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1 Melanchthon and Luther Luther’s lives Philip Melanchthon and the historical Luther by Ralph Keen ‘Isaiah . . . John the Baptist . . . Paul . . . Augustine . . . Luther’: with these five names Philip Melanchthon identified the points of descent in the transmission of the true faith of the church.1 The occasion was Luther’s funeral, at which Melanchthon, the eulogist, would describe the Wittenberg community as being like orphans bereft of an excellent and faithful father.2 The combination of reverence and affection for the great Reformer reflected in these comments
15 Melanchthon on Luther 2 Melanchthon on Luther Luther’s lives Philip Melanchthon’s History of the Life and Acts of Dr Martin Luther translated by Thomas D. Frazel and annotated by Ralph Keen HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND ACTS OF THE MOST REVEREND DR MARTIN Luther, Dr of true Theology, written in good faith by Philip Melanchthon Certain poems have been added by John Policarius 1 on the blessings which God through Luther bestowed upon the whole world. Including several distichs on the Acts of Luther, which were recounted in this same year. 1548. Reverend Martin
This book presents a contemporary, eyewitness account of the life of Martin Luther translated into English. Johannes Cochlaeus (1479–1552) was present in the great hall at the Diet of Worms on April 18, 1521 when Luther made his famous declaration before Emperor Charles V: ‘Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen’. Afterward, Cochlaeus sought Luther out, met him at his inn, and privately debated with him. Luther wrote of Cochlaeus, ‘may God long preserve this most pious man, born to guard and teach the Gospel of His church, together with His word, Amen’. However, the confrontation left Cochlaeus convinced that Luther was an impious and malevolent man. Over the next twnety-five years, Cochlaeus barely escaped the Peasant's War with his life. He debated with Melanchthon and the reformers of Augsburg. It was Cochlaeus who conducted the authorities to the clandestine printing press in Cologne, where William Tyndale was preparing the first English translation of the New Testament (1525). For an eyewitness account of the Reformation—and the beginnings of the Catholic Counter-Reformation—no other historical document matches the first-hand experience of Cochlaeus. After Luther's death, it was rumoured that demons seized the reformer on his death-bed and dragged him off to Hell. In response to these rumours, Luther's friend and colleague Philip Melanchthon wrote and published a brief encomium of the reformer in 1548. Cochlaeus consequently completed and published his monumental life of Luther in 1549.
Introduction Introduction Introduction We have only two substantial eyewitness accounts of the life of Martin Luther. Best known is a 9,000-word Latin memoir by Philip Melanchthon published in Latin at Heidelberg in 1548, two years after the Reformer’s death.1 In 1561, ‘Henry Bennet, Callesian’ translated this pamphlet into English; the martyrologist John Foxe adopted Bennet’s text into his Memorials verbatim, including a number of the Englisher’s mistranslations. For example, where Melanchthon wrote that Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle
division between Protestantism and Catholicism as crystal clear as it would later seem. When Pendleton replied to Bradford’s taunt, he admitted that he had paid too much attention to the works of Luther and Melanchthon. He denied that he had rejected transubstantiation, but admitted he had said that the name itself could not be found in the Bible. The religious conflicts of the day revolved around many detailed points of doctrine concerning salvation, election, sacraments, free will, and good works, in which
on the 15th day of April. However, Luther came to Worms on 16 April, when the Lutherans were not yet able to know what the Parisians had decided. But after a few months, when certain printed copies of this opinion arrived in Germany, all the Lutherans changed their minds and began to accuse those whom before they had praised. And in order that their contempt toward the Parisians because of this verdict might seem greater, Philip Melanchthon, as a fervent defender of Luther, edited that same opinion about them, by which he augmented his Latin Apology for Luther
with those who had deviated from obedience to the church. And in order to ensure that all Protestants were included in the Council’s proceedings, he expanded his canon of adversaries beyond Luther and Melanchthon to include men such as Martin Bucer and Heinrich Bullinger.31 If the period 1530–9 was one for territorial rulers like Duke George of Saxony to come to the aid of the Roman church, the 1540s were time for action at the imperial level. Cochlaeus accordingly devoted his dozen years in exile to making imperial and papal powers aware of the disaster that would
the might of Rome and seeking any support he could obtain. But Henry himself, doctrinally a Catholic and sharing little with the early Protestants other than a dislike of the power of Rome, was unlikely to remain content for long with such limited approbation. No doubt he hoped that English reformers would be won round, like Melanchthon in Saxony, to acceptance of the visible Church, as regulated by the temporal ruler, as guardian of Christian truth. This hope was not to be fulfilled in his lifetime. As it happened, it was chiefly Catholics like himself who provided
‘grapho-relics’: Luther’s or Melanchthon’s autographs, inscribed under a line of Scripture: salvation and personal charisma mediated in the same scrap of paper.42 While Alexandra Walsham rightly doubts whether such practices indicate ‘survivalism and syncretism’ among a stubbornly semi-reformed laity, their spiritual, emotional and sometimes thaumaturgical uses demonstrate the enduring significance of individual sanctity, even at a time when ‘superstition’ was under attack.43 Similar ambiguities can be glimpsed beneath nineteenth-century commemorations of martyrs
comprehend translation, dissemination and reading of the Scriptures and religious works. It would include the way in which English people were allowed and encouraged to read 257 4035 The debate.qxd:- 9/12/13 08:37 Page 258 THE DEBATE ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION works by Continental and Scottish reformers. It would acknowledge the debt that the English Reformers owed to Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Melanchthon, Bucer and Bullinger. It would attend to the attitudes of Continental reformers to what was happening in England and Scotland. From the 1860s onwards any strong