The Metaphysician of Wittenberg: Philipp Melanchthon’s Unknown Works
Philipp Melanchthon is an enigmatic figure of the Reformation, but a critical contributor to the reading of the Pauline epistles created by 16th-century Protestants stepped into scholastic Augustinian thought. There are no good English translations of any of his works, yet he was one of the key architects of the second largest branch of Christianity. Tens of millions of people worldwide are Melanchthon's followers today (every "Bible-believing" Protestant), yet 99.99% do not even know his name, let alone have read his works. Hence a new research and translation project: The Complete Works of Melanchthon in 6 volumes, translated directly from the original Latin and German manuscripts.
Melanchthon spoke Middle High German, using a lexicon that is either outdated or, in some cases, non-existent in modern German. Words like "Petschaft," which means "seal" in English (like a wax seal), is "Siegel" in modern German. The word for "devil" used by Melanchthon and Luther doesn't exist in modern German. The spelling of words in 500-year-old German is, of course, quite different from modern spelling-"Daseyn" verses "Dasein," for example-and for a long time German had two different characters for "Ezette," depending on its position in the word.
The Greek is left untouched here, as Melanchthon wanted to be very specific in his use of terms. The Latin is translated as literally as possible while maintaining intelligibility. The constant references to verses clutter the text, but I have tried to keep textual changes to an absolute minimum and to render the Latin literally. This makes the text difficult to read, but he wrote this in neo-Latin; making it easy to read was not his primary goal.
Likewise, the Latin he uses is a synergy of classical Latin and the "New Latin" of the 15th-17th centuries. The humanist revival of Latin was asymmetrical, and writers were constantly inventing new words. Luther's communications with Erasmus were exclusively in Latin, and many of Melanchthon's works are entirely in Latin, the Loci Communes, for example.
The semantic value of the same word has also shifted. I'm not going to take the word he uses for Africans literally, for obvious reasons. Archaic words like "Mahometists" have been updated to Muslims, and "Ethnics" has been changed to "Pagans". A modern reader will not know that "Samosate" refers to the domain of the Turks, or understand the references to the Lombards, a Germanic ethnic group that ruled in what is now Italy, or the "Monarchy of Cyrus," which refers to Cyrus the Great. I leave these as they are to introduce the reader to his view of world history.
Melanchthon does not use as many ad hominums as Luther, but he does have some creative insults, often to the point of comedy, such as "Cycladic men". Perhaps "Neaderthal" is a modern translation of the meaning he is trying to convey, but I have left all these references as much as possible as they are.
These 6 volumes:
I. Letters of Melanchthon
II. Loci Communes
III. Visitations and Enchiridion
IV. Augsburg Confession & the Apology
V. The Life of Martin Luther
VI. Collected Minor Works
Contain these works:
1519 Bericht uber die Leipziger Disputation an Oecolampadius
1520 Bedencken von der Mess vun Entpfahung
1522 Anmerkungen zum Brief an die Romer
1522 Enchiridion
1527 Unterricht der Visitatoren, an die Pfarrherrn im Kurfürstenthum zu Sachsen
1528 Der Anabaptistis
1528 Unterricht der Visitatoren 1530 Apologia der Konfession
1530 Confessio Augustana
1530 Con der Rchtfertigung de Menschen vor Gott
1540 Ob Sie Glauben, dass der mensch einen freien Willen habe
1546 Die Historie vom Leben und Geschichten
1546 Rathschlag der Theologen zu Wittenberg
Collected Minor Works
1519 Report on the Leipzip Disputation to Oecolampadius
1520 Consideration of the Mass and the Reception of the High Sacrament
1522 Commentaries on Romans
1528 The Anabaptists
1530 On the Justification of Man to God, to Johann Brentius
1546 Advice to the theologians at Wittenberg to John Frederick
