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PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
1497—1560.
RY THE LATE
REV. GEORGE WILSON, F.L.S.,
Literary Superintendent , Bri.'iJi and Foreign Bibie Socicti.
LONDON :
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY,
56 Taternoster Row, and 6$ St. Paul's Churchyard.
1897.
LONDON :
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
EDITOR'S PREFACE.
This book, small though it be, is the work of
one of the ablest and most thorough modern
students of Melanchthon's life and works.
Unhappily, the final touches and the careful
revision which the Author was so competent
to give are lacking. When the manuscript
was under consideration, the accomplished
Author died suddenly as he was engaged in
his duties at the Bible House. This sudden
departure, while apparently in good health
and in the full discharge of his ordinary
duties, came as a great shock to the many
friends who knew and who loved Mr. Wilson.
To these it may prove a mournful satisfaction
to get this last treasure from his stores of
learning. Those who through this book
146
V i
il
6 EDITOR'S PREFACE,
make his acquaintance for the first time will
join his friends in regretting that he has not
lived to produce that volume on the great
Reformation Scholar which he had hoped
would have been the crowning work of his
life.
( 7 )
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I'AGH
I. Memories of Childhood .... 9
II. Heidelberg 25
III. Tubingen 36
IV. Early Years in Wittenbekg ... 54
V. In Wittenberg— Luther's Death . 80
VI. Later Years in Wittenberg . . . 112
VII. Philip Melanchthon at Home . . 130
VI 1 1. The Sunset 143
IX. Melanchthon's Library .... 149
( 8 )
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Philip Melanchthon 2
Melanchthon's Birthplace 11
Heidelberg Castle 27
The Elector Frederick 49
Dr. Bugenhagen 63
Albert Durer 84
Signing the Protest at Spires .... 90
Augsburg 93
Zwingle lOI
Luther 107
PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
CHAPTER I.
MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD.
When, some pensive hour in later life, the
thoughts of Philip Melanchthon would turn
from his Wittenberg study to the days when
he was a clnld, they led him, in imaginative
memory, to a little town near the valley of
the Rhine. A pleasant little town, reposing
independently on its hilly slopes, and sur-
rounded by vineyards and cultivated fields.
The burghers are moving about the streets or
standing at their doors in the sun ; there are
children here and there ; and never long out
of sight two or three comfortable ecclesiastics.
The town has a serviceable wall round it,
which more than once has been honourably
defended. Within it and among the houses
lo PHILIP melanchtiion;
are open spaces and gardens ; and, through
the gates looking towards the country, there
are glimpses of wooded hills. In all respects
a place where honest labour seems ever
alternating with rest ; while, in visions of
memory, a warm sunshine seems to fold it in
the stillness of a dream.
The child — for in imagination he is again a
child — sees all this ; and specially he sees one
house facing the market-place, with a work-
shop attached to it full of the tools and
furnishings of an armourer. He sees again
the helmets and breastplates, skilfully shaped
and inlaid, and all the forging and fashioning
implements which he so often looked and
wondered at long ago. He sees a man with
quiet, grave face bending over the work-bench,
but as if weary, and less able to work than to
direct the others. It is his father ; and the
child gazes at the kind, wasted face through
his tears. In the garden are two little girls
at play, and a boy younger by four years
than himself; and, inside, there is the baby's
round face and padded cap reposing on the
pillow in the cradle. Sometimes in the
garden, sometimes in the house, always busy,
he sees his mother, and hears her voice as she
MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD. ii
talks or calls to the children. How often has
MICLANCIITIION'S niRTIIPLACE.
he played round that sunny garden and In
12 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
the shop with his sisters and his brother
George in the old days ; and now, when it all
comes back to him as if it were yesterday, in
his dream vision he sees them as they play
again.
The little town is Bretten, in the Grand
Duchy of Baden, some twenty miles south
from Heidelberg and seven eastwards from
Carlsruhe. There, on February i6, 1497,
Philip was born. His father was George
SChwartzerd, armourer ; his mother was
dangHIeFof Hans Reuter, mayor of the town.
Philip was their eldest child. By the time he
had learned to pilot himself unsteadily from
one chair to another, he found out he had a
baby sister, Anna, who before long found him
out in turn, and became his playmate and
companion. Two years later appeared his
brother George ; then another sister, Mar-
garet ; last, of all came little Barbara. Theirs
were the child-faces which rose before him
when he thought of the days that were no more.
Philip's father had come from Heidelberg*
While yet a lad, the Elector had marked his
ability, and sent him, the better to learn his
craft, to the famous workshops of Nuremberg.
He grew to be a notable fashioner of honest
MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD. 13
armour ; better still, he was himself an honest
man. Like his own weapons, stout and trust-
worthy, and with a character genuine as his
own steel, it was no wonder the neighbouring
nobles held him in honour, and, as a special
mark of their regard, came to the wedding
in Spires on the day he married the mayor's
daughter.
From this time Bretten became his home,
and the house in the market-place seemed to
have held both families, as they afterwards
grew pleasantly together. And, in keeping
with his manly straightforwardness, George
Schwartzerd was eminently devout. With
few words to waste on any subject, his
upright life was his best religious profession,
but his son remembered how reverently he
observed every religious duty, and how at
midnight he used punctually to rise to pray.
In a rough and jovial society he was a
German Puritan, stout and valorous while
tenderly good and true ; and some of the
finest qualities of his famous son arc dcvclof)-
mcnts of those of * the Locksmith of Heidel-
berg.'
Frau Schwartzerd was a model housewife.
However devout and benevolent, her special
I4 PHILIP MELANCHTHOM.
characteristic was practical sense. In her
own woman's kingdom she was prudence
embodied and in full activity. Her husband's
coat-of-arms — a gift of the young Prince
Maximilian — was a lion with hammer and
anvil ; her own might have been a well-filled
and closely-tied purse with a bundle of keys.
The good house-mother was an excellent
supplement to her earnest and deep-souled
husband. Even to this day not a few German
proverbs are traced back to her ; and when
some wiser head will rebuke one not quite so
steady, it is not unfrequently done by quoting
a thrifty and sagacious aphorism of the
mother of Melanchthon.
The armourer was much from home ; but
Philip found an unfaihng friend in the mayor,
his grandfather. Like not a few grandfathers,
he was delightfully indulgent. As the little
boy grew up, so keen and clever, so sensitive
and affectionate, it was no wonder the old
man loved him with an excusable partiality.
Of the four lads who soon came to trot off
punctually each morning to school — Philip
and his brother George and two of the
mayor's younger sons — Philip was evidently
the child of promise and of hope. Hans
MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD, 15
Rcuter was himself a man of higher culti-
vation than usual, and he could understand
and direct the development of an opening
mind. And if perhaps a little too indulgent
to his favourite, he had himself furnished a
corrective in the tutor whom, on the break up
of the school through the master's illness, he
had provided for the boys. John Hungar
was, like the grandfather, cultured and kind,
but he was a sound disciplinarian ; and Philip
respected him all the more that he made him
work hard.
Pleasant to memory those early days in
Bretten must have been. On Sundays the
mayor's family was seen filing off with an
exemplary regularity to church ; and it was
a source of special enjoyment to the old man
to watch Philip as he sang in the choir with
the missal which he himself had given him
in his hand. And then there were those
remarkable sermons which, with intermittent
attention, the boys used to listen to, and
which Philip, with the spirit of later days
beginning to stir within him, used to think
over with hopeful mental independence. To
the stories of the saints generally he was
devoutly attentive ; but he was much exer-
i6 PHILIP MELANCIITHON.
cised in mind when one day a preacher told
the congregation that the slippers of St.
Francis of Assisi were made of the wood of
the tree of knowledge which once grew in the
Garden of Eden. That seemed somehow to
need clearing up in a talk with the grand-
father or with John Hungar. And when, on
another occasion, the priest displayed a gold
ring on his finger, the disapproval on the part
of one at least of the choristers was peculiarly
strong.
But there was no more serious worshipper
after all than Philip Schwartzerd. Like many
another incipient ecclesiastic, he set up an
imitative service at home, and his mother and
the servants decorously attended on his
ministrations. There was no harm in it, she
thought, and it would do the boy good. One
can imagine on the Sunday afternoons, and
in some room of the old house when the sun
was mellowing westwards toward the Rhine,
a group of children gathered round Grand-
father Reuter and listening with natural joy
and wonder as he told them some instructive
tale from the Golden Legend^ or one of the
even more astonishing histories drawn from
the yet uncollected stores of that brightest
MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD. 17
and, in intention, most improving of all story-
books — the Acta Sanctortivt,
Less enjoyable, perhaps, but not less profit-
able, were the week-days spent under the
watchful eye of John Hungar. Latin was a
principal study, and, in days when Horace
and Virgil were scarce books, the classic was
John Baptista of Mantua. The poems of this
contemporary author were painfully digested
in portions of some twenty or thirty lines
each, which were carefully prepared over-
night and accurately translated in the morn-
ing. And it was real work. During all his
later life Philip recollected the discipline of
these early days : the microscopic examination
of clause and sentence, verb and substantive
to which the tutor's conscientious thorough-
ness subjected his boys, as well as the in-
evitable strapping which was sure to follow
every instance of carelessness. But no one
thought of the master but as his pupil's
genuine friend ; and it is his worthiest memo-
rial in the world of learning that the Preceptor
of Germany gratefully attributed his own
sound grammatical scholarship to the faithful
drilling of John Hungar.
But the clouds were already gathering over
C
1 8 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
these peaceful days. The gradual decay of
age may be less evident to the observation of
boys ; but they must have noticed that now
for a long time the armourer had been look-
ing ill. And in the same month, the October
of 1507 — month of dying glories and fading,
falling leaves — both the grandfather and the
armourer died. The good old man was the
first to receive the message with the secret
token of the King ; and the little people with
perplexed grief saw the townspeople assemble
to carry with all honour the mayor's body to
its rest. And hardly was the funeral over
when the children were taken into the room
where their father lay. With a fresh shock
of fear and trouble they saw the strong face
and form sorely altered for the worse. The
armourer felt the approach of death, and he
would see his boys and girls and speak to
them again before the end. By this time
Philip was ten years old, and the dying man
turned with serious affection to his eldest son.
' I have seen,' he said, ' many a change^ in my
life, and there are greater changes close at
hand. May God preserve you all through
whatever comes ! And you, Philip, my boy,
be sure to live righteously and in God's fear.
MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD, 19
Then he looked at them each with the last
wistful look, and touched them with his dying
hand. Poor little Philip and Anna, and
Margaret and George ! Poor little Baby
Barbara ! They were drawn gently from the
room ; and, to be out of the way when the
inevitable change came, they were sent to
Spires. *It was the first time I left home,*
says Philip, twenty years afterwards, *and
it was with tears.' Within three days
the children learned that their father was
dead.
When the two women who were left in the
desolate house sat down together after the
second funeral, they decided on what was to
be done. It would be better that the mayor's
widow should join a relative in her native
town and bring up the boys at the Gymnasium
there ; and the little girls would stay in
Bretten with their mother.
Accordingly, one day in 1508, Philip and
George Schwartzcrd and John Reutcr set off
with their bundles of books and clothes to
Pforzheim. The town layTess than a dozen
miles south towards the opening of the Black
r^orcst. There was an excellent High School,
and the lads could not have been placed
C 2
20 PHILIP MELANCHTIION,
under a better instructor or kinder friend
than the head-master, Dr. George Simler.
They fell to work, and the principal soon
found that among the boys from Bretten was
one of his most promising scholars.
' Simler was himself one of the heralds of
the sounder and wider learning of the Refor-
mation. In days when some skill in mediaeval
Latin made a scholar, he had familiarised
himself with Cicero, and, a still rarer accom-
plishment, he knew something of Hebrew
\and Greek. His aplef pupils he used to form
|, into a class for the" study of the fascinating
/ L- ' but forbidden language of Homer and the
New Testament, and Philip^^on qualified
himself to be enrolled among the rector's
Grecians. Those were days not to be for-
gSttCTTT* It was at Pforzheim that the future
Preceptor of Germany first heard the music
of the old speech of Hellas, and listened, as
one who for the first time hears the fall of
sea-waves, to the * surge and thunder of the
Odyssey.' His friend Camerarius has sketched
{he young scholar as heWSTabout this period,
and the picture is pleasantly vivid. Scarcely
any one could be more apt to learn, and while
remarkably keen and clever, he was at the
MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD, 21
same time so lovable that everybody liked
the generous and gifted boy. For, though
both eager and emotional, his was from the
first a gentle heart, and, if just somewhat
hasty-tempered, he was incapable of anything
unhandsome or worthy of serious blame. He
used to stammer a little — a habit which it
took him a long time to get over; but his
friend thought it rather set off than otherwise
his boyish volubility. What wide questioning
eyes the rector often found fixed on him as
they studied Greek together ! What a hurry
of tripping and tumbling words, as the young
lips tried to shape themselves to some of the
sonorous hexameters of Homer !
But Philip made another friend at Pforzheim
even more important to him than the rector.
The mayor's widow had a brother who used
to come to see her, and Philip, who must
have seen him before in Bretten, remembered
that the tall portly gentleman was the famous
Dr. Rcuchlin. Discussing among themselves
all tiiey c^uld hear about the stranger, the
boys found out that he lived on a little estate
of his own near Stuttgart ; that he was a
marvellously learned man, and that he was
very fond of rearing white peacocks.
PHILIP MELANCIirilON,
Very soon the old and the young scholar
^became hearty friends. The doctor was
delighted with a lad so ardent and capable as
Simler told him Philip was, and as he himself
soon found him to be. Reuchlin had a deep,
kind, somewhat dreamy eye, a jovial laugh,
and a winning manner, and, what was more
important to Philip, he and the famous
Erasmus were the two most~^learned men in
all the Fatherland. It was a great satisfaction
to the old scholar to know that his little
kinsman was likely to be himself famous,
and when he once sent him his doctor's hat,
and told him he would be a doctor and a
great man himself some day, it was one
of those jests which are more than half in
earnest.
Better than even the hat, he used to furnish
Philip with books, one of them A Golden Key
to the New Learning, a Greek grammar and
lexicon bound in one. Never was kindness
better bestowed.
On one of his visits to Pforzheim, the
burghers, to do honour to their famous
townsman, entertained Reuchlin at a banquet.
At the end there was a Latin play, and the
doctor found that the actors were some of the
MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD, 23
Academy boys headed by Philip, and that
the piece was one of his own. It was a
pleasant surprise, and it merited some corre-
sponding recognition. One of the customs of
the lettered world of the time was to impose
upon those whom merit had given a claim to
its freedom new personal names, which, re-
producing the substantial meaning of the old
ones, set them forth in well-sounding Latin
or Greek. Reuchlin himself was Capnio
among the learned, and Erasmus might have
half forgotten that he had ever been known
as Gerhard Gerhardzoon.
And now the Dux of Rector S imler's
Grecians was to undergo the initiation cere-
mony at his distinguished relative's hands.
He was to be n o longer Philip Schwar tzerd.
but Philip Mclanchthon. The new design ation
\^s RruclilinX and from those days onwards
it steadily grew into usage, till now with
many it may stir a slight surprise that ever
there was any other to be superseded by the
now familiar name.
Philip was ripening fast, and it was plain
that the time had come to leave Pforzheim
for the University. The choice fell on
Heidelberg, where Philip's paternal grand-
24 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
father and his father when a boy used to live
in the old days.
One ambition of earlier days was to be ful-
filled. He was to be a real student, and he
was going to college.
( 25 )
CHAPTER II.
HEIDELBERG.
Let us then with Philip leave these school-
days, and, as we best can, make ourselves of
his company, when, in the autumn of 1509, he
said farewell to Pforzheim and turned his face
to go to Heidelberg. He gave some days to
Bretten, for his mother was there, and his
sisters and brothers, and there were various
preparations to be made. What feelings
stirred in the kind maternal heart at the
leave-taking, mothers will instinctively under-
stand ; and students at their first outset to
college, and touched with the romance of that
time, may divine what passed in Philip's own.
At length the gables of the little town dip
below the hill ; the path along the Briichsal
leads him towards the open valley of the
Rhine with its frequented road, and after a
few stages the Konigstuhl rises before him,
and the huge castle, and the old city clustering
its houses along the river side. And then he
makes his way to the house of Dr. Pallas
26 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
Spangel, where his home is to be, and the
kind old professor bids him welcome. The
old professor had known and honoured the
father — the armourer — and the first look, not
to speak of the good w^ords which had pre-
ceded Philip, makes him quite sure he will
like the son.
The next day Philip paid his first visit to
the University — two centuries old even then —
and one may still read in the venerable
register the entry of his matriculation : ^ In
Rectoratu II., Mag. Johannis Wysers de Ober-
spach, Jurium Licentiati intitulatus est d. XIII.,
Oct. 1509. — Philippus Schwazerd de Bretten.'
