Melanchthon, Philipp

MELANCHTHON, PHILIPP. - Collaborator and friend of Luther, b. at Bretton (Palatinate) on 16 Feb. 1497, d. at Wittenberg on 16 Apr. 1560.

Of a well-to-do family, a relative of the humanist Reuchlin, who persuaded him to Grecize the name Schwarzerde into Melanchthon, he received an intensely humanistic education at Heidelberg and Tübingen. He applied himself before long, besides to the editing of Latin classics (Terence, 1516), to the study of the Fathers and of the Greek text of the New Testament; in the controversy between Reuchlin and the professors of Cologne, he took Reuchlin's side. In 1518, at only 21 years of age, he obtained the chair of Greek at the recent University of Wittenberg, and began his teaching with a programmatic discourse De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis that touched also on theology. Here he came under the influence of Luther, alongside whom he placed himself, polemicizing decisively with Eck and formulating, even before Luther, the thesis of the Bible as the supreme doctrinal authority. In 1519 he became a bachelor in theology: he never, however, wished to accept a doctorate in theology, considering himself fundamentally a philologist and grammarian.

Nevertheless it fell to M. to be the author of the first treatise of Lutheran theology with his Loci communes rerum theologicarum seu hypopioses theologiae (1520-21), which treat of sin, of Grace, of free will, of the law, of the Gospel, of faith, of justification and of regeneration, and which in successive editions were greatly expanded (cf. in vol. XXI of the Corpus Ref., the 2nd ed. [Halle 1535], and the 3rd [ibid. 1543]).

In 1522 M. had to confront at Wittenberg the radical iconoclasm of the Anabaptists, who came from Zwickau, and of Carlstadt, who tended to push the reform as far as the subversion of traditional worship; it was M. who called Luther back from his refuge at the Wartburg so that he might intervene with his authority and his energy. On this occasion M.'s conservative tendency revealed itself, his concern to preserve as far as possible the ecclesiastical institutions, above all worship and organization, along the lines of tradition. This conservative tendency is perceptible in a very significant way also in the Confessio augustana (1530), signed by the Protestant princes but drafted by him on the commission of the Elector of Saxony, in which the doctrinal points of divergence from Catholicism are either passed over in silence or dissembled, and the reform is presented essentially as being of a practical nature, as the elimination of abuses that had crept in with scholastic terminology and with canon law. This conservative character of the document, and therefore of M.'s thought, emerges in full evidence if one compares it with the tone of intransigence and violence of the Smalcald Articles drafted by Luther (1537). It is true that in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (a reply to the Confutatio catholica), also drafted by M. and published under his name, the polemical note is accentuated, as also in the De potestate Papae of 1537, written and circulated by him with a view to the Council convoked at Vicenza for that year. M.'s conciliatory tendency resurfaces in the religious colloquies of 1540-41, in which he, in representation of the innovators, sought to second the mediating policy of Charles V and, for example, on the points of the effects of original sin, on man and on the nature of justification accepted the formulas proposed by Pighius and Contarini. Even after 1548, during the interim of Augsburg, in the lively controversy concerning the adiaphora, he seconded a Catholicizing policy, maintaining that the practices of worship reimposed by Charles V in Saxony after the defeat suffered at Mühlberg by the Smalcald League were to be considered "indifferent," and not binding on conscience and on Lutheran conviction.

M. was above all an organizer and a humanist. As an organizer he gave its structure to the Church of electoral Saxony in the Instructions to the Visitors of Parish Priests (1528), for which Luther wrote the preface. In this, as in other similar writings, M. took care to re-establish discipline, order, uniformity in teaching and in the practice of worship, recommended respect for the constituted authority in the Church, gave norms to avoid the laxist consequences of the principle of salvation through faith alone, insisting on the practice of good works as commanded by God, even if they are to be considered devoid of meritorious value.

