Much influenced by Melchior Hofman, he had no sympathy with the fanatic violence of the Minster faction.
It was first published at Nuremberg by Melchior Pfintzing in 1517, and was adorned with woodcuts by Hans Leonhard Schaufelein.
An English translation of the Theses, with brief life of Erastus (based on Melchior Adam's account), was issued in 1659, entitled The Nullity of Church Censures; it was reprinted as A Treatise of Excommunication (1682), and, as revised by Robert Lee, D.D., in 1844.
He fell under the suspicion of the Inquisition; his mystical teaching was said to be heretical, and his most famous book, the Guia de Peccadores, still a favourite treatise and one that has been translated into nearly every European tongue, was put on the Index of the Spanish Inquisition, together with his book on prayer, in 1559 His great opponent was the restless and ambitious Melchior Cano, who stigmatized the second book as containing grave errors smacking of the heresy of the Alumbrados and manifestly contradicting Catholic faith and teaching.
Here too arose the obscure triangular quarrel between Diderot, Rousseau and Frederick Melchior Grimm, which ended Rousseau's sojourn at the Hermitage.