But the first lesson he learned distinctly and
sorrowfully, and it was learned in a very short
time, was, that in the old class-rooms there
was little to be learned at all. ^ Nothing was
publicly taught there,' he wrote, thirty years
afterwards, ' except a wordy dialectic and a
pretence of physical science. It was like
finding one's way through labyrinths choked
with rubbish ; how little was known of litera-
ture and history : of the very subjects men
themselves professed to teach ! * But if there
was little of liberal learning, there was more
than enough of scholastic metaphysics : the
HEIDELBERG CASTLI.
HEIDELBERG. 29
classes were filled with the empty reverbera-
tions of the Realistic and Nominalistic Con-
troversy, and the students occasionally trans-
ferred the discussion to the streets, and fought
it out with their clubs. This intellectual
eclipse was all the more depressing; for
Heidelberg, some years previously, had
seemed to be moving into the dawn which
was then beginning to rise over Germany.
John Wessel, one of the Reformers before the
Reformation, had been one of the professors ;
so had been Rudolph Agricola ; Conrad Celtis,
that once famous laureate, and one of the most
enthusiastic prophets of the New Learning,
had once prelected in Heidelberg ; . and VVim-
pfeling for three years had taught poetry and
eloquence, and to students who presumably
were not all unresponsive. But these more
enlightened scholars had departed, dusk had
rolled back again, and mediae valism had once
more settled down comfortably in its former
haunts. For Mclanchthon the Heidelberg
period was to all intents and purposes, so
far as the University was concerned, a blank.
There was but one exception, and it is a
doubtful one, in the occasional lectures of tlic
young Swiss, Conrad Helvetius, who ex-
30 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
pounded astronomy according to the system
of Ptolemy. But he interested Philip : there
was a mystic quality in the boy's mind,
caught perhaps from the author of De Verbo
Mirifico, to which the haunting mysteries of
the old science appealed; and to the end of
his life he remained under its spell.
But when the University failed him, there
was compensation at home. The name of
C) Dr. Pallas has been forgotten : it is but an
obscure vanishing figure one can catch looking
into that old world, hardly, indeed, an em-
bodied figure at all, but a shadow as if moving
along the wall into the void air. But he was
an eminent man in his day — vir illo tempore
clarissimns — and, what is far better, he was
a good one. The ripening of peaceful age
had come upon him ; he was of tempered
wisdom, liberal and kind. Too old to learn
Greek, or take to the new methods and
fashions in learning, he was far from unsym-
pathetic towards them, and he had the quality,
regrettably rare among old men, of being able
to associate with the young. And what me-
morable evenings they used to have in the old
house when Reuchlin came over from Stutt-
gart, and Dr. Pallas and he, while the young
HEIDELBERG, 31
students listened, talked about the men they
had known, the stir and movement of the
world ! They would tell stories of Rudolph
Agricola, that excellent scholar, a man honnetey
franc^ sans envie^ ' inodert\ de belle humeiiry
and how he used to lecture when he was
professor in the College ; of Celtis and his Latin
plays ; of Wimpfeling, whose forgotten books
on Youth and the Training of Young Meft
reveal his sympathies, and who united some-
thing of the devout temper he had learned
from Thomas a Kempis with a reformed
learning ; of many others whose names long
since slipped out of the memories of men.
Wimpfeling, indeed, Philip seems to have met
— he visited Heidelberg in 15 10 — and they
apparently became something like friends, for
the boy's first printed verses arc found in
a book which Wimpfeling published soon
after. But there is another name of more
significance perhaps in Philip's Heidelberg
history : it is that of Gciler of Kaisersberg,
whom Rcuchlin knew and loved, and in
whose serSTons" we may still feel the pulse of
his warm devotion, and hear the awakening
message of the genuine Evangel itself. These
sermons Philip read, and they were perhaps
32 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
his earliest and most influential lessons in the
practical theology of the heart. Long after-
wards when, in Wittenberg, he expounded
the Epistles in his PostillcEy he quoted from
Geiler's pungent pages, and paid tributes of
affectionate honour to his name.
Philip had younger companions, and, as he
has himself said, it is student friendships
which are often the most delightful of life.
There was Peter Sturm, whom we dimly
remember nowadays as brother of James
Sturm of Strasburg, but whose name should
be kept green as Melanchthon's early friend :
there was John Sorbillo, the poet of the youth-
ful party, whose long-silent harp once de-
lighted Philip and the others : there was
Theobald Gerlach, from Billigheim in the
Palatinate ; and Peter Giinther, who lectured
on rhetoric ; and John Brentz, whose massive
folios survive to bear testimony to the scholar-
ship and piety of his riper ministry. It was
in those days that Philip, as is the manner of
generous youths, fell under the spell of the
poets ; and it is more than likely that
Politian and Baptista of Mantua were not
altogether reserved for his solitary hours. Did
not the young fellows meet in Philip's sanctum
HEIDELBERG, 33
to listen with rapturous applause to the latest
verses of Sorbillo, or to Gunther, as he recited
passages from Bembo and Politian ? It is not
in the history, but human nature does not
change, and they were German students.
These were some of the sources of influence
which Philip felt when he was a student at
Heidelberg ; but there were surely others
which must have laid their spell upon him
then, as on all receptive minds they still lay
their spell, from the beautiful places in which
they have their home. There was the Spirit
of history and romance, whose voice Philip
must often have heard when evening light
touched the old castles and precipices of the
Rhine, and gave music and the impression of
visible nearness to the legends which hung
round them. There was that other enchan-
tress, of whom he must have had glimpses as
of a fleeting angel when he wandered through
the groves beside the Ncckar, whose song he
would catch in the waterfall, and her whisper
in still hours beside" the river as it flowed
onwards to its rest. These faces and these
unuttercd voices we all see and hear, when
the gates of the spiritual city are not hope-
lessly closed ; and it was Philip's instinct
D
34 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
from the first to open all the doors and win-
dows of his mind to every free air and space
of illuminated sky around him. In later life
he wrote of the charm of natural studies, of
the presence of God in the world, of the sweet
influences and the humanising powers of
verse. Yet it may be doubted whether any
of the spirit voices were so audible in his
heart as when he stood, as he must often
have stood, before an old house below the
castle rock. It was the house in which his
grandfather had lived — in which his father
had been a child ; and now that his son would
gaze musingly at the silent windows, did not
the gentle Spirit of Home seal him of her
company, and weave round his affections the
bonds which ever drew him back to the old
places, and remained unbroken to the last ?
In a home so kindly as that of Dr. Spangel,
and with so many inspiring influences, the
Heidelberg years, despite University draw-
backs, must have been an enjoyable time.
But in the autumn of 1512 the kind old pro-
fessor died ; Philip, who had taken his first
degree, was refused the higher, as * too young
in appearance and in academic life ' ; and his
own health had once or twice been weakened
HEIDELBERG, 35
by attacks of fever. Under all the circum-
stances, he was inclined to leave. Reuchlin
and Dr. Simler urged the claims of Tubingen :
it was Reuchlin's own University, and Simler
had himself settled as professor there. Their
advice was followed, and in the autumn of
15 12 Philip took his farewell of the old Rhine
citjrand turned his face to the South.
D 2
36 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
CHAPTER III.
TUBINGEN.
MELANCHTHON went to Tiibingen in Sep-
temBer 1512. He was there, first as student,
later as tutor and professor, for six years.
The change from Heidelberg was considerable,
and in some important respects it was much
for the better. In the younger University — it
had been founded only twenty years — there
were teachers of deserved repute, and there
was a hopeful degree of sympathy in the
place with the New Learning. Stuttgart
was not far off, and there Reuchlin might
any day be found weaving and unweaving the
tangled mysteries of the Talmud, or dis-
coursing with his learned acquaintances, but
always ready for a friendly talk.
In the matter of natural scenery and sur-
roundings, Philip had assuredly lost by his
removal ; but the wooded hills around Tubin-
gen had a charm of their own, and it was
still the Neckar he could hear blending its
voice with that of the Ammer as it urged its
TUBINGEN. 37
rapid course down the valleys of the Black
Forest, back again to Heidelberg and the
Rhine. It was in the beautiful season, so
suitable for the opening of studious sessions,
when the leaf puts on its richest tints before
it falls, and the sky is deeper and more
pensive, and when autumn, as it throws a
shadowing veil over the external world, seems
to reveal the starry wonders of the student's
heaven and the sublimer objects of his desires
and his dreams.
Of all the freshmen of the session of 1512
none could well be more apt and eager than
Melanchthon, and to his liberal tastes every
subject in the curriculum appealed with more
or less persuasive attractiveness. To Professor
von Stadian, who lectured on Aristotle, he soon
became drawn by the charm oFhis congenial
character. * I loved him,' he wrote in later
days, *as I would my father.' Professor
Brassican he found a worthy successor of John
Hungar — a clear and sensible grammarian, an
effective teacher, and an able man. In the
astronomical auditorium he listened to dis-
cussions on a subject which he had found so
fascinating at Heidelberg ; and there was
much in Dr. Stoffler's genial character which
38 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
won respect, and justified the complimentary
dedications which Philip, when he was him-
self a professor and an author, addressed to
his early instructor. But it may be doubted
whether any of the class-rooms became so
favourite a resort or so entirely suited Philip's
tastes as that in which Professor Heinrich
Bebel discoursed on belles-lettres^ afid ex-
patiated on the beauties and inspiration of
classical Latin verse. Bebel is one of the
early German Humanists whose name, though
somewhat distantly, is still remembered with
respect for the undoubted services which he
rendered to the cause of liberal learning.
Like Melanchthon himself, he had been a
precocious student, a * laureate poet ' when
only twenty, and he was a man of excellent
abilities. He possessed the capital merit of
recognising the value, both for matter and
style, of the literature of the classic times ;
and he earned the gratitude of all intelligent
students by diverting them from the inflated
productions of contemporary writers to the
models of juster taste. It was from this
time — and the change may be credited in
considerable measure to Bebel's influence —
that Philip laid aside Bembo and Baptista
TOBINGEN, 39
for Virgil and Terence, and addressed him-
self to the serious study of the old masters
of literature. It was Bebel's excellent habit
to enliven his lectures by giving details of
his authors' personal history as well as by
sympathetic criticism on their works. And
his little book of Pleasanteries — still to be seen
in the nooks of some scholars' libraries — makes
it easy to understand by its jovial, if only
too brusque anecdotes, how racy and how
memorable his prelections on the poets and
orators may well have been.
But students often find that no class
lectures are so inspiring as the debates and
fraternisings celebrated in their own rooms ;
and it is more than probable that the develop-
ment of Melanchthon while in Tubingen was
less influenced by his professors, however
excellent some of them were, than by his own
reading, and by the 'Attic nights* which his
friends and he used to pass together at home.
His fellow-lodger was John Schurff, and one
of his earliest and most intimate companions,
who had matriculated the same year as him-
self, John TTiissfTon. or, as as we now know him,
QLcolani[) uliii . afuiwuds the Reformer of
Basle. In Tubingen there was as yet no Greek
40
PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
Chair, and no professor of that dangerous
tollgue ; but Philip and CEcolampadius studied
Hesiod together as they best could. ' Remem-
ber/ Philip wrote many years afterwards, and
with inimitable tenderness of recollection —
'remember, when CEcolampadius and I were
reading the Wo7'ks and Days, and when I, a lad
then, was eager in my astronomical pursuits,
there was no one in the whole staff of
teachers except Stoffler who could help us in
knotty passages about the constellations.' In
Hebrew, Philip's unfailing and enthusiastic
friend was Reuchlin, and the kind old scholar
would often come over to Tubingen to stay
in Philip's room and help him by liberal
communication of information and loans of
books. Among these were some which, in
the long run, awoke far deeper and more
enduring influences than even the classics of
Greece. At Heidelberg, Philip had met
Wimpfeling, and to know Wimpfeling and
Reuchlin was to hear of Wessel and Gerson —
those teachers in a dark age of what has
. been felicitously described as ' the most excel-
lent of the sciences.' In Tubingen he made
closer acquaintance with the writings of these
' Reformers before the Reformation' ; he would
$J^
TUBINGEN. 41
also hear of, and in all probability he would
read, some of Luther's early books. But
there was lioTSbok given by Rcuchlin to his
grand-nephew which so absorbed his attention
as a copy of the Latin Bible. A few years
before there had been issued from the press of
Froben at Basle a portable edition of the
Vulgate, and it soon became Philip's constant
companion. * He carried it with him every- I .
where,* says Camerarius, ' and read it at all * r
times and places.' Some of his suspicious !
companions noticed it with him at church : it ,
was larger than the regulation praj/er-book,
and must be one of the pernicious books of
the New Learning which ought to be pro- \
scribed. But the proscription did not take 1
effect, and the great classic did its quiet work.
On the wall of his room Philip had written
some of the pithy aphorisms for which his )
mother was notable. The Latin ^iblc
recalled the devout words and ways of his
father, and must have made them all the
more impressive.
In~I5I4, Philip took his mas;
the first among eleven candidates, and at-
tained the accompanying status as private
docent or tutor. Accordingly, he formed
//^>
II
42 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
classes in his rooms, and began to read Cicero
and Virgil. In those early and unquiet days of
liberal learning, some of its friends had asso-
ciated themselves in congenial clubs. There
was the Society of the Rhine (1496), of the
Danube (1501) ; there was a third at Strasburg
(1524) ; a fourth in Bavaria. And, somewhat in
imitation of his seniors, the new tutor formed
a Collegiate Association of his own. Some
of the names of the young Humanists are still
remembered, but most of them can be found
only in neglected records. Ambrose Blaur
was, in all probability, one of the club, and in
the old Swabian land, where he was one of
the first and most earnest preachers of reform,
and in Constanz, his birthplace, the story of
his devoted life is an enduring possession.
One of the young men was John Setzer
(Secerius), who afterwards issued^ "from his
printing-office at Hagenau many of the
treatises of Luther and Melanchthon. On
another name a soft light still lingers : it is
that of Bernard Maur, a very young member
of this little society, whom Philip evidently
drew more closely than others to his heart.
He alludes to his graceful personality and
generous temperament, and several of Philip's
TUBINGEN. 43
earliest publications were, in prefaces of wise
counsel and affectionate tone, dedicated to
this companion of his youth.
For, like every true lover of books, Philip
was always contemplating the production of
some of his own. He had already edited
several tractates in Greek and Latin ; but in
1 516 Professor Bebef died ; Brassican was
called to~T:lie vacant chair ; Melanchthon to
that of Rhetoric and History, and thus was
both need and opportunity for more serious
labours. Accordingly, in 15 19 appeared a
new edition of the Rhetoric of Rudolph
Agricola, with a preface full of commendation
of the subject and reflections on the age in
which it was so misunderstood. The next
year appeared an edition of Terence. The
Roman playwright had from their first
acquaintance become a special favourite with
his editor, and Melanchthon repeatedly
praises him as a model of colloquial Latinity
and a teacher of excellent morals. Melanch-
thon's edition of Terence is notable as the
first in which the CBfficdies were printed in
verse. It is characteristic of the obscurantism
of the time that the worthy poet had been
treated as a prose writer, and the Tubingen
44
PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
IP
edition must have been a startling innovation
to some of the earlier readers.
In the same year Philip appeared as editor
in another field. Always encyclopaedic in
his tastes, he was interested in all the
sciences, and they all more or less engaged
him, none perhaps more powerfully than
history, with its vast and populous stage, its
endless variety of event, its infinite illustra-
tion of human hope and fear. A colleague
in the University, John Nauclerus, had com-
piled a Handbook of General History, but the
book needed revision and enlargement, and
the publishers put it into the hands of the
new History Professor. It was issued in 1516,
and became one of the most popular manuals
of the subject.
To this revision succeeded a translation of
Aratus on Meteorology, with a preface full of
the sense of the charm and the value of the
study of Nature. A Greek grammar was
also approaching compfetion ; but a literary
enterprise greater than any previous one
was rising in Philip's active mind. This was
a new Aristotle : an edition of the great
philosopher, who till then, the prospectus
pungently complained, had been * more
TUBINGEN, 45
obscure than a Delphic oracle/ revised freshly
from the best manuscripts, and interpreted
with all possible accuracy. Philip would,
he hoped, restore Aristotle to Germany as
Ficinus had given Plato to Italy. Already
Pirkheimer of Nuremberg had promised to
help : so had Reuchlin, Capito, Simler, and
other competent men. It was an immense
project, and it was undertaken with character-
istic energy ; but long before it could be
accomplished Philip had found the absorbing
task of his life.
This list of Melanchthon*s literary work in
Tubingen is an incomplete one, but it is suffi-
cient to show that he was fully tasking his
strength. Happily, there were occasional
breathing-times, and intervals of delightful
change. None of the Tubingen walks was
so much a favourite, and none was so
familiar, as that which led along the Stuttgart
road to the home of Reuchlin. * My fellow-
students and I,' Philip writes, * used often to
visit him : the more sober and bookish of us
would give most of our time to the library,
examining the rare or the new books, arid
listening to him as he talked about them.
The others, and ultimately all of us, would go
I
!
