Lesser-Known Reformers: Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560)

Philip Schwarzerd was born in Baden, Germany, to devout Catholic parents. He was a bright child; already at the tender age of twelve he began university training. He received his bachelor’s degree when he was fourteen and his master’s degree by the time he was seventeen. At the age of twenty-one, he began to teach Greek and Latin in another university that was itself not even twenty years old—the University of Wittenberg. By then he had changed his last name from the German word Schwarzerd,...