As a humanist and philologist, he collaborated with Luther in his German translation of the Bible, vigorously upheld the decisive pre-eminence of its literal sense against the four senses considered by traditional scholastic exegesis, edited many ancient authors, wrote manuals for the study of Latin, of Greek, as well as commentaries on works of rhetoric, dialectic, physics, ethics, politics, school manuals for these disciplines, and not a few academic disputations on the subject. An introduction to universal history comprehensive of ecclesiastical history is the Chronicon Curionis. He promoted the creation and reorganization of many Latin schools, dictating in many cases their ordinance, as, for example, in the reorganization of the churches and schools of Wittenberg (1533). The guiding concept of this ordinance of studies, which is significant also for his conception of the study of theology, is that philosophy and the sciences must constitute the bases of theological study properly so called. It emerges clearly in the reorganization of the universities, where M. left his imprint most deeply. The faculties of arts became genuinely humanistic: logic, which then predominated in teaching, had to give way to the languages, and precisely, besides classical Latin, to Greek and Hebrew, to which a pre-eminence was even recognized by the fact that they are the languages in which the original text of the Bible is written. The classics supplanted the medieval grammarians in the study of Latin; philosophy, embracing the different branches of knowledge, was taught on the basis of Aristotle, but also of Cicero and the other ancient writers. Theology maintained its pre-eminence also in the study of the "bonae litterae." It was, however, first of all exegesis of Sacred Scripture, according to the principle affirmed by Luther; the same dogmatic principles had to be developed and defended in the exegetical-scriptural sphere. Only at a later stage could systematic expositions of dogma be added. The old universities to which the Melanchthonian reform was applied were Frankfurt, Leipzig, Rostock, Heidelberg; the new ones, created with ordinances inspired by him, Marburg (1527), Königsberg (1544), Jena. It is for this vast pedagogical work that M. was called "Praeceptor Germaniae." In this direction of studies M. shows himself a champion of Christian humanism, that is, of the subordination of the methods and results of philosophy to the requirements of theology, understood as exegesis of Sacred Scripture and conceptual elaboration of the biblical Revelation contained in it.

In this sense the predominant note of M.'s personality ends up being that of the theologian: and this not only because theological activity quantitatively (controversial works, commentaries on the books of the Old Testament and the New Testament, above all on the Letters of St. Paul, letters referring to theological problems) prevails in his literary work, but because it is precisely in the theology of the innovators that M. inserted motifs that gave it a peculiar stamp, in part in antithesis to Luther's intentions. His theological conception can be recognized in the 1535 edition of the Loci, which indeed show his distancing from certain positions of the master and the influence of humanistic demands on M. Thus the radical divine determinism regarding salvation appears mitigated; a certain capacity of the human free will to do good is affirmed, thereby laying the premises of the "synergistic" position regarding the relations between Grace and free will; God is not the cause of sin and man is responsible for his acts. Man's salvation requires his cooperation, although one cannot speak of merits on his part. Similarly M. emphasized, also on theological grounds, the necessity of good works, even though referring above all to the ethical-social and ecclesiastical point of view; they are necessary for eternal life, insofar as they must follow the reconciliation of the sinner, or, in other words, insofar as a new spiritual life must appear in the Christian.

In three points M.'s conception departs more sharply from Luther's, bringing about among the disciples (called "Philippists," while Luther's followers, in the wake of Flacius, defined themselves "Gnesio-Lutherans" and contested against M. the modifications he introduced into the Augsburg Confession [variata edition of 1541]), a lively and long controversy, which at some moments seemed even to endanger the unity of the new Churches. First of all regarding the conception of the consequences of original sin on man's natural powers: for M. indeed rejects, as has already been mentioned, Luther's radical pessimism, and M.'s point of view succeeded in triumphing in the Formula of Concord of 1578. Secondly regarding the way of understanding justification, which M. regards as a mere imputation of Christ's merits, purely extrinsic, "forensic"; hence not at all a sanctification, distinguishing clearly from it, as a second moment, positive justification, the infusion of the Holy Spirit, interior regeneration; this conception too imposed itself in the Formula of Concord. Thirdly in the doctrine of the Supper, in which M. inclined toward the idea of a merely spiritual presence of Christ in the faithful, hence toward Calvinist symbolism, provoking from the Lutherans against him and his disciples the persistent and grave accusation of "crypto-Calvinism." The Lutheran formulas of faith on this point explicitly maintained the principle of the real presence of the Body of Christ in the eucharistic elements.

M.'s influence, however contested, became more pronounced after Luther's death (1546), with the particular motifs of his theology, but even more because of his concept of the function of theology, as right thinking about the word of God, in the life of the faithful and in that of the Church: it is M. who lays the foundations of Lutheran orthodoxy as a requirement of the Church, with reference to the professions of faith, to be considered as the genuine formulation of the thought of Holy Scripture, norm and limit of teaching. M. thus imposed within the framework of the Lutheran Reformation his personality as that of the systematizer, alongside the figure of Luther, who represents in it that of the awakener.

Mario Bendiscioli