chambers_search-1

Search Chambers

Consult Chambers 21st Century Dictionary, The Chambers Thesaurus (1996) or Chambers Biographical Dictionary (1997 edition with amendments). Enter your search and choose your title from the drop-down menu.

Melanchthon, Philipp, Greek surname for original name Schwatzerd ('Black Earth') 1497-1560
German Protestant reformer

Born in Bretten, in the Palatinate, he studied at Heidelberg (1509-11), then Tübingen (1512-14) universities. Appointed Professor of Greek at Wittenberg in 1516, he became Martin Luther's fellow-worker. The Augsburg Confession (1530) was composed by him. After Luther's death he succeeded to the leadership of the German Reformation movement but lost the confidence of some Protestants by concessions to the Catholics. His conditional consent to the introduction of the stringent Augsburg Interim (1549) in Saxony led to painful controversies. His Loci Communes (1521) is the first great Protestant work on dogmatic theology.