Erasmus Sarcerius (19 April 1501 in Annaberg ― 18 November 1559 in Magdeburg) was a German Protestant Gnesio-Lutheran theologian and reformer. He was the father of Lutheran philosopher Wilhelm Sarcerius. Life Sarcerius was the son of a burgher who became wealthy through metal trading in the Annaberg town mines. He is said to have gone to school in Freiberg with Friedrich Myconius and attended the University of Leipzig. After the death of his humanist teacher, Petrus Mosellanus, he moved to Wittenberg in 1524 and worked with fellow Lutheran reformers Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon. Later in his life, he worked at Protestant theology schools in Austria and Rostock. Between 1531 and 1536, he worked as the first subrector at Katharineum, a Latin humanist school in Lübeck. He was said to have been close to the rector, Hermann Bonnus[de], who would become the later superintendent at Lübeck. By the time that he became a teacher, he had already rose to prominence through his writings on Protestantism. In 1536, he was appointed rector of the Latin school in Siegen, and in the following year was appointed superintendent of the state by Count William Otto of Nassau-Siegen for the purpose of reorganizing the church. In his liturgical career, Sarcerius published copies of his sermons, and wrote Lutheran catechisms, such as his dogmatic treatise Methodus divinae scripturae locos praecipuos explicans (A method of explaining the main passages of the divine scriptures) in 1539. He served as a preacher in Andernach during the attempted Reformation of Archbishop Hermann of Wied and in 1545 in the Babenhausen municipality (now Babenhausen, Hesse), which belonged to the county of Hanau-Lichtenberg. While he was working in Nassau, Sarcerius received a request to work as professor to Lutheran students in Leipzig, but Count William Otto requested that he did not leave his current position. After the Augsburg Interim, the count was not able to keep Sarcerius on tenure. Sarcerius hoped to move back to Lübeck or Rostock, but decided to take the pastorate at St. Thomas in Leipzig. Through his activities in West Germany, as well as in his native Saxony, Sarcerius accuired large influence in ecclesiastical circles. Contemporaries considered him a significant figure and treated him with great respect. In 1552, Sarcerius, Melanchthon, and Valentin Paraus were chosen to present the Saxon Confession, an alteration of the Augsburg Confession, at the Council of Trent. It is said that Duke