undertook to obtain possession of the oxen of the Thessalian prince Iphiclus. As Melampus had foretold, he was caught and imprisoned, but was released by Phylacus (the father of Iphiclus) on giving proof of his powers of divination, and was finally presented with the oxen as a reward for having restored the virility of the son. Melampus subsequently obtained a share in the kingdom of Argos in return for having cured the daughters of its king Proetus, who had been driven mad for offering resistance to the worship of Dionysus or for stealing the gold from the statue of Hera. At Aegosthena in Megara there was a sanctuary of Melampus, and an annual festival was held in his honour. According to Herodotus, he introduced the cult of Dionysus into Greece from Egypt, and his name (“black foot”) is probably “a symbolical expression of his character as a Bacchic propitiatory priest and seer” (Preller). According to the traditional explanation, he was so called from his foot having been tanned by exposure to the sun when a boy. In his character of physician, he was the reputed discoverer of the herb melampodium, a kind of hellebore. Melampus and Bias are symbolical representatives of cunning and force.
See Apollodorus i. 9, 11, 12; ii. 2, 2; Odyssey, xv. 225–240; Diod. Sic. iv. 68; Herodotus ii. 49; ix. 34; Pausanias ii. 18, 4; iv. 36, 3; scholiast on Theocritus iii. 43; Ovid, Metam. xv. 325; C. Eckermann, Melampus und sein Geschlecht (1840).
Melampus is also the name of the author of a short extant treatise of little value on Divination by means of Palpitation (Παλμῶν) and Birthmarks (Ἐλαιῶν). It probably dates from the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus (3rd cent. B.C.). Edition by J. G. Franz in Scriptores physiognomiae veteres (1780).
MELANCHLAENI (from Gr. μέλας, and χλανῖα, “Blackcloaks”),
an ancient tribe to the north of Scythia, probably
about the modern Ryazan and Tambov (Herodotus iv. 106).
They have been identified with the Finnish tribes Merja
(now extinct) and Cheremis, now driven north-east on to the
middle Volga. These, till recently, wore black. There has
been confusion between this tribe and another of the same
name mentioned by Pliny (N. H. vi. 15), and Ptolemy in the
Caucasus. (E. H. M.)
MELANCHOLY (Gr. μελαγχολία, from μέλας, black, and χολή, bile), originally a condition of the mind or body due to a supposed
excess of black bile, also this black bile itself, one of the chief
“humours” of the body, which were, according to medieval
physiology, blood, phlegm, choler and melancholy (see Humour);
now a vague term for desponding grief. From the 17th century
the name was used of the mental disease now known as
“melancholia” (see Insanity), but without any reference to
the supposed cause of it.
MELANCHTHON, PHILIPP (1497–1560), German theologian and reformer, was born at Bretten in Baden on the 16th of February 1497. His father, George Schwartzerd, was an
armourer under the Palatinate princes. His mother, Barbara
Reuter, a niece of Johann Reuchlin, was shrewd, thrifty and
affectionate.[1] Her father, Johann Reuter, long burgomaster
of Bretten, supervised the education of Philipp, who was taught
first by Johannes Hungarus and then by Georg Simler at the
academy of Pfortzheim. Reuchlin took an interest in him,
and, following a contemporary custom, named him Melanchthon
(the Greek form of Schwartzerd, black earth). In October
1509 he went to Heidelberg, where he took the B.A. degree,
afterwards proceeding M.A. at Tübingen. The only other
academic distinction he accepted was the B.D. of Wittenberg
(1519). He would never consent to become a “doctor,” because
he thought the title carried with it responsibilities to which
he felt himself unequal. At Tübingen he lived as student and
teacher for six years, until on Reuchlin’s advice, the elector of
Saxony called him to Wittenberg as professor of Greek in 1518.
