Lazarus Spengler: A Lutheran Teacher

“To the honorable and wise Lazarus Spengler ...” This is how Martin Luther began a letter in the summer of 1530. Luther had written A Sermon On Keeping Children in School, and sent it to his friend, Lazarus Spengler.

“I hope that it may do much good, and I have published it under your name,” Luther wrote, “with the sole thought that it may thereby receive greater attention and, if worthy, be read by the people of your city. ... I hope you will continue to push and promote this matter, as you have been doing anyway all along.”

Lazarus Spengler was the leading Lutheran layman during the Reformation. Only one year after Luther posted the 95 Theses, Spengler met Luther and supported him. In 1520, when the pope excommunicated Luther, he excommunicated five others too—including Spengler! (Spengler had written a best-selling book which praised Luther's Bible-based teachings.)

Spengler was a fighter. He appealed directly to the emperor to have his own excommunication repealed (and it was). Spengler worked hard to influence his city of Nuremberg to adopt and support Lutheran teaching and practice. His city council was one of only two city councils to sign the Augsburg Confession, and Spengler himself was present and active at Augsburg. As secretary of the Nuremberg city council, Spengler was the city's chief representative at many important religious meetings.

But one of Spengler's greatest victories was a peaceful one. In 1524 Martin Luther issued a call for Lutherans to start schools. Spengler wasted no time. He himself was the leading voice in convincing Nuremberg's city council to begin a Lutheran school. Already in 1525, on Nuremberg's behalf Spengler consulted in person with Luther about the new school. By May of 1526, the school opened.

But he did not only help get the school started. We also know he was concerned about the quality of the teaching. The Nuremberg city council, no doubt influenced by Spengler, tried to make sure the school obtained the very best teachers. Philip Melanchthon himself was the first choice to head the school, but he declined. The first teachers at the school -- in the subjects of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, history, literature, rhetoric, mathematics, science and astronomy -- were well known and highly regarded. All of these teachers were Lutheran.

However, even this was not all Spengler did. Not only did he help get the school started; nor was securing good teachers enough. Spengler also kept working to influence the city council to give the school proper financial support and scholarships for worthy students.

From Spengler’s example we see (1) that a concern for pure Lutheran doctrine goes with a zeal to start Lutheran schools; (2) that the teachers in Lutheran schools need to be the very best; and (3) that we also have a duty to encourage financial support for these schools.

This might be all we can say about Lazarus Spengler’s official involvement with the Lutheran school in Nuremberg. But it is not all he did in the realm of “Christian education.”

In 1524 he wrote a hymn. We might call it a “teaching hymn.” For those who might not go to the new Lutheran schools, this hymn itself taught them the same Christian faith taught in the schools.

We sing this hymn too: #430 in our Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary, “By Adam’s Fall Is All Forlorn.” (Stanzas 5-9 are newly translated and published in the ELH by Rev. Mark DeGarmeaux.) The faith this hymn teaches is the reason for having Lutheran schools. A fitting stanza for the subject of Lutheran schools is the last verse of Spengler’s own hymn:

Your Word, a Lamp unto my feet,

A Light, it leads me always.

Your truth with joy I gladly greet,

To guide me on my pathway.

In us shall rise

For Paradise

This Morning Star for one and all.

His Holy Dove

Grants us in love

The hope of life eternal.

Jerry Gernander is pastor of Bethany Lutheran Church in Princeton, Minnesota.