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Alber, Erasmus

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a German Protestant theologian, born, it is thought, at Sprendlingen or at Wetterau, and educated at Wittenberg. In 1528 he was called by. Landgrave Philip of Hesse as pastor to Sprendlingen. Subsequently, he was court preacher to Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg, by whom he was again dismissed on account of the violence of language with which he combated the taxation of the clergy. In 1543 he received from Luther the title of doctor of divinity. In 1545 he was called by the count of Hanau Lichtenberg to carry through the reformation in his land. From Magdeburg, to which city he was subsequently called as pastor, he was expelled on account of his opposition to the Interim. In 1553 he was appointed superintendent at Neu-Brandenburg, in Mecklenburg, where he died, May 5, 1553. While court preacher of the elector of Brandenburg, he found in a Franciscan convent a work by a Franciscan monk, Bartholomew Albizzi (q.v.), entitled Liber Conformitatum S. Francisci ad. vitam Jesu Christi. This induced him to write his celebrated work, Der Barfusser Monche Eulenspiegel und Alcoran, which was published, with a preface from Luther, at Wittenberg, in 1542, and soon appeared in a French, Latin, and Dutch translation. He wrote several other works against the Interim; against Andreas Osiander, against the followers of Karlstadt, against Witzel, fables for the youth in rhymes, and religious songs, published by Stromberger, in Geistliche Stanger der christlichen Kirche deutscher Nation, vol. 10 (Halle, 1857). A complete list of his works is in Strieder, Grundlage zu einer Hessischen Gelehrten-und Schriftstellergeschichte (Gott. 1781), 1:24 sq. — See Herzog, Supplem. 1, 33; Biog. Univ. 1, 394.