Johann Balthasar Schupp (1 March 1610 – 26 October 1661) was a German satirical author and a writer of Christian lyrics. After 1654, his having switched mid-career to a position as a high-profile Lutheran pastor, the content and populist approach of Schupp's sermons and of the printed pamphlets which he now started to publish brought him into increasingly acrimonious conflict with Hamburg's (relatively) conservative church establishment.
Much of his later written work appeared under a succession of pseudonyms. These included Antenor, Philandron, Ehrnhold, Philanderson, Mellilambius and Ambrosius.
Life Provenance and early years Johann Balthasar Schupp was born in Giessen, the eldest recorded child of a prosperous middle class couple. He was baptised as a Protestant on 29 March 1610, but the baptismal record did not mention his birth date. The birth date of 1 March 1610 is widely applied in secondary sources, but no original record of it is traceable. Johann Eberhart (Ebert) Schupp, his father, was a local businessman and town councillor who twice, in 1630 and again in 1640, served terms as mayor. His mother, born Anna Elisabeth Ruß, came from a patrician family: her father, Johannes Ruß, had also, in 1601 and 1613, served as mayor. Balthasar Schupp had five younger siblings.
Studies and Wanderjahre Schupp attended the Pädagogium (school) in Giessen till the end of 1625 when, on 29 December, he enrolled at the already well established University of Marburg, some 25 miles to the north. (The universities of Giessen and Marburg were at this time administered as a single entity.) He studied Philosophy and Theology. In 1628 he undertook a lengthy tour educational through southern Germany and the Baltic coastal region According to one source his travels also took in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, extending also to Copenhagen and Königsberg. On a number of occasions he was obliged to change his travel plans at short notice, reacting to the dangers presented by the marauding armies and the accompanying plague epidemics that were a constant feature of the on-going war. Scholars encountered during these Wanderjahre who exercised a particular influence on Schupp's later career included the noted professor of eloquence, Samuel Fuchs, at Königsberg, the Rostock theologian Johann Cothmann, the Rostock legal scholar Thomas Lindemann and, perhaps most importantly, the academic poet-polymath Peter Lauremberg. Schupp evidently lodged with Lauremberg at Rostock during 1630/31. It was also Lauremberg who supervised him for the magister degree which he received from the University of Rostock on 18 August 1631. He was especially proud that the university had ranked him at the top of degree list.
Itinerant scholar Still in Rostock, he immediately began to work as a tutor (Privatdozent). However, on 15 October 1631 the imperial garrison left Rostock, ushering in what came to be known as the "Swedish times". The city was now controlled from Mecklenburg by Swedish forces directed by Gustavus Adolphus. In the event, Rostock suffered less under occupation than many other regional centres, although trade was badly disrupted. Later during October 1631 Schupp had nevertheless left town, moving via Lübeck to Hamburg and then to Bremen. By 1632, after an absence of perhaps three years, he was back home in Giessen. The military-political situation locally was relatively quiet, and during 1632 he received permission from the young Landgraf to lecture at Marburg. At the same time he was appointed director and, between 1632 and 1634, head stipendiate ("Stipendiatenmajor") at Marburg's "collegium und exercitium oratorium". Here he may have been imprudently generous with his political views, since in December 1632, following the Landgraf's personal intervention, he was formally and firmly admonished by Johann Heinrich Tonsor, a senior professor at the university. He should restrict himself to subjects that fell within the existing scope of his students' understanding: he must take care to avoid any questions that might prejudice the standing of the imperial authorities, or touch on the causes and disputes of the war.
After the university was cleared by plague Schupp returned once more to Giessen where during 1633/34 he taught Rhetoric. Sources differ as to whether it was dissatisfaction with the teaching work in Giessen or the continuing twin impacts of plague and war in Hesse-Darmstadt that drove him, during 1634/35, to team up with the young aristocrat Rudolf Rau von Holzhausen and leave the area and embark on what in effect became a second period as an itinerant scholar, moving first to Cologne and then to what was known at the time as the "Zuiderkwartier" (South Holland). Identified in records as the companion Rau von Holzhausen, on 3 June 1634 Johannes Balthasarus Schuppius enrolled at the University of Leiden. In the Dutch Republic Schupp resumed his teaching career. He was also able to network with some of the leading international scholars of the day, including the classicist Claudius Salmasius and the remarkable philologist Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn. The man described in a number of sources as the greatest scholar of his generation, Daniel Heinsius, nevertheless refused even to meet Schupp. Having noticed the similarity (especially in Latin) between Schupp's family name and that of the Catholic controversialist Caspar Schoppe (who by now had relocated permanently south to Rome, Heinsius insisted that Schoppe and Schupp must be cousins., during which time he made the acquaintance of the well-travelled theologian Gerardus Vossius and of the polymath-humanist Caspar Barlaeus. Although he was impressed by these and by many other eminent academic gentlemen whom he met during his time accompanying Rudolf Rau von Holzhausenin the Dutch Republic, of greater significance was his appreciation at close hand of the mutual tolerance apparent in the relationship between church and state. He himself later attributed his liberal approach to church-state relations to his Dutch experiences. The religious toleration upon which visitors to the Dutch Republic frequently commented during the so-called "Dutch Golden Age" was particularly striking after his earlier travels across various parts of the Holy Roman empire in which the more conservative precept "Cuius regio, eius religio" was seldom challenged.
