[i]

LUTHER

[ii]

Imprimatur

Edm. Can. Surmont,

Vic. Gen.

Westmonasterii, die 12 Martii, 1917.

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[iii]

LUTHER

BY
HARTMANN GRISAR, S.J.
PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK

AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN BY
E. M. LAMOND

EDITED BY
LUIGI CAPPADELTA

Volume VI

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., Ltd.
BROADWAY HOUSE 68-74 CARTER LANE, E.C.
1917

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[iv]

A FEW PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUMES I-V.

“His most elaborate and systematic biography … is not merely a book to be reckoned with; it is one with which we cannot dispense, if only for its minute examination of Luther’s theological writings.”—The Athenæum (Vol. I).

“The second volume of Dr. Grisar’s ‘Life of Luther’ is fully as interesting as the first. There is the same minuteness of criticism and the same width of survey.”—The Athenæum (Vol. II).

“Its interest increases. As we see the great Reformer in the thick of his work, and the heyday of his life, the absorbing attraction of his personality takes hold of us more and more strongly. His stupendous force, his amazing vitality, his superhuman interest in life, impress themselves upon us with redoubled effect. We find him the most multiform, the most paradoxical of men.… The present volume, which is admirably translated, deals rather with the moral, social, and personal side of Luther’s career than with his theology.”—The Athenæum (Vol. III).

“Father Grisar has gained a high reputation in this country through the translation of his monumental work on the History of Rome and the Popes in the Middle Ages, and this first instalment of his ‘Life of Luther’ bears fresh witness to his unwearied industry, wide learning, and scrupulous anxiety to be impartial in his judgments as well as absolutely accurate in matters of fact.”—Glasgow Herald.

“This ‘Life of Luther’ is bound to become standard … a model of every literary, critical, and scholarly virtue.”—The Month.

“Like its two predecessors, Volume III excels in the minute analysis not merely of Luther’s actions, but also of his writings; indeed, this feature is the outstanding merit of the author’s patient labours.”—The Irish Times.

“This third volume of Father Grisar’s monumental ‘Life’ is full of interest for the theologian. And not less for the psychologist; for here more than ever the author allows himself to probe into the mind and motives and understanding of Luther, so as to get at the significance of his development.”—The Tablet (Vol. III).

“Historical research owes a debt of gratitude to Father Grisar for the calm unbiased manner in which he marshals the facts and opinions on Luther which his deep erudition has gathered.”—The Tablet (Vol. IV).

“We have nothing but commendation for the translation.”—The Tablet (Vol. V).

“Another volume of Father Grisar’s ‘Life of Martin Luther’ … confirms the belief that it will remain the standard ‘Life,’ and rank amongst the most valuable contributions to the history of the Reformation.”—Yorkshire Post.

[v]

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXXV. LUTHER’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS SOCIETY AND EDUCATION (continued from Vol. V.)	pages 3-98
3. Elementary Schools and Higher Education.
Luther’s appeals on behalf of the schools; polemical trend of his appeals; his ideal of elementary education; study of the Bible and the classics. The decline in matters educational after the introduction of the innovations; higher education before Luther’s day; results achieved by Luther	pages 3-41
4. Benevolence and Relief of the Poor.
Organised charity in late mediæval times. Luther’s attempts to arrange for the relief of the poor; the “Poor-boxes”; Bugenhagen’s work; the sad effects of the confiscation of Church-property; and of the doctrine that good works are valueless	pages 42-65
5. Luther’s Attitude towards Worldly Callings.
Whether Luther’s claim can stand that he was the first to preach the dignity of worldly callings? His depreciation of the several classes of the nation due to his estrangement from them. Attitude towards the merchant-class. His Old-Testament ideas react on his theories about usury and interest; his views on the lawfulness of permanent investments, etc.	pages 65-98
CHAPTER XXXVI. THE DARKER SIDE OF LUTHER’S INNER LIFE. HIS AILMENTS	pages 99-186
1. Early Sufferings, Bodily and Mental.
Fits of fear, palpitations, swoons, nervousness; his temptations no mere morbid phenomena	pages 99-112
2. Psychic Problems of Luther’s Religious Development.
Temptations to despair. The shadow of pseudo-mysticism. Temptations of the flesh	pages 112-122
3. Ghosts, Delusions, Apparitions of the Devil.
The statements regarding Luther’s intercourse with the beyond and his visions of the devil. The misunderstood reference to his disputation with the devil on the Mass. His belief in possession and exorcism	pages 122-140
[vi]4. Revelation and Illusion. Morbid Trains of Thought.
His conviction that he was the recipient of a special revelation; his apparent withdrawals of this claim. His so-called “temptations” viewed by him as confirming his mission; his persuasion that the Pope is Antichrist, that his opponents are all egged on by the devil and that no man on earth can compare with him. His tendency to self-contradiction; his changeableness, his feverish polemics	pages 141-171
5. Luther’s Psychology according to Physicians and Historians.
Whether Luther’s mind was abnormal, or whether all his symptoms are to be explained by uric acid, or by degeneracy	pages 172-186
CHAPTER XXXVII. LUTHER’S LATER EMBELLISHMENT OF HIS EARLY LIFE	pages 187-236
1. Luther’s later Picture of his Convent-Life and Apostasy.
The legend about his first appearance on the field of history. His supposed excessive holiness-by-works during his monastic days	pages 187-205
2. The Reality. Luther’s Falsification of History.
Inward peace and happiness in his monastic days; his vows and their breach; some peculiarities of his humility; his feverish addiction to his work; the facts around which his later legend grew	pages 205-229
3. The Legend receives its last touch; how it was used.
Forged in the solitude of the Coburg. His characteristic passage from the “I” to the “we.” His monkish “experience” useful to him	pages 229-236
CHAPTER XXXVIII. END OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. THE CHURCH-UNSEEN AND THE VISIBLE CHURCH-BY-LAW	pages 237-340
1. From Religious Licence to Religious Constraint.
Freedom as Luther’s early watchword. Intolerance towards Catholics, in theory, and in practice. Sanguinary threats against all papists; the death-penalty pronounced against “sectarians” at home; his justification: blasphemy must be put down. The people driven to the new preaching; no freedom of conscience allowed: Luther’s intolerance imitated by his friends	pages 237-279
2. Luther as Judge.
The pigheadedness and arrogance of all the “sectarians.” None of them are sure of their cause; none of them can work miracles	pages 279-289
[vii]3. The Church-Unseen, its Origin and Early History.
Luther’s invisible Church; her marks; only the predestined are members; his shifting theory	pages 290-308
4. The Church becomes visible. Its organisation.
The Church materialises in Articles and a Ministry set up by Wittenberg with the sovereign as “emergency-bishop.” The results of State-interference	pages 309-325
5. Luther’s Tactics in Questions concerning the Church.
The Erfurt preachers at variance with the Town-Council. Luther shifts his ground in his controversies with the Catholics. How the Church, in spite of Christ’s promises, contrived to remain plunged in error for over a thousand years. Luther’s interpretation of Christ’s words “On this rock”	pages 325-340
CHAPTER XXXIX. END OF LUTHER’S LIFE	pages 341-386
1. The Flight from Wittenberg.
His depression gets the better of him and he leaves the town “for ever.” Change of air sweetens his temper and he returns and resumes his work with new ardour	pages 341-351
2. Last Troubles and Cares.
Quarrels with the Swiss and with New Believers nearer home; with the lawyers regarding clandestine marriages; the State proves a cause of vexation on account of its interference in matters which concern the preachers. Luther’s fears for the future; encroachments of human reason; the coming collapse of morals	pages 351-369
3. Luther’s Death at Eisleben (1546).
Thoughts of death. His last visit to Mansfeld, to act as arbitrator between the Counts. The versions of his last moments	pages 370-381
4. In the World of Legend.
The tale of Luther’s suicide, of the disappearance of his body, etc. Who was responsible for the habit of concocting such stories	pages 381-386
CHAPTER XL. AT THE GRAVE	pages 387-462
1. Luther’s Fame among the Friends he left behind.
Extracts from the panegyrics and early biographies; medals struck in his honour; his epitaphs	pages 387-394
2. Luther’s Memory among the Catholics. The Question of His Greatness.
Luther’s defiance of the whole world, whilst evoking their wonder, failed to secure the admiration of Catholics. Whether Luther’s undoubted strength of will makes of him a “great man.” The part played by other factors in the movement he inaugurated	pages 394-407
[viii]3. Luther’s Fate in the First Struggles for his Spiritual Heritage.
Defeat of the Schmalkalden Leaguers. Osiandric, Majorite, Adiaphoristic, Synergistic and Cryptocalvinist controversies	pages 407-423
4. Mutual Influence of the Two Camps. Growing Strength of the Catholic Church.
The Lutherans are induced to adopt the Formula of Concord as a counterblast against the Council of Trent. Catholic theology benefits by the new controversies; the Church’s religious life is deepened; progress in catechetical instruction, in matters educational, Bible-study and Church-history	pages 423-439
5. Luther as described by the Olden “Orthodox” Lutherans.
Their “mediæval” attitude. Luther the “Prophet of the Germans,” a New Elias and John the Baptist	pages 440-444
6. Luther as seen by the Pietists and Rationalists.
Each in their own way make of Luther their forerunner and breathe into him their own ideals	pages 444-448
7. The Modern Picture of Luther.
The Romanticists; liberal theologians; independent historians; the Janus-Luther, with one face looking back on the Middle Ages and the other turned to the coming world. Ritschl, E. M. Arndt. Luther the hero of Kultur? Houston S. Chamberlain’s picture of the “Political Luther.” Conclusion	pages 449-462
XLI. APPENDIX I. LUTHER’S WRITINGS AND THE EVENTS OF THE DAY, ARRANGED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER	pages 465-495
XLII. APPENDIX II. ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS	pages 496-516
1-2. Luther’s Visit to Rome.
The Scala Santa; the General Confession; Oldecop’s account of Luther’s petition to be secularised; the outcome for the Order of Luther’s visit to Rome	pages 496-497
3. Luther’s conception of “Observance” and his conflict with his brother friars	pages 497-501
4. Attack upon the “Self-righteous”	pages 501-503
5. The collapse of the Augustinian Congregation	pages 503-504
6. The Tower Incident	pages 504-510
[ix]7. The Indulgence-Theses	page 510
8. The Temptations at the Wartburg	page 511
9. Prayer at the Wartburg	pages 511-512
10. Luther’s state during his stay at the Coburg	page 512
11. Luther’s moral character	pages 512-513
12. Luther’s views on lies	pages 513-515
13. Luther’s lack of the missionary spirit	pages 515-516
14. Notes: Pope Alexander VI “the Maraña”; from Bishop Maltitz’s letters to Bishop Fabri	page 516
General Index to the six volumes	pages 517-551

[1]

VOL. VI

SURVEY OF LUTHER’S WORK. HIS AILMENTS. HIS DEATH

[2]

LUTHER

[3]

CHAPTER XXXV (Continued)
LUTHER’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS SOCIETY AND EDUCATION

3. Elementary Schools and Higher Education

Luther’s Appeals on Behalf of the Schools

In a pamphlet of 1524, on the need of establishing schools, Luther spoke some emphatic and impressive words.[1]

There could be nothing worse, he declared, than to abuse and neglect the precious souls of the little ones; even a hundred florins was not too much to pay to make a good Christian of a boy; it was the duty of the magistrates and authorities to whom the welfare of the town was confided to see to this, the parents being so often either not pious or worthy enough to perform this office, or else too unlearned or too much hampered by their business or the cares of their household. The well-being of a town was not to be gauged by its fine buildings, but rather by the learning, good sense, and honourable behaviour of the burghers; given this the other sort of prosperity would never be lacking. Luther dwells on the urgent need of studying languages and sees an act of Providence in the dispersion of the Greeks whose presence in the West had been the means of giving a fresh stimulus to the study of Greek, and even to the cultivation of other languages. Without schools and learning no men would be found qualified to rule in the ecclesiastical or even in the secular sphere; even the management of the home and the duties of women to their families and households called for some sort of instruction.[2]

[4]

Owing to their innate leaning to savagery the German people, above all others, could ill afford to dispense with the discipline of the school. All the world calls us “German beasts”; too long have we been German beasts, let us therefore now learn to use our reason.[3]

He speaks of the educational value not only of languages but of history, mathematics and the other arts, but above all of religion, which, now that the true Evangel is preached, must take root in the hearts of the young, but which could not be maintained unless care was taken to ensure a supply of future preachers.

He gives an excellent answer to the objection: “What is the good of going to school unless we are thinking of becoming parsons?” The wholesale secularisation of ecclesiastical benefices had resulted in a great falling off in the number of scholars, the parents often thinking too much of the worldly prospects of their children. Luther, however, points out that even the secular offices deserve to be filled with men of education. “How useful and called for it is, and how pleasing to God, that the man destined to govern, whether as Prince, lord, councillor or otherwise, should be learned and capable of performing his duty as becomes a Christian.”[4]

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This booklet, which is of great interest for the history of the schools, was translated into Latin in the same year by Vincentius Obsopœus (Koch) and published at Hagenau, with a preface by Melanchthon.[5] It also became widely known throughout Germany, being frequently reprinted in the original tongue. As the title shows, Luther addressed himself in the work “To the Councillors of all the townships,” viz. even to the Catholic magistrates among whom he stood in disfavour. He declares that it was a question of the “salvation and happiness of the whole German land. And were I to hit upon something good, even were I myself a fool, it would be no disgrace to anyone to listen to me.”[6]

[5]

In thus calling for the founding of schools Luther was but reiterating the admonition contained in his writing “To the German Nobility.” Such exhortations were always sure to win applause, and served to recommend not only his own person but even, in the case of many, his undertaking as a whole.[7] In his rules for the administration of the poor-box at Leisnig Luther had been mindful of the claims of the schools, nor did he forget them in the other regulations he drew up later. In his sermons, too, he also dwelt repeatedly on the needs of the elementary schools; when complaining of the decay of charity he is wont to instance the straits, not only of the parsonages and the poor, but also of the schools. “Only reckon up and count on your fingers what here [at Wittenberg] and elsewhere those who bask in the Evangel give and do for it, and see whether, were it not for us who are still living, there would remain a single preacher or student.… Are there then no poor scholars who ought to be studying and exercising themselves in the Word of God?” But “hoarding and scraping” are now the rule, so that hardly a town can be found “that collects enough to keep a schoolmaster or parson.”[8]

Many wealthy towns had, however, to Luther’s great joy, taken in hand the cause of the schools. Their efforts were to prove very helpful to the new religious system.

In the same year that the above writing appeared steps were taken at Magdeburg for the promotion of education, and Cruciger, Luther’s own pupil, was summoned from Wittenberg to assume the direction. Melanchthon and Luther repaired to Eisleben in 1525, where Count Albert of Mansfeld had founded a Grammar School. In some towns the Councillors carried out Luther’s proposals, in others, where the town-council was opposed to the innovators and their schools, the burghers “set at naught the Council,” as Luther relates, and erected “schools and parsonages”; in other words, they established schools as the best means to further the new Evangel.[9] At Nuremberg Melanchthon,[6] a zealous promoter of education, exerted himself for the foundation of a “Gymnasium” which was to serve as a model of the new humanistic schools of the Evangelicals, and which was generously provided for by the town. May 6, 1526, saw the opening of this new school. Learned masters were appointed, for instance, Melanchthon’s friend Camerarius, the poet Eobanus Hessus and the humanist Michael Roting. In 1530 Luther speaks of it in words meant to flatter the Nurembergers as “a fine, noble school,” for which the “very best men” had been selected and appointed. He even tells all Germany, that “no University, not even that of Paris itself, was ever so well provided in the way of lecturers”; it was in no small measure owing to this school that “Nuremberg now shone throughout the whole of Germany like a sun, compared with which others were but moon and stars.”[10]

Yet it was certain disagreeable happenings at Nuremberg itself which led him to write in 1530 his second booklet in favour of the schools. In the flourishing commercial city there were many wealthy burghers who refused to send their children to the “Gymnasium,” thinking that, instead of learning ancient languages, they would be more usefully occupied in acquiring other elements of knowledge more essential to the mercantile calling; by so doing they had raised a certain feeling against the new school. Many were even disposed to scoff at all book-learning and roundly declared, as Luther relates, “If my son knows how to read and reckon then he knows quite enough; we now have plenty German books,” etc.[11]

In July of the above year, Luther, in the loneliness of the Coburg, penned a sermon having for its title “That children must be kept at school.” The sermon grew into a lengthy work; Luther himself was, later on, to bewail its long-windedness.[12] This writing, taken with that of 1524, supplies the gist of Luther’s teaching with regard to the schools.

[7]

As regards the question whether all children were to be forced to go to school, in this writing Luther does not speak of any universal compulsion; only “when the authorities see a capable lad”[17] does he wish coercion to be applied to the parents. In his first writing on the schools likewise, he had not advocated universal compulsion but had merely pointed out that it was “becoming” that the authorities should interfere where the parents neglected their duty;[18] he does not say how they are to “interfere,” but merely suggests that one or two “schoolmasters” should be provided whose salary should not be grudged.

“Hence it is incorrect,” rightly remarks Kawerau, “to represent Luther as the harbinger of universal compulsory education.”[19]

Fr. Lambert of Avignon, in his ecclesiastical regulations dating from 1526, indeed sought to establish national schools throughout Hesse, but his proposals were never[9] enforced. It was only at the beginning of the 17th century that Wolfgang Ratke (Ratichius, †1635), a pedagogue educated in the Calvinistic schools, established the principle of universal education which then was incorporated in the educational regulations of Weimar in 1619.[20] But the Thirty Years’ War put an end to these attempts, and it was only in the 18th century that the principle of compulsory State education secured general acceptance, and then, too, owing chiefly to non-Lutheran influences.

Before entering further into the details of Luther’s educational plans we must cast a glance at a factor which seems to permeate both the above writings.

Polemical Trend of Luther’s Pedagogics

If we seek to characterise both the writings just spoken of we find that they amount to an appeal called forth by the misery of those times for some provision to be made to ensure a supply of educated men for the future. Frederick Paulsen describes them, particularly the earlier one, as nothing more than a “cry for help, wrung from Luther by the sudden, general collapse of the educational system which followed on the ecclesiastical upheaval.”[21] They were not dictated so much by a love for humanistic studies as such or by the wish to further the interests of learning in Germany, as by the desire to fill the secular-government berths with able, “Christian” men, and, above all, to provide preachers and pastors for the work Luther had commenced and for the struggle against Popery. The schools themselves were unobtrusively to promote the new Evangel amongst the young and in the home. Learning, according to Luther, as a Protestant theologian expressed it, was to enter “into the service of the Evangel and further its right understanding”; “the religious standpoint alone was of any real interest to him.”[22]

Melanchthon’s attitude to the schools was more broadminded. To some extent his efforts supplied what was wanting in Luther.[23] His object was the education of the people, whereas, in Luther’s eyes, the importance of the[10] schools chiefly lay in their being “seminaria ecclesiarum,” as he once calls them. With him their aim was too much the mere promoting of his specific theological interests, to the “preservation of the Church.”[24]

Hence the two writings differ but little from his usual polemical and hortatory works. They do not make of Luther the “father of the national schools,” as he has been erroneously termed, because, what he was after was not the real education of the masses but something rather different; still less do the booklets, with their every page reeking of the Word of God which he preached, make him the father of the modern undenominational schools.[40]

In fact, elementary schools as such have scarcely any place in these writings. What concerns him is rather the Latin grammar schools, and only as an afterthought does he passingly allude to the other schools in which children receive their first grounding.[41]

Luther’s standpoint as to the Church’s need of Grammar Schools is always the same, even when he speaks of them in the Table-Talk.

“When we are dead,” he says for instance, “where will[14] others be found to take our place unless there are schools? For the sake of the Churches we must have Christian schools and maintain them.”[42]—“When the schools multiply, things are going well and the Church stands firm.”[43]—“By means of such cuttings and saplings is the Church sown and propagated.”—“The schools are of great advantage in that they undoubtedly preserve the Churches.”[44]

“Hence a reformation of the schools and universities is also called for,” so he writes in a memorandum,[45] immediately after having declared, that “it is necessary to have good and pious preachers; all will depend on men who must be educated in the schools and universities.”[46]

For this reason, viz. on account of the preparation they furnished, he even has a kind word for the schools of former days.

He recalls to mind, that, even in Popery “the schools supplied parsons and preachers.” “In the schools the little boys learnt at least the Our Father and the Creed and the Church was wonderfully preserved by means of the tiny schools.”[47]—Of a certain hymn he remarks, that it was “very likely written and kept by some good schoolmaster or parson. The schools were indeed the all-important factor in the Church and the ‘ecclesia’ of the parson.”[48]

[15]

Luther’s Educational Plans

When, in his exhortations, Luther so warmly advocated the study of Latin and of languages generally, he was merely keeping to the approved traditional lines. Although he values ancient languages chiefly as a means for the better understanding of Scripture, he is so prepossessed in their favour in “worldly matters” that he even praises Latin at the expense of German. He is particularly anxious that Latin works should be read; among themselves the boys were to speak Latin. Recommending the study of tongues, he says: “If we make such a mistake, which God forbid, as to give up the study of languages, we shall not only lose the Gospel but come to such straits as to be unable to read or write aright either Latin or German.” The education of earlier days had not only led men away from the Gospel owing to the neglect of languages, but “the wretched people became mere brutes, unable to read or write either Latin or German correctly, nay, had almost lost the use of their reason.” It was statements such as these which drew from Friedrich Paulsen the exclamation: “Hence Christianity and education, nay, even sound common sense itself, all depend on the knowledge of languages!”[49]

Well founded as were Luther’s demands for a Latin education, yet we find in him a notable absence of discrimination between schools and schools.

Even in the preparatory schools he was anxious to see the study of languages introduced, and that for the girls too. Boys and girls, he says, ought to be instructed “in tongues and other arts and subjects.” He was of opinion, that, in this way, it would be possible from the very first to pick out those best fitted to pursue the study of languages and to become later “schoolmasters, schoolmistresses or preachers.”[50] He even appeals to the example of olden Saints such as Agnes, Agatha and Lucy when urging that the more talented girls should receive a grounding in languages.[51] “It would undoubtedly have been quite enough had the less ambitious children been taught merely to reckon, and to read and write German.” “Luther’s action in having as[16] many children of the people as possible taught languages … and his warfare against the use of German in the schools, whether in the towns, the villages, or the hamlets, was all very unpractical.… He had come to the conclusion that German schools, for one reason or another, were unsuited to be nurseries for the Church (‘seminaria ecclesiæ’), hence his effort to transplant into the Latin grammar schools every sapling on which he could lay hands.”[52]

In his two appeals for the schools in 1524 and 1530 Luther is less explicit in his requirements than the regulations for the Visitation. According to him, apart from the languages, it is the text of Scripture which must form the basis of all the instruction.

Holy Scripture, especially the Gospel, was to be everywhere “the chief and main object of study.” “Would to God that every town had also a school for girls where little maids might hear the Gospel for an hour a day, either in German or in Latin.… Ought not every Christian at the age of nine or ten to be acquainted with the whole of the Gospel? Young folk throughout Christendom are pining away and being pitiably ruined for want of the Gospel, in which they ought always to be instructed and exercised.”

“I would not advise anyone to send his child where Holy Scripture is not the rule. Where the Word of God is not constantly studied everything must needs be in a state of corruption.”[54]

In the event, the Bible, together with Luther’s Catechism which had to be committed to memory, and the hymn-book, became the chief manuals in the Lutheran schools. On these elements a large portion of the young generation of Germany was brought up.

In his suggestions on the instruction to be given in the Latin schools (for in reality it was only of these that he was thinking) Luther classes with languages and other arts and sciences “singing, music and mathematics as a whole.”[61] Greek and Hebrew no less than Latin would also be indispensable for future scholars. He further wished the authorities to establish “libraries” to further the studies; not, however, such libraries as the olden ones, containing “mad, useless, harmful, monkish books”—“donkey’s dung introduced by the devil”—“but Holy Scripture in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and German, and any other languages in which it might have been published; besides these the best and oldest commentaries in Greek, Hebrew and Latin, and furthermore such books as served for the study of languages, for instance, the poets and orators,” etc. “The most important of all were, however, the chronicles and histories … for these are of wonderful utility in enabling us to understand the course of events, for the art of governing, as also for perceiving the wonderful works of God. Oh, how many fine stories we ought to have about what has been done and enacted in the German lands, of which we, sad to say, know nothing.” In his appreciation of the study of history and of the proverbial philosophy of the people Luther was in advance of his day.

Owing to his polemics the judgment he passed on the olden libraries was very unjust; the remaining traces of them and the catalogues which have been published of those that have been dispersed show that, particularly from the early days of Humanism, the better mediæval collections of books had reached and even passed the standard Luther sets up in the matter of history and literature.

[20]

Very modest, not to say entirely inadequate, is the amount of time Luther proposes that the children should daily spend in the schools. Of the lower schools, in which Latin was already to be taught, he says, it would be enough for “the boys to go to such a school every day for an hour or two and work the rest of their time at learning a trade, or doing whatever was required of them.… A little girl, too, could easily find time to attend school for an hour daily and yet thoroughly perform her duties in the house.” Only the “pick” of the children, those, namely, who gave good promise, were to spend “more time and longer hours” in study.[62]

From all the above it is plain that there is good reason for not accepting the extravagant statement that Luther’s writings on education constitute the “charter of our national schools.” Others have extolled him as the founder of the “Gymnasium” on account of his reference in these works to the Latin schools. But even this is scarcely true, for, in them, the author either goes beyond the field covered by the Gymnasium or else fails to reach it. The Protestant pastor, Julius Boehmer, says in the popular edition of Luther’s works:[63] “It will not do to regard the work (”An die Radherrn“) as the ‘Charter of the Gymnasium,’ as has often been done, seeing that, as stated above, it is concerned with both the Universities and the lower-grade schools.”[64]

As to attendance at the Universities, of which Luther also speaks, he asks the authorities to forbid the matriculation of any but the “clever ones,” though among the masses “every fellow wanted a doctorate.”[65]

What he says of the various Faculties at the Universities is also noteworthy. With the object of reforming philosophy and the Arts course he wishes that of all the writings of Aristotle, that blind heathen master, who had hitherto led astray the Universities, only the “Logica,” “Rhetorica”[21] and “Poetica” should be retained; “the books: ‘Physicorum,’ ‘Metaphysicæ,’ ‘De anima’ and ‘Ethicorum’ must be dropped”; curiously enough these are the very works on which Melanchthon was later on to bestow so much attention. We know how hateful Aristotle was to Luther, because, in his heathen way, he teaches nothing of grace and faith, but, on the other hand, extols the natural virtues. Luther’s impulsive and unmethodical mode of thought was also, it must be said, quite at variance with the logical mind of the Stagirite.

According to Luther “artistic education must be wholly rooted out as a work of the devil; the very most that can be tolerated is the use of those works which deal with form, but even these must not be commented on or explained.”[66]

“The physicians,” he says, “I leave to reform their own Faculty; I shall see myself to the lawyers and theologians; and, first of all, I say that it would be a good thing if the whole of Canon Law from the first syllable to the last were expunged, more particularly the Decretals. We are told sufficiently in the Bible how to conduct ourselves in all matters.” Secular law, so he goes on, has also become a “wilderness,” and accordingly he is in favour of drastic reforms. “Of sensible rulers in addition to Holy Scripture there are plenty”; national law and national usage ought certainly not to be subordinated to the Imperial common law, or the land “governed according to the whim of the individual.… Justice fetched from far afield was nothing but an oppression of the people.” Theology, according to him, must above all be Biblical, though now everything is made to consist in the study of the Book of Sentences of the schoolman, Peter Lombard, and of his commentators, the Gospel in both schools and courts of justice being left “forlorn” in the dust under the bench.[67]

He rightly commends the Disputations, sometimes termed “circulares,” held at the Universities by the students under the direction of their professor; it pleased him well that the students should bring forward their own arguments, even though they were sometimes not sound; for “stairs can only be ascended step by step.” The Disputations, in his[22] view, also accustomed young men to “reflect more diligently on the subjects discussed.”[68]

To conclude, we may say a few words concerning the incentives he uses when urging parents to entrust their children to the schools.

Here Luther considerably oversteps the limits. In one passage, for instance, he thinks it his right to threaten the parents with the worst punishments of hell should they refuse to allow gifted children to study, in order to place them later at the service of the pure Word of God, or of the Christian rulers, as though forsooth parents and children had no right in the sight of God to choose their own profession. “Tell me what hell can be deep and hot enough for such shameful wickedness as yours?” “If you have a child who studies well, you are not free to bring him up as you please, nor to treat him as you will, but must bear in mind that you owe it to God to promote His two rules.” Should the father refuse to allow the boy to become a preacher, he says, then, so far as in him lies, he was really consigning to hell all those whom the budding preacher might have assisted; compared with such a crime against the common weal the “outbreaks of the rebellious peasants were mere child’s play.” This he says in a printed letter addressed in 1529 to the town commandant, Hans Metzsch of Wittenberg, which served as a prelude to his pamphlet “Das man Kinder zur Schulen halten solle.”[69] The writing is solely dictated by Luther’s bitter annoyance at the dearth of pastors and the indifference displayed within his fold.

In this letter, as in both his works on the schools, Luther, whilst dealing with the excuses of the parents, at the same time throws some interesting sidelights on the decline in learning and its causes.

The Decline of the Schools Following in the Wake of the Innovations

In the above letter to Metzsch Luther briefly gives as follows the principal reason for the decay of learning:[23] People were in the habit of saying, “If my son has learnt enough to gain his living then he is quite learned enough.”[70]

The contempt for learned studies was “largely due to the strongly utilitarian temper of the age.” “Owing in the first place to the flourishing state of the towns in the 13th and 14th century, and further to the influence of the great political upheaval which resulted from the discoveries and inventions of the day, a sober, practical spirit, directed solely to material gain, had been aroused throughout a wide section of the German nation. Preference was shown for the German schools where writing and reckoning were taught and which prepared children for the calling of the handicraftsman or the merchant.”[71] Against this tendency of the day Luther enters the lists particularly in his second work on the schools dedicated to the syndic of Nuremberg; at the same time he deals, not in the best of tempers, with the objections advanced by the merchant and industrial classes.[72] He speaks so harshly as almost to place in the same category those who refused to bring up their children “to art and learning” and those who turned them “into mere gluttons and sucking pigs, intent on food alone” (to Metzsch). “The world would thus become nothing but a pig-sty”; these “gruesome, noxious, poisonous parents were bent on making simple belly servers of their children,” etc.[73]

It is a question, however, whether the development of the material trend, so surprisingly rapid, with its destructive influence on study was not furthered by the religious revolution with which it coincided. Luther had sapped the respect which had obtained for the clerical life and for those callings which aimed at perfection, while at the same time, by belittling good works he loosened the inclinations of the purely natural man; by his repudiation of authority he had produced an intellectual self-sufficiency or rather self-seeking, which, in the case of many, passed into mere material egotism, though, of course, Luther’s work cannot be directly charged with the utilitarianism of the day.

What, however, made his revolt to contribute so greatly[24] to the decline of learning was its destruction of the wealth of clergy and monks, and its confiscation of so many livings and foundations established for educational purposes. By far the greater number of students had always consisted of such as wished to obtain positions in the Church among her secular clergy, or to become priests in some monastery. The ranks of these students had been thinned of late years now that the Catholic posts no longer existed, that the foundations which formerly provided for the upkeep of students had disappeared and that an avalanche of calumny and abuse had descended on the monasteries, priests and monks.[74] In addition to this there was the fear aroused in Catholic parents and pastors by the unhappy controversies on religion, lest the young should be infected in the higher schools these being so frequently hot-beds of the modern spirit, of hypercriticism and apostasy. Then, again, there was the distrust, springing from a similar motive, felt by the Catholic authorities for the centres of learning, and their niggardliness in making provision for them, an attitude which we meet with, for instance, in Duke George of Saxony. This was encouraged in the case of the rulers by the fear of social risings, such as they had experienced in the Peasant War, and which they laid to the charge of the new ideas on religion.

Among those favourable to Lutheranism the Wittenberg professor himself awakened a distaste for the Universities by telling them they must not allow their sons to study where Holy Scripture “did not rule” and “where the Word of God was not unceasingly studied.”[75] No one ever depreciated the Universities as much as Luther, who principally because their character was still Catholic, was never tired of calling them the “gates of hell,” and places worse than Sodom and Gomorrha.[76] Nor did he stop short at the condemnation of[25] their religious attitude. Luther’s antagonism to the whole system of philosophy, which the Universities, following the example of Aristotle and the schoolmen, had been so criminal as to admit, to the liberty they allowed to crazy human reason in spiritual matters, and to their championship of natural truth and natural morality as the basis of the life of faith, all this, when carried to its logical conclusion, necessarily brought Lutheranism into fatal conflict with the learned institutions.

If we look more closely into the decline of the schools, we shall find that it came about with extraordinary rapidity, a fact which proves it to have been the result of a movement both sudden and far-reaching.

Eobanus Hessus, a Humanist friendly to Luther, who lectured at Erfurt University, was so overcome with grief at sight of the decline that was making itself felt there that, in 1523, he composed an Elegy on the decay of learning entitled “Captiva” and sent it to Luther. The melancholy poem of 428 verses was printed in the same year under the title “Circular letter from the sorrowful Church to Luther.” Luther replied, praising the poem and assuring the sender that he was favourably disposed towards the humanistic studies and practices. He even speaks as though still full of the expectation of a great revival; his depression is, however, apparent from the very reasons he gives for his hopes: “I see that no important revelation of the Word of God has ever taken place without a preliminary revival and expansion of languages and erudition.” The present decline[28] might, however, he thought, be traced to the former state of things when they did not as yet possess the “pure theology.”[84]

But Hessus had complained, and with good reason, of the evil doings of the new believers, instances of which had come under his notice at Erfurt, and which had caused many to declare sadly: “We Germans are becoming even worse barbarians than before, seeing that, in consequence of our theology, learning is now going to the wall.”[85] At Erfurt the Lutheran theology had won its way to the front amidst tumults and revolts since the day when Crotus had greeted Luther on his way to Worms with his revolutionary discourse.[86] Since then there had been endless conflicts of the preachers with the Church of Rome and amongst themselves. Some were to be met with who inveighed openly against the profane studies at the Universities, and could see no educative value in anything save in their own theology and the Word of God. Attendance at the University had declined with giant strides since the spread of Lutheranism. Whereas from May 1520 to 1521 the names of 311 students had been entered, their number fell in the following year to 120 and in 1522 to 72; five years later there were only 14.

Hessus wrote quite openly in 1523: “On the plea of the Evangel the runaway monks here in Erfurt have entirely suppressed the fine arts … our University is despised and so are we.”

His colleague, Euricius Cordus, a learned partisan of Luther, expresses himself with no less disgust concerning the state of learning and decline of morals among the students.[87] “All those who have any talent,” we read in the Academic Year-Book in 1529, “are now forsaking barren scholarship in order to betake themselves to more remunerative professions, or to trade.”[88]

As at Erfurt, so also at other Universities, a rapid diminution in the number of students took place during those years. “It has been generally remarked,” a writer who has made a special study of this subject says, “that in the German Universities in the ’twenties of the 16th century[29] a sudden decrease in the number of matriculations becomes apparent.” He proves from statistics that at the University of Leipzig from 1521 to 1530 the number of those studying dropped from 340 to 100, at the University of Rostock from 123 to 33, at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder from 73 to 32 and, finally, at Wittenberg from 245 to 174.[89] The attendance at Heidelberg reached its lowest figure between 1521 and 1565, “this being due to the religious and social movements of the Reformation which proved an obstacle to study.” Of the German Universities generally the following holds good: “The religious and social disturbances of the Reformation brought about a complete interruption in the studies. Some of the Universities were closed down, at others the hearers dwindled down to a few.”[90]

“The Universities, Erfurt, Leipzig and the others stand deserted,” Luther himself says as early as 1530, gazing from the Coburg at the ruins, “and likewise here and there even the boys’ schools, so that it is piteous to see them, and poor Wittenberg is now doing better than any of them. The foundations and the monasteries, in my opinion, are probably also feeling the pinch.”[91] He speaks at the same time of the decline of the Grammar schools and the lower-grade schools which also to some extent shared the fate of the Universities.

In the Catholic parts of Germany the clergy schools and monastic schools suffered severely under the general calamity, as Luther had shrewdly guessed. Nor was the set-back confined to the Universities, but even the elementary schools suffered.

It was practically the universal complaint of the monasteries, so Wolfgang Mayer, the learned Cistercian Abbot of Alderspach in Bavaria, wrote in 1529, that they were unable to continue for lack of postulants; “in consequence of the Lutheran controversy the schools everywhere are standing empty and no one is willing any longer to devote himself to study. The clerical and likewise the religious state is[30] despised by all and no one is inclined to offer himself for this life.” “Oh, God who could ever have anticipated the coming of such a time! Everything is ruined, everything is in confusion, and there is nothing but sunderings, splits and heresies everywhere!” Yet these words come from the same author, who, in 1518, in the introduction to his Annals of Alderspach, had been so enthusiastic about the state of learning in Germany and had said: “Germany is richly blessed with the gifts of Minerva and disputes the palm in the literary arena with the Italians and the Greeks.” Whereas, between the years 1460-1514 no less than eighty brethren had entered Alderspach, Mayer, in his thirty years of office as Abbot, clothed only seventeen novices with the habit of St. Bernard, and, of these, five broke their vows and left the monastery. He expresses his fear that soon his religious house will be empty and ascribes the lack of novices largely to the fate which had overtaken the schools owing to the innovations.[92]

“Throughout the whole of the German lands,” as Luther himself admits: “No one will any longer allow his children to learn or to study.”[93] At the same time contemporaries bitterly bewailed the wildness of the students who still remained at the Universities. With regard to Wittenberg itself we have grievous complaints on this score from both Luther and Melanchthon.[94]

The disorder in the teaching institutions naturally had a bad effect on the education of the people, so that Luther’s efforts on behalf of the schools may readily be understood. The ecclesiastical Visitors of the Saxon Electorate had been forced to adopt stern measures in favour of the country schools. The Elector called to mind Luther’s admonitions, that he, as the “principal guardian of the young,” had authority to compel such towns and villages as possessed the means, to maintain schools, pulpits and parsonages, just as he might compel them to furnish bridges, high roads and footpaths.… “If, moreover, they have not the means,” so Luther had said, “there are the monastic lands[31] which most of them were bestowed for this very purpose.”[95] But in spite of the measures taken by the Elector and the urgent demands of the theologians for State aid, even in towns like Wittenberg the condition of the intermediate educational institutions was anything but satisfactory. In the case of his own sons Luther had grudgingly to acknowledge that he was “at a loss to find a suitable school.”[96] He accordingly had recourse to young theologians as tutors.

The disappointment of the Humanists was keen and their lot a bitter one. They had cherished high hopes of the dawn of a new era for classical studies in Germany. Many had rejoiced at the alliance which had at first sprung up between the Humanist movement and the religious revolution, believing it would clear the field for learning. They now felt it all the more deeply seeing that the age, being altogether taken up with arid theological controversies and the pressing practical questions of the innovations, had no longer the slightest interest in the educational ideals of antiquity. The violent changes in every department of life which the religious upheaval brought with it could not but be prejudicial to the calm intellectual labours of which the Humanists had dreamed; the prospect of Mutian’s “Beata tranquillitas” had vanished.

Mutian, at one time esteemed as the leader of the Thuringian Humanists, retired into solitude and died in the utmost poverty (1526) after the Christian faith had, as it would appear, once more awakened in him. Eminent lawyers among the Humanists, Ulrich Zasius of Freiburg and Christopher Scheurl of Nuremberg, openly detached themselves from the Wittenbergers. Scheurl, who had once waxed so enthusiastic about the light which had dawned in Saxony, now declared confidentially to Catholic friends that Wittenberg was a cesspool of errors and intellectual darkness.[97] The reaction which the recognition of Luther’s real aims produced in other Humanists, such as Willibald Pirkheimer, Crotus Rubeanus, Ottmar Luscinius and Henricus Glareanus, has already been referred to.[98] It is no less true[32] of the Humanists favourable to the Church than of those holding Lutheran views, that German Humanism was nipped in the bud by the ecclesiastical innovations. As Paulsen says: “Luther usurped the leadership [from the Humanists] and theology [that of the Protestants] drove the fine arts from the high place they had just secured; at the very moment of their triumph the Humanists saw the fruits of victory snatched from their grasp.”[99]

The event of greatest importance for the Humanists was, however, Erasmus’s open repudiation of Luther in 1523, and his attack on that point so closely bound up with all intellectual progress, viz. Luther’s denial of free-will.

Quite independent of this attack were the many and bitter complaints which the sight of the decline of his beloved studies drew from Erasmus: “The Lutheran faction is the ruin of our learning.”[100] “We see that the study of tongues and the love of fine literature is everywhere growing cold. Luther has heaped insufferable odium on it.”[101] He regrets the downfall of the schools at Nuremberg: “All this laziness came in with the new Evangel.”[102] He wished to have nothing more to do with these Evangelicals, he declares, because, through their doing, scholarship was everywhere being ruined. “These people [the preachers] are anxious for a living and a wife, for the rest they do not care a hair.”[103]

In the above year, 1523, at the beginning of his public estrangement with Erasmus, Luther had written: “Erasmus has done what he was destined to do; he has introduced the study of languages and recalled us from godless studies (‘a sacrilegis studiis’). He will in all likelihood die like Moses, in the plains of Moab [i.e. never see the Promised Land]. He is no leader to the higher studies, i.e. to piety”; in other words, unlike Luther, he was not able to lead his followers into the land of promise, where the enslaved will rules.[104]

Luther’s use of the term “sacrilega studia” invites us to cast a glance on the state of education before his day.

[33]

Higher Education before Luther’s Day

The condition of the schools before Luther, as described in our available sources, was very different from what Luther pictured to his readers in his works.

That, on the contrary, education, not only at the Universities, but also in the Latin schools, which Luther had more particularly in view, was in a flourishing condition and full of promise before it was so rudely checked by the religious disturbances which emptied all the schools, has been fully confirmed to-day by learned research. “The increased attendance at the Universities in the course of the 15th and the commencement of the 16th century is a very rapid one,” writes Franz Eulenburg. “Hence the decline in the[34] ’twenties of the latter century is all the more noticeable.”[106] “At the beginning of the 16th century,” says Friedrich Paulsen, “everyone of any influence or standing, strength or courage, devoted himself to the new learning: prelates, sovereigns, the townships and, above all, the young”; but, shortly after the outbreak of the ecclesiastical revolution, “everything became changed.”[107]

What had contributed principally to a salutary revival had been the sterling work of the older Humanists. Eminent and thoroughly religious men of the schools—men like Alexander Hegius and his pupils and successors Rudolf von Langen, Ludwig Dringenberg, Johannes Murmellius and, particularly, Jakob Wimpfeling, who, on account of his epoch-making pedagogic work, was called the teacher of Germany—zealously made their own the humanistic ideal of making of the classics the centre of the education of the young, and of paving the way for a new intellectual life, by means of the instruction given in the schools.[108] An attempt was made to combine classical learning with devotion to the old religion and respect for the Church. They also strove to carry out—though not always successfully—the task which was assigned to the schools by the Lateran Council held under Leo X; the aim of the teacher was to be not merely to impart grammar, rhetoric and the other sciences, but at the same time to instil into those committed to their charge the fear of God and zeal for the faith.[109] The sovereigns and the towns placed their abundant means at the disposal of the new movement and so did the Church, which at that time was still a wealthy organisation.

The number of the schools and scholars in itself proves the interest taken by the nation in the relative prosperity of its education.

Luther’s Success

Did Luther, by means of the efforts described above, succeed in bringing about any real improvement in the schools, particularly the Latin schools? The affirmative[36] cannot be maintained. At least it was a long time before the reform which he desiderated came, and what reform took place seems to have been the result less of Luther’s exhortations than of Melanchthon’s labours.

On the whole his hopes were disappointed. The famous saying of Erasmus: “Wherever Lutheranism prevails, there we see the downfall of learning,”[113] remained largely true throughout the 16th century, in spite of all Luther’s efforts.

Schiele says: Where Melanchthon’s school-regulations for the Saxon Electorate were enforced without alteration, Latin alone was taught, “but neither German nor Greek nor Hebrew,” that the pupils might not be overtaxed. Instruction in history and mathematics was not insisted on at all. Bugenhagen added the rudiments of Greek and mathematics. Only about twenty years after Luther’s “An die Radherrn” do we hear something of attempts being made to improve matters in the Lutheran districts. As a rule all that was done even in the large towns was to amalgamate several moribund schools and give them a new charter. “Even towns like Nuremberg and Frankfurt were unable, in spite of the greatest sacrifices, to introduce a well-ordered system into the schools. The two most eminent, practical pedagogues of the time, Camerarius and Micyllus, could not check the decline of their council schools.”[114]

Nuremberg, the highly praised home of culture, may here be taken as a case in point, because it was to the syndic of this city that Luther addressed his second writing, praising the new Protestant gymnasium which had been established there (above, p. 6). Yet, in 1530, after it had been in existence some years, this same syndic, Lazarus Spengler, sadly wrote: “Are there not any intelligent Christians who would not be highly distressed that in a few short years, not Latin only, but all other useful languages and studies have fallen into such contempt? Nobody, alas, will recognise the great misfortune which, as I fear, we shall soon suffer, and which even now looms in sight.”[115] In the Gymnasium, which[37] he had so much at heart, instruction was given free owing to the rich foundations, nevertheless but very few pupils were found to attend it. Eobanus Hessus, who was to have lent his assistance to promoting the cause of Humanism, left the town again in 1533. When Hessus before this complained to Erasmus that he had given offence to the town by his complaints of the low standard to which the school had fallen (above, p. 32), the latter replied in 1531, that he had received his information from the learned Pirkheimer and other friends of the professors there. He had indeed written that learning seemed to be only half alive there, in fact, at its last gasp, but he had done so in order by publishing the truth to spur them on to renewed zeal. “This I know, that at Liège and Paris learning is flourishing as much as ever. Whence then comes this torpor? From the negligence of those who boast of being Evangelicals. Besides, you Nurembergers have no reason to think yourselves particularly offended by me, for such complaints are to be heard from the lips of every honest man of every town where the Evangelicals rule.”[116] Camerarius, whom Melanchthon wished to be the soul of the school, turned his back on it in 1535 on account of the hopeless state of things. J. Poliander said in 1540: In Nuremberg, that populous and well-built city, there are rich livings and famous professors, but owing to the lack of students the institution there has dwindled away. “The lecturers left it, which caused much disgrace and evil talk to the people of Nuremberg, as everybody knows.”[117] When Melanchthon stayed for a while at Nuremberg in 1552 by order of the Elector, the Gymnasium was a picture of desolation. In the school regulations issued by the magistrates the pupils were reproached with contempt of divine service, blasphemy, persistent defiance of school discipline, etc., and with being “barbarous, rude, wild, wanton, bestial and sinful.” Camerarius even wrote from Leipzig advising the town-council to break up the school.[118]

There is no doubt that in other districts where Lutheranism prevailed Latin schools were to be found where good discipline reigned and where masters and pupils alike[38] worked with zeal; the records, however, have far more to say of the decline.

In the elementary schools which gradually came into being the parish-clerk gave instruction in reading and writing, and, in addition, tried to teach the catechism by reciting it aloud and making the children repeat it after him. The earliest definite regulations which imposed this duty on the clerk in addition to the catechism were those issued by Duke Christopher of Würtemberg in 1559, who also devoted his attention to the founding of German schools. The latter, however, were not intended for the smaller villages, nor did they receive any support from the “poor box.” Nor did all the children attend the schools kept by the clerk. The school regulations issued by the Protestant Duke were in themselves good, but their effect was meagre.[123] In the Saxon Electorate it was only in 1580 that the parish-clerks of the villages were directed to keep a school.[124]

Finally, to come to the Protestant Universities; it was only in the latter part of the 16th century that the attendance, which, as we saw above, had fallen so low, began once more to make a better show.

