Johann Cochlaeus

Originally Johann Dobneck, he was born of poor parents at Wendelstein (near Nuremberg), from which he obtained the punning surname Cochlaeus,[1] for which he occasionally substituted Wendelstinus.

He maintained good relations with the episcopal court of Mainz and with Hieronymus Aleander of Worms, who applied to him for the purpose of a discussion on the best means of opposing Martin Luther.

Cochlaeus accompanied Lorenzo Campeggio, the papal nuncio in Holy Roman Empire, to the Convention of Regensburg as interpreter and member of the commission which discussed the reform of the clergy.

His position at Frankfurt becoming untenable during the German Peasants' War, he fled to Cologne in 1525, and in 1526 received a canonry at St. Victor's in Mainz.

It became a model and source for later polemics, and the view expounded in it that the Protestant Reformation was nothing but an incidental jealousy between the Dominican and Augustinian orders had a wide circulation.

[3] He left one of the few contemporary notices of the young Michael Servetus as well as notes on Tyndale's abortive attempt to print his New Testament at Cologne in 1525.