EMSER, JEROME or HIERONYMUS an tagonisL. of Luther, was born of a good family at Ulm on March 20, 1477. He studied Greek at Tubingen and jurisprudence at Basel, and after acting for three years as chaplain and secretary to Raymond Peraudi, cardinal of Gurk, lectured on classics at Erfurt where Luther may have been among his audience. In the same year he became secretary to Duke George of Albertine Sax ony. At first Emser sided with the reformers, but like his patron he desired a practical reformation of the clergy without any doctrinal breach with the past or the church ; and his liberal sympathies were mainly humanistic. As late as 1519 Luther re ferred to him as "Emser noster," but the disputation at Leipzig in that year completed the breach between them. Eraser warned his Bohemian friends against Luther, and Luther retorted with an attack on Emser which outdid in scurrility all his polemical writings. In the violent controversy that followed Emser wrote some eight tracts. At Duke George's instance he prepared, in 1523, a German translation of Henry VIII.'s "Assertio Septem Sacramentorum contra Lutherum," and criticized Luther's "New Testament." He also entered into a controversy with Zwingli, he took an active part in organizing a reformed Roman Catholic Church in Germany, and in 1527 published a German version of the New Testament as a counter-blast to Luther's. He died on Nov. 8, in that year.