Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Johann Jakob Grynæus

GRYNÆUS, or Gryner, Johann Jakob (1540-1617), a learned theologian of the period immediately succeeding the Reformation, was born, October 1, 1540, at Bern, where his father Thomas, nephew of Simon Grynaeus, was at that time a teacher of theology, was educated at Basel, and in 1559 received an appointment as curate to his father who had become pastor of Roteln in Baden. In 1563 he proceeded to Tubingen for the purpose of completing his theological studies, and in 1565 he re turned to Roteln as successor to his father. Here, as the result of much reading and reflexion, he felt com pelled to abjure the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord s Supper, and to renounce the Formula Concordice. Called in 1575 to the chair of Old Testament exegesis at Basel, he became involved in unpleasant controversy with Simon Sulzer and other champions of Lutheran orthodoxy; and in 1584 he was glad to accept an invitation to Heidelberg, where two years were spent. Returning to Basel in 1586 as autistes or superintendent of the church there, he exerted for upwards of twenty-five years a very considerable influence upon both the church and the state affairs of that com munity, and acquired a wide reputation as a skilful theo logian of the school of Zwingli. Five years before his death, which occurred August 13, 1617, he had the mis fortune to become totally blind, but he continued to preach and lecture to the last.

His numerous works include commentaries on various books of the Old and New Testament, Tkcologica thcorcmata et prdblcmata (1588), and a collection of patristic literature entitled Monumcnta S. Patrum Orthodoxographa (2 vols. fol., 1569).