Johann Host

One of the seven Dominicans, who distinguished themselves in the struggle against Luther in Cologne. The others were Jacob van Hoogstraten, Conrad Collin, Bernard von Luxemburg, Johann Pesselius, Tillman Smeling and Johann Slotanus. Johann Host was born on a farm at Romberg, or Romberch, in Westphalia about 1480, and died at the close of 1532 or the beginning of 1533. At the age of sixteen he entered the Dominican Order, and we find him studying at the University of Bologna from 1516 to 1519. In 1520 he was appointed to the theological faculty of the University of Cologne, and despite the many religious controversies he was engaged in, he found time for considerable literary activity. Among the works he edited are Burchard von Barby, "Descriptio Terrae Sanctae", Fabri, "Antilogiarium Lutheri Babylonia" and the "Commentarium in PsaImos" of Dionysius the Carthusian. He has moreover left many controversial works. The fact of his being appointed to the facility of Cologne University is proof of the orthodoxy of his theology as that university held a sort of censorship over all the theological faculties of Germany Host's last work was the "Enchiridion Sacerdotum" which was published at Cologne in 1532. His fellow members on the university faculty, Hoogstraten and Collin, besides being distinguished churchmen were eminent among later German Humanists.

SS. O.P., II, 88; PAULUS in Katholik. (1895), 481 sqq.; (1896), 473; i (1897), 188 sqq.; ii (1901), 187 sqq., JANSSEN, tr. CHRISTIE, History of the German People, XIV (London, 1909), 261-2; BUCHBERGER, Kirchliches Handilezikon, s. v.

J. C. Grey.