Tenure At the end of 1635, after approximately another year away, he returned again to Marburg. By now, still aged only 25, he believed himself well prepared to take up a position as a university theologian. The university authorities had other ideas, however, which Schupp was in no position to counter. Professor Theodor Höpingk had just vacated Marburg in order to take up a position as Syndic in Friedberg (near Frankfurt, leaving Marburg with a vacancy for a professor of Eloquence and History. Johann Balthasar Schupp accepted the Marburg professorship in Eloquence and History, retaining the post till 1646. Sources recall that he took a personal interest in his students, and displayed a talent for relating to them, delivering his lectures with flair and liveliness, while shunning academic stiffness and pedantry. He was accordingly able to generate a certain level academic zeal, along with a mutually fulfilling relationship that benefited teacher and students alike.
Marriages On 9 May 1636 Johann Balthasar Schupp married Anna Elisabeth Helwig. As the only (recorded) daughter of the polymath-philologist Christoph Helvig, she came from another academic family in the region. Her father had died in 1617, however. The marriage was a happy one. After the death of his first wife in 1650 he married, secondly, Sophia Eleonora Reinkingk in 1651. By each of his marriages Balthasar Schupp was father to at least one son and one daughter. According to at least one source, however, his marriages resulted in the births not of four but of five recorded children.
Academic progression In 1638 Schupp organised the republication of his father-in-law's book "Theatrum historicum et chronologicum", which remained a useful tool for history teaching. The books lasting relevance is evident from the fact that further reprints were still being issued in the eighteenth century. His own didactic approach of abandoning pedantic tradition in favour of a more lucid eloquence effectively heralded a new technique and methodology that would win lasting approval, even though at this stage neither Schupp nor anyone else of influence in the universities establishment took the next obvious step of teaching the topic of "Eloquence" in the vernacular rather than in Latin.
By this time, in addition to his teaching duties at the university, Schupp was providing private lessons in Oratory at "Avellin", his summer holiday-home in the countryside outside Marburg.
One surviving indication of the affection and esteem in which he was held by colleagues is a letter dated 12 December 1638 addressed by the entire university to Landgraf Georg II, urging that Schupp's meagre annual salary of 140 gulden should be increased. The letter describes Schupp as a "rarum ingenium" (loosely, "a rare talent"). The Landgraf's reply, dated 17 January 1639, indicates that he will supplement the university salary with a personal annual grant of 100 gulden, effective retrospectively from 1 January 1639. In addition the Landgraf proposes a one-time payment of 50 gulden as acknowledgment of the low level of Schupp's remuneration during the earlier years. Both the letters involved in this remunerative exchange pay fulsome tribute to the young professor's hard work and enthusiasm.
Royal commission Having been alerted to the excellence of the Professor of History and Eloquence at his university in Marburg, in 1640 the Landgraf commissioned Schupp to write a large Latin-language work of history. It was to be a history of the government of Landgraf Georg and of his father, the Landgraf Ludwig, who had died in 1626. The period in question was an eventful one, coinciding with the outbreak and more than two decades of the Thirty Years' War. There was self-evidently a tension between the Landgraf's commission and the agreed need for Schupp to continue his public teaching and ensure that students should continue with the opportunity to study History and Eloquence. A letter from 29 September 1641 to the university authorities spells out the conflicting objectives and hints at some sort of ill-defined scaling back of the university teaching, and a subsequent letter addressed to Schupp himself and dated 29 October 1641 undertaking to provide supplementary "princely recompense" in the form of 12 Klafter (roughly 20 meters) of timber and two sows annually. That would surely have been enough to keep the growing Schupp family warm through the winter and well provided with meat through the year. The book was almost certainly never completed, but something of its likely tone and content can be inferred from the text of a speech that Schupp delivered in 1638 in which he warmly eulogised the Landgraf, but also vividly described the horrors of the on-going war. The text survives because in 1640 it was printed and published as a short (16 page) booklet, dedicated to Landgraf Georg, and made available under the title "Hercules togatus" (loosely, "Citizen Hercules").