In 1540 Melanchthon expressed himself as satisfied with the condition of learning which prevailed in them.[125] But among others whose opinion was less favourable we find Luther’s friend Justus Jonas, who, two years before this, in 1538, wrote, that, since the Evangel had begun to make its way through Germany, the Universities were silent as the[40] grave.[126] The testimony of Rudolf Walther, a Swiss, who had visited many German Universities and been on terms of intimacy with eminent Protestant theologians, must also receive special attention. In 1568 he wrote—though his words may perhaps be somewhat discounted by his own theological isolation—“The German Universities are now in such a state that, to say nothing of the conceit and carelessness of the professors and the impudent immorality which prevails, they are in no way remarkable. Heidelberg, however, is praised more than the others, for the attacks which menace her on all sides do not allow this University to slumber.”[127]

Heidelberg was the chief educational centre of those who held Calvinistic views. Since 1580 the attendance at the University had notably increased owing to the influx of students from abroad. Towards the close of the century, with Wittenberg and Jena, it headed the list of the Universities of the new faith in respect of the number of matriculations. Jena, like its sister Universities of Marburg, Königsberg and Helmstädt, had been founded as a seminary of Protestant theology and at the same time of Roman law, which served to strengthen the absolutism of the princes. Since the appointment of Flacius Illyricus in 1557 it had become a stronghold of pure Lutheranism. The theological squabbles within the bosom of Protestantism, here as in the other Universities, were, however, disastrous to peace, and any healthy progress. Characteristic of the treatment meted out to the professors by Protestant statesmen of a different opinion, even when they were not summarily dismissed, is the discourse of the Saxon Chancellor, Christian Brück, to the professors of the theological Faculty at Jena in 1561: “You black, red and yellow knaves and rascals! A plague[41] upon you all you shameless scamps and rebels! Would that you were knocked on the head, disgraced and blinded!”[128]

The University of Wittenberg now registered the largest number of students. Although on Luther’s first public appearance crowds of students had been attracted by the fame of his name, yet these decreased to such an extent that between 1523 and 1533 not a single theological degree was conferred. About 1550, however, the Faculties again numbered about 2000 students, thanks chiefly to Melanchthon. In 1598 the number is even given as exceeding 2000. Throughout the whole of the century, from the beginning of the ecclesiastical schism, a considerable percentage of students had poured in from abroad. Of the wantonness of the Wittenberg students of the various Faculties, contemporaries as well as official documents wax so eloquent that the University would seem to have enjoyed an unenviable notoriety in this respect among the Protestant educational establishments.[129] The fact that, as just mentioned, the students were largely recruited from other countries must be taken into account. Wittenberg suffered more than the other Universities from the quarrels which, according to Luther, tore to pieces Protestant theology. What was said in a sermon in 1571 on the words “Peace be with you” is peculiarly applicable to Wittenberg: “Only see what quarrelling and envy, hatred, and persecution, and expulsion there has been, and still is, among the professors at Wittenberg, Jena, Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, Königsberg and indeed all the Universities which really should be flourishing in the light of our beloved Evangel; it would indeed be a great and heavenly work of God if all the young men at these Universities did not fall into such vices, and even become utterly corrupted.”[130]

[42]

4. Benevolence and Relief of the Poor

Luther’s attitude towards poor relief, which ever since the rise of Protestantism has been the subject of extravagant eulogies, can only be put in its true light by a closer examination of the state of things before his day.[131]

At the Close of the Middle Ages

Indications of the provision made by the community for relief of the poor are found in the Capitularies of Charles the Great, indeed even in the 6th century in the canons of a Council held at Tours in 567. Corporate relief of the poor, later on carried out by means of the guilds, and the care of the needy in each particular district undertaken by unions of the parishes, were of a public and organised character. It has been justly remarked concerning the working of the mediæval institutions: “The results achieved by our insurance system were then attained by means of family support, corporations, village clubs and unions of the lords of the manors.… Such organised relief of the poor made any State relief unnecessary. The State authorities concerned themselves only negatively, viz. by prohibiting mendicancy and vagabondage.”[132] Private benevolence occupied the first place, since the very nature of Christian charity involves love of our neighbour. Its work was mainly done by means of the ecclesiastical institutions and the monasteries. Special arrangements also were made, under the direction of the Church, to meet the various needs, and such were to be found in considerable numbers both in large places and in small; all, moreover, was carried out on the lines of a careful selection of deserving cases and a wise control of expenditure.

The share taken by the Church in the whole work of charity was, generally speaking, a guarantee that the work was managed conscientiously.

Though among both monks and clergy scandalous instances of greed and self-seeking were not wanting, yet[43] there were many who lived up to their profession and were zealous in assisting in the development of works of charity. The mendicant Orders, by the very example of the poverty prescribed by their rule, helped to combat all excessive avarice; their voluntary privations taught people how to endure the trials of poverty and they showed their gratitude for the alms bestowed on them by their labours for souls in the pulpit and in the school, and by doing their utmost to promote learning.

Every Order was exhorted by its Rule to fly idleness and to perform works of neighbourly charity.

There are plentiful sermons and works of piety dating from the close of the Middle Ages which prove how the faithful were not only urged to be charitable to the needy, but also to obey God’s command and to labour, this exhortation referring particularly to the poor themselves, who were not unnecessarily to become a burden to others. Again and again are the words of the Bible emphasised: “In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread,” and “Whoever will not work neither let him eat” (Gen. iii. 19; 2 Thes. iii. 10).

In spite of this, lack of industrial occupation, the difficulty and even sometimes the entire absence of public supervision, and, in part also, the ease with which alms were to be had, bred a large crop of beggars, who moved about from place to place and who, in late mediæval times, became a perfect plague throughout the whole of Germany. Hence all the greater towns in the 15th century and early years of the 16th issued special regulations to deal with the poor. In the matter of these laws for the regulation of charity the city-fathers acted independently, strong in the growing consciousness of their standing and duties. Lay Guardians of the Poor were appointed by the magistrates and poor-boxes were established, the management of which devolved on the municipal authorities. The Catholic Netherlands set an excellent example in this respect by utilising the old hospital regulations and, with their help, drawing up new and independent organisations. Antwerp, Brussels, Louvain, Mechlin, Ghent, Bruges, Namur and other towns already possessed a well-developed system of poor relief.

All the enactments, dating from late mediæval times prior to the religious innovations, for the poor of the other great[47] German towns, for instance, of Ratisbon (1523), Breslau (1525) and Würzburg (1533) are of a more or less similar character. Thus, thanks to the economic pressure, there was gradually evolved, in the centres of German prosperity and commercial industry, a sober but practical and far-sighted poor-law system.[139]

It was not, indeed, so easy to get rid of the existing disorders; to achieve this a lengthy struggle backed by the regulations just established would have been necessary. Above all, the tramps and vagabonds, who delighted in idleness and adventure and who often developed dangerous proclivities, continued to be the pest of the land. The cause of this economic disorder was a deep-seated one and entirely escapes those who declare that beggary sprang solely from the idea foisted on the Church, viz. that “poverty was meritorious and begging a respectable trade.”

Luther’s Efforts. The Primary Cause of their Failure

The spread of Lutheranism had its effect on the municipal movement for the relief of the poor, nor was its influence all for the good.

In 1528 and 1529 Luther twice published an edition of the booklet “On the Roguery of the False Beggars” (“Liber vagatorum”), a work dating from the beginning of the 16th century; in his preface to it he says, that the increase in fraudulent vagrancy shows “how strong in the world is the rule of the devil”; “Princes, lords, town-magistrates and, in fact, everybody” ought to see that alms were bestowed only on the beggars and the needy in their own neighbourhood, not on “rogues and vagabonds” by whom even he himself (Luther) had often been taken in. Everywhere in both towns and villages registers should be kept of the poor, and strange beggars not allowed without a “letter or testimonial.”[140]

He was, however, not always so circumspect in his demands and principles. In a passage of his work “An den Adel” he makes a wild appeal, which in its practicability falls short of what had already been done in various parts of Germany. The only really new point in it is, that, in order to make an end of begging and poverty, the mendicant[48] Orders should be abolished, and the Roman See deprived of their collections and revenues. Of the ordinary beggars he says, without being sufficiently acquainted with the state of the case, that they “might easily be expelled,” and that it would be an “easy matter to deal with them were we only brave and in earnest enough.” To the objection that the result of violent measures would be a still more niggardly treatment of the poor he replied in 1520: “It suffices that the poor be fairly well provided for, so that they die not of hunger or cold.” With a touch of communism he exaggerates, at the expense of the well-to-do and those who did no work, an idea in itself undoubtedly true, viz. that work is man’s portion: “It is not just that, at the expense of another’s toil, a man should go idle, wallow in riches and lead a bad life, whilst his fellow lives in destitution, as is now the perverted custom.… It was never ordained by God that anyone should live on the goods of another.”[141]

In itself it could only have a salutary effect when Luther goes on to speak, as he frequently does, against begging among the class whose duty it was to work with their hands, and when he attempts both to check their idleness and to rouse a spirit of charity towards the deserving.[142] He even regards the Bible text, “Let there be no beggar or starving person amongst you,” as universally binding on Christians. Only that he is oblivious of the necessary limitations when he exclaims: “If God commanded this even in the Old Testament how much more is it incumbent on us Christians not to let anyone beg or starve!”[143]

The latter words refer to those who are really poor but quite willing to work (a class of people which will always exist in spite of every effort); as for those who “merely eat” he demands that they be driven out of the land. This he does in a writing of 1526 addressed to military men; here he divides “all man’s work into two kinds,” viz. “agricultural work and war work.” A third kind of work, viz. the teaching office, to which he often refers elsewhere, is[49] here passed over in silence. “As for the useless people,” he cries, “who serve neither to defend us nor to feed us, but merely eat and pass away their time in idleness, [the Emperor or the local sovereign] should either expel them from the land or make them work, as the bees do, who sting to death the drones that do not work but devour the honey of the others.”[144] His unmethodical mind failed to see to what dire consequences these hastily penned words could lead.

With the object of alleviating poverty he himself, however, lent a hand to certain charitable institutions, which, though they did not endure, have yet their place in history. Such were the poor-boxes of Wittenberg, Leisnig, Altenburg and some other townships. This institution was closely bound up with his scheme of gathering together the “believing Christians” into communities apart. These communities were not only to have their own form of divine worship and to use the ecclesiastical penalties, but were also to assist the poor by means of the common funds in a new and truly Evangelical fashion.

The olden poor-law ordinances of mediæval times had been revised at Wittenberg and embodied in the so-called “Beutelordnung.”[145] Carlstadt and the town-council, under the influence of Luther’s earlier ideas, substituted for this on Jan. 24, 1522, a new “Order for the princely town of Wittenberg”; at the same time they reorganised the common funds.[146] These regulations Luther left in force, when, on his return from the Wartburg, he annulled the rest of Carlstadt’s doings; the truth is, that they were not at variance even with his newer ideals.

In 1523 he himself promoted a similar but more highly developed institution for the relief of the poor in the little Saxon town of Leisnig on the Freiberg Mulde; this was to be in the hands of the community of true believers into which the inhabitants had formed themselves at the instigation of the zealous Lutheran, Sebastian von Kötteritz. At Altenburg also, doubtless through Luther’s doing, his friend Wenceslaus Link, the preacher in that town, made a somewhat similar attempt to establish a communal poor-box. In[50] many other places efforts of a like nature were made under Lutheran auspices.

How far such undertakings spread throughout the Protestant congregations cannot be accurately determined. We know, however, the details of the scheme owing to our still having the rules drawn up for Leisnig.[147]

His premonition of failure was only too soon realised at Leisnig. The new scheme could not be made to work. The magistrates refused to resign the rights they claimed of disposing of the foundations and similar charitable sources of revenue or to hand over the incomings to the coffer-masters, for the latter, they argued, were representatives, not of the congregation but of the Church. Hence the fund had to go begging. Luther came to words with the town-council, but was unable to have his own way, even though he appealed to the Elector.[149] He lamented in 1524 that the example of Leisnig had been a very sad one, though, as the first of its kind,[150] it should have served as a model. Of Tileman Schnabel, an ex-Augustinian and college friend of Luther’s at Erfurt, who had been working at Leisnig as preacher and “deacon,” Luther wrote, that he would soon find himself[52] obliged to leave if he did not wish to die of hunger. “Incidents such as these deprive the parsonages of their best managers. Maybe they want to drive them back to their old monasteries.”[151]

Thus the parochial fund of Leisnig, which some writers have extolled so highly, really never came into existence. It lives only in the directions given by Luther.

So ill were parson and schoolmaster cared for at Leisnig, in spite of all the Church property that had been sequestered, that, according to the Visitation of 1529, the preacher there had been obliged to ply a trade and gain a living by selling beer. In 1534, so the records of the Visitations of that date declare, the schoolmaster had for five years been paid no salary.

Link, the Altenburg preacher, was also unsuccessful in his efforts to carry out a similar scheme. He complained as early as 1523, in a writing entitled “Von Arbeyt und Betteln,” that this Christian undertaking had so far “not only not been furthered but had actually gone backward” in spite of all his efforts from the pulpit. He, too, addresses himself to the “rulers” and reminds them that it is their duty “to the best of their ability to provide for the poverty of the masses.”[152]

To Luther’s bitter grief and disappointment Wittenberg (see above, p. 49) also furnished anything but an encouraging example. Here the incentive to the introduction of the common fund by Carlstadt had been the resolve of the town council “to seize on the revenues of the Church, the brotherhoods and guilds and divert them into the common fund, to be employed for general purposes, and for paying the Church officials.… No less than twenty-one pious guilds were to be mulcted.”[153] Yet the Wittenberg measures were so little a success, in spite of all Luther’s efforts, that in his sermons he could not sufficiently deplore the absence of charity and prevalence of avarice and greed amongst both burghers and[53] councillors.[154] The Beutelordnung continued indeed in existence, but merely as an administrative department of the town council.

It is not surprising therefore that Luther gave up for the while any attempt at putting into practice the Leisnig project elsewhere; his scheme for assembling the true Christians into a community had also perforce to betake itself unto the land of dreams. Only in his “Deudsche Messe” of 1526 does the old idea again force itself to the front: “Here a general collection for the poor might be made among the congregation; it should be given willingly and distributed amongst the needy after the example of St. Paul, 2 Cor. ix.… If only we had people earnestly desirous of being Christians, the manner and order would soon be settled.”[155]

Subsequent to 1526, however, Bugenhagen drafted better regulations and poor laws for Wittenberg and other Protestant towns, founded this time on a more practical basis. (See below, p. 57 f.)

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Luther, nevertheless, continued to complain of the Wittenbergers. The indignation he expresses at the lack of all charitable endeavours throughout the domain of the new Evangel serves as a suitable background for these complaints.

Want of charity and of neighbourly love was the primary and most important cause of the failure of Luther’s efforts.

Finally he recalls the enactments against begging by which the “authorities forbade foreign beggars and vagabonds and also idlers.” This brings us back to the attempts made, with the consent of the authorities in the Lutheran districts, to obviate the social evils by means similar to those adopted at Leisnig.

A Second Stumbling Block: Lack of Organisation

It was not merely lack of charity that rendered nugatory all attempts to put in force regulations such as those drafted for Leisnig, but also defects in the inner organisation of the schemes. First, to lump all sorts of monies intended for different purposes into a single fund could prove nothing but a source of confusion and diminish the amount to be devoted directly to charitable purposes; this, too, was the effect of keeping no separate account of the expenditure for the relief of the poor.

Then, again, the intermingling of secular and spiritual which the arrangement involved was very unsatisfactory. We can trace here more clearly than elsewhere the quasi-mystic idea of the congregation of true believers which retained so strong a hold on Luther’s imagination till about 1525. With singular ignorance of the ways of the world he wished to set up the common fund on a community based on faith and charity in which the universal priesthood was supposed to have abolished all distinction between the spiritual and secular authorities, nay, between the two very[56] spheres themselves. He took for granted that Evangelical rulers would be altogether spiritual simply because they possessed the faith; faith, so he seemed to believe, would of itself do everything in the members of the congregation; under the guidance of the spirit everything would be “held in common, after the example of the Apostles,” as he says in the preface of the Leisnig regulations. But what was possible of accomplishment owing to abundance of grace in Apostolic times was an impossible dream in the 16th century. “The old ideal of an ecclesiastical commonwealth on which, according to the preface, Luther wished to construct a kind of insurance society for the relief of the poor, could not subsist for a moment in the keen atmosphere of a workaday world where men are what they are.”[163]

Hence the latest writer on social politics and the poor law, from whom the above words are taken, openly expresses his wonder at the “utopian, religio-communistic foundation on which the Wittenberg and Leisnig schemes, and those drawn up on similar lines, were based,” at the “utopian efforts” with their “absurd system of expenditure,” which, owing to their “fundamental defects and the mixing of the funds, were doomed sooner or later to fail.” This “travesty of early Christianity” tended neither to promote the moral and charitable sense of the people nor to further benevolent organisation. “Any rational policy of poor law” was, on the contrary, shut out by these early Lutheran institutions; the relief of the poor was thereby placed on an “eminently unstable basis”; the poor-boxes only served “to encourage idleness.” “Not in such a way could the modern poor-law system, based as it is on impersonal, legal principles, be called into being.”

“No system of poor law has ever had less claim to be placed at the head of a new development than this one [of Leisnig].”[164]

The years 1525 and 1526 brought the turning point in Luther’s attitude towards the question of poor relief, particularly owing to the effect of the Peasant War on his views of society and the Church.

The result of the war was to bring the new religious system into much closer touch with the sovereigns and[57] “thus practically to give rise to a theocracy.”[165] In spite of the changes this produced, Luther’s schemes for providing for the poor continued to display some notable defects.

The whole of the outward life of the Church being now under the direction of the Protestant sovereign, the system of poor relief began to assume a purely secular character, having nothing but an outward semblance of religion. The new regulations were largely the work of Bugenhagen, who was a better organiser than Luther. The many enactments he was instrumental in drafting for the North German towns embody necessary provisions for the relief of the poor.

Officials appointed by the sovereign or town-council directed, or at least supervised, the management, while the “deacons,” i.e. the ecclesiastical guardians of the fund, were obliged to find the necessary money and, generally, to bear all the odium for the meagreness and backwardness of the distribution. The members of the congregation had practically no longer any say in the matter. The parish’s share in the relief of the poor was made an end of even before it had lost the other similar rights assigned to it by Luther, such as that of promulgating measures of discipline, appointing clergy, administering the Church’s lands, etc. Just as the organisation of the Church was solely in the hands of the authorities to the complete exclusion of the congregations, so poor relief and the ecclesiastical regulations on which it was based became merely a government concern.

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What Bugenhagen achieved, thanks to the ecclesiastical regulations for poor relief, for which he was directly or indirectly responsible, gave “good hopes, at least at first, of bringing the difficult social problem of those days nearer to a solution.” At any rate they were a “successful attempt to bring some order into the whole system of relief, by means of the authorities and on a scale not hitherto attempted by the Church.”[166] It is true that he, like those who were working on the same lines, e.g. Hedio, Rhegius, Hyperius, Lasco and others, often merely transplanted into a new soil the rules already in vogue in the Catholic Netherlands and the prosperous South German towns. Hedio of Strasburg, for instance, translated into German the entire work of Vives, the opponent of Lutheranism, and exploited it practically and also sought to enter into epistolary communication with Vives. The prohibition of mendicancy, the establishment of an independent poor-box apart from the rest of the Church funds, and many other points were borrowed by Bugenhagen and others from the olden Catholic regulations.

Such efforts were in many localities supplemented by the kindliness of the population and, thanks to a spirit of Christianity, were not without fruit.

As, however, everybody, Princes, nobles, townships and peasants, were stretching out greedy hands towards the now defenceless possessions of the olden Church, a certain reaction came, and the State, in the interests of order, saw fit to grant a somewhat larger share to the ecclesiastical authorities in the administration of Church property and relief funds. The Lutheran clergy and the guardians of the poor were thus allowed a certain measure of free action, provided always that what they did was done in the name of the sovereign, i.e. the principal bishop. The new institutions created by such men as Bugenhagen soon lost their public, communal or State character, and sank back to the level of ecclesiastical enterprises. Institutions of this stamp had, however, “been more numerous and better endowed[59] in the Middle Ages and were so later in the Catholic districts.”

Owing in part to a technical defect in the Protestant regulations, dishonesty and carelessness were not excluded from the management and distribution of the poor fund, the administration falling, as a matter of course, into the hands of the lowest class of officials. Catholics had good reason for branding it as a “usury and parson’s box.”[167] The reason why, in Germany, Protestant efforts for poor relief never issued in a satisfactory socio-political system capable of relieving the poor and thus improving the condition of both Church and State, lay, not merely in the economic difficulties of the time, but, “what is more important, in the social and moral working of the new religion and new piety which Luther had established.”[168]

Influence of Luther’s Ethics. Robbery of Church Property Proves a Curse

Not only had the Peasant Rising and the reprisals taken by the rulers and the towns brought misery on the land and hardened the hearts of the princes and magistrates, not only had the means available for the relief of the poor been diminished, first by the founding of new parishes in place of the old ones, which had in many cases been supported by the monasteries and foundations, secondly, by the demands of Protestants for the restitution of many ecclesiastical benefices given by their Catholic forefathers, thirdly, by the drying up of the spring of gifts and donations, but “the common fund, which had been swelled by the shekels of the Church, had now to bear many new burdens and only what remained—which often enough was not much—was employed for charitable purposes.” In the same way, and to an even greater extent, must the Lutheran ethics be taken into account. Luther’s views on justification by faith alone destroyed “that impulse of the Middle Ages towards open-handed charity.” This was “an ethical defect of the Lutheran doctrine”; it was only owing to his “utter ignorance of the world” that Luther persisted in believing that faith would, of itself and without any “law,”[60] beget good works and charity.[169] “It was a cause of wonder and anxiety to him throughout his life that his assumption, that faith would be the best ‘taskmaster and the strongest incentive to good works and kindliness,’ never seemed to be realised.… The most notable result of Luther’s doctrine of grace and denial of all human merit was, at least among the masses, an increase of libertinism and of the spirit of irresponsibility.”[170]

The dire effects of the new principles were also evident in the large and wealthy towns, the exemplary poor-law regulations of which we have considered above. After the innovations had made their way among them we hear little more of provisions being made against mendicancy, for the promotion of work and for the relief of poverty. Hence, as regards these corporations … the change of religion meant, according to Feuchtwanger, “a decline in the quality of their social philanthropy.” (Cp. above, vol. iv., p. 477 ff.)

From some districts, however, we have better reports of the results achieved by the relief funds. In times of worst distress good Christians were always ready to help. Much depended on the spirit of those concerned in the work. In general, however, the complaints of the preachers of the new faith, including Melanchthon, wax louder and louder.[171] They tell us that the patrimony of the poor was being carried off by the rapacity of the great or disappearing under the hands of avaricious and careless administrators, whilst new voluntary contributions were no longer forthcoming. We find no lack of those, who, like Luther’s friend Paul Eber, are given to noting the visible, palpable consequences of the wrong done to the monasteries, brotherhoods and churches.[172]

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Adolf Harnack is only re-echoing the complaints of 16th century Protestants when he writes: “We may say briefly that, alas, nothing of importance was achieved, nay, we must go further: the Catholics are quite right when they assert that they, not we, lived to see a revival of charitable work in the 16th century, and, that, where Lutheranism was on the ascendant, social care of the poor was soon reduced to a worse plight than ever before.”[182] The revival in Catholic countries to which Harnack refers showed itself particularly in the 17th century in the activity of the new Orders, whereas at this time the retrograde movement was still in progress in the opposite camp. “For a long time the Protestant relief system produced only insignificant results.” It was not till the rise of Pietism and Rationalism, i.e. until the inauguration of the admirable Home Missions, that things began to improve. But Pietism and Rationalism are both far removed from the original Lutheran orthodoxy.[183]

Some Recent Excuses

It has been remarked in excuse of Luther and his want of success, that, “with merit and the hope of any reward, there also vanished the stimulus to strive after the attainment of salvation by means of works,” and that this being so, it was “not surprising” that charity—the selfless fruit of faith—was wanting in many; “for new, albeit higher moral motives, cannot at once come into play with the same facility as the older ones which they displace; there comes a time when the old motives have gone and when the new ones are operative only in the case of a few; the leaven at first only works gradually.” The history of the spread of “the higher motives of morality” not only at the outset of Christianity but at all times, shows, however, as a rule these to be most active under the Inspiration of the Divine[64] Spirit at the time when first accepted. Nor does the comparison with the leaven in the passage quoted apply to a state of decline and decay, where, for a change to be effected, outside and entirely different elements were needed. We are told that the new motives could not at once take effect, but, where the delay extends over quite a century and a half, the blame surely cannot be laid on the shortness of the time of probation.

Again, when we hear great stress laid on the fact that Luther at least paved the way for State relief of the poor and, thus, far outstrode the mediæval Church, one is justified in asking, whether in reality State relief of the poor, with compulsory taxation, non-intervention of Christian charity, or individual effort, or without any morally elevating influence, is something altogether ideal; whether, on the other hand, voluntary charity, as practised particularly by associations, Orders or ecclesiastics, does not deserve a much higher place and take precedence of, or at least stand side by side with, the forced “charity” of the State. Even to-day Protestantism is seeking to reserve a place for voluntary charitable effort. Considerations as to the value of mere State charity would, however, carry us too far. We must refer this matter to experts.[184]

That, before Luther’s day, the authorities took a reasonable and even larger share in the relief of the poor than he himself demanded, is evident from what has been said above (p. 43 ff.).

As a matter of fact, judging by what has gone before, the assertion that the system of State relief of the poor was originated by Luther or by Protestantism calls for considerable “revision.” “The reformation,” so the sociological authority we have so frequently quoted says, “created neither the communal nor the governmental[65] system of poor relief.”[185] This he finds borne out by the different schemes for the relief of the poor contained in the old ecclesiastical constitutions. It is true, he says, that, “according to the idea in vogue, the origin of our present Poor Law can be traced back directly” to the Reformation. Nevertheless, the changes that took place in the social care of the poor subsequent to Luther’s day, though certainly “far-reaching enough,” were “exclusively negative”;[186] owing to his exertions the Church property and that set aside for the relief of the poor was secularised, and the previous free-handed method of distribution ceased; all further growth of legislation on the subject in the prosperous and independent townships was effectually hindered; out of the mass of property that passed into alien hands only a few scraps could be spared by the secular rulers and handed over to the ministers for the benefit of the poor.

This was no State-regulation of poor relief as we now understand it. Still, the way was paved for it in so far as the props of the olden ecclesiastical system of relief had been felled and had eventually to be replaced by something new. In this sense it may be said that Luther’s work “paved the way” for the new conditions.[187]

5. Luther’s Attitude towards Worldly Callings

An attempt has been made to prove the truth of the dictum so often met with on the lips of Protestants, viz. that “Luther was the creator of those views of the world and life on which both the State and our modern civilisation rest,” by arguing, that, at least, he made an end of contempt for worldly callings and exalted the humbler as well as the higher spheres of life at the expense of the ecclesiastical and monastic. What Luther himself frequently states concerning his discovery of the dignity of the secular callings has elsewhere been placed in its true light (and the unhistoric accounts of his admirers are all in last resort based on his). This was done in the most suitable place, viz. when dealing with “Luther and Lying,” and with his spiteful caricature of the mediæval Church.[188] Still, for the sake of completeness, the claims Luther makes in this respect, and some new[66] proofs in refutation of them, must be briefly called to mind in the present chapter. It is not unusual for his admirers to speak with a species of awe of Luther’s achievements in this respect:

The claims Luther makes in respect of his labours on behalf of the worldly callings are even greater than his admirers would lead one to suppose. His actual words reveal their hyperbolical character, or rather untruth, by their very extravagance.

Luther we have heard say: “Such honour and glory have I by the grace of God, that, since the time of the Apostles no doctor … has confirmed and instructed the consciences of the secular estates so well and lucidly as I.”[189]—It was quite different with the “monks and priestlings”! They “damned both the laity and their calling.” These “revolutionary blasphemers” condemned “all the states of life that God instituted and ordained”; on the other hand, they extol their self-chosen and accursed state as though outside of it no one could be saved.[190]

The phantom of a Popish, monkish holiness-by-works never left him. In his Commentary on Genesis, though he holds that he has already taught the Papists more than they deserve on the right appreciation of the lower callings and labours, yet he once more informs them of his discovery, “that the work of the household and of the burgher,” such as hospitality, the training of children, the supervision of servants, “despised though they be as common and worthless,” are also well-pleasing to God. “Such things must be judged according to the Word [of God], not according to reason!… Let us therefore thank God that we, enlightened by the Word, now perceive what are really good works, viz. obedience to those in authority, respect for parents, supervision of the servants and assistance of our brethren.” “These are callings instituted by God.” “When the mother of a family provides diligently for her family, looks after the children, feeds them, washes them and rocks[67] them in the cradle,” this calling, followed for God’s sake, is “a happy and a holy one.”[191]

Luther is never tired of claiming as his peculiar teaching that even the most humble calling—that of the maid or day-labourer—may prove a high and exalted road to heaven and that every kind of work, however insignificant, performed in that position of life to which a man is called is of great value in God’s sight when done in faith. He is fond of repeating, that a humble ploughman can lay up for himself as great a treasure in heaven by tilling his field, as the preacher or the schoolmaster, by their seemingly more exalted labours.

There is no doubt, that, by means of this doctrine, which undoubtedly is not without foundation, he consoled many of the lower classes, and brought them to a sense of their dignity as Christians. It is true that it was his polemics against monasticism and the following of the counsels of perfection which led him to make so much of the ordinary states of life and to paint them in such glowing colours. Nevertheless, we must admit that he does so with real eloquence and by means of comparisons and figures taken from daily life which could not but lend attraction to the truth and which differ widely from the dry, scholastic tone of some of his Catholic predecessors in this field.

He does not, however, really add a single fresh element to the olden teaching, or one that cannot be traced back to earlier times.

Either Luther was not aware of this, or else he conceals it from his hearers and readers. It would have been possible to confront him with a whole string of writers, ancient and mediæval, and even from the years when he himself began his work, whose writings teach the same truths, often, too, in language which leaves nothing more to be wished for on the score of impressiveness and feeling.[192] So many proofs, from reason as well as from revelation, had always been forthcoming in support of these truths that it is hard for us now to understand how the idea gained ground that Christians[68] had forgotten them. Those who, down to the present day, repeat Luther’s assertions make too little account of this psychological riddle.

Here we shall merely add to what has already been brought forward a few further proofs from Luther’s own day.

Luther’s Pessimism Regarding Various Callings. The Peasants

When olden writers dealt with the relation between the Gospel and the worldly callings as a rule they pointed out with holy pride, that Christianity does not merely esteem every calling very highly but embraces them all with holy charity and cherishes and fosters the various states as sons of a common father. Nothing was so attractive in the great exponents of the Gospel teaching and renovators of the Christian people—for instance in St. Francis of Assisi—as their sympathy, respect and tenderness for every class without exception. The Church’s great men knew how to discover the good in every class, to further it with the means at their disposal and indulgently to set it on its guard against its dangers. They wished to place everything lovingly at the service of the Creator.

Had Luther in reality brought back to humanity the Gospel true and undefiled, as he was so fond of saying, then he should surely have striven, in the spirit of charity and good will, to make known its supernatural social forces to all classes of men, and to become, as the Apostle says, “All things to all men.”

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Now, although Luther uses powerful words to describe the dignity of the different worldly callings, on the other hand, he tends at times to depreciate whole classes, this being especially the case when he allows his disappointment to get the better of him. Nor is the contempt openly expressed here counterbalanced by any sufficient recognition of the good, such as might have mollified his hearers and made them forget the ungracious abuse he thundered from his pulpit.

After the defeat of the peasants in 1525 he supported those princes favourable to his teaching at the expense of the peasants, so that the latter were loud in their complaints of him. In this connection, looking back at the overthrow of the Peasant Revolt, he wrote to those in power: “Who opposed the peasants more vigorously by word and writing than I? … and, if it comes to boasting, I do not know who else was the first to vanquish the peasants, or to do so[73] most effectually. But now those who did the least claim all the honour and glory of it.”[204]

After the Peasant War he was so filled with hatred of the peasant class and so conscious of their dislike for himself personally, as to be hardly able to speak of them without blame and reproach. “The peasants do not deserve,” he says, “the harvests and fruits that the earth brings forth and provides.”

Of all classes the peasants around Wittenberg incurred his displeasure most severely. “They are all going to the devil,” he says when lamenting that, “out of so many villages, only one man taught his household from the Word of God”; with the young country folk “something” could be done, but the old peasants had been utterly corrupted by the Pope; this was also the complaint of the Evangelical deacons who came in touch with them.[205]—“I am very angry with the peasants,” he wrote in 1529, “who are anxious to govern themselves and who do not appreciate their good fortune in being able to sleep in peace owing to the help and protection of the rulers. You helpless, boorish yokels and donkeys,” he says to them, “will you never learn to understand? May the lightning blast you!—You have the best of it.… You have the Mark and yet are so ungrateful as to refuse to pray for the rulers or to give them anything.”[206]

As a matter of fact, however, the great ones did not wait for the peasants to “give” anything.

They oppressed the country people and plundered them. Melanchthon wrote, particularly after 1525, of the boundless despotism of the authorities over the people on the land. Since the overthrow of the social revolution very sad changes had taken place among the agriculturists. The violent “laying of the yokels” became a general evil, and, in place of the small holdings of the peasant class—the most virile and largest portion of the nation—arose the large estates of the nobles. Not merely where the horrors of war had raged, but even elsewhere, e.g. in the north-east of Germany, the peasant found himself deprived of his rights and left defenceless[74] in the hands of the Junkers and knights.[207] “The reformation-age made his rights to his property and his standing more parlous than before.”[208]

What Luther says of serfdom, the oppression and abuse of which had led to the Peasant Rising, is worthy of record: “Serfdom,” he says, “is not contrary to Christianity, and whoever says it is tells a lie!”[209]—“Christ does not wish to abolish serfdom. What cares He how the lords or princes rule [in secular matters]?”[210]

He makes a strict application of this in his sermons on Genesis, where he even represents serfdom as a desirable state. Luther delivered these sermons in 1524 and they were printed from notes in 1527. In his preface he declares, that he was “quite willing” they should be published because they express his “sense and mind.” He relates in one passage how Abimelech had bestowed “sheep and oxen, men-servants and maid-servants” on Abraham (xx. 14), and then goes on to say of the people made over: “They too were all personal property like other cattle, so that their owners might sell them as they liked, and it would verily be almost best that this stage of things should be revived, for nobody can control or tame the populace in any other way.” Abraham did not set free the men-servants and maid-servants given him, and yet he was accounted amongst the “pious and holy” and was “a just ruler.” He proceeds: “They [the patriarchs] might easily have abolished it so far as they were concerned, but that would not have been a good thing, for the serfs would have become too proud had they been given so many rights, and would have thought themselves equal to the patriarchs or to their children. Each one must be kept in his place, as God has ordained, sons and daughters, servants, maids, husbands, wives, etc.… If compulsion and the law of the strong arm still ruled (in the case of servants and retainers) as in the past, so that if a man dared to grumble he got a box on the ear—things would fare better; otherwise it is all of no use. If they take wives, these are impertinent people, wild and dissolute, whom no one can use or have anything to do with.”[211]

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The Psychological Background. Luther’s Estrangement from Whole Classes of Society

Both in Luther’s treatment of the peasants of his day and in his whole attitude to different classes of society, we find the traces of a profound and general depression which had seized upon him and which seems to accord ill with the sense of triumph one would have expected in him at the continued progress of his work, and at the apostasy from the Roman Church. Such expressions of dissatisfaction become more frequent as years go by and serve to some extent to explain and excuse his pessimism concerning the different classes.

This feeling had its origin, apart from other causes, in the fact that Luther little by little lost touch with whole classes of the people, while to many of the new conditions he remained a stranger. He, who had held in his hands the destiny of so many, was, in fact, becoming to a great extent isolated, particularly since the actual direction of the new Church had been taken out of his hands and vested in the princes or municipal authorities.

Not only did the rift which separated him from the peasants subsequent to 1525 become ever more pronounced, but he found hostility and dislike growing between himself and other classes of society.

Under the influence of the adverse wind blowing from Wittenberg many of the Humanists had given up their at one time enthusiastic friendship and turned against him. Catholic scholars who had once been disposed to favour the reform but had been disappointed in their hopes withdrew from him in increasing numbers. In other districts which had been recently Protestantised the country clergy remained faithful to the olden Church, as we see, for instance, from a letter of Luther’s dated Sep. 19, 1539, where he speaks of “over five hundred parsons, poisonous Papists,” who had “been left unexamined and now are raising their horns in defiance”—but who, he hopes, will soon be forcibly sent about their business.[212] In his own camp, again, there were Anabaptists and other sectarians; there were also theologians who refused to fall into line and either failed to[76] preach on faith and works as harshly as he wished, or, running to the opposite extreme like the Antinomians, went much further than he himself. In the Saxon Electorate Luther felt grievously the decease of those Councillors, like Pfeffinger and Feilitzsch, who had been well disposed towards him, whose places were now taken by “greedy Junkers and skinflints, who looked upon the ecclesiastical revolution as a good opportunity for increasing their family estates and for running riot at others’ expense.”[213] Among the princes who had apostatised from the Church he also detected to his bitter vexation an ever-growing tendency to separate themselves from Wittenberg, partly owing to the influence of Zwinglianism, partly in consequence of their independent Church regulations. Such was, for instance, the action of Berlin, where the Protestant Elector, Joachim II of Brandenburg, declared in an address to his clergy: “As little as I mean to be bound to the Roman Church, so little do I mean to be bound to the Church of Wittenberg. I do not say: ‘credo sanctam Romanam’ or ‘Wittenbergensem,’ but ‘catholicam ecclesiam,’ and my Church here at Berlin or at Cöllen is just as much a true Christian Church as that of the Wittenbergers.”[214]

In the sermon Luther preached at Wittenberg on June 18, 1531, he pours forth the vials of his wrath on the nobles and peasants of the new faith. He was then doing duty for Bugenhagen, the absent pastor, and devoting himself to preaching, though he describes himself in a letter as “old, sickly and tired of life,” and elsewhere, alluding to his many employments, says: “I am not only Luther, but Pomeranus, Vicar-General, Moses, Jethro and I know not who else besides.”[215]

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Thus the ill will gathering within him was poured forth, as occasion offered, on the various classes indiscriminately.

It seemed to him as though little by little the whole world was becoming a hostel of which the devil was the landlord and where wickedness and lust reigned supreme—above all because it was so slow to receive his preaching.[220] Even the supreme Court of Justice of the Empire became in 1541 a “devil’s whore,”[221] because the judges and imperial authorities were against him and stood for the old order of things. It was also at this time that his pent-up anger broke out against the Jews.[222] Here it will be sufficient to give a few new quotations.

After all that has been said it would be very rash to apply to Luther’s attitude towards the different callings and professions the words which St. Paul wrote of himself when[79] considering humanity as a whole, i.e. of the power of God by which he had striven with endless patience and charity to bring home the Gospel to both Jew and Greek: “To the Greeks and to the barbarians, to the wise and to the foolish I am a debtor.” “I have become all things to all men in order to save all.”

The Merchant Class

The opening up of many previously unknown countries, the discovery of new trade routes, and the new industries called forth by new inventions brought about a sudden and quite unforeseen revival in trade and prosperity at the time of the religious schism. An alteration in the earlier ideas on political economy was bound to supervene. The upsetting of the mediæval notions which now could no longer hold and the uncertainty as to what to build on in future led to a deal of confusion in that period of transition.

What was chiefly needed in the case of one anxious to judge of things from their ethical and social side was experience and knowledge of the world joined with prudence and the spirit of charity. Annoyance was out of place; what was called for was a capacity to weigh matters dispassionately.

Among the Humanists there were some, who, because the new era of commerce turned men’s minds from learning, condemned it absolutely. Thus Eobanus Hessus of Nuremberg laments, that, there, people were bent on acquiring riches rather than learning; the world dreamt of nothing but saffron and pepper; he lived, as it were, among “empurpled monkeys” and would rather make his home with the peasants of his Hessian fatherland than in his present surroundings.[226]—What was Luther’s attitude towards the rising merchant class and its undertakings?

In his case it was not merely the injury done to the schools and to “Christian” posterity, and the ever growing luxury that prejudiced him against commerce, but, above all, the constant infringement of the principles of morality, which, according to him, was a necessary result of the new economic life and its traffic in wares and money. He exaggerated the moral danger and failed entirely to see the economic side of the case. We do not find in him, says[80] Köstlin-Kawerau, “a sufficient insight into the existing conditions and problems,”[227] nevertheless he did not shrink from the harshest and most uncharitable censure.

It was his deliberate intention, so he says, “to give scandal to many more people on this point by setting up the true doctrine of Christ.” This we find in a letter he wrote after the Leipzig Disputation when putting the finishing touch to his first works on usury (1519).[228] Because no attention was paid to his “Evangelical” ideas on usury he came to the conclusion that, “now, in these days, clergy and seculars, prelates and subjects are alike bent on thwarting Christ’s life, doctrine and Gospel.”[229] Hence he must once again vindicate the Gospel. He, however, distorts the Christian idea by making into strict commands what Christ had proposed as counsels of perfection. There is reason to believe that the mistake he here makes under the plea of zeal for the principles of the Gospel is bound up not merely with his antipathy to the idea of Evangelical Counsels,[230] but also with his older, pseudo-mystic tendency and with his conception of the true Christian. We cannot help thinking of his fanciful plan of assembling apart the real Christians when we hear him in these very admonitions bewailing that “there are so few Christians”; if anyone refused to lend gratis it was “a sign of his deep unbelief,” since we are assured that by so doing “we become children of the Most High and that our reward is great. Of such a consoling promise he is not worthy who will not believe and act accordingly.”[231]

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In any case it was a quite subjective and unfounded application of Holy Scripture, when, in his sermon on usury, he makes the following the chief point to be complied with:

“Christian dealings with temporal possessions,” he there says, “consist in three things, in giving for nothing, lending free of interest and lovingly allowing our belongings to be taken from us [Matt. v. 40, 42; Luke vi. 30]; for there is no merit in your buying something, inheriting it, or gaining possession of it in some other honest way, since, if this were piety, then the heathen and Turks would also be pious.”[232]

This extravagant notion of the Christian’s duties led to his rigid and untimely vindication of the mediæval prohibition of the charging of interest, of which we shall have to speak more fully later. It also led him to assail all commercial enterprise.

Greatly incensed at the action of the trading companies he set about writing his “Von Kauffshandlung und Wucher” (1524).

In his remarks we often find interesting thoughts on the economic conditions; we see the remarkable range of his intellect and occasionally we may even wonder whence he had his vast store of information. It is also evident, however, that the other work with which he was overwhelmed did not leave him time to digest his matter. Often enough he is right when he stigmatises the excesses, but on the whole he goes much too far. As Frank G. Ward says: “Because he was incapable of passing a discriminating judgment on the abuses that existed he simply condemned all commerce off-hand.”[237] He was too fond of scenting evil usury everywhere. A contemporary of his, the merchant Bonaventura Furtenbach, of Nuremberg, having come across one of Luther’s writings on the subject, possibly his “Von Kauffshandlung,” remarked sarcastically: “Were I to try to write a commentary on the Gospel of Luke everyone would say, you are not qualified to do so. So it is with Luther when he treats of the interest on money; he has never studied such matters.”[238] A Hamburg merchant also made fun of Luther’s economics, and, as the Hamburg Superintendent Æpinus (Johann Hock) reported, quoted the instance of the Peripatetician Phormion, who gave Hannibal a scholastic lecture on the art of war, for which reason it is usual to dub[83] him who tries to speak of things of which he knows nothing, a new Phormion.[239]

In his “An den Adel” Luther had shown himself more reticent, though even here he inveighs against interest and trading companies, and says: “I am not conversant with figures, but I cannot understand how, with a hundred florins, it is possible to gain twenty annually.… I leave this to the worldly wise. I, as a theologian, have only to censure the appearance of evil concerning which St. Paul says [1 Thess. v. 22] ‘from all appearance of evil refrain!’ This I know very well,” he continues, speaking from the traditional standpoint, “that it would be much more godly to pay more attention to tilling the soil and less to trade.” Yet, even in this writing, he goes so far as to say: “It is indeed high time that a bit were put in the mouth of the Fuggers and such-like companies.”[240]

More and more plainly he was, however, forced to realise that it was not within his power to check the new development of commerce; he, nevertheless, stuck by his earlier views. He was also, and to some extent justifiably, shocked at the growing luxury which had made its way into the burgher class and into the towns generally in the train of foreign trade. Instead of “staying in his place and being content with a moderate living,” “everyone wants to be a merchant and to grow rich.”[241]

Hence he took a “tolerable maintenance” as he expresses it, i.e. the mode of living suitable to a man’s state, as the basis of a fair wage. The question of wages must in the last instance, he thinks, depend on the question of maintenance. Luther, like Calvin, did not go any further in this matter. “Their conservative ideas saw in high wages only the demoralisation of the working classes.”[247]

Luther’s remarks on this subject “recall the words of Calvin, viz. that the people must always be kept in poverty in order that they may remain obedient.”[248]

According to his view “the price of goods was synonymous with their barter value expressed in money; money was the fixed, unchangeable standard of things; it never occurred to anyone that an alteration in the value of money might come, a mistake which led to much confusion. Again, the barter value of a commodity was its worth calculated on the cost of the material it contained and of the trouble and labour expended on its manufacture. This calculation excluded the subjective element, just as it ignored competition as a factor in the determining of prices.”[249] Thus, according to Luther, the merchant had merely to calculate “how many days he had spent in fetching and acquiring the goods, and how great had been the work and danger involved, for much labour and time ought to represent a higher and better wage”; he should in this “compare himself to the common day-labourer or working-man, see what he earns in a day, and calculate accordingly.” More than a “tolerable[85] maintenance” was, however, to be avoided in commerce, and likewise all such profit “as might involve loss to another.”[250] It would have pleased him best had the authorities fixed the price of everything, but, owing to their untrustworthiness, this appeared to him scarcely to be hoped for. The principle: “I shall sell my goods as dear as I can,” he opposed with praiseworthy firmness; this was “to open door and window to hell.”[251] He also inveighed rightly and strongly against the artificial creation of scarcity. Here, too, we see that his ideas were simply those in vogue in the ranks from which he came.

“His economic views in many particulars display a retrograde tendency.”[252]—“In the history of economics he cannot be considered as either an original or a systematic thinker. We frequently find him adopting views which were current without seriously testing their truth or their grounds.… His exaggerations and inconsequence must be explained by the fact that he took but little interest in worldly business. His interpretation of things depended on his own point of view rather than on the actual nature of the case.”[253]

The worst of it is that his own “point of view” intruded itself far too often into his criticisms of social conditions.

Influence of Old-Testament Ideas

Excessive regard for the Old-Testament enactments helped Luther to adopt a peculiar outlook on things social and ethical.

His views on interest and usury were likewise influenced by his one-sided reading of certain Old- and New-Testament statements.

Usury and Interest

On the question of the lawfulness of charging interest Luther not only laid down no “new principles” which might have been of help for the future, but, on the contrary, he paved the way for serious difficulties. He was not to be[87] moved from the traditional, mediæval standpoint which viewed the charging of any interest whatever on loans as something prohibited. His foe, Johann Eck, on the other hand, in a Disputation at Bologna, had defended the lawfulness of moderate interest.[259]

After having repeatedly attacked by word and pen usury and the charging of any interest[260]—led thereto, as he says, by the grievous abuses in the commercial and financial system, he published in 1539 his “An die Pfarherrn wider den Wucher zu predigen,” whence most of what follows has been taken. As it was written towards the end of his life, we may assume it to represent the result of his experience and the final statement of his convictions.

