Philip Schaff was born in Chur, Switzerland on January 1, 1819. He was an illegitimate child whose mother was forced out of town for that reason and whose father died a year after his birth, making him a ward of the state. In 1834, he was dismissed from his school and sent to a boarding school at Kornthal in Württemberg that was founded by Pietists. After six months at Kornthal, which Schaff called his "spiritual birthplace," he transferred to a Gymnasium at Stuttgart where he continued to be influenced by pietism and revivalism. In 1837, he began his university studies at Tübingen during the era of David Strauss, Isaac Dorner, Ferdinand Baur, and Friedrich Schmid. He was especially influenced during this time by the evangelical mediating theology of Dorner and Schmid and would go on to train with similar thinkers such as Friedrich Tholuck at the University of Halle, where he spent a winter semester in 1839-40, and August Neander at the University of Berlin, where he completed his doctoral dissertation entitled "The Sin Against the Holy Spirit" in the spring of 1842. In the summer of 1841, Schaff was hired by a widow named Baroness Von Krocher to be a tutor for her only son. He spent fourteen months traveling with the von Krochers throughout Italy and Sicily while completing his dissertation. After returning to Berlin in the summer of 1842, he prepared a second inaugural dissertation entitled "The Relationship of James, the Lord's Brother, to James, the son of Alphaeus, anew Exegetically and Historically Investigated." This qualified him to take his first teaching post as a privadozent at the University of Berlin in late 1842. In 1843, Schaff was called to a professorship at Mercersberg Seminary, the theological seminary of the German Reform Church of the United States, located in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. In April 1844, Schaff was ordained by the Prussian Evangelical Union church, a Reformed church in Elberfeld, so that he could serve at Mercersberg. He arrived in Mercersberg in August 1844 and continued to teach there until 1863. When he first arrived he gave a controversial inaugural address entitled "The Principle of Protestantism" that contained mediating views taken to be out of accord with the teachings of the German Reformed Church. In the publication of this address he added a rejection of the "Waldensian theory," which held that the Roman Catholic Church was apostate and that true apostolic succession ran only through the Waldensian medieval sect. Schaff's rejection of this doctrine led him to be tried for heresy in October 1845. He was acquitted of all charges. He was threatened with a second heresy trial in 1846, but the Synod of the German Reformed Church did not take action. On December 10, 1845, Schaff was married to Mary E. Schley. They had 8 children, 5 of whom died before 1876. In 1863, when the Civil War began, Mercersberg Seminary was closed and the buildings turned into a military hospital. To avoid the turmoil, Schaff moved his family to New York City, where he worked as Secretary of the New York Sabbath Committee until 1869. After lecturing intermittently during these years at Andover, Drew, Hartford, and Union seminaries, he was invited to join the faculty at Union Theological Seminary in 1870. There he was appointed Professor of Theological Encyclopedia and Christian-Symbolics (1870-73); of Hebrew (1873-74); of Sacred Literature (1875-1887) and finally as Washburn Professor of Church History (1887-1893). During his years at Union he traveled to Europe thirteen times, often for Bible revision work, for conferences of the Evangelical Alliance and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and for archival consultation in preparation for his church history volumes. His many original writings include The Principle of Protestantism (1845), Creeds of Christendom (1877), and History of the Christian Church (12 vols, 1838-1893). He also edited, among many other works, John Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (1864-1880) and the sets of patristic translations known as the Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers (Series I, 14 vols., 1886-9; Series II, 14 vols., 1890-1900). Schaff was a founding member of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis (1880), the American Society of Church History (1888), and the American branch of the Evangelical Alliance (1867). He was also the first president of the American Bible Revision Committee, which he organized in 1871 at the request of the British Committee. He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from Berlin University in 1854, the University of St Andrews in 1887, and the University of the City of New York in 1892. He was awarded an LL.D. from Amherst College in 1874. Philip Schaff died in New York City, October 20, 1893.