Jodok Mörlin was born in or around 1490 in Feldkirch in the Vorarlberg, the westernmost part of the Archduchy of Austria. He was the son of Hugo Mörlin and his wife, Lucia Ebenko, the grandson of Johann Mörlin, and the great-grandson of another Hugo Mörlin. The name, Jodok, was not Germanic; it was Breton. Jodok might have gotten his rare name if he was baptized on 13 December, the feast day of St. Judoc, a 7th Century noble from Brittany. Nothing is known about his early years. But in 1508 he was studying at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, with Johann Eck as one of his teachers, and then, on a scholarship, at the University of Leipzig in 1509 and the University of Wittenberg in 1510. Here in Wittenberg his career was made. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree after only a few months in 1510 and a Magister’s degree in 1512 and became the Professor of Metaphysics in 1514 and then the Dean of the Faculty of Arts in 1516, all at the University of Wittenberg. In 1517 and 1518, he taught an introductionary course about “the three principal languages, Latin, Hebrew and Greek, and the ‘Luther College’ grammar .”
During the Reformation
Three years after the beginning of the Reformation, in the spring of 1521, Mörlin was appointed as the pastor of Westhausen. His post had been left vacant in 1520 with the death of the last Catholic priest, Henningus Gode. By then, Mörlin was a presbyter at the Diocese of Magdeburg and already the Conventor of Westhausen. He was recommended to replace Father Gode by Martin Luther and presented by two brothers, Frederick the Wise, the Elector of Saxony, and John the Steadfast, the Duke of Saxony, to the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg, Konrad von Thüngen. Mörlin was accepted and installed on 9 April 1521. By then, Mörlin already had a wife and at least five sons, including Joachim and Maximilian, so he was, as Luther had noted in March 1521, “impotent and very poor ”, in need of a better income. The appointment did improve his financial prospects because Westhausen was one of the several parishes assigned to the University of Wittenberg so that the professors would have steady income from them. But, as both the pastor and a resident, Mörlin still had to deliver his parish’s annual fees to the University. He himself was not able to obtain his own exemption until 1528. So his financial problems continued, forcing his sons to learn their trades. Joachim was apprenticed as a potter, and Maximilian, as a tailor. Nevertheless, their father proved to be popular as a preacher. Residents came from all over the Heldburger Land to Westhausen to hear his sermons for years before they even got their own Lutheran pastors. This was precisely what the Elector and the Duke wanted, to limit the Catholic influence of the Prince-Bishops of Würzburg over the Heldburger Land. In 1528, the Electorate of Saxony had its first Visitation of the East Country of Franconia. When the Visitors came to Westhausen, the parishioners told them that “he was doing all the hard work in the preaching of the Divine Word, and they had no lack of it, but they complained that he would be overcome with drink and pick fights ”. Mörlin, threatened with dismissal, promised to improve. In the following Visitations, he kept his word, and he was allowed to keep his offices. But he still had to keep a chaplain and pay him an annual salary of 40 guilders.
After the Reformation
Mörlin died in Westhausen on 15 September 1550 after 29 years as the town’s pastor.
Family
Jodocus was married twice. His first wife was Margarete, the daughter of the administrator of the Elector of Saxony’s vineyards, and she died in either 1514 or 1515. Mörlin then married Anna Hausknecht, perhaps a native of Wittenberg, in 1515 and they had 12 children, including two of their eight sons, Joachim and Maximilian.