In this writing, after a sad outburst on the increase of usury in Germany, he begins his “warnings” by urging that “the people should be told firmly and plainly concerning lending and borrowing, and that when money is lent and a charge made or more taken back than was originally made over, this is usury, and as such is condemned by every law. Hence those are usurers who charge 5, or 6, or more on the hundred on the money they lend, and should be called idolatrous ministers of avarice or Mammon, nor can they be saved unless they do penance.… To lend is to give a man my money, property or belongings so that he may use them.… Just as one neighbour lends another a dish, a can, a bed, or clothes, and in the same way money, or money’s worth, in return for which I may not take anything.”[261]

The writer of these words, like so many others who, in his day and later, still adhered to the old canonical standpoint, failed to see, that, as things then were, to lend money was to surrender to the borrower a commodity which was already bringing in some return, and that, in consequence of this, the lender had a right to demand some indemnification. As this had not generally speaking been the case in the Middle[88] Ages, the prohibition of charging interest was then a just one. Nevertheless, within certain limits, it was slowly becoming obsolete and, as the economic situation changed for that of modern times and money became more liquid, the more general did lending at interest become.

Luther was well aware that to lend at interest was already “usual” and even “common in all classes.”[262] It was also, as a Protestant contemporary complained in 1538, twice as prevalent in the Lutheran communities than among the Catholics.[263] Still Luther insists obstinately that, “it was a very idle objection, and one that any village sexton could dispose of when people pleaded the custom of the world contrary to the Word of God, or against what was right.… It is nothing new or strange that the world should be hopeless, accursed, damned; this it had always been and would ever remain. If you obey its behests, you also will go with it into the abyss of hell.”[264]

The Jesuit theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries as a rule were careful to instance a number of cases in which the canonical prohibition of charging even a moderate rate of interest does not apply. They thus paved the way for the abrogation of the prohibition. Of this we have an instance in Iago Lainez, who in principle was strongly averse to the charging of interest. This theologian, who later became General of the Jesuits, when a preacher at the busy commercial city of Genoa, wrote (1553-1554) an essay on usury embodying the substance of his addresses to the merchants.[273] Lainez there points out that any damage accruing to the lender from the loan, and also the temporary absence of profit on it, constitutes a sufficient ground for demanding a moderate interest.[274] He also strongly insists that the lender, in compensation for his willingness to lend, may accept from the borrower a “voluntary” premium;[275] the lender, moreover, has a perfect right to safeguard himself by stipulating for a fine (pœna conventionalis) from the borrower should repayment be delayed. All this comes under the instances of “apparent usury,” which he enumerates: “Casus qui videntur usurarii et non sunt” (cap. 10).

Luther devotes no such prudent consideration to those exceptional cases. He was more inclined by nature harshly to vindicate the principles he had embraced than to seek how best to limit them in practice. “He did not take into account loans asked for, not from necessity, but for the purpose of making profit on the borrowed money”;[276] yet, after all, this was the very point on which the question turned in the early days of economic development. He discusses the lawfulness of a voluntary premium and comes to the conclusion that it is wrong. He scoffs at the lender, as a mere hypocrite, who argues: “The borrower is very thankful for such a loan and freely and without compulsion offers me[91] 5, 6 or even 10 florins on the hundred.” “But even an adulteress and an adulterer,” says Luther in his usual vein, “are thankful and pleased with each other; a robber, too, does an assassin a great service when he helps him to commit highway robbery.” The borrower does the lender a similar criminal service and spiritual injury, for which no premium can make compensation.[277] As regards the case where the loan is not repaid at the specified time, Luther is, of course, of opinion that any real loss to the owner must be made good by the borrower. But now, he says, “they accept reimbursement for losses which they never suffered at all,” they simply calculate the interest on a loss which they may possibly suffer from not having back the money when the time comes for buying or paying. “In its efforts to make a certainty of what is uncertain, will not usury soon be the ruin of the world!”[278]

In the Table-Talk a friend, in 1542, raised an objection: If a man trades with the money lent him and makes 15 florins yearly, he must surely pay the lender something for this. Of this Luther, however, will not hear. “No, this is merely an accidental profit, and on accidentals no rule can be based.”[279] That the profit was “accidental” was, however, simply his theory.

Luther on Unearned Incomes and Annuities

A great change took place in Luther’s views concerning the buying of the right to receive a yearly interest, nor was the change an unfortunate one. He was induced to abandon his earlier standpoint that such purchase was wrong and to recognise, that, within certain limits, it could be perfectly lawful.

The nature of this sort of purchase, then very common, he himself explains in his clear and popular style: “If I have a hundred florins with which I might gain five, six or more florins a year by means of my labour, I can give them to another for investment in some fertile land in order that, not I, but he, may do business with them; hence I receive from him the five florins I might have made, and thus he sells me the interest, five florins per hundred, and I am the buyer and he the seller.”[286] It was an essential point in the arrangement that the money should be employed in an undertaking in some way really fruitful or profitable to the receiver of the capital, i.e. in real estate, which he could farm, or in some other industry; the debtor gave up the usufruct to the creditor together with the interest agreed upon, but was able to regain possession of it by repayment of the debt. The creditor, according to the original arrangement, was also to take his share in the fluctuations in profit, and not arbitrarily to demand back his capital.

At first Luther included such transactions among the “fig-leaves” behind which usury was wont to shelter itself; they were merely, so he declared in 1519 in his Larger Sermon on Usury, “a pretty sham and pretence by which a man can oppress others without sin and become rich without labour or trouble.”[287] In the writing “An den Adel” he even exclaimed: “The greatest misfortune of the German nation is undoubtedly the traffic in interest.… The devil invented it and the Pope, by sanctioning it, has wrought havoc throughout the world.”[288] It is quite true that the arrangement, being in no wise unjust, had received[94] the conditional sanction of the Church and was widely prevalent in Christendom. Many abuses and acts of oppression had, indeed, crept into it, particularly with the general spread of the practice of charging interest on money loans, but they were not a necessary result of the transaction. Luther, in those earlier days, demanded that such “transactions should be utterly condemned and prevented for the future, regardless of the opposition of the Pope and all his infamous laws [to the condemnation], and though he might have erected his pious foundations on them.… In truth, the traffic in interest is a sign and a token that the world is sold into the devil’s slavery by grievous sins.”[289] Yet Luther himself allows the practice under certain conditions in the Larger Sermon on Usury published shortly before, from which it is evident that here he is merely voicing his detestation of the abuses, and probably, too, of the “Pope and his infamous laws.”

In fact his first pronouncements against the investing of money are all largely dictated by his hostility to the existing ecclesiastical government; “that churches, monasteries, altars, this and that,” should be founded and kept going by means of interest, is what chiefly arouses his ire. In 1519 he busies himself with the demolition of the objection brought forward by Catholics, who argued: “The churches and the clergy do this and have the right to do it because such money is devoted to the service of God.”

In his Larger Sermon on Usury he gives an instance where he is ready to allow transactions at interest, viz. “where both parties require their money and therefore cannot afford to lend it for nothing but are obliged to help themselves by means of bills of exchange. Provided the ghostly law be not infringed, then a percentage of four, five or six florins may be taken.”[290] Thus he here not only falls back on the “ghostly law,” but also deviates from the line he had formerly laid down. In fact we have throughout to deal more with stormy effusions than with a ripe, systematic discussion of the subject.

Later on, his general condemnations of the buying of interest-rights become less frequent.

He even wrote in 1524 to Duke Johann Frederick of Saxony: Since the Jewish tithes cannot be re-introduced,[95] “it would be well to regulate everywhere the purchase of interest-rights, but to do away with them altogether would not be right since they might be legalised.”[291] As a condition for justifying the transaction he requires above all that no interest should be charged without “a definitely named and stated pledge,” for to charge on a mere money pledge would be usury. “What is sterile cannot pay interest.”[292] Further the right of cancelling the contract was to remain in the hands of the receiver of the capital. The interest once agreed upon was to be paid willingly. He himself relied on the practice and once asked: “If the interest applied to churches and schools were cut off, how would the ministers and schools be maintained?”[293]

With regard to the rate of interest allowable in his opinion, he says in his sermons on Matt. xviii. (about 1537): “We would readily agree to the paying of six or even of seven or eight on the hundred.”[294] As a reason he assigns the fact that “the properties have now risen so greatly in value,” a remark to which he again comes back in 1542 in his Table-Talk in order to justify his not finding even seven per cent excessive.[295] He thus arrives eventually at the conclusion of the canonists who, for certain good and just reasons, allowed a return of from seven to eight per cent.

The difficulties which beset Luther’s attitude on the question of interest were in part of his own creation.

It is notorious that the controversy regarding the lawfulness of interest, even of 5 per cent, on money loans, went on for a long time among theologians both Catholic and Protestant. The subject was also keenly debated among the 16th-century Jesuits. No theologian, however, succeeded in proving the sinfulness of the charging of a five per cent interest under the circumstances which then obtained in Germany. Attempts to have this generally prohibited under severe penalties were rejected by eminent Catholic theologians, for instance, in a memorandum of the Law and Divinity Faculties at Ingolstadt, dated August 2, 1580, which bore the signatures of all the professors.[303] On the Protestant side the contest led to disagreeable proceedings at Ratisbon, where, in 1588, five preachers, true to Luther’s injunctions, insisted firmly on the prohibition on theological grounds. They were expelled from the town by the magistrates, though this did not end the controversy.[304]

There was naturally no question at any time of enforcing the severe measures which Luther had advocated against those who charged interest; on the contrary the social disorders of the day promoted not merely the lending at[98] moderate interest, but even actual usury of the worst character. When even Martin Bucer showed himself disposed to admit the lawfulness of taking twelve per cent interest George Lauterbecken, the Mansfeld councillor, wrote of him in his “Regentenbuch”: “What has become of the book Dr. Luther of blessed memory addressed to the ministers on the subject of usury, exhorting them most earnestly,” etc., etc.? Nobody now dreamt, so he complains, of putting in force the penalties decreed by Luther. “Where do we see in any of our countries which claim to be Evangelical anyone refused the Sacrament of the altar or Holy Baptism on account of usury? Where, agreeably to the Canons, are they forbidden to make a will? Where do we see one of them buried on the dungheap?”[305]

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CHAPTER XXXVI
THE DARKER SIDE OF LUTHER’S INNER LIFE. HIS AILMENTS

The struggles of conscience which we already had occasion to consider (vol. v., p. 319 ff.) were not the only gloomy elements in Luther’s interior life. Other things, too, must be taken into our purview if we wish to appreciate justly the more sombre side of his existence, viz. his bodily ailments and the mental sufferings to which they gave rise (e.g. paroxysms of terror and apprehension), his temptations, likewise his delusions concerning his intercourse with the other world (ghosts, diabolical apparitions, etc.), and, lastly, the revelations of which he fancied himself the recipient.

1. Early Sufferings, Bodily and Mental

It is no easy task to understand the nature of the morbid phenomena which we notice in Luther. His own statements on the subject are not only very scanty but also prove that he was himself unable to determine exactly their cause. Nevertheless, it is our duty to endeavour, with the help of what he says, to glean some notion of what was going on within him. His gloomy mental experiences are so inextricably bound up with his state of health, that, even more than his “agonies of conscience” already dealt with, they deserve to take their place on the darker background of his psychic life. Here again, duly to appreciate the state of the case, we shall have to review anew the whole of Luther’s personal history.

Fits of Fear; Palpitations; Swoons

What first claims our attention, even in the early days of Luther’s life as a monk, are the attacks of what he himself calls fears and trepidations (“terrores, pavores”). It seems[100] fairly clear that these were largely neurotic,—physical breakdowns due to nervous worry.

According to Melanchthon, the friend in whom he chiefly confided, Luther gave these sufferings a place in the forefront of his soul’s history. The reader may remember the significant passage where Melanchthon says, that, when oppressed with gloomy thoughts of the Divine Judgments, Luther “was often suddenly overwhelmed by such fits of terror (‘subito tanti terrores’)” as made him an object of pity. These terrors he had experienced for the first time when he decided to enter the monastic life, led to this resolution by the sudden death of a dearly loved friend.[306]

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A physical accompaniment of these fears was, in Luther’s case, the fainting fits referred to now and again subsequent to the beginning of his struggle against the Church.

On the occasion of the attack of which we are told by Ratzeberger the physician, when he was found by friends lying unconscious on the floor, he had been “overpowered by melancholy and sadness.” It is also very remarkable that when his friends had brought him to, partly by the help of music, he begged them to return frequently, that they might play to him “because he found that as soon as he heard the sound of music his ‘tentationes’ and melancholy left him.”[317] According to Kawerau the circumstances point to this incident having taken place in 1523 or 1524.[318]

On the occasion of a serious attack of illness in 1527 his swoons again caused great anxiety to those about him. This illness was preceded by a fit in Jan., 1527. Luther informs a friend that he had “suddenly been affrighted and almost killed by a rush or thickening of the blood in the region of the heart,” but had as quickly recovered. His cure was, he thinks, due to a decoction of milk-thistle,[319] then considered a very efficacious remedy. The rush of blood to the heart, of which he here had to complain, occurred at a time when Luther had nothing to say of “temptations,” but only of the many troubles and anxieties due to his labours.

The more severe bout of illness began on July 6, 1527, at the very time of, or just after, some unusually severe “temptation.”[320] Jonas prefaces his account of it by saying that Luther, “after having that morning, as he admitted, suffered from a burdensome spiritual temptation, came back partially to himself (‘utcunque ad se rediit’).” The words seem to presuppose that he had either fainted or been on the verge of fainting.[321] Having, as the same friend relates, recovered somewhat, Luther made his confession and spoke of his readiness for death. In the afternoon, however, he[104] complained of an unendurable buzzing in his left ear which soon grew into a frightful din in his head. Bugenhagen, in his narrative, is of opinion that the cause of the mischief here emerges plainly, viz. that it was the work of the devil. A fainting fit ensued which overtook Luther at the door of his bedchamber. When laid on his bed he complained of being utterly exhausted. His body was rubbed with cloths wrung out of cold water and then warmth was applied. The patient now felt a little better, but his strength came and went. Amongst other remarks he then passed was one, that Christ is stronger than Satan. When saying this he burst into tears and sobs. Finally, after application of the remedies common at that time, he broke out into a sweat and the danger was considered to be over.

There followed, however, the days and months of dreadful spiritual “temptations” already described (vol. v., p. 333 ff.). At first the bodily weakness also persisted. Bugenhagen was obliged to take up his abode in Luther’s house for a while because the latter was in such dread of the temptations and wished to have help and comfort at hand. For a whole week Luther was unable either to read or to write.

At the end of August and again in September the fainting fits recurred.

His friends, however, were more concerned about Luther’s mental anguish than about his bodily sufferings. The latter gradually passed away, whereas the struggles of conscience continued to be very severe. On Oct. 17, Jonas wrote to Johann Lang: “He is battling amidst the waves of temptation and is hardly able to find any passage of Scripture wherewith to console himself.”[322]

In 1530 again we hear of Luther’s life being endangered by a fainting fit, though it seems to have been distinct from the above attack of illness. This also occurred after an alarming incident during which he believed he had actually seen the devil. It was followed the next day by a loud buzzing in the head. Renewed trouble in the region of the heart, accompanied by paroxysms of fear, is reported to have been experienced in 1536.[323] After this we hear no more of[105] any such symptoms till just before Luther’s death. In the sudden attack of illness which brought his life to a close he complained chiefly of feeling a great oppression on the chest, though his heart was sound.[324]

Nervousness and other Ailments

Quite a number of Luther’s minor ills seem to have been the result of overwrought nerves due partly to his work and the excitement of his life. Here again it is difficult to judge of the symptoms; unquestionably some sort of connection exists between his nervous state and his depression and bodily fears;[325] the fainting fits are even reckoned by some as simply due to neurasthenia.

There can be no doubt that his nervousness was, to some extent inherited, to some extent due to his upbringing. His lively temper which enabled him to be so easily carried away by his fancy, to take pleasure in the most glaring of exaggerations, and bitterly to resent the faintest opposition, proves that, for all the vigour of his constitution, nerves played an important part.

Already in his monastic days his state was aggravated by mental overstrain and the haste and turmoil of his work which led him to neglect the needs of the body. His uninterrupted literary labours, his anxiety for his cause, his carelessness about his health and his irregular mode of life reduced him in those days to a mere skeleton. At Worms the wretchedness of his appearance aroused pity in many. It is true that when he returned from the Wartburg he was looking much stronger, but the years 1522-25, during which he led a lonely bachelor’s life in the Wittenberg monastery, without anyone to wait on him, and sleeping night after night on an unmade bed, brought his nervous state to such a pitch that he was never afterwards able completely to master it. On the contrary, his nervousness grew ever more pronounced, tormenting him in various ways.

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So little, however, did he understand it that it was to the devil that he attributed the effects, now dubiously, now with entire conviction.

Among these effects must be included the buzzing in the head and singing in the ears, to which Luther’s letters allude for many a year. When, at the end of Jan., 1529, the violent “agonies and temptations” recurred, the buzzing in the ears again made itself felt. He writes: “For more than a week I have been ailing from dizziness and humming in the head (‘vertigo et bombus’), whether this be due to fatigue or to the malice of the devil I do not know. Pray for me that I may be strong in the faith.”[326] He also complains of this trouble in the head in the next letter, dating from early in Feb.[327] He was then unable to preach or to give lectures for nearly three weeks.[328]

He goes on to say of himself: “In addition to the buffets of the angel of Satan [the temptations] I have also suffered from giddiness and headache.”[329] It was, however, as he himself points out, no real illness: “Almost constantly is it my fate to feel ill though my body is well.”[330]

In the new kind of life he had to lead in the Castle of Coburg in 1530, when, to want of exercise, was added overwork and anxiety of mind, these neurasthenic phenomena again reappeared. He compares the noises in his head to thunder, or to a whirlwind. There was also present a tendency to fainting. At times he was unable even to look at any writing, or to bear the light owing to the weakness of his head.[331] Simultaneously the struggle with his thoughts gave him endless trouble; thus he writes: “It is the angel of Satan who buffets me so, but since I have endured death so often for Christ, I am quite ready for His sake to suffer this illness, or this Sabbath-peace of the head.”[332] “You declare,” he says laughingly in a letter to Melanchthon, “that I am pig-headed, but my pig-headedness is nothing[107] compared with that of my head (‘caput eigensinnigissimum’); so powerfully does Satan compel me to make holiday and to waste my time.”[333] Towards the middle of August his head improved, but the tiresome buzzing frequently recurred. Luther complained later that, during this summer, he had been forced to waste half his time.[334]

When, from this time onwards, “we hear him ever saying that he feels worn-out (‘decrepitus’), weary of life and desirous of death … all this is undoubtedly closely bound up with these nerve troubles.”[335] The morning hours became for him the worst, because during them he often suffered from dizziness. After his “prandium,” between nine and ten o’clock, he was wont to feel better. As a rule he slept well.

The attacks which occurred early in 1532 must also be noted.

In Jan., so his anxious pupil Veit Dietrich writes, Luther had a foreboding of some illness impending and fancied it would come in March; in reality it came on on Jan. 22. “Very early, about four o’clock, he felt a violent buzzing in his ears followed by great weakness of the heart.” His friends were summoned at his request as he did not wish to be alone. “When, however, he had recovered and had his wits about him (‘confirmato animo’), he proceeded to storm against the Papists, who were not yet to make gay over his death.” “Were Satan able,” he says, “he would gladly kill me; at every hour he is at my heels.” “The physician declared,” so the account goes on, “after having examined the urine, that Luther stood in danger of an attack of apoplexy, which indeed he would hardly escape.” The prediction was, however, not immediately verified and the patient was once more able to leave his bed. On Feb. 9, however (if the date given in the Notes be correct),[336] after assisting at a funeral in the church of Torgau, he was again seized with such a fit of giddiness as hardly to be able to return to his lodgings. When he recovered he said: “Do not be grieved even should I die, but continue to further[108] the Word of God after my death.… It may be we are still sinners and do not perform our duty sufficiently; if so we shall cloak it over with the forgiveness of sins.” This time again he was not able to work for a whole month.

What he at times endured from the trouble in his head we learn from a statement in the Notes of the Table-Talk made by Cordatus: “When I awake and am unable to sleep again on account of the noise in my ears, I often fancy I can hear the bells of Halle, Leipzig, Erfurt and Wittenberg, and then I think: Surely you are going to have a fit. But God frequently intervenes and gives me a short sleep afterwards.”[337]

No notable improvement took place until the middle of 1533.

The noises in the head began again in 1541. He fancied then that he could hear “the rustling of all the trees and the breaking of the waves of every sea” in his head.[338] When he wrote this he was also suffering from a discharge from the ear, which, for the time, deprived him of his hearing; so great was the pain as to force tears from him. Alluding to this he says that his friends did not often see him in tears, but that now he would gladly weep even more copiously; to God he had said: “Let there be an end either of these pains or of me myself,” but, now that the discharge had ceased, he was beginning to read and write again quite confidently.[339]

From the commencement of his struggle, however, until the end of his life his extreme nervous irritability found expression in the violence of what he said and wrote. There can be no question that, had he not been in a morbidly nervous state, he would never have given way to such outbursts of anger and brutal invective. “There was a demoniacal trait,” says a Protestant Luther biographer, “that awakened in him as soon as he met an adversary, at which even his fellow-monks had shuddered, and which carried him much further than he had at first intended.” He became the “rudest writer of his age.” In his controversy with the Swiss Sacramentarians he “was domineering and high-handed.” “His disputatiousness and tendency to[109] pick a quarrel grew ever stronger in him after his many triumphs.”[340]—But, even among his friends and in his home, he was careless about controlling his irritation. We find him exclaiming: “I am bursting with anger and annoyance”; as we know, he excited himself almost “to death” about a nephew and threatened to have a servant-maid “drowned in the Elbe.”[341] (Cp. the passages from A. Cramer quoted below, towards the end of section 5.)

Other maladies and indispositions, of which the effects were sometimes lasting, also deserve to be alluded to. Of these the principal and worst was calculus of which we first hear in 1526 and then again in 1535, 1536 and 1545. In Feb., 1537, Luther was overtaken by so severe an attack at Schmalkalden that his end seemed near.—In 1525 he had to complain of painful hæmorrhoids, and at the beginning of 1528 similar troubles recurred. The “malum Franciæ,” on the other hand, cursorily mentioned in 1523,[342] is not heard of any more. The severe constipation from which he suffered in the Wartburg also passed away. Luther was also much subject to catarrh, which, when it lasted, caused acute mental depression. The “discharge in his left leg” which continued for a considerable while[343] during 1533 had no important after-effects.

The maladies just mentioned, to which must be added an attack of the “English Sweat,” in 1529, do not afford sufficient grounds for any diagnosis of his physical and mental state in general.[344] On the other hand, the oppression in the præcordial region and his nervous excitability are of great importance to whoever would investigate his general state of health.

The so-called Temptations no Mere Morbid Phenomena

Anyone who passes in review the startling admissions Luther makes concerning his struggles of conscience (above, vol. v., pp. 319-75), or considers the dreadful self-reproaches to which his apostasy and destruction of the olden ecclesiastical system gave rise, reproaches which lead to “death[110] and hell,” and which he succeeded in mastering only by dint of huge effort, cannot fail to see that these mental struggles were something very different from any physical malady. Since, however, some Protestants have represented mere morbid “fearfulness” as the root-cause of the “temptations,” we must—in order not to be accused of evading any difficulties—look into the actual connection between natural timidity and the never-ending struggles of soul which Luther had to wage with himself on account of his apostasy.

Luther’s temptations, according to his own accurate and circumstantial statements, consisted chiefly of remorse of conscience and doubts about his undertaking; they made their appearance only at the commencement of his apostasy, whereas the morbid sense of fear was present in him long before. Of such a character were the “terrores” which led him to embrace monasticism, the unrest he experienced during his first zealous years of religious life, and the dread of which he was the victim while saying his first Mass and accompanying Staupitz in the procession; this morbid fear is also apparent in the monk’s awful thoughts on predestination and in his subsequent temptations to despair. Moreover, such crises, characterised by temptations and disquieting palpitations ending in fainting fits, were in every case preceded by “spiritual temptations,” and only afterwards did the physical symptoms follow. Likewise the bodily ailments occasionally disappeared, leaving behind them the temptations, though Luther seemed outwardly quite sound and able to carry on his work.[345]

Hence the “spiritual temptations” or struggles of conscience were of a character in many respects independent of this morbid state of fear.

They occur, however, on the one hand, in connection with other physical disorders, as in the case of the attack of the “English Sweat” or influenza which Luther had in 1529, and which was accompanied by severe mental struggles; on the other hand, they appear at times to excite the bodily emotion of fear and in very extreme cases undoubtedly tended to produce entire loss of sleep and appetite, cardiac disturbance and fainting fits. Luther himself once said, in 1533, that his “gloomy thoughts and temptations” were the cause of[111] the trouble in his head and stomach;[346] in his ordinary language the temptations were, however, “buffets given him by Satan.”[347] He is fond of clothing the temptations in this Pauline figure and of depicting them as his worst trials, and only quite exceptionally does he call his purely physical sufferings “colaphi Satanæ,” they, too, coming from Satan. Now we cannot of course entirely trust Luther’s own diagnosis—otherwise we should have to reduce all his maladies to a work of evil spirits—yet his feeling that the “temptations” were on the one hand a malady in themselves and on the other a source of many other ills, should carry some weight with us.

It is also clear that, in the case of an undertaking like Luther’s, and given his antecedents, remorse of conscience was perfectly natural even had there been no ailment present. It was impossible that a once zealous monk should become faithless to his most solemn vows and, on his own authority and on alleged discoveries in the Bible, dare to overthrow the whole ecclesiastical structure of the past without in so doing experiencing grave misgivings. Add to this his violence, his “wild-beast fury” (J. von Walther), his practical contradictions and the theological mistakes which he was unable to hide. Hence we need have no scruple about admitting what is otherwise fairly evident, viz. that his ghostly combats stand apart and cannot be attributed directly to any bodily ailment.

It remains, however, true that such struggles and temptations throve exceedingly on the morbid fear which lay hidden in the depths of his soul. It must also be granted that neurasthenia sometimes gives rise to symptoms of fear similar to those experienced by Luther, as we shall hear later on from an expert in nervous diseases, whom we shall have occasion to quote (see section 5 below). Consideration for such facts oblige the layman to leave the question open[112] as to how much of Luther’s fear is to be attributed to nervousness or to other physical drawbacks.

We do not think it desirable here to enter further into the views of the older Catholic polemics, already referred to, who looked upon Luther as possessed (as labouring under an “obsessio” or at least a “circumsessio”). The fits of terror he endured both before and after his apostasy seemed to them to prove that he was really a demoniac. As already pointed out above (vol. iv., p. 359), this field is too obscure and too beset with the danger of error to allow of our venturing upon it.[348] Quite another matter is it, however, with regard to temptations, with which, according to Holy Scripture and the constant teaching of the Church, the devil is allowed to assail men, and to discuss which in Luther’s case we will now proceed, using his own testimonies.

2. Psychic Problems of Luther’s Religious Development

From the beginning of his apostasy and public struggle we find in Luther no peace of soul and clearness of outlook; rather, he is the plaything of violent emotions. He himself complains of having to wrestle with gloomy temptations of the spirit. It is these that we now propose to investigate more narrowly. In so doing we must also examine how his nervous state reacted on these temptations, whereby we shall, maybe, discern more clearly than before the connection of Luther’s doctrine with his distress of soul.

Temptations to Despair

As to the temptations admitted by Luther to be such, we must first of all recall the involuntary thoughts of despair which occurred to him in the convent and the inclination he felt, against his will, to abandon all hope of his salvation and even to blaspheme God. Everybody in the least acquainted with the spiritual life knows that such darkening of the soul may be caused by the Spirit of Evil and often accompanies certain morbid conditions of the body. When the two, as is often the case, are united, the effects are all[113] the more far-reaching. Now, on his own showing, this was precisely the case with the unhappy inmate of the Erfurt monastery. Luther felt himself compelled, as he says, to lay bare his temptations (the “horrendæ et terrificæ cogitationes”) to Staupitz in confession.[349] The latter comforted him by pointing out the value of such temptations as a mental discipline. Staupitz, and others too, had, however, also told him that his case was to some extent new to them and beyond their comprehension.[350] Hence, understood by none, he passed his days sunk in sadness. All to whom he applied for consolation had answered him: “I do not know.”[351] His fancy must, indeed, have strayed into strange bypaths for both Pollich, the Wittenberg professor, and Cardinal Cajetan expressed amazement at the oddness of his thoughts.

His theological system finally became the pivot around which his thoughts revolved; to it he looked for help. He had created it under the influence of other factors to which it is not here needful to refer again; particularly it had grown out of his own relaxation in the virtues of his Order and religious life.[352] His system, however, had for its aim to combat despair, overmastering concupiscence and the consciousness of sin by means of a self-imposed tranquillity. He was determined to arrive by main force at peace and certainty. Only little by little, so he wrote in 1525, had he discovered, “God leads down to hell those whom He predestines to heaven, and makes alive by slaying”; whoever had read his writings “would understand this now very well”; a man must learn to despair utterly of himself, and allow himself to be helplessly saved by the action of God, i.e. by virtue of the forgiveness won by fiducial faith.[353] How he himself was led by God down to hell he sets forth in his “Resolutiones,” in the account of his mental sufferings given above (p. 101 f.), a passage which transports the reader into the midst of the pains which Luther endured in his anxiety.

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The Shadow of Pseudo-Mysticism

In this connection it will be necessary to return to Luther’s earlier predilection for a certain kind of mysticism.[359]

It was not long before Luther’s pseudo-mysticism translated itself into deeds. He persuades himself that he is guided in all his actions and resolutions by a sort of Divine inspiration. A singular sort of super-naturalism and self-sufficiency gleams in the words he once wrote to Lang. After reminding him of the unquestioned truth, that “man must act under God’s power and counsel and not by his own,” he goes on to explain defiantly, that, for this reason, he scorns once and for all any objections the Erfurt Augustinians might urge against the “paradoxical theses” he had sent them a little earlier, also their charge that he had shown himself hasty and precipitate: God was enough for him; of their counsel and instruction he stood in no need.[365] As though real wisdom and true mysticism did not teach us to welcome humbly the opinion of well-meaning critics, and not to trust too implicitly our own ideas, particularly in fields where one is so liable to trip. But the “Theology of the Cross,” sealed by his fears, now seemed to him above all controversy. During his temptations he had come to see its truth, and it also fell in marvellously with his changed views on the duties of a religious and with his renunciation of humility and self-denial.

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Other Ordeals

Other temptations that assailed Luther must be taken into account. Unfortunately he does not say what “new” form of temptation it was of which he wrote to Johann Lang in 1519. He says: A temptation had now befallen him which showed him “what man was, though he had fondly believed that he was already well enough aware of this before”; he felt it even more severely than the trials he had to endure before the Leipzig Disputation; he would discuss it with him only by word of mouth when Lang came to see him.[370] Is he here referring to temptations of the flesh of an unusual degree of intensity? We have already heard him bewail his temptations to ambition and hate. Moreover, in this very year he speaks of temptations against chastity in his Sermon on Marriage: It is a “shameful temptation,” he says; “I have known it well, and I imagine you too are acquainted with it; ah, I know well how it is when the devil comes and excites and inflames the flesh.… When one is on fire and the temptation comes I know well what it is; then the eye is already blind.”[371] Already before this he had had to fight against “very many temptations” of the sort, which are “wont to attend the age of youth.”[372] Later on they startled him by their waxing strength. Of the temptations of the senses (“titillatio”) to which he was exposed he had complained, for instance, in the same year (1519) in a letter to his superior Staupitz,[373] and the worldly intercourse into which he was drawn, “the social gatherings, excessive indulgence in the pleasures of the table, and general lukewarmness,” of which he speaks on the same occasion, make such temptations all the more likely in the case of a young man of a temper so lively and impressionable, especially as his lukewarmness took the shape of neglect of prayer and the means of grace, and of the help he might have derived from the exercises of the Order.

Such fleshly temptations he bewailed even more loudly when at the Wartburg. There, as we may recall, he became[119] the plaything of evil lust (“libido”) and the “fire of his untamed flesh.” “Instead of glowing in spirit, I glow in the flesh.”[374] Admitting that he himself “prayed and groaned too little for the Church of God,” he exclaims: “Pray for me, for in this solitude I am falling into the abyss of sin!”[375] Though in bodily health and well cared for, he is “being well pounded by sins and temptations,” so he wrote to his old friend Johann Lang.

To all this was still added great trouble of conscience concerning his undertaking as a whole. When he was passionately declaring that his misgivings were from the devil and resolving never to flinch in his antagonism to the hated vow of chastity he was himself falling into the state which he himself describes: “You see how I burn within (‘quantis urgear æstibus’).” This to Melanchthon, after having explained to him the struggle waging within between his feelings and his knowledge of the Bible in the matter of the vow of chastity. He is being carried away to take action, and yet is unable, as he here admits, to prove his object by means of the text of Scripture.[376] He feels himself to be “the sport of a thousand devils” in the Wartburg on account of this and other temptations; he falls frequently, yet the right hand of God upholds him.[377] The castle is full of devils, so he wrote from within its walls, and very cunning devils to boot, who never leave him at peace but behave in such a way that he “is never alone” even when he seems to be so.[378] Hence he was writing “partly under the stress of temptation, partly in indignation.” What he was writing was his “De votis monasticis,” by means of which, as he here says, he is about “to free the young folk from the hell of celibacy.”[379]

Ten years later he still recalls the “despair and the temptation concerning God’s wrath” which had then been raging within him.[380]

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His temptations at that time must have been rendered even worse by the morbid conditions then awakening in him, by the dismal, racking sense of fear that peopled his imagination with thousands of devils, and the mental confusion resulting from his state of nervous overstrain.

It would carry us too far to pursue the diabolical temptations to despair (or what he held to be such) throughout the rest of his life, and to examine their connection with his maladies. We shall only remark, that, even at a later date, when we find him the butt of severe temptations of this sort, an under-current of other trouble is frequently to be detected. The “terrors” he endured in his youthful years indeed moderated but never altogether disappear. The “spiritual sickness” of 1537 of which he speaks, when for a whole fortnight he could scarcely eat, drink or sleep, shows the degree to which these thoughts of despair and struggles of conscience could reach.

Summary

To sum up what we have said of Luther’s temptations, a distinction must be made between the temptations of the Evil One, which Luther himself regarded as such, and certain other things the real nature of which he failed to grasp. Moreover, there are those “temptations” which bore on his work and doctrines and which he wrongly regarded as temptations of the devil, whereas they were no more than the prick of conscience. All three are at times reacted on by a morbid state which he likewise failed rightly to understand, but which was made up of that predisposition to anxiety to which his nature was so prone and a kind of nervous irritability due to his struggles and over-great labours. Only those of the first and second class have any title to be regarded as temptations.

To the first class, i.e. to the temptations he felt and described as such, belongs first of all that despair which often disquieted him even in his later years; then again the temptations of the flesh of which we have also heard him speak. Though he ascribes both to the machinations of the Evil One, yet his method of fighting them was fatally mistaken. The temptations to despair he withstood by his erroneous doctrine of grace and faith alone, and, the more such thoughts torment him, the more defiantly does[121] he stand by this doctrine. In the case of the temptations against chastity he failed to make sufficient use of the remedies of Christian penance and piety; on the contrary, under the stress of their allurements, he finally saw fit to demolish even the barrier raised by solemn vows made unto God.

The second class of temptations, which to him, however, did not seem to be such, includes all the mental aberrations we have had occasion to note during the course of his life story, particularly at the beginning of his apostasy. Here we shall only indicate the more important. It may be allowed that many of them masqueraded under specious pretexts and the appearance of good (“sub specie boni”). Thus, e.g. there was something fine and inspiring in his plans of exalting the grace of Christ at the expense of the mere works of the faithful; of giving the religious freedom of the Christian full play, regardless of unwarranted human ordinances; of improving the cut-and-dry theology of the day by a deeper and more positive study of the Bible; and of stopping the widespread decline in ecclesiastical learning and ecclesiastical life by stronghanded reforms. He allowed himself, however, to be altogether led astray in both the conception and the carrying out of these plans.

There was grave peril to himself in that sort of spiritualism, thanks to which he so frequently attributes all his doings to the direct inspiration and guidance of Almighty God; real and enlightened dependence on God is something very different; again, there was danger in his perverted interpretation of the teaching of the mystics of the past, in his exaggeration of the strength of man’s sinful concupiscence and neglect of the remedies prescribed in ages past, particularly of the practices of his own Order, also in his passionate struggles against the so-called holiness-by-works prevalent among the Augustinians, in his characteristic violence and tendency to pick a quarrel, and, above all, in the working of his inordinate self-esteem and unbounded appreciation of his own achievements as the leader of the new movement, which led him to exalt himself above all divinely appointed ecclesiastical authority.

In the above we were obliged to hark back to Luther’s earlier days, and this we shall again have to do in the following pages. The truth is, that many of the secrets of his[122] earlier years can be explained only in the light of his later life, whilst, conversely, his youth and years of ripening manhood assist us in solving some of the riddles of later years. Hence we cannot be justly charged with repeating needlessly incidents that have already been related.

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Just as the Wartburg witnessed the strongest temptations that Luther had ever to bear, so, too, it formed the stage of certain of those manifestations from the other world of which he fancied himself the recipient. Such manifestations, which lead one to wonder whether Luther suffered from hallucinations, are of frequent occurrence in his story. We shall now proceed to review them in their entirety.

3. Ghosts, Delusions, Apparitions of the Devil

In investigating the many ghostly apparitions with which Luther believed he had been favoured, our attention is perforce drawn to the Wartburg. We must, however, be careful to distinguish the authentic traditions from what has been unjustifiably added thereto. As to the explaining and interpreting of such testimonies as have a right to be regarded as historical, that will form the matter of a special study. In order that the reader may build up an opinion of his own we shall meanwhile only set on record what the sources say, the views of those concerned being given literally and unabridged. This method, essential though it be for the purposes of an unbiassed examination, has too often been set aside, recourse being had instead to mere assertions, denials and pathological explanations.

The Statements Concerning Luther’s Intercourse with the Beyond

On April 5, 1538, Luther, in the presence of his friends, spoke of the personal “annoyance” to which the devil had subjected him while at the Wartburg by means of visible manifestations. The pastor of Sublitz, then staying at Wittenberg, had complained of being pestered at his home by noisy spooks; they flung pots and pans at his head and created other disturbances. Referring to such outward manifestations of the spirit-world, Luther remarked: “I too was tormented in my time of captivity in Patmos, in[123] the castle perched high up in the kingdom of the birds. But I withstood Satan and answered him in the words of the Bible: God is mine, Who created man and ‘set all things under his feet’ (Ps. viii. 7). If thou hast any power over them, try what thou canst do.”[381]

On another occasion he related before his friend Myconius and in the presence of Jonas and Bugenhagen, “how the devil had twice appeared at the Wartburg in the shape of a great dog and had tried to kill him.” It is Myconius who relates this, mentioning that it had been told him by Luther at Gotha in 1538,[382] “in the house of Johann Löben, the Schosser.”

Of one of these two apparitions, the physician Ratzeberger, Luther’s friend, had definite information. He, however, quotes it only as an instance of the many ghostly things which Luther had experienced there: “Because the neighbourhood was lonely many ghosts appeared to him and he was much troubled by disturbances due to noisy spooks. Among other incidents, one night, when he was going to bed, he found a huge black bull-dog lying on his bed that refused to let him get in. Luther thereupon commended himself to our Lord God, recited Ps. viii. [the same as that mentioned above], and when he came to the verse ‘Thou hast set all things under his feet’ the dog at once disappeared and Luther passed a peaceful night. Many other ghosts of a like nature visited him, all of whom he drove off by prayer, but of which he refused to speak, for he said he would never tell anyone how many spectres had tormented him.”[383]

According to the account of his pupil Mathesius, Luther often “called to mind how the devil had tormented him in mind and caused him a burning pain which sucked the very marrow out of his bones.”[384] Of visible apparitions Mathesius has, however, very little to say: “The Evil Spirit,” so we read in his account of Luther’s sayings, “most likely wished to affright me palpably, for on many nights I heard him making a noise in my Patmos, and saw him at the Coburg under the form of a star, and in my garden in the shape of[124] a black pig. But my Christ strengthened me by His Spirit and Word so that I paid no heed to the devil’s spectre.”[385] Mathesius, in his enthusiasm, actually goes so far as to compare such things to Satan’s tempting of Christ in the wilderness.

The encounter with the great black dog in the Wartburg is related in an old edition of Luther’s Table-Talk with a curious addition, which tells how Luther, on one occasion, calmly lifted from the bed the dog, which had frequently tormented him, carried him to the window, and threw him out without the animal even barking. Luther had not been able to learn anything about it afterwards from others, but no such dog was kept in the Castle.[386]

ed., 58, p. 129.

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Greater stress must be laid on those statements of his which bear on inward experiences, where the most momentous truths were concerned and which occurred at certain crises of his life.

In Nov., 1525, he assured Gregory Casel, the Strasburg theologian, in so many words, that “he had frequently had inward experience that the body of Christ is indeed in the Sacrament; he had seen dreadful visions; also angels (‘vidisse se visiones horribiles, sæpe se angelos vidisse’), so that he had been obliged to stop saying Mass.”[400]

He spoke in this way in the course of the official negotiations with Casel, the delegate of the Protestant theologians of Strasburg. The words occur in Casel’s report of the interview published by Kolde. It is true that Luther also speaks here of the outward “Word” as the support of his doctrine, particularly on the Sacrament. “We shall,” he says, “abide quite simply by the words of Scripture—until the Spirit and the unction teach us something different.” He avers that the Strasburgers who denied the Sacrament come with their “Spirit” and wish to explain away the words of the Bible concerning the body of Christ in the Bread. This, however, is not the “light of the Spirit,” but the “light of reason”; he himself had long since learnt to reject reason in the things of God. They were not convinced of their cause as he was, otherwise they would defend their teaching publicly as he did, for he would rather the whole world were undone than be silent on God’s doctrine, because it was God’s business to watch over it.

The Table-Talk assures us that, “Dr. Martin proved it from his own experience that Jesus Christ is truly God; this he also confessed openly; for if Christ were not God then there was certainly no God at all.”[404] It was no difficult task for him to include himself in the ranks of those “who had received the first fruits of the spirit.”[405]

In addition to this, however, as will be shown below,[406] he thinks his doctrine has been borne in upon him by God through direct revelation. More than once, without any scruple, he uses the word “revelatum”; he is also fond of setting this revelation in an awesome background: it had been “strictly enjoined on him (‘interminatum’) under pain of eternal malediction” to believe in it.[407]

In fact a certain terror is the predominating factor in this gloomy region where he comes in touch with the other world. He has not merely had experience that there are[129] roving spirits who affright men,[408] but, in a letter from the Wartburg, he insists quite generally, that, “the visions of the Saints are terrifying.” Of course, as we well know, delusions and hallucinations very often do assume a terrifying character.

Luther also asserts that “divine communications” are always accompanied by inward tortures like unto death, words which give us a glimpse into his own morbid state.[409] And yet he fully admits elsewhere the very opposite, for he is aware that God is, above all things, the consoler. “It is not Christ Who affrights us”;[410] and “it is Satan alone who wounds and terrifies.”[411] But, in practice, according to him, things work differently; there the fear from which he and others suffer comes to the fore. “We are oftentimes affrighted even when God turns to us the friendliest of glances.”[412]

This change of standpoint reminds us of another instance of the same sort. Luther’s teaching on the terrifying character of the divine action is much the same as his theological teaching that fear is the incentive to good deeds. While, as a rule, he goes much too far in seeking to rid the believer of any fear of God as the Judge, preaching an unbounded confidence and even altogether excluding fear from the work of conversion, yet, elsewhere, he emphasises most strongly this same fear, as called for and quite indispensable; this he did in his controversies with the Antinomians and, even earlier, as on the occasion of the Visitations, on account of its religious influence on the people.

No change or alteration is, however, apparent in the accounts he gives above of the cases in which he came in touch with the other world; he sticks firmly by his statement that he had experienced such things both mentally and palpably. Hence the difficulty of coming to any decision about them.

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But there are further alleged experiences, also detailed at length, which have a place here, viz. the apparitions of the devil himself.

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By the word hallucination is understood an apparent perception of an external object not actually present. That the “apparition” at the Coburg and other similar ones already mentioned or yet to be referred to were hallucinations is quite possible though not certain. It is true that the excessive play Luther gave to his imagination, particularly at the Wartburg and, later, at the Coburg, was such that it is quite within the bounds of possibility that he fancied he[131] saw or heard things which had no real existence. On the other hand, moreover, we know what a large share his superstition had in distorting actual facts. Hence, generally speaking, most of the ghosts or visions he is said to have seen can be explained by a mistaken interpretation of the reality, without there being any need to postulate an hallucination properly so-called. Much of what has been related might come under the heading of illusions, though, probably, not everything. To analyse them in detail is, however, impossible as the circumstances are not accurately known. Certainly no one, however much inclined to the supernatural, who is familiar with Luther and his times, will be content, as was once the case, to believe that the devil sought to interfere visibly and palpably with his person and his teaching.

To proceed with the accounts of the apparitions of the devil: About the reality of two of such, Luther is quite positive.

It is a fact worthy of note that the older Protestant writers, when speaking of the apparitions Luther had, never mention any such or any revelations of a consoling character, but merely terrifying stories of devils and diabolical persecutions. This agrees with the observation already made above (p. 128 f.). It is evident that as good as nothing was known of any consoling apparitions; nor would the mild and friendly angels have been in place in the warlike picture which his friends transmitted of Luther. That he did not think himself a complete stranger to such heavenly communications has, however, been proved above, and it may be that his imagination would have had more to relate concerning this friendlier world above had he not had particular reasons for being chary about speaking of such visions.

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The Disputation with the Devil on the Mass

In Spangenberg even Luther’s famous disputation with the devil on private Masses is also made to do duty among the other apparitions. He, like many others, takes it as an actual occurrence and represents it as further proof of the “real martyrdom” of his hero.[428] As, conversely, this disputation also plays a part in the works of Luther’s adversaries, it may be worth while to examine it somewhat more narrowly. It is urged that Luther admits he had been instructed by the devil regarding the falsity of the Catholic doctrine of the Mass, and, that, by thus tracing it back to the devil, he stamps with untruth an important portion of his teaching, seeing, that, from the father of lies, nothing but lies can be expected.

What then are we to believe concerning this disputation, judging from Luther’s own words which constitute our sole source? The only possible answer is, that Luther is merely making use of a rhetorical device.

Certain Protestant writers, even down to our own times, have, however, insisted that, at any rate inwardly, the devil had sought to reduce Luther to despair on account of his celebration of Mass as a Catholic; that the spirit of darkness had attached so much importance to the suppression of the Gospel, that he attempted to disquiet Luther with such self-reproaches.[432] It is true Luther once says that the devil reproached him with his “misdeeds, for instance, with the sacrifice of the Mass,” and other Catholic practices of which he had formerly been guilty.[433] On other occasions, however, he quite absolves the devil of any change concerning the Mass. He says, e.g.: “The devil is such a miscreant that he does not reproach me with my great and[137] awful crimes such as the celebration of Mass,”[434] etc. Thus he had persuaded himself quite independently of the devil that the Mass was a grievous crime. We have, in fact, in Luther’s statements concerning his inward experiences a crying instance of his changeableness. We shall return below to his self-reproach on account of his celebration of Mass (see section 4).

Possession and Exorcism

We may conclude our examination of diabolical apparitions by some statements concerning the exorcisms Luther undertook and his treatment of cases of possession.

His first followers believed he had been successful in 1545 in driving out Satan in the case of a person possessed. The testimony of two witnesses of the incident must here come under consideration, both young men who were present on the occasion, viz. Sebastian Fröschel, Deacon at Wittenberg, and Frederick Staphylus, a man of learning who afterwards abandoned Lutheranism and became Superintendent of the University of Ingolstadt.[435] The latter knows nothing of any success having attended Luther’s efforts, whereas the former boasts that such was the case, though he somewhat invalidates his testimony by saying nothing of the embarrassing situation in which Luther found himself at the close of the scene. According to both accounts the incident was more or less as follows:

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Luther himself says nothing of it, though disposed in later life to lay great stress on stories of the devil.[438] Earlier than this, in 1540, he had hastened to tell his Katey of the supposed deliverance of a girl at Arnstadt from the devil’s power through the ministrations of the Evangelical pastor there; the latter had “driven a devil out of the girl in a truly Christian manner.”[439] He does not, however, mention this incident in his published works.

