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ALBERUS, ERASMUS (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 Barfusser Monche Eulenspiegel und
Alkoran, an adaptation of the Liber confermitatum 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 und 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