46 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
into the garden and enjoy ourselves there.'
How delightful a glimpse of those vanished
days — of the kind old scholar — of the generous
young men ! One seems to hear them dis-
cussing the latest news, starting the questions
students have started in every age, rolling a
chorus, filling the moonlit roads with infinite
conversation as they strode back again to
Tubingen.
Some of the students used to call Reuch-
lin's house the Museum of Europe. Here
were Hebrew manuscripts in mysterious and
uncanny characters ; dark volumes of the
Talmud ; Greek authors, some in ancient
parchment, some in brass-clasped pigskin,
covered folios with carmine edges, fresh from
the presses of Oporin and Froben ; Latin
illuminated missals ; Oriental curiosities ;
strange collections of natural history mon-
strosities ; objects which seemed in all the
totiiin scibile to belong to no ascertained
category. \ The genius of the collection, so
marvellous to many of the visitors, was happily
a very benevolent one, and most communica-
tive of information. He was in the autumn
of his life, his heart was in his studies and in
his friends, and all he desired or dared to
TOBINGEN. 47
hope for was undisturbed leisure. But the
modest desire was doomed to the saddest
disappointment.
The vexatious persecution of Reuchlin in '
his controversy with the wretched obscuran-
tists of his time occupies, indeed, all the years
of Melanchthon's stay at Tubingen, and goes
only too far beyond it. The story has often 1
been told : it can only be recalled here. How
Pfefferkorn, the Christianised Jew, the miser-
able tool of the monks, raised the cry that I
all Hebrew books except the Old Testament |
should be burned : how Reuchlin's opinion
was asked, and with what excellent sense he
gave his advice on the absurd demand : how j
the malicious hatred of the monks turned
upon him and put his life in actual peril : how
the friends of liberal learning took their stand
beside him : how the Pope was appealed to :
how the fortune of the strange, dismal contro-
versy turned at length in his favour, but only
when he was almost worn out — all this may
be read elsewhere. It is more immediately
within Melanchthon's life that from the
beginning he was found close beside his
noble friend. He prefaced the Epistola
Clarorum Virorunt, which bore so distin-
48 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
guished testimony to Reuchlin's dignity and
1 worth, and contributed to the Epistolce
Obscurormn Virorum^ which filled Germany
with reverberations of laughter at his con-
temptible enemies. But Philip was perilously
near suffering for his interference. Tubingen
was stirred by the controversy, as all the
Fatherland was, and feeling became viciously
keen. Some of Reuchlin's foes had an eye,
Philip found, on himself. He was coarsely
satirised, and his sensitive temper was natur-
ally wounded and depressed. Towards the
end of 1 5 17 his letters began to reflect the
change, 'if he speak out his mind, he says,
he is threatened ; if he try to 'go in the old
grooves of custom, he is demoralised. But
the crisis of his affairs was close at hand.
One day in the spring of the following year
Reuchlin had an important letter from the
Elector of Saxony. The Elector was con-
cerned about his new University of Witten-
berg ; he would not see it*'behind the times ;
two professors should be appointed — one for
; Hebrew, another for Greek : could the
i veteran scholar advise him as to the choice
of suitable men? In a fortnight Reuchlin
gave his reply. For the Hebrew Chair he
THE EUECTOR FREDERICK.
TUBINGEN. 51
had thought of CEcolampadius, but he was
committed to other work. Dr. Ricclus might
be approached ; or Conrad Pellican, who had
published a grammar of the language. As to
Greek, he had less difficulty ; there was a
brftlTaht young kinsman of his own — Philip
Melanchthon of Tubingen, to whom the
Ingoldstadt and the Leipsic authorities were
already turning their attention, and the
ablest and the most promising man he knew.
He might, in any case, go to the Saxon
University on trial. The Elector trusted
much to Reuchlin's judgment ; he had already
heard of Melanchthon, and the matter was
at once arranged. Reuchlin's letter to the
young man he loved and praised so gener-
ously is full of honour to his own kind heart.
He knew how modest and how sensitive
Melanchthon was, and he encouraged him to
take with a stout heart the tide which, at this
turning, would, he was sure, lead on to for-
tune. * Here is the good Elector's letter with
his offer of the position, signed by his own
hand. I will not quote poetry, but I will
remind you of the words God addressed to
faithful Abraham : ** Get thee out of thy
country, and from thy kindred and from thy
£ 2
52 PHILIP' MELANCHTHON.
father's house, unto a land that I will show
thee : and I will make of thee a great nation,
and I will bless thee, and make thy name
great, and thou shalt be a blessing." *
And accordingly, but not without some
characteristic misgivings, Philip determined
to go. The Tubingen professors generally
were not particularly sorry ; others, including
the friendly Dr. Simler, shook their heads and
said they were losing the ablest among their
younger men. Even Duke Ulrich, unwilling
his Swabian University should be deprived
of a scholar likely to be famous, sent Philip
a message suggesting he should become a
priest and take to theology, and promising
he should not lose by the change. Philip
knew, however, too much both of the current
theology and of his Tubingen colleagues to be
tempted by the proposal. His books were
soon packed ; he took affectionate leave of
his own people at Bretten, and of his faithful
Reuchlin at Stuttgart ; and, with the old
tender words about Abraham in his mind,
left his own country and kinsfolk, and turned
his face to the North, wondering, no doubt,
what his promised land would prove to be.
When he came to Leipsic, he was received
TUBINGEN, 53
with exceptional howoViX^ feted at a banquet,
and urged to make it the end of his
journey, and settle down there. But the
invisible hands drew him on. At length,
lifting up his eyes, he saw before him the
toweiTot WitteiilBerg and the deputation sent
to meet him and escort him to hfs rooms.
The first words of Reuchlin's interpreted
prophecy were already fulfilling themselves.
But how little could Philip, or indeed Reuchlin,
have foreseen what a fulfilment — surely higher
than his highest imaginings — was to be
reserved for the last !
Ill
54 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
CHAPTER IV.
EARLY YEARS IN WITTENBERG.
Melanchthon delivered his introductory
lecture in the Greek Chair of Wittenberg on
August 29, 15 18, and the date has a signifi-
cance^f its own in the literary annals of
Europe. Seldom, if perhaps ever before, had
the University auditorium been filled with
an audience so distinguished and so ex-
pectant. The subject-matter of the new
chair had, even to those who knew little or
nothing of Greek, a certain fascination of its
own, and great anticipations had been stirred
about the new professor. The two intellectual
chiefs at the time were Erasraus and Reuchlin,
and both had spoken with altogether ex-
ceptional praise of the young scholar whom
the Elector had invited to his Saxon Uni-
versity. * What hopes this young man, I
might almost say this boy, has awakened ! '
Erasmus had exclaimed. * What keenness of
insight he has — what a charm of style — what
a maturity of learning ! ^ In one respect,
EARLY YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 55
however, and for the moment the subject of
a eulogy so generous proved somewhat of
a disappointment. Below the middle size,
slight, and surprisingly~youtFfiil,^nd with a
shy and awkward manner which emphasised
the stammering utterance of his first sentences,
he seemed hardly likely to prove himself
worthy of the forecast of his partial friends.
But as he gathered confidence, and as he
caught the inspiration of his subject, the first
unfavourable impressions were soon and con-
clusively corrected. His voice grew clear and
forceful, his actions animated, while the spark-
ling eye and flushing forehead gave emphasis
to statements which in themselves were
becoming wonderfully interesting. Melanch-
thon*s Lati n had much of the old 'classic
grace, and it was accentuated by occasional
quotations from the Greek and Hebrew.
And then, fresh from the controversy of
Rcuchlin and the monks, his words breathed
occasionally that spirit of battle which students
especially love.
In his earlier passages, Mclanchthon
sketched the history of the decline and the
darkening of liberal studies with a fulness of
knowledge which probably no one but himself
$6 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
possessed. And then, with excellent sense,
he outlined the methods of a restored and
emancipated learning. The nobler classics
of Latin, and especially of Greek, literature,
must be studied directly an5 afresh, not
merely as the teachers of grammatical ex-
pression, but of morals and of taste ; and,
wisely used. Homer and Plato and Virgil
may instruct more effectually than the most
pretentious philosophy. And as in the c:Lse
of the masters of the ancient Gentile wisdom,
so must it be, and in an especial degree, with
theology. The long-neglected tongue of the
Psalmists and Prophets must speak again in
its own incorrupt eloquence ; the single and
genuine sense of the Gospel must, in its own
language, be restored ; the lumber of obscur-
ing commentary must be put aside. But,
above all, it must be understood that the
highest attainment of all true theology is the
knowledge of Christ. Sweeter than the most
fragrant spices, the wisdom of that great
Master has an aroma which mere human
learning has never breathed. It is when the
Spirit guides us to the ultimate source ot
truth, and the mind is disciplined and en-
riched with true culture that the doors of
EARLY YEARS IN WITTENBERG.
57
Divine learning are opened to us : the law of
Christ becomes full of light, and we taste
something of the pure wisdom of Heaven.
The closing sentences reminded the students
of some of the difficulties as well as of the
rewards which were before them, and assured
them that all the energies of their professor's
own mind would be devoted to their service,
and to the attainment of the noble objects he
had described.
A discourse in which wisdom and know-
ledge were so attractively blended deserved
generous recognition, and it was a promising
symptom of Wittenberg feeling that it was
received with universal applause. When
Melanchthon sat down, perhaps the most
enthusiastic auditor was Luther himseTTT" A
ew ^rlays later, Dr. S'palatin, the Court
preacher, learned from him that the new
professor had delivered with general admi-
ration a * beautiful and learned ' oration, and
Luther's anxieties were already stirred lest
so able a colleague should, in any unexpected
way, be lost to the University. The Elector
should be heartily thanked for the gift of
such a man, and Dr. Spalatin, having these
things greatly under his control, should sec
}
58 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
that Philip's salary and all the arrangements
of his chair should put him beyond the reach
of temptation from any other quarter.
In the meantime a course so auspiciously
begun proceeded with great enthusiasm.
The attendance on the Greek lectures was
immense : Philip often saw himself confronted
by a crowd of two thousand — professors,
ministers, and dignitaries of various rank
conspicuous in the throng. The books chosen
for prelection were the Iliad of Homer and
the Epistle of St. Paul to Titus ; and no selec-
tion could better illustrate Philip's views as
to the duties as well as the dignity of his
chair. From the first, instinctively guided
by the devout sense, caught perhaps from the
piety of his father, Philip was possessed by
the belief that the end of all true learning is
good living, and that the culture of the intel-
lect has its worthiest result in the purification
of the heart. When in Tubingen he had
acted on this noble principle, and in later
life he repeatedly urged that authors should
be valued primarily according to their ethical
work. Accordingly, when he came to consider
the subjects of his prelections he had little
difficulty in the choice. The fountain of the
EARLY YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 59
earlier Greek wisdom was undoubtedly
Homer, and in his delightful pages there was
treasure of grammatical, historical, and ethical
lore. But there was another classic as much 7
higher and^etter than Homer, as it was ^(^^
altogether divine -and--tf«e to his own prin-
ciples : the professor could not allow his stu-
dents to neglect that sourceofundefiled truth.
The Apostle of the Gentiles deserved early and
special study, and much of his ripest and
most practical wisdom lay folded in the pages
of his epistle to that young friend who, like
many of the Wittenberg students, was look-
ing forward to a ministerial life. No choice
of subjects could have been better, and to all
responsive minds it must have been delightful,
after they had had in the Homer lectures
enough of grammar and of the gods, to turn
to the pastoral letter recalling the days of
living Christianity, and lifting the thoughts in
every sentence to things unseen and eternal.
It would, however, be a mistake to imagine
that so sudden popular interest could endure
indefinitely, and that the G reek class-room
remained as thronged and as enthusiastic as
it did at first. Superficial curiosity is soon
satisfied, and fashions live by change, and
/
6o PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
there were in Wittenberg additional reasons
why the number of Melanchthon's genuine
and effective students should be greatly re-
duced. In our modern colleges the press is
so vitally connected with the chairs that class-
books suitable for every course are easily
accessible ; but when Melanchthon lectured
the case was perplexingly difficult. In order
to enable his students to read the Epistle to
Titus in the original the professor had to pre-
pare a special edition ; and one of the earliest
difficulties to be overcome in this and similar
cases was the want of a fount of Greek type.
Some years later, when he proposed to discuss '
one of the Orations of Demosthenes, the only
copy of that author within reach was Philip's
own, and only four men were able or ready to
make copies of the necessary text for them-
selves. A similar state of things existed as
to other necessary literary apparatus, and in-
volved a great deal of laborious industry on
the part of Melanchthon. Hardly, indeed,
had a month passed from the delivery of the
inaugural lecture when he wrote to Dr.
Spalatin : ^ I hope to see issued immedi-
ately editions of a Dialogue of Lucian, two
■JDiscourses of Plutarch ; one of Athenagoras ;
EARLY YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 6i
a Greek Hymn ; the Banquet of Plato, with
a treatise on the Arrangement of Studies, a
Greek Lexicon, and perhaps several other
things/ His anticipation in regard to several
of these was premature ; but Melanchthon's
industry all through his life as editor as well
as professor was auspiciously great.
These engrossing academic pursuits were
unexpectedly interrupted when Philip accom-
panied Luther and other friends to the dis-
cussion in Leipsic on the disputed points
of theology raised in the Reformation move-
ment. An interruption much more eventful
indeed than could at the time have been an-
ticipated, for it was the occasion of involving
Mclanchthon in various anxious tasks, from
which, had he foreseen them, he would have
assuredly shrunk. But in the meantime
theological controversy was an untasted
luxury, and he went as a leisurely and half-
concerned spectator. In outward aspect, and
in all the attractions which appeal to those
who delight in polemics, the Leipsic discus-
sion was an impressive spectacle. The
Wittenberg professors were accompanied to
the scene by hundreds of students armed
with halberds. The place of debate was a
62 PHILIP MELANCIITHON.
hall in the Ducal Castle, the appointments
were of spectacular impressiveness, and the
ecclesiastical tournament lasted for several
days. The details of this as of subsequent
conferences belong to a history of the time.
But the consequences to Philip personally of
this visit to Leipsic were of the most im-
portant kind. It revealed to him, as perhaps
nothing else could so effectively have done,
the difference between the theology and the
spirit of the Schools and that of the New
Testament, and it engaged him far beyond his
intentions in investigations and controversy
of his own. Dr. Eck, that practised scho-
lastic pugilist, had indeed made a deeper
impression than even he had at all imagined.
The policy and the views of Luther became
more decisively defined than before ; many
hesitating minds were resolved for the Re-
formation ; and Melanchthon, whose aims had
been limited to the cultivation of a Christian
literature, was constrained to go much
further.
After the conference, Melanchthon wrote to
his friend Bugenhagen a brief but very in-
structive account of what happened. The
letter was printed, and came into Dr. Eck's
DR IIUGENIIAOKM.
EARIY YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 65
hands, who, irritated with a previous grudge
at Reuchlin's kinsman, gave it a characteristie
reply. This Melanchthon answered with
excellent sense and conclusiveness. So
effective indeed was his share in this first
passage of arms, that Luther would not rest
till his ally had undertaken, in addition to the
duties of his Greek Chair, those of a Theolo-
gical Lectureship. The degree of Bachelor
of Divinity was conferred upon him a few
months afterwards, but a higher honour he
would never accept. From the purely theo-
logical position he instinclively shrank ; his
place, he repeatedly said, was that of a
Humanist: his work to develop a culture
which should serve and supplement direct
Christian truth. But the force of circumstance
was more effective than personal preference.
When Luther was carried off to the Wartburg,
the theological faculty of the Sorbonne at
Paris delivered itself of a pompous condemna-
tion of his views, while from Florence came an
assault levelled against his heroic Letter to the
Nobles of the German Nation. To both of
these Philip replied, and in a way which shows
how clearly, at this period, his mind discerned
the great principles of Evangelical truth.
F
66 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
There was another and a much more im-
portant result of Melanchthon's share in the
A controversies of his friend. During Luther's
(p absence, he had chosen the Epistle to the
ir ' ^ Romans as the subject-matter of his lectures,
\ \Q^ and drawn up from that great summary of the
Gospel, as well as from other Biblical sources,
a series of compendious and classified state-
ments of Scriptural truth. These were
primarily for his own use, and, recalling
» Cicero's phrase, he labelled them * Common
J Places' — Loci Communes, The Synoptical
\ System of Divinity grew in his hands, and in
1 521 he consented to its publication. The
book had evidently come in season ; it was
read with extraordinary interest, and before
the following year was out it had reached its
fourth edition. ' It is a book of gold,' Luther
' said, in his generously exaggerating way, ' and
^ >^ I worthy of a place in the Canon.' By the
r - time" that Philip had begun to revise it for
edition after edition, he was fairly committed
4 to theology.
