Gieseler, JOHANN KARL LUDWIG

Gieseler, JOHANN KARL LUDWIG, a great German writer of church history, was born 3d March 1793, at Petershagen, near Minden. He made his studies at Halle, and in 1813 volunteered as a soldier during the war of liberation. After the peace he returned to teaching, became corrector of the gymnasium at Minden, next director of the new gymnasium at Cleves. His Entstehung und frühere Schicksale d. schriftlichen Evangelien (1818) demolished the prevalent theory of a primitive written gospel, and procured him the chair of Theology at the new university of Bonn. Hence he was called to Göttingen in 1831, where he became in 1837 a consistorial councillor, and died 8th July 1854. His great work is the Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte (5 vols. 1824-57), of which the last two volumes were edited by Redepenning, who added also a sixth, the Dogmengeschichte, and prefixed a Life to the fifth volume. Gieseler's profound learning, judicial temper, and admirable faculty of throwing fresh light upon the original documents combine to make him an unusually satisfactory historian, and indeed he falls short of Neander only in his rarest gift—that profound spiritual sense to which he owed his insight. The English translation comes down only to the beginning of the Reformation; the American, to the peace of Westphalia.