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Georg Scherer (1540 – 30 November 1605) was a Roman Catholic pulpit orator and controversialist.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(May 2014) |
Georg Scherer (1540 – 30 November 1605) was a Roman Catholic pulpit orator and controversialist.
Born at Schwaz, in Tyrol, Scherer entered the Society of Jesus in 1559. For over forty years he labored in the Archduchy of Austria. In 1577 he was Court preacher to the Archduke Matthias; he retained the post until 1600. In 1590 he was appointed Rector of the Jesuit College at Vienna; the sternness of his character scarcely fitted him for the office, and he was transferred (1594) to Linz.
Scherer enjoyed lifelong popularity as an orator, beginning before his ordination. A popular anecdote tells of him exclaiming from the pulpit "If the Catholic Church is not the True Church, may I become blind", and being struck blind on the spot. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia dismisses this story as "pure invention", but praises Scherer's "boundless energy" and "rugged strength of character".
Scherer vigorously opposed the Tübingen professors who meditated a union with the Greek Schismatics, refuted Lutheran divines like Osiander and Heerbrand, and roused his countrymen against the Turks. He made many converts, amongst them the future Cardinal Khlesl.
In 1605, Scherer died in Linz of apoplexy. His works were collected and published by the Premonstratensians of Bruck, Moravia (1599–1600), and again issued at Munich (1613–1614).
Believing like his contemporaries that the State had the right to put witches to death, Scherer maintained, however, that since they were possessed, the principal weapons used against them should be spiritual ones, e.g. exorcisms or prayer. Scherer's severe attitude towards witchcraft did not meet the approval of his general, Acquaviva.
In 1583, Scherer played a role in Vienna's one and only case of witch-burning. [1] 70-year-old Elise Plainacher of Mank, Lower Austria, a Lutheran, had raised her granddaughter Anna Schlutterbauer ever since the girl's mother died. When Anna was 17 her father, Elise's Catholic son-in-law, took custody and moved with Anna to St. Pölten. There, the girl suffered seizures, probably epileptic, that were blamed on a hex placed by her grandmother. Anna and Elise were brought to Vienna, where Scherer conducted a rigorous "investigation" (exorcisms combined with interrogation) at St. Barbara's Church in Fleischmarkt. Over the course of several days, Scherer claimed to have discovered 12,652 demons inhabiting Anna's body and spirit. At length the exhausted and confused girl agreed that her grandmother had hexed her. Elise was taken to the notorious Rogues' House (Malefizhaus) at 10 Rauhensteingasse for interrogation under torture. Her eventual confession was so unconvincing that the mayor of Vienna appealed to Emperor Rudolf II to overturn it, but Scherer brought ecclesiastical pressure to bear and the Emperor declined the petition. Elise Plainacher was burned at the stake and her ashes thrown into the Danube on 28 September 1583.
In some religions, an exorcist is a person who is believed to be able to cast out the devil or performs the ridding of demons or other supernatural beings who are alleged to have possessed a person, or (sometimes) a building or even an object. An exorcist can be a specially prepared or instructed person including: priest, a nun, a monk, a witch doctor (healer), a shaman, a psychic or a geomancer.
Elise Richter was an Austrian philologist, specialising in Romance studies, and university professor. She was the first woman to achieve the habilitation at the University of Vienna, the first female associate professor and the only woman at any Austrian university before World War I to hold an academic appointment. Persecuted by Nazi officials during World War II, she was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia in October 1942, and died there in June 1943.
Georg Ritter von Schönerer was an Austrian landowner and politician of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A major exponent of pan-Germanism and German nationalism in Austria as well as a radical opponent of political Catholicism and a fierce antisemite, Schönerer exerted much influence on the young Adolf Hitler. He was known for a generation as the most radical pan-German nationalist in Austria.
Melchior Klesl was an Austrian statesman and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church during the time of the Counter-Reformation. He was minister-favourite of King and Emperor Matthias (1609-1618) and a leading advocate for peace between the empire's different confessional leagues before the Thirty Years' War.