To compile a manual of divinity is, how-
ever, a much easier thing than to discuss
doctrines with passionate preachers, or still a
tempest of popular excitement But in the
EARLY YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 67
strange development of affairs, these were the
particular tasks to which, in the spring of
1522, Philip was imperiously called. During
L'uther's absence in his Wartburg Patmos, the
Augiistinian monksnof Wittenberg had risen
up ii^ ecclesiastical revolt, headed by the
excellent but unstable Dr. Carlstadt, and the
storm rolled its breakers, as ii by natural trend
of the shore, to the feet of Luther's henchman
and friend. Nor was this all. From his own
kindly Swabian land, where the peasant folk
of the Black Forest had lived so long in un-
complaining quiet, came ominous sounds of
dangerous unrest The Peasants'^War was
enough to try stronger nerves and a more
masterful rule than Philip ever possessed ;
but when Prince Philip, remembering that
Melanchthon was himself a Swabian, asked
his counsel and assistance, the appeal could
not be refused. He gave the prince the result
of his best judgment in an elaborate statement
on the value of the peasants' claims. In the
meantime, some of the leaders took refuge in
Wittenberg, and Philip received one of them
into his own house. If the most amiable good
sense and the kindest of kind reasoning could
have availed with either Thomas Storsch or
F 2
68 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
with Dr. Carlstadt, the tumult would soon
have been allayed. But the Augustinians
were bent on extreme measures, and the
Anabaptist Saul was beyond the influence of
Melanchthon's music. Just when things were
at their worst, but in time to save the
battle, Luther returned from the Wartburg,
and his perplexed colleague breathed again
freely.
These were the tempests which vexed the
autumn of 1521 and the spring of the follow-
ing year. But it is pleasant to recollect that
just before these troublous times had invaded
his peace, Philip had come into the posses-
sion of two of the chiefest blessings of the life
I of man — the first, a devoted wife, the other, a
^ / scarcely less warmly devoted friend.
In the story of Melanchthon's marriage
there is hardly any romance. The inde-
/' I fatigable Luther, ever anxious about Philip's
welfare, had reached the conclusion at a very
early stage of their acquaintance that, for many
indisputable reasons, he should have a wife.
The shy little scholar, absorbed in his books
and his students, may have admitted the
contention in a distant and theoretical way,
but his friends were bent on somethinof more
.?4
EARLY YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 69
practical. The reasoning must be removed
from the speculative region and be embodied
in a more personal and persuasive form. The
Wittenberg Burgomaster Krapp had a charm-
ing daughter — Katharine became the conclu-
sive minor premiss of the syllogism. Looked
at in this way, Philip had to acknowledge
that there was force in the argument. It
would have been more in accordance with
modern ideas if there had been no necessity
for arguments at all ; but the facts must
unfold their own oddly-interesting story.
* I followed the counsel of my friends/
admits the guileless but ungallant Greek
professor. *And 1/ surely Katharine had
whispered to herself, * followed the counsel
of my own heart* The honours of the history
evidently belong to the gentle lady. She
was drawn to her worthy suitor by the only
argument which has ever prevailed with
hearts like hers. *Shc loved her husband,*
said Camerarius, who knew Katharine well,
*with deep and tender aflcction.' After all,
Philip seems to have been but half just to his
better self. *I cannot venture to say how
unexpected a gift was my wife, how little I
was worthy of her ; but she was such a ijift
70 PHILIP MELANCHTHOM.
in grace and endowment of nature as one
might have hesitated to ask from Heaven/
The marriage was celebrated in November,
1520, and every successive year proved how
full" it was of the tender if perilous delights
of domestic love.
About a year before Philip's marriage,
when he was at the Leipsic Conference, he
heard much of a gifted youth very desirous
to make his acquaintance — one Joachim
Camerarius (Kammermeister), then at Bam-
berg. A friend was going that way, and a
few courteous Greek verses from Philip made
further correspondence easy. It was not till
1 521, when the plague drove many of the
students from Leipsic to Wittenberg, that
there were opportunities of closer acquaint-
ance. From this period to the end, no one
was so entirely the brother of Melanchthon's
heart as Camerarius.
Only three years Philip's junior, and, like
himself, variously gifted, precocious^ of grave
spiritual temper, and devoted to Greek,
Joachim was entirely fitted to become, as
soon he was affectionately called, his alter ego,
— his other self. During the exciting years
when they were together at Wittenberg, each
EARLY YEARS IM WITTENBERG. 71
inspired and helped the other ; and when, in
1524, Camerarius left the University, a con-
tinual interchange of letters continued the
intimacy which had been formed. In the
delightful annals of friendship, few chapters
are more pleasant than that in which Me-
lanchthon and Camerarius meet each other
again ; and their correspondence — a true
Cardiphonia — is still preserved by its intimacy
and sweetness. Nor has one friend often
told the story of the life of another more
attractively than has Camerarius in his affec-
tionate, if almost too partial, biography of
Melanchthon.
This admirable scholar, unequalled perhaps
among his contemporaries in pure classical
learning, became in later years eminent and
inffuehTial in a very high degree. At Melanch-
thon's suggestion, he was elected Rector of the
Nuremberg Gymnasium ; and his subsequent
life there, and at the University of Lcipsic,
was, in the sphere of educational influence,
hardly less distinguished than that of his
illustrious friend. In the epistles of Me-
lanchthon, the first addressed to Camerarius
is dated January I, 1523, and the series is
continued uninterrupted to the end. It is
i
72 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
in this correspondence one may see from
Melanchthon's point of view, as can be seen
nowhere else, the light and shadow of the
inner history of the Reformation.
Sometimes, when delicate matters are in
hand, he writes in Greek, reasonably pre-
suming that, even should the lelter fall into
other hands, nobody except Joachim would
be able to read it. But though often too
monotonously expressive of his own despon-
dency, the letters of Philip are no less inter-
esting than they are expressive of his excel-
lent good sense and of his gentle heart. In
the ecclesiastical histories of the time, as we
catch glimpses of him in conference after
conference — those packed and often passion-
ate assemblies — he is seen at a distance, and
often to his disadvantage. But when he goes
home and pours out his heart to Joachim —
sometimes in two or three letters a day — one
may see how much better Philip himself was
than his best books, how much wiser than his
Greek philosophy, how sensitive and con-
scientious, how tender and true.
The very first letter, indeed, lies under one
of those cloud-spots of darkness never long
absent from that wind-swept field of sun and
EARLY YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 73
shade. Philip writes to comfort Camerarius
in severe personal sorrow, and the kind words
must have touched him all the more as they
came from a heart almost as heavy as his
own. * Think of those who have suffered
before us, whom our Father in heaven has
given for our examples, and remember,
Joachim, that you are Christ's. You cannot
easily believe how these examples of suffering
patience comfort me when I, like you, am in
distress/
The truth was that both friends, in addition
to their actual troubles, were unstrung and
over-tasked, and both needed the relief of
change and rest. The fact must have been
evident to his Wittenberg acquaintances, and
when the suggestion of a holiday was made
by young William Nissen, one of Philip's
friends, it commended itself by its entire
reasonableness. Nissen was one of the
students whose gifts and amiable character
had endeared him to Philip ; he had been
the master of a school in Frank fort-on-thc-
Main, and now, after three years in Witten-
berg, he was about to return. It was the
most delightful time of tlic year, and why
should not the over-worked professor — suffer-
74 PHILIP MELANCHTHOM,
ing from insomnia, worried with Reformation
cares — come with him ? Their mutual friends
Burckhardt and Gerbelius would join the
party, and so, of course, would Camerarius.
Philip was easily persuaded, but he had
conscientious scruples whether he should
leave his work, and he would consult Luther.
In that quarter there was no hesitancy ; in
his genial way Luther gave Philip his parental
blessing, told him to be off, assured him that
his classes would be cared for. The matter
was accordingly arranged, and the episode of
Philip's first holiday in the vast and crowded
canvas of the Reformation age is like one of
the glimpses of peaceful scenery, a cottage
with children, a distant hillside in the sun, by
which the painter of some great piece of
storm or tragedy sometimes relieves its too
oppressive gloom.
\ It was on April i6, 1524, when the five
I friends left the gates of Wittenberg behind
I them and turned their faces to the fresh
I country fields and woods. They were on
horseback, and as they rode along they heard
the immemorial song of spring, saw the deep
clear heaven, that is clouded for a moment
only to be clear again, uttered in friendly
EARLY YEARS IiV WITTENBERG. 75
talk the thoughts of hope which rise in the
heart in the presence of natural beauty and
peace. A few stages brought the travellers
to Leipsic, where Philip and Camerarius
visited the Humanist Mosellanus, only to find
him on his death-bed ; he died the same day,
fading out of the world just when it was be-
ginning to resound with the victories for
which he had fought. At Fulda the friends
were welcomed by Adam Krafift, who deserves
to be remembered were it only because he
first introduced Camerarius to Melanchthon ;
and by that gifted, but as it proved unstable
friend of the Reformation, Crotus Rubianus.
The first news the Wittenberg party were told
at Fulda was that the obscure report they
had heard of the death of the chivalrous
knight and scholar Von Hutten was only too
true. He had fallen at last, not yet thirty-
five years old, in a little island — the last vain
refuge from his enemies — in the Lake of
Constance, and his fearless crest would be
seen no more in the wave of the battle for
learning and liberty.
From Fulda, past the beech woods of
Buchorn, they rode into Frankfort, and there
Philip spent an enjoyable time with the
ie PHILIP MELANCHTHOM.
accomplished physician Carinus, and here
Nissen left the party to resume his duties.
But the best of the journey was to come, for
in a few days Philip saw in the distance the
clustering roofs of the little town where he was
born. No spot of earth was so dear to him :
it had never seemed so dear before, and, dis-
mounting from the saddle, he knelt on the
ground in a flush of devout joy — Vaterlandserde !
wie dank ich dh% Herr^ dass ich sie zvieder
betreten darf. They rode up the little street,
in full view, no doubt, from all its doors
and windows, and soon were at the old home
where Philip's mother and his step-father, for
she had married two years before, and his
brother George, looking pale and delicate
received them with respectful joy.
At Bretten the little company of travellers
was still further reduced, for Camerarius with
Burckhardt and Gerbelius was off to Basle
to visit Erasmus, and Philip was left with his
own people. What conversings during those
days the old room heard between mother and
son ; what inquiries she had to answer about
early friends ; what questionings he had to
satisfy about the far-off great Wittenberg,
and the men whose names fame had blown
EARLY YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 77
on every wind into the little town itself ! And
to think that her son was one of those famous
people, that his name was being heard of over
Germany along with theirs ! And if it seemed
too wonderful to be true, how much easier to
believe it when Dr. Grynaeus and Dr. Busch,
with all the dignity of a special deputation,
came one day to Bretten to present to Philip,
from the faculty of the Heidelberg University,
a splendid piece of plate ; and when a mes-
senger from the great Cardinal Campeggi
arrived with tempting offers, if only Philip
would disengage himself from the Reformers
and devote his services to the old Church of
his fathers. Dr. Nansen could, however,
make nothing of the incorruptible scholar ;
* I will never desert,' said Philip, * what I have
ascertained to be the truth.' His mother
may have admired her son's stedfastncss
rather than approved of it, for she still re-
mained in the old Church, and she seems to
have had her own suspicions that the new
people in Wittenberg, or perhaps the new wife
Philip had chosen, instead of coming back for
one to Bretten, were urging things too far.
But these were delightful days, and when his
three friends came back from Basle, and it
78 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
was necessary for them all to think of return-
ing home, it must have seemed a painfully
short holiday.
But the inevitable hour came, and they left
the little town with its kind people at last, and
turned their faces to the North. As they were
nearing Frankfort they had an adventure
which with something of romance had much
more of unforeseen importance. A company
of horsemen were seen approaching, evidently
of high rank ; they turned out to be the
retinue of Prince Philip of Plesse, and the
frank young p>ince himself He had heard
of Melanchthon's visit ; he was deeply inter-
ested in the Reformation movement, though
not yet decided for it, and it struck him, as
the little party drew near, scholars as they
evidently were, that among them might be
the eminent man he wished to meet. * Which
of you is Philip Melanchthon ? ' he asked ; and
when Philip would have dismounted he
courteously compelled him to keep his seat,
and assured him he need have no apprehen-
sions for his personal safety. * I am not
apprehensive,* was the answer, * and I am not
a person of importance enough to make my
detention of any value.' The prince smiled
EARLY YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 79
suggestively. * And yet,' he said, ' if I handed
you over to Cardinal Campeggi he might
think differently ! ' And then he urged
Philip, after a short conference, to spend a
night with him ; he was anxious to discuss
important theological questions, and they
could talk them over at leisure. It was a
characteristically liberal offer, but Philip
begged he might be allowed to proceed, and
promised in writing a fuller and more careful
statement of the points in debate than could
be given in conversation. On this friendly
understanding they parted, the prince to
Heidelberg, the academic party to Frankfort,
and some days afterwards to Wittenberg.
The promised statement was in due time
sent, and in the spring of the following year
Philip was delighted to learn that the prince
had declared himself in agreement with the
friends of Reformation, and taken his stand
at their side.
8o PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
chaptp:r v.
IN WITTENBERG — LUTHER'S DEATH.
It was midsummer when Philip and Camera-
rius and their two friends returned from their
holiday to the friendly streets and little garden
closes of Wittenberg. Unhappily there were
fresh anxieties waiting him and much deferred
work, and he soon begins to speak again of
the ' miserable insomnia/ which had vexed
him before they started. Then came the news
that their friend William Nissen, who had
planned the pleasant outing, had been drowned
in the Elbe ; and a few weeks afterwards
Camerarius had to leave Wittenberg to
attend to work of his own. These also were
the heavy days of the ^ Peasants' War.' The
letters of this autumn are full ^of a sense
of loneliness and unrest. * I am working like
a wretch in prison,' he writes to Camerarius,
* without congenial friend to talk to. I miss
you constantly, and books are all the com-
pensation I have, with a few gossips such as
IN WITTENBERG— LUTHER'S DEATH. 8l
they are. When I asked Anna to-day at
table ' (Anna is his little girl) * where Joachim
and Michael were, she said, in such a pretty
stammering way, ann perbellule ebalbutivissety
'' they will soon come back again." I hope it
will turn out a good omen, and that we shall
indeed soon see you once more.'
There is a momentary forgetfulness in some
of these vexed words, for Luther and QEcolam-
padius were within reach, and Philip's gentle
wife, uxor viri amantissimay was beside him.
How could he forget, even for a moment, so
near and dear a friend ! But he was assuredly
in weak health, and his habitual wistfulncss of
depression often lay heavy on him.
Happily there occurred a pleasant inter-
ruption to the monotony of his work and care.
The good Nurembergcrs were bent on found-
ing a new college worthy of their famous city,
and receptive of the new intellectual light
spreading everywhere over Germany, and they
urged Melanchthon to become the rector.
He replied in a letter which is entirely
characteristic : —
* It is a tempting suggestion ; many things
plead for Nuremberg — but I must not go.
The good Elector has first claim on all my
Q
82 PHILIP MELANCHTHOJSr.
services, such as they are. To tell you the
truth, I am not equal to the task. You want
an orator — a man of presence and of popular
address. I am anything but that. When I
was brought to Wittenberg I was a boy ; the
responsibility was far too serious for me ; I
must not allow myself to be placed in such a
position again. There are far better men for
your work : there is Camerarius — there is
Johan Hess.*
From a man less genuine, or less conscious
of his own limitations, the self-depreciatory
letter would have been suspiciously like an
affectation. But it was meant for an entirely
honest portrait — the artist's sketch of himself,
with a sensitive conscience guiding his un-
f^iltering pencil. Nevertheless, though he
cannot go as rector, he will gladly accept the
invitation to deliver the inaugural address ;
and accordingly, in the early summer of 1526,
he went to Nuremberg. The accounts of this
visit — it was but too short, he said regretfully —
are a delightful episode in a record which was
becoming more and more sombre in its tone.
Melanchthon was received with all the fine
old hospitality and every expression of
honour. He was the guest of the generous
i: 2
ALBERT DURER.
IN WITTENBERG^LUTHER'S DEATH. 85
Pirkheimer; met Albert Diirer, explored his
portfolios with admiration, breathed with
delight, as one breathes sweet garden airs, the
liberal atmosphere of thought in which such
men moved. Diirer was engaged at the time
on his fine study of the Four Flvangelists,
and' this noble head of St. John is that of
Melanchthon. Nor did Philip ever pronounce
a eulogium of the higher learning more
expressive of his own ideals, more entirely
felicitous and inspiring, than that delivered
at the inauguration of the Gymnasium of
Nuremberg. He compares the stately old
city to Florence, and already sees the houses
domesticated in a nobler northern home, and
diffusing from it their gracious influences all
over Germany.
