GIESELER, JOHANN KARL LUDWIG, German church historian, was. b. Mar. 3, 1792, at Petershagen, near Minden, where his father was a clergyman. After attending the orphan-house school and university of Halle, and after teaching for a year in that town, in Oct., 1813, he entered the army as a volunteer during the war of liberation. On the re-establishment of peace, however, in 1815, he returned to his former situation, where he taught for two years, and then became conrector of the gymnasium at Minden. In, the following year, he Was appointed to the directorship of a newly instituted gymna- sium at Cleves, and published an essay on the origin and early fate of the gospels (His torisch-Eritischer Vermeil, fiber d. Entstehung u. d. frilhern Schiclaule d. schriftliehen ELVR- golien (Leip. 1818). This and other works were the occasion of his being called, in. 1819, as ordinary professor of theology, to the university of Bonn, which had been_ established but shortly before. It was in this place that he began his great work on church history, of which 3 vols. appeared during his life, and two more after his death, under the editorship of E. R. Redepenning. This work, which brings down the history
of the. church to the most recent times, has been translated into English, and is so greatly valued for its method of picturing the times in happy quotations from contem porary writings, that the first three volumes have already gone through several editions. In 1831, Gieseler was called to a chair in Gottingen; became, in 1837, a consistorial councilor; and later, also knight of the order of the Guelphs. He was deeply devoted to his professorial duties, but took at the same time a practical interest in many benevo lent schemes, especially in the Gottingen orphan-house. Besides numerous contribu tions to periodicals and publications on contemporary questions, he edited, among other things, the Narratio de Bogomilis of Euthyinius Zygabenus (Gott. 1842), as well as Petriis Siculus's Historia Nanicheorum seu Paulicianorum (Gott. 1846), and left behind him a volume on the history of dogmas, which was given to the world by Redepenning in 1856. He died July 8, 1854. A notice of his life will be found prefixed, by the the 5th vol. of 'his '