Further reading
Further reading
The standard text for most (but by no means all) of Melanchthon's writings is still the Corpus Reformatorum Philippi Melanthonis Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia, ed. C. B. Bretschneider and H. E. Bindseil, 28 vols, Halle, 1834–52, Brunswick, 1853–60. Fortunately, a new edition of his correspondence is now in progress: Melanchthons Briefwechsel: kritische und kommentierte Gesamtausgabe, im Auftrag der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed. H. Scheible, Stuttgart, 1977– (in progress) (with text, index and summary of content). For information on editions and the printing history of his works, see A Checklist of Melanchthon Imprints Through 1560, ed. R. A. Keen, St Louis, 1988. Particularly useful for Melanchthon's orations is H. Koehn, ‘Philipp Melanchthons Reden. Verzeichnis der im 16. Jahrhundert erschienenen Drucke’ Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 25, 1984, 1277–1486.
A good selection of Melanchthon's philosophical and theological writings is A Melanchthon Reader, trans. R. Keen, New York, 1988. An English translation of the first edition of the Loci Communes is available in Melanchthon and Bucer, trans. L. J. Satre and rev. W. Pauck, London, 1969. For the 1555 edition, see Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine: Loci Communes of 1555, trans. C. L. Manschreck, New York, 1965. For the Augsburg Confession, see W. Maurer, Historical Commentary on the Augsburg Confession, trans. H. George Anderson, Philadelphia, 1986. Melanchthon's commentary on Colossians is translated in Melanchthon, Paul's Letter to the Colossians, trans. D. C. Parker, Sheffield, 1989. For other English translations, see the list in L. C. Green and C. D. Froehlich, Melanchthon in English – New Translations into English with a Registry of Previous Translations, Sixteenth-Century Bibliography, vol. 22, St Louis, 1982.
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The most comprehensive biography is by Karl Hartfelder, Philipp Melanchthon als Praeceptor Germaniae, Berlin, 1889. In English, there are: R. Stupperich, Melanchthon, trans. R. H. Fischer, London, 1966, and C. L. Manschreck, Melanchthon: The Quiet Reformer, New York, 1958. L. C. Green, How Melanchthon Helped Luther Discover the Gospel: the Doctrine of Justification in the Reformation, Fallbrook, CA, 1980, concentrates specifically on Melanchthon's role in developing the doctrine of justification. For the relationship between the two reformers, see the collection of essays in Luther und Melanchthon, ed. V. Vajta, Göttingen, 1961. For an excellent summary of the relationship between Erasmus and Melanchthon, see the entry by Heinz Scheible in Contemporaries of Erasmus, Toronto 1986, vol. 2. pp. 424–9 and now T. J. Wengert, Human Freedom, Christian Righteousness: Philip Melanchthon's Exegetical Dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam, Oxford, 1998. For Melanchthon's reaction to the evangelical radicals, see J. S. Oyer, Lutheran Reformers against Anabaptists: Luther, Melanchthon and Menius and the Anabaptists of Central Germany, The Hague, 1964. For the claims of the radical evangelicals, see The Radical Reformation, ed. Michael G. Baylor, Cambridge, 1991 and T. Scott, Thomas Müntzer: Theology and Revolution in Reformation Germany, London, 1989. For iconography of Melanchthon, O. Thulin, ‘Melanchthons Bildnis und Werk im zeitgenössischer Kunst’, in Philipp Melanchthon, ed. W. Ellinger, Göttingen, 1961, pp. 180–93, is an excellent starting-point.
For a study of his natural philosophy, see S. Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: the Case of Philip Melanchthon, Cambridge, 1991, and C. Methuen, ‘The Role of the Heavens in the Thought of Philip Melanchthon’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 56–3 (1996), 385–403. For his moral and political philosophy, see Ralph Keen, Divine and Human Authority in Reformation Thought: German Theologians on Political Order 1520–1555, Nieuwkoop, 1997.
Several studies look at his exegetical methods: T. J. Wengert, Philip Melanchthon's Annotationes in Johannem in Relation to Its Predecessors and Contemporaries, Geneva, 1987; T. H. L. Parker, Commentaries on the Epistle to the Romans 1532–1542, Edinburgh, 1986; A. Williams, The Common Expositor: an Account of the Commentaries of Genesis 1527–1633, Chapel Hill, 1948.
