MELANCHTHON, PHILIPP (1497-1560), German theo logian and reformer, was born at Bretten in Baden on Feb. 16, 1497. His father, George Schwartzerd, was an armourer under the Palatinate princes. His mother, Barbara Reuter, a niece of Johann Reuchlin, was shrewd, thrifty and affectionate. Reuchlin took an interest in the boy, and, following a contemporary cus tom, named him Melanchthon (the Greek form of Schwartzerd, black earth). In October 1509 he went to Heidelberg, where he took the B.A. degree, afterwards proceeding M.A. at Tubingen. The only other academic distinction he accepted was the B.D. of Wittenberg (1519). The elector of Saxony called him to Witten berg as professor of Greek in 1518.
Wittenberg became the school of the nation; the scholastic methods of instruction were set aside, and in a Discourse on Re forming the Studies of Youth Melanchthon gave proof, not only that he had caught the Renaissance spirit, but that he was fitted to become one of its foremost leaders. He began to lecture on Homer and the Epistle to Titus. Luther received a fresh impulse towards the study of Greek, and his translation of the Scriptures, begun as early as 1517, now made rapid progress, Melanchthon helping to collate the Greek versions and revising Luther's trans lation. Melanchthon felt the spell of Luther's personality.
Melanchthon was first drawn into the arena of the Reformation controversy through the Leipzig Disputation (June 27–July 8, 1519), at which he was present. He had been reproved by Johann Eck for giving aid to Carlstadt, and was soon afterwards himself attacked by Eck. Melanchthon replied in a brief and moderately worded treatise, setting forth Luther's first principle of the su preme authority of Scripture in opposition to the patristic writings on which Eck relied. His marriage in 1520 to Catharine Krapp of Wittenberg gave a domestic centre to the Reformation. In 1521, during Luther's confinement in the Wartburg, Melanchthon was leader of the Reformation cause at the university.
With the arrival of the Anabaptist enthusiasts of Zwickau, he wavered. Their attacks on infant baptism seemed to him not alto
gether irrational, and in regard to their claim to personal inspira tion he said "Luther alone can decide ; on the one hand let us beware of quenching the Spirit of God, and on the other of being led astray by the spirit of Satan." In the same year, 1521, he published his Loci communes rerum theologicarum, the first sys tematized presentation of the reformed theology. From 1522 to 1524 he was busy with the translation of the Bible and in pub lishing commentaries. In 1524 he went for reasons of health into southern Germany and was urged by the papal legate Campeggio to renounce the new doctrines. He refused, and maintained his refusal by publishing his Summa doctrinae Lutlieri.
After the first Diet of Spires (1526), where a precarious peace was patched up for the reformed faith, Melanchthon was deputed as one of twenty-eight commissioners to visit the reformed states and regulate the constitution of churches, he having just pub lished a famous treatise called the Libellus visitatorius, a directory for the use of the commissioners. At the Marburg conference (1529) between the German and Swiss reformers, Luther was pitted against Oecolampadius and Melanchthon against Zwingli in the discussion regarding the real presence in the sacrament. How far the normally conciliatory spirit of Melanchthon was here biased by Luther's intolerance is evident from the exaggerated accounts of the conference written by the former to the elector of Saxony. He was at this time even more embittered than Luther against the Zwinglians. At the Diet of Augsburg (1530) Melanch thon was the leading representative of the Reformation, and it was he who prepared for that diet the seventeen articles of the Evangelical faith, which are known as the "Augsburg Confession." He held conferences with Roman divines appointed to adjust differences, and afterwards wrote an Apology for the Augsburg Confession.