The first Diet of Spires was held in the
same year. The practical result of the nego-
tiations was the recognition of the great
principle of parity between the old religion
and the new: the admission, in the mean-
time at least, of the right of Reform to develop
and establish itself alongside of the ancient
forms. The immediate and most important
consequence of this arrangement was the
action of the Elector of Saxony and Philip of
S6 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
Hesse in setting about the establishment of
the Reformation in their own territories. In
carrying out this excellent plan the first step
was to ascertain, by a visitation of the
churches, the actual state of ecclesiastical and
religious affairs. Accordingly, the Elector
appointed a commission of twenty-eight
deputies, and, in the summer of 1527, Philip,
with five colleagues, began the work of visita-
tion in Thuringia. They left Wittenberg in
July, and a month was passed in friendly con-
ference with pastors and people. In the
meantime the plague had broken out in
Wittenberg, and the students and professors,
Luther only excepted, had migrated to Jena.
This business of visitation, resumed in the two
following as well as in later years, is an im-
portant and interesting part of Melanchthon's
activity and influence. He found a state of
things which to a good many of our times
would appear shocking, to others amusing ;
to Philip, with his grave, sensitive temper, it
was very depressing. He found an almost
universal ignorance of the elementary prin-
ciples of religious truth, the oddest survivals
of an ancient not quite outworn paganism.
Some of the clergy administered the mass
IN WITTENBERG— LUTHER S DEATH, 87
according to the old manner in one place, and
the Lord's Supper after the new fashion in
another. Some who were vaguely desirous
of preaching the Gospel had the most imper-
fect notion of what it really was. Some
expended their oratorical energies in abusing
the order of things which was passing away ;
some, with perhaps equally good results, did
not preach at all. The conduct of many of
the priests was scandalous. There was a
general neglect of education. * Do you
teach the Ten Commandments to your
people ? * Philip asked one of these primitive
ecclesiastics. * I have lost the book,' replied
the worthy old gentleman. But the picture
of the manners of a society passing in a
blind sorrowful confusion from the old order
of things to the new must be studied else-
where.
The experience which Philip had thus
laboriously gained was used in drafting the
outlines and filling in the details of his visi-
tation book for the use of deputies in the
reorganisation and establishment of churches.
It is a practical compendium of the more
essential matters, and, like its author, it is
tolerant and kindly. But in an age of
88 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
extremists it seemed to some only too liberal,
and Philip found himself taken to task by
two of his colleagues, both of them old
Wittenberg friends. * The author is a Papist
at heart,' one of them courteously wrote ; ' he
is really an apologist for the monks and their
abominable ways.' The controversy is in-
structive as an illustration of the conditions
under which much of Melanchthon's work
was done from first to last. But the visitation
book has a high value and significance. It
may be described as the nucleus of a group
of writings in which Melanchthon gave the
Saxon churches the beginnings of their
pastoral and catechetical theology. In
another group, of which the Loci Comimmes is
the centre of development, he has given to
Lutheranism its body of systematic divinity.
On both its positive and its practical side the
restored Evangelicalism of the Fatherland
received mould and fashion from the same
skilful hand.
From these journeyings through the
Thuringian valleys, with their strange reveal-
ings of the human heart and of old-time
manners, the narrative leads us back to the
inevitable theological debate. Since he first
IN WITTENBERG— LUTHER'S DEATH. 89
made acquaintance with polemical tourna-
ments at Leipsic, Philip had shared in many,
and he was to share, before the end, in many
more. The year 1529 is memorable for the
second Diet of Spires. Strange portents were
noticed by those who saw in such unusual
things dim hintings of the purposes of God.
Philip had unfortunately always been one of
these anxious observers, and he watched a
comet which blazed along its mysterious path
above Wittenberg as one who beheld a door
opened in heaven. There was a general
sense of apprehension among the Evange-
lical party that the Diet would prove a crisis
in their affairs. In April, 1529, the Diet was
opened. The aspecF^bf aflairs seemc3 to
coiifirm the portents. * Yesterday,* wrote
Philip to Camerarius, * the Imperial Edict was
read, and it is in the highest degree alarming.
The concessions of the first Diet arc with-
drawn7 and the wuist perils threaten those
who refuse submission to the new order. You
can easily understand our apprehensions.
Never was there so large an attendance of
bishops: one may read in their looks how
they hate us. We are treated as beneath
contempt. But I trust that our Lord will
90
PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
confuse the counsel of those who devise mis-
chief.' The only course open to the outvoted
Reformers proved at the same time the best.
They submitted the Protest which became
famous, and then withdrew. Their policy
SIGNING THE PROTEST AT SPIRES.
f became from this time definite and resolute :
that thrill was beginning to stir in the blood
which men feel in the face of battle. What part
Melanchthon took in this defiant step is un-
certain : no letter seems to have mentioned it,
m WITTENBERG— LUTHER'S DEATH. 91
and he left the Diet deeply depressed. There
was indeed reason for grave thought, but he
seems unconscious of the advance which had
been made.
But if some of the theologians failed for
the moment to recognise the significa nce of
the Protest, the politicians understood it
perfectly. At that moment the power of the
Emperor Charles was at its height : he had
broken the menace of France and occupied
Rome. But there was a more formidable j
danger in the East, and to meet the Turkish j
power, hanging like a th-undercloud over the I
Hungarian frontier, he needed all the un- *
divided forces of the Empire. And now
through the Lutheran religious revolt a new
foe seemed to be arising in his own household.
The Protest of the Diet of Spires made it
clear that the Emperor must either crush or
conciliate the party who had been bold enough
to question his authority, and the despatches
from the East showed that his action must /
be prompt. Accordingly, another Diet was aO jA
convened for A ugsburg the following year,/ >t^1r
when it was hoped the new party might be \
conclusively suppressed. The Protestant
chiefs foresaw the danger, convened a council,
92 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
and formed the Schmalkald League. The
duty of preparing a statement of their faith —
a manifesto of the Evangelical party— was
entrusted to Melanchthon.
On June 15, 1530, Augsburg crowded its
streets and windows to watch the train of the
Emperor as he passed through the city to the
Episcopal Palace.
The procession was headed by two com-
panies of the picturesque landsknechts, whose
types we may see in the etchings of Diirer.
Then came four hundred and fifty mounted
troops — the body-guard of the six Electoral
Princes — with light armour and scarlet jackets,
and in all the pomp and blazonry of their
chiefs. The Emperor's retinue followed —
pages in scarlet and yellow velvet ; the
German, Spanish and Bohemian nobles on
horseback; dukes, princes and electors;
heralds and trumpeters, and, under a splendid
canopy, the Emperor himself. Then came
bands of clergy in their canonicals, foreign
ambassadors, and lastly, in long procession,
troops of horse and foot and burghers of the
City Guard. The princes afterwards accom-
panied the Emperor to the cathedral, and
then to his apartments in the palace. Few
AUGSBURG.
IN WlTT^NBEkG— LUTHER'S DEATH, 9S
civil or ecclesiastical conferences had been
introduced with a more magnificent cere-
monial, and the citizens may safely have
inferred that matters of unusual import-
ance were on hand. The popular interest
was at its height when, ten days afterwards,
in the chapel of the Episcopal Palace, Chan-
cellor Baier read aloud for the space of two
hours the statement of the Reformed Faith as
prepared by Melanchthon.
The chapel was crowded to the door ; the
courtyard was equally thronged, but so clear
was the emphatic German of the Chancellor,
and so profound was the attention, that the
silent listeners outside, as well as within,
could hear every word.
It made a profound impression. A state-
ment so moderate in tone, so reasonable in
argument, so full of the glow of devout feeling,
so welcome in its fresh explanation of the
Gospel, could not but commend itself to many
hearts. * Can you answer that ? ' said Duke
William of Bavaria, to one of his theologians,
* From the Fathers T can refute it,* was Eck*s
reply ; * but not,* he added, with unusual
candour — * not from the Scriptures.* * I sec,
doctor,' said the Duke, * that the Lutherans
96 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
are in the Scriptures ; we are only near them.'
So may well have felt many others, as they
left the assembly with strange new thoughts
stirring in their minds.
The discussion thus opened prolonged
itself into the autumn. About a month after
the Confession had been read, the Papal
theologians issued a reply. Then followed
repeated conferences, more or less ineffectual,
statements and counterstatements, sederunts
indefinitely renewed. While the ecclesiastical
campaign was thus filling Augsburg with its
alarms, Luther — on whom still lay the Papal
ban — chafed^^Timself in the enforced exile
of Coburg. Philip continually corresponded
with him, though it is doubtful whether all
his letters came into the hands of his im-
petuous friend. The details of this long and
anxious period belong to ecclesiastical history.
In the intervals of debate Melanchthon was
engaged on his Apologia — a defence of the
Confession, and a reply to the Catholic attack.
The Confession and the Apology, monu-
mental as they are in the history of Reforma-
tion theology, are much the most valuable
contribution he made to a long and vexatious
controversy. They are comprehensive of the
/A WITTENBERG— LUTHER'S DEATH. 97
great matters of the Gospel, set forth with
much of tender and noble tone. But in eccle-
siastical diplomacy Philip was not an adept.
With the best intentions, he was unfortunate
enough during the months of this harassing
council to wound not a few of his friends, and
pierce his own soul with many reproachful
sorrows. Yet his mistakes were ever of that
generous kind in which the kind and hopeful
heart thinks that others are as frank and as
honest as itself. It is one of the most de-
pressing of discoveries to find how mistaken
is the amiable calculation, and Philip had to
learn the lesson more than once. At length,
on September 22, the final deliverance of the
Diet on the religious question was declared.
The Reformed Confession was pronounced
refuted, and jts^j upportcrs were allowed six
months to make their submissiori^~tQ the
authority of the Church. The Protestants
questioned the facts, and declined submission.
The severance with Rome was complete.
On September 23 the Elector of Saxony,'
with Mclanchthon and his Tricnds, left the
Diet. Luther gave them an exuberant wel-
come. 'Thank God, you arc wen out of
that hell!'
- 11
98 PHILIP MELANCHTHOM.
Did Luther think there would be no more
such places of torment ? Could his much
more sensitive friend share, even for a day,
the same seductive opinion ? Philip's heart
was in his home, where his books were, and
his gentle wife and children — where he could
relieve his heart in wistful letters to Came-
rarius — where he could forget his cares for a
while as he watched the harmless battles of
the Iliad, or ploughed the violet sea with the
candid Odysseus. His life, he would often
say, was really due to literature. He would
fain let the divines fight out their own
passionate contests, and give himself to the
task of training up another generation in the
counsels of moderation, of elevating learning,
of sweet and pure life. But to this reasonable
haven of his desires he seemed fated never to
attain. Like the far-wandering Greek, of
whom he discoursed to his students, he
seemed to be beaten about on every sea
while he sought the Ithaca of his dreams.
* What tempests are these that drive me,' he
wrote to Camerarius, *from the quiet and
more useful studies I love, into the heart of
these bitter controversies which I abhor ? *
He abhorred their bitterness ; but, after all,
IN WITTENBERG— LUTHER'S DEATH. 99
was it not the will of his Divine Chief he
should go? And accordingly he closed the
alluring Greek pages, posted up a notice to
his students, took farewell of wife and child,
and with resolute heart took the road again.
' I have lived in theological conferences,* he
said almost bitterly once, thinking how life
was fleeting away, * and I shall die in one of
them at last/ For the next fifteen years
we follow him as one follows a traveller who
half wonders to find himself at home. But
we are reaping the fruits of his labours in
these more peaceful times, and may well
spare some honour to the faithful heart
which never refused to remember the voice
of duty.
In the spring of 1531, another Council was
held by the Evangelical chiefs and theolo
gians, with the worthy aim of ' promoting the
glory of God, the union of good Christian
people, the securing of a pure faith, and a
worthy Christian life,* and not, it may be
hoped, without advancing somewhat in the
direction of these noble objects. Those who
from our quieter century look back into that
in which Mclanchthon lived, will remem-
ber that all these conferences, peaceful or
H 2
:|
lop PHILIP MELANCIITIION.
polemical, weiis held in such political weather
as finds a S3''mbol in a day of spring, when the
artillery of thunderstorms is heard rolling off
its volleys at intervals all round the horizon,
and the sky clears only to become black and
ominous again. In the year of the Schmalkald
League, Zwingle leTF on the battlefield of
Cappel. The Germans were looking to their
swords, and watching each other across the
table of the Diets, and, beyond the Hungarian
frontier, the Turks were hammering at the
door of disunited Europe. A few months
after Zwingle's death, died also Philip's old
college friend, CEcolampadius, asking at the
last from some kind visitor whether there
was any news, and whispering, with a smile,
when it was replied that there was none,
' Nay, but I will tell you something new.
In a very short time I shall be with Christ
my Lord.' A year later came the ' Witten-
berg Truce,' a further interim of rniitual
tolerance between the opposing parties.
Further and to perilous lengths it might have
gone, but the reports from the East became
alarming, and the Emperor — or the Turk —
adjourned the assembly. But, in spite of
the continuous public engagements, this was
ZWINGLK.
IN WITTENBERG—LUTHER'S DEATH. 103
one of Philip's most productive years. In
1532, he published his Commentar y on the
Romans ; and the elaborate book may stand
besiffe^that of Luther on Galatians! ifuring
the following year, the enlarged edition of the
Loci was issued. But these mark breathing-
spaces only in very unrestful years. In 1536,
there was an anxious and critical debate
between the Lutherans and Zwinglians, and
Bucer deserves liberal praise for the peaceful
compromise with which it closed. Next year
came the Sc hmalkald C onference, in which
the Articles were drafted by Luther's defiant
pen, and supplemented by a treatise on Papal
and Episcopal power by Melanchthon. The
spirit of a meeting of the Evangelical leaders
at Gotha in 1540 was *no peace with Rome,'
and we begin to hear more distinctly the
voices which presage war. Then came the
Regcnsburg Diet of 1541, when hostilities
would probably have broken out, but the
Eastern question again became urgent, and
the debate was prorogued.
At all these assemblies Melanchthon was
present ; but it is the noteworthy fact of the
year 1534 that he was repeatedly urged to
leave the Fatherland and its stormy Diets
11
104 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
altogether. Readers of Marlowe's Fatistv^S^X
remember that not Paris or Florence is intro-
duced as the seat of the higher learning, but
Wittenberg. The fame of Luther in a
stormy way and of Melanchthon in more
peaceful minds had been blown much about
the world ; Philip's distinguished gifts gave
lustre to Wittenberg, and they would give
equal or greater lustre to other places desir-
ous of a man so eminent. He was first in-
vited to Poland, then to his old University
of Tubingen, where he would have had as
colleague his old friend Camerarius. * I be-
lieve,' he wrote, * there is something of Divine
direction in our friendship, and could we but
work in peace together, I am assured it would
be for the general good.' Still he could not
go ; his faithful Elector had claims before all
others, and to something like right he was
adding the inducements of friendship, and
holding out hopes to Philip that he would
enlarge his Wittenberg house and add a
garden, in which he might perhaps find or
form another ' Grove of Academe.'
But it was a more serious matter when
first Francis, writing with his own royal hand
from France, and then Henry VITI. of England,
IN WITTENBERG— LUTHER'S DEATH. 105
invited the theologian of the Reformation to
transler himself to their shores. There was
something to be said for both proposals, and
many anxious interviews were held with the
deputies who enforced the arguments of their
masters. To France Philip might have gone,
but the Elector resolutely and justly refused
permission. The inducements to go to
England were seriously urged ; but Philip, who
haa sulfered acutely from his casuistical share
in the matter of the bigamy of Philip of
Hesse, cannot have been anxious to interfere
in tKc more perilous matrimonial problems
of Henry VIII. In the long run Melanchthon
was satisfied that the Elector was both wise
and friendly, and that he should remain
beside Luther. In 1536, he wrote to Came-
rarius, * The En glish business is conclusively
over/
"Tn the meantime great events were resound-
ing throughout Europe, and the years fleeting
over in the excitement were rapidly making
men older. Since the Diet of Augsburg
England had revolted from Kome ; Jt*'rance
had been humbled by the limpcror ; the
Turks had sprung upon Hungary ; Loyola
had founded the order of Jesuits ; in
io6 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
Germany the Anabaptist Rebellion had burnt
Itself out in the tragedy of Miinster. Ariosto
had died in Italy ; Erasmus at Basle ; Sir
Thomas More had been beheaded in England.
These were great matters, but it is the smaller
things, if only near enough the heart, that
make themselves more acutely felt. When
Philip came back from one of these Diets he
found himself the object of what seemed a
conspiracy of fault-finding at Wittenberg.
He was discovered to be unsound in the
faith ; he was unworthy to be beside Luther ;
the Rector of the University should see to a
man so dangerous.
The details of the wretched attack are un-
important, but they are part of the already
gathering opposition to Philip himself and to
the * Melanchthonism * of his teaching which
embitters his later years. And could it be
possible that even Luther himself half sym-
pathised with the fault-finders ! Certainly he
was not altogether the same as he used to be
in the old cordial and generous days : was it
age, or was it the work of chronic illness, or
was it an altered mind ? In any case, during
these dark years Philip continued to suffer
the pressure of a burden which seemed
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IN WITTENBERG— LUTHER'S DEATH. 109
heavier than he could very long bear. * For
the last three years/ he confided to Came-
rarius, ' I have been like Prometheus on the
rock, I feel as if I must sink and die/ And
die he all but did, when at Weimar, in 1540,
he fell ill, and sank into alarming collapse.