On the other hand we have in the Table-Talk a full account of his treatment of a woman “possessed,” or, rather, clearly ailing from a nervous disorder. Her symptoms were regarded, as was customary at a time when so little was known of this class of maladies, as “purely the work of the devil, as something unnatural, due to fright and devil-spectres, seeing that the devil had overlaid her in the shape of a calf.” Luther, on visiting the woman thus “bodily persecuted by the devil,” again laid great stress on the need of praying that she might be rid of her guest, though this time he did not scorn the use of the formula of exorcism. “The night after, she was left in peace, but, later, the weakness returned. Finally, however, she was completely delivered from it;”[440] in other words, the malady simply took its natural course.

Another much-discussed case which occurred after the middle of the ’thirties was that of a girl at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, a report of which came to Luther from Andreas Ebert, the Lutheran pastor there (see above, vol. iii., p. 148). In his reply to the circumstantial account of how the “possessed” girl was able to produce coins by magic Luther shows himself in so far cautious that he is anxious to have it made clear whether the story is quite true and whether the coins are real. Nevertheless, he does not hesitate to declare, that, should the incident be proved, it would be a great omen (“ostentum”), as Satan, with God’s permission, was thus setting before them a picture of the greed of money prevailing among certain of the princes. He[140] was loath to see exorcism resorted to, “because the devil in his pride laughs at it”; all the more were they to pray for the girl and against the devil, and this, with the help of Christ, would finally spell her liberation; meanwhile, however, he expresses his readiness to make public all the facts of the case that could be proved. In his sermons he spoke of the occurrence to his hearers as a “warning.”[441]

Theodore Kirchhoff, who, in the “Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie,” mentions “Luther’s exorcisms of hysterical women folk,” not without bewailing his error, points out that it was in part his own fancied experience with the devil which led him to regard “similar phenomena in others as diabolical”; “his many nervous ailments,” he says, “strengthened his personal belief in the devil.” “Indeed, so far did he go in his efforts to drive out the devil that once he actually proposed that an idiot should be done to death.”[442] “Such a doctrine [on the devil’s action], backed by the authority of so great a man, took deep root.” It would be incorrect, writes Kirchhoff, to say, that Luther inaugurated a healthier view of “possession”; on the contrary his opinion is, “that, owing to Luther’s hard and fast theories, the right understanding and treatment of the insane was rendered more difficult than ever; for, if we consider the immense spread of his writings and what their influence became, it is but natural to infer that this also led to his peculiar view becoming popular.”[443] Needless to say, other circumstances also conspired to render difficult the treatment of the mentally disordered; long before Luther’s day they had been regarded by many as possessed, and as the physicians would not undertake to cure possessions, this condition was neglected by the healing art. In many instances, too, the relatives were against any cure being attempted by physicians.

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4. Revelation and Illusion. Morbid Trains of Thought

One ground for considering the question of Luther’s revelations in connection with the darker side of his life lies in the gloomy and unearthly circumstances, which, according to his own account, accompanied the higher communications he received (“sub æternæ iræ maledictione”),[444] or else preceded them, inducing within his soul a profound disturbance (“ita furebam.”…), “I was terrified each time.”[445]

A further reason is the unfortunate after-effect that the supposed revelations from above had upon his mind. Outwardly, indeed, he seemed an incarnation of confidence, but, inwardly, the case was very different. Chapter xxxii. (vol. v.) of the present work will have shown how it was his new doctrines, and his overturning of the Church which accounted for his “agonies of soul,” his “pangs of hell” and “nightly combats” with the devil, or rather with his own conscience. “Why do you raise the standard of revolt against the house of the Lord?… Such thoughts upset one very much.”[446] His irritation, melancholy and pessimism were largely due to his disappointment with the results of his revelations. “They know it is God Whose Word we preach and yet they say: We shan’t listen.” “We are poor and indifferent trumpeters, but to the assembly of the heavenly spirits ours is a mighty call.” “My only remaining consolation is that the end of all cannot be far off.” “It must soon come to a head. Amen.”[447] And yet, for all that, he insisted on his divine mission so emphatically (above, vol. iii., p. 109 ff.).

The revelations which confirmed him in the idea of his mission deserve more careful examination than has hitherto been possible to us in the course of our narrative.

That Luther ever laid claim to having received his doctrine by a personal revelation from God has been several times denied in recent times by his defenders. They urge that he merely claimed to have received his doctrine from above, “in the same way that God reveals it to all true Christians”; in this and in no other sense, does he speak[142] of his revelations, nor does he ascribe to himself any “peculiar mission.”

It is true Luther taught that the content of the faith to which every true Christian adheres had come into the world by a revelation bestowed on mankind; he also taught that the Holy Ghost lends His assistance to every man to enable him to grasp and hold fast to this revelation: “This is a wisdom such as reason has never framed, nor has the heart of man conceived it, no, not even the great ones of this world, but it is revealed from heaven by the Holy Ghost to those who believe the Gospel.”[448]—This, however, is not the question, but rather, whether he never gave out that he had reached his own fresh knowledge, and that reading of the Bible which he sets up against all the rest of Christendom, thanks to a private and particular illumination, and whether he did not base on such a revelation his claim to infallible certainty?

Luther’s Insistence on Private Revelation

Luther certainly never dreamt of making so bold and hazardous an assertion so long as a spark of hope remained in him that the Church of Rome would fall in with his doctrines. It was only gradually that the phantom of a personal revelation grew upon him, and, even later, its sway was never absolute, as we can see from our occasional glimpses into his inward struggles of conscience.

We may begin with one of his latest utterances, following it up with one of his earliest. Towards the end of his life he insisted on the suddenness with which the light streamed in upon him when he had at last penetrated into the meaning of Rom. i. 17 (in the Tower), thus setting the coping-stone on his doctrines by that of the certainty of salvation.[449] Again, at the outset of his public career, we meet with those words of which Adolf Harnack says: “Such self-reliance almost fills us with anxiety.”[450]

The words Harnack refers to are those in which Luther solemnly assures his Elector that he had “received the Evangel, not from man, but from heaven alone, through[143] our Lord Jesus Christ.” This he wrote in 1522 when on the point of quitting the Wartburg.[451]

In the same year in his “Wyder den falsch genantten geystlichen Standt,” full of the spirit he had inhaled at the Wartburg, he declared that he could no longer remain without “name or title” in order that he might rightly honour and extol the “Word, office and work he had from God.” For the Father of all Mercies, out of the boundless riches of His Grace, had brought him, for all his sinfulness, “to the knowledge of His Son Jesus Christ and set him to teach others until they too saw the truth”; for this reason he had a better right to term himself an “Evangelist by the Grace of God” than the bishops had to call themselves bishops. “I am quite sure that Christ Himself, Who is the Master of my doctrine, calls and regards me as such.” Hence he will not permit even “an angel from heaven to judge or take him to task concerning his doctrine”; “since I am certain of it I am determined to be judge, not only of you, but, as St. Paul says (Gal. i. 8), even of the angels, so that whoever does not accept my doctrine cannot be saved; for it is God’s and not mine, therefore my judgment also is not mine but God’s own.”[452]

Such Wartburg enthusiasm, where all that is wanting is the actual word revelation, agrees well with his statement about the sort of ultimatum (“Interminatio”) sent him by God: “Under pain of eternal wrath it had been enjoined on him from above,” that he must preach what had been given him; he describes this species of vision as one of the greatest favours God had bestowed on his soul.[453] Nor did he scruple to make use of the word “revelation.”

From all the above it becomes clear that the revelation which Luther claimed was regarded by him throughout as a true and personal communication from above, and not merely as a knowledge acquired by reflection and prayer under the Divine assistance common to all. It was in fact only by considering the matter in this light that he was able effectually to refute the objections of outsiders and to allay to some extent the storms within him. The very character of his revolt against the Church, against the tradition of a thousand years, against the episcopate, universities, Catholic princes and Catholic instincts of the nation demanded something more than could have been afforded by a mere appeal to the revelation common to all. Of what service would it have been to him in his struggles[147] of conscience, and when contending with the malice and jealousy of the sects, to have laid claim to a vague, general revelation?

Nevertheless, the appeals Luther makes to the revelation he had received are at times somewhat vague, as some of the passages quoted serve to prove. We shall not be far wrong if we say that he himself was often not quite clear as to what he should lay claim. His ideas, or at any rate his statements, concerning the exalted communications he had received, vary with the circumstances, being, now more definite, now somewhat misty.

Here, as in the parallel case of his belief in his mission, his assertions are at certain periods more energetic and defiant than at others (see above, vol. iii., p. 120 ff.).

However this may be, the idea of a revelation in the strict sense was no mere passing whim; it emerges at its strongest under the influence of the Wartburg spirit, and, once more, summons up all its forces towards the end of his days, when Luther seeks for comfort amid his sad experiences and for some relief in his weariness. Yet, in him, the idea of a revelation always seems a matter of the will, something which he can summon to his assistance and to which he deliberately holds fast, and which, as occasion requires, is decked out with the necessary adjuncts of angels descending from heaven, visions, spirits, inward experiences, inward menaces, or triumphs over the temptations of the devil.

Some Apparent Withdrawals

Various apparently contradictory statements, such as the reader must expect to meet with in Luther, are not, however, wanting, even concerning his revelations.

Discordant statements of the sort do not, indeed, occur in the passages, where, as in the quotations given above, he is defending his theological innovations against the authority of the Church. Often they are a mere rhetorical trick to impress his hearers with his modesty. In his sermons at Wittenberg in 1522, for instance, he declared that he was perfectly willing to submit his “feeling and understanding” to anyone to whom “more has been revealed”; by this, however, he does not mean his doctrine but merely the practical details of the introduction of the new ritual of[148] public worship, then being discussed at Wittenberg. This is clear from the very emphasis he here lays on his teaching, thanks to which the Wittenbergers now have the “Word of God true and undefiled,” and from his description of the devil’s rage who now sees that “the sun of the true Evangel has risen.”[469]

Again, when, in his later revision of the same course of sermons, we hear him say: “You must be disciples, not of Luther, but of Christ,”[470] and: “You must not say I am Luther’s, or I am the Pope’s, for neither has died for you nor is your master, but only Christ,”[471] he has not the least intention of denying the authority of the doctrine revealed to him, on the contrary, on the same page, he has it that, “Luther’s doctrine is not his but Christ’s own”;[472] he had already said, “Even were Luther himself or an angel from heaven to teach otherwise, let it be anathema.”[473] He is simply following St. Paul’s lead[474] and pointing out to his hearers the supreme source of truth; he still remains its instrument, the “Prophet,” “Evangelist” and “Ecclesiastes by the grace of God,” favoured, like the inspired Apostle of the Gentiles, with revelations.

Nevertheless, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact, that, subsequent to 1525, Luther tended at times to be less insistent on his revelations. From strategic considerations he was careful to keep more in the background his revelations from the Spirit now that the fanatics were also claiming their own special enlightenment by the “Spirit.” His eyes were now opened to the danger inherent in such arbitrary claims to revelation, and, accordingly, he now begins to insist more on the outward “Word.”[475]

It is true, that, in Nov., 1525, in refutation of the Zwinglian theologians of Strasburg, he still appealed not merely to his visions of angels (see above, p. 127) but also to the certain light of his doctrine inspired by the Holy Ghost, and to his sense of the “Spirit.” “I see very well,” he says, “that they have no certainty, but the Spirit is[149] certain of His cause.”[476] Even then, however, a change had begun and he preferred to appeal to Holy Scripture, which, so he argued, spoke plainly in his favour, rather than to inspirations and revelations. Hence his asseveration that this outward Word of God has much more claim to consideration than the inward Word, which can so easily be twisted to suit one’s frame of mind. He now comes unduly to depreciate the inward Word and the Spirit which formerly he had so highly vaunted, though, on the other hand, he continues to teach that the Spirit and the inward enlightening of the Word are necessary for the interpretation of Holy Scripture.

His Commentary on Isaias contains a delightful attack on the “all-too spiritual folk, who, to-day, cry Spirit, Spirit!” “Let us not look for any private revelations. It is Christ who tells us to ‘search the Scriptures’ [John v. 39]. Revelations puff us up and make us presumptuous. I have not been instructed,” so he goes on, “either by signs or by special revelations, nor have I ever begged signs of God; on the contrary I have asked Him never to let me become proud, or be led astray from the outward Word through the devil’s tricks.” He then launches out against those who pretend they have “particular revelations on the faith,” being “misled by the devil.” These words occur in the revised and enlarged Scholia on Isaias published in 1534. It may, however, be that they did not figure in Luther’s lectures on Isaias (1527-30) but were appended somewhat later.[477]

After thus apparently disowning any title to private revelation and a higher light Luther’s inevitable appeal to the certainty of his doctrine only becomes the more confident. Thanks to his temptations and death-throes, he had become so certain, that he can declare: Possessed of the “Word” as I am, I have not the least wish “that an angel should come to me, for, now, I should not believe him.”

“Nevertheless, the time might well come,” so he continues in this passage of the Table-Talk, “when I might be pleased to see one [an angel] on certain matters.” “I do not, however, admit dreams and signs, nor do I worry about them. We have in Scripture all that we require. Sad[150] dreams come from the devil, for everything that ministers to death and dread, lies and murder is the devil’s handiwork.”[478]

It is true Luther was often plagued by terrifying dreams, and as he numbered them among his “anxieties and death-throes” what he says about them may fittingly be utilised to complete the picture of his inward state. To such an extent was the devil able to affright him, so he says, that he “broke out into a sweat in the midst of his sleep”; thus “Satan was present even when men slept; but angels too were also there.”[479] He assures us, that, in his sleep, he had witnessed even the horrors of the Last Judgment.

The “Temptations” as one of Luther’s Bulwarks

The states of terror and the temptations he underwent were to Luther so many confirmations of his doctrine. Some of his utterances on this subject ring very oddly.

At any rate there is no room for doubt that this opened out a rich field for delusion; what he says depicts a frame of mind in which hallucinations might well thrive; we shall, however, leave it to others to determine how far pathological elements intervene.

In the certainty that his cause was inspired he calmly awaits the approach of the fanatics; they can serve only to strengthen in him his sense of confidence. Of them and their “presumptuous certainty” he makes short work in a conversation noted down by Cordatus:[486] Marcus Thomae (Stübner) he requests to perform a miracle in proof of his views, warning him, however, that “My God will assuredly forbid your God to let you work a sign”; he also hurls against him the formula of exorcism: “God rebuke thee,[152] Satan” (Zach. iii. 2).[487] Nicholas Storch and Thomas Münzer, so he assures us, openly show their presumption. A pupil of Stübner was anxious to set himself up as a teacher, but the fellow had only been able to talk fantastic rubbish to him. Of people such as these he had come across quite sixty. Campanus, again, is simply to be numbered among the biggest blasphemers. Carlstadt, who wanted to be esteemed learned, was only distinguished by his arrogant mouthing. Nowhere was there profundity or truth. “Not one of you has endured such anxieties and temptations as I.”[488] “And yet Carlstadt wanted us to bow to his teaching.… Like Christ, however, I say: ‘My doctrine is not mine but his that sent me’ (John vii. 16). I cannot betray it as the world would have me do. The malice of all these ministers of Satan only serves my cause and exercises me in indomitable firmness.”[489] Hence he derives equal benefit from the malice of his opponents within the fold and from the inward apprehensions of which Satan was the cause.

The manifold errors which had sprung from the seed of his own principles, in any other man would have elicited doubts and scruples; Luther, however, finds in them fresh support for his dominating conviction: My glorious sufferings at the devil’s hands are being multiplied and, thereby, too, the witness on behalf of my doctrine is being strengthened.

The mystical halo of the “man of suffering” certainly made a great impression on some of his young followers and admirers such as Spangenberg, Mathesius, Cordatus and Veit Dietrich. On others of his circle the effect was not so lasting.

Melanchthon, for instance, was well acquainted with Luther’s fits of mystic terror, yet how severe is the criticism he passes on Luther’s ground-dogmas, particularly after the latter’s death.

The doctrine of man’s entire unfreedom in doing what is good may serve as an instance.

This palladium of the new theology had been discovered by Luther when overwhelmed with despair; by it he sought to commit himself entirely into God’s hands and blindly and passively to await salvation from Him; this he[153] regarded as the only way out of inward trials; no man could face the devil with his free will; he himself, so he wrote, “would not wish to have” free-will, even were it offered him (“nollem mihi dari liberum arbitrium”), in order that he might at least be safe from the devil; nay, even were there no devil, free-will would still be to him an abomination, because, with it, his “conscience would never be safe and at rest.” The words occur in the work he declared to be his very best and a lasting heirloom for posterity.[490] This particular doctrine, Melanchthon was, however, so far from regarding as a “revelation,” that he wrote in 1559: “Both during Luther’s lifetime and also later, I withstood that Stoical and Manichæan delusion which led Luther and others to write, that all works whether good or evil, in all men whether good or bad, take place of necessity. Now it is evident that this doctrine is contrary to God’s Word, subversive of all discipline and a blasphemy against God.”[491] Melanchthon did not even scruple to call upon the State to intervene and prohibit such things being said. In his Postils, dealing with the question whether heretics should be put to death, he declares: “By divine command the public authorities must proceed against idolaters and also interdict blasphemous language, as, for instance, when a man teaches that good or evil takes place of necessity and under compulsion.”[492]

He could not well have said anything more deadly against the foundation on which Luther’s whole edifice was reared.

In spite of all, Luther always stood by his pseudo-mystic idea of his having received revelations. Without it he could never have ventured to threaten as he did the secular and ecclesiastical authorities who opposed his dogmas, with “extermination” and “great revolts,” or to proclaim so confidently that they would fall, blown over by the breath of Christ’s mouth, or to prophesy that, even beyond the grave, he would be to the impenitent Papists, what, according to the prophet Osee, God threatened to be to Israel, viz. “a bear in the road and a lion in the path.”[493]

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His whole process of thought was, as it were, held captive in the heavy chains of this idea.

Three Perverted Theories Dominating Luther’s Outlook

In order to enter even more deeply into Luther’s mentality three categories of ideas by which he determined his life well deserve consideration here. Only at the point we have now reached can some of his statements be judged of aright.

Among his strange ideas must be reckoned his threefold conviction, first, that he was called to be the opponent of Antichrist, secondly, that Popery was a thing of boundless and utter depravity, thirdly, that in his own personal experiences and gifts he was blessed beyond all other men. Here again we shall have to refer to many passages already quoted and also to some fresh ones of Luther’s which afford a glimpse into his perverted mode of thought and incredible prejudice.

His obstinate belief in his mission against Antichrist keeps the thought of a mortal combat ever before his mind; a decisive battle at the approaching end of all, between heaven and hell, between Christ and the dragon. This struggle, such as he viewed it, needless to say existed only in his imagination. If, according to him, the devil fights so furiously that at times Christ Himself seems on the point of succumbing, this is only because Luther’s cause does not thrive, or because Luther himself is again the butt of gloomy fears. As early as 1518, as we know, he fancied he had detected the Papal Antichrist, and could read the thoughts of Satan, who was at work behind his opponents.[494] In this idea he subsequently confirmed himself by his reading of the Old-Testament prophecies, on which, till almost the very end of his life, he was wont laboriously to base new calculations. From the dawn of his career it has been borne in on him with ever-growing clearness how Christ, using Luther as His tool, will overthrow, as though in sport, this “man of sin” of which Popery is the embodiment; at the very[155] close of his days, when the sight of the evils rampant in Germany was causing him the utmost anxiety, he seems to hear the trump that heralds the Coming of the Judge.

Using images that suggest a positive obsession, he depicts the world as full of the traces of Antichrist and the devil his forerunner. Yet all the machinations of the old serpent avail only to strengthen the defiance with which he opposes Satan and all his myrmidons. The signs in the heavens above and on the earth below all point to him, the great, albeit unworthy, champion of God’s cause. Though Antichrist and the powers that are his backers in this world may for the time have the better of the struggle this is but the last flicker of the dying flame which, by prophecy and vision, he had been predestined to extinguish (above, vol. iii., p. 165 ff., etc.).

Hence his confidence in unveiling the action of Antichrist as portrayed in the birth of the Monk-Calf; like some seer he hastens to pen a special work for the instruction of the people in the meaning of the Calf’s anatomy.[495] His growing uncanny imagination goes on to describe, in colours more and more glaring, the abominations of that Antichrist from whom he has torn the veil. The fury of the Turk is but child’s play to the horror of the Papal Antichrist. That portion of the Table-Talk which deals with Antichrist, comprising no less than 165 sections brimful of the maddest fancies, begins with the description of Antichrist’s head. “The head is at the same time the Pope and the Turk. A living animal must have both soul and body. The spirit or soul of Antichrist is the Pope, his flesh or body the Turk”;[496] the concluding words on the subject are in the same vein: “The blood of Abel cries for vengeance on them,” viz. on the followers of the Pope-Antichrist.[497] These chapters of the Table-Talk dealing with Antichrist scarcely do credit to the human mind. We can, however, understand them, for to Luther nothing is plainer than that the “nature of his foes is utterly devilish”; all he sees is the claws, paws, horns and poison-fangs of Antichrist.[498]

Luther revealed the anti-Christian nature of the Pope, in accordance with the prophet Daniel whom he read on[156] the principle: “Sic volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas”; “Nevertheless we attach but little importance to our deliverance and are very ungrateful. This, however, is our consolation, viz. that the Last Day cannot now be long delayed. Daniel’s prophecy is fulfilled to the letter and paints the Papacy as plainly as though it had been written post factum.”[499]

In spite of Antichrist and “all that is mighty” the Article concerning Holy Scripture and the Cross still holds the field. And, so Luther proceeds in the Table-Talk, “I, a poor monk, had to come,” with “an unfortunate nun” [Catherine Bora who doubtless was present], and “seize upon it and hold it. Thus ‘verbum’ and ‘crux’ are the conquerors; they make us confident.”[500]

The reason why Luther longed with such ardour for the coming of the Last Day has already been shown to have been his growing pessimism and the depression resulting from the sad experiences with which he had met (above, vol. v., p. 245 ff.). In his elastic way he, however, manages, when preaching to the people, to give a rather different reason for his prediction of the fall of Antichrist and the coming of the end. In Popery, he declares, we were not allowed to speak of the Last Judgment; “how we dreaded it”; “we pictured Christ to ourselves as a Judge to Whom we had to give account. To that we came, thanks to our works.” But now it is quite otherwise. “Now on the contrary I should be glad if the Last Day were to come, because there is no greater consolation.”[501] Here he speaks as though inspired solely by the purest of intentions when he looked forward to the coming of the vanquisher of Antichrist.

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The wickedness of his opponents and the weapons to be used against them constitute a second group of ideas. Here,[157] once again, the psychological or pathological appreciation of Luther’s strange and morbid train of thought makes imperative a further investigation of certain points already discussed in other connections.

Often Luther seems unable to stem the torrent of charges and insults that streams from him as soon as adversaries appear in his field of vision. Frequently it almost looks as though some superhuman agency outside himself had opened the sluice-gates of his terrible eloquence. He is determined to rage against them “even to the very grave”; his wrath against them “refreshes his blood.” It is actually when expressing his hatred in the most incredible language that he is most sensible of the “nearness of God.” Do not his Popish foes deserve even worse than he, a mere man, is able to heap on them? Those scoundrels who “only seek a pretext for telling lies against us and misleading simple folk, though quite well aware that they are in the wrong.”[502] Their palpable obstinacy, in spite of their better judgment, was so great, so he argued, that it was only because Luther advocated it that they refused to hear of any moral reform, for instance, of the clergy marrying, etc., otherwise they would have held it “quite all right.” He does not shrink from demanding that such roguery should “be hunted down with hounds,” no less than the wickedness of these “most depraved of brothel-keepers, open adulterers, stealers of women and seducers of maidens.”[503]

The most curious thing, however, one, too, that must weigh heavily in the balance when judging of his mental state, is that, as shown elsewhere, by dint of repeating this he actually came to believe that his caricature of Catholicism was perfectly true to fact. The calumnies become part of his mental framework, the very frequency and heat of his charges blinding him to all sense of their enormity, and clouding his outlook. What is even worse is, that, even when he occasionally glimpses the truth he yet believes it lawful to deviate from it where this suits his purpose. Thus he came to formulate the dangerous theory of the lie of necessity and the useful lie which we have already described in his own words. He goes so far as to say, that the nature of his foes was utterly devilish (above, p. 155, n. 4), and, when assailing[158] the wickedness of Popery, he considers “everything lawful for the salvation of souls” (“omnia nobis licere arbitramur”).[504] Our “tricks, lies and stumblings” may “easily be atoned for, for God’s Mercy watches over us.”[505]

On other occasions his opponents become “a pack of fools”; they deserve nothing but scorn and no heed should be paid to their objections. Even should the world write against him he will only pity them. All earlier ages and “a thousand Fathers and Councils of the Church” cannot rob him of the golden grains of truth which he alone possesses.

No sooner does he speak of the Papists and their religion, than, irresistibly, there rises up before his mind the picture of the “tonsures, cowls, frocks and bawling in the choir,” in short the so-called holiness-by-works, on which he seizes to load ridicule on all that is Popish.

In the pictures his imagination conjures up, the sacrifice of the Mass—the most sacred mystery of Catholic worship—occupies[160] a special place. It is the idolatrous abomination foretold by the prophet, or rather the idol Moasim itself (above, vol. iv., p. 524). One wonders whether he really succeeded in persuading himself that his greatest sin, a sin that cried to heaven for vengeance and deserved eternal damnation (above, p. 136; cp. vol. iv., p. 509), was his having—as a monk and at a time when he knew no better—celebrated the sacrifice of the Mass? It is true that, in the solemn profession he makes of his belief in the Sacrament (1528), when resolved to confess his faith “before God and the whole world,” he says: “These were my greatest sins, that I was such a holy monk and for over fifteen years angered, plagued and martyred my dear Master so gruesomely by my many Masses.” The words occur at the close of his “Vom Abendmal Christi Bekentnis,” with the asseveration, that he would stand firm in this faith to the very end; “and were I, which God forbid, under stress of temptation or in the hour of death to say otherwise, then [what I might say] must be accounted as nought and I hereby openly proclaim it to be false and to come from the devil. So help me My Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.”[507]

According to what he once remarked in 1531 (above, p. 136 f.) it was, however, not the devil who was prompting him to despair by calling up his crying sin of having said Mass. If Luther is indeed telling the truth, and if his doings as a zealous monk really seemed to him to be his worse sins, then we can only marvel at his confusion of mind having gone so far. From other admissions we should rather gather that what disquieted his conscience was more the subversion of the olden worship, the ruin of the religious life and, in fact, the whole working of the innovations. And yet, here, we have a solemn assurance that the very contrary was the case.

It is in itself a problem how he contrives to make such frightful sins of his monastic life—into which, on his own showing, he had entered in ignorance—and of the Masses which he had said all unaware of their wickedness.

But, in his polemics, such is the force with which he is swept along, that he does not pause to consider his blatant self-contradictions, or how much he is putting himself at the[161] mercy of his opponents, or how inadequately his rhetoric and all his playing to the gallery hides the lack of valid proofs and the deficiencies of his reading of Scripture.

As for his foes, in his mind’s eye he sees them wavering and falling, blown over, as it were, by the strength of his reasoning, even when they are not overtaken and slain by the righteous judgment of God. When need arises he has ready a list of deaths, particularly of sudden ones, by which opponents had been snatched away.[508] The “blessed upheaval,” however, which is one day to carry them all off together, is, so at least his morbid fancy tells him, still delayed by his prayers.

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As for himself personally, he stood under the spell of a train of thought displaying pathological symptoms, which, taken in the lump, must raise serious questions as to the nature of his changing mental state.

Being chosen by God for such great things, being not merely the “prophet of the Germans” but also destined to bring back the Gospel to the whole Christian world, Providence, in his opinion, has equipped him with qualities such as have hitherto rarely graced a man. This he does not tire of repeating, albeit he ever refers his gifts to God. He is fond of comparing himself not merely with the Popish doctors of his day but also with the most famous of bygone time. In the same way he is fond of measuring foes within the fold by the standard of his own greatness. He is thus betrayed into utterances such as one usually hears only from those affected with megalomania; this sort of thing pleases him so well, that, intent on his own higher mission, he fails to see the bad taste of certain of his exaggerations and how repulsive their tone is.[509]

God at all times has saved His Church “by means of individuals and for the sake of a few”; this Luther pointed out to his friends in 1540, instancing Adam, Abraham, Moses, Elias, Isaias, Augustine, Ambrose and others. “God also did something by means of Bernard and now again through me, the new Jeremias. And so the end draws[162] nigh!”[510] The end, however, for which he has made everything ready, may now come quite peacefully and speedily, for he has not merely done “something,” but “everything that pertains to the knowledge of God has been restored”; “the Gospel has been revealed and the Last Day is at the door.”[511]

Fancying himself the passive tool of Divine Providence, it becomes lawful for him deliberately to scatter over the world his literary bomb-shells, exclaiming: God wills it, for, did He not, He could prevent it! He flings broadcast atrocious charges of a character to arouse men’s worst passions, and, at the same time, writes to his friends: If it is too much, God at our prayer must provide a remedy.[512] Hence it is God Who must bear the blame for everything, seeing that He works through Luther. God made him a Doctor of Holy Scripture, let Him therefore see to it.

Though quite full of the idea that his own doctrine was alone right, yet, as already shown, he went in early days so far as to grant to every man freedom of belief and the right to read Scripture according to his lights; for to him every Christian is a judge of Holy Scripture, a doctor and a tool of the Holy Ghost. The assumption underlying this, viz. that, in spite of all, the necessary unity of doctrine would be preserved, is not easy to explain. When, however, experience stepped in and disproved the assumption, Luther’s behaviour became even more inexplicable. He was by nature so disposed to ignore the claims of logic that the contradiction between his demand that all should bow to his doctrine, and such theories as that the Bible is, for all, the true and only fount of knowledge, and that no other outward ecclesiastical authority exists, never seems to have troubled him. Though he claimed to be the “liberator of minds and consciences,” he, nevertheless, called on the authorities to put down all other doctrines.[519]

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The dignity of his chair at Wittenberg is exalted by him to giddy heights. “This university and town,” he said of Wittenberg, may vie with any others. “All the highest authorities of the day are at one with us, like Amsdorf, Brenz and Rhegius. Such men are our correspondents.” In comparison, the sects are simply ludicrous in their insignificance. Woe to those within the fold who dare to run counter to Luther, “like ‘Jeckel’ and ‘Grickel’; they imagine that they alone are clever and that they, like ‘Zwingel’ also, never learnt anything from us! Yet who knew anything 25 years ago? Who stood by me 21 years since, when God, against both my will and my knowledge, led me into the fray? Alas, what a misfortune is ambition!” This he said in 1540,[520] but already eight years before he had complained bitterly: “Each one wants to make himself out to be alone in knowing everything.… Everywhere we find the same Master Wiseacre, who is so clever that he can lead a horse by its tail.” Though one alone has received from God the mission of preaching the Gospel, yet “there are others, even among his pupils, who think they know ten times more about it than he.… Then, hey presto, another doctrine is set up.”[521] “Deadly harm” to Christianity is the result; nevertheless, according to Christ’s prophecy, “factions and sects” there must be; but their source is and remains the devil[522]—who, according to Luther, is the true God of this world in which indeed his finger can everywhere be seen. (See above, vol. v., p. 275 ff.)

Strange indeed is the frame of mind here presented to the observer. So much is Luther the plaything of his fancy and the feeling of the moment, that, at times he seems the victim of a sort of self-suggestion and to be following blindly the idea which happens to hold the field.

His judgment being seen to be so confused, it becomes easier to estimate at their right value certain of his ideas, particularly his conviction that he and his cause owed their preservation to a series of palpable miracles. He contrived to spread among his pupils the belief that “holy Luther” was the greatest prophet since the time of the Apostles.[523] Yet anyone who reflects how Luther could devote a special[165] tract to proving that so everyday an occurrence as the “escape” of a nun from her convent was worthy of being deemed a great miracle for all time, can only marvel at the facility with which Luther could delude himself.[524]

Other Abnormal Lines of Thought and Behaviour

Luther’s action presents many other problems to the psychologist, for instance, in its waverings and contradictions. Strong in his belief in his Divine mission, he roundly abuses kings and princes in the vilest terms, and yet, at the same time, he teaches respect and obedience towards them and even sets himself up as a model in this respect, all according to his mood and as they happen to be favourable to him or the reverse. On the one hand, he presumes to incite the people to acts of violence, and, on the other, he preaches no less cogently the need of calmness and submission. He boasts of the courage with which he had dashed into the very jaws of Behemoth, and of his utter contempt for his foes; yet this same Luther is obsessed by the idea that his own life is threatened by poison and sorcery, just as his party is menaced by the hired assassins of the monks and Papists. While he extols the University of Wittenberg as the bulwark of theological unity, he is at the same time so distrustful of the doctrine of his friends that his intercourse with them suffers, and, to at least one of his intimates, Wittenberg becomes a “cave of the Cyclops.”

Such contradictions and many of the like combined to induce in him an abnormal state of mind. Harmony and consistency of thought and feeling was something he never knew. Hence the charge brought against him, not merely by opponents, but even by many of his own followers, viz. of being muddled, illogical and not sure of his ground.

While he is perfectly able at times to speak and write with such candour and truth that one cannot but admire the wholesome sense, and sober, witty, cheery style of his literary productions, yet their tone and character change entirely as soon as it becomes a question of his polemics or of his Evangel. Then his mind becomes overcast, his thoughts pursue one another like storm-clouds, assuming meanwhile the strangest shapes and the reader is over whelmed by a torrent of mingled abuse and paradox.[166] His very proofs are caught up in the whirl and become so distorted that it is often impossible even to tell whether they are meant in earnest or are merely in the nature of a challenge.

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Finally we have the paradox apparent in his practical instructions and the curious behaviour into which his belief in his mission occasionally led him. We may recall the means to be employed for overcoming temptations, one of the mildest of which was a good drink,[533] and the measures to be taken to induce peace of soul. “Break out into abuse,” such is his advice, and that will bring inward peace.[534] If this does not work, then coarse humour will often succeed, one of those jests, for instance, where the sacred and sublime is vulgarised simply to raise a laugh. “Against the devil Luther makes use of ‘stronger buffoonery’ and dismisses him curtly, nay, often rudely.”[535] Pointless jests often spoil the force of his words. For instance, he found himself in a difficulty about the second wife whom one of Carlstadt’s followers, acting on Luther’s own principles, wished to take in addition to his ailing spouse; whilst stipulating that the man must first “feel his conscience assured and convinced by the Word of God,” and doing his best to dissuade him from taking such a step, Luther adds in a jesting tone, that it were perhaps better to let the matter take its course, as at Orlamünde (under the rule of Carlstadt and his Old-Testament ideas) they would soon be introducing circumcision and the Mosaic Law in its entirety.[536]

His instability of mind and ever-changing feeling ended by impressing a peculiar stamp on his whole mentality.

At one time he is delighted to see all things subject to the new Evangel, and extols the gigantic success of his efforts; at another he complains bitterly that the world is turning its back on the Word and deserting the little flock of true Evangelicals. Thus the world could promptly assume in his mind quite contradictory aspects. Of his alternating moods of confidence and despair he told his friends: “My moods vary quite a hundred times a day—nevertheless I stand up to the devil.”[537] Hence he was aware of his vacillations, though on the same occasion he declares that he knows[168] right well how Holy Scripture strengthens him against them. He also feels and acknowledges his inconsistency, in being, for all his changeableness, so rigid and obstinate in his dealings with his friends. They knew his character, he said, and called it “obstinate.”[538]

Profound depression can alone account for the step he took in 1530, when, for a while, he discontinued his sermons at Wittenberg because he was sick of the indifference of his hearers to the Word of God and disgusted with their conduct. The editor of the sermons of this year, which have only recently been published, remarks justly, that “the only possible explanation of this step is a pathological one.”[539] Luther even went so far as to declare from the pulpit that he was “not going to be a swine-herd.”[540] Yet, a little after, during the journey to the Coburg, a sudden change occurred, and we find Luther making jokes and writing in a quite optimistic vein, and, no sooner had he reached his new abode, than he plunged into new literary labours. Nevertheless, whilst at the Castle, he was again a victim of intense depression, was visited by Satan’s “embassy” and even vouchsafed a glimpse of the enemy of God. On his departure from the Coburg good humour again got the better of him, as we see from his jovial letter to Baumgärtner of Oct. 4, 1530, and on reaching Wittenberg, he was soon up to his ears in work, so that he could write: “I am not only Luther, but Pomeranus, Vicar-General, Moses, Jethro and I know not who else besides.”[541] The facility with which his moods altered is again apparent when, in his last days, he left Wittenberg in disgust only to return again forthwith in the best of spirits. (See below, xxxix., 1.)

Yet in his attitude to the olden Church this same man, who otherwise shows himself so instable, knows how to display such defiant obstinacy that Protestants who look too[169] exclusively at this side of his character have even been able to speak of his inflexible firmness. What steels him here is his ardent belief in his calling.

The idea of his vocation ever serves to help him over his difficulties. An instance of that marvellous elasticity of mind with which he seizes on his calling to pacify both himself and his friends, is to be found in an intimate conversation held after the “greatest of his temptations” in 1527, and recorded by Bugenhagen. After Luther had declared that he saw nothing to regret in his severity towards his foes he went on to speak, with tears in his eyes, of the sects that would spring up and which his friends would not be able to withstand. He proceeded to admit that “he was sorry if he had given scandal by his buffoonery and by his vituperation,[542] but that the cause could not be displeasing to the pious, for he loved mankind [this is Bugenhagen’s remark] too much and was an enemy to all hypocrisy.” “God had not ordained” that he, so Luther here declares, “should appear as a stern and austere figure. The world finds no sins (‘crimina’) wherewith to reproach me, but, because it follows its own judgment, it takes great offence at me, as I see. Possibly,” so he goes on, “God wishes to delude the blind and ungrateful world (‘mundum stultum facere’) so that it may perish in its contempt and never see what excellent gifts God has bestowed on me alone out of so many thousands, wherewith I am to minister unto those who are His friends. Thus the world, which refuses to acclaim the word of salvation which God sends through me, will find in me, according to the divine counsel, what offends it and is to it a stumbling-block. For this God is answerable; for I shall pray that I may never be to any a cause of scandal by my sins.”

“This I learnt with wondrous joy from his own lips,” adds Bugenhagen.[543] Others will, however, find Luther’s enigmatical train of thought more difficult to understand.

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The above are but a few instances of an abnormal turn of mind; of the like the present work contains others in abundance. Anyone desirous of penetrating further into the folds and windings of a mind so involved should study[170] Luther’s letters, particularly those dating from 1517 to 1522 and from 1540 to 1546. He will there find much of the same sort, which can hardly be termed either sane or reasonable; but even the passages we have quoted suffice to reveal in him an uncanny power of self-deception such as few historic characters display. Many a great genius has betrayed psychological peculiarities, indeed it seems at times to be the fate of those endowed with eminent gifts to overstep the boundaries and to venture further than the reason and reflection of thinking men can follow.[544] That Luther carried certain mental peculiarities to their utmost limit is plain from what we have seen, nor can it be right to close one’s eyes to the fact.

Luther showed the defects of a “genius” not least in his vituperation and in the other far from commendable methods he used in his polemics. It was precisely these defects which led Erasmus to question whether he was quite in his right mind. “Had a man said this in the delirium of fever, could he have uttered anything more insane?” Thus Erasmus in his “Hyperaspistes.”[545] He often speaks of his opponent’s feverish fancies. He denies that his spirit is a “sober” one, and maliciously supposes that he was drunk. In spite of his usual moderation and reticence, the scholar, when dealing with Luther’s assertions, constantly uses such words as “delirus,” “insanus,” “lymphatus,” “sine mente,” “mera insania.” On one occasion he says of the “devils, spectres, ‘lamiæ,’ ‘megæræ’ and other more than tragic words” which Luther was addicted to flinging at his foes, that such a habit was a “sign of coming madness” (“venturæ insaniæ præsagia”); elsewhere he views with misgiving the sort of compulsion (“non agere sed agi”) which urges Luther to abuse all who differ from him.[546]

In other circles, too, the opinion prevailed that Luther was suffering from some sort of mental disease. We may recall the remarks of Boniface Amerbach, who was not unkindly disposed to Luther, in sending the latter’s tract of 1534 against Erasmus, to his brother Basil (above, vol. iv., p. 183).

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In Luther’s immediate surroundings we also find traces of a fear that the Master stood in some danger of losing his mind.

A thoroughgoing investigation of the matter by some unbiassed expert in mental diseases would, however, be of immeasurably greater value than the mere opinions of contemporary admirers and opponents. But the difficulty is to find an impartial expert. Protestant theologians will not easily be found ready to agree with Catholic writers regarding the process which made of a quondam monk the founder of the Protestant faith, or to see Luther’s scruples in quite the same light. Entire agreement would seem for ever excluded, owing to differences of outlook so deep-seated. If, to some, Luther appears as a “new Paul,” and as one who removed every obstacle to free religious research, then the view they take of his inward change and later spiritual life must perforce be coloured to some extent by this idea.

Nor must the fact be lost to sight that many of the apparently suspicious symptoms were, in Luther’s case, quite wilful. Thus his outbreaks of fury against Popery, the psychological origin of which we have already described (vol. iv., p. 306 ff.), are largely an outcome of the feelings of hatred he deliberately encouraged, and a reaction against his earlier and better convictions. Again, self-deception and lack of self-control, i.e. moral elements, played a great part in him. Since, however, even at the outset of his career he already displayed these moral defects, they must be carefully distinguished from his morbid states and no less from his doubts and remorse of conscience.

At the very least, however, we should give to the purely historical facts such unbiassed, broadminded recognition as that editor of the great Weimar Edition of Luther’s works (see above, p. 168), who, as we heard, spoke of the “pathological” explanation of certain acts and statements of Luther’s as the only one possible. The word “pathological,” and other similar ones, had, however, been used even earlier, and, that, even by non-Catholics, as descriptive of certain of Luther’s states, nor was the remark entirely new, that in many a great genius we find something pathological.[547]

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5. Luther’s Psychology according to Physicians and Historians

It is not our intention in the following to criticise the opinions quoted; they have been collected chiefly with the object in view of providing those qualified to judge with matter on which to exercise their wits. Nevertheless, we have no intention of depriving ourselves of the right of making occasional observations. Thus Hausrath’s opinion, to be given immediately, calls for some revision, as will be clear even to the lay mind. No disturbance of Luther’s intellectual functions or mental malady amounting to actual “psychosis” can be assumed at any period of his life. This, however, is a quite different thing from admitting that his case was not entirely normal.

“The psychology of men, who, like him, are engaged in such a struggle,” rightly remarks a Protestant theologian, “is exceedingly complicated. Discrepancies are to be met with side by side, and, according to the circumstances, now one element now another comes to the fore.”[548] In Luther’s case the co-existence of bouts of illness with the unfettered use of his powers, of fundamental delusions with true though misapplied ideas, of frivolity, sensuality and temptations to despair, and, on the top of all this, the contradictory statements he himself makes about himself, i.e.—he, the only man who could have told us how the facts really stood—all these circumstances render any sure conclusion extremely difficult.

No Protestant hitherto has used terms so strong to describe Luther’s overwrought nerves as his most recent biographer, Hausrath, the Heidelberg theologian, in his first edition of his “Life of Luther.” His assertions do undoubtedly err on the side of exaggeration.[549] For instance,[173] when he says, that, owing to his illness in the monastery Luther had more than once been in danger of sinking into “the abyss of religious melancholia.”[550] Erroneously regarding the “temptations”—in reality mere remorse of conscience—from which Luther suffered, as the outcome of his morbid bodily and mental state, he even ventures to hint expressly at the nature of the malady: “The regularity with which the attacks return during all the years spent in the monastery and after he had commenced his public career, leads us to infer a recurrent psychosis, the attacks of which became less frequent after his marriage, but never altogether ceased.”[551]

In recent times, apart from Hausrath, two other writers, both of them non-Catholics, have looked more closely into Luther’s pathology. Dr. Berkhan in an article in the “Archiv für Psychiatrie” entitled “Die nervösen Beschwerden Luthers,” and Gustav Kawerau in the study “Etwas vom kranken Luther,” printed in the “Deutsch-evangelische Blätter.” The two Protestants, Küchenmeister and Ebstein, who also dealt with Luther’s maladies,[552] failed to discuss the psychological phenomena here under consideration; what interested them was more Luther’s ordinary illnesses though, it is true, they bring forward various data which may prove of interest here; these, nevertheless, must be cautiously used, as the authors are somewhat deficient in historical criticism. Older writers[174] who treated of Luther’s illnesses, e.g. the Protestant pastor Friedrich Siegmund Keil, Garmann, the Chemnitz physician and an anonymous writer in the “Neues Hannöversche Magazin” are even less satisfactory.

Of the two first mentioned, Kawerau supplies a careful review of those statements of Luther’s which concern his nervous maladies, not, however, carrying them back to his earliest years. He gives us the picture “of a man occupying a most responsible position, ever in friction with his surroundings” and “in a state of nervous overstrain due to too much work of body and mind.”[553] With these words he seeks to pave the way for a psychological appreciation of all that, as he says, “so often appears repulsive or regrettable in Luther, for instance, his waxing irritability, his unbridled anger, the excesses he commits by word and pen, and his sudden changes of mood.” He even opines that “the spiritual temptations may be accounted for by his all-too-great labours and anxieties, and their effect upon his constitution”;[554] his conclusion is that a fuller knowledge of Luther’s ailments “helps us to understand him aright and better to appreciate his greatness.”[555]

The other writer, Dr. Berkhan, a Brunswick physician, had, previous to Kawerau, attempted to lift the veil which shrouds the “anomalies” presented by Luther; he did not, however, properly sift his materials, nor did he consider the various symptoms in their complexus.[556] He comes to the conclusion that some of Luther’s troubles, for instance, his “hallucinations,” “must be ascribed to an affection of the nerve centres.” These “hallucinations” he attributes to “fluxions” due to overwork. Such hallucinations, according to him, were, in Luther’s case, of two kinds; some optical and some auditory. They were induced, so he thinks, not only by the permanent excitement of Luther’s life, but also by “his doubts and controversies.” What Luther terms temptations Berkhan also regards as, in the main, mere psychic depression bound up with nerve disturbance. In view of certain other symptoms he diagnoses a case of præcordial trouble.[557]

After Kawerau and Berkhan we must refer to P. J.[175] Möbius, the Leipzig expert in mental ailments. He is known in connection with his highly original studies on Rousseau, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche; on Luther he has not expressed his views at any great length, but, such as they are, they are drastic enough.[558]

Wilhelm Ebstein, a Professor of Medicine,[562] recently, and not without reason, registered a protest against the view of those who maintain that Luther was actually out of his mind. Himself interested in the treatment of cases of gout and calculus, he comes to the conclusion that Luther’s chief sufferings were caused by uric acid and faulty digestion, the two together constituting the principal trouble, and being accompanied, as is so often the case with gout, by “neurasthenic symptoms which at times recall psychosis”;[563] his “hypochondriacal depression which passed all bounds” was entirely due to these ailments. Not only these “nervous symptoms,” but also the other ailments of which Luther had to complain, his palpitations, headaches, dizziness,[177] sore-throat, defective hearing, impaired digestion, fainting fits, and particularly his oppression in the region of the heart and the feelings of fear which accompanied it, all these were, according to Ebstein, due more or less to gout and the other troubles resulting from the presence of uric acid.[564]

As regards Luther’s mental sufferings, Ebstein will not hear of Berkhan’s hypothesis of “fluxions”; he himself, however,—and herein lies his principal fault,—does not make sufficient account of his patient’s frequent nervous states. He thinks that Luther’s black outlook, which, according to him, resulted from gout, was not bound up directly with any sufferings.[573] As regards the “hallucinations of sight and hearing,”[574] which Luther regarded as the work of the devil, he declares, that Luther, from time to time, fell into a condition of “weakness and irritability which make the temporary disturbance of his brain-powers quite intelligible”; as to the cause of the lapses, Ebstein finds it in “the strenuous mental labour” leading to a “condition of inanition.”[575] He also allows, that, even as a monk, and in early life, Luther was a victim of moodiness.[576] He is, however, quite right when he says: “Insanity cannot be thought of, nor even epilepsy.”[577] In his admiration[179] for Luther, he also credits him with having in his lifetime endured “more days of suffering than of well-being.” To make this statement entirely true it would, however, be necessary to include amongst the days of suffering, those when he was so paralysed by remorse of conscience as to be incapable of work. At any rate we quite admit with Ebstein that, in Luther, we have “a man, during a great part of his life, sorely tried by bodily ailments,”[578] a fact which can only make one wonder the more at the extent of his labours.

