CAPITO, WOLFGANG FABRICIUS

original name Wolfgang Kpfel born 1478, Hagenau, Alsace [now in France] died Nov. 4, 1541, Strassburg [now Strasbourg, Fr.] Christian humanist and Roman Catholic priest who, breaking with his Roman faith, became a primary Reformer at Strassburg. Educated at the German universities of Ingolstadt and Freiburg, Capito became a diocesan preacher (1512) in Bruchsal, where he met the future Reformers John Oecolampadius and Conrad Pellicanus. Appointed cathedral preacher at Basel, Switz., in 1515, he lectured at the university and met the celebrated humanist Desiderius Erasmus and the leader of the Swiss Reformation, Huldrych Zwingli. To Capito's dismay, the elector Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz summoned him in 1519 to Mainz, as cathedral preacher and, later, as chancellor. Badly torn in conscience, he twice visited Martin Luther at Wittenberg. By 1523 he fully believed in the cause of the Reformation; he resigned his post at Mainz and went to Strassburg, where he joined forces with the German Protestant Martin Bucer in reforming Strassburg and southern Germany and in consolidating the leading German, French, and Swiss Evangelical ministers. In 1530 he and Bucer drafted the Confessio Tetrapolitana, an attempt to mediate the differences between Zwingli and Luther over the Augsburg Confession. Unlike Bucer, Capito remained friendly to the Anabaptists, the radical wing of the Reformation, and other dissenters disturbing the Strassburg Reformation, until 1534, when he clearly repudiated them. His most important work is considered to be Berner Synodus (after the synod held at Bern, Switz., in 1532), which deals essentially with church discipline and pastoral instruction. An active participant in several important church synods, he died of plague while returning from the Colloquy of Regensburg.