OSIANDER, ANDREAS, one of the most learned and zealous of the German reformers, was born in 1498, at Gunzenhausen, near Nuremberg. His father was a blacksmith, called 13osemann, out of which name his son, after the fashion of his time, manufactured the .classic-looking Osiander. Osiander was educated at Ingolstadt and Wittenberg; and after completing his course of study, became a preacher at Nuremberg, where he was conspicuously active in introducing the reformation (1522). He ardently advocated the views of Luther in his controversy with the Swiss reformer Zwingli, on the question of, the Lord's-supper. He took part in the conference held at Marburg (1529), and was present at the diet of Augsburg (1530). In 1548 he was deprived of his office as preacher at Nuremberg, because he would not agree to the Augsburg interim; but was immediately afterwards invited by Albrecht, duke of Prussia, to become the head of the theological faculty in the newly established university of Konigsberg. He was hardly settled here when he became entangled in a theological strife that embittered his naturally imperious and arrogant temper. In a treatise, De Lege et Ecangclio (•On the Law and the Gospel"),
°slander asserted that the righteousness by which sinners are justified, is not to be con ceived as a mere justificatory or imputative act on the part of God, but as something• inward and subjective, as the impartation of a real righteousness, springing in a mysti al way from the union of Christ with man. The most notable of his opponents was Martin Chemnitz (q.v.). A seemingly amicable arrangement betweeu the disputants was brought about by duke Albrecht in 1551; but the strife was soon recommenced, by °slander publishing some new writings in which he attacked Melanchthon; nor did his death in the following year put a stop to the war of words. It was continued by his followers, called Osiandrists, who were finally extinguished by the Corpus Doetrintr Prutenieunt (in 1567), which caused their banishment from all parts of Prussia. See' Wilkes, Andr. Osiander's Leben, Lehre and Sehriften (Strals. 1844).