Johannes Ludovicus Pistorius, sr.

Not to be confused with Johannes Henricus Pistorius Woerdensis (1499-1525), first protestant martyr in the Netherlands. https://www.geni.com/family-tree/index/6000000005073687685 There seems to be no common ancestor.

1. Johannes Pistorius the Elder:

Controversies with Roman Catholics

First Protestant pastor at Nidda, Hesse; b. in the latter part of the fifteenth century; d. 1583. In company with Butzer, he appears to have attended the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, and in 1541 he became superintendent of the diocese of Alsfeld. Landgrave Philip accorded him the utmost confidence. In 1540 he was one of the Hessian delegates to the convention at Hagenau, and soon afterward he was delegated to attend the colloquy with at Worms, in 1540-41. He accompanied the landgrave to the Diet of Regensburg, where the emperor appointed him to speak on the Protestant side, along with Melanchthon and Butzer. He stood loyal to Melanchthon, who esteemed him highly In 1543, at the request of Butzer, the landgrave sent him to Cologne, to support attempts of the elector to introduce the Reformation there. He preached to large throngs, and to Melanchthon's complete satisfaction. In 1545-116, again as a colleague of Butzer, he took part in the religious conference at Regensburg. When it was purposed to introduce the Interim (q.v.) in Hesse, he headed a brave, though moderate, resistance, even being ready to resign his office. After the reaction brought about by the Elector Maurice, the landgrave, in 1557, despatched Pistorius to the princely diet at Frankfort; and not long afterward he was one of the speakers at the great religious conference in Worms (q.v.).

Activity in Inter-Protestant Controversy

From this time on, Pistorius was busied more by the controversies raging among the Protestants than by the struggle against the Roman Catholic Church. He then deeply influenced the Hessian position, and his constant aim was either to preserve or to restore peace. Together with his colleagues at the Synod of Ziegenhain, in 1558, he gladly accepted the Frankfort Recess (q.v.). Owing to illness, he was unable to accompany the landgrave to the princes' conference at Naumburg in 1561, although he declared, in a formal expression of opinion, that the revised Augsburg Confession contained no doctrinal deviation from the original. It was most probably Pistorius who composed the important Hessian opinion, dated Oct. 19, 1566, regarding the "final answer" of the W�rttemberg theologians to the Heidelberg divines (T�bingen, 1566). This document takes a very decided stand against the Heidelberg party with their Calvinistic teaching regarding the Lord's Supper, and it recognizes the doctrine of Ubiquity (q.v.). At the momentous eighth general synod of 1576, when the Torgau Book (see FORMULA OF CONCORD) was under advisement, Pistorius approved its basal creed, its various doctrinal statements and antitheses, its teaching concerning the Lord's Supper, and, pending deeper investigation, its Christology. At the same time, he shared the scruples urged by the majority against emphasizing the Invariata, the "damnation" of the Calvinists, and the subtlety of the doctrine of ubiquity; and he was, therefore, the first to sign the treatise explanatory of these points. At the general assembly in Treysa (Nov., 1577), Pistorius and the majority voted to reject the Book of Bergen (see FORMULA OF CONCORD). It is thus evident that Pistorius undervalued the significance and range of the dogmatic questions of the period. He intensely disliked doctrinal polemics, and always treated dogmatic questions from a practical point of view. Administratively he evinced a very influential activity in organization and polity, as well as in public worship, discipline and education, during his entire term of office. At his death he left an unfinished work on the diets and colloquies that he had attended from 1540 to 1557.

Also see http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/encyc09.html?term=Pistorius,%20Joha...

Johannes was a sexton in Woerden and also tenant of the brickworks, and his surname may have been derived from that profession.

Johannes Pistorius and his family fled from Pistoia Italy during the Roman Catholic era of the Lombards invasion of Pistoia to rid of any religious groups other than Roman Catholic