This appointment marked an epoch in German university
education; Wittenberg became the school of the nation; the
scholastic methods of instruction were set aside, and in a Discourse
on Reforming the Studies of Youth Melanchthon gave
proof, not only that he had caught the Renaissance spirit, but
that he was fitted to become one of its foremost leaders. He
began to lecture on Homer and the Epistle to Titus, and in connexion
with the former he announced that, like Solomon, he
sought Tyrian brass and gems for the adornment of God’s Temple.
Luther received a fresh impulse towards the study of Greek,
and his translation of the Scriptures, begun as early as 1517,
now made rapid progress, Melanchthon helping to collate the
Greek versions and revising Luther’s translation. Melanchthon
felt the spell of Luther’s personality and spiritual depth, and
seems to have been prepared on his first arrival at Wittenberg
to accept the new theology, which as yet existed mainly in subjective
form in the person of Luther. To reduce it to an
objective system, to exhibit it dialectically, the calmer mind of
Melanchthon was requisite.
Melanchthon was first drawn into the arena of the Reformation controversy through the Leipzig Disputation (June 27–July 8, 1519), at which he was present. He had been reproved by Johann Eck for giving aid to Carlstadt (“Tace tu, Philippe, ac tua studia cura nec me perturba”), and he was shortly afterwards himself attacked by the great papal champion. Melanchthon replied in a brief and moderately worded treatise, setting forth Luther’s first principle of the supreme authority of Scripture in opposition to the patristic writings on which Eck relied. His marriage in 1520 to Catharine Krapp of Wittenberg gave a domestic centre to the Reformation. In 1521, during Luther’s confinement in the Wartburg, Melanchthon was leader of the Reformation cause at the university. He defended the action of Carlstadt, when he dispensed the Eucharist in an “evangelical fashion.”[2]
With the arrival of the Anabaptist enthusiasts of Zwickau, he had a more difficult task, and appears to have been irresolute. Their attacks on infant baptism seemed to him not altogether irrational, and in regard to their claim to personal inspiration he said “Luther alone can decide; on the one hand let us beware of quenching the Spirit of God, and on the other of being led astray by the spirit of Satan.” In the same year, 1521, he published his Loci communes rerum theologicarum, the first systematized presentation of the reformed theology. From 1522 to 1524 he was busy with the translation of the Bible and in publishing commentaries. In 1524 he went for reasons of health into southern Germany and was urged by the papal legate Campegio to renounce the new doctrines. He refused, and maintained his refusal by publishing his Summa doctrinae Lutheri.
After the first Diet of Spires (1526), where a precarious peace was patched up for the reformed faith, Melanchthon was deputed as one of twenty-eight commissioners to visit the reformed states and regulate the constitution of churches, he having just published a famous treatise called the Libellus visitatorius, a directory for the use of the commissioners. At the Marburg conference (1529) between the German and Swiss reformers, Luther was pitted against Oecolampadius and Melanchthon against Zwingli in the discussion regarding the real presence in the sacrament. How far the normally conciliatory spirit of Melanchthon was here biased by Luther’s intolerance is evident from the exaggerated accounts of the conference written by the former to the elector of Saxony. He was at this time even more embittered than Luther against the Zwinglians. At the Diet of Augsburg (1530) Melanchthon was the leading representative of the reformation, and it was he who prepared for that diet the seventeen articles of the Evangelical faith, which are known as the “Augsburg Confession.” He held conferences with Roman divines appointed to adjust differences, and afterwards wrote an Apology for the Augsburg Confession. After the Augsburg
- ↑
Her character is evidenced by the familiar proverb—
Wer mehr will verzehren
Denn sein Pflug kann erehren,
Der muss zuletzt verderben
Und vielleicht am Galgen sterben—of which Melanchthon said to his students “Didici hoc a mea matre, vos etiam observate.” (For Melanchthon’s Latin version of the saying see Corpus reformatorum, x. 469.)
- ↑ He read the usual service, but omitted everything that taught a propitiatory sacrifice; he did not elevate the Host, and he gave both the bread and the cup into the hands of every communicant.