When Luther reached the bedside of his
friend he recognised the ominous fades
hippocratica^ the skin was clammy, the pulse
was fluttering away. Luther roused him
from the perilous coma, compelled him to eat
something, cheered him in his inspiring way.
*We can't spare you yet, Philip! ' he
exclaimed ; prayed for him in a passion of
importunity. The strong ticlcs ot Luther's
vitality lifted the stranded vessel ; there \vere
yet to be twenty N'ears of v()\-aij[ing to the
caliiT waters which lay in the haven of his
rest. But the strong kind man who had
saved him was already within sight of harbour,
and Philip would sail through the dim seas
alone.
The year 1546 is one of those which is
remembered, as some grim waymark is re-
membered, by all who have travelled over those
sixteenth-century ways. It was the fateful
year when the Emperor Charles v., having
)
llo PHILIP MELANCUfHOI^,
beaten and bargained off his French foes on
the one side of the Empire and the Turks on
the other, turned with hands free at last upon
the Reformation party at home. He had long
been waiting for the opportunity, and when it
came he would not hesitate. The great re-
ligious war was out at last in the North ; and
in Trent the great papal council sat deliber-
ately down. And just before the outbreak,
in that moment of fatal stillness before battle,
Luther died,
Tlie strong heroic man had been broken
in health for years. He sank somewhat
suddenly at the end, writing grim jests in
his latest letters, and then dying nobly as he
had lived.
Melanchthon was not with him. Sorrowful
was the procession which, from Eisleben,
where he was born, carried the body to
Wittenberg again. Still more sorrowful the
crowd that broke up in silence after his coffin
had been left in the Nicholas Church, and the
last words of Bugenhagen's sermon and
Melanchthon's Latin oration had been heard.
Who could well be more sorrowful than Philip
himself }
The year before his death Luther had said,
IN WITTENBERG— LUTHER'S DEATH. HI
* While I live no danger may arise ; but after
I am gone tHen go to prayer. Truly" there
will "be need of prayer; and our children may
take to their spears, and there will be sad
times in Germany/ Surely those sad times
were at last come.
PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
CHAPTER VI.
LATER YEARS IN WITTENBERG.
The story of the time pauses for a moment
at the grave of Luther, and then hurries away
to poHtical councils and the troops gathering
for war. During almost seven years we
hear, more or less distant, the intermittent
cannonading of siege trains, the roll of the
drum, the shock and thunder of battle. Of
these things, in the colour and body of their
life, and in all their details, one reads in the
great histories. It is possible to recall the
outlines of them only as we follow the patient
sensitive man who shuddered at every story
of bloodshed, but stood firmly at his post,
through it all, to the end.
During the autumn of 1547 the Imperial
forces were being quietly concentrated, and
the chiefs of the Schmalkald League — Prince
Philip of Hesse and the Elector of Saxony —
were preparing, not too soon, to defend them-
selves. And had the Protestant leaders but
LATER YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 1 13
been united, a good account and early in the
campaign might have been given of their
formidable foe. But time and the fateful
opportunities of things were allowed to slip
past. In a month or two the ferocious levies
of Spain and a contingent from Italy had
joined the Emperor's troops in the North.
And then fell on astonished Germany the
first incomprehensible surprise of the war.
People heard, some with horror, some with
unbelieving joy, that Duke Maurice of Saxony,
himself a Protestant, had declared for the
Catholic Emperor and accepted the police
duty of coercing his own relative, the Elector
Frederick. The first blood was drawn
between friends. In the meantime, while the
ill-omened campaign had begun in Saxony,
the Emperor advanced from the South. The
Elector's army, not in the best of spirits,
waited for him at Muhlberg, on the Elbe.
The Spaniards, with their swords between
their teeth, pushed through the river, the
landsknechts found a ford, and a fierce battle
rolled over the dark heath of Lochau. The
IClcctor was defeated and made prisoner ;
Prince Philip surrendered afterwards ; and
the Schmalkald League was at an end. Then
I
114 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
the Electorate of Saxony was conferred on
Duke Maurice.
This was the sharp, decisive beginning of
things, and had the control been in the hands
of the Pope, who was already benevolently
blessing the war against the heretics, it had
gone hard with them. But the Emperor
proved unexpectedly tolerant, and no one
could have more fairly guarded the interests
of the Protestants in his dominions than the
new Elector. Wittenberg had sustained a
stout siege, and then surrendered, on the
condition that the Spanish troops should not
be allowed entry. The old city was treated
with honourable consideration ; the Reformed
worship was restored, the dispersed students
and professors were invited back. Magdeburg
won for itself similar honour. In the mean-
time the Emperor convened new theological
conferences, hoping in his own persistent way
that the schism might yet be healed. One
of these ineffectual assemblies was held at
Augsburg in 1548 ; another, in the autumn
of the same year, at Leipsic, when a proposed
Interim was drafted. The General Council,
so long contemplated, was holding its sessions
at Trent, and Melanchthon had been directed
LATER YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 115
to proceed to that unpromising convocation.
He had arrived at Nuremberg on his unwel-
come journey, and was waiting day after day
for further instructions, when all Germany
was thrown into perplexed astonishment. It
was the second great surprise of the war, and
it was from the same quarter as the first.
The Elector Maurice, irritated that his father-
in-law, Philip of Hesse, had been a prisoner
and wretchedly treated for five years, and
inspired perhaps also by some new scheme in
his tortuous policy, made a secret treaty with
the King of France, ascertained that the
inevitable Turk was ready with new irruptions
on the eastern frontier, and then suddenly
turning upon the Emperor Charles, compelled
him to come to terms. The end of the
strange campaign was as prompt and unex-
pected as its beginning. A treaty which
ensured complete political equality to the
Protestants was signed at Passau in 1552,
and a council to arrange similar religious
liberty was promised in six months. After
some inevitable delay it was held in 1553 in
Augsburg, where the great Confession had
been presented twenty-three years before.
With the Treaty of Passau and the Religious
I 2
Ii6 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
Peace of Augsburg, the civil and the religious
rights of the Protestants were permanently
secured, and the history of the Reformation
in Germany, as an organic movement, may
be said to have come to an end.
And now surely, somewhere about the
falling in of these hopeful years of toleration,
must have become due at length that peaceful
millennium for which Melanchthon had been
waiting so long. For many weary spaces of
endurance he had anticipated a golden season,
when he and all scholars might pursue their
useful studies undisturbed ; when the Reform
might proceed unchallenged on its way of
proclaiming the old gospel of goodwill and
love ; when the long strife of opinion and of
passion should subside at last. And though
some of his friends had gone, and though he
was himself fast growing old, there would yet
be time enough, in life's serene evening, to
forget the tempests of the earlier day, and
enjoy something of the prelude to the eternal
rest — the initinm qinetis cEternce. It has
been said of the political campaign, that had
the Protestant leaders been of one mind the
war might have ended earlier ; and something
of the same reflective kind may be repeated.
LATER YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 117
but With a far more sorrowful sense of regret,
with reference to the war of opinion. Nothing,
indeed, in Philip's wistful life is more pathetic
than its wistful ending. In these latest years
awaited him, not the millennium of his longings,
but the heaviest of his disappointments — the
most complete fulfilment of his worst fear.
The immediate cause of the sorrow which
closed around him and hung on him to the
end was the Leipsic Interim of 1548, and the
share he had tackerrm drafting' and approving
that unhappy statement. The subject is still
debated, and the student will take liis own
side. Few, indeed, will accept the articles
thus reluctantly accepted by Melanchthon
and his colleagues as a tolerable expression
of the Reformed faith, and many regard it as
a disreputable surrender. And if even now
it is difficult to be dispassionate and impartial,
how utterly impossible must it have been
then ! When the concessions of the Interim
were known, they roused among many of the
Reformed theologians the most angry protest.
Buccr, whose incorruptible honesty was
proved by what he suffered, rebuked Me-
lanchthon from his exile, and his voice was
but one of many others as authoritative as
1 18 PHILIP MELANCIITBON.
his own. It was in vain to plead that the
concessions referred almost entirely to matters
of ceremonial and such things — those
indifferent matters {adiaphord) which do not
affect the essential faith. 'But thatl urged
the critics, 'that is precisely the point in
question ; you have dared to regard as
indifferent those very matters which are not
indifferent — those which include and which
themselves are entirely essential and vital/
And, however the question might be stated,
the fact became every month more clear that
Protestantism, and just in the hour of securing
its liberties, was dangerously near schism ;
and that the schism was involving the heart
with its kindly affections as well as the
deliberative judgment. It was deplorable,
and, unhappily, it was to become a permanent
state of affairs, which continued, with now
more, now less depression, till Philip could
deplore it no more. Nor may the narrative
forget to add that the sorrowful Adiaphoristic
Controversy was only one of not a few others
almost as vexing as itself. Flacius had raised
his banner of revolt over the Interim question ;
why should not Osiander raise the question
of the relation of Faith to Justification ; and
LATER YEARS IN WITTENBERG. U^
Staucar on the Person of Christ in relation to
the work of His mediation? Why, indeed,
should not a new University — a school of the
sound old Lutheran divinity — be founded at
Jena, by way of counteracting the dangerous
Melanchthonism of Wittenberg ? And accord-
ingly — for is it not the condition of all human
intercourse, perhaps of all human progress ? —
the expostulatory pamphlets were written, the
little schools of righteous dissent were founded,
the conscientious upholders of liberated ortho-
doxy liberated their souls. These things
can perhaps be estimated more fairly now ;
but it has taken three centuries to teach the
ethics of impartial toleration, the wisdom of
friendly forbearance. And is it quite certain
the lesson has even yet been learned ?
Could we but hear the professor himself
on some of these distracting subjects once
more ! How anxiously would he be sure to
remind us that when the Interim was drafted
the sword was half out of its scabbard against
his people ; that his action was a plea and a
concession for peace and for the lives of men !
How energetically would he argue that
* indifferent * and subordinate all questions
assuredly are compared with the great matters
120 PHILIP MELANCHTIION.
of the love of God, the Atonement of Christ,
the warrant and promise of faith — and that
these foundation truths he had guarded as his
own soul. Would he not win us as he recalled
the conditions of all theological controversy ?
how it is inevitably biassed, inevitably one-
sided ; how the moderate view is sure only of
reprobation by all parties of extremists ; how
no Church has ever escaped the healthful
discipline of dissent. Nor would Melanchthon
leave unexplained the guiding principle of all
his policy from the first — the effort to secure
the liberty of preaching the old Gospel in all
its comprehensive simplicity, the circulation
of a vernacular self-explanatory Bible, these
being the surest conditions of essentially sound
Christian doctrine, and the best safeguard
against all practical error.
Many such considerations might he not
allege ; how many, indeed, has he alleged,
and in his own admirable manner, in the old
letters which still pulsate with the generous
convictions of the heart from which they
came ! He has added what is more pathetic
than any argument— what is conclusive as to
his full share of the weakness, and the honour,
of our sad, imperfect humanity- — he has
LATER YEARS IN WITTENBERG, I2I
deplored the limitations of his own capabili-
ties ; he has recognised his own inevitable
mistakes. ' These things I did for the best.
I trusted they would be taken as they were
meant. I expected, indeed, too much ; but I
would have died rather than betrayed the
truth or wounded my kind brethren. Why
have I, born for my Greek studies, for the
humble pUTsnits^ of the grammarian, been set
thus in the high places of theological passions
and war? Would that Doctor Martin had
been with us, for he would have saved it all ! '
That brave voice cannot be heard again ;
why should we recall from their sepulchres
the frowning old ghosts which drove Philip
almost to his death ? The wretched Interim
lived but a year or two, disowned by the
Reformed, disowned even more by the
Romanists, ineffectual for its purpose ; better,
like many such things, to be conclusively left
in some convenient limbo of failures. The
troubles in which it involved him Philip bore
with such patience and now fast-failing
strength as he had. The faithful Camcrarius
saw that he was wounded deep, * Nothing
that the poets have feigned about the tortures
of imaginary people in Hades can be worse
122 PHILIP MELANCHTROI/.
than what I am enduring ; I am so overborne
with this unending worry that I cannot live.'
Again the old smiling pleasantries return.
* All these months I have been fighting with
these children of Polyphemus ; how should
we expect broad views of things from men
who, like their father, have but one eye ! '
But as the years — inevitably just and kind
to such men — passed gradually over, they
brought many compensations — the self-con-
tained mind, the enlarging view, the spirit
ripening as it was wearying for heaven, the
generous appreciation of the truly wise and
good. Philip's incessant writings, now an
expostulatory letter, now an explanatory
tractate, now a copy of gentle verse, now an
academic address, now a ' fruitful ' com-
mentary — these kept his genuine spirit clear
before all who knew mild wisdom and piety,
and the charm of his personal presence still
touched the responsive heart. In 1551, he
recast the great Confession of Augsburg, and
he had the satisfaction of hearing it read in
Wittenberg, in full audience of the University
and of the neighbouring ministers, with
universal acceptance. It is to this monu-
mental expression of the Reformed Theology
LATER YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 123
that those should turn who vex themselves
with the Leipsic Interim. The pressure of
the dark hour, the strain of the divided motive,
had been removed, and Melanchthon must
have written with some consciousness that it
was for minds which would be more liberal,
and for a time in which the feverish passions
of his own would not prevail. The Confession
in its final form may be described in words
which a German historian has applied to its
earlier: *In regarding this deliverance we
seem to be standing on the borders of a
limpid lake, the wild tumult of whose storm-
tossed waters has subsided, and on which the
sun, once more issuing from the clouds, is
mirrored, though the agitated waters are not
yet entirely at rest.'
One day, when called away from his house-
hold and students to attend a theological
assembly, Philip explained to the young men,
in a friendly little notice affixed to the class-
room door, why their professor did not appear.
He said with equal truth and frankness that
he would much rather have remained at home
— his mind abhorred contention — but there
were necessary duties to be discharged, and
they would understand why he must go.
124 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
The little notice may be still useful to tra-
vellers in the old paths of these times, who
would know where they may find Philip when
most free from care, and most ready for
friendly conversation. We shall not see him
at his best in the Conferences in Leipsic or
Torgau or Augsburg, or somewhere else
among strangers. Let us leave these fre-
quented places and wait for him at Wittenberg.
The lecture begins as a rule at seven in
the morning. The little notice has been
assiduously read, and if it promises an
interesting course it will draw a full class-
room. Indeed, these friendly messages to the
students form by themselves a very interesting
course of Melanchthonian reading. They
are usually brief, though occasionally, as when
public affairs are gloomy, they become much
more detailed ; they are always instructive,
always devout in tone.
When the University re-assembled after the
! siege of Wittenberg in 1 547, Philip announced
that he would preach upon the Colossians -^
I and while every despatch was awaited with
apprehension, and the land was full of alarms,
the successive sentences of that beautiful
Epistle lifted, and verily not ineffectually, the
LATER YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 125
thoughts and the affections of many in the
Greek class-room to those serene places of
contemplation where Christ sits at the right
hand of God. The next year he chose, not
for the first time, the Epistle to the Romans,
reminding the students in his little notice
that though the book had been preached
upon before it could not be read too often,
just as, they would recollect, Epictetus had
said that all matters of weight and gravity
should be turned over and considered again
and again.
A year or two later the class-book was
the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius, and
the professor took occasion, referring to the
anxious state of the Church, to express the
devout wish that just as in the days of
the Flood the Father of men secured His
Argonauts in the ark, so He would be mind-
ful of His distressed people in the Fatherland,
tossed in the perilous tempests of the time.
On another occasion the placard announces
Thucydidcs ; it is a book which the Emperor
greatly admires, and no doubt his young
subjects will like to make acquaintance with
it also. Or it is the Knights of Aristophanes,
or it is the Suppliants of Euripides which, in
126 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
the attractive manner of these small placards,
is explained to be specially suitable for study
in the present political state of affairs. Then
for a change, and for the great value of the
subject-matter about which everyone should
know something, the professor has chosen
Theophrastus on Plants, and he will describe
as many of them as is convenient and possible.
Occasionally the students are told that a new
edition of the book to be read has been
published, and may be had from a certain
bookseller, or that a treatise on some Greek
subject has appeared and is well worthy of
being purchased.
Those characteristic little programmes
which used to be posted on the Wittenberg
class-room door four hundred years ago have
an interest and value quite their own. They
bring back the old days : they help us to
understand how the students went about
their work : we can almost see the benignant
face of the professor : we can fancy we hear
him speaking to the young men. We are
quite sure that his lectures were full of
good matter — brimful of benevolent wisdom —
tender with that unaffected and unconscious
piety which none appreciate more than gene-
LATER YEARS IN WITTENBERG, 127
rous youth. Also, as has been said, they
serve to direct us along the pleasantest path
Melanchthon had found through the tangled
wood of the world — the sheltered covert from
which he was never willingly absent, and
where, when you find him sitting in the old
Greek sunshine, he is always most congenially
employed, most entirely himself. To this
general truth there is but one exception.