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To pass now to some older Catholic writers. In 1874 Bruno Schön, of Vienna, published an essay in which he depicted Luther as mentally deranged.[579]

Long before this other Catholic writers had instanced certain peculiarities in Luther’s mental state, though they, like almost all recent writers, with the exception of Hausrath, were ignorant of one of the most remarkable elements to be taken into consideration, viz. the fits of terror to which Luther had been subject from early youth. The treatment[180] of this matter was made all the harder by the fact that Luther’s extravagant after-accounts of his life in the monastery, and the growth of his ideas, were received with too much credulity, and that his letters, his Table-Talk and many details of his life were but little known.

Maximilian Prechtl, Abbot of Michaelfeld (†1832), though he refuses to regard Luther as insane, nevertheless calls attention to the many “phantoms of a sick brain” which he had seen; “Luther believed,” so he says, “that he often saw the devil, and that under different shapes.”[581] The learned Abbot brought out a new annotated edition of Luther’s “Against the Papacy founded by the Devil,” which he published at the time of the Reformation-Festival in 1817, in order to show the mad fury, hate and mental confusion to which its author had fallen a victim. Luther’s writing betrays, so he opines, “no common fury but the insane passion of the man, then almost at death’s door.”[582] Too great stress must not be laid on some of the opinions he here advances, which overstep the limits he himself had traced and appear to credit Luther with insanity. Prechtl spoke out more strongly in his “Rejoinder” to the attacks made on his remarks. He emphasises “the incontrovertible proofs” to be found in Luther “of a troubled fancy,” and asserts that “he was not always in his right mind.”

Somewhat earlier, in 1810, the Catholic layman Friedrich von Kerz, who continued Stolberg’s “Geschichte der Religion Christi,” published a book “Über den Geist und die Folgen der Reformation” in which he comes to a far too unfavourable opinion of Luther’s mental state, which he seeks to bolster up by statements incapable of historical proof. In a nutshell, what he tentatively advances is, that, “owing to the shock following the death of a friend struck down at his side, Luther had lost his reason”; “the symptoms of a twisted mind soon became apparent.” “Luther not seldom appears in the light of an inexplicable moral enigma, so that we are led, not indeed willingly, to wonder whether a certain recurrent mental aberration and periodic madness was not in reality the first and perhaps the[181] only source of his vocation as a Reformer, of all his public acts and of the greater part of his reforms.”[583]

As against Kerz, Schön and even Prechtl, we must urge that we have no proof that Luther was actually the slave of his morbid fancies, or mentally diseased; no such proof to support the hypothesis of insanity is adduced by any of the writers named. Of the temporary clouding of the mind they make no mention.

As for the kind of megalomania met with in Luther, when he insists on his being the mouthpiece of revelation, this is not the sort usual in the case of the mentally deranged, when the patient appears to be held captive under the spell of his delusion. Luther often wavered in his statements regarding his special revelation, indeed sometimes went so far as to deny it; in other words he was open to doubt. Moreover, at the very times when he clung (or professed to cling) to it with the greatest self-complacency, he was suffering from severe attacks of depression, whereas it is not usual for megalomania and depression to exist side by side. As for the periodic fits of insanity suggested by Hausrath his moods alternated too rapidly. His morbid ideas do not constitute a paranoic system of madness, and still less is it possible to attribute everything to mere hypochondriacal lunacy.

The theory of Luther’s not being a free agent is excluded not only by his doubts and remorse of conscience, but also by the bitter determination with which at the very beginning he persuades himself of his ideas, insists upon them later when doubts arise, and finally surrenders himself to their spell by systematic self-deception. Such behaviour does not accord with that of a man who is not free. It must also be noted that the morbid symptoms of which Schön speaks, in whatever light they be regarded, do not occur simultaneously; some disappear while others become more marked as time goes on. This, however, also makes it difficult and wellnigh impossible to discover what were the components which originally went to make up Luther’s mentality before it had been seared by the errors and inward commotion of his later passionate life. Above all a fact repeatedly pointed out already must not be overlooked, viz. that, throughout, wilful giving way to passion, lack of[182] self-control and too high an opinion of himself, united with self-deception played a great part with him, particularly in those outbreaks of fury against Pope and Papists in which one might be tempted to see the work of a maniac. In view of Luther’s aptitude to pass rapidly from craven fear to humorous self-confidence it would be necessary in order to prove his insanity, to show clearly as far as possible—a demonstration which has not yet been attempted—that periods of depression or fear really alternated with periods of exaltation, and what the duration of these periods was.

We cannot too much impress on those who may be inclined to assume that, at least at times, Luther was not in his right mind the huge and truly astounding powers of work displayed by the man. Only comparatively seldom do we hear of his being disinclined to labour or incapable of work, and almost always the reason is clear. Even were the advocates of intermittent insanity ready to allow the existence of lengthy lucid intervals still so extraordinary a power for work would prevent our agreeing with them any more than with Schön, Möbius, Hausrath and the older authors referred to above.

As to the question of the possibility of such a disability having been inherited either from his father or his mother—a matter into which modern psychiaters are always anxious to inquire: Here, again, we find nothing to support the theory of mental derangement. Hans Luther, his father, was a stern, rude man of violent temper, and his wife, Margaret, would also appear to have been a harsh woman, without any joy in life and displaying small traces of the more winning traits of affection. Neither of the pair did much to sweeten the lad’s hard boyhood and youth. This certainly explains to some extent the thread of depression and pessimism which runs side by side with the lively and more cheerful one in the monk and university professor. Of greater importance to the question in hand is the irritability and violence of temper which showed itself in his father. If the latter really committed manslaughter in a fit of anger, as seems probable, and as has also been admitted by Protestant scholars,[584] then the son’s irritability, and his startling tendency to break out into foaming rage against his opponents, may doubtless be traced back in part to the[183] effects of heredity. In 1906 the fact came to light that another Hans Luther, besides Martin’s father, resided at Mansfeld, and the latter, according to the records of the law-courts, would appear to have borne a bad character and to have been frequently punished for brawling and for being too ready with his knife. If the latter, as the name would imply, was a relative of Martin’s we have here one more argument to prove that the family was exceptionally irritable.[585]

Luther’s nervous irritability ought, indeed, to be made more account of than it has hitherto been.

Addendum. Some Medical Opinions on Nervous Degeneration, and Abnormal Ideas.

What was said above about Luther’s “nervousness” (p. 105 ff) may here be supplemented by some quotations from August Cramer, the expert psychiater, now of Berlin. It is true that what we shall quote is not intended to refer to Luther, yet what he says may serve to explain certain of Luther’s symptoms, and, possibly, to show that some which were put down to mental derangement may have been due rather to a form of neurasthenia.[586]

As to how far what Cramer says is applicable to Luther’s mental states may here be left open. The same holds good of what we shall quote below from C. Wernicke and H. Friedmann. What the former says of “autochthonous” ideas may conceivably be applicable to Luther’s conviction of the private revelations he had received and of which he speaks so strongly above (p. 142 ff.) as even to suggest actual auditory hallucination; that there was no real hallucination seems more likely for the reason that Luther elsewhere is disposed to regard the incidents as of an inward character and is not quite so wholly under their sway as would have been the case had they been strictly speaking hallucinatory.

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As to “exalted ideas,” of which both speak, they put us in mind of some of Luther’s ideas concerning his own person, position, achievements and persecutions (cp. our summary in vol. iv., pp. 329-41).

It must, however, be noted that “exalted ideas” can be present in a mind otherwise perfectly sound, and that, consequently, even if Luther had such ideas it would not prove him to have been mentally deranged; the same holds good of “autochthonous” ideas, which, occurring singly, are no warrant of insanity.

Again, even should Luther’s idea of his revelations turn out to be originally “autochthonous,” yet the reception he accorded it, the interpretation he placed on it and the use he made of it seem, as we have already set forth, to have been both deliberate and responsible. This is confirmed by the circumstance that, in time, his keen sense of such impressions waned under the objections brought against them, and that his insistence on the “revelations” and his interpretation of them no longer found quite the same vigorous expression as before. Nevertheless, we repeat it once more: It is for experts to pass a definite judgment, but, in order to do so fairly, they must not submit to the microscope merely one class of Luther’s mental manifestations, but consider him as a whole, as monk no less than as Reformer, and examine his mentality on all its sides.

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CHAPTER XXXVII
LUTHER’S LATER EMBELLISHMENT OF HIS EARLY LIFE

In later life, looking back on his past, Luther was in the habit of depicting certain of its principal phases in a way which is at variance with the facts, and which even Protestants in recent times have characterised, as “a picture in which he becomes a myth unto himself.”[591]

It will be no matter for surprise to the dispassionate observer that the memory of the vows Luther had broken and the thought of his early days in the monastery—which presented so striking a contrast with his later life—were subject-matters of warped and distorted images. Particularly is this true of his monastic years which he insists on depicting as one long night of sadness and despair.

Not merely in the fictions in which he came to shroud the more fervent days of his life as a monk, but also in his explanations of the various stages of his apostasy, Luther affords us fresh data for the psychological study of his personality, and thus the present chapter may serve to supplement the previous one. Only after having studied the legend he wove around himself and compared it with the truth as otherwise known, will it be possible to arrive at a considered judgment concerning Luther’s mental states.

1. Luther’s later Picture of his Convent Life and Apostasy

What Luther says of his life as a monk is what will chiefly interest us, but, before proceeding to consider his words and the strange problems they present, we must first refer to the legendary traits comprised in his statements on the first period of his struggle; how false they are to the facts will be clearly perceived by whoever has read the detailed accounts already given.

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The Legend about his First Public Appearance

“Not only have the dates been altered,” says Hausrath, of Luther’s later statements concerning his first public appearance, “but even the facts. No sooner does the elderly man begin to tell his tale than the past becomes as soft wax in his hands. The same words are placed on the lips, now of this, now of that, friend or foe. The opponents of his riper years are depicted as his persecutors even in his youth. Albert of Mayence had never acted otherwise towards him than as a liar and deceiver. Even previous to the Worms visit he had sought to annul his safe-conduct.… Of Tetzel he now asserts, that, unless Duke Frederick had pleaded for him to the Emperor Max, he would have been put in a sack and drowned in the Inn on account of his dissolute life.… The same holds good of the [equally untrue] statement that Tetzel had sold indulgences for sins yet to be committed.… It is also an exaggeration of his old age when Luther asserts that, in his youth, the Bible had been a closed book to all.… To the old Reformer almost everything in the monastery appears in the blackest of hues.”[592]

Generally speaking, however, Luther prefers to trace the whole of his quarrel with the Church back to Tetzel and to his righteous censure of the abuse of indulgences. He seems to have completely forgotten the deep theological chasm that separated him from the Church even before his quarrel with Tetzel. His theological attitude at that time, the starting-point of his whole undertaking, has disappeared from his purview; he has forgotten his burning desire to win the day for his own doctrines against free-will, against the value of works, against justification as taught by Catholic tradition, and for his denial of God’s Will that all men should be saved. His early antagonism to the theological schools and to Canon Law as a whole has lapsed into oblivion.[602]

This is how Luther wrote—confusing the events and suppressing the principal point—when, towards the end of his life, he penned for posterity a record of what had occurred. Otto Scheel, in a compilation of the texts bearing on Luther’s development prior to 1519, rightly places this later account, together with the other statements made by him in old age, under the heading: “second and third rate authorities.”[603] What, however, are we to think when the considered narrative, written by a man of such eminence, of events in which he was the chief actor, has to be relegated to the category of second-rate and even third-rate authorities?[604]

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To enumerate some other misrepresentations not connected with his monkish days: Luther assures us that sundry opponents of his “had blasphemed themselves to death”; men who had the most peaceful of deathbeds he alleges to have died tortured by remorse of conscience and railing at God. He boasts aloud that it was the Papists who made a “good theologian” of him, since, “at the devil’s instigation,” they had so battered, distressed and frightened him out of his wits, that he necessarily came to obtain a more profound knowledge.[605] Boldly and exultingly he points to the many “miracles” whereby the Evangel had been proved.[606] He says of the Diets, that the Papists always succeeded in wriggling out of a hole by dint of lies, so that they looked quite white and “without ever a stain.”[607] Of his own writings he says, that he “would gladly have seen all his books unwritten and consigned to the fire.”[608] This in 1533, and again in 1539.[609] Before this, however, he had declared he would not forswear any of his writings, “not for all the riches of the world,” and that, at least as a good work wrought by God, they must have some worth.[610]

In such wise does the picture he gives of his life vary according to his moods. He does not hesitate to sacrifice the sacred rights of truth when this seems to the advantage of his polemics (see above, vol. iv., p. 80 ff.), and, owing to the peculiar constitution of his mind, the fiction he so often repeats becomes eventually stamped as a reality to which he himself accords credence.

The Legend about his Years of Monkish Piety

We may now turn to Luther’s fictions regarding his monkish days, prefacing our remarks with the words of Luther’s Protestant biographer, Adolf Hausrath. “The picture of his youth is forced to tally more and more with the convictions of his older years. What he now looks upon[192] as pernicious, he declares he had found in those days to be so by his own experience.… The oftener he holds up to his listening guests the warning picture of the monk sunk in the abyss of Popery, the more gloomy and starless does the night appear to him in which he once had lived.”[611]

That the use hitherto made of Luther’s statements concerning his convent life calls for correction has already been admitted by several Protestant students of reformation history. As early as 1874 Maurenbrecher protested strongly against the too great reliance placed on Luther’s own later statements, which, however, at that time, constituted almost the only authority for his early history. “How wrong it is to accept on faith and repeat anew Luther’s tradition is quite obvious. Whoever wishes to relate Luther’s early history must first of all be quite clear in his mind as to this characteristic of the material on which he has to work.… The history of Luther’s youth is still virgin soil awaiting the labours of the critic.”[612] The objections recently brought forward by Catholics have drawn from W. Friedensburg the admission that we have unreliable, and, “in part, misleading statements of Luther’s concerning himself.”[613] G. Kawerau also at least goes so far as to admit that the historian of Luther at the present day “is inevitably confronted by a number of new questions.”[614] The publication of Luther’s Commentary on Romans of 1515-16 finally proved how necessary it is to regard the theology of his early years as the chief authority for the history of his development. Hence, in the account of his youth given above in vol. i., we took this Commentary as our basis.

A preliminary sketch of the picture he handed down in his later sayings is given us by Luther himself in the following:

Roughly, this is the tone of the testimony he gives of himself. It is not our intention here simply to spurn it, but to examine whether there is any call to accept it unconditionally—simply because it comes from Luther’s lips—and whether it comprises a certain quota of truth.[626]

First, it must be noted that he represents himself as a sort of fanatical martyr of penance. He assures us: Even the heroic works of mortification I undertook brought me no peace in Popery: “Ergo,” etc. He here opens an entirely[194] new page in his past. He tells his friends, for instance: “I nearly killed myself by fasting, for often, for three days on end, I did not take a bite or a sip. I was in the most bitter earnest and, indeed, I crucified our Lord Christ in very truth; I was not one of those who merely looked on, but I actually lent a hand in dragging Him along and nailing Him. May God forgive me! … for this is true: The more pious the monk the worse rogue he is.”[627]

Besides his penances another main feature of his later picture is his extraordinary, albeit misguided, piety and virtue.

Other characteristic lines of the picture are, first, the dreadful way in which his mind was torn by doubts concerning his own salvation, doubts arising simply from his works of piety, and, secondly, his speedy deliverance from such sufferings and attainment of peace and tranquillity as soon as he had discovered the Evangel of faith. He cannot find colours sombre enough in which to paint his former state of misery, which is also the inevitable experience of all pious Papists.

Those Protestants who take Luther’s statements too readily, without probing them to the bottom and eliminating the rhetorical and fabulous element, are apt to urge that Luther’s descriptions of the monastic state show that nothing but mental derangement could result from such a life.

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Dr. Kirchhoff, a medical man, basing his remarks on Luther’s accounts, is inclined to assume the existence of some severe temperamental malady. He even goes so far as to say that, at any rate, countless numbers of monks lost their reason. “In the course of time,” he adds, Luther “acquired a greater power of resisting the temptations, and, possibly, in his quieter after-life the physical causes may have diminished; it would appear that the accompanying conditions disquieted him greatly.”[658]

The fact is that Protestant authors as a rule fight shy of undertaking any criticism of Luther’s account of himself. They accord it far too ready credence and usually see in it a capital pretext for attacking the olden Church.

If Luther is to be taken literally and is right in his generalisations, then we should have to go even further than such writers and argue that, one and all, those who sought to be pious in the religious life were mad, or at least on the verge of insanity; the Church, by her doctrine of works, of satisfaction and of man’s co-operation with Grace, infects all who address themselves zealously to the performance of good works with the poison of a subtle insanity.

We need waste no further words here on the falsehood of Luther’s objections against the Catholic doctrine of works.[659]

We may pass over the countless clear and authentic proofs furnished by Luther’s elders and contemporaries, and even by Luther himself previous to his apostasy, which place the Catholic doctrine on works in a very different light. The Church, in point of fact, always refused to hear of works done solely by man’s strength being efficacious for salvation, and regarded only those works performed by the aid of God’s supernatural Grace as of any value—and that through the merits of Christ—whether for the purpose of preparing for justification or for winning an everlasting reward; she always recognised faith, hope and charity as conditions for forgiveness and justification, and as the threefold spring whereby good works are rendered fruitful.

There can be no question that Luther’s picture of his holiness-by-works in Popery is meant to include all his earnest brother monks and their mistaken way of life, and[199] the doctrine and religious practices of Popery as such. The fiction serves a twofold purpose. On the one hand, as its author gives us to understand quite openly, it was his excuse for having shaken off the yoke of the religious life, on the other, it was to be used as a weapon against the olden doctrine of the importance of works for personal salvation. To be true to history, one must judge of his account of his Catholic life from these two standpoints. How extremely unreliable it is will then be more apparent. The following observations on the contrast his account presents with historical truth, particularly with the well-authenticated incidents of his development, and even with the elements of truth which he introduces into the legend, will place the grave shortcomings of the latter in an even clearer light.

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Again, several details of the picture—quite apart from the obvious effort to burden the olden Church with a monstrous system of holiness-by-works—warn us to be sceptical. First of all there is the customary rhetoric and playing to the gallery. The palpable exaggeration it contains, its references to the howling by day and by night, to the scourgings, to the tortures of hunger and cold, to the endless prayers and watchings, and to the ravings of the woebegone searchers after peace, do not prepossess us in favour of the truth of the account. Luther, in so much of what he says on the point, has shown us how little he is to be taken seriously, that one cannot but wonder how his statements, even when exaggerated to the verge of the ludicrous, can ever have been regarded in the light of real authorities.

“It is an astonishing and dreadful thing,” he proceeds, “that men should have been so mad!” Those who live in the religious life and according to man-made ordinances “do not deserve to be called men nor even swine”;[672] a “hateful and accursed life” was it, with “all their filth!”[673]

The young monk too—could we trust Luther’s account—must have been seriously wanting in discretion where mortification was concerned, and a like indiscretion was evinced by all others who took the religious vocation in earnest. But the extravagant asceticism such as Luther would have us believe he practised, and the theological assumption underlying it, viz. that salvation depends on bodily mortification, are quite against the older teaching in vogue in his time. We may quote a few instances of the teaching to the contrary.

These are but two notable witnesses taken from the endless tale of those whose testimony is at variance with the charges implied in Luther’s legend, that the monks were regardless of discretion where penance was concerned.

That Luther is guilty of self-contradiction in attributing to the Catholic teachers and monks of his day such mistaken views and practices and the doctrine of holiness-by-works generally is fairly obvious.

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It is interesting to note the varying period during which Luther, according to his later sayings, was addicted to these excessive penances and to holiness-by-works. We already know that it was only gradually that he broke away from his calling, and that he had in reality long been estranged from it when he laid aside the Augustinian habit.

Luther’s versatile pen is fond of depicting the quiet, retiring monk of those days. As early as 1519 he wrote to Erasmus that it had always been his ardent wish “to live hidden away in some corner, ignored alike by the heavens and the sun, so conscious was he of his ignorance and inability to converse with learned men.”[685] These words in their stricter sense cannot, however, be taken as applicable to the period when they were written but rather to the first years of his life as a monk.

The historical features of his earlier life in the monastery deserve, however, to be examined more carefully in order better to understand the legend.

2. The Reality. Luther’s Falsification of History

The legend of Luther’s abiding misery during his life as a monk previous to his change of belief contradicts the monk’s own utterances during that period.

Monastic Days of Peace and Happiness. The Vows and their Breach

The fact is, that, for all his sufferings and frequent temptations, Luther for a long while felt himself perfectly at ease in monasticism. In the fulness of his Catholic convictions he extolled the goodness of God, who, in His loving-kindness, had bestowed such spiritual blessings on him. In 1507 he wrote that he could never be thankful enough “for the goodness of God towards him, Who of His[206] boundless mercy had raised him, an unworthy sinner, to the dignity of the priesthood.”[686] The elderly friend to whom he thus opened his heart was the same Johannes Braun, Vicar of the Marienstift at Eisenach, to whom he again gave an account of his welfare in 1509. To him he then wrote: “God is God; man is often, in fact nearly always, wrong in his judgments. God is our God, and will guide us sweetly through everlasting ages.”[687]—The inward joy which he found in the monastery gave him strength to bear his father’s displeasure. He not only pointed out to him that it was “a peaceful and heavenly life,”[688] but he even tried so to paint the happy life he led in his cell as to induce his friend and teacher Usingen to become an Augustinian too.[689] We may also recall his praise of his “preceptor” (i.e. novice master), whom he speaks of as a “dear old man” and “a true Christian under the damned frock.” He repeats some of his beautiful, witty sayings and was always grateful to him for his having lent him a copy, made by his own hand, of a work by St. Athanasius.[690] The exhortations addressed to him by Staupitz when he was worried by doubts and fears, for instance his excellent allusion to the wounds of Christ,[691] found an echo in Luther’s soul, and, in spite of his trouble of mind, brought him back to the true ideal of asceticism. We also know how he praised Usingen, his friend at Erfurt, as the “best paraclete and comforter,”[207] and wrote to a despondent monk, that his words were helpful to troubled souls, provided always that they laid aside all self-will.[692]

Hence, for a considerable part of his life in the monastery, Luther was not entirely deprived of consolations; apart from the darker side of his life, on which his legend dwells too exclusively, there was also a brighter side, and this is true particularly of his earlier years.

In all this we can but discern a morbid reaction against the disquieting memory of his former state of life, not, as the legend asserts, peace of mind and assurance of having won a “Gracious God,” thanks to his change of religion. The reaction was throughout attended by remorse of conscience.

These struggles of soul in order to find a Gracious God, which lasted, as he himself says (above, vol. v., pp. 334 f.;[210] 350 f.), even down to his later years, constitute a striking refutation from his own lips, of the legend of the wonderful change which came over him in the monastery.

On the other hand, the story of his long-drawn devotion to the monastic practice of good works is no less at variance with the facts. On the contrary, no sooner did Luther begin his official career as a monk at Wittenberg, than he showed signs of his aversion to works; the trend of his teaching was never in favour of strictness and penance, which, as he declared, could only fill the heart with pride. (Above, vol. i., pp. 67 ff., 117 ff.) At a later date, however, he sought to base this teaching on his own “inner experiences” and with these the legend supplied him (above, vol. iv., p. 404, n. 2).

Some Doubtful Virtues

It is worth while to examine here rather more narrowly than was possible when giving the history of his youth, the zeal for virtue and the self-sacrificing industry for which, according to the legend, the youthful monk was so conspicuous. What in our first volume was omitted for the sake of brevity may here find a place in order to throw a clearer light on his development. Two traits are of especial importance: first humility as the crown of all virtue, on account of the piety Luther ascribes to himself, and, secondly, the exact character of his restless, feverish industry.

Luther’s humility presents some rather remarkable features. In the documents we still possess of his we indeed find terms of self-depreciation of the most extravagant kind. But his humility and forced self-annihilation contrast strangely with his intense belief in his own spiritual powers and the way in which he exalts himself above all authorities, even the highest.

There is a document in existence, on which so far but little attention has been bestowed, which is characteristic of his language at one time. Its tone of exaggeration makes it worthy to rank side by side with the mystical passage quoted above, in which Luther professes to have himself experienced the pangs of hell which were the earthly lot of chosen souls.[709] Owing to its psychological value this witness to his humility must not be passed over.

The passion, precipitancy and exaggeration which inspired him during his monkish days is the other characteristic which here calls for consideration. His fiery and unbridled zeal was of such a character as to constitute a very questionable virtue in a monk.

As we might expect, during the first years of his great public struggle his restlessness was even more noticeable than before. The predominance of the imagination has hardly ever been so fatally displayed by any other man, though, of course, it is not every man whose life is thrown amid times so stirring. “Because,” so he wrote in 1541, recalling his audacity in publishing the Indulgence-Theses and the fame it brought him, “all the Bishops and Doctors kept silence [concerning the abuse of indulgences] and no one was willing to bell the cat.… Luther was vaunted as a doctor, and as the only man who was ready to interfere. Which fame was not at all to my taste.”[730] This latter assertion he is fond of making to others, but his letters of that time show how greatly the charm of notoriety contributed to unbridle his stormy energy. It was his opponents’ defiance which first opened the flood-gates of his passionate eloquence. At the very outset he warns people that contradiction will only make his spirit more furious and lead him to have recourse to even stronger measures; elsewhere he has it: “The more they rage, the further I shall go!”[731]

We may recall his reference to the “gorgeous uproar,” and the passages where he assures his friends: “I am[218] carried away and know not by what spirit,”[732] and “God carries me away, I am not master of myself.”[733]

In the light of his pathological fervour the contradictions in which he involves himself become more intelligible, for instance, what he wrote to Pope Leo X in his letter of May, 1518,[734] which so glaringly contrasted with his other words and deeds. His unrest and love of exaggeration caused him to overlook this and the many other contradictions both with himself and with what he had previously written.

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The picture of the monk which we have been compelled to draw differs widely from the legendary one of the pious young man shut up in the cloister, who, according to Luther’s account at a later date, led a fanatical life of penance and, because he saw Popish piety to be all too inadequate, “sought to find a Gracious God.”

Luther’s Alterations of the Facts

It was not altogether arbitrarily that Luther painted the picture of the monk forced by his trouble of mind to forsake Popery. Rather he followed, possibly to some extent unconsciously, the lines of actual history, though altering them to suit his purpose.

He retained intact not a few memories of his youth, which, under the stress of his bitterness and violence, and with the help of a lively imagination unfettered by any regard for the laws of truth, it was no difficult task to transform. Among these memories belong those of his time of fervour during his Noviciate and early days as a priest. They it was which evidently formed the groundwork of his later statements that he had been throughout an eminently pious monk. Then again, among the remarkable traits which made their appearance somewhat later, the two elements just described have a place in his legend, viz. his extravagant self-conscious humility and his fiery zeal. In his later controversies he is disposed to represent this strange sort of humility as real humility[219] and as a sign of genuine piety. The pious, humble monk hidden in a corner had all unwittingly grown into a great prophet of the truth. In the same way the ardour of those years which he never afterwards forgot, was transformed in his fancy into a fanatical hungering and thirsting after Popish holiness-by-works, in discipline and fasting, watching, cold and prayer.

In addition to these there were memories of the transition period of religious scruples, of temptations to doubts about predestination, of his passing paroxysms of terror, gloom and inherited timidity. These elements must be considered separately.

Scrupulosity, with the doubts and nervousness it brings in its train, probably only troubled him for a short time during the first period of his life in the cloister. The admonitions of his novice-master, given above (p. 206), may refer to some such passing condition through which the young man went, and which indeed is by no means uncommon in the spiritual life. The profound impression made by these first inward experiences seems to have remained with him down to his old age; indeed it is the rule that the struggles of one’s younger days leave the deepest impression on both heart and memory. His quondam scruples and groundless fear of sin, eked out by his ideas of the virtues of a religious, probably served as the background for the picture of the young monk “sunk” in Popish holiness-by-works and yet so profoundly troubled at heart.

But all this would not suffice to explain the legend of his mental unrest, of his sense of being forsaken by God, of his howling, etc.

What promoted this portion of the legend was the recollection of those persistent temptations to despair which arose from his ideas on predestination during the time of his mystical aberrations.

The dreadful sense of being predestined by God to hell had for many years stirred the poor monk’s soul to its lowest depths, even long before he had thought out his new doctrine. It is no matter for surprise, if, later, carried away by his polemics, he made the utmost use in his legend of his former states of fear the better to depict the utter misery of the monk bent on securing salvation by the practice of good works. The doctrine of faith alone which he had discovered[220] and the new Evangelical freedom were, of course, supposed to have delivered him from all trouble of mind, and thus it was immaterial to him later to what causes his fears and sadness were assigned.

Yet his supposed new theological discoveries became for him, according to the testimony of the Commentary on Romans, in many respects a new source of fear and terror. The doctrine of the Divine imputation or acceptation did not sink into his mind without from its very nature causing far-reaching and abiding fears. His then anxieties, which, as a matter of fact, were in striking contrast with his later assertion of his sudden discovery of a Gracious God, together with the mystical aberrations in which he sought in vain for consolation, doubtless furnished another element for the legend of the terrors he had endured throughout his life as a monk.

Luther’s recollections of the mental ailments he went through as a monk also undoubtedly had their effect on the legend. We know that Luther never rightly understood the nature of these ailments and that he regarded his fits of terror, his nervousness and his gloom as anything but what they really were. It would appear that, in his old age, he simply lumped all his sad experiences together as typical of the sort of poison which Popery and Monkery, owing to their false doctrines, offered to their adepts. Nothing seemed to him to show better from what horrors he had snatched mankind. Whether involuntary self-deception played a part here, or whether, by dint of constant repetition, he came to believe in the truth of his tale, who can now venture to say? In any case his spirit of bitterness led him to make of his own sufferings a sort of spectre of terror common to all, who, like himself, had raved that they were zealously serving God whether in the monastery or in Popery at large. Even “great Saints” had, according to him, lived amidst the “devil’s factions and errors, under Rules and in monasteries and institutions,” but had finally “cut themselves loose and been saved by faith in Jesus Christ.”[738]

He completely shuts his eyes to the fact that both his fears concerning predestination and his morbid states of terror accompanied by fainting fits recurred in his case even in later life, and, that, after his apostasy he had in addition to suffer from remorse of conscience on account of his doings against the Church. Nor does he seem to see that he himself betrays the falsity of what he says of the general depression to which all monks were subject when he relates above, that he alone had gone about in the monastery labouring under such oppression and that no one had understood him or been able to console him (above, p. 113); hence, according to this, his brother monks cannot have suffered from the terrors he afterwards attributed to them.

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The Monkish Nightmare

The strange “terrors” under which he was labouring when he first knocked at the gate of the Augustinian convent at Erfurt were, according to Melanchthon’s definite assurance already quoted, closely bound up with his habitual states of fear. They were extraordinary states of mental perturbation (“terrores”) and can only be explained when looked at in the light of his other mental troubles.[739] Of the incidents that impelled him to enter the convent[740] Luther himself says in a passage which has also been quoted above, that (on the occasion of his first Mass) he had tried to reassure his father Hans by pointing out that he had been called “by terrors from heaven” (“de coelo terrores”); to which his father had harshly replied: “Oh, that it may not have been a delusion and a diabolical vision” (“illusio et præstigium”).[741] The happenings immediately previous to his entering the monastery are of a rather mysterious character. The inmates of the Erfurt convent declared at that time in consequence of what they had gathered from Luther, that he, like “another Paul, had been miraculously converted by Christ.”[742] Oldecop, who began his studies at Wittenberg in 1514, speaks in his Chronicle of “strange fears and spectres” on account of which Luther had taken the habit.[743] Still more remarkable is the report based on the account of Luther’s intimate friend Jonas, and dating from 1538. He says: When Luther, as a student, was returning to Erfurt after having been to Gotha to buy some books “there came a dreadful apparition from heaven which he then interpreted as signifying that he was to become a monk.”[744] If these statements were correct it would[223] appear as though we have here already an instance of hallucination worthy of being classed with the “sights and visions” elsewhere mentioned. Even his earliest monastic days would assume a suspiciously pathological character if, even then, he was convinced of having been the recipient of heavenly messages. It must, however, remain doubtful whether Jonas’s report means exactly what it seems to mean and whether his sources are to be relied upon.

The possibility of his having been the victim of hallucination at such an early date also raises the question whether his later abnormal states can be explained by heredity or his upbringing.

By their “harsh treatment,” so Luther says on one occasion, his parents had “driven him into the monastery”; here we have an entirely new version of the motives of his choice of the religious life; he adds that, though they meant well by him, yet he had known nothing but faintheartedness and despondency.[745] Poverty still further darkened his early youth. It is quite possible that the young monk may have suffered for some considerable time from feelings of timidity and depression as a result of his education and mode of life. The natural timidity which was apparent during a part of his youth may also have contributed its quota to the rise of the legend of the monk who was ever sad. But all this does not explain as well as an hereditary malady would the terrors or seeming hallucinations. Unfortunately the question of heredity is still quite obscure, though the highly irritable temper of his father referred to above (p. 182) may have some bearing on it. Luther, however, says very little about his parents and even less of his manner of bidding good-bye to the world.

Again, the legend makes out the monk, in the time of his first fervour, to have looked more like a corpse than a man; yet, so far as we can judge, it was only after he had begun his public struggle, i.e. subsequent to 1517, that he began to show signs of physical exhaustion and emaciation, and this, too, was only owing to the way in which he went to work. On the other hand, on March 17, 1509, i.e. nearly four years after his entry into the religious life, when about to quit Erfurt, he wrote, that, “as to himself, by God’s grace, all was going well.” The expression he uses seems to imply that, not merely his spiritual, but also his bodily, state was satisfactory.[753]

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In his legend Luther speaks repeatedly of certain morbid states from which he had suffered and which he duly uses to lash the Popish conception of holiness. They are too closely[225] bound up with other facts in his mental life to be set aside as simple inventions, though it must also be added that they contain an element of uncertainty.

In the case of people who have been brought up as Christians but who suffer from certain nervous disorders, particularly when their temperament is of the melancholy variety, a notable aversion for sacred objects may occasionally be observed. “Many such patients cannot bear the sight of a cross, cannot listen to prayers, stop their ears at the ringing of the Angelus, cannot mention the word ‘sacrament,’ but use some circumlocution instead.” “Among perfectly normal people we do not meet with this sort of thing, still it is nothing extraordinary.”[754]

Now, oddly enough, we find Luther, in 1532, telling the people quite seriously in his sermons on Matt. v.-vii., that, as a novice, he had not been able to endure the sight of the crucifix. “When I saw a picture or statue of Christ hanging on the Cross, etc., I was so affrighted that I averted my eyes.”[755] And, again, in the same sermons: “When I looked at Him on the Cross He seemed to me like a flash of lightning.” He also adds that he “had often been affrighted at the name of Jesus.”[756] “The Last Day,” he says in a sermon of 1534, he could not bear to hear spoken of, and “my hair stood on end when I thought of it.”[757] These statements are doubtless exaggerations, but Luther has others even stronger: He would “rather have heard the devil spoken of than Christ”; he would rather have seen “the devil than the Crucified”; “rather have heard of the devils in hell than of the Last Day.” It may be queried whether the above were simply inventions designed to vilify the monastic life and the faith in which he had grown up. Nevertheless, whoever calls to mind the “terrors” Luther experienced at his first Mass and in the procession with Staupitz, whoever keeps before him the part played by Luther’s “fears” even at a later date,[758] will certainly not think it beyond the bounds of possibility that, at times, he[226] should have shuddered at the sight of the cross or at the mention of Christ or of the Last Judgment.

To all this, his bodily condition may have contributed, yet, in his legend, Luther makes of these doubtless morbid states of his the inevitable result of the holiness-by-works practised in the convent and taught by Catholic doctrine. It was because they had known Christ only as the Judge, Who must be placated by works, that he had so dreaded the Crucifix and the very mention of the Judgment. He says that he could not but tremble at the sight of the Crucifix, because, like the rest of the Papists, he had been taught to think that “I must go on performing good works until I have thereby made Christ my friend and gracious toward me.”[759] For this reason alone he had “so often shrunk back affrighted at the name of Jesus” and at the “Cross” as at a “flash of lightning,” because he, like all the rest, had lost his faith; “I had fallen away from the faith and had no other thought than that I had angered God Whom I must once more propitiate by my works.” “But praise and thanks be to God that now we have His Word once more, which leads us to Christ and depicts Him as our Righteousness”; our heart need no longer “tremble and quake.”[760]

After assuring us that he was often unable to gaze upon the Cross, he also at once proceeds to make capital out of this against the olden Church: “For,” so he continues, “my mind was poisoned by this Popish doctrine,” a doctrine according to which “Christ, our Healer, had been turned into a devil.”[761]

Nor does he hesitate to make out that the sight of the Saviour was likewise terrifying to all the zealous and earnest “saints-by-works” in the religious life and Popery generally.[762] In another passage he speaks of the dreadful emotion all felt at the mention of the coming Judgment and the Last Day: “And so we were all sunk in the filth of our own holiness and fancied that, by our life and works, we could pacify the Divine Judgment”; formerly they used[227] to start “if anyone spoke of death or of the life to come”; but, since the light of the Evangel has risen, it is otherwise.

It is true that the way in which Luther here allows his prejudice to exploit these terrifying experiences may raise doubts as to whether they had ever actually existed even in his own case, or whether he did not rather invent them with the object of afterwards ascribing them to all. At the same time it is easier to believe in their existence than to credit him with having deliberately evolved them out of his own fancy.

The utmost caution must indeed be exercised in accepting his assertions on this subject. We cannot sufficiently express our amazement at the credulity with which Luther’s rhetorical statements about his life in the convent have often been accepted, for instance even by Köstlin. The fact is, that the ground on which Luther’s later account rests, the elements that he introduces into his transformation of the facts, and above all the bitter and aggressive spirit which directs and permeates everything, have not been adequately recognised and thus the mythological nature of his fiction has remained undetected. Otherwise it would surely have been impossible to assert, that, just as Paul had been through the mill of the Law, so Luther also had been through that of the religious life, in order, by virtue of his experience, to discover the supreme truth.

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Various traits in the picture he drew, which, owing to its difficulties, has puzzled many people, may, as we have seen, be explained by his misapprehension or misinterpretation of the phenomena of his own morbid, melancholy mind. Other moral factors have, however, also to be taken into account.

As already pointed out, his depression of mind, due primarily to physical causes, became so pronounced owing to his refusal to submit to proper direction.

His dissatisfaction was increased by his growing impatience with the religious life, by remorse of conscience arising from his tepidity and worldliness, and by his growing antipathy to his vocation.

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It may be said, that, had the convent been wisely governed, Luther would never have been admitted to profession but have been quietly dismissed while yet a[228] novice. Both for his superiors and for himself this would have been the better course. A morbid temperament such as his, whatever may have been its cause, was not suited for the religious life, even apart from the obstacles in Luther’s character. The monotony and the penances of the monastic life, the self-discipline and obedience; also the annoyances with which he had to put up from his brother monks, whose habits and upbringing were not his, must necessarily have aggravated his case, particularly as he refused to submit to guidance. His superiors should have foreseen that this brother would be a source of endless difficulties. Instead of this, Staupitz, the vicar, clung to his favourite. He even gave him to understand that he would make of him a great scholar and an ornament of the Order. Had he remained in the world, in a different and freer sphere of action, Luther might possibly have succeeded in shaking off his ailments and the resultant depression. But, in the convent, particularly as he went his own way, he became the victim of ideas and imaginations which promoted the growth of his doctrine and helped to pave the way for his apostasy. Nevertheless, his morbid states could not annul the vows he had taken in the Order, hence his leaving and his breach of the vows cannot be excused on the ground of his illness, though the latter may help to explain his step.

From all the above it is plain how unwarrantable is the assumption that to set aside Luther’s legend is to shut one’s eyes to the severe inward struggles through which he went previous to making his great decision.

There can be no doubt that, previous to his unhappy change of religion, the monk had to wage a hard fight with himself. He was striving against his conscience, and, by overcoming it, he consciously and deliberately incurred the guilt of his apostasy. “A frightful struggle of soul,”[763] may, and indeed must, be assumed, though a very different one from that usually pictured by Protestants and by Luther himself. It would indeed be “stupid” (to use the words of a Protestant biographer of Luther) to seek to “obliterate from history” the deep-down inward struggle which, “maybe, lasted longer than we think.” It is, however,[229] gratifying to find that the same author admits that, as a monk in the Erfurt priory, Luther “found some inward contentment,” in other words, that the legend is false in this particular; he also grants that, at least “in this or that statement,” Luther, in his later accounts, has been guilty of “exaggeration”; that his “development” did not proceed quite on the lines he fancied later, at least that the “change was not quite so sudden,” and, finally, that “physical overstrain” had something to do with his struggles.[764]

3. The Legend receives its last touch; how it was used

It is only after 1530 that we find Luther’s legend of his monkish life fully developed. Before this we see only the first hints of the tale.

It cannot be argued that, till then, he had been silent on his inward experiences as a monk, or that the MSS. of the Table-Talk only commence subsequent to 1530. That, even before this, he had frequently spoken of his earlier spiritual experiences is evident from the passages already quoted, and might be proved by many others; moreover the absence of any recorded Table-Talk is a detail, since the latter is far from being our sole source in the present question.

We are justified in assuming that the idea matured in 1530, during his stay at the Castle of Coburg where he had to wage so severe a struggle with himself. Amid the trials he endured during his days of retirement at the Wartburg he had found time to pen his violent attack on monastic vows; so also, it was in the quiet of the Coburg, amidst the ghostly conflicts and delusions, that he wove the caricature of his own monkish life into the web of his history. At the very time when Luther was at the Coburg the burning question of German monasticism was being debated at the Diet of Augsburg; the Catholic Estates hoped that recognition might again be won for it from the Protestants, or that it might at least secure toleration in the districts where allegiance was divided. It was also at the Coburg that Luther penned many of the furious passages of his “Warning to the Clergy forgathered at Augsburg.”

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He there says: “For the monks I know not how to plead. For I am well aware you would rather they were all of them given over to the devil, please God, whether they take wives or not.”[765] In these words he erroneously takes for granted that all ecclesiastics shared his own hatred for the monks. He boasts in this writing that he “had destroyed the monks by his teaching”;[766] he trusts that “the Bishops will not allow such bugs and lice to be stuck again on their fur cappas.”[767] The reason why his doctrine had destroyed the monks was, because it had revealed how they were merely “intent upon works.” “For what else could come of it? If a conscience is intent on its works and builds on them, then it is stablished on loose sand which is ever slipping and sliding away; it must ever be seeking for works, for one and then for another and ever more and more, until at last even the dead are clothed in monks’ cowls the better to reach heaven.”[768] The last words are a caricature, a misrepresentation of a pious custom by which no one ever dreamt infallibly to win heaven. The “loose sand” is, however, a favourite expression with him when speaking of his teaching on works. It is the same teaching that he wants to bring before the eyes of all by means of his fiction. How, at that time, his thoughts were harking back to his former life in the convent is plain from a letter of consolation he then wrote to his “tempted” pupil Weller. He tells him that he himself had also had his sadnesses and temptations, but that what he had suffered as a monk had in the end proved a schooling for his present high calling.[769]

Had he really been the butt of such “temptations” as the legend depicts and contrived so successfully to vanquish them by his doctrine on justification, then we might expect to find some trace of this in his first writings subsequent to his change of outlook. Now, in the Commentary on Romans we have a vivid document bearing on his change of opinions, yet, full as it is of information about the author, we may seek in vain for the legend. On the contrary it breathes a high esteem for the religious state.[770] In the “Resolutions” to the Indulgence-Theses likewise, Luther speaks of the[231] phases through which he had passed and of the mystical sufferings he had endured.[771] Yet here again the features of the legend are wanting. Is it not somewhat remarkable that an author usually so candid and talkative as Luther should have kept silence about those experiences of which, just at that time, i.e. at the beginning of his public struggle, he must have been so full?

Nor is the legend to be found in Luther’s writings dating from between 1520 and 1530. All the passages quoted above date from a later period.

Had the tale it tells been based on history he would surely have made capital out of it during this long spell of controversy with the monks and Papists. Thus, in his violent “De votis monasticis” of 1521, he as yet has nothing to say of his supposed so pious life, of his excessive penance, misguided holiness-by-works, and the despair he endured in the convent, though, in the Preface, he alludes to his own life as a monk. Nor, again, in his “De servo arbitrio” of 1525, does he as yet put forward the actual legend. It is true that here, when explaining his doctrine of Predestination, he refers to the fears from which as a monk he had suffered regarding his election, fear which arose from his doubts as to the fate decreed for him by God from all eternity. As it is also here that he for the first time airs his theory that his doctrine of absolute predestination and his dogma of justification were alone able to give peace,[772] this would seem to have been the place to give an account of his own life in the monastery and its attendant circumstances. But the legend was not as yet ready. We have merely a hint of what is to come: The Catholic doctrine that heaven may be won by works spells the end of all peace; “this is proved by the experience of all the holy-by-works, and this, to my cost, I also learnt by the experience of many years.”[773] About his heroic works of penance, his vigils, fastings, extraordinary piety, and the sudden and gratifying change, he has not a word to say.

Heralds of the legend are certain statements met with in a sermon of 1528 where he describes himself as having been a “very pious monk,” who was, however, wanting in constancy and like a “shaking reed,” not being firmly rooted[232] in Christ;[774] again at the end of his “Vom Abendmal Bekentnis” he declares his “greatest sins” were his having “been such a holy monk and having plagued God for more than fifteen years with so many masses.”[775] In the latter writing he at least admits that “many great saints had lived in the monasteries”;[776] he even thinks that “it would indeed be a fine thing if the monasteries and foundations were retained, to the end that young folk might there be taught God’s Word, the Scriptures and how to live a Christian life,” in short as educational establishments for both boys and girls. “But, to seek in them the road to salvation, that is the devil’s own doctrine and belief.”[777]

Finally, in the sermons on John vi.-viii. which he began in 1530 after his return from the Coburg to Wittenberg and continued till 1532 we have the legend more or less complete: He had been a monk and had kept the nightly watches (i.e. had chanted the usual matins), had “fasted and prayed, scourged his body and tormented it”; he had been one of the pious and earnest monks who took their life seriously, “who, like me, were at some pains and examined and plagued themselves, and wanted to attain to what Christ is in order to be saved. But what did they gain thereby?”[778] At the same time he begins to enlarge in the most incredible way on the beliefs and habits of the Papists with regard to their own merits and the merits of Christ. All had held their tongues concerning the Saviour, so he says, and he emphasises his statement by adding: “I myself, I should have blushed to say that Christ was the Saviour.” Thus in a sermon of Dec., 1530.[779]

As he himself gradually came to believe in his extraordinary “holiness-by-works” it may be that his thoughts dwelt too exclusively to his earlier days as a monk, i.e. on those passed at Erfurt, during which he certainly was more zealous than in later years, though never such a fanatic as he afterwards makes out. He may also have compared his life as a monk with the small efforts after virtue he made subsequent to his public apostasy, and the contrast may have led him to make too much of his piety in the convent. The contrast, indeed, often troubled him, and we find him seeking for grounds to excuse his later lukewarmness in prayer, so different from his earlier fervour.[787] This also helps us to explain the line of thought followed in the legend.