Recent studies have focused on the importance of rhetoric in Renaissance thought, such as Peter Mack, Renaissance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of Rhetoric and Dialectic, Leiden, 1993; Brian Vickers,
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‘Epideictic and Epic in the Renaissance’, New Literary History, 14 (1983), 497–537 and John W. O'Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450–1521, Durham, NC, 1979. For Melanchthon's rhetoric specifically, see Kees Meerhoff, ‘The Significance of Philip Melanchthon's Rhetoric in the Renaissance’ in Renaissance Rhetoric, ed. Paul Mack, Basingstoke, 1994, pp. 46–62 and idem, ‘Logique et Création selon Philippe Mélanchthon: à la recherche du lieu commun’, in Logique et Littérature à la Renaissance, Actes du Colloque de la Baume-les-Aix, Université de Provence, 16–18 septembre 1991, Paris, pp. 51–68; R. Schneider, Philip Melanchthon's Rhetorical Construal of Biblical Authority: Oratio Sacra, Text and Studies in Religion 5, Lewiston and Lampeter, 1990; T. J. Wengert, ‘Philip Melanchthon's 1522 Annotations on Romans and the Lutheran Origins of Rhetorical Criticism’, Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation, ed. R. A. Muller and J. L. Thompson, Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, 1996, pp. 118–40.
For the reception of humanism in educational institutions, see Erika Rummel, The Humanist–Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation, Cambridge, MA and London, 1995; A. Grafton and L. Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenthand Sixteenth-Century Europe, London, 1986; L'Humanisme allemand, 1480–1540, XVIIIe Colloque International de Tours, Munich, Fink and Paris, 1979; Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools, Ithaca and London, 1988. For studies on the humanist influences at the University of Wittenberg, see Maria Grossmann, Humanism in Wittenberg 1485–1517, Nieuwkoop, 1975 and Humanismus und Wittenberger Reformation: Festgabe anlässlich des 500. Geburtstages des Praeceptor Germaniae Philipp Melanchthon am 16. Februar 1997: Helmar Junghans gewidmet, ed. Michael Beyer and Gunther Wartenberg with Hans-Peter Hasse, Leipzig, 1996.
For an important and extensive study of Melanchthon's Aristotelian legacy, see Peter Petersen, Geschichte der Aristotelischen Philosophie im Protestantischen Deutschland, Leipzig, 1921; and for his students, see Melanchthon in seinen Schülern, ed. Heinz Scheible, Wolfenbuetteler Forschungen, Wiesbaden, 1997. For Melanchthon's influence in various areas, see the following: R. S. Westman, ‘The Melanchthon Circle, Rheticus and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory’, Isis, 56, 1975, 165–93; V. Nutton, ‘Wittenberg Anatomy’, and S. Kusukawa, ‘Aspectio divinorum operum: Melanchthon and Astrology for Lutheran
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Medics’, in Medicine and the Reformation, ed. O. P. Grell and A. R. Cunningham, London, 1993, pp. 11–56; H. Dannenfeldt, ‘Wittenberg Botanists During the Sixteenth Century’, in The Social History of the Reformation, ed. L. P. Buck and J. W. Zophy, Columbus, 1972, pp. 223–48; Charlotte Methuen, ‘Kepler's Tübingen: Stimulus to a Theological Mathematics’, Ph.D. dissertation, Edinburgh, 1995; M. Büttner, ‘The Significance of the Reformation for the Reorientation of Geography in Lutheran Germany’, History of Science, 17, 1979, 151–69; F. H. Lapionte, ‘The Origin and Evolution of the Term “Psychology”’, Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia, 28, 1973, 138–60; for ‘Philippo-Ramism’, see Joseph S. Freedman, ‘The Diffusion of the Writings of Petrus Ramus in Central Europe, c. 1570-c. 1630’, Renaissance Quarterly 46 (1993), 98–152; Robert Kolb, ‘Philipp's Foes, but Followers Nonetheless: Late Humanism among the Gnesio-Lutherans’, in his Luther's Heirs Define His Legacy, Aldershot, 1996.
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