Much as he loved his class-room and the
Greek poets, he was still more tenderly
attached to his home. To that sacred place
of his deepest desire we may presently
attempt to find the way.
Partly in the discharge of those welcome
professorial duties, partly in the much less wel-
come but no less faithfully discharged duties
which called him to conferences and consul-
tations, the last fifteen years of Melanchthon*s
life were passed. We find the home-loving
scholar, as if bearing the doom of some
strange unrest, at Leipsic, at Nuremberg, at
Frankfort, at Erfurt, at Dresden, at Worms,
For a whole autumn and spring, the year the
University was broken up by the siege, he is
at Zerbst ; again, in 1552, the plague drives
him with his household gods and his students
128 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
to Torgau. Sometimes his letters enable us
to bear him imaginative company on the way.
In January, 1552, with his devoted son-in-law,
Dr. Peucer, he had gone to Nuremberg —
lodging in the Aegidian Monastery with his
old friend the abbot — dining with the wealthy
Fuggers — spending evenings with much talk
of old times with his faithful Jerome Baum-
garten, to whom so many of his letters are
addressed — delivering lectures before the
College — occupying such leisure as was left
in authorship or correspondence ; sometimes,
alas ! wearing away the hours of sleepless and
suffering nights by composing Latin verses.
On March 18 Melanchthon set out for
home with two companions, his friends
adding a mounted guide and two spare horses.
The travellers passed through thickly wooded
country to the little town of Eger in Bohemia,
where Wallenstein was murdered, meeting
hardly twenty people on the two days*
journey — Philip varying conversation and his
own thoughts by an occasional page of the
Son of Sirach. The next day the party
passed down the Joachimsthal, calling upon
the worthy pastor John Matthesius, to whom
the following day, when they reached Anna-
LATER YEARS IN WITTENBERG. 129
berg, Philip sent some verses by which he had
beguiled the road. Three days later they
rested at Leipsic ; thence by a few stages
they came within sight of the friendly walls
of Wittenberg. He might, indeed, have made
much longer journeys, for once and again he
was invited to England ; but Melanchthon
would never leave the Fatherland, ungrateful
and unappreciative as many of his country-
men were. Nor was he unmindful, these
last grey years, that there was another journey
waiting him, not to be indefinitely deferred,
much longer than any of the others — and the
last. Before that inevitable departure let us
draw nearer, if we may, to the kind heart — let
us join, so far as it is possible, the little home-
circle, and retrace its gentle history. For there
it was that Philip was ever most truly himself,
and it is there, if anywhere, that it may be
seen what manner of man he was.
K
I30 PHILIP MELANCHTIION.
^CHAPTER VII.
PHILIP MELANCHTHON AT HOME.
It was on November 25, 1520, that Philip
Melanchthon and Katharine Krapp were
married to each other. There was a distin-
guished company. Luther tells us that his
father and mother were there : he was there
himself, beaming with benignant satisfaction.
No frivolous honeymoons are heard of: the
conscientious bridegroom was too much
absorbed in his work. On the class-room
door the students read a rhythmical Latin
couplet, just perceptibly reflecting their own
smiles, which announced intermission of
lectures for a single day. The young couple,
unromantic and practical from the first, went
pleasantly home, and addressed themselves
to their new engagements.
Katharine soon proved herself a most
affectionate wife, a devoted JiaicsfratL, and, in
the special matter of benevolence, a model of
all the gentle virtues. She was boundlessly.
PHILIP MELA NCIITIIOy A T HOME. 1 3 1
almost recklessly, charitable ; and there were
only too many opportunities of being benevo-
lent. Her husband's house was beset by an
unending stream of visitors, and not a few of
them came for help. There was not much to
be kind upon ; but Katharine was ingenious
as well as sympathetic, and if she had nothing
to give, she would plead with some wealthier
friend. For that matter, how could it well
be otherwise ? She was but following her
kind husband's example. There are a hundred
stories of Philip's generosity : how he would
give almost anything away, denying himself
endlessly, exchanging even pieces of plate
for the desirable gold pieces which he might
slip into hands poorer than his own. * I wish,*^
said good Dr. Peucer, many years after-
wards — ' I wish his friends would not put
their gifts to my father-in-law into money.
He is never the richer of it. It all goes
straightway to someone he is anxious to-
make happy.'
With hearts so quick to kind impulses,
with means just narrow enough to make
charity a genuine virtue, with work entirely
to their minds, with the soft airs of the new
young years about them — ^were Katharine
K 2
132 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
and Philip ever happier than they were then ?
Who shall come back to tell us of the talks
the two Reformers' excellent wives used to
have with each other — Luther's Kate with
Philip's — in those distant silent years ? Their
husbands often dined together, while from
time to time the other professors would drop
in. One would like to have been of the
company when the party was at Dr. Justus
Jonas's — when they sat out the afternoon in
that charming garden of his : the gentlemen,
perhaps, by themselves ; the ladies, in con-
fidential little groups, discussing matters more
pleasant than politics, and more practical than
Greek poetry and philosophy. Philip has
himself celebrated that delightful garden in
verses of suitable praise : —
* Hie gravidam pomis ficum, lentasque cupressos,
Purpureas violas, aurea mala parit.
Caetera quid referam largas natura benigne
Ruris opes horto divitiasque dedit.
Etvates colit hunc herus, invitatque frequenter :
E medio doctas hue Helicone Deas.
Hie vidi Musas pro Carmine texere serta
Praemia victori digna loaehime tibi.
Hie vidi laetas plausu vultuque canenti
Mycillo Aonias saepe favere Deas.
Soeratieisque iocis hie Mieale seria condis,
Exaeuuntqui sales pectora nostra tui.'
PHILIP MELANCHTIION A T HOME, 133
But as the years passed, everybody became
more busy at home. Soon after Philip entered
on his professorial duties, and students began
to pour into Wittenberg, he found that many
of them were sadly unripe for the University
classes, and, while there were as yet no
gymnasia to receive and train them, he
invited not a few to take up their abode in
his own house. Gradually he found his
Schola Domestica no unimportant part of his
charge ; and it was a charge in which his
kind wife had her full share. Her hands were
soon more than full. These lads paid, or
were understood to pay, suitable fees ; but
who can believe that from the humble-
followers of the Muses fees were always either
received or asked ? The professor's heartiest
sympathies were always with poor, if but
earnest, students: he prevailed with some
colleagues to follow his example ; and in
these domestic gymnasia he laid the Univer-
sity, and indeed the Fatherland, under a real
obligation.
And with each successive year his visitors
and his engagements increased. The mes-
sengers from many parts of Germany — from
more distant countries, charged with every
134 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
kind of commission — became more and more
numerous. As Philip's name and his writings
became widely known, his counsel was much
in request : all kinds of visitors found their
way to the busy house. Some brought per-
plexing cases for his advice : some unfolded
manuscripts of intended books : some pre-
sented credentials for academical employ-
ment : some wanted his autograph : some
would be contented if they could only say
when they got home again that they had
seen the great professor himself. Far too
sensitive to be uncourteous, far too kind to
refuse any service possible to him, Philip
found refuge in a manner of life which might
well rival the busiest of our more complacent
days.
When many excellent persons are in the
mid-voyage of their dreams, at two, or per-
haps at three, in the morning, it was Philip's
resolute habit to enter his study. The little
lamp is in his hand : he is wrapped in the
long wandrocke of the time ; whatever besides
can be done for his comfort may be trusted
to that faithfullest of servants — the good
John Koch. Then, with that old reverent
habit he brought from the child-days at
PHILIP MELANCHTIION- A T HOME. 135
Bretten, he turns his face eastwards — his
thought spreading over the dark sleeping
spaces towards Palestine, and he remembers,
with devout prayer, how the Sun of Righteous-
ness arose, as the grey morning is rising,
over those hills of dawn. Then he opens the
Calendar and recalls the associations of the
day — the names of old saints, the personages
and the events of history ; and these he often
notes according to the year as well as after
the Christian era. And then he takes up
the package of letters. This one is from Dr.
Spalatin, Court preacher of the Elector of
Saxony, and more than likely it is on Univer-
sity business. This is from no less notable a
correspondent than Erasmus ; this is from
Geneva ; here is one from a Catholic prelate,
and it will require careful handh'ng. And
these, placed by themselves, and first and
most eagerly to be read, are from familiar
friends — one from Camcrarius at Bamberg ;
one from the excellent Jerome Baumgarten
at Nuremberg; a third is from Tubingen in
the old Swabian land ; and the messengers
who brought them are waiting for return
replies. And, besides all the correspondence,
there are addresses to be drafted, chapters of
136 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
new books to be outlined ; lectures, usually
three or four in the day, to be turned over.
The first lecture is sometimes at six in the
morning — usually, seven. When the day is
fairly come, and the streets of the old town
have become populous and noisy, a tide of
public work pours in : college councils, depu-
tations, personal interviews ; and secluded
studies are impossible. At length evening
comes, with its comparative leisure and
friendly supper-table : it is to this hour,
sacred to the home affections and to rest, that
Philip has been looking forward all the day.
But like such dear intervals it passes only
too quickly : the stories are told, the genial
conversation has rippled on, and then the
evening prayer folds together the closed
pages of the day. By nine o'clock there is
stillness, and the house is dark once more.
But at two o'clock to-morrow morning you
will see the faithful lamp in the window
again.
Let us leave the busy house, and Philip and
Katharine for a little : let us think seven years
have passed. In the early summer of 1527,
one might have seen three little people who
were invisible at an earlier period. The young
PHILIP MELANCIITHON A T HOME, 137
gentlemen are more numerous ; the professor is
more engaged than ever ; but there is a new
light in the gentle mother's eyes as she tells
us that this pretty little lady is Anna, now five
years old ; and this is Philip, a delicate boy
of three ; and this, with his bright eyes full
of intelligence, is George. George is but
eighteen months old : his name reminds us of
the worthy armourer of Bretten ; and were
it not that Anna is her father's darling, and
that Philip's languid face engages his mother's
sympathies, the baby would be the absorbing
centre of affection. One seems to see these
children again in the old garden close, in
the sun-glow of that dreamy summer ; one
seems to hear their young voices — to see
their mother's wistful eyes. If there is a
shade of care in those eyes, how much
more depth, how much more completeness
of content, than lay in their soft light seven
years ago !
Again the years pass: it is November,
1536; and the imaginative mind, travelling
so easily through the dim vanished spaces,
allows us to visit the Wittenberg home again.
Again we sec Anna — and into what a sweet
girlhood has she grown ! — and Philip, with
138 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
some hintings of delicacy still in his face ;
and this small grave maiden, who had not
arrived in the house seven years ago, is
Magdalena. Eut where is little George ? Do
not ask his father — shrinking at the child's
name — do not wake again the tender words
one may still read in the old letter : ' There
was nothing dearer to me than that little
boy I '
But there are pleasanter subjects. You
noticed t^^at quick young student, for nearly
fifteen years one of the professor's boarders,
so brilliant in his talents, so rare in his poetic
gift ; and you noticed also how a flush touched
Anna's handsome brow as her mother spoke
of George Sabinus. She will tell you how
promising in every way the young man is —
how natural it was Anna and he should
become attached to each other — how, in fact,
they are to be married in a month. And
married they were, amidst general congra-
tulations, and, as was suitable, with many
offerings of Greek and Latin verse. One
may see and, if he will, read these flowery
old Epithalamia in the Poetica of George
Sabinus. Anna is addressed in one of them
by Aphrodite herself, and in the most com-
PHILIP MELANCHTIION A T HOME, 139
plimentary terms ; and if but one-half were
present of the distinguished company invited
— Apollo, all the Nine Muses, the Nymphs,
the Hamadryads — there surely never was
such a wedding ! It is a flood of sunshine,
melodious with friendly voices. In the middle
of that dark Wittenberg winter four hundred
years ago.
Again the years pass, but with what silent,
deceptive speed ! It is not seven years only,
but twenty years, that have gone. And again
you visit, as some unseen presence might, the
familiar home. Again, with an effort, you
try to recognise the young people : you
wonder who these children arc you have not
seen before. One may imagine how the
story of these years may have been told,
when on some still evening, as the dying sun
filled the old garden, some more intimate
friend, sitting beside her, drew the tale from
the tremulous lips — from the wistful memory
of the professor's gentle wife.
One would learn from the narrative, not
unbroken by sighs and quiet tears, that for
ten years now Anna's fair eyes had been
dark in her Konigsberg grave : that these
girls, already betrothed, are her daughters:
140 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
that she had known great and sore adversities
— better left now in gentle silence : that the
father had declined visibly ever since the
child of his heart had died. And Magdalena
had been married — these are her little girls —
and to one of the best of men : no one could
be kinder to his wife than Dr. Peucer — no
one more devoted to her father, bearing him
company on his journeys, watching his health
with more than a physician's care, gathering
round his later years a soft consolation for
many of his sorrows. How bound up their
grandfather is in all the young people — how
tender the messages he sends them when
he is absent — how peacefully content he is
about their future ! And one would notice,
as she told the blended tender human
history of smiles and tears, how wasted and
changed the gentle lady herself too evidently
was.
Let us follow the narrative but a little
further. In the autumn of 1557, Melanchthon,
leaving an ecclesiastical conference at Worms,
had gone on business connected with the
organisation of a gymnasium to the old city
of Heidelberg. His faithful son-in-law, Dr.
Peucer, was with him ; and his brother
PHILIP MELANCIITHON A T HOME, 141
George, from Bretten, had unexpectedly
joined the party. Again Phih'p saw the
stately castle he had known so well in his
student days — saw the University class-rooms
— saw the beautiful woods of the Neckar as
they flamed their bright, fading foliage away.
Unexpectedly also, and as if to complete the
peaceful memories of the visit to the old
place, Camerarius arrived from Wittenberg.
Next morning the two friends walked through
the trellised garden alleys of the castle, their
minds full of that unspoken thought which in
later life the revisited scenes of youth have
such power to awake. At length Camerarius
reverted to the true, the sad reason of his
arrival. Katharine had been ill ; the anxious
inquiries of her husband had been gently
evaded ; but the message which Joachim's
heavy heart was carrying must be delivered :
she had grown worse — she had sunk rapidly,
and the dim pitying eyes told the rest.
There was a moment of silence — that moment
whicHpsvhcn In the crises of the lu.ut it visits
us, is an age — the silence which is so full of
the voices of eternity. Then Philip said, */
shall see her soon again : I sJiall be ivith her
for ever'
>
142 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
With the death of his wife the more
intimate history of Melanchthon's household
is closed. And now there is but a little
space to be passed over, and the words of
love and hope shall be fulfilled.
{ 143 )
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SUNSET.
When we have sailed for our appointed
years over life's strange sea, and when we
approach at last its more strange and mys-
terious shore — concealed as that ever is from
us by the deep mist which never lifts nor
parts — are there not intimations given to
those who are nearing the end — intimations
they alone can interpet ; ' tokens,' as John
Bunyan has said, ' secret ' to all others but to
themselves alone ! To Philip Melanchthon
these tokens were surely being sent, during
the last years of his life, as if by trusted mes-
sengers, and he knew how full of significance
they were. There is nothing more touching
or gravely beautiful than to notice how every-
thing was having the one solemn, but not at
all unwelcome, meaning to him for about a year
before the end. lie thinks about his father's
death, recalls all the tender circumstances, feels
as if he were a child again, and yet, even
144 PHILIP MELANCHTHON'.
more, that he can now understand his father's
mind, and that he is strangely moving Into
his place. As one after another of his faith-
ful old friends dies — Bugenhagen, Meibomius,
Burckhardt — he follows them wistfully, with
many ever-repeated thoughts of the serene
rest to which they have attained, and ever
more and more unaffectedly wishing that he
were with them. All things remind him of
one solemn approaching event — the troubles
of the Church, the contentions of theologians,
even the pathetic presence of innocent little
children. His thoughts, full of renewed ten-
derness, go back to his gentle wife : he misses
her more and more ; he writes of her many
virtues, her endless services — -how good she
was — how welcome the day will be that brings
him to her side again. Sometimes, when
peculiarly distressed by the petulant assaults
upon him, he speaks of taking refuge in
Palestine : he will find out the retreat of St,
Jerome, and live as he lived, far from men, in
study and contemplation and prayer. But
this is only for a moment. The one and the
unfailing refuge to which more and more
seriously he is looking is the peaceful country
whither so many of his friends are gone.
