Philip Melanchthon 1497 – 1560

Philip Melanchthon was a German humanist scholar, Reformer, and Luther's closest collaborator at the University of Wittenberg. A Greek prodigy of extraordinary learning, he combined classical philology with biblical exegesis and produced the first systematic Lutheran textbook of theology, the Loci Communes, as well as the Augsburg Confession of 1530, which remains the founding doctrinal statement of the Lutheran churches. His textbooks of Latin, Greek, dialectic, rhetoric, and natural philosophy shaped Protestant secondary and university education across Europe and earned him the title Praeceptor Germaniae, the Teacher of Germany.

Philip Melanchthon — Philipp Schwartzerdt, the Greek translation of his German surname suggested by his great-uncle Reuchlin — was born in 1497 at Bretten in the Lower Palatinate. A precocious humanist, he took his bachelor's at Heidelberg at fourteen and his master's at Tubingen at sixteen, and in 1518, on Reuchlin's recommendation, was appointed at twenty-one to the new chair of Greek at Wittenberg, where he was to spend the remainder of his life.

Drawn at once into the orbit of Martin Luther, he became the systematic theologian and educational organizer of the Reformation. His Loci Communes (1521, much revised in later editions) was the first Protestant systematic theology; the Augsburg Confession of 1530 and its Apology, both his work, became the principal doctrinal documents of the Lutheran churches; and his Greek and Latin grammars, his ethics, his commentaries on Aristotle, and his school visitations earned him the title Praeceptor Germaniae, the teacher of Germany.

Melanchthon defended the legitimacy of philosophy and the liberal arts within reformed Christianity at a moment when Luther's most enthusiastic followers wanted to be rid of Aristotle, and tried after Luther's death to negotiate compromises with Catholics and Calvinists that embroiled him in the long Protestant disputes of the later sixteenth century. He died at Wittenberg in April 1560 and was buried beside Luther in the Castle Church.