Schwaz is a city in the Austrian state of Tyrol. It is the administrative center of the Schwaz district. Schwaz is located in the lower Inn valley.
Scherer or Scherrer is a German language surname widespread in German speaking Europe since the Middle Ages. With the beginning of colonization it also came to North and South America. Notable people with the surname include:
Wilhering Abbey is a Cistercian monastery in Wilhering in Upper Austria, about 8 km (5 mi) from Linz. It was founded in 1146. The buildings, re-constructed in the 18th century, are known for their spectacular Rococo decoration.
Anna Vasa of Sweden was a Swedish princess heavily involved in the politics of that country and of Poland. She was starosta of Brodnica and Golub. The youngest child of King John III of Sweden and Catherine Jagiellon, she was close to her brother Sigismund Vasa, King of Poland (1587–1632) and King of Sweden (1592–99). Raised a Catholic, Anna converted to Lutheranism in 1584. Though she had several suitors, she remained unmarried.
George Frederick of Baden-Durlach was Margrave of Baden-Durlach from 1604 until his abdication in 1622. He also ruled Baden-Baden.
Anna of Tyrol was by birth an Archduchess of Austria and member of the Tyrolean branch of the House of Habsburg and by marriage Holy Roman Empress, German Queen, Queen of Bohemia and Queen of Hungary.
Eleonora Gonzaga, was by birth Princess of Mantua, Nevers and Rethel from the Nevers branch of the House of Gonzaga and was Holy Roman Empress, German Queen, Queen consort of Hungary and Bohemia by marriage to Emperor Ferdinand III.
Johann Gruber, also known as "Papa Gruber" and "The Saint of Gusen", was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest who was imprisoned in Concentration Camp Gusen I from 1940 until he was murdered by the camp commandant on Holy Friday 1944. In the concentration camp, Gruber helped many others survive by raising funds from outside the camp and bribing the SS men and kapos in order to organise the delivery of food to starving inmates.
The Hitler family comprises the relatives and ancestors of Adolf Hitler, an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party, who was the dictator of Germany, holding the title Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state as Führer und Reichskanzler from 1934 to 1945. Adolf Hitler had a central role in the rise of Nazism in Germany, provoking the start of World War II, and holding ultimate responsibility for the deaths of many millions of people during the Holocaust.
Elisabeth Plainacher, or Elsa Plainacher, was an alleged Austrian witch. She was the only person executed for sorcery in the city of Vienna.
Lambert de Sayve, also Saive or Seave, was a Flemish composer.
The Lutheran City Church is a Lutheran church building in Innere Stadt, the first district of Vienna.
Jacob Heerbrand was a German Protestant theologian, reformer and controversialist.
Rudolf Ignaz Kner was an Austrian geologist, paleontologist, zoologist and ichthyologist. He also wrote some poems which were published by his brother-in-law K.A. Kaltenbrunner.
In the Holy Roman Empire, witch trials composed of the areas of the present day Germany, were the most extensive in Europe and in the world, both to the extent of the witch trials as such as well as to the number of executions.
The Rottenburg witch trials was a series of witch trials taking place in Rottenburg am Neckar in then Further Austria in present day Baden-Württemberg in Germany between 1578 and 1609. It resulted in the death of 150 people. The witch trials were divided in the waves of 1578-1585, 1589-90, 1595-96, 1598-1605 and 1609. The high peak of the trials were the witch trials of 1595-96, when 41 women were burnt alive at the stake between June 1595 and July 1596. Rottenburg was known as a witch trials center and the 1595 trial attracted attention from the University of Tübingen. The Rottenburg witch trials has been characterized as traditional, since the victims were almost exclusively poor old women, and never developed in to the endemic mass trials in which citizens of all sexes and classes could be indiscriminately accused, such as the Würzburg witch trials, and they were conducted under strict control from the authorities.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Georg Scherer". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company.| International | |
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