His supposed experiences as a monk are even made to do service in his interpretation of Holy Scripture. In order to understand the Scriptures, so he argues, deep inward experience is called for. This he maintained when withstanding the fanatics and their system of illuminism. Here he[235] actually carries back the beginning of his own experience to his convent days.

Already in the convent, so he declares, he had been compelled to bow to the idol of scepticism, because he, and all the rest, knew nothing of any real faith in the Gospel. Far less had he learned to pray Evangelically.

His falsehoods are coupled with the outbursts of fury against Catholicism into which he was so prone to fall when attempting to describe the religious life he had forsaken.

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CHAPTER XXXVIII
END OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. THE CHURCH-UNSEEN AND THE VISIBLE CHURCH-BY-LAW

1. From Religious Licence to Religious Constraint

Freedom as the Watchword

In the early days of his public protest against the olden Church, when Luther proclaimed the “universal priesthood of all Christians,” there could as yet be no question of any compulsion in matters of doctrine, seeing that he expressly conceded to the Christian congregations the right and power to weigh all doctrines and “to set up or send adrift their teachers and soul-herds.” Every Christian, so he wrote, who saw that a true teacher was lacking, was taught and consecrated by God as a priest and was also bound, “under pain of the loss of his soul and of incurring the Divine displeasure, to teach the Word of God.”[802] It is not necessary after all we have already said[803] to point out how impossible it is to square such far-reaching concessions to freedom with any idea of a positive body of doctrine. The concessions may, however, have appealed to him particularly because he himself was disposed to claim the utmost freedom in respect of the dogmas of Catholicism. In those days he was delighted to hear himself extolled as the champion of freedom and the right of private judgment. The interests of his party made such extravagant toleration commendable, for any attempt at compulsion in doctrinal matters, particularly at the beginning, would have lost him many friends. He was also anxious that it should be said of the new Church that it had spread of its own accord and only owing to the power of the Word.

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Luther registered a formal protest against the ancient right of proceeding against heretics by means of temporal penalties, particularly that of death. “To burn heretics is against the will of the Holy Ghost,” so he declared in 1518 and again in 1520.[808] In 1520 he said: “Heretics must be overcome by argument, not by fire.”[809]

Most of what he was to say subsequently on the question of public toleration refers to the bearing of the authorities, especially towards the Anabaptists and Zwinglians. That he himself, however, and every follower of his Evangel, were bound to regard all opinions which diverged from his own as godless heresies and brand them as such, that he had never doubted from the moment he had discovered his new Evangel. In accordance with this he proceeds to demand more and more strongly of the “heretics” within the pale unconditional acceptance of all the articles of faith.[810]

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What were the authorities to do faced by teachings so divergent? In 1523, in a writing indeed intended mainly for the Catholic rulers and opponents of his doctrine, Luther is decidedly quite against any interference on the part of the authorities: “To resist heretics, that is the bishops’ duty to whom this office is committed, not the princes’; for heresy can never be overborne by a strong hand.… Here God’s Word must fight.”[811] In April, 1525, in the midst of the Peasant War, in his “Ermanunge,” he enunciates, not without some thought of his personal ends, this general principle—“Yes, the authorities must not oppose what each one chooses to believe and teach, whether it be Gospel or lie; it is enough that they hinder the preaching of feud and lawlessness.”[812]

Boehmer justly points out, that Luther’s standpoint and doctrine as a whole, essentially spelt not only “unfettered freedom of teaching, but also entire freedom of worship.”

Meanwhile, however, Luther had already repeatedly urged those in power, especially his own sovereign, to do their supposed duty, and back up the new Evangel by their authority and by forbidding Catholic worship, the Mass and Catholic sermons.

In what follows we shall deal with Luther’s behaviour towards the Catholics, as distinguished from his attitude towards sectarians within his own camp.

Intolerance Towards Catholics in Theory and Practice

We should be making a serious mistake were we to judge of Luther’s tolerance towards the olden religion from his statements above on behalf of freedom. In Protestant literature, even to the present day, such a one-sided view has found a place, though it has long since been rejected by clear-sighted historians of that faith. In the course of the above narrative instances have been met with repeatedly of Luther’s intolerance in theory and practice with regard to those who thought differently. Here we shall refer concisely to various details already set on record and then draw some new facts and utterances from the abundant store bearing on the matter in hand.

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“A secular ruler,” Luther himself wrote to the Elector Johann on Feb. 9, 1526, “must not permit his underlings to be led into strife and discord by contumacious preachers, for this may issue in uproar and sedition, but in each locality there must be but one kind of preaching.”[822]

On such grounds, however, Protestantism itself might just as well have been denied a hearing, seeing that it had come to disturb the peace, the “one kind of preaching” and the one faith. The princes, however, spurred on by their theologians, seized only too eagerly on this principle, using it in favour of the innovations. The Elector Johann declared as early as Feb. 31, 1526, that he had “graciously taken note of the Memorandum” and would, “for the future, conduct himself in such matters as beseemed a Christian”;[823] and he kept his word.

The intolerance shown to Catholics and their systematic oppression in Saxony stands in blatant contrast with the claim made, that Luther by his preaching had won religious freedom for the German lands. Banishment was the punishment incurred by those who chose to remain steadfast in their attachment to the Catholic faith. Thus, in 1527, it was expressly laid down in the regulations for the Saxon Visitation, that: “Whoever is suspected in the matter of the Sacraments, or of any other error in the faith” is to “be summoned and questioned, and, if necessary,[242] witnesses against him are also to be called.” “Such an ‘inquisition’ is also to be instituted by the Visitors in the case of the laity.”[824] If they refuse to abjure their “errors” they are to be given a certain time to sell their possessions and to quit the land, with a “warning of the severe penalties” with which any ecclesiastic or layman will be visited who is again found in the country.[825] Bearing in mind the difficulty emigration presented at that time, particularly in the case of the people on the land, one can appreciate the injustice of the measure.

In the Duchy of Saxony, as everybody knows, the introduction of Lutheranism was opposed by Duke George. His severity he justified by appealing to the thousand-year-old law of the one great world-wide Church, the Church of the Apostles, of the Fathers and martyrs and Œcumenical Councils and great missioners of all ages, a law, moreover, sanctioned by the Empire. When, in 1533, a number of Lutherans were banished from the Duchy[830] Luther seized upon this as a pretext for controversy. Roundly scolding the “Ducal tyrant,” he declared this sentence of banishment to be “a devilish and criminal thing.” The authority of the sovereign, so he now wrote, again contradicting himself, “only extends over life and property in secular matters.”[831] But, after George’s death in 1539 and the accession of his brother Henry, Luther’s tone changed, for Henry held Lutheran views. In a letter he sent about that time to the Elector Johann Frederick, he is angry because more than 500 of the Saxon clergy, all of them “venomous Papists,” had not yet been driven out. “For the sake of the poor souls, many thousands of whom live neglected under such parsons,” he urges the Elector to do his best “to help and promote a Visitation.”[832] He demands that Duke Henry, as the sovereign and protector of the bishopric of Meissen, should “put a damper on the blasphemous idolatry” as best he could, for “the Princes who are able to do so should at once abolish Baal and all idolatry.”[833] He also wished that the bishop of Meissen, though a Prince of the Empire, should “at once bow his head to the Evangel”; in this matter there is no need for “much disputing.”

It was but natural that such intolerance often led to scenes of brutality; such was the case in the cathedral of Meissen, where the splendid tomb of Benno, the saintly[244] bishop of Meissen, was hewn in pieces, and the statue of the patron, which was an object of veneration to all the people, was set up headless at the church door as a laughing-stock for the Lutherans.[834]

Hand in hand with such legal coercion, which he both approved and furthered, went Luther’s declaration—which, though seeming to promote freedom, really constituted a new encroachment on the rights of conscience—viz. that: No one was to be forced to believe in his heart, but that “the people were to be driven to the sermons for the sake of the Ten Commandments, so that they might at least learn the outward works of obedience.”[835] “It would be grand,” so he told Margrave George of Brandenburg, “if your Serene Highness on the strength of your secular authority enjoined on both parsons and parishioners under pain of penalties the teaching and learning of the Catechism, in order, that, as they are Christians and wish to be called such, they may, please God, be compelled to learn and to know what a Christian ought to know, whether he believes it or not.”[836] At his instance attendance at the sermons was imposed on all people in the Saxon Electorate under pain of penalty, whatever they might think of the preaching.[837]

These intolerant principles, which could not but lead to persecution, were made even worse by the abuse and invective which Luther publicly showered on the representatives of Catholicism. He taught the mob to call them “blasphemous ministers of the Babylonian whore,” knaves, bloodhounds, hypocrites and murderers. In the Articles of Schmalkalden which found a place among the Symbolic Books, he introduces the Pope as the “dragon” who leads astray the whole world, as the “real Antichrist” and as the “devil himself” whom it was impossible to “worship as[246] Master or as God,” for which reason he would not suffer the Pope as “Head or Lord”; they must say to him: “May God rebuke thee, Satan!” (Zach. iii. 2).[853] Among his monstrous caricatures of the Pope he also included one depicting the “well-deserved reward of the Most Satanic Pope and his Cardinals,” as the inscription runs below. Here the Pope is seen on the gallows with three Cardinals; their tongues which have been torn out by the root are nailed to the gibbet and devils are scurrying off with their souls. The picture is embellished with the following doggerel:

Threats of Bloody Reprisals against Papists, Priestlings and Monks

At the right moment let us fall upon the Turks “and the priests and smite them dead!” Only then shall we be successful against the Turks! So runs one of Luther’s sayings in the Table-Talk.[855]

“Oh, that our Right Reverend Cardinals, Popes and Roman Legates had more kings of England to put them to death!”[856] This he wrote in 1535, after the execution of Thomas More and John Fisher by Henry VIII.

As early as 1520 he had exclaimed against Prierias: If thieves are punished by the rope, murderers by the sword and heretics by fire, why not proceed against “these noxious teachers of destruction—these Cardinals, Popes and the whole swarm of the Roman Sodom, who are ever ceaselessly destroying the Church of God—with every kind of weapon, and wash our hands in their blood?”[857]

No one, in the least familiar with Luther’s writings, will be so foolish as to believe that it was really his intention to kill the Catholic clergy and monks. His bloodthirsty demands were but the violent outbursts of his own deep inward intolerance. They were called forth occasionally by other alleged misdeeds of Popery, of its advocates and friends, for instance, by the burdensome taxes imposed by the Church, by her use of excommunication, and by the action taken against the Lutherans, particularly by the resolutions of the Diets for the suppression of Protestantism. Nor must we forget that the religious dissensions grew into a sort of permanent warfare and that war tends to produce effusions such as would be unthinkable in times of peace; nor was the warlike feeling a monopoly of the Lutheran side.

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But who was it who was responsible for having provoked the war?

Occasional counsels to patience and endurance, to self-restraint and consideration were indeed given by Luther from time to time[864] (they have been diligently collected by his modern supporters), but, generally speaking, they are drowned in the din of his controversial invective.

What was to be expected when the people, who were already profoundly excited by the social conditions, were told: “Better were it that all bishops were put to death, and all foundations and convents rooted out than that one soul should be seduced” by Popish error.[865] “What better do they deserve than to be stamped out by a great revolt?”[866] If his reforms were rejected then it was to be wished that monasteries and foundations “were all reduced to one great heap of ashes.”[867] “A grand destruction of all the monasteries, etc., would be the best reformation!”[868] What wonder “were the Princes, the nobles and the laity to hit Pope, bishop, priest and monk on the head and drive them out of the land?”[869] The “Rhine would hardly suffice to drown” the many “bull-mongers,” Cardinals and “knaves.”[870]

The Death-Penalty Sectarians within the New Fold

In the above we have dealt with Luther’s intolerance in theory and practice towards the Catholic Church. It remains for us to look at his attitude towards the sects within his own camp.

The question, how far they were to be tolerated, or whether it would be better forcibly to suppress them was first brought home to Luther by the Anabaptist movement under Thomas Münzer. Sure of the upper hand, Luther decided, as we know, at the end of July, 1524, to advise the Saxon Princes to leave the Anabaptists in peace so far as their doctrines were concerned. “Let them preach as they please,” was his advice, for “there ‘must needs be heresies’” (1 Cor. xi. 19).[871] He explained to Lazarus Spengler of Nuremberg on Feb. 4, 1525, that the Anabaptists were not to be punished, particularly with “bodily penalties,”[249] because, in his opinion, they were no real blasphemers, but merely “like the Turks or straying Christians.”[872] In May of the same year he showed himself disposed to universal toleration. “The authorities are not to hinder anyone from teaching and believing what he pleases”;[873] a principle which, as we have shown above (p. 239), he himself had contravened in practice as early as 1522, and was finally to set aside altogether.

As for the Anabaptists, in 1527 Luther was not yet in favour of the “putting to death” and bloody “rooting out” of these sectarians. In 1528 he even taught in his exposition of the Parable of the Good Seed and the Tares that “we are not to fight the fanatics with the sword.”[874] What made him hesitate to advise the putting to death of these heretics was, as he told his friend Wenceslaus Link of Nuremberg in 1528, the apprehension that this might lead to abuses; he feared lest, in the time to come, we might turn the sword against the best “among us.”[875] But without a doubt he approved of the Edict of the Elector Johann (Jan. 17, 1528) which proscribed the writings of the Anabaptists, Sacramentarians and fanatics throughout the land—if indeed the Edict itself may not be traced directly to Luther, as Zwingli suspected.[876] In 1528 it also seemed to him right to decree the penalty of banishment in the case of the Anabaptists.[877]

When, however, the danger had become more evident, which the Anabaptist heresy spelt both to the land-frith and the foundations of Christianity, not to speak of the Lutheran teaching, Luther adopted a sterner line of action.

His views altered in 1530. After a Mandate had been issued in the Saxon Electorate against the “secret preachers and conventicles, Anabaptists and other baneful novel teaching,” six Anabaptists were executed early in the year at Reinhardsbrunn in the duchy of Saxe-Gotha. The[250] discussion which took place on this event gave Melanchthon occasion to declare in Feb., 1530, that, “even though the Anabaptists do not advocate anything seditious or openly blasphemous” it was, “in his opinion, the duty of the authorities to put them to death.”[878] In the spring of 1530, with the Anabaptists in his mind, Luther, in his commentary on Ps. lxxxii. dealt with the question whether the authorities “ought to forbid strange teachings or heresies and punish them, seeing that no one should or can force men into the Faith.”[879]

Accordingly, at the end of 1530, Melanchthon at the instance of the Electoral Court once more took the matter in hand. He drafted a memorandum on the duty of the secular authorities in the matter of religious differences, with particular reference to the Anabaptists. In it he set forth at length the grounds for a regular system of coercion by the sword. Luther, too, set his name to the document with the words: “It pleases me, Martin Luther.” In it the sectarians were reprobated as blasphemers because they reject “the public preaching office [the ministry] and teach that men can become holy without any preaching and ecclesiastical worship.” They ought to be visited with death by the public authorities whose duty it is to “befriend and uphold ecclesiastical order”; and in like manner should their adherents and those whom they have led astray be dealt with, who insist, “that our baptism and preaching is not Christian and therefore that ours is not the Church of Christ.”[883] Nevertheless, we can see from the words Luther adds after his signature that the decision, or at least its severity, aroused some misgivings in him. He says: “Though it may appear cruel to punish them by the sword, yet it is even more cruel of them to condemn the preaching office and not to teach any certain doctrine, to persecute the true doctrine, and, over and above all this, to seek to destroy the kingdoms of this world.”

It is quite true that Luther and Melanchthon had an eye on the seditious character of these sects, yet present-day Protestant theologians are not justified when they try to explain and excuse their severity on this ground. On the contrary, as we have already pointed out, the texts plainly show that they were chiefly concerned with the punishment of the sectarians’ offences against the faith. This was made the principal point, as we see in Melanchthon’s memorandum[252] just referred to. He says, for instance: “Though many Anabaptists do not openly teach any seditious doctrines,” yet “it was both sedition and blasphemy for them to condemn the public ministry.” It was therefore the duty of the authorities, above all “on account of the second commandment of the Decalogue, to uphold the public ministry” and to take steps against them. If, to boot, they also taught seditious doctrines then it was “all the easier to judge them,” as we read in another memorandum of the Wittenberg theologians (1536) of which Melanchthon was also the draughtsman.[884]

To N. Paulus belongs the credit of having thrown light on the true state of affairs, for, even previous to the publication of his “Protestantismus und Toleranz im 16 Jahrhundert” (1911) he had discussed Luther’s attitude both in his shorter writing, “Luther und die Gewissensfreiheit” (1905) and in various articles in reviews. After him, the Protestant historian P. Wappler took up the same views, particularly in his “Die Stellung Kursachsens … zur Täuferbewegung” (1910). In the “Neues Archiv für sächsische Geschichte” (1911) O. A. Hecker also quite agrees in rejecting the opinion of certain recent Protestant theologians, who, as he says, “all try to exonerate Luther from any hand in the executions for heresy, though they can only do so by dint of forced interpretations, as Paulus pointed out.”[885]

“The worldly authorities bear the sword,” so Luther said in his Home-Postils, “with orders to prevent all scandal, so that it may not intrude and do harm. But the most dangerous and horrible scandal is where false doctrine and worship finds its way in.… For this reason the Christian authorities must be on the look-out for such scandal.… They must resist it stoutly and realise that nothing else will do save they make use of the sword and of the full extent of their power in order to preserve the doctrine pure and the worship clean and undefiled.”

“Then everything will go well.”[889]

We have also his exposition of Ps. ci. (1534), where there occurs the eulogy of David, the “scourge of heretics.”[890]

How he was in the habit of dealing with the Sacramentarians at a later date the following instance may serve to show, which at the same time reveals his coarseness and his reliance on the secular authorities. To Luther’s[254] doctrine that Christ was bodily present, not only in the Host, but throughout the world, the Sacramentarians had rejoined: Good, then we shall partake of Him everywhere, in “spoon, plate and beer-can!”[891] To this Luther’s reply ran: See “what graceless swine we abandoned Germans for the most part are, lacking both manners and reason, who, when we hear of God, esteem it a fairy tale.… All seek to do their business into it and to wipe their back parts on it. The temporal authorities ought to punish such blasphemers.… God knows I write of such high things most unwillingly because they must needs be set before such dogs and swine.… Hearken you, you pig, dog, or fanatic, or whatever brainless donkey you may be: Though Christ’s body is everywhere, yet you will not be able to lay hold of it so easily.… Begone to your pigsty and wallow in your own muck! … there is a distinction between His Presence and your laying hold of Him; He is free and nowhere bound,” etc.—Luther himself was, however, very far from making clear what the distinction was. After much else not to the point he concludes: “Oh, how few there are, even among the highly learned, who have ever meditated so profoundly on this article concerning Christ!”[892]

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The treatment of the sectarians in the Saxon Electorate was in keeping with the theories and counsels of Luther and his theologians.

Relentless measures were taken against them on account of their deviation from the faith even when no charge of sedition was forthcoming. On Jan. 15, 1532, the Elector Johann admitted the following as his guiding principle for interfering: “It is the duty of the authorities to punish such teachers and seducers, with God and with a good conscience.… For were heretics and contemners of the Word of God not punished we should be acting against the prescribed laws which we are in every way bound to observe.”[893]

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The Saxon lawyer, Matthias Coler (†1587), taught in his “Decisiones Germaniæ,” that, according to the laws of Saxony those were to be punished by death at the stake (“de iure saxonico cremandi veniunt”) who openly denied either the Divinity of Christ, or other important truths of faith; before being burnt they were, however, to be questioned under torture concerning their confederates in order that the land might be purged of such wicked men.[901]

In thus interfering the sovereigns were well aware that they had the warm official approval of Luther and his fellows. To this, for instance, the Elector Johann Frederick appealed in 1533 when milder measures were suggested. He referred to the memorandum which his father had obtained from the Wittenberg theologians and lawyers concerning the execution of the Anabaptists; their decision had been, “that His Highness might with a good conscience cause those charged with Anabaptism to be punished by death,” and, soon after, several of them were executed.[902] The person who[256] had thought otherwise, and to whom this vindication was accordingly addressed, was no less a man than Landgrave Philip of Hesse.

Luther himself, too, had been obliged on various occasions to justify the severity of his opinions.

Luther’s Self-justification and Excuses

Philip of Hesse, though he treated Catholics with the utmost intolerance, refused to hear of punishing the Anabaptists with death unless indeed they were the cause of public disturbances. “We cannot find it in our conscience to put anyone to death by the sword on account of religion unless we have sufficient proof of other crimes as well.” Such was the declaration he made in 1532 to Elector Johann of Saxony, and which he emphasised in 1545 to the latter’s successor: “Were all those to be executed who are not of our faith what then should we do to the Papists, to say nothing of the Jews, who err even more greatly than the Anabaptists?”[903]

Luther was apparently far surer of his case. He is as confident, subsequent to 1530, in drawing from Scripture the principles for the treatment of the heretics as he is in defending them against the obvious objections so often brought against them.

Luther had it that the line of action for which he stood was not coercion to any definite religious practices. “Our Princes,” so he sought to reassure himself as early as 1525, “do not force people to the faith and to the Evangel but merely set a term to outward abominations.”[904]

The Elector, as was to be expected, expressed himself likewise: “Though it is not our intention to prescribe to anyone what he must hold or believe, yet, in order to guard[257] against harmful uprisings and other disorders, we refuse to recognise or permit any sects or schisms within our Princedom.”[905]

The severity of his demands is hardly mitigated or excused by the right he gives people to leave the country. At any rate those who do not see eye to eye with him must get themselves gone, for, as he frequently remarks, whoever[258] wishes to dwell among the burghers must not disregard the laws of the borough.[911]

“By all this, however,” so he says on another occasion, “no one is forced into the faith but the common man is merely set free from troublesome and obstinate spirits, and the knavery of the hole-and-corner preachers is checked.”[912] Thus, if the man who thinks otherwise wishes to lock up his convictions in his own breast, he is quite free to do so. Within, he may enjoy the most far-reaching freedom, since no earthly power extends to his thoughts. The reply of those concerned was, however, obvious; what right, they asked, had the new religious tribunal to prevent a man from revealing his convictions and openly living up to them, and was not the order to keep silence tantamount to a stifling of conscience and to forcing people to become hypocrites?

Hence, in the ensuing discussions, we find that Luther and his friends were ever making fresh efforts to meet the objections; in itself this was a sign of the weakness of the exclusivism adopted by the Lutherans, in spite of all they had formerly said, as soon as they had succeeded in winning the favour of the State.

“Some argue,” we read in the memorandum of the Wittenbergers published in 1536, “that the secular authorities have no concern whatever with ghostly matters. This is going much too far.… The rulers must not only protect the life and belongings of their underlings, but their highest duty is to promote the honour of God and to prevent blasphemy and idolatry,” etc.[913]

The memorandum was intended for Philip of Hesse. As Luther was aware that the Landgrave was loath to proceed to extremities with the Anabaptists, he added to the memorandum a note of his own. “Seeing that His Serene Highness the Landgrave reports that certain leaders and teachers of the Anabaptists … have not kept their promise (viz. to quit the land) Your Serene Highness may with a good conscience cause them to be punished with the sword, for this reason also, to wit, that they have not kept their oath or promise. Such is the rule. Yet Your Serene Highness, needless to say, may at all times allow justice to be tempered with mercy, according to the circumstances.”[914]

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If meant in earnest the latter recommendation to mercy does the speaker credit and is the more noteworthy because, in his later years, we do not often hear him pleading for the heretics. As a rule he is all too intent on emphasising the wickedness of what he terms “blasphemy and idolatry,” i.e. of whatever was at variance with his own teaching.

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As a reason of his animus against heretics within his own fold Luther finally brings forward those personal considerations which are familiar to all who have followed his controversies.

But did not his very self-reliance finally broaden the ideas of the preacher of coercion? Did not Luther in a sermon preached at Eisleben on Feb. 7, 1546, as good as repudiate his former exclusivism?

Compulsory Attendance at Church

“Facts have shown,” Luther wrote to Spalatin in 1527 of the conditions in his new churches, “that men despise the Evangel and insist on being compelled by the law and the sword.”[927] He was very anxious to make attendance at the Lutheran preaching a matter of obligation.

According to his earlier statements, attendance at the preaching had been voluntary, for the matter of the sermons was to be judged by the hearers, in order that they might avoid what was harmful; his subsequent practice of driving all to the preaching made an end of this freedom, or rather duty. Through the authorities, so far as his influence went, he insisted on this principle: “Even though they do not believe they must nevertheless, for the sake of the Ten Commandments, be driven to the preaching, so that they may at least learn the outward work of obedience.” He wrote this at a time when he had already justified such coercion at Wittenberg, viz. on Aug. 26, 1529, in a letter to the “strict and steadfast” Joseph Levin Metzsch of Mila, who was shortly after appointed by the Elector to take part in the Visitation.[928] Instructions sent by Luther on the same day to Thomas Löscher, pastor of the same locality, are to the same effect (“cogendi sunt ad conciones … audiant etiam inviti”).[929] The orders of the authorities concerning public worship were represented in the Visitation Rules for[263] the pastors (1528) as universally binding: “All secular authority is to be obeyed because the secular powers are not ordering a new worship but enforcing peace and charity.”[930] The Preface of the Smaller Catechism (1531) was on the same lines. “Although we neither can nor should force anyone into the faith, yet the masses must be held and driven to it in order that they may know what is right or wrong in those among whom they live.”[931]

In the same year Luther advised Margrave George of Brandenburg to compel the people to attend the Catechism “at the behest of the secular authority,” for, since they “are Christians and wish to be so called,” it was only fitting “they should be obliged to learn what a Christian ought to know.” The Ansbach preachers embodied this requirement in the same year in the alterations they proposed in the church-regulations.[932]

Wittenberg served as the pattern. It was to Wittenberg that Leonard Beyer addressed himself when he succeeded Luther’s friend, Nicholas Hausmann, as pastor of Zwickau. Luther answered his letter by describing the system of coercion practised in Wittenberg and the neighbourhood when people persistently neglected to attend the sermons: “With the authority and in the name of our Most Noble Prince it is our custom to affright those who disregard all piety and fail to attend the preaching, and to threaten them with banishment and the law. This is the first step. Then, if they do not amend, the pastors are enjoined by us to ply them for a month or more with instructions and representations, and, finally, in the event of their still proving contumacious, to excommunicate them, and to break off all intercourse with them as though they were heathen.” He concludes: “The words of the Bible [Matt. xviii. 17; 2 Thes. iii. 6] concerning the avoidance of heretics are quite clear.”[933]—He, however, forgets to add that neither he nor the pastors had ever been quite successful in their attempts at excommunication.

The above regulations of the authorities were to remain in force. In 1533 the Prince once more insisted that: No one is to be permitted to absent himself from the “common[264] church-going,” everyone must be “earnestly reminded of this.”[934] In the General Articles of 1557 it was determined by the Elector August, that, whoever absented himself without permission from the sermon on Sundays and festivals, whether in the morning or afternoon, “more particularly in the villages” was to be fined, or, if he was poor, “to be punished with the pillory, either at the church or at some prison.”[935] The parsons, however, were to notify the authorities of any who contemned the preaching and the sacraments, or who obstinately persisted in their false opinion. Even the practice of auricular confession was, at a later date, made a strict law; whoever evaded confession and the Supper was liable to banishment.[936] The Saxon lawyer, Benedict Carpzov (1595-1666) in his “Iurisprudentia ecclesiastica” defended as self-evident the legal principle based on the practice of Luther’s own country: “Those, who, after repeated admonitions, maliciously absent themselves from the Supper, are to be expelled from the land; they are to be compelled to sell their goods and emigrate.”[937] The same scholarly lawyer elsewhere alludes to the Saxon custom of condemning seditious and blasphemous heretics to die at the stake.[938]

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At Wittenberg strong ramparts were set up for the protection of the Lutheran doctrine and to prevent divergent opinions finding their way in.

The doctrine of the punishment of heretics was afterwards incorporated by Melanchthon in 1552, in the Wittenberg instructions composed by him and entitled: “The Examination of Ordinands.”[945]

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Opinions of Protestant Historians

The above account of Luther’s intolerance is very much at variance with the Protestant view still current to some extent in erudite circles, but more particularly in popular literature. Luther, for all the harshness of his disposition, is yet regarded as having in principle advocated leniency, as having been a champion of personal religious freedom, and having only sanctioned severity towards the Anabaptists because of the danger of revolt. Below we shall, however, quote a series of statements from Protestant writers who have risen superior to such party prejudice.

Walther Köhler, in his “Reformation und Ketzerprozess” (1901), wrote:

The matter has been examined with equal frankness by P. Wappler in various studies in which he utilises new data taken from the archives.[951]

Luther’s Spirit in his Fellows

The question concerning Melanchthon raised by Protestant historians, viz. whether it was he who converted Luther to his intolerance, or, whether, on the other hand, he himself was influenced by Luther, cannot, on the strength of the documents, be answered either affirmatively or negatively. In some respects Melanchthon struck out his own paths, in others he merely followed in Luther’s wake.[970] He was by no means loath to making use of coercion in the case of doctrines differing from his own. His able pen had the doubtful merit of expressing in fluent language what Luther thought and said in private, as we see from the Memoranda still extant. His ill-will with the Papacy and the hostile sects within the new fold, was, it is true, as a rule not so blatant as Luther’s; he was fond of displaying in his style that moderation dear to the humanist; yet we have spontaneous outbursts of his which sound a very harsh note and which doubtless were due to his old and intimate spiritual kinship with Luther.

Coming from Luther and fostered by Melanchthon, these intolerant ideas profoundly influenced all their friends.

Not as though there was ever any lack of opponents of the theory of coercion among the Protestants, or even in Luther’s own flock. On the contrary there were some who had the sense of justice and the courage to resist the current of intolerance coming from Wittenberg. Indeed it was the protests which Luther encountered at Nuremberg which led him to emphasise his harsh demands.

Sebastian Franck, the witty and learned opponent of Luther, “after Luther himself, the best and most popular German prose writer of the day,” took the line of pushing to its bitter end Luther’s subjectivism. He declared that the new preachers had made of Holy Scripture a paper idol for the benefit of their private views, and that the Lutheran Church was the invisible kingdom of Christ and as such numbered among its members men of every sect; hence he argued that what was termed false doctrine and false worship should not be interfered with.[983] As Kawerau points[272] out, Franck found in the 16th century “not a few readers wherever dissatisfaction prevailed with the Papacy of the theologians”;[984] nevertheless, in 1531, he was expelled from Strasburg on account of his liberal views; later on, when he had taken up his residence at Ulm, Melanchthon wrote thither, in 1535, that he should be “dealt with severely” (“severe coercendum”) no less than Schwenckfeld.[985] Driven from Ulm he went to Basle in 1539, but even there the echo of the verdict of the Wittenbergers reached him; in March, 1540, the theologians assembled at Schmalkalden, condemned him and charged him with “inducing people to seek the spirit while neglecting the ‘Word’”; they themselves, they added, had broken with the Churches of the Pope because of their idolatry, but there was “no reason whatever for throwing over the ministry in our own Churches.”[986]

As we have already shown, Landgrave Philip of Hesse was likewise disposed to be less intolerant than Luther, at least with regard to the Anabaptists. Relentlessly as he refused any public toleration to the Catholic faith and banished those Catholics who persisted in their religious practices, yet, in a letter of 1532, addressed to Elector Johann of Saxony, he declared himself against the execution of the Anabaptists; the actual words have been quoted above (p. 256). In another letter, in 1545, to the Elector Johann Frederick, he also points out, that: “If this sect be punished so severely by us, then we, by our example, give our foes, the Papists, reason to treat us in the same way, for they regard us as no better than the Anabaptists.”[987]

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These and similar remonstrances were unavailing to change the views which had taken root at Wittenberg.

George Major, Professor of theology at Wittenberg University, was a learned and zealous disciple of Luther’s. He, like Melanchthon, on hearing of the execution of Servetus at Geneva, declared that Calvin was to be commended[273] for having put to death the heretic, and, at a Disputation held in 1555, expressly defended the thesis, that it was the duty of the authorities to punish contumacious heretics with death. They must “get rid of blasphemers, perjurers and wizards. Amongst the blasphemers must, however, be reckoned those who persistently defend idolatrous worship, or heresies which clearly disagree with the articles of the faith.”[988]

Luther’s code of penalties for any deviation from the Wittenberg teaching fitted in well with Bugenhagen’s natural harshness, who showed himself only too ready to make his own the words of Moses concerning the slaying of unbelievers. We may recall how, in conversation, when Luther mentioned the difficulties he had with Carlstadt, Agricola and Schenk, Bugenhagen broke in with the remark: “Sir Doctor, we ought to do what is commanded in Deuteronomy where Moses says they should be put to death.”[989] Bugenhagen, in the many places into which he brought the new faith, was relentlessly severe in enforcing against the Catholics the principles he had carried with him from Wittenberg. Very characteristic is the tone in which he reported to Luther that the Mass had been forbidden in Denmark and the monks driven out of the land as “seditionmongers” and “blasphemers.”[990] Not only had the bishops been imprisoned, but, according to the account of Peter Palladius the superintendent, some of the monks “had been hanged.”[991]

Justus Jonas began his labours at Halle in 1542 by a written invitation to the Town-Council “completely to purge the town of false doctrine and every kind of idolatrous worship”; Luther and Melanchthon had sufficiently proved in their works that this “was incumbent on Christian magistrates.” He declared that the monks still living in the town were “obstinate and impenitent idolaters,” “adders and snakes” whom he “must reduce to silence with the use of the gag”; already, throughout the whole neighbourhood,[274] “merely at the exhortations of the preachers, the monasteries, with their Masses and idolatrous worship, had crumbled into ruins.”[992] Later, in a memorandum addressed to the Town-Council in 1546, Jonas again inveighed against the remaining handful of well-disposed and zealous monks, and called to mind how “our beloved father, Dr. Martin, in the very last sermon he preached at Halle shortly before his decease, had exhorted the Town-Council and the whole Church with all his burning, stormy earnestness to rid themselves of the crawling things.”[993] Jonas appealed to his own “conscience” and threatened to report matters to the Elector of Saxony and “his Electoral Highness’s scholars at Wittenberg.”[994] With the outbreak of the Schmalkalden war, when the Electoral troops laid waste the monasteries his hopes at last found their fulfilment. He announced on March 3, 1547, that, at Halle, the “Papistic idolatry” had now been swept away;[995] when he wrote this he did not expect the change in the position of the Catholics in the town, for which the defeat of the Elector’s troops in the following month was responsible.

We are reminded how greatly Spalatin was imbued with Luther’s exclusivism and spirit of intolerance by his words concerning the “Christian bit” which he wished placed in the mouths of all the clergy.[996] He was at great pains to press upon the sovereign that he was not to permit “unchristian ceremonies” and “idolatry.”[997]

The Elector Johann was merely giving expression to the views with which Spalatin and Luther had inspired him when he declared that, “heretics and contemners of the Word” must in every instance be punished by the authorities.[998] His successor, Johann Frederick, likewise followed obediently the “Wittenberg theologians and lawyers,” as[275] he terms his authorities.[999] He instructed Melanchthon in 1536 to write and have printed a popular “Answer to sundry unchristian articles” against the Anabaptists, which was to be read aloud from the pulpit every third Sunday, and which insisted that the secular authorities were bound to punish “all contempt of Scripture and the outward Word” as “blatant blasphemy.”[1000]

Martin Bucer though differing from Luther in much else was yet at one with him in asserting that it was the duty of the secular authority to abolish “false doctrine and perverted ceremonials,” and that, as the sole authority, it was to be obeyed by “all the bishops and clergy.” Though anxious to be regarded as considerate and peaceable, he defended the prohibition against Catholic sermons issued at Augsburg by the City-Council in 1534, and even incited it to still more stringent measures against the Catholics. He advocated quite openly “the power of the authorities over consciences.”[1010] “Among us Christians,” he asks, “is injury and slaughter of souls by false worship of less importance than the ravishing of wives and daughters?”[1011] He never rested until, in 1537, with the help of such hot-heads as Wolfgang Musculus, he brought about the entire suppression of the Mass at Augsburg. At his instigation “many fine paintings, monuments and ancient works of art in the churches were wantonly torn, broken and smashed.”[1012] Whoever refused to submit and attend public worship was obliged within eight days to quit the city-boundaries. Catholic citizens were forbidden under severe penalties to attend Catholic worship elsewhere, and special guards were stationed at the gates to prevent any such attempt.[1013]

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In other of the Imperial cities Bucer acted with no less violence and intolerance, for instance, at Ulm, where he supported Œcolampadius and Ambrose Blaurer in 1531, and at Strasburg where he acted in concert with Capito, Caspar Hedio, Matthæus Zell and others. Here, in 1529, after the Town-Council had prohibited Catholic worship, the Councillors were requested by the preachers to help to fill the empty churches by issuing regulations prescribing attendance at the sermons. Bucer adhered till his death (1551), as his work “De Regno Christi” (1550) proves, to the principle of the rights and duties of authorities towards the new religion.[1014]

In the above survey of those who preached religious intolerance only Luther’s own pupils and followers have been considered; the result would be even less cheering were the leaders of the other Protestant sects added to the list.

At Zürich, Zwingli’s State-Church grew up much as Luther’s did in Germany; Œcolampadius at Basle and Zwingli’s successor, Bullinger, were strong compulsionists. Calvin’s name is even more closely bound up with the idea of religious absolutism, while the task of handing down to posterity his harsh doctrine of religious compulsion was undertaken by Beza in his notorious work “De hæreticis a civili magistratu puniendis.” The annals of the Established Church of England were likewise at the outset written in blood.

The sufferings endured by the Catholics in Germany owing to the wave of intolerance which spread from Wittenberg are reflected in the countless complaints we hear at that time. Many writings still tell to-day of the injustice under which they groaned. In a “Manual of Complaint and Consolation for all oppressed Christians” we read as follows: “Oh, what a mockery it is that these tyrants and abusers of power should exclaim everywhere that their gospel is Christian freedom, that they have no wish to tyrannise over consciences when there could never have been worse tyrants than those men who do not scruple to go on unceasingly tormenting the consciences of the people, robbing them of the consolation of the holy sacraments of the religious ministrations of consecrated priests, of all their prayer-books[279] and devotional works, and, even on their death-beds, in spite of their piteous entreaties refusing them the Holy Viaticum!”[1015] This touching complaint is made more particularly in the name of those most defenceless members of society, who were devoid of legal protection and whose very poverty made emigration impossible. “All the iniquities committed in German lands and cities are attested at the Judgment-Seat of God by the souls of thousands of consecrated nuns, who never did wrong to anyone and who asked for nothing more than permission to live and die in their ancient faith, even though their worldly goods should be taken away from them and they shut up within closed walls.”[1016]

2. Luther as Judge

It must not be overlooked that Luther’s severity towards heretics within his fold is to be set down largely to his nervous irritability arising partly out of his natural temperament, partly out of his unceasing labours, so that, if we are to be just to him, his conviction that his doctrine was the only authorised one must not be held to be entirely responsible for his behaviour. At the same time it is plain how deeply he was affected by belief in his higher mission. Thus he practically made himself a religious dictator, when, in 1542, he demanded that the Meissen nobles who had come over to him should not only ratify their new belief by doing penance, but also should “signify their approval of everything which has hitherto been done by us and shall be done in the future.”[1017]

Another point on which we must also do him justice is the service performed by him in his controversies with rivals, in the field both of theology and Scripture-exegesis, by repressing with such energy and general success the dangerous tendencies apparent in the Anabaptist heresy and the Antinomianism of Johann Agricola. In the attacks of the[280] Antinomians on all law, even on the Decalogue, there undoubtedly lay a great danger for morality and religion. Certain of Luther’s own principles were carried to rash, nay, foolhardy, lengths by the Antinomians. Hence it was not unfortunate that Agricola found pitted against him so redoubtable an opponent as Luther who, as was his wont, interfered and nipped the evil in the bud.

The Conceit and the Obstinacy of the “Heretics”

Luther bitterly accuses of boundless presumption all the heretics within the New Faith, but particularly Agricola. The latter might even be classed with those doctors who might most fittingly be compared with Arius and treated in the same way.

Though Luther never grows weary of insisting against the heretics at home on the “public, common doctrine,” and of instancing the fell consequences of pride and obstinacy, even going so far as to predict that they will in all likelihood never be converted because founders of sects rarely retrace their steps and recant,[1030] yet he never seems to have perceived that the point of all this might equally well have been turned against himself.

The blindness of such heretics he describes in a tract of 1526 dedicated to Queen Mary of Hungary:

Such statements of Luther’s are of supreme importance for judging of his Divine Mission. In his frame of mind it became at last an impossibility for him to realise that his hostility and intolerance towards “heretics” within his fold could redound on himself, or that he was contradicting himself in continuing to proclaim freedom, or at least in continuing to make the fullest use of it himself. In reality he was living in a world of his own, and his mental state cannot be judged of by the usual standards.

“Heretics” who cannot be sure of their Cause

Apart from the “pride of the heretics,” another idea of Luther’s deserves attention, viz. that those teachers who differed from him, in their heart of hearts, knew him to be in the right, or at least neither were nor could be quite certain of their own doctrines. Of any call in their case there could be no question; his call, however, was above doubt, seeing his certainty. Hence, in his dealings with the[284] “sectarians” we once again find the same strange attitude, as he had exhibited towards the “Papists,” who, according to him, likewise were withstanding their own conscience and lacked any real call.

To a man so full of such fiery enthusiasm for his cause and so dominated by his imagination as Luther, it seems to have been an easy task to persuade himself ever more and more firmly, that all his opponents’ doings were against their own conscience.

Where are your Miracles?

The stress Luther lays on miracles as a proof of doctrine is another trait to add to the picture of his psychology. Again and again he repeated anew what he had already, in 1524, said of Münzer and some of the preachers: They must be told to corroborate their mission by signs and wonders, or else be forbidden to preach; for whenever God wills to change the order of things He always works miracles.[1050] There is something almost tragic in the courage with which he appealed to miracles in this connection, when we bear in mind his own difficulties, in accounting for their absence in his own case.[1051] Here it is enough to recall Hier. Weller’s words: “I still remember right well,” Weller writes, “how he once said that he had never thought of asking God for the[286] gift of raising the dead, or of performing other miracles, though he did not doubt he might have obtained such of God had he wished; he had, however, preferred to be content with the rich gift of Scripture-interpretation; he further said that he had raised two persons from the dead, one of them being Philip Melanchthon and the other a God-fearing man.”[1052]

As against the sects and fanatics, Luther urges that he himself laid no claim to any extraordinary mission; as they, however, did make such a claim, they must vindicate it by miracles. “I have never preached or sought to preach unless I was asked and called for by men, for I cannot boast as they do that God has sent me from heaven without means; they run of their own accord, though no one sends them, as Jeremias writes [xxiii. 21]; for this reason they work no good.”[1053] Neither here nor elsewhere does he explicitly state by whom it is necessary to be “asked” or “called.” His account of the source whence he derives his mission also varies, being now the Wittenberg magistrates, now his Doctor’s degree, now the sovereign, now the enthusiastic hearers and readers of his word.[1054]

Such was his confidence that Luther forgot that it was by no means difficult for the “false brethren” within his camp to pick out the weak spots in his doctrine. He refused to recognise that much of their criticism was valid; on the negative side it even took the place of miracles. It was not every Catholic polemic who succeeded in demonstrating so clearly and convincingly the anomalies in Luther’s views, for instance, on the Law and Gospel, as the Antinomian, Johann Agricola.

On the other hand, Luther could well note with satisfaction the inability of the heretics to bring forward anything positive of importance. They were dwarfs compared with him. With his knowledge of the Bible it was child’s play to him to overthrow the fanatics’ often ludicrous applications of Scripture. Of Zwingli, too, it was easy for him to get the better by dint of sticking to the literal sense of Christ’s words of institution: “This is My Body.” Luther was not slow in pointing out the blemishes of the[287] “fanatics,” their vanity and blind obedience to ambition and self-will, and the impracticability of their fantastic, and often revolutionary, theories. The very truth of his strictures, for all his lack of miracles, raised him in his own eyes, far above these clumsy teachers; this perhaps enables us to understand better the utter contempt he expresses for them.

His Anger with Lemnius and Others

One had but to praise those whom he condemned to call forth Luther’s implacable anger.

This was the experience in 1538 of the humanist, Simon Lemnius (Lemchen) of Wittenberg, a man otherwise kindly disposed to the new teaching. A humanist above all, he had won Melanchthon’s favour on account of his talent.

In order rightly to appreciate, from their psychological side, Luther’s angry outbursts against the heretics in his party we must above all remember his fears of a coming[289] collapse of theology among his following; that he foresaw something of the sort has already been shown above.[1062]

He was also keenly alive to the harm these dissensions were doing to his reputation. Nor must we forget the threatening and highly insulting behaviour of many of these heretics. Taking all things together, it is easy to understand how a temper such as his was lashed to fury when denouncing the “presumption and foolhardiness” of his foes.[1063]

The depth of the yawning abyss between the heretics and Luther and also the hatred they bore him on account of his treatment of them is plain from the words of Münzer and Ickelsamer already quoted.[1080]

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3. The Church-Unseen, its Origin and Early History

His doctrine of the Church may in many respects be regarded as the key-stone and centre of the rest of Luther’s theology.

It is practically important in that it affords a clue to anyone desirous of ascertaining to which of the competing religious bodies he should belong. It was usually to this article on the Church that those who afterwards returned to Catholicism appealed in vindication of their step. It was also the practice of Catholic writers, in their controversies with Luther, to appeal to the doctrine of the one Church which has never erred in dogma in order to convict him more speedily of the guilt of his separation. All of them started from the old definition, according to which the Church is the visible commonwealth of the faithful, founded by Christ on Peter, the Rock, which confesses the same Christian belief and unites in the same Sacraments under the guidance of its lawful pastors, in particular of the successors of St. Peter.

Luther himself was fully aware of the supreme importance of this doctrine; he frequently enough brings his opponents on the scene “crying Church, Church!”[1081] Among the Papists, he says, they do nothing but shriek Church, Church, Church, and this is the chief obstacle to reunion.[1082] “Hence there is indeed need that we should see what the Holy Christian Church is. If it is the clergy and their mob, then the devil has won and we two, God and His Word, are the losers.”[1083] “The Pope quotes this text [John xiv. 17: ‘The spirit of truth shall remain with you’] strongly and impressively.… They have become so certain of their cause that they take their stand on it as on a wall of iron.… This we ourselves must believe and say, viz. that the Holy Ghost is with the Church which is certainly on earth and will remain.”[1084] But was Luther’s Church a visible or an invisible one?

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Invisibility of Luther’s Church

Bearing in mind the religious compulsion practised by Luther, the question would seem already answered. His practice involved the existence of an outward ecclesiastical authority with outward rules, a congregation to which it was impossible to belong without submitting to the doctrine of a visible head or corporation. Of the visible nature of this Church there can be no question. It is with this tangible authority that he confronts the Anabaptists, for instance when he says: “The presumption of these fanatics is unbearable, for they altogether repudiate the authority of the Church and will have it all their own way.”[1085] The best-grounded maxims of the best teachers are despised by them, so he complains, and they only esteem the opinions they themselves have rummaged for in Scripture! “Yet great heed should be paid to the Church.”[1086]

Nevertheless, according to Luther’s own views which had not changed much since 1519, the Church is in reality invisible.

