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.