Melanchthon at Erasmus’s Funeral: 1528-1560

Abstract Twenty-one years and one week after Erasmus of Rotterdam’s death, a student at the University of Wittenberg, Bartholomew Kalkreuter, recited a declamation, De Erasmo Roterodamo, recently penned for him by Philip Melanchthon.1 In the course of rehearsing Erasmus’s life, he depicted the Dutch humanist’s relation to the Reformation this way: “Afterwards, the whole body of church doctrine was again purified by the voice of that reverend man, Doctor Luther. He [Erasmus] was a preparation for this thing, because the apostolic books and the ancient histories were now in people’s hands.”2 Kalkreuter added that despite their differences, Erasmus agreed with Luther’s attack on church practices, praised Luther’s exegesis, and, in a conversation with Frederick the Wise, insisted that Luther’s greatest errors were attacking “the pope’s crown and the monks’ bellies.”