Daniel Cramer ( Daniel Candidus) (20 January 1568 – 5 October 1637) was a German Lutheran theologian and writer from Recz, Brandenburg. He was an opponent of the and the Jesuits.
Life
He became professor and archdeacon at
Stettin. Earlier, in the 1590s, he was at the University of Marburg, writing on
Aristotle.
[[1]. The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy describes his Isagoge as the earliest German textbook on metaphysics. (p. 626)]
Writings
Cramer is remembered for his
emblem book The True Society of Jesus and the Rosy Cross (1617). It was reprinted with different titles:
Emblemata sacra (1624), and
Emblematum sacrorum (1627), composed with the academic and poet
Conrad Bachmann (1572–1646). The 1624 edition (with 50 emblems) is the better known. This was followed by the
Octaginta emblemata moralia nova (1630). The common denominator of all the Cramer's emblems is a mystic heart, represented in the most different situations: chained, crowned, nailed to a cross, to the roots of a rosary, endowed with wings, undermined by the devil, and so on. The books of emblems composed by Daniel Cramer are considered by some scholars (for example
Adam McLean and Giordano Berti) as expressions of the Rosicrucian thought. Indeed, various clues suggest that Cramer was a member of the
Rosicrucian brotherhood.
Daniel Cramer wrote also neo-Latin drama, and controversial works in theology. For the Duke of Pomerania, Philipp II, he became involved in writing the church history Pomerania;[[2] . This was the first such history, and written from a strictly Lutheran perspective ( this PDF, about the year 1637, on Cramer).] his preaching in front of Philipp is recorded.
Works
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Areteugenia
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Plagium (1593) drama
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Isagoge in Metaphysicam Aristotelis (1594)
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Synopsis trium librorum rhetoricorum Aristotelis (Stettin, 1597)
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Extract und kurtzer warhafftiger Bericht vom Colloquio zu Regensburg, zwischen unsern Theologen ... und den Gehsuiten (Stettin, 1602)
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Methodus concionandi, de interpretatione cujusvis textus biblici, tam artificiosa quam populari (Stettin, 1605)
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Das Grosse Pomrische Kirchen-Chronicon, four volumes (Stettin, 1628)
Sources
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Adam McLean (editor), Fiona Tait (translator)(1991) The Rosicrucian Emblems of Daniel Cramer: The True Society of Jesus and the Rosy Cross
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Sabine Mödersheim (1994) "Domini Doctrina Coronat". Die geistliche Emblematik Daniel Cramers (1568–1637)
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Wolfgang Harms and Michael Schilling (editors of reprint) (1994) Daniel Cramer: Emblemata Sacra
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Angela Baumann-Koch (2001) Frühe lutherische Gebetsliteratur bei Andreas Musculus und Daniel Cramer
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Friedrich Wagnitz (Kiel 2001), Daniel Cramer (1568–1637). Ein Leben in Stettin um 1600
External links
