Johannes Agricola

Johannes Agricola (1494–1566), born Johann Schneider at Eisleben, was a Protestant reformer and once a close friend of Martin Luther, as his secretary at the 1519 Leipzig disputation. He taught and preached before his recall in 1536, and defended the doctrine Luther branded antinomian: that Christians were no longer bound by the Mosaic law.

The quarrel drove him from Wittenberg to Berlin in 1540. Elector Joachim II made him court preacher, and he helped draft the Augsburg Interim of 1548, whose concessions to Catholic authority made him an outcast. He died of plague in Berlin.