Nikolaus Selnecker (1530-1592)

Born in Hersbruck and raised primarily in Nuremburg, Nikolaus Selnecker showed considerable talent as an organist at an early age. He studied under Melanchthon at Wittenburg from 1549 to 1558. Today, we remember Selnecker primarily as a prolific hymnist, having written over a hundred hymns. However, he also wrote many lectures on Biblical texts and played a key role in resolving a long list of doctrinal controversies that arose after Martin Luther’s death.

Several biographies describe Nikolaus Selnecker as a conciliatory people pleaser with relatively moderate theological views. His career experienced ups and downs as the various Lutheran factions moved in and out of favor. His conciliatory nature may have made him an ideal candidate to bring these factions together, and, in 1576, the Elector August asked him to work with others (primarily Jakob Andrea and Martin Chemitz) to reconcile the splintered Lutheran theologies into what became The Formula of Concord.

Leipzig appointed Selnecker a professor of theology, and he died there in 1592. According to a biography of Selnecker at the journal Studium, a Wittenberg professor named Georg Mylius said the following at Selnecker’s funeral, “He was not a weathervane or a rubberneck on the doctrine of the Christian religion, nor was he a reed, which the wind blows here and there, nor a man in impressible clothing, who would let himself be moved to all changes in religious matters for the sake of lordly favor and worldly glory, but he has remained true and faithful to a simply known and confessed truth during his lifetime and continues till his death.”