HOFMANN or HOFFMANN, MELCHIOR (c. 1498 ' 543/4), anabaptist, was born at Hall, in Swabia. He was a furrier of Livonia, and with others travelled to Sweden, preaching as he went. Fervid attacks on image worship led to expulsion, and Hofmann thereafter went from place to place in the Baltic States and in Germany, meeting Luther at Wittenberg. Frederick I. of Denmark appointed him a preacher at Kiel. He developed a Zwinglian view of the Eucharist; Luther was alarmed, and at a colloquy of preachers in Flensburg (April 8, 1529) Hofmann, John Campanus and others were put on their defence. Refusing to retract, he was banished, and at Strasbourg, to which he now turned, he was well received till his anabaptist development be came apparent. Journeying to East Friesland (153o) he founded a community at Emden (1532). Despite the warning of John Trypmaker he returned in 1533 to Strasbourg, which was to be the seat of the New Jerusalem, and was arrested. He denied that he had made common cause with the anabaptists, but refused the articles of faith proposed to him by the provincial synod. The last notice of his imprisonment is on Nov. he probably died soon after.
His works (Weissagung vsz heiliger gotlicher geschrifft [ 153o] and Prophecey oder Weissagung vsz roarer heiliger gotlicher schri ff t [ 153o]) influenced Menno Simons and David Joris. He has been claimed as a pioneer of some of the positions of Ser vetus. He maintained that all are elected to salvation, only the regenerate may receive baptism, and those who sin after re generation sin against the Holy Ghost, and cannot be saved. His followers were known as Hofmannites or Melchiorites.
See G. Herrmann, Essai sur la vie et les &crits de M. Hofmann (185 2) ; F. 0. zur Linden, M. Hofmann, ein Prophet der W iedertiiu f er (1885) ; H. Holtzmann, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (188o) ; Hegler in Hauck's Realenzyklopddie (i9oo).