German Reformer (1497-1560) and Luther's principal lieutenant in the Lutheran branch of the Reformation. Born Philipp Schwartzerdt at Bretten in the Palatinate; trained at Heidelberg (BA 1511) and Tübingen (MA 1514); appointed professor of Greek at the University of Wittenberg in 1518 at age twenty-one. Melanchthon arrived at Wittenberg with humanist credentials (his great-uncle Johann Reuchlin had Latinized his name to Melanchthon — Greek for black earth, the same meaning as German Schwartzerdt) and quickly became Luther's closest theological partner. Melanchthon's contributions to the Reformation are immense. (1) The Loci Communes Rerum Theologicarum (1521, expanded through later editions to the great 1559 Latin form) was the first Protestant systematic theology and the model that subsequent Protestant systematics built upon. (2) The Augsburg Confession (1530), the principal Lutheran confessional document, was drafted by Melanchthon and presented at the Diet of Augsburg before Emperor Charles V. (3) The Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531), Melanchthon's defense of the Confession against Roman Catholic objections, became part of the Lutheran Book of Concord. (4) Melanchthon's Latin grammar and his Greek grammar shaped Protestant education for centuries. (5) His pastoral correspondence and university-reform labor across Lutheran Germany earned him the title Praeceptor Germaniae (Teacher of Germany). Melanchthon's later years were marked by controversy: his eirenic tendencies and his concessions on adiaphora during the Augsburg Interim (1548) produced the Crypto-Calvinist and Synergistic controversies among Lutherans, eventually resolved at the Formula of Concord (1577). The Reformed-confessional reader receives Melanchthon as a substantive Reformer whose theological labor undergirds much of Lutheran Protestantism while recognizing the historic tensions with the more thoroughgoing Lutheran Gnesio (genuine-Lutheran) party.