Basilius Monner

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Basilius Monner (1500 – 16 January 1566, in Jena) was a German jurist and reform-minded scholar. In his youth he joined the Augustinian order and studied at the University of Wittenberg during the Reformation. In 1524 he became Rector of the Gotha Gymnasium, a post he held for eleven years, and earned a master’s degree in the seven liberal arts in Jena.

He left Jena for the Wittenberg Academy in 1527 because of the plague. In 1535 he began studying law at Wittenberg. In 1538 he traveled to France as an envoy for the Protestants and returned in October of that year, receiving his doctorate on 16 January 1539. In February 1539 he joined the newly founded Wittenberg Consistory, the forerunner of evangelical consistories and marriage courts. His work there was short, because on 10 October 1539 he began to counsel Johann Friedrich of Saxony and became the tutor of his sons.

After training Duke John Frederick II of Saxony, Monner moved to Jena in autumn 1554 to teach law at the new Gymnasium there, working with Gregor Brück, the Saxon regent. He took part in the Colloquy of Worms in 1557 and witnessed the founding of the University of Jena on 15 August 1557. He began teaching in the law faculty on 2 February 1558, becoming one of its first professors alongside Matthias Wesenbeck, and focused on Protestant marriage law, blending canon law with Reformation ideas.

Contemporary observers described him as vain, domineering, zealous, and sometimes intriguing. He was a strict Lutheran and supported Matthias Flacius as a Gnesio-Lutheran.