The Church is not an outward, tangible institution, with a divinely appointed spiritual government and direction, such as it had been to Catholics through all the ages; rather it is the ghostly congregation of true believers known to Christ alone, Who alone is their head, guide and teacher. Men holding “office” in the Church there must indeed be, but only in order to preach and to dispense the sacraments; any spiritual authority with full powers for legislating and guiding the faithful is non-existent.[1087] It is the “true” faith and the possession of the “right” sacraments that constitute the Church. It is accordingly clear to him that the Holy Church in which we are to believe, must be a “ghostly, not a bodily one,” “for what we believe,” so he proceeds, “is not bodily but ghostly. The outward Roman Church we can all of us see, hence she cannot be the true Church in which we believe which is a congregation or[292] assembly of the saints in faith; but no one can see who is a saint or who has the faith.” This he said in his “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome” (1520).[1088]

Although, as the theologian in question points out, in Luther’s idea of the Church visible elements are not lacking, e.g. preaching and the sacraments, yet the actual congregation of Saints is visible to God alone; indeed the Church would still be there even should her only members consist of “babes in the cradle.”[1094] For instance, according to him, the Church before his day comprised very few people, and those unknown, who kept the Gospel undefiled and thus preserved the Church; some “elect souls must needs have come back,[293] at least on their death-beds, to the true path.”[1095]—“Such persons [inspired by the Holy Ghost] there must always be on earth, even though there should only be two or three, or just the children. Of the old there are, alas, but few. Such as do not belong to this class have no right to look upon themselves as Christians; nor are they to be consoled as though they were Christians by much talk of the forgiveness of sins and the Grace of Christ.”[1096]

Thus, in so far as the visible elements were recognised by Luther, Protestants are justified in teaching that Luther’s Church-Unseen was “not a mere idea or empty phantom”; if, however, they go on to say that, according to Luther, the Church is “the living sum total of all who are united in the Spirit,” one sees at a glance that, though, mentally, we can make a class of all who come under the category of “believers,” this implies no actual relation between such, and consequently no “Church” or real though invisible society.[1097]

The Marks of the Church. Gradual Disappearance of the Old Conception of the Church

It is a matter of common knowledge that the marks or “notæ” of the Church had been the subject of many disquisitions before Luther’s day. We may now inquire whether Luther himself also admitted the existence of these “marks,” by which the true Church of Christ might be known.

Though the admission of such marks seems incompatible with his theory of the Church-Unseen, Luther repeatedly seeks to prove the truth of his own Church and the falsehood of Catholicism by this means. Especially is this the case in his “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen” (1539).

Such true believers, according to Luther’s teaching, are so much the sole representatives of the visible Church that the wicked, the unbelieving, the hypocritical Christians who only expose her to the scorn and derision of her foes, do not really belong to the Church at all.[1108] They are members of the Church merely in name, but, in reality, are not Christians at all.[1109]

It was not, however, easy for him to shake off the true feeling he had inherited from youthful days, viz. that whoever wished to be pious and pleasing to God, must become so through the true Church. “Let us therefore pray in the Church,” so we hear him say, “let us pray with the Church and for her.”[1110] According to him the Church was the ghostly Eve taken from the side of Christ, a pure virgin and one body with Christ, great and splendid in God’s sight, the chief of His works, dear to Him, precious and highly esteemed in His sight, etc.[1111] Hence we find him re-echoing the beautiful words in which Catholic mystics had been wont to extol the Church and her “soul.”

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Yet there is no doubt, that, in spite of all this, Luther had explained away the Church’s very essence.

It was indeed his tendency to spiritualise, and his favourite idea that true believers must be enlightened by God directly concerning His outward “Word” that helped him thus to explain away the Church. As for any outward doctrinal establishment or institutional Church having an authority of her own, no such thing existed. Thus the Church which Luther extols as so holy turns out to be something quite intangible—water that for want of a holder runs away and is lost. Even Köstlin admits this, though in guarded words: “Certain main problems which the Reformed view of the Church must necessarily face” “were only very insufficiently grasped and discussed” by Luther and his friends. Among such questions Köstlin includes some that touch the Church’s very essence: How far is purity of doctrine necessary in order to belong to the Church; how far are the old Creeds still professed by Protestantism obligatory or binding upon preachers; where, finally, does the freedom preached by Luther precisely end?[1112] But, in spite of all the lacunæ in his doctrine of the Church, Luther bitterly insists, that, outside the Church there can be no salvation.[1113] Nor did he even admit the usual Catholic limitation, viz. that those, who through no fault of their own are ignorant of the Church, may possibly be saved if their life has been otherwise good. Luther indeed, as already shown (p. 292), is of opinion that some olden Catholics may have been saved, if, in the end, they laid hold on Christ as Luther taught;[1114] he also opines that salvation had been brought to all “worthy men of every nation” who had died before the coming of Christ, through His preaching during His visit to Limbo;[1115] yet he does not believe that it was the Will of God that all men, whether within or outside the Church, should be saved.[1116]

After having in the above examined Luther’s conception of the Church, irrespective of its mode of growth, we may now turn our attention to the genesis and historical development of this conception.

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Origin and Early Outbuilding of the New Idea of the Church

A curious psychological process accompanies the growth of Luther’s idea of the Church. We know that, even long after he had fallen a victim to his theory of justification by faith alone, he had still no thought of breaking away from the Church’s communion or of questioning the conception then in vogue of the Church. It was only when the olden Church refused to come over to his new doctrine and prepared to condemn it, that he decided, after great struggles within, to cut himself adrift, and it was in order to justify this step to himself and to vindicate it to the world that he gradually formed his new views on the Church. (Cp. above, vol. i., p. 321 ff.)

In thus cutting the idea of the Church to his own measure, Luther had reached the Husite theory of the predestined as the sole members of the Church. “Luther found in this his own view of the Church, for, according to him, on the one hand there was no need of submission to Rome, and, on the other, only the real Christians and the elect were actual[300] members of the Church.”[1126] In the “Resolutions,” which he published at the end of August immediately after the Disputation, he adheres to the statement that even Œcumenical Councils had erred and that, even on the most important questions of the faith. Still, strange to say, he does not think there is any reason for fearing that the Church had been forsaken by the Spirit of Christ, for by the Church was to be understood neither the Pope nor a Council.[1127] Here we have the basis of his new idea of the Church.… It is combined with another idea towards which he had long been drifting, viz. of seeing in Holy Scripture the sole source of faith.[1128] In the “Resolutions” he says: “Faith does not spring from any external authority but is aroused in the heart by the Holy Ghost, though man is moved thereto by the Word and by example.”[1129] Wherever Luther’s doctrine is believed, there is the Church.[1130]

The Papal Bull of 1520 condemned among the other selected theses of Luther’s, his attack on the Primacy and the Councils, though saying nothing of his doctrine of the Church, then still in process of growth. “The Roman Pope, the successor of Peter,” so the 25th of these condemned Theses runs, “is not the Vicar of Christ set over all the Churches throughout the whole world and appointed by Christ Himself in the person of St. Peter.” And the 29th declares: “It is open to us to set aside the Councils, freely to question their actions and judge their decrees and to profess with all confidence whatever appears to be the truth whether it has been approved or reproved of any Council.”[1131]

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The originator of principles so subversive to all ecclesiastical order had perforce to reassure himself by claiming freedom in the interpretation of Scripture.

Hence, for himself and all who chose to follow him, he set up in the clearest and most decided terms the personal reading of the written Word of God, above all tradition and all the pronouncements of the teaching office of the Church; in this he went much further than he had done hitherto in the questions he had raised concerning justification, grace, indulgences, etc. It is easy to understand why it was so necessary for him to claim for himself a direct enlightenment by the Spirit of God in his reading of the Bible;[1132] in no other way could he vindicate his daring in thus setting himself in opposition to a Church with a history of 1500 years. At the same time he saw that this same gift of illumination would have to be allowed to others, hence he declared that all faithful and devout readers of the Bible enjoyed a certain kind of inspiration, all according to him being directly guided by the Spirit into the truth without any outward interference of Church doctrine, though the first fruits of revelation belonged to him alone.[1133]

By thus exalting the personal element into a principle, he dealt a mortal blow at the idea of a Church to whom was committed the true interpretation of doctrine.

Before pointing out, how, in spite of the boundless liberty proclaimed by Luther, he nevertheless was anxious to retain some sort of Church in the stead of the ancient one, we may here put on record certain statements of his on the illumination of the individual by God that have not as yet been quoted; albeit difficult to understand this is of the very essence of Lutheranism and quite indispensable to the new doctrine of an invisible Church.[1134]

It would be a waste of words to point out that this was to deal a death-blow at the olden conception of the Church.

Startling, nay, utterly stupefying, is the sharp contrast all this presents to Luther’s later attitude already described above (pp. 241, 251, 262). There we have a rigid, coercive Church held fast in the ban of the Wittenberg doctrine, whereas here, in the days of the early development of Lutheranism, we find an exuberant wealth of individual freedom which scoffs even at the possibility of any ecclesiastical order.

Only a dreamer and hot-head like Luther could have seen in such an individualism, where each one is teacher and priest, anything else than chaos.

Luther’s Later Attitude Towards the Idea of the Church. Objections

But, in such a system, what place was there left for anything more than a phantom Church? Obviously the Church had to withdraw into the region of the invisible. For her again to become visible and assume the shape to be considered below, seems almost a paradox.

In view of the elasticity and vagueness of Luther’s teaching on the Church it is not surprising that his followers, to this very day, are divided as to whether, in point of fact, Luther wanted a “Church” or not.

Frequently we find in Catholic works on dogma extracts from Luther’s writings dating from 1519 and 1520, which, it is alleged, show his positive conviction at that time that a Church—i.e. one in the olden Catholic sense—was to be recognised. But this is a mistake. The documents containing such utterances were of a diplomatic character, and we have no right to build upon them. They do not in any way invalidate what has been said above.

If it was a difficult matter to give an account of Luther’s invisible Church, owing to the changes which took place in his own views, even more difficult is the task of tracing the further growth of his teaching. His invisible Church becomes more and more clearly a visible Church; yet all the while it protests, that, in its nature, it is invisible.

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4. The Church becomes visible. Its organisation

What was Luther’s view of the Church’s character when the time came to set up new congregations within the circle of the “Evangel”?

Theologically the question is answered in the authentic publicly accepted explanations he gave of his doctrine on the Church. Of these the oldest is comprised in the Schwabach Articles of 1529,[1156] where we read in Article XII:

There is “no doubt that there is and ever will be on earth a holy Christian Church until the end of the world, as Christ says in Matt, xxviii. 20.… This Church is nothing else than the believers in Christ, who hold, believe and teach the above-mentioned articles and provisions [of the Schwabach Confession], and who, on this account, are persecuted and tormented in the world. For where the Gospel is preached and the sacraments rightly used, there is the holy Christian Church, bound by no laws and outward pomp to place or time, persons or ceremonies.”—“Thus did the Evangelical idea of the Church,” so we read in Köstlin-Kawerau, “find expression once and for all in the fundamental confessions of Protestantism, faith in Christ being identified with faith in the said ‘articles and provisions.’”[1157]

When the above was penned, indeed, even when Melanchthon wrote the “Confessio Augustana,” the new Church, though theoretically invisible, had long since received an established outward form. Yet its invisibility is emphasised in the Schwabach Articles which reject such outward laws as are inconsistent with the Church’s character; the Confession and Apologia also refer to the (ghostly) union of hearts in the faith, and to the assembly of the (unknown) saints.

Nevertheless the visibility, so strongly insisted on in the Schmalkalden Articles, was practically indispensable, and was also a logical result of the whole work undertaken by Luther.

First of all it was called for by the very nature of this “ministry” of those who were to preach and to dispense the sacraments in the name of the congregation; according to Luther’s teaching, the dispensing of the sacraments went hand in hand with preaching, the sacraments being efficacious only through the faith of the recipient, and the dispenser’s duty being confined to making the recipient more worthy of the inpouring of grace through the word of faith which accompanies the visible sign of the sacrament. The ministerial “office” was not conferred by a sacrament as was the case in the priestly ordination of the olden Church, but, as Luther teaches, “ordination, if understood aright, is no more than being called or ‘ordered’ to the office of parson or preacher.” Among the Papists “Baptism and Christ had been weakened and darkened” by the ordinations. “We are born priests and as such we want to be known.” “By[311] Holy Baptism we have become the true priests of Christendom as St. Peter says: ‘You are a royal priesthood.’”[1163] Ministers (i.e. servants) of the Word was the proper title for those who performed all their functions in the name of the common priesthood of the whole people.

As soon, however, as it became a question of appointing preachers a visible Church at once appeared on the scene, though one without either Pope or hierarchy.

It may be recalled that Luther’s plan was originally to leave it to each congregation to appoint a preacher either from its own body or an outsider, who was then to act in their name and with their authority. There seemed no better way of securing control over the preacher’s doctrine. As for the ecclesiastical penalties, Luther, even in his “Deudsche Messe,” left their use to the congregation as a whole.[1164] At a later date he still clung to the idea of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the congregation. Even to absolve from sin belonged, in his opinion,—and to this he adhered to the end,—to all believers, and such absolution was as valid as had it been pronounced by God Himself (always assuming that faith had already been awakened in the penitent).[1165] On the authority of the congregation was to rest, not only the lower ministry, but also the quasi-episcopate. The scheme he sketched in 1523 in the Latin work he addressed to the Bohemians, “De instituendis ministris ecclesiæ,” has already been described.[1166]

The many abuses which arose, and indeed were bound to arise, from the independence of the congregations soon compelled him to cast about for a more reliable framework. The phantom of a community of believers united in spirit, of a “brotherhood” minus any social or constitutional cohesion and devoid of any vigorous direction, proved incapable of realisation.

Help was to be looked for only from the State.

By clinging to its solid structure the religious innovations would have a chance of avoiding the conventicle system and the danger of its congregations falling asunder. The[312] tendency to drift towards the State was also promoted by the opposition of the fanatical Anabaptists, for this sect was a menace to order in the congregations owing to its excesses and also to the pertinacity with which, following out Luther’s own teaching, it insisted on individualism and repudiated the “office” of the ministry. Not only did Luther, after the rise of the Anabaptists, emphasise the outward rather than the inward Word, but, for the same reason, he also laid much greater stress than formerly on the “office” and on the external representation of the Church’s members—invisibly united by the faith—by duly called officials.

Thus, the Church, whose invisibility and spirituality Luther had been so fond of emphasising, became, in course of time, more and more a visible and concrete body, though remaining closely bound up with the State. Yet, even in Luther’s earlier views on the Church, certain indications pointed to the visible Church yet to come; indeed the ideas he retained from Catholic days were to prove stronger than he then anticipated.

Of a statement contained in “De servo arbitrio” (1525), a book written after the rise of the Anabaptist subjectivism, Möhler justly remarks: “This passage views the clergy as the representatives of the Church which is thus quite visible; professing the faith of the invisible Church and expressing its mind, this Church has a definite doctrinal standpoint which she advocates through her clergy, and, which, as the dictum of the Saints, she regards as true and infallible. Hence the visible Church appears as the expression and facsimile of the invisible Church.”[1167]

Already in his books against Alveld and Catharinus Luther was at pains to insist that the Church which he taught was a real community living on earth in the flesh, though not tied down to any definite place or persons.[1168] Wavering and confusion, here as elsewhere, characterise Luther’s teaching.

We can understand how his Catholic opponents, for instance Staphylus, make much of the change from the visible to the invisible Church. Staphylus dubs those who persisted in advocating her invisibility, the “Invisibiles,”[313] such being the followers of Flacius, Schwenckfeld and Osiander, and also the Anabaptists.[1169]

It is a fact that Melanchthon, particularly in his later years, insists on the Church as an institution and on her visible nature more than Luther does. The centuriators defined the Church as “cœtus visibilis” and, after Chemnitz’s day (†1586), the Church of the Lutheran theologians is something quite visible, and is spoken of as an institution for the preservation and promotion of pure doctrine and of the means of grace which work by faith.[1170]

Nor can the Wittenberg view of the Church be taken otherwise when we see how the theologians of that town in Luther’s own time proceeded in appointing ministers and controlling and supervising their office. The preachers and pastors, after their doctrine had been found consonant with that of Wittenberg,[1171] were “entrusted with the ministry” though it is not apparent whether the authorisation came from the congregations who applied for them, or from the theological examiners, or from the sovereign and his mixed consistory. The formulas used are by no means clear, save on one point, viz. that they expressly claim for the Wittenbergers the character of a true “Catholic Church,” or at least their harmony with such a Church.

The fact is, Wittenberg was anxious to stand at the head of the visible Church.

It was at Wittenberg that Luther, as the leader of the young Church, had first preached the truth of the Gospel urged thereto “by Divine command”; on the strength of such a command he was compelled to defend himself against the Elector’s lawyers who wanted to play havoc with “his Church.”[1174]

“By divine authority we have begun to ameliorate the world.”[1175]

Foes at home twitted him with setting up an “office of the Word” by which an end was made of all freedom; they[315] urged, that, at Wittenberg, people were trying to “breathe new life into despotism, to seat themselves in the chair and to exercise compulsion just as the Pope had done heretofore.”[1176] Luther proclaims loudly: “We, who preach the Evangel, have full powers to ordain; the Pope and the bishops can ordain no one.”[1177]—“You are a bishop,” said Luther once jokingly to a Superintendent, “just as I am Pope.”[1178] Beneath the jest there lay bitter earnest, for the authority of the “Wittenberg school” in Luther’s estimation stood high indeed; whoever “despises it, so long as the Church and school remain as they are, is a heretic and a bad man,” seeing that, in this school, God has “revealed His Word.”[1179]—Nevertheless, the Wittenberg theologians complained that this authority was not recognised, that the Church was a “spectacle of woe,” without “oneness either in doctrine or in worship”; “our princes and cities” ought to bring about unity. Moreover things are bound to grow worse, seeing that “each one wants to be his own Rabbi.”[1180] Outside Wittenberg, and even within the city walls, and that even in Luther’s time, the prediction of Duke George about the 72 sects of the Protestant Babel seemed about to be fulfilled.[1181]

Yet Luther, in setting up the Wittenberg Primacy, retained his former principles which were altogether at variance with unity and subordination. “Who holds the public office of preacher,” so he declared in 1531, is not “forbidden to judge of doctrine” (before this, as the reader may remember, every “miller’s maid” had been free to do this); but whoever has no such office may not do so, because he would be acting “of his own doctrine and spirit.”[1182]

Where is your office? Such was his question in 1525 to his opponent Carlstadt. The latter appealed to the call he had received from the congregation of Orlamünde. But of this Luther even then refuses to hear. He required from Carlstadt, in addition, the ratification of the sovereign, viz. of the Saxon Elector.

Even in those days he was most anxious to see Church discipline established and excommunication resorted to,[316] even though this involved making the Church something visible; the disruption and confusion everywhere rampant cried aloud for regulations, laws and penalties.[1183] “Such punishment and discipline through the Ban,” so he says, “is utterly odious to the world and causes the faithful ministers much work and danger; for vice has already grown into a habit; it is no longer a sin; the ungodly have power, riches and position on their side. The greater the rascal the better his luck.”[1184] Yet, according to him it was impossible for the Church to make laws, otherwise we would again be putting up “snares for consciences” as in Popery.[1185] Laws must be made only by the sovereigns—whatever discipline was enforced against the unruly was enforced by the secular authorities. “The most the parsons did for discipline was in following out the Electoral instructions to the Visitors and denouncing offenders to the secular officials and judges.”[1186] Of the “blasphemers,” viz. those who were obstinate or opposed the New Evangel, Luther wrote in 1529 to Thomas Löscher, parson of Milau: “They must be forced to attend the preaching,” needless to say by temporal penalties; in this way they will be taught the obedience they owe as citizens and also their duty to the State, “whether they believe in the Evangel or not.… If they wish to live among the people, then they must learn the laws of the people, even though unwillingly.”[1187] Hence here and in other instructions it is no longer a question of the Church but only of the sovereigns; these, so he urged, were to be backed by the preachers. He praised the Bohemian Brethren and the Swiss for having better discipline in their Churches, he also admitted that the action of the authorities would not of itself alone be sufficient to correct grave moral disorders.[1188]

“Unless the Court gives its support to our regulations,” Melanchthon once said, the result will be mere “platonic laws.”[1189]

References such as these to the State, which was now seen to be necessary for the support of the Church when once[317] it had become a visible body,[1190] are to be met with repeatedly by anyone who follows the history of Lutheranism in its beginnings, more particularly in the years 1525-1528. It was during this period that the union of the new Church with the State, which has been described above, was accomplished. The sovereign arrogated to himself those powers which gradually made him the supreme head of the Church and permanent “emergency-bishop.”[1191] The visibility of the Church, or rather Churches—as all claim to catholicity was abandoned save in the credal formularies—rested on the enactments of the rulers, who, not without Luther’s connivance, soon introduced the compulsory element into religion. To make use of the invisible power of the Gospel and to give advice to consciences as to moral conduct, was indeed left to the ministers of the Word. But it was the State that had to establish “the right form of worship and the right ecclesiastical organisation.”[1192]

All heretical communities from the commencement of the Church had looked to the State for help. But no heresiarch ever put himself so completely in the hands of the State in all outward matters as Luther and his fellows did where princes of their own party were concerned. “The common Christian Church” was, according to him, to retain for herself only the true faith and the sacraments which worked by faith.

When, in the State Church thus called into being, the authorities proceeded too vigorously against the preachers and treated Luther without due consideration, the latter had himself a taste of the state of servitude into which he had brought the Church. Döllinger says truly that this[318] restriction must have been “doubly irksome to a man who had known the old episcopal, ecclesiastical rule and who now had to admit to himself that it was he who had brought about the destruction of a system which, in spite of all its defects, had dealt with Church matters in an ecclesiastical spirit, and that it was he who had paved the way for the new and quite unecclesiastical order of things.”[1193]

Not seldom do we hear Luther reproaching himself bitterly for the changes.

Among the thoughts that chiefly disturbed his conscience was, as he himself repeatedly admits, that of having rent asunder the great Church. How can you justify your revolt against the one great Church of antiquity, the heir to the promises, so the inner voices said to him as he himself relates: “The words ‘sancta ecclesia’ affright a man. They rise up and say: ‘Preach and act as you like and can, the ‘ecclesia christiana’ is still here. Here is the bark of Peter, it may be tossed about on the waves, but perish it will not!…’ What was I to do? And how was I to comfort myself?… And yet I had to do it [i.e. preach against this Church] as here [John viii. 28] the Lord Christ also does and preaches against those who in name are God’s Kingdom and God’s priesthood.”[1194]

Elsewhere he admits: “What am I doing in preaching against such [representatives of the olden Church], like a pupil against his masters? Thoughts such as these storm in upon me: Now I see that I am in the wrong; oh, that I had never begun, never preached a single word! For who is allowed to set himself up against the Church?… It is hard to persist and to preach against such a Ban.”[1195]—And yet, in his defiant spirit, he does persist: “This hits one smartly in the face, as has often happened to me … yet the One Man, my Beloved Lord and Healer Jesus Christ, is more to me than all the holiest people on earth.” Since he thinks it is His Evangel he is defending, he is able, though only at great costs, “to rise above the cry of ‘Church, Church,’” though he has to admit that, “this troubles me greatly,” and “it is truly a hard thing … to leave the Church herself and not to believe or trust her doctrine any more.”[1196]

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It was no real parallel when Luther, in order to justify the State Church, appealed to the conditions in the Middle Ages where the rulers had a share in Church matters,[1197] for if then the princes had intervened in Church matters their action, at least in principle, was always subordinate to the ecclesiastical authority which kept the power in its own hands, and concerned moreover only those outward things in which the Church was thankful for their assistance: The two co-ordinate powers, the secular and the spiritual, helped one another mutually—such at least was the ideal of world-government in those days,—acting in Christian agreement in the service of God and for the general welfare of mankind. Now, however, that the olden spiritual authority had been either completely paralysed or reduced to the shadow of its former self, Luther undertook to replace it by the State, and thus the Church ceased to be any longer a co-ordinate power.

Though the Wittenberg theologians insisted that to them belonged the care of souls and this alone, still the limits between this domain and that of the State became everywhere confused when once the new system had begun to work. Owing to the friction this caused, Luther, in the course of time, came to emphasise merely the duty of the authorities to arrange by law for the establishment of “schools and pulpits,” and to “allow us divergency in preaching or morals.”[1198] Otherwise he left those in power, the high-handed nobles and officials, to do as they pleased, or, else, he lashed them ineffectually with violent and abusive language. In 1586 he declared, speaking of the marriage questions: “The peasants and the rude people who seek nothing but the freedom of the flesh, and likewise the lawyers who are always bent on thwarting our decisions, have wearied me so greatly that I have thrown aside the marriage cases and written to some that they may do as they please in the name of all the devils; let the dead bury their dead.”[1199] It was chiefly in the matter of these matrimonial cases that he came into conflict with the Court[320] lawyers, e.g. as to the validity of the secret marriage contracts. It was in this connection that he declared that, “in his Church,” which was God’s own institution, he would retain in his own hands the decision on such matters by virtue of his ecclesiastical office. In other strong remonstrances wrung from him by the arbitrary interference of the State officials and the nobles in Church matters, he sometimes spoke so strongly of the inalienable rights of the Church that one might well think that he regarded the Church as essentially an independent institution with an organisation and spiritual authority of its own.[1200] More usually, however, he simply sighs. When the Court of Dresden interfered with his plans for the improvement of Church discipline he wrote resignedly: “Satan is still Satan. Under the Pope he pushed the Church into the world’s sphere and now, in our day, he seeks to bring the State system into the Church.”[1201]

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Without reverting to the subject of the State and Established Church already dealt with (vol. v., 568 ff.) we may refer to the close connection between Luther’s theology on the Church and the development which was its outcome. His theology, from the outset, had aimed at undermining the authority of the Church, while at the same time enlarging the sphere of the secular power.

The relations between State and Church in Lutheranism may be regarded as an indirect justification of the Catholic doctrine of the Church’s nature. According to the Catholic view Christ founded the sublime structure of the Church as a free spiritual society. He willed that the saving grace he had won by His Death should be applied to the souls of men by means of a visible and independent institution, which, inspired by Him with His own ideal[323] and holy aims and equipped with her own peculiar rights, should work for the salvation of mankind until the end of the world. Hence, the advocates of the olden Church not only set the idea of the Church in the foreground of the struggle, but they also explored, enlarged on and illumined this idea with the help of Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers. Such was the work of men like Eck, Cochlæus, Johann Fabri, Bishop of Vienna, and Catharinus, and, in the same century, of Melchior Canus, Peter Canisius, Bellarmine and Stapleton. They indeed allowed the inward side of the Church—its soul as it has been called—to come into its rights, but, at the same time, they maintained with equal firmness its thoroughly visible character, above all they insisted on the hierarchy with the successor of St. Peter at its head as the holder of the threefold spiritual power—which Luther denied—of shepherd, teacher and priest. On this point there could be no yielding.

To those adherents of Luther’s who fancied they could reach union without the Church’s help and without an entire acceptance of the Catholic doctrine, Eck addressed the following: “There is no middle course and words are of no avail; whoever wishes to make himself one in faith with the Catholic Church must submit to the Pope and the Councils and believe what the Roman Church teaches; all else is wind and vapour, though one should go on disputing for a hundred years.”[1213]

What the above Catholic polemics said may be summed up as follows:—

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Lutheranism, however, took scant notice of these Biblical and historical proofs.[1214] Its founder, at the end of his life, left it as his legacy a church, or rather churches, of a different structure. In the evening of his days, in spite of the hopeless and imperilled state of his congregations, he refused to admit any gleam of light that might have brought him back to the unwavering authority of the ancient Church which once, in the days of his crisis, he had extolled. By heavenly signs and wonders, so he had pointed out in his Commentary on Romans (1516), this Church was introduced into the world; she is the mother of those who teach; to her decision every doctrine must bow if it is not to become a heresy, “robbed of the witness of God and of that divinely authenticated authority” which “down to the present day supports the Roman Church.”[1215]

Since he had descended into the arena of controversy his attitude towards the dogma of the Church had become not so much a matter of doctrine (for the essential question was, as Köstlin aptly remarks, “very insufficiently grasped and explained by him”[1216]) as one of policy.

5. Luther’s Tactics in Questions concerning the Church

Both for Luther’s views on doctrine and for his psychology his tactics in his controversy about the nature of the Church offer matter for consideration.

Controversy, as we know, tended to accentuate his peculiarities. His talents, his gift of swift perception, his skill for vivid description, his art of exploiting every advantage to the delight of the masses were all of value to him. What he wrote when not under the stress of controversy lacked these advantages, advantages, moreover, which, for the most part, were merely superficial, and sometimes, when he was in the wrong, display a very unpleasing side.

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The Erfurt Preachers in a Tight Place

In 1536 Luther took a hand in a controversy which had arisen at Erfurt as to whether the “true Church was there,” and whether his preachers, who represented the Church and were being persecuted by some of the Town Council, should leave the town.[1217]

Controversies with the Catholics on the Question of the Church

In what Luther wrote against the Catholics we occasionally meet some fine sayings on the unfettered authority of the Church in its relations to the secular rulers,[1225] so greatly was his versatile mind governed by the spirit of opportunism.

In his controversies with the Catholics he often enough found himself faced by the objection, that the true Church could not be with him, because on his side all the fruits of holiness were wanting; the Church being essentially holy should needs be able to point to her good influence on morals.

It was not, however, bold presumption and lack of humility that led Luther’s literary opponents among the Catholics to appeal to the promises Christ had made to His Church; rather it was their conviction that these solemn assurances excluded the possibility of the Church’s having ever erred in the way Luther maintained that she had done.

The Indefectibility of the Church and Her Thousand-Year-Long Error

When the question arose, how the Church, in spite of Christ’s protection, could nevertheless have fallen into such monstrous errors,[1249] Luther was disposed to admit in his polemics that the true Church, i.e. the community of real believers, could not go astray. “The Church cannot teach lies and errors, not even in details.… How could it then be otherwise when God’s mouth is the mouth of the Church. As God cannot lie neither therefore can the Church.”[1250]

Such an immutable and reliable guide to erring men for their perfect peace of mind and sure salvation, the Catholics retorted, did Christ intend to leave in His visible Church, ruled by the successors of St. Peter.

Yet, in spite of the above concessions, the Mediæval Church remains in his eyes a “place of abominations”;[336] her members, though validly baptised, are not members of the Church; they might indeed sit in the Church, but only as Antichrist sits in the Temple of God (2 Thess. ii. 4); her children would be saved if they died before coming to a full knowledge of the Popish Church, but if they grew up and followed her lying preaching then they would become devil’s whores;[1259] even as I myself “was stuck fast in the behind of the devil’s whore, i.e. of the Pope’s new Churches, so that it is a grief to us to have spent so much time and pains in that shameful hole. But praise and thanks be to God Who has delivered us from the Scarlet Woman!”[1260]

So low is his esteem for the authority of the tradition of the “Holy Place of abominations,” that he includes among the doubtful and fallible statements of that Doctor of the Church the famous saying of St. Augustine, that he would not believe the Gospel were it not for the Church.[1261] He urges that Augustine himself had declared, that his doctrines were to be examined, and only those to be accepted which were found correct. He prefers to harp on another passage where St. Augustine says: “The Church is begotten, fed, brought up and strengthened by the Word of God,”[1262] as though St. Augustine in speaking thus of the soul of the Church was denying her external organisation, her spiritual supremacy, and her teaching office. Luther, however, treated tradition just as he pleased; theologians had always distinguished between those traditions of the olden Doctors that had been guaranteed by the Church and those views which were merely personal to them; the latter no theologian regarded as binding, whereas the former were accepted by them with the respect befitting the witnesses. Here, once more, we see Luther’s subjective principle at work, which excludes all authoritative doctrine that comes to man from without, leaves him exposed to doubt and negation, and quite overlooks the fact that all revelation in last resort comes to the individual from without with an irresistible and authoritative claim to respect. Just as the Divine revelation vindicates its claim to acceptance by the[337] faithful by means of proofs, so too, the teaching authority of the Church—as Luther’s Catholic opponents were not slow to point out—could show proofs that what was presented to the faithful as an article of belief might reasonably be accepted without any need of previously testing it to see whether it agreed with Holy Scripture—an examination, which, as a matter of fact, most people were not capable of undertaking.

As the polemic we quoted above argues, Protestants held Holy Scripture to be so clear that everyone could understand it without outside help. “But, if the heretics think Scripture to be so plain and clear, why do they write so many books in order to explain it? If Scripture is so clear, plain and easy to understand how is it that they are so much at variance concerning that one text: ‘This is My Body?’”[1263]

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Luther now fell back on the Holy Spirit. “Without the Holy Ghost,” he says, “it is impossible to discern the abominations from the Holy Place.” But, so he was justly asked, who is to vouch for it that a man has truly the Holy Spirit? And, if, as Luther opines, the Holy Ghost points to the fruits as the means whereby He may be recognised, everything again depends on the fruits being judged according to Luther’s own moral standard. In short, in these controversies, Luther revolves in a vicious circle.

Luther’s Tactics in the Interpretation of the Bible

The text just quoted leads us to glance at his Biblical arguments; to conclude this chapter we shall therefore give as a sample of his exegesis on the Church a more detailed account of his exposition of the chief argument for the papal primacy, viz. Christ’s promise to Peter, using for this purpose his last book against Popery.[1265]

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CHAPTER XXXIX
END OF LUTHER’S LIFE

1. The Flight from Wittenberg

“Old age is here,” so wrote Luther in a fit of depression to his Elector on March 30, 1544, in his sixty-first year; “old age which in itself is cold and ungainly, weak and sickly. The pitcher goes to the well until one fine day it breaks; I have lived long enough, may God grant me a happy deathbed.… Methinks, too, I have already seen the best I am like to see on earth, for it looks as though evil days were coming. May God help His own! Amen.” He recommends his sovereign to seek comfort in the “Dear Word of God” and in prayer, assuring him: “These two unspeakable treasures shall never be the portion of the devil, the Turk, or of the Pope and his followers.”[1272]

About this time he had to complain of palpitations, dizziness and calculus. His will he had already drawn up on Jan. 6, 1542.[1273] In it he refused to make use of the usual legal forms, being determined to have nothing to do with the lawyers, with whom he was always at variance. He was quite aware that lawyers still insisted on the objections to the validity of the marriages of clerics and monks and the rights of inheritance of their children, as they indeed were bound to do not only by Canon Law but also by the law of the Empire.

How cheerfully he was inclined to look forward to death even the year before is apparent from a letter to Myconius, “the bishop of the Churches of Gotha and Thuringia,” who was then lying seriously ill; here he says: “I pray our Lord Jesus not to call to everlasting rest you and our followers and leave me here among the devils to be still longer tormented by them. Truly I have been long enough[342] plagued by them and really I deserve that my turn should come before yours. Hence my prayer is: May the Lord lay your illness upon me and rid me of my earthly habitation which is so useless, worn-out and exhausted. I see right well that I am no longer good for anything.”[1274]

After his above farewell-letter to the Elector Luther’s thoughts reverted to death more frequently than before. He cast up the books he had still to write and took stock of his powers to see whether he would have time to finish them. For his energy and spirit of enterprise were by no means yet dead, though at times they seem to be paralysed. Often enough he pulls himself together in his letters sufficiently to make jokes with his friends, the better both to banish his own gloomy thoughts and to inspire the addressees with greater courage and confidence. Nevertheless, through it all, we can detect his disquiet and suffering.

Luther’s extant letters covering the period from May to December, 1545, afford us an insight into the emotions through which he passed.

From the month of May onwards he sank deeper and deeper into a dreary state of annoyance and sadness, and, at last, at the end of July, he shook the dust of Wittenberg from his feet. In the latter half of August, after he had allowed himself to be persuaded to return, his spirits rapidly revived, and such was the reaction that his new mystical ardour knew no bounds while his exertions seem almost incredible.

When his physical sufferings diminished there came to his mind the recollection of how, more than a year before, early in 1544, he had determined to leave Wittenberg, of which he had sickened, in order to seek a more peaceful life elsewhere. It was only the extraordinary exertions of his friends that had then succeeded in keeping him back. Bugenhagen and the other preachers, the University and the magistrates, had besought him with tears and entreaties. On that occasion he was “incensed,” so Cruciger, his friend and pupil, says, “at some trivial matter, or rather he was full of suspicion about us all, as I believe.”[1301] Already in 1530, and again in 1539, he had declared that, owing to the annoyance given him, he would never again mount the pulpit at Wittenberg.[1302] Now, however, his chagrin was even deeper and he resolved to carry out his plan prudently and quit the town for ever.

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Without acquainting even Catherine Bora of the length of his absence from the town he left Wittenberg at the end of July accompanied by his son Hans, his guest Ferdinand von Maupis, travelling with Cruciger, who was to decide a quarrel between Medler and Mohr, the two Naumburg preachers at Zeitz, on July 27. Luther also repaired to Zeitz and took part in the negotiations, but instead of returning with Cruciger to Wittenberg, he wrote a letter to Katey from Zeitz on the 28th,[1303] stating that he had no intention of returning to Wittenberg. “My heart has grown cold so that I no longer like being there; I advise you to sell the garden and courtyard, the house and stabling; then I would make over the big house [the old monastery in which Luther used to live] to my gracious Lord, and it would be best for you to settle down at Zulsdorf [i.e. on her own little property] while I am yet alive.”[1304] He hoped, he goes on, that the Elector would continue to pay him his stipend as professor, “at least during the last year of his life.”

From the letter it is plain that it was annoyance at the decline of morals in the town rather than any strained relations with his friends at Wittenberg that drove him to this sudden decision. “Let us begone out of this Sodom!” he writes and hints that, in addition to the disorders with which he was already acquainted fresh scandals had reached his ears on this journey; the “government,” i.e. the authorities, aroused his deepest indignation. “There is no one to punish or restrain, and besides this the Word of God is derided”; maybe the town “will catch the Beelzebub-dance, now that they have begun to uncover the women and girls [an allusion to the low-cut dresses] in front and behind.” “So I will wander about and rather eat the bread of charity than allow my last days to be tortured and upset by the disorderly life at Wittenberg and see all my hard[347] work brought to nought. You may tell Dr. Pommer and Master Philip of this if you please,” he concludes, “and see whether Dr. Pommer will bid farewell to Wittenberg for me, for I can no longer contain my anger and annoyance.”

The Wittenberg notabilities were filled with consternation on hearing of what Luther had done; they could not regard it as a mere passing whim, for they knew Luther’s determination. The University made representations in writing to the Elector, begging him to intervene to prevent such a misfortune; the foes of the Evangel would rejoice at the departure of the great teacher, other professors would leave, and the result would be new dissensions.[1305] As we know, Melanchthon, by his own account, was ready “to slink away.” Luther, so the University stated, like a new Elias, was the chariot and horseman of Israel and quite indispensable; if he wished any changes made and order established this would be done even should he find “fault with the teaching of some.” The University also sent Bugenhagen and Melanchthon to talk the matter over with Luther; the town despatched its burgomaster and the Elector sent him his own medical attendant, Ratzeberger, with a friendly letter.[1306]

In the meantime Luther had left Zeitz and gone on to Merseburg, whither he had been invited by George of Anhalt, formerly canon of the chapter there. The latter had gone over to Protestantism, and, when the bishopric was sequestrated in 1541 by a secular prince—August, the brother of Duke Maurice of Saxony—was appointed “spiritual administrator” of the see. He now wanted to be formally “consecrated” by Luther as bishop of Merseburg. To this the latter readily agreed. On Aug. 2, with the assistance of Jonas, Pfeffinger and others he reiterated the ceremonial which he had once before performed on Amsdorf at Naumburg (above, vol. v., p. 194).

The festivities at Merseburg, the kindness and hospitality of which he was the recipient at Lobnitz and Leipzig, and, lastly, the change of air and surroundings brought Luther to a much better frame of mind.

The messengers from Wittenberg found him at Merseburg. After they had seen him and listened to his stern admonitions,[348] they were delighted to receive his assurance that, after all, he would return to Wittenberg. His resolve had, in fact, been merely the result of strong excitement. Now, moreover, not only had the depression ceased of which he had so long been the victim but a notable change of mood had supervened and his confidence and courage had been restored. Such sudden changes are not without their parallel in Luther’s earlier life, as has been sufficiently shown above.

He now returned in a better temper to Leipzig, where he preached a vigorous sermon on Aug. 12, and was there entertained by Camerarius, Melanchthon’s confidant; he also “associated with his circle of friends in the best of humours.”[1307]

After his return to Wittenberg on the 16th we hear no more of his vexation, though he did not put much faith in the disciplinary measures that had been drawn up for the town, notwithstanding that they were backed by the Elector; the Court itself, so he wrote, read nothing and only scoffed at everything.[1308]

---

He now threw himself once more into the struggle with his theological foes. A glance at these labours and at his lectures shows him working at high pressure, while, as his letters show, he retained his sense of humour.

Impelled by the ardent desire to do something for the furtherance of peace within his camp, in spite of his bodily weakness and his distaste for worldly business, he undertook at the request of Count Albert of Mansfeld to act as arbiter in the dispute between the latter and his brother and nephew concerning the royalties from the mines and certain other legal claims.

“My time is entirely taken up,” so he says, “with affairs which do not in the least interest me; I must serve the belly and the table.”[1324] Already at the beginning of October these matters had induced him, with Melanchthon and Jonas, to proceed to Mansfeld. As soon as his course of lectures was finished, viz. at Christmas, he again repaired thither, in spite[351] of the severity of the weather, again accompanied by Melanchthon, who was inclined to grumble at being called upon to listen to the squabbles of quarrelsome people. Luther, however, as he wrote to Count Albert, wished to see the “beloved lords of his native land reconciled and on good terms” before “laying himself to rest in his coffin.”[1325] He returned to Wittenberg shortly after Christmas, owing to Melanchthon’s falling ill.

These two journeys to Mansfeld, afterwards to be followed by a third and last, have, by controversialists, wrongly been made out to have been due to Luther’s desire to escape from Wittenberg on account of his bitter experiences there.

2. Last Troubles and Cares

Theological Disruption

“The sad controversies of the last few years had made Luther recognise that a race of theological fighting-cocks, gamesters and idle rioters had arisen, and that dissensions of the worst sort might be anticipated in the future. The nation in which each one obstinately followed his own way was beyond help.… The Swiss refused to have anything to do with the German Reformation; the Bucerites held themselves aloof from both Lutherans and Swiss, the Brandenburgers wanted to belong neither to the Church of Rome nor to that of Wittenberg; at Wittenberg itself the Martinians and the Philippists (so-called after Luther and Melanchthon) were hostile to each other, and finally the Princes and magistrates all went their own way. ‘Things will fare badly when I am dead,’ such was Luther’s repeated prediction. Whether he looked at this Prince of the Church, at that Landgrave, or that other Duke Maurice, there was not one in whom he could entirely trust. More than one Mene Tekel was written on the wall, yet none perceived it save the old man at Wittenberg at whom they all shrugged their shoulders.”[1326]

Such is the description by Luther’s latest Protestant biographer of the “sad decline of the Evangelical party.”

The Zwinglians had received a severe blow from Luther in his “Kurtz Bekentnis” of Sep., 1544;[1327] but the Swiss,[352] who were hardy and independent fellows, soon prepared a furious counter-reply.[1328] The “old man at Wittenberg” was not deceived as to the profound and irremediable breach, yet he succeeded, at least outwardly, in driving away his annoyance and cares by the use of ridicule. Early in 1546, to one of his confidants who had bewailed the new step taken by the Swiss, he wrote the following, which forms his last utterance against the Zwinglians: “If they condemn me, it is a joy to me. For by my writing I wished to do nothing else than force them to declare themselves my open foes. I have succeeded in this, hence so much the better. To adapt the words of the Psalmist: ‘Blessed is the man who hath not sat in the council of the Sacramentarians, nor stood in the way of the Zwinglians, nor sat in the chair of the men of Zürich.’”[1329] To another intimate, Amsdorf, the “Bishop” of Naumburg, who was allowed a deeper insight into his soul than others, Luther confided that one of the principal reasons of his hatred of his competitors in Switzerland and South-West Germany was that “they are proud, fanatical men, and also idlers. At the beginning of our enterprise, when I was fighting all alone in fear and dread against the fury of the Pope, they were bravely silent and waited to see how things would go. Later on they suddenly posed as victors, and as though, forsooth, they alone had done it all. So it ever is: one does the work and another seeks to enjoy his labour. Now they even go so far as to attack me, who won their freedom for them.… But they will find their judge. If I answer them at all it will be nothing more than a brief recapitulation of the sentence of condemnation irrevocably passed upon them.”[1330]—No such answer was, however, to be forthcoming.

Against Melanchthon Luther’s ardent followers, the Martinians, were, as we know, highly incensed for attempting to modify the doctrines of the Master. Melanchthon’s sufferings on this account have already been described (vol. v., p. 252 ff.). With a grudging silence Luther bore[353] with his friend’s Zwinglian leanings on the doctrine of the Supper, and with their other differences.

Both, moreover, were surrounded by an atmosphere of theological bickerings, “where individuals, who, had it not been for these squabbles, would never have achieved notoriety, gave themselves great airs.”[1331]

We may recall how Melanchthon had even thought of leaving Saxony, where, as he wrote to Camerarius, he was bound down by undignified fetters; such was his weakness, however, that he could not bring himself to do even this. Luther’s coarseness, lack of consideration and dictatorial bearing it was that led Melanchthon to say that he who ruled at Wittenberg was not a Pericles, but a new Cleon and an unsufferable tyrant.[1332]

On the question of the veneration of the Sacrament differences at last sprung up even between Bugenhagen and Luther; the former, usually his pliant instrument, took upon himself during Luther’s absence to abolish at Wittenberg the elevation of the elements during the celebration. Apparently this was in the second half of Jan., 1542. Luther expressed his disapproval of this action and declared he would revive the rite.[1333] In 1544, when the three Princes of Anhalt were at Wittenberg and asked him whether it would be right to abolish the Elevation, he replied: “On no account; such abrogation detracts from the dignity of the Sacrament.” There is no doubt that it was his antagonism to the Zwinglians that was here the determining factor; moreover, as he admitted Christ to be present in the Sacrament during reception in the wider sense, i.e. during the liturgical action, he had no theological grounds for doing away with the elevation and adoration of the elements. In his own justification he went so far as to say: “Christ is in the bread, why then should He not be treated with the greatest respect and also be adored?”[1334]

[354]

The Lutheran preacher Wolferinus of Eisleben was in the habit of pouring back into the barrel what remained of the consecrated Wine after communion. Luther called him sharply to account, as he found that his conduct was tainted with Zwinglianism; in order to evade the difficulty he ordered that, in future, preachers and communicants should see that nothing was left over after communion.[1335]

Luther, towards the end of his life, had to taste a good deal of that “theological ire” of which Melanchthon frequently speaks, and not only from the Swiss. We need only call to mind Johann Agricola, and his “antinomian sow-theology,” as Melanchthon termed it. His inferences from Luther’s doctrine of the inability of man to fulfil the Law he never really withdrew even when he had betaken himself to Brandenburg. In the Table-Talk dating from the latest period and published by Kroker, Luther’s frequent bitter references to Agricola show the speaker was well aware that his Berlin opponent still hated and distrusted him as much as ever. After Luther’s death it became evident that Agricola “was capable of everything,” and that Luther was not so far wrong, when, on another occasion, he declared that he was not a man to be taken seriously.[1336] Agricola finally died, loaded with worldly honours, in 1566.

A more serious critic of Luther, at any rate on the question of the Sacrament, was Martin Bucer. The latter’s friendship with the Swiss and the too independent spirit in which he planned the reformation of Cologne, caused Luther great anxiety towards the end of his life. In his plan Luther, so he says, was unable to find any clear confession of faith in the Sacrament, but merely “much idle talk of its profit, fruit and dignity,” all carefully “wrapped up that no one might know what he really thought of it, just as is the way with the fanatics.” In all this talk he could “readily discern the chatterbox Bucer.”[1337] Bucer, on his side, was dissatisfied[355] with the progress of Luther’s work in Germany. Owing to the Interim he was no longer able to remain at Strasburg and accordingly accepted a post at the English University of Cambridge and died in England in 1551.

The Controversy on Clandestine Marriages

It was, however, annoyances and disagreements of a different sort that kept Luther to the end of his days in a state of extreme indignation against the lawyers and politicians of the Court.

In order to understand the victory over the lawyers of which he speaks it will be necessary to cast a glance back on the whole struggle.

