AGRICOLA, John, a Saxon divine, born at Eisleben in 1492. He went as chaplain to Count Mansfield, when that nobleman attended the Elector of Saxony to the diet at Spire in 1529, and that of Augsburg in 1530. He was of a restless, ambitious temper, rivalled and wrote against Melancthon, and gave Count Mansfield occasion to reproach him severely. He obtained a professorship at Wittemberg,
where he taught peculiar doctrines, and became founder of the sect of Antinomians; which occasioned warm disputes between him and Luther, who had before been his attached friend. But though he was never able to recover the favour either of the Elector of Saxony or of Luther, he received some consolation from the fame he acquired at Berlin, where he became preacher at court; and was chosen, in 1548, in conjunction with Julius Phlug and Michael Holdingus, to compose the famous Interim. He died at Berlin in 1566. His real name was Schnitter or Schneider.