Amid the devastation of the Schmalkaldic War (1546-47), Philip Melanchthon and his colleagues at Wittenberg hastily compiled a Latin edition of Sophocles out of fifteen years of teaching materials and sent it directly to Edward VI of England within weeks of his coronation. Wittenberg tragedy reconciled Aristotelian technology, Reformation politics, and Lutheran theology, and offered consolation in the face of events which themselves seemed to be unfolding on a tragic stage. A crucial but neglected source of English and Continental literary thought, the “Wittenberg Sophocles” shaped the reception of Greek tragedy, tragic poetics, and neo-Latin and vernacular composition throughout the sixteenth century.