MELANCHTHON
151
MELANCHTHON
had clearly conceived one. So this man loaded with
honours, wealth and glory, was perpetually unhappy
and discontented. His pride and his suspicious sensi-
tiveness were proverbial. This sickly self-love was
the chief cause of the flivision among the French art-
ists in 1889 when to the traditional Salon Meissonier
opposed the Salon of the "Champ -de-Mars" or of the
Socii5t6 Nationals. This unreasonaljle schism had
regrettable consequences and introduced into the
school the anarchical system which for twenty years
has gone on developing.
Such was this eminent and most unfinished of artists, assuredly little deserving of the mark of hon- our paid him l>y erecting his statue in the Garden of the Louvre, but still less deserving of the unjust criticisms he has since had to bear in expiation of his great glory. He was in reality tlie victim no less than the product of a valuable faculty carried to hypertrophia and monstrosity. He may perhaps lie more equitably judged Ijy the less known portions of his work, in which his faculties for analysis and observation found their true use, as in the small portraits such as that of "The Younger Dumas" (Louvre), those of "Stan- ford " or " Vanderbilt ", or again his small studies from nature as in his " Views of Venice " at the Louvre, and especially his peerless collection of drawings at the Luxembourg. If these are not a great work, or their author a great artist, they are at least the materials, the remains or the fragments thereof. On 13 October, 1838, he married Jenny Steinheil, who died in June, 1888; in August, 1890, he married Mile Bczan^on; he died 31 January, 1S91, and after a Requiem Mass at the Madeleine, 3 February, 1891, he was buried at Poissy where a monument was erected to him in 1894.
Gr^ard, Meissonier (1897); Gautier, Les Beaux- Arts en Europe, II (1856); Salons (not collected in vols.); Planche, Salons (1855): CnssSEW, Les nations rivales dans I'art (1868); Michel, Notes sur Vart modeme (1896); Breton, Nos veinires du sii'cle; Alexandre, La Peinture militaire en France; Muther, £171 Jahrhundert framosischer Malerei (1901).
Louis Gillet.
Melanchthon, Philipp, collaborator and friend of LuthiT, 1 1, at Hretten (in Unterpfalz, now Baden), 16 Feljruary, li;i7; d. at Wittenberg, 19 April, 1560.
(1) Hi8 Rearinq and Education.' — Melanchthon was of respectable and well-to-do parentage. His father, Georg Schwarzerd (Schwarzert) was a cele- brated armourer, wliile his pious and mtelligent mother was the daughter of Reuter, the burgomaster of Bretten. He received his first instruction at home from a private tutor, and in 1507 he went to Pforz- heim, where he hved with Hs grandmother Elizaljeth, sister of the great humanist, Johann Reuchlin. Here the Rector, Georg Simler, made him acquainted with the Greek and Latin poets, and with the philosophy of Aristotle. But of greater-influence still was his inter- course with Reuchlin, his grand-uncle, who gave a strong impetus to his studies. It was Reuchlin also who persuaded him to translate his name Schwarzerd into the Greek Melanchthon, (written Melanthon after 1531). In 1509 Melanchthon, not yet 13 years of age, entered the University of Heidelberg. This institu- tion had already passed its humanistic prime under Dalberg and Agricola (see Humanism). It is true that Pallas Spangel, Melanchthon's eminent teacher, was also familiar with humanists and humanism, hni he was none the less an able scholastic and adherent of Thomism. Melanchthon studied rhetoric under Peter Gunther, and astronomy under Conrad Helvetius, a pupil of Caesarius. Meanwhile he continued eagerly his private studies, the reading of ancient poets antl historians as well as of the neo-Latins, grammar, rhet- oric, and dialectics. He obtained the baccalaureate in 1511, but his application for the master's degree in 1512 was rejected because of his youth. He there- fore went to Tiiljingen, where the scientific spirit was in full vigour, and he became there a pupil of the cele- brated Latinist Heinrich Bebel, and, for a second
time, of Georg Sinder, who was then teaching humani-
ties in Tubingen, and was later professor of jurispru-
dence. He studied astronomy and astrology under
Johann Stoffler. With Franciscus Stadianus he
planned an edition of the genuine Greek text of Aris-
totle, but nothing ever came of this. His thirst for
knowledge led him into jurisprudence, mathematics,
and even meilicine.
In 1514 he won the master's degree as first among eleven canditlates, and was made an instructor in the university. His subjects were Vergil and Terence: later he was assigned the lectureship on eloquence and expounded Cicero and Livy. He also became (1514) press-corrector in the printing office of Thomas An- shelm, pursued his private studies, and at last turned to theology. For the antiquated scholast ic methods of this science as taught at Tubingen, and for Dr. Jacob Lemp, who, as Melanchthon said, had attempted to picture Transubstantiation on the blackboard, he had, later on, only words of derision. He studied patristics on his own account and took up the New Testament in the original text, but did not at this time reach any definite theological point of view; in this branch of knowledge, as he himself afterwards repeatedly declared, his intellectual father was Luther. He naturally took Reuchlin's part in the latter's contro- versy with the Cologne professors (see Hum.\nism), and wrote in 1514 a preface to the " Epistolae clarorum virorum"; but he did not come prominently to the fore. His own earliest publications were an edi- tion of Terence (1516), and a Greek grammar (1518). In 1518 he was oiTered, on Reuchlin's recom- mendation, a professorship of Cireek at Wittenberg. " I know of no one among the Germans who is superior to him, " wrote Reuchlin to the Elector of Saxony, " save only Erasmus Roterodamus, and he is a Dutch- man." The first impression made by the simple, bashful and frail-looking youth was not favourable. But his opening address: "De corrigendis adoles- centise studiis" (29 Aug., 1518), elicited enthusiastic applause. He extolled the return to the authentic sources of genuine science as a signal merit of the new humanistic and scientific spirit, and he promised to apply this method to the study of theology.
(2) Melanchthon .■^-Nd the German Reforma- tion. — Luther was a strong believer m making human- ism serve the cause of the " Gospel ", and it was not long before t he still plastic Melanchthon fell imder the sway of Luther's powerful personality. He accom- panied the latter to his Leipzig disputation in 1519; though he did not participate in the discussion itself, he seconded with his knowledge Luther's preparatory labours. After the disputation he com- posed, with the co-operation of d^colarapadius, a report which was the occasion of an attack upon him by Eck to whom he replied with his "Defensio Phil. Melanchthonis contra Joh. Eckiura professorem". He was now persuaded by Luther to take up theologi- cal lectures, and became in 1519 a Bachelor of Theology, then a professor of the same science. For 42 years he laboured at Wittenberg in the very front rank of university professors. His theological courses were followed by 500 or 600, later by as many as 1500 students, whereas his philological lectures were often but poorly attended. Yet he persistently refused the title of Doctor of Divinity, and never accepted ordina- tion; nor was he ever known to preach. His desire was to remain a hmnanist, and to the end of his life he continued his work on the classics, along with his exegetical studies. And yet he became the father of evangelical theology. He composed the first treatise on "evangelical" doctrine (Loci commimes rerum theo- logicarum, 1521). It deals principally with practical religious questions, sin and grace, law and gospel, jastification and regeneration. This work ran through more than 100 editions before his death. He was a friend and supporter of Luther the Reformer, and de-
