Jerome Emser

Jerome (or Hieronymus) Emser (March 20, 1477 – November 8, 1527), was a German theologian and antagonist of Martin Luther, was born of a good family at Ulm.

He studied Greek at Tübingen and jurisprudence at Basel, and after acting for three years as chaplain and secretary to Raymond Peraudi, cardinal of Gurk, he began lecturing on classics in 1504 at Erfurt, where Luther may have been among his audience.

[1] Emser next, in 1521, published an attack on Luther's Appeal to the German Nobility, and eight works followed from his pen in the controversy, in which he defended the Roman doctrine of the Mass and the primacy of the pope.

At Duke George's instance he prepared, in 1523, a German translation of Henry VIII's Assertio Septem Sacramentorum contra Lutherum, and criticized Luther's New Testament.

He took an active part in organizing a reformed Roman Catholic Church in Germany, and in 1527 published a German version of the New Testament as a counterblast to Luther's.