THE SUNSET, 145
* Were it not the will of God, I do indeed
desire to depart and to meet my blessed
Lord;
Thus, when the year 1560 came — the year )
he had long anticipated,"!©? it was his63rd
and climacteric year — he was deeply assured
it would prove the last. But he intermitted
no work : it is strangely touching to see how
earnest he is about all work which can possibly
be done. In April he went to Leipsic ; the
north wind swept the chill roads as he came
back, and he was seized with feverish chills
and ominous symptoms of grave illness. The
history of this last pathetic stage of his life
has been told, day by day, almost hour by hour,
by Dr. Windsheim in the address delivered
at Melanchthon's funeral. As we read his
reverent minute descriptions again, we seem
to be spectators of the last days — members of
the sorrowful affectionate company who were
always with the dying man.
It is pleasant to know that Camerarius was
with his friend during these iSst days. Dr.
Peucer was always close to him with every
kind service. So long as Philip, in the inter-
missions of his severer symptoms, could creep
to the class-room he would go. About a
L
146 PHILIP MELANCHTHON.
week before the end he lectured on the sacred
seventeenth of St. John, and recollected how
tlie last words of his father, addressed to him-
self more than fifty years before, summed up
the main parts of that solemn, beautiful
prayer. He was full of kind words to the
children, painstaking about anything he could
give or do to the end. Two days before he
died he had a little travelling-bed taken into
his study, and there he laid himself wearily
down. His eyes wandered along the shelves
of books — those silent friends with whom he
had so long taken pleasant cotmsSr* He
thought of the little bed also — said it was a
travelling one : he would use it once again,
and take his last and happiest journey home.
Immediately before the end he employed one
day such thought as he had in noting on a
sheet of paper the reasons why his willing
spirit should be well content to depart.
There never surely was anything more full of
tender, sorrowful pathos than that little sheet.
On the one side he has written : — •
*Thou shalt say farewell to sin.
Thou shalt be set free from
miseries and from the spiteful
fury of theologians.'
THE SUXSET. 147
And then, with kindling imagination, on
the other side he traced the words which
describe the glory to be revealed : —
* Thou shalt come into the Eternal Light.
Thou shalt see God.
Thou shalt look into the face of the Son of God.
Thou shalt learn those secret things
too difficult to be understood here — why
we are created as we are : how in
Christ the two natures are united.'
It is an outline of the theologian's heaven
— the nobly intellectual state when the great-
est subjects shall engage the mind, not to
darken and vex it any more, but to be
understood — to be beheld in their revealed
magnificence at last.
Thus with every gentle thought in his
heart, with the highest subjects of contem-
plation stirring his mind, he sank with quiet
motion, as if moving along some still river
of peace, down into the great unbroken
calm. On the afternoon of April 19 he lay
with scarce-stirring consciousness and failing
breath. Dr. Peucer bent over him and asked
whether he wished for anything. * Nothing
except heaven : ask me no more/ STlittle
while afterwards, about sunset, Dr. Wind-
L 2
148 PHILIP MELANCHTHOJSr.
sheim pronounced the great words : ' Father,
into Thy hands I commit my spirit/ and
asked him whether he heard. ' Yes/ he
faintly answered ; and then, sinking into his
last and sweetest sleep, Philip Melanchthon
received his heart's desire.
( 149 )
CHAPTER IX.
MELANCHTHON^S LIBRARY.
It has so long been our habit to think of
Melanchthon as a theologian and Reformer,
that it may stir a sense of strangeness and a
desire for information to be reminded that he
was also an undoubted bibliophilist — one of
the l arge and honourable company of those
who find delight in the pursuit and the
possession of books. Philip, however, was
not wanting in this quality of all developed
scholars. From the time that his excellent
grandfather presented him with a breviary,
the passion for books, growing steadily, kept
its hold on him, ever ready to grow still
more rapidly whenever opportunity offered,
and kept in repression only by the inevita-
ble narrowness of income, and the absorbing
anxieties of his public life.
What his accumulations precisely were when
he entered on his Wittenberg duties it would
be difficult to say, but it is suggestive that
ReuchliivJn one of his letters at that time to
150 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
the Elector of Saxony, made careful reference
to the transit from Tubingen of Philip's
literary possessions. They formed, it is more
than likely, at least the respectable beginnings
of a library. That they increased steadily
and considerably as the years went on is
quite certain. His letters reveal the undis-
guisable book-collector. He inquires after
new editions, communicates "bibliographical
information, lends with characteristic gene-
rosity, and gladly receives loans in return.
Each new year opened to Philip with a
congenial appointment, for the Leipsic book-
fair was held in January, and it was a
delightful opportunity to inspect the folios and
quartos just issued from the great publishing
offices, and to add to his stores.
The chances of procuring desirable books
— and to a scholar so encyclopaedic in his
tastes, how many must have been irresistibly
desirable ! — always appealed strongly to him.
It was, for example, no inconsiderable induce-
ment to accompany Luther to Worms in
1519, little as Philip loved ecclesiastical
debate, that a good library was to be sold
in the vicinity. Always eloquent in praise of
pure and liberal learning, he transferred much
MELANCHTHON'S LIBRARY. 151
of his affection to the volumes in which it was
store d ; a nd the frnx^ editio n s of "STic!i scholar-
printers as Henry"Stephens and Froben were
to Philip something like visible embodiments
of his highest aims and desires. Perhaps the
most genuine expression of his love of books
— it was surely the most delicate and pathetic
— was given just before he died. He had
been up till then finding such rest as he could
in his bedroom ; but when he was aware of
the mysterious symptoms which the dying
instinctively understand, he ordered a little
bed to be prepared in his librar\'. lie would
have his books — friends as they were of his
better mind— within sight and near him at ||
the endr ""'"
"TEe history of Melanchthon's library — such
an obscTlfe and imperfect history as it is — has
a certain sorrowful romance of its own. When
Melanchthon died, Dr. Peucer discharged the
duties of executor, and niost of the literary
property would pass under his control. But
in the confusions of the time Peucer was
imprisoned, and when, twelve years after-
wards, he was released, his wife was dead,
and his property forfeited and gone. The
fate of the Reformer's books can be only
i-
(1
152 PHILIP MELAKCHTHON.
conjectured; but in the meantime they seem
to have disappeared as completely as when a
vessel founders some dark night at sea.
Some two hundred years afterwards, one
of the bibliographers, in whom Germany has
always been so rich, Professor Kloss of
Frankfort-on-the-Main, formed the plan of
preparing a new edition of Panzer's Typo-
graphical Annals. That important book deals
with the printed literature of Europe from
the invention of printing down to 1536. In
his search throughout the Fatherland for books
illustrating his period, Dr. Kloss made exten-
sive collections, including, in several cases,
complete libraries rich in fifteenth and early
sixteenth century editions. The plan of re-
editing Panzer was subsequently abandoned,
and in one of those too common vicissitudes
which overtake literary projects and posses-
sions, Dr. Kloss's collection was, in 1835,
removed to London for sale. A closer
examination proved that many of the volumes
contained copious marginalia in the Reformer's
handwriting. It appeared, in fact, that in
sweeping the seas for his coveted treasures.
Dr. Kloss's net had brought to the surface
again the wreck of Melanchthon's library.
MELANCHTHON'S LIBRARY. 153
The subject has many difficulties in detail,
but the general fact cannot reasonably be
doubted. Mr. Sotheby's Catalogue of ' Me-
lanchthon Copies ' certainly agrees in a
remarkable way with the main directions of
Philip's studies and tastes. Here is a seduc-
tive assemblage of poets — modern and fashion-
able most of them when these copies were
annotated — Bebel and Beroaldo, Philelphus
and Politian, Lacustorius and Bembo, and
many more.
These recall the days in Heidelberg when
Philip was deep in such alluring studies.
There is a fine collection — some forty items
— of Wimpfeling's, some of them perhaps
mementos of the time when their excellent
author visited Dr. Pallas Spangel's house, and
met his young student friend there. Astro-
nomy, which had thrown its spell over Philip
almost as early as poetry, is represented by
Purbach, Manilius, Sacrobosco, and other
similar repertories of mysterious astrological
lore.
One of the special subjects of lifelong at-
traction with Mclanchthon was medicine, and
here are presumably the very copies of Galen,
one of them the Latin version of Linacre, which
154 PHILIP MELANCHTHON,
he studied till he had it ' at his finger-ends,'
at Tubingen^ with an array of classical and
Arabian authors, with the works of later
physicians sufficient to form the library of an
accredited practitioner.
As may be expected, theology is liberally
represented ; there are fathers, councils, and
polemical divines — these latter were favourite
authors with Philip — and especially there are
notable editions of the great Sacred Classic,
which he found so much more congenial than
its disputatious expositors. A copy of the
rare Complutensian Polyglott has in several
of its volumes marginalia^ apparently from
Melanchthon's hand ; the fine Latin Bible of
Koburger (1477) was copiously annotated ;
there are copies of the little Greek Testaments
of 1521 ; the Latin and German Psalter of
1502; and especially of the Latin Bible of
Froben, issued in 149S, the identical copy,
Mr. Sotheby thought, which Reuchlin gave
to Philip when he was at Tubingen.
Alongside of this may be placed a breviary
with illustrations, which may have been the
earlier gift of John Reuter, of Pforzheim.
Rhetorical and grammatical works, agreeably
to Philip's studies, are, from Priscian down-
MELANCHTHON'S LIBRARY. 155
wards, largely represented ; and there is an
assemblage of classics from the presses of
Aldus and Junta, Froben and Stephens, over
whicRTtrr the palmy days of Dibdin, collectors
would have hung in rapture. Philip's par-
tiality for Terence, as a teacher at once of good
Latin and of good morals, may be remem-
bered ; and here are copies of between thirty
and forty various editions, many of them with
apparently autograph notes. The editions of
Cicero are even more numerous. Valerius
Maximus — that repertory of biograpKTcal
anecdote and apothegm, from which Philip
draws so liberally in his Lectures — appears in
an array of interesting editions, and has
apparently been repeatedly read. When he
was in Tubingen, the idea of a new Aristotle
had possessed Philip's imagination ; ar^d here
is a copy of the Editio Princips of Aldus, with
a subsidiary apparatus of commentators, which
bears impressive testimony to the magnitude
of that unfulfilled undertaking.
These interesting volumes of Dr. Kloss's
collection, dispersed at the time at the
stroke of the unsentimental hammer, have
passed into many hands, to be treasured, let
it be hoped, with worthy affection and care,
K
156
PHILIP MELANCHTHOlSr.
k\
and transmitted, when the inevitable hour
arrives, to other like-minded possessors. Other
of these literary relics occur from time to time.
A recent bookseller's catalogue offered a copy
of Sophocles, which should have attracted
lovers of Melanchthon, for it was the copy
presented by Philip to Camerarius, and with
autographs on the title-page of each of the
inseparable friends. A copy of the rare
Hebrew Lexicon, with the grammar of
Reuchlin, from the press of Thomas Anshelm,
of Pforzheim, is in the possession of J. B.
Braithwaite, Esq., of London, and that vHier-
able scholar believes it to be, in all proba-
bility, Melanchthon's copy, with many of his
pen-and-ink sketches, and with notes made
apparently when he was at school.
In the British Museum will be found, as
may be expected, several memorials of
Melanchthon of high interest — manuscript
and printed ; and the Libraries of the Father-
land naturally claim many more. These
faded pages, on which Melanchthon's "hand
must have rested, along which his untiring
pen has coursed, affect us strangely ; they
seem to bring him so near, but he remains
<,CmSo distant ; so communicative they are, but so
\
MELANCHTHON'S LIBRARY. 157
silent ; they have been touched, as all similar
reltcs are touched, with the reticence and
mystery of the grave. Yet who would not
visit the shrines of such oracles again ? Surely
there are favourable moments ; it is but the
turning of a page, the recognition of a signa- .
ture ; a face seems to pass, a voice to be half
heard ; is it only the whim of the imagina-
tion ? and it is but for a moment ; but we
have touched a hand that is not cold, and for
an instant we have been among those who are
no more.
^
1 \ M<^HEEND. \\ U'
w
'
( 158 )
INDEX.
y
y
y
Adiaphoristic Controversy, the,
u8
Agricola, R., 29, 31
Ariosto, death of, 106
Augsburg, Emperor Charles at, 92
Bebel, H., 38
Blaur, A., 42
Brassican, Prof., 37
Brentz, J., 32
Bretten, 12
Busch, Dr., 77
Camerarlus, J., 70
Campeggi, offer of, 77
Capnio, 23
Carinus, Dr., 76
Carlstadt, Dr., 67
Celtis, C, 29, 31
Charles V. at Augsburg, 92 ;
of, 112
Clubs, 42
Confession of Augsburg, the,
Council of Trent, the, 114
Diet of Spires, first, 85 ; second,
89
Durer, Albert, 85
Eck, Dr., 62
Eger, 128
Elector of Saxony, letter of, 48
Erasmus, on Melanchthon, 54;
death of, 106
Geller, 31
Gerlach, T., 32
Greek Studies, 39
Grynseus, Dr., 77
Giinther, P., 32
y
Heidelberg, 26
Helvetius, C, 29
Hungar, John, 17
Hussgen, J., 39
Hutten, Von, 75]
Jesuits, Order of, founded, 105
Jonas, Dr. J., 132
Kloss, Dr., collection of, 152
Konigstuhl, 25
Krafft, A., 75
Krapp, K., wife of Melanchthon,
69 ; her character, 130 ; her
death,'i4i
tatin Bible, the, 41
Leipsic Interim, the, "7
Library of Melanchthon, 149
Loyola, 105
Luther at Leipsic, 61 ; at the
Wartburg, 65 ; at Weimar, 109 ;
death of, no
Magdeburg, 114
Malthesius, J., 128
Maur, B., 42
Maurice, Duke, 113
Melanchthon, Philip, early life of,
10 ; birthplace of, 12 ; parents
ci7"i2 ; at school, 14; his Sun-
days, 15 ; early discipline, 17 :
at Pforzheim, 19 ; his change of
name, 23 ; at Heidelberg, 23 ;
matriculation of, 26 ; tutors and
friends of, 29 ; takes his first
degree, 34; goes to Tubingen,
36 ; studies Greek, 39 ; love for
INDix.
^sf^^^C^^'
, (h ^I
159
the Bible, ^;t-rtakes his master's
degree, 41 ; his literary work,
43 ; foes of, 48 ; goes to Witten-
berg, 52 ; at Leipsic, 53 ; his
lectures, 55 ; popularity of, 58 ;
his editorial work, 60 ; accom-
panies Luther to Leipsic,' 61 ;
made Bachelor of Divinitj', 65 ;
his 'Common Places,' 65; his
marriage, 68 ; his friendship for
Camerarius, 70; his first holi-
day, 74 ; re-visits Bretten, 76 ;
adventure with Philip of Hesse,
78 ; depression of, 80 ; letter of,
to Nuremberg, 81 ; visits Nurem-
berg, 82 ; visits Thuringia, 86 :
at Spires, 89; his Apologia,
96 ; leaves Augsburg, 97 ; his
attendance at Diets, 103 ; in-
vited to England and France,
X04 ; attacks on, 106 ; illness of,
109 ; visits Nuremberg again,
115 ; sorrows of, 117 ; his class
notices, 123 ; his later studies,
124 ; his programmes, 126 ; his
travels, 127 ; his home life, 130 ;
his verse, 132 ; habits of, 134 ;
his children, 137 ; visits Worms,
140 ; death of his wife, i^i ; hi .
thoughts*' • f the «nd, T43 ; at
Leipsic, 145 ; his lines on death,
1 46 ; his death, 147 ; his library,
More, Sir T., death of, 106
MoscUanus, 75
MUnster, tragedy of, 106
Nansen, Dr., 77
Nauclcrus, J., 44
Nisscn, Wm., 73 ;
Nuremberg, 83
death of, 8j
icplampndius, 39
Osiandcr, schism of, 118
Peasants' War, the, 67
PeUican, C, 51
Peucer, Dr., ia8, 140
Pfefferkom, demand of, 47
Pforzheim, 19
Philip of Hesse, 67, 78
Pirkheimer, 85
Protest at Spires, the, 91
Regensburg Diet, the, 103
Religious Peace of Augsburg, 115
Reuchlin, Dr., 21, 45 ; his col-
lection, 46 ; persecution of, 47 ;
recommends Melanchthon, 51
Reuter, mayor of Bretten, 14;
death of, 18
Riccius, Dr., 51
Rubianus, C, 75
Sabinus, G., 138
Schmalkald League, the, 92 ; end
of, 113
Schurff, J., 39
Schwartzerd, G., father of Me-
lanchthon, 12 ; death of, 19
Schwartzerd, Frau, mother of Me-
lanchthon, 13
Setrer, J., 4a
Simler, Dr. G., ao
Sorbillo, J., 32
Spangel, Dr. P., a6, 30
Stadian, Prof, von, 37
Staucar, schism of, 1x9
StOfflcr, Dr., 37
Storsch, T., 67
Sturm, P., 3a
Trent y of Passau, 1x5
TQbingcn, 36
Turks, the, adrance of, xoa
Ulrich, Duke, recommend.it ion of.
uigate, the, 41
^y
Weasel, John, 99
Wittenberg, 9 : siege of, 114
Wittenberg Truce, the, xot
Zwingle, loa
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