Melanchthon's role as key player in the advocacy for reform expanded through his involvement in the Leipzig Disputation, his visible representation of the evangelical cause in Wittenberg during Luther's absence at Worms and the Wartburg, and his struggle with the radical wing. The volume closes by looking ahead to Melanchthons contribution to the Augsburg Confession of 1530. Dr. Graybill has painted a humane and nuanced portrait of one of the most remarkable scholars and reformers of the Reformation era: a prodigy of energy and productivity. In this book, Melanchthon steps out of the shadow of Martin Luther and lives again in the turbulent first years of the German Reformation.
-Diarmaid MacCulloch,
University of Oxford
Gregory Graybill has written a fine, vivid, scholarly yet readable biography of Philipp Melanchthon, which fills a large gap in recent English language writing on the Reformation. This is an ideal place to start to get to know a man whose influence on Reformation Europe was huge.
-Graham Tomlin,
St. Mellitus College
What would it be like to have been Martin Luther's closest theological companion in the birth years of the Protestant Reformation? Greg Graybill answers this question in his deeply researched post-Oxford-doctoral work written (and illustrated) from Philipp Melanchthon's own personal homes in Germany. Welcome to the heart and mind of the Reformation! I warmly recommend this engaging study.
-Frederick Dale Bruner,
Whitworth University
At long last Philip Melanchthon is pulled from the wings of the Reformation, not for a momentary bow as Luther's disciple, but as an auxiliary Reformer whose contribution to the Reformation was essential. Focusing on the titanic decade of 1515-1525 - when Melanchthon was only in his twenties - Greg Graybill surveys not simply Melanchthon's significance, but offers a portrait of his person - the key events that shaped his life, his friendships and indebtedness to the great Humanists of the day, and above all Melanchthon's extraordinary synthesis of content and style that was present in no other German-speaking Reformer. Something of that same content and style is present in Graybill's presentation, recovering not only a prodigious Reformer, but making the Reformation itself more three-dimensional.
-James R. Edwards,
Whitworth University
