1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Macalpine, John

MACALPINE (or Maccabeus), JOHN (d. 1557), Protestant theologian, was born in Scotland about the beginning of the 16th century, and graduated at some Scottish university. From 1532 to 1534 he was prior of the Dominican convent of Perth; but having in the latter year been summoned with Alexander Ales (q.v.) and others to answer for heresy before the bishop of Ross, he fled to England, where he was granted letters of denization on the 7th of April 1537, and married Agnes Macheson, a fellow-exile for religion; her sister Elizabeth became the wife of Miles Coverdale. The reaction of 1539 made England a doubtful refuge, and on the 25th of November 1540 Macalpine matriculated at the university of Wittenberg. He had already graduated B.A. at Cologne, and in 1542 proceeded to his doctorate at Wittenberg. In that year, being now known as Maccabeus, he accepted Christian III.’s offer of the chair of theology at the university of Copenhagen, which had been endowed out of the spoils of the Church. Melanchthon spoke well of Macalpine, and with Peter Plade (Palladius), who had also studied at Wittenberg, Macalpine took a prominent part in building up the Lutheran Church of Denmark. A joint exposure by Plade and Macalpine of Osiander’s errors was published in 1552 and reprinted at Leipzig and Copenhagen in 1768; and Macalpine was one of the four translators of Luther’s German Bible into Danish. He also encouraged Sir David Lindsay, who visited him in 1548, to publish his Monarchie, and persuaded Christian III. to intercede with Queen Mary Tudor on behalf of Coverdale and invite him to Denmark. Macalpine died at Copenhagen on the 6th of December 1557.

See Dict. Nat. Biog. and authorities there cited; Corpus reformatorum, iii. (1066), iv. 771, 793; Foerstemann, Album academiae vitebergensis (1841), p. 186, and Liber decanorum (1838), p. 32; Rockwell, Die Doppelehe des Landgrafen Philipp (1904), pp. 114-116; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII. (1537), i. 1103 (12); (1542), pp. 46,218.  (A. F. P.)