Zacharias Ursinus

Zacharias Ursinus was born Zacharias Baer in 1534 in Breslau in Silesia, now Wrocław in Poland. At fifteen he went to the University of Wittenberg, where for seven years he lived in the home of Philip Melanchthon, Martin Luther's colleague. Like many scholars of his time he took a Latin name; Ursinus comes from ursus, the Latin word for 'bear', just as Baer means bear in German. He went on to study at Strasbourg, Basel, Lausanne and Geneva and learned Hebrew in France. When his writing on the sacraments angered Lutherans at home, he moved to Zurich and became a friend of Heinrich Bullinger and Peter Martyr Vermigli. In 1561 Frederick III, the Elector Palatine, made him a professor at Heidelberg, and there he wrote the main drafts of the Heidelberg Catechism, which was published in 1563 and is still used by Reformed churches around the world. When a Lutheran elector came to power in 1576, Ursinus lost his post. He taught at Neustadt an der Weinstraße until his death in 1583.

Zacharias Ursinus is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: German theologian and one of the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)

See also: Caspar Olevianus · Philip Melanchthon · John Calvin