ERASMUS

See also:

• ERASMUS ALBERUS (c. 1500-1553)

ALBERUS (c. 1500-1553)  , German humanist, reformer and poet, was a native of the village of Sprendlingen near Frankfort-on-Main, where he was born about the year 1500 . Although his father was a schoolmaster, his early education was neglected . Ultimately in 1518 he found his way to the university of Wittenberg, where he studied theology . He had here the good fortune to attract the attention of Luther and Melanchthon, and subsequently became one of Luther's most active helpers in the Reformation . Not merely did he fight for the Protestant cause as a preacher and theologian, but he was almost the only member of Luther's party who was able to confront the Roman Catholics with the weapon of literary satire . In 1542 he published a prose satire to which Luther wrote the preface, Der Barfiisser Monche Eulenspiegel and Alkoran, an adaptation of the Liber conformitatum of the Franciscan Bartolommeo Albizzi of Pisa (Pisanus, d . 1401), in which the Franciscan order is held up to ridicule . Of higher literary value is the didactic and satirical Buch von der Tugend lend Weisheit (1550), a collection of forty-nine fables in which Alberus embodies his views on the relations of Church and State . His satire is incisive, but in a scholarly and humanistic way; it does not appeal to popular passions with the fierce directness which enabled the master of Catholic satire, Thomas Murner,to inflict such telling blows . Several of Alberus's hymns, all of which show the influence of his master Luther, have been retained in the German Protestant hymnal . After Luther's death, Alberus was for a time Diakonus in Witten-berg; he became involved, however, in the political conflicts of the time, and was in Magdeburg in 1550-1551, while that town was besieged by Maurice of Saxony . In 1552 he was appointed Generalsuperintendent at Neubrandenburg in Mecklenburg, where he died on the 5th of May 1553 .

Das such von der Tugend and Weisheit has been edited by W .

Beaune (1892); the sixteen Geistliche Lieder by C . W . Stromberger (1857) . Alberus's prose writings have not been reprinted in recent times . See F . Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Erasmus Alberus (1894) .