Melanchthon Circle
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The Melanchthon Circle was a 16th-century Lutheran intellectual network centred on the University of Wittenberg in Germany and its leading theologian Philip Melanchthon. It was identified as significant for its interests in natural philosophy by Lynn Thorndike, in a chapter "The Circle of Melanchthon" in his multi-volume History of Magic and Experimental Science.[1] Among this circle were found many of the most important early proponents of the heliocentric model of Copernicus.[2] They included Caspar Peucer who became Melanchthon's son-in-law, Erasmus Reinhold, and Georg Joachim Rheticus. Patronage came from Albert, Duke of Prussia.[3]
In lecturing on the Librorum de judiciis astrologicis of Ptolemy in 1535–36, Melanchthon expressed to students his interest in Greek mathematics, astronomy and astrology. He considered that a purposeful God had reasons to exhibit comets and eclipses.[4] He was the first to print a paraphrased edition of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos in Basel, 1554.[5] Natural philosophy, in his view, was directly linked to Providence, a point of view that was influential in curriculum change after the Protestant Reformation in Germany.[6] In the period 1536–9 he was involved in three academic innovations: the refoundation of Wittenberg along Protestant lines, the reorganisation at Tübingen, and the foundation of the University of Leipzig.[7]