As we have already pointed out in the words of a Protestant biographer of Luther the legal status of Lutheranism threatened to give rise to dire complications, while any downright abrogation of Canon Law, such as Luther wished for, was out of the question.[1340] The sober view of the situation taken by the lawyers did not deserve Luther’s offensive treatment. Moreover, under the leadership of Schurf, the lay professors of jurisprudence at the Wittenberg University had many objections to raise against Luther’s demands. They not only upheld clandestine marriages as valid, but, at the same time, defended the indissolubility of marriage, even in the case of adultery, in accordance with the laws of the olden Church; they also held that second marriages were not lawful to the clergy. Schurf likewise wanted the “Evangelical bishops” to be consecrated by papal bishops. A further cause of constant friction lay in the fact that the professors of law were obliged to base their lectures on the books of Canon Law in the absence of any others; whence it came that Luther had to listen to many disagreeable references to the questions of Church property, of the right of inheriting of the children of former monks, of the marriage of nuns, of the legal status of the monasteries, etc. Schurf was otherwise a good Lutheran and had assisted Luther with advice at the Diet of Worms. Melchior Kling, his pupil and colleague at Wittenberg, agreed with him in following the Canon Law on the question of clandestine marriages, according to which (before the Council of Trent had required for the validity of marriage, that it should be performed publicly in the presence of the parish-priest), they were[357] regarded as valid, albeit wrong and forbidden, so that no new marriage could be entered into so long as the parties lived.

Luther hoped, by opposing such marriages, to bring about some improvement in the sad state of morals which the Visitations of 1528 and 1529 had disclosed in the Saxon Electorate. The facility with which such marriages were contracted by the Wittenberg students, and the bad effect they had on the peace of the burghers seemed to him a real blot on the New Evangel. He insisted very strongly that the consent of the parents was required as a condition for marriage; without the parents’ consent the marriages were in his eyes neither public nor valid; it was only where the parents refused their consent on insufficient grounds that he would admit that the bride had any right to enter into a real marriage contract. The decision as to whether the parents’ objections held good was, however, one on which opinions were bound to differ.

Shortly after the Visitations referred to above, in 1529, he wrote his “Von Ehesachen,” published early in 1530; in it he declared: “A secret betrothal simply constitutes no marriage whatsoever,” whilst, as a secret betrothal (i.e. invalid marriage) he regards “any betrothal which takes place without the knowledge and consent of those in authority, and who have the right and power to settle the marriage, viz. the father, mother or whoever stands in their stead.”[1341]

In 1532 he also proclaimed his views against the lawyers from the pulpit without, however, being able to alter thereby either their practice or their teaching. He lamented in 1538 the blindness of Schurf, who paid more attention to man-made laws than to God’s Word and authority.[1342]

After some new disputes he delivered a sermon on Feb. 23, 1539, in which he threatened to put on his horns. In it he called his opponents blockheads; they ought “to reverence our doctrine as the Word of God, coming from the mouth of the Holy Ghost.”[1343] He was not going to worship the Pope’s ordure for the sake of the jurists; “let them let our Church be”; but “now the lawyers are seeking to corrupt our young students of theology with their Papal filth.”[1344]

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Schurf seems to have yielded so far as no longer to attempt to make his opinions public or official.

The greatest tussle, however, ensued on the establishment of the Consistories in 1539, as the lawyers who were entrusted with the matrimonial cases, treated the clandestine marriages as valid, and, in other ways, also took Schurf’s side.

Luther asserted that by countenancing the “espousals,” which were “an institution of the devil and the Pope,” the good name and the morals of Wittenberg were being undermined. “Many of the parents say that, when they send their boys to us to study, we hang wives round their necks and rob them of their children.” Not only the burghers and students but even the girls themselves “who have waxed bold” use their freedom most wantonly.[1345] In Jan., 1544, in the pulpit, he poured out his wrath in most unmeasured language, particularly on the second Sunday after the Epiphany; in his tragic delivery he said, for instance: “I, Martin Luther, preacher in this Church of Christ, take thee, secret promise and the paternal consent that follows, together with the Pope and the devil who instituted thee, I bind you all together and fling you into the abyss of hell, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.”[1346]

His anger and annoyance had been aroused by certain concrete cases.

One of Melanchthon’s sons had contracted such a marriage as he was denouncing. In his own family circle the same thing happened, probably in the case of his nephew, Fabian Kaufmann. A student, Caspar Beier, who was on intimate terms with Luther’s household, wished to marry at Wittenberg, but was prevented by the lawyers of the Consistory on account of a previous clandestine marriage which, however,[359] he denied; he appealed from the Consistory to the sovereign, and was supported by a letter from Luther. This quarrel kindled a conflagration at Luther’s home. Cruciger, a friend of the house, was against Beier and described his cause as “none of the best”; Catherine Bora, on the other hand, the “fax domestica” as Cruciger called her,[1347] seems to have fanned the flames of Luther’s wrath, in the interests of Beier who was a relative of hers.

To a friend Luther admitted in Jan. that he “was so indignant with the lawyers as he had never before been in all his life during all the struggle on behalf of the Evangel.”[1348]

When the controversy was at its height, viz. in Jan., 1544, the Elector arranged for an interview between Luther and the Consistory. Later, in Dec., those negotiations were followed by others, in which the members of the Wittenberg High Court took part; at last Luther’s obstinacy and violence won the day: All marriages without the knowledge or approval of the parents were to be invalid until the latter consented, or the Consistory had pronounced their opposition groundless. To the Elector, who from the first had agreed with Luther’s view, the latter then addressed the letter referred to above (p. 355) where, appealing to his “Divine mission” to preach the 4th commandment, he announces his final triumph over the lawyers and their edicts.

His triumph he owed to his strong will and, also, possibly, to the fact that the Elector was on his side. The victory also affected the case of Beier, whom Luther hastened to acquaint of his freedom;[1349] it further decided to some extent, the yet more important question whether or not the lawyers were to yield to Luther in ecclesiastical matters. They accepted their humiliation with the best grace possible, but we shall not be far wrong in assuming that they were not over-pleased with Luther’s irregular and illogical handling of questions of law.

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Difficulties with the State Church

The far-reaching encroachments of the secular authorities in his Church became for Luther in his later years a source of keen vexation.

Luther’s attitude towards the lawyers is of special importance from two points of view. It shows afresh the high opinion he entertained of himself, and, at the same time, it reveals his jealousy of any outside influence.

We have also other utterances which testify to his deep distrust of the secular authorities, on account of their real or imaginary encroachments.

He often gives vent to his wounded feelings in unseemly words. A strange mixture of glowing fanaticism and coarse jocularity flows forth like a stream of molten lava from the furnace within him.

The Present and the To-come

On his last birthday, which he kept on Martinmas-Eve, 1545, Luther assembled about him Melanchthon, Bugenhagen, Cruciger, George Major and other guests, and to them opened his mind. According to the account left by his friend Ratzeberger he spoke of the coming dissensions: “As soon as he was gone the best of our men would fall away. I do not fear the Papists, he remarked; they are for the most part rude, ignorant asses and Epicureans; but our own brethren will injure the Evangel because they have gone forth from us but were not of us. This will do more harm to the Evangel than the Papists can.” The sad political outlook of Germany led him to add: “Our children will have to take up the spear, for things will fare ill in Germany.” Of the Catholics he said: “The Council of Trent is very angry and means mischief; hence be careful to pray diligently, for there will be great need of prayer when I am gone.” All, he exhorted “to stand fast by the Evangel.”[1372]

“For it is the command of our stern Lord [the Elector],” he says elsewhere, “that we should maintain undefiled the government of the Church, dispense aright the Word, the Absolution and the Sacraments according to the institution of Christ, and also comfort consciences.”[1373]

The decline of morals, now so obvious, was another phantom that haunted the evening of his days.

[367]

Up to the day of his death he was concerned for the welfare of the students at Wittenberg University. Among the 2000 young men at the University (for such was their number in Luther’s last years) there were many who were in bitter want. Luther sought to alleviate this by attacking, even in his sermons, those who were bent on fleecing the young; he not only gave readily out of his own slender means but also wrote to others asking them to be mindful of the students; of this we have an instance in a note he wrote in his later years, in which he asks certain “dear gentlemen” (possibly of the University or the magistracy) for help for a “pious and learned fellow” who would have to leave Wittenberg “for very hunger”; he declares that he himself was ready to contribute a share, though he was no longer able to afford the gifts he was daily called upon to bestow.[1385]

We know how grieved he was at the downfall of the schools and how loud his complaints were of the lawlessness of youth; how it distressed him to see the schools looked down upon though their contribution to the maintenance of the Churches was “entirely out of question.”[1386]

For his University of Wittenberg he requests the prayers of others against those who were undermining its reputation. He sees the small effect of his earnest exhortations to the students against immorality.[1387] The excellent statutes he had laid down for the town and the University were nullified by the bad example of men in high places. “Ah, how bitterly hostile the devil is to our Churches and schools.… Tyranny and sects are everywhere gaining the upper hand by dint of violence.… I believe there are many wicked knaves and spies here on the watch for us, who rejoice when scandals and dissensions arise. Hence we must watch and pray diligently. Unless God preserves us all is up. And so it looks. Pray, therefore, pray! This school [of Wittenberg] is as it were the foundation and stronghold of pure religion.”[1388] He once declared sadly that, among all the students in the town there were scarcely two from whom something might be hoped as future pastors of souls. “If out of all the young men present here two or three honest[368] theologians grow up then we should have reason to thank God! Good theologians are indeed rare birds on this earth. Among a thousand you will seldom find two, or even one. And indeed the world no longer deserves such good teachers, nor does it want them; things will go ill when I, and you and some few others are gone.”[1389]

“The world was like this before the flood, before the destruction of Sodom, before the Babylonian captivity, before the destruction of Jerusalem—and so again it is before the fall of Germany.… Should you, however, ask what good has come of our teaching, answer me first, what good came of Lot’s preaching in Sodom?”[1390]

To divert his thoughts from these saddening cares he often turned to Æsop. It is of interest to note how highly he always prized Æsop’s Fables, not merely as a means of education for the young in the elementary schools, but even as furnishing a stimulating topic for conversation with his friends.

He was very determined in putting down scandals when they occurred in his own home. A young relative, who was addicted to drunkenness, he took severely to task, pointing out the good example, which in the interests of the Evangel his household was strictly bound to give; when the maidservant, Rosina, whom he had taken into his house, turned out a person of bad life, he could not sufficiently express his indignation and dismissed her from the family. A similar case also occurred at the time of his flight from Wittenberg in July, 1545; he writes to Catherine in the letter in which he tells her of his intention of not returning: “If Leck’s ‘Bachscheisse,’ our second Rosina and deceiver, has not yet been laid by the heels, do what you can that the miscreant may feel ashamed of herself.”[1394]

Catherine Bora was a good helper in matters of this sort. In fact she performed with zeal and assiduity the duties that fell to her lot in tending the aged and infirm man, and looking after the house and the small property. Amidst his many and great difficulties he often confessed that she was a comfort to him, and gratefully acknowledges her work. In his letters to her during his later years he writes in so religious a strain, and in such heartfelt language, that the reader might be forgiven for thinking that Luther had entirely succeeded in forgetting the irreligious nature of the union between a monk and a nun. “Grace and peace in the Lord,” he writes in a letter from Eisleben of Feb. 7, 1546, to his “housewife.” “Read, you dear Katey, John and the Smaller Catechism, of which you once said: All that is told in this book applies to me. For you try to care for your God just as though He were not Almighty and could not make ten Dr. Martins should the old one be drowned in the Saale, etc. Leave me in peace with your cares, I have a better guardian than even you and all the angels.”[1395]

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3. Luther’s Death at Eisleben (1546)

In March, 1545, there was sent to Luther by Philip of Hesse an Italian broadside purporting to have been printed in Rome, and containing a fearsome account of Luther’s supposed death. In it “the ambassador of the King of France” announces that Luther had wished his body set up on the altar for adoration; also that before he died he had received the Body of Christ, but that the Host had hovered untouched over the grave after the funeral; a diabolical din had been heard coming from the grave, but, on opening it, it was found to be empty though it emitted a murderous stench of brimstone. Luther at once published the narrative with an half-ironical, half-indignant commentary. He sought to persuade the people that the Pope had actually wished for his death and damnation. In a poem which he prefixed to the pamphlet he tells the Pope in his usual style that: his life was indeed the Pope’s plague, but that his death would be the Pope’s death too; the Pope might choose which he liked best, the plague or death.—About the real origin of this alleged Italian production nothing is known.[1396]

In his bodily sufferings and anxiety of mind concerning the present and the future of his life’s work Luther frequently spoke of his desire for a speedy release by death. His words on this subject throw a strong light on his frame of mind.

In Jan., 1546, Luther set out for the third time for Mansfeld, in order to settle the business of Count Albert of Mansfeld; only as a corpse was he to return home.

The Elector did not look with approval on Luther’s arduous labours as peacemaker, while Chancellor Brück even went so far as to characterise the Counts’ interminable lawsuits about the mines and the rest as a “pig-market.” Luther, nevertheless, set out again on Jan. 23, regardless of his already impaired health, betaking himself this time to Eisleben. He was accompanied by his three sons, their tutor and his famulus Aurifaber, the editor of the German Table-Talk. At Halle they were detained three days in the house of Jonas on account of the floating ice and the flooded state of the Saale. “We did not wish to take to the water and tempt God,” so he wrote to Catherine on Jan. 25, “for the devil bears us a grudge and also dwells in the water; and, moreover, ‘discretion is the best part of valour’; nor is there any need for us to give the Pope and his myrmidons such cause for delight.”[1407]

On the 26th Luther preached a sermon in which, with all the strength at his command, he poured forth his anger against Popery, “which had cheated and befooled the whole world.” “The Pope, the Cardinals and the lousy, scurvy, mangy monks have hoaxed and deluded us.” He proceeded to storm against the unfortunate monks who had dared to remain in a town now almost entirely won over to the[373] innovations: “I am above measure astonished that you gentlemen of Halle can still tolerate amongst you these knaves, the crawling, lousy monks.… These wanton, verminous miscreants take pleasure only in folly.… You gentlemen ought to drive the imbecile, sorry creatures out of the town.… What we teach and preach we do not teach as our own words, discovered or invented by us, like the visions of the monks which they preach; their lies are like bulging hop-pockets or sacks of wool.”[1408]

On the 28th, after having been joined by Jonas, Luther and his companions crossed the swollen Saale. On this occasion he said to Jonas: “Dear Dr. Jonas, wouldn’t it be a fine thing were I, Dr. Martin, my three sons and you to be all drowned!” Not far from Eisleben they were overtaken by a cold wind which brought the traveller in the carriage to such a state of weakness and breathlessness that he nearly fainted. “The devil always plays me this trick,” so he consoled himself, “when I have something great on hand.”[1409]

At Eisleben he took up his abode with the town-clerk, and soon got well enough to take part in the negotiations; he visited the several families of the Counts and amused himself in his hours of leisure by looking at the young nobles and their ladies tobogganing.[1410] To Catherine he wrote jestingly on Feb. 1, that his fit near Eisleben was the work of the Jews, numbers of whom lived there (at Rissdorf); they had raised up a bitter wind against him, which “penetrated the back of the carriage and passed right through my cap into my head, and tried to turn my brain to ice. This may have brought on the fainting; now, however, thank God, I am quite well, were it not for the pretty women, etc.” (cp. above, vol. iii., p. 281). He extols the Naumburg beer, which suits him well, says that his three sons have gone on to Jena and alludes to the blow he was planning against the Mansfeld Jews, on whom Count Albert frowned and whom he was determined to abandon.[1411]

When Catherine again expressed fears about his health he replied in a joking vein on Feb. 10, giving her an account of all that her anxious thoughts had brought upon him: The fire that broke out just in front of his door had almost burnt[374] him up, the plaster that fell from the ceiling of his room had almost killed him, “having a mind to verify your pious fears if the dear and holy angels had not been watching over me. I fear, if you don’t put your fears to rest, the earth will finally open and swallow us up.… We are, thank God, well and sound.“[1412]

In the interval, while the negotiations were still proceeding, he had dealt very rudely with the Jews in a sermon on Feb. 7, in spite of the fact that the Countess of Mansfeld, Solms’s widow, was said to be in their favour. He was displeased to see them left unmolested. “No one lifts a finger against them.” In a manuscript “exhortation against the Jews,” written at that time,[1413] he briefly sums up his wishes: “You Lords ought not to tolerate them, but rather drive them out,” at least if they refuse to become Christians. Not long before he had declared that, with his own hands, he could put a Jew to death who dared to blaspheme Christ; when writing to Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg he also praised one of his partisans, a certain provost, simply and solely for his hatred of the Jews: “The provost pleases me beyond measure because he is so strong against the Jews.”[1414]

Altogether, Luther preached four sermons at Eisleben. Twice he went to the Supper, so we are told, after having previously received “Absolution.” On the second occasion “he ordained” two priests,[1415] his friend’s account narrates, “in the apostolic way.” Every evening he assembled his friends about him, the chief being Justus Jonas and the Eisleben preacher, Michael Cœlius. In their company he showed a good temper, much as the long-drawn, tedious negotiations annoyed him. He put it down to the devil that the scheme of settlement drawn up by expert lawyers, encountered so much opposition on both sides; indeed he fancied that all the devils had gathered together at Eisleben to mock at his efforts in this dreary business. He would fain have himself played the poltergeist among the combatants, to “grease the wheels of the lazy coach” and “bring them back at last to some sense of the duty of Christian charity.”[1416] The reader will remember the apparition that Luther[375] thought he saw in those days.[1417] At last, on Feb. 14, he was able to write to his “dear, kind housewife”: “God has shown us great mercy here, for, through their solicitors, the Lords have settled almost everything save two or three points.”[1418] These outstanding matters were satisfactorily adjusted shortly afterwards.

In the same letter Luther said: “We hope, please God, to return home this week.” Thus he scarcely expected to die yet, but still hoped to be able to get back to Wittenberg before the end came. “Here we eat and drink like lords,” so he assures his Catherine, “and are very well looked after.”[1419] On Feb. 16, at table, when the talk turned on sickness and death, Luther said: “When I get home to Wittenberg I shall at once lay myself in my coffin and give the grubs a nice fat doctor to feed on.”[1420] For all his weakness his cheerfulness had not left him.

New cares were now troubling his mind. He had learnt how the Kaiser was insisting on submission to the Council, how the religious conference at Ratisbon had been a failure, and had merely given the Imperial forces time to arm themselves for an attack on the Schmalkalden Leaguers. The coming defeat of the League at Mühlberg was already casting its shadow. “May God help His Highness our Master” (the Elector), remarked Luther; “he is in for a bad time.”[1421] His annoyance with Kaiser Charles led him to say: The “Emperor is dead against us, and now he is showing the hand he so long had concealed.”[1422]

Luther, however, was not to live to see the blow delivered which the flouted Imperial power had so long been threatening.

“During those three weeks” Luther frequently left the supper-table with the admonition to “pray for our Lord God [i.e. for His cause][1423] that it may go well with His Churches; the Council of Trent is highly wroth.”

Holy Scripture, to which he had always devoted himself with so much energy, even now engrossed him. He felt[376] keenly its obscurity and depth. The last short note he made was on the Book of Books and the difficulty of reaching its innermost meaning. After instancing the difficulty of rightly understanding even Virgil or Cicero, it proceeds: “Let no one think he has sufficiently tasted Holy Scripture, unless, for a hundred years, he has ruled the Churches with prophets such as Elias, Eliseus, John the Baptist, Christ and the Apostles.”[1424] By this significant admission he had of course no intention of repudiating the principle, whereby in the stead of the teaching authority of the Church he had put the written Word of God as the clear and final rule for each individual. At this time, just before his death, he was less inclined than ever to retract one jot of his doctrine. Nevertheless the fact that he himself was compelled to admit in such terms the depth and the difficulty of the Bible seems scarcely to bear out his usual contention, viz. that Holy Scripture is the one and all-sufficient guide and master for all.

On Feb. 17, the first symptoms showed themselves of the attack which was to carry him off before the next dawn.[1425] During the day he was very restless; once he said: “Here at Eisleben I was baptised, how if I were to remain here?” In the evening he felt the oppression on the chest of which[377] he had had to complain in previous illnesses; he therefore had himself rubbed down with hot flannels and, as soon as he felt better, went off to supper. During the meal he was, as usual, talkative and in good humour; he told some humorous anecdotes and also spoke of more serious things, and ate and drank heartily. He casually said that, were he to die as a man of sixty-three, he would have attained a quite respectable age, “for people do not now live to be very old. Well, we old men must live so long in order to be able to look behind the devil [i.e. learn his wickedness] and experience so much malice, faithlessness and misery in the world that we may bear witness what a wicked spirit the devil is.” With the pessimism peculiar to him he concludes: “The human race is like the sheep being led to the slaughter.”

According to Ratzeberger, the Elector’s medical adviser, who collected the latest particulars concerning Luther, the latter, on the evening of the 17th, “when about to lie down to sleep after supper,” wrote “with a piece of chalk on the wall the verse: In life, O Pope, I was thy plague, in dying I shall be thy death” (cp. above, vol. iii., p. 435). If we may trust this account, then, on this occasion Luther again used the words which had once before served him under similar circumstances at Schmalkalden. Those actually present at Eisleben make, however, no mention of this, and, in his funeral address, Jonas merely says, that these verses were Luther’s fitting “epitaph” which he had once written for himself. Cœlius also, in his panegyric on Luther, says that though dead he still survives in his books; “he will also after his death, please God, be the death of the Pope, thanks to his writings, just as he was his plague during life.” As no mention of the writing on the wall is made by either of these two, nor yet in the account of his death given by his three friends, though there was no reason for their omitting it, Ratzeberger’s account stands alone and must be taken for what it is worth.[1426]

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The following is based principally on the narratives of Jonas, Cœlius and Aurifaber, though the fact that it emanates from enthusiastic friends of Luther’s has not been overlooked. Even though, as is highly probable, the three writers in question made the most of the edifying traits they were able to mention, yet this is no sufficient ground for rejecting their account as a whole. Even the short prayers which they put on Luther’s lips may not be pure inventions.

After supper Luther betook himself rather early to his sitting-room and, as his custom was, said his prayers at the open window. Another severe attack of heart oppression then came on; his friends hurried to his assistance and again tried to mend matters by rubbing him with hot cloths; he was, however, only able to get an hour’s sleep on a sofa in the room. He refused to have the doctors called in as he did not think there was any danger. For the next two or three hours, viz. till 1 a.m. he slept in his own bed in the adjoining bedroom, after telling his anxious friends and his two sons, Martin and Paul, to go to rest. Jonas, the principal witness at his death, had a couch in the same room as Luther.

About one o’clock Luther suddenly felt very unwell. “Oh, my God, how ill I feel,” he said to Jonas, and, getting out of bed, he dragged himself into the sitting-room, saying he would probably die at Eisleben after all, and repeating the prayer: “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” He complained of an intolerable burden on his chest. Two physicians, one a doctor and the other a master of medicine, were now summoned in haste. Before they arrived the patient seems to have suddenly collapsed; they found him on the sofa, unconscious and with no perceptible pulse. Recovering consciousness he said, all bathed in the cold sweat of death: “My God, I feel so ill and anxious, I am going,” and then, according to Jonas, he said a short prayer of thanks to God for having revealed to him His Son Jesus Christ in Whom he believed and Whom he had preached and confessed, whilst the hateful Pope and all the ungodly had blasphemed this same Christ; thereupon, all trustfully, he commended his soul to the Lord. No less than three times, according to this witness, did he repeat in Latin the familiar Bible text: “God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not[379] perish but have everlasting life.” This text (John iii. 16) he had, indeed, always esteemed highly, and seen in it the seal of his doctrine. He is also said to have repeated other Bible texts while medicines were being given him. Count Albert and his relatives, who had come in, also offered him various remedies. Soon after he seemed again to lose consciousness. In spite of the confessions just mentioned Jonas and Cœlius shouted once more in his ear the question, whether he remained steadfast in the faith in Christ and His doctrine which he had preached; to which they caught the reply “Yes.” That was his last word.—To all appearance his death was due to an apoplectic seizure.

All things considered, it is very odd that Luther apparently never gave a thought to his life’s partner, whom he had left at Wittenberg, and that, at least as it seems, his sons were not with him at his death. The argument from the silence of his friends on this point is not devoid of force, for it would have been so easy for them to supply what we here miss. Their silence might even be adduced in support of the substantial reliability of their narrative. The best explanation of Luther’s apparent oblivion is probably to be sought in the result of the stroke which stupefied him and blotted out the memory of those dear to him.[1427]

Towards 3 a.m., after drawing a last deep breath. Luther yielded up his soul into the hands of the Judge. This was on Feb. the 18th.

At the demand of both the physicians the apothecary of Eisleben was sent for, either immediately after death had taken place, or possibly just before, to administer a stimulant by means of a clysteral injection. The apothecary, Johann Landau by name, was a Catholic and a convert, a nephew of the convert polemic Wicel. He drew up a report of his visit which has become famous in the discussion of the question stupidly broached anew of recent years as to whether Luther committed suicide.[1428] We here give the principal passages of[380] his very realistic narrative. He speaks of himself in the third person.

“The apothecary was awakened at the third hour after midnight.… When he arrived he said to the doctors: ‘He is quite dead, of what use can an injection be?’ Count Albert and some scholars were present. The physicians, however, replied: ‘At any rate have a try with the instrument that he may come again to himself if there be any life yet in him.’ When the apothecary inserted the nozzle he noticed some flatulency given off into the ball of the syringe.”[1429] The apothecary persevered in his efforts until the physicians saw that all was useless. “The two physicians disputed together as to the cause of death. The doctor said it was a fit of apoplexy, for the mouth was drawn down and the whole of the right side discoloured.”[1430] The master, on the other hand, thought it incredible that so holy a man could have been thus stricken down by the hand of God, and thought it was rather the result of a suffocating catarrh and that death was due to choking. After this all the other Counts arrived. Jonas, however, who was seated at the head of the bed, wept aloud and wrung his hands. When asked whether Luther had complained of any pain the evening before he replied: “Dear me, no, he was more cheerful yesterday than he had been for many a day. Oh, God Almighty, God Almighty, etc.”—by this Jonas did not mean to deny the fit of heart oppression that had occurred the previous day, since he himself reports it to the Elector; distracted by grief as he was he probably only thought of the good spirits Luther had been in that evening, and of the contrast with the dead body he now saw lying before him. Or it may be that he did not regard the heart oppression as actual “pain.”

Landau’s report continues: “In the meantime the Counts brought costly scents to be applied to the body of the deceased, for on several occasions before this he had been thought to be dead when he lay for a long time motionless and giving no sign of life, as happened to him, for instance, at Schmalkalden when he was tormented with the stone.…[381] The apothecary vigorously rubbed his nose, mouth, forehead and left side for some time with the oils. Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt came and bent over the corpse and asked the apothecary whether any sign of life remained. The latter, however, replied that there was not the least life in him seeing that the hands, nose, forehead, cheeks and ears were already stiff and cold in death.… Jonas said: It will be best now for us to send a swift rider to the Elector and for one of us to sit down and write and tell him all that has happened.”

Jonas himself wrote this first still extant account to his sovereign “about four o’clock in the morning.”

On Feb. 20 Luther’s body was taken to Halle, and early on the 22nd to Wittenberg, where it was received at the Elster Gate—the scene of the famous burning of the Bull—by the University, the Town Council and the burghers. He was buried in the Schlosskirche. There his bones still rest in the grave as was proved by an examination made on Feb. 14, 1892.[1431]

4. In the World of Legend

Barely twenty years later a report that Luther had committed suicide went the rounds among certain of his opponents, the report being subsequently grounded on the alleged statement of a servant.

The first writer who mentions the servant is the Italian Oratorian, Thomas Bozius, in a book on the marks of the Church printed in Rome in 1591. “Luther after having supped heartily that evening and gone to bed quite content,” so he writes, “died that same night by suffocation. I hear that it has recently been discovered through the confession of a witness who was then his servant and who came over to us in late years, that Luther brought himself to a miserable end by hanging; but that all the inmates of the house who knew of the incident were bound under oath not to divulge the matter, for the honour of the Evangel as it was said.”[1432]

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It was not till the beginning of the 17th century that the text of the supposed letter of Luther’s servant began to be circulated, according to which, when the latter went one morning to awaken Luther “as usual” (i.e. about 7 a.m.) he found he had committed suicide; this, however, is quite at variance with the definite accounts we have of the time of death. The supposed servant claims to have been alone when he found “our Master Martin hanging from the bedpost, miserably strangled,” whereas the notes made at the time speak of the presence of witnesses both before and after the death which, moreover, was quite a natural one. The apocryphal letter bears no writer’s name nor do we know anything of its source; it seems to have made its first public appearance at Antwerp in 1606 in the work of the Franciscan Sedulius, who probably took it in good faith. It is remarkable, that, down to 1650, as Paulus has proved, only one German writer mentions this fictitious letter, though foreign polemics were busy with it. Outside of Germany such inventions found more ready credence, particularly among the zealous and more imaginative Catholics of the Latin race, who were only too willing to seize on any tale which was to the discredit of the lives of the German foes of Catholicism.[1433]

The falsehood of the legend of Luther’s suicide was most convincingly proved by N. Paulus in his special work on the subject (1898). This scholar submitted the fable to the sharp knife of criticism with a broadminded love of truth that honours his Catholicism as much as his acumen does honour to him as a critic.

It is barely credible to us to-day what inventions grew up in the 16th century, both on the Catholic and the Protestant side, about the deaths of well-known public men who happened to be the object of animosity to one party or the[383] other. Suicide, or murder at the hands of friend or foe, or, more frequently, dreadful maladies or sudden death under the most horrible shapes were the ordinary penalties assigned to opponents, not only by the populace but even by the more credulous type of learned writers. We must not forget that Luther himself had at hand a list of the persecutors of the Evangel, who, in his own day, had been snatched away by sudden death, and that it served him on occasion in his sermons and writings.[1434]

It is an undeniable fact that Luther did much to pave the way for such stories. His printed Table-Talk could well be taken as a model. Among the fearsome tales of death he himself related was e.g. that of Mutian the humanist, who, refusing to become a Lutheran, fell from poverty into despair and poisoned himself;[1435] of the Archbishop of Treves, Richard of Greiffenklau, who was “bodily carried off to hell by the devil”;[1436] of the Catholic preacher, Urban of Kunewalde, who, “having fallen away from the Evangel,” was “struck by a thunderbolt” in the church, and then again by a flash of lightning that passed through his body from head to foot, because he had asked heaven for a sign to prove that he was in the right,[1437] etc.[1438] “All these perished miserably,” he says, “like senseless swine. And so too it will happen with the others.”[1439]

In those days, partly owing to Luther’s influence, people were very ready to admit the devil’s intervention in the horrible death that befell their foes; the Catholic champions would all seem to have had a shocking end, could we but trust the writers in the Protestant camp.[1440]

Eck they depicted entirely possessed by the devil and “dying like a brute beast, quite out of his mind.” Of Emser (when still living) Luther himself says, that he had been killed suddenly by the “fiery darts and arrows of the[384] devil.”[1441] Cochlæus, according to other writers, was removed from the world in an awful way. Johann Fabri it was said had died in despair, saying to those who exhorted him to have confidence: “Too late, too late.” Pighius was made out to have died by his own hand. Latomus was represented as crying out on his death-bed that he was a devil incarnate and had claws on his fingers and toes. Hofmeister, the learned Augustinian, according to the Protestant version, repeatedly said before dying: “I belong to the devil body and soul.” Of the Jesuits, even their founder, Ignatius of Loyola, had a bad death. Canisius was struck dumb in the pulpit at Worms and was carried off by the judgment of God; some were not wanting, however, who declared that he had been converted to Luther’s doctrine. Seven years before his death, it was reported of Bellarmine, the great controversialist of that day, that “he had died miserably and in despair,” carried off on the back of a fiery he-goat from hell; and “even to this very day,” so it was told during his lifetime, “Bellarmine may be heard gruesomely howling in the wind, astride his flaming, winged steed.”

Needless to say, many of the converts who turned their back on Luther and took the part of the Catholic Church “perished miserably”! “Many of these devil’s henchmen,” writes a “simple minister of the Word,” “who knowingly and of malice aforethought, as they themselves admit, deny the known truth of the Evangel, have been carried off alive by the devil, or have howled before their death like wolves and tigers, as notoriously happened in the case of that firebrand Staphylus.”[1442]

If similar tales, representing in an unfavourable light Luther’s life and death, were equally rife among the Catholics, this can be no matter for surprise if we bear in mind how greatly they were vexed by the exaggerated eulogies passed on him and his life’s work, and how much they had been stung by his polemics and furious onslaught on the Church. Whoever loved the olden Church held Luther’s very name in execration.

One such tale early current at Halle was that, when the[385] funeral procession arrived at Wittenberg, the coffin was found empty, Luther’s corpse having vanished on the road. A number of rooks having described circles in the air about the corpse at Halle, a later tale made them out to have been devils “streaming to the funeral of their prophet.”[1443] Proof of this general foregathering of the devils was even found in the comparative calmness of those possessed, who, it was argued, had evidently been forsaken for a while by their diabolical tenants, the latter’s presence at the burial explaining their temporary departure from their usual habitats.[1444] The corpse, it was also said, gave out so evil a smell that the bearers had to leave it on the road to Wittenberg.

Other versions of these tales deserve to be mentioned. According to Johann Oldecop, the Hildesheim Dominican (†1574), who, however, is not reliable in what he had at second hand, Luther was simply found dead in his bed. According to Simon Fontaine (1558), a French writer, who also speaks of his sudden death, he had “his nun” with him that night; this is also affirmed in the works of Jérôme Bolsec and James Laing, printed in Paris, as well as in a work published at Ingolstadt. According to William Reginald, Professor at the English College of Douay (1597), Luther had been strangled in the night by Catherine Bora. The same tale was afterwards told at Münster in Westphalia by Johann Münch (1617).

Even more common were the reports, quite in accordance with the manners which Luther had fostered, that the devil had murdered him. The Polish scholar, Stanislaus Hosius, asserted this in 1558, and, later, it is mentioned, though only tentatively, by the Dutch theologian, William Lindanus and the Paris theologian Prateolus. In 1615, Robert Bellarmine, speaking in general terms, says that Luther, after an illness lasting only a few hours, “yielded up his soul to the devil”;[1445] but the “Compendium fidei” 1607 of Franz Coster (already published in Dutch in 1595) had been beforehand in particulars of Luther’s death at the devil’s hands. He tells how, according to the statement of a noble lady of Eichsfeld, Luther’s body had been found with the “neck red and out of joint,” hence it was plain that “he had been strangled by the devil.” Peter Pázmány a Magyar writer (1613) had heard that the devil had appeared in the[386] shape of a great sheep-dog to the guests at table on the evening previous to Luther’s death, and that Luther had exclaimed: “What, so soon?” Claude de Sainctes (1575) a French theologian, finds nothing extraordinary in Luther’s horrible death, since most of the Church’s foes had been brought to a violent end by the devil as the examples of Zwingli, Carlstadt, Œcolampadius and others showed!

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CHAPTER XL
AT THE GRAVE

1. Luther’s fame among the friends he left behind

The first panegyrics on Luther, the funeral orations and encomiums which were immediately printed and scattered broadcast through Germany constitute an historical phenomenon in themselves. They show orators and writers alike fascinated as it were by Luther’s overpowering personality, and they, in turn, fascinated many thousands who read them. Jonas was the first to deliver at Eisleben an address in his honour, viz. in the afternoon of Feb. 19; this was followed by another by Cœlius previous to the departure of the funeral procession on Feb. 20; whilst Bugenhagen, too, delivered one of his own on the 22nd, after the arrival of the body at the Schlosskirche. The rhetorical effusions of Jonas and Cœlius, who had been present with Luther at the end, likewise Bugenhagen’s address, and the account of Luther’s death which they published in conjunction with Aurifaber, are all crammed with incredible praises. Melanchthon, too, forgetful of all the pain he had suffered at Luther’s hand and shutting his eyes to all his weaknesses, paid his tribute of honour to Luther’s memory, first in a notice affixed at the University, then in a Latin funeral-oration which he delivered in the Schlosskirche as soon as Bugenhagen had had his say, and, again, in a short writing on his friend and master which he prefixed to the second volume of the Latin edition of Luther’s works (1546).

These eulogies, which owe their fulsomeness partly to the bad taste of the humanistic period, were strong in their[389] effects on men’s minds; the preachers, moreover, who had been trained or appointed by Luther, were anxious thereby to strengthen their own position and to show their scorn for Popery. Even in the above addresses Luther and what he stood for is contrasted with “the oppression and tyranny of the hateful Popedom” from which the world had been delivered. (Bugenhagen.)

In many of the churches Luther’s picture was hung up with the inscription: “The Holy Dr. Martin Luther (‘Divus et sanctus,’ etc.).” Writings were published bearing such titles as “Luther, the Prophet,” “Luther, the Wonder-Worker.” All sorts of medals were struck in his honour, one with the inscription: “Propheta Germaniæ, Sanctus Domini,” others with Luther’s motto: “Pestis eram vivus,” etc.[1449] Even in his lifetime pictures appeared in reprints of his works where he was represented with a halo and with the Dove, as the symbol of the Holy Ghost, descending on him from heaven.[1450]

The most popular biography of Luther was that of Johann Mathesius, who died as pastor of Joachimsthal in Bohemia. He met with a success such as can be accounted for only by the passion in favour of Wittenberg then prevalent in Protestant Germany. The appellations so common in later years, Luther the “Wonder-Worker,” “Chosen Instrument,” “True German Prophet,” “Man full of Grace and the Holy Spirit,” are to be met with already in the “Historien” of Mathesius, delivered originally as sermons and first published in 1566. In these “stories” he has[390] interwoven in Luther’s laurel wreath much that is untrue or doubtful, for instance, the saying attributed to Erasmus and since frequently quoted on his authority, is spurious, viz. “that, when Dr. Luther explains Scripture, on one of his pages there is more reason and common sense than in all the tomes and scrolls of Scotists, Thomists, Albertists, Nominalists and Sophists.”[1451] Mathesius wishes people “not to be forgetful of so worthy a man’s life and testimony,” yet even he gives us a glimpse into the bitter controversies now already raging among the Lutherans; he points out how “God loves the peacemakers and calls them His own dear children while He sends adrift all who delight in war and strife.” He himself had some experience of the antagonism between the progressive party and the more old-fashioned Lutherans. Indeed one of the principal reasons why he wrote the “Historien” was because “many an ungrateful fellow actually forgets this great man and his faithful industry and toil.” He already sees the “Wittenberg cisterns” defiled by “all kinds of brackish, foul, baneful, muddy and uncleanly waters.”[1452]

Particularly around Luther’s tomb did veneration centre. Thus the verses of August Buchner invite his readers to visit Luther’s tomb, and proclaim it a greater thing to have seen this little resting place than even the proud Temple of Capitoline Jove.[1461]

Immediately after his death a lengthy “poem” was[393] published at Wittenberg entitled “Epitaphium,” celebrating both the deceased and his grave:

In it Luther tells how he had been sent by God that he might—

For ever and for ever it would remain true that

His grave was marked only by a stone let into the ground bearing on it a metal plate with his name, the date and place of his death, and his age.[1463]

On a bronze memorial tablet in the wall was described in Latin verse the dark night in which the world was plunged under the Papacy, until at last Luther “once more made known the Grace of Christ, and, moved by the Divine inspiration (‘Dei adflatu monitus’) and called by the Word of God, had caused the new light of the Evangel to illuminate the world.” Like Paul his tongue had sent forth lightnings, like John the Baptist he had shown to the world in its darkness the Saving Lamb of God, and also brought to light the Tables of Moses, the Prophet of God, in their counter-distinction from the Gospel. The altars had been purged of the Roman idols. In reward for all this he had been exalted by Christ to the stars in order that he might share in His eternal joy.[1464] Beside the monument there was placed in the following century a framed painting representing Luther in the pulpit, pointing with his finger to the Crucified, while a[394] dragon with wide-open jaws was swallowing the Pope and his helpers. On this painting the verses given above were repeated.[1465]

The Elector Johann Frederick had another memorial tablet cast, but, owing to his defeat in the Schmalkalden War, this was taken by his sons to Weimar and later, in 1571, to Jena, where it was put up in the church of St. Michael. On it, above the life-size figure of the deceased, stands the verse: “Pestis eram vivus, moriens ero mors tua papa.” Other Latin verses at his feet state that, through him, the great fraud had been exposed whereby godless Rome had ensnared Christ’s flock. Would that Christ would help the orthodox school of Jena to vanquish the swarm of false doctrines (of the New Believers) that was springing up now, when the end of the world was so close.[1466]

2. Luther’s Memory among the Catholics. The Question of His Greatness

A faithful Catholic visiting the Schlosskirche at Wittenberg must necessarily have been assailed by thoughts much at variance with the eulogistic language of the epitaph and other expressions of Lutheran feeling. Let us suppose that one of those zealous and cultured Catholics who had been drawn by the attack on the olden religion into yet closer sympathy with it had crossed the threshold of the church—for instance a preacher such as Dr. Conrad Kling of Halle, who in the midst of trials and slanders was seeking to save the remnants of Catholicism,[1467] or a man like the historian Wolfgang Mayer,[1468] or the learned and sharp-witted Kilian Leib, Prior of Rebdorf,[1469] or one of the highly gifted women of that day, for instance, Charity Pirkheimer, the sister of the humanist and Superior of the struggling Poor Clares of Nuremberg[1470]—what would have been the impressions called forth by the building and the monument?

The building itself recalled the oneness of the divine edifice of the Church whose work it was to build up all the regenerate into one body, without dissensions or divisions,[395] that oneness to which the Church in olden days, when barely out of the hands of the persecutor, had borne witness at the baptismal font of St. Peter’s in Rome in the impressive inscription: “One chair of Peter and one font of Baptism!”[1471] The pulpit of the Schlosskirche called to mind the commission given by the Divine Saviour to His Apostles and their successors to baptise all nations and preach that doctrine which He Himself was to preserve infallible by His Presence “all days even to the end of the world.” The altar reminded the Catholic visitor of the eucharistic Sacrament and of the unbloody sacrifice formerly offered there. The bare walls spoke of the iconoclastic storm against both the images of the Saints and any living union of the faithful on earth with the elect in heaven, while the elaborate monuments to the dead seemed to proclaim in these times of excitement the peace in which those departed men had passed away happy in the possession of the one olden faith.

This ecclesiastical unity—such would have been the thought of the Catholic—has been shattered in our unhappy age by the man whose remains are here honoured by his followers, and not in order to reform, or improve, but rather to replace the thousand-year-old heirloom of the Church by a new faith and worship.

Even Luther’s very monument re-echoed the menaces pronounced by Luther upon Catholicism when he desecrated what was most sacred for so many thousands, and laid rough hands on the one consolation of their sorrowful lives.

These great expectations and bold prophecies were as little realised as that of the impending fall of the Papacy.

On the contrary the Papacy gathered strength, renewed its youth from one decade to another and, though the apostasy also grew, yet a gradual revival of the ancient faith set in throughout the Catholic world. On the minds of the faithful Catholics there remained, however, indelibly stamped the gloomy recollection of the towering defiance with which the Wittenberg professor and his secular allies had sought to introduce an alien teaching and reform.

The inflexible will on which Luther so prided himself is the sign manual of his personality. Nothing is so characteristic of Luther as his obstinate determination which yielded to nothing, and the appalling pertinacity that ever drove him on and never allowed him to retreat.

“No one, please God, shall awe me so long as I live!”[1480][397] To no other principle was he more faithful throughout his life. Thus we hear him declaring:

A defiance so utterly overwhelming as Luther’s the world had never before seen. The Catholics were quite dumbfounded. Can we take it ill if they failed to admire this form of Titanic greatness. A frightful greatness (perhaps it were more accurate to say a great frightfulness) indeed lurked behind Luther. Yet a Catholic would have had to throw over all religious and moral standards before he could extol a man as great simply on account of his strength of will, determination, power of resistance, inflexibility and defiance. Men felt that, after all, what was important was the aim and the means used in pursuing it. If all that mattered was merely the inflexibility of the will, this would have spelt an “upsetting of all values” and the strong man, he who towered above his fellows owing to his physical strength and his power of bidding defiance to the world would become the ideal of the human race.

Nor would a thoughtful Catholic contemporary have[399] been much impressed by the modern eulogies of Luther’s defiance.

It is to cherish too low an idea of greatness, not merely according to the Christian but also according to the merely natural standard, if strength of will or eventual success are alone taken into account and the aim and whole moral character of the work completely disregarded. In one sense of the word Catholics have never been unwilling to grant Luther a certain greatness, particularly as regards his astounding mental gifts and his powers of work. Döllinger was quite ready in his Catholic days to include “the son of the peasant of Möhra amongst the great, nay, among the greatest of men,” though Döllinger qualifies the admission by the words which immediately follow: “His disciples and admirers were wont to console themselves with the ‘heroic spirit’ of the man, who was so intolerant of any limitations or restrictions and who, dispensed by a kind of inspiration from the observance of the moral law, could do things, which, done by others, would have been immoral and criminal.”[1496]

There was no neutral vantage-ground from which to judge of Luther’s labours and his influence. Every thinking man did so from the ethical standpoint, and the Catholic likewise[400] from the standpoint of his Church. It is clear that Luther must not be tested by the standard of profane greatness, but by a religious one. It would be to do him rank injustice, and he would have been the first to protest were we to consider merely the force of his character and the extent of his success, rather than his objects and his influence from the moral and religious standpoint.

He represented himself to his Catholic contemporaries as a divinely commissioned preacher; in the name of the Lord he called on them to forsake the Church of all the ages, because he had come to proclaim afresh a forgotten Gospel. Hence they were bound to examine the actual state of the case and to probe for the moral signs which the words of Christ and the Apostles had taught them to look for, and, when they found the necessary religious qualities and moral greatness wanting, who can blame them for not having gone over to him? With them it was not a question whether they might admire in him a strong man, a Hercules or “superman,” but whether they were, at his bidding, to sever the tie that had hitherto bound them to the Church, follow him blindly, and commit their eternal salvation to his guidance. Luther had never tired of urging: “No man shall quench or thwart my teaching, it must have its way as it has hitherto for it is not mine” (but God’s).[1497] “I call myself Ecclesiastes [the preacher] by the Grace of God.… I am certain that Christ Himself calls and regards me as such, that He is my master, and that He will bear me witness on the Last Day that it is not mine but His own Gospel undefiled.”[1498] It was this rôle of Evangelist that the better class of opponents felt disposed to examine.

“Because you call yourself an evangelist and proclaimer of the Gospel,” so Duke George of Saxony wrote in his reply to Luther, “it would have better beseemed you to punish with mildness whatever abuses existed therein, and to instruct the people kindly.”[1499] On the contrary, so the Duke urges, his behaviour is anything but that of an “evangelist,” what with his passionate abuse and vituperation, and his[401] criminal breach of the public peace and religious unity: “Where peace and unity are not, there there is neither the true faith, which indeed is not to be found in you.”

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It is worth while to consider what response would have been awakened in the minds of serious Catholic visitors to Luther’s grave by his startling success.

Those who to-day claim unqualified “greatness” for Luther are usually thinking of the astonishing success of his undertaking, and of his influence and that of his labours on posterity. They boast: “He tore his age from its moorings,” “he reduced to ruins what for a thousand years had been held in honour”; “he gave a new trend to civilisation.”

A man of insight could, however, explain otherwise many of these effects.

The result of Luther’s preaching was undoubtedly very great. But, in the first place, this result was not solely due to the efforts of one man but was rather the outcome of the circumstances in which that man lived, the product of divers factors in the history of the times.

His contemporaries saw full well that Luther, with his fiery temperament, had merely assumed the direction of a spirit that had long began to pervade the clergy, regular and the secular, leading them to cast aside the duties of their calling and to seek merely honours and emoluments. They were also aware of the oppressive burden of abuses the Church had to carry and of the far-reaching disorders in public life. Society was now anxious to liberate itself from the Church’s tutelage which had grown irksome. Everyone was conscious of the trend of the day towards freedom, individuality and new outlooks. Both the Empire and the olden idea of the Christian nations united as in one family were in process of dissolution owing to political and social trends quite independent of Luther’s work. His contemporaries saw with deep misgiving how Luther’s new doctrine and his innovations generally were strengthening all these elements, and setting free others of a similar nature which could not fail to help on his work. Nevertheless the elements of unrest, without which he would have been unable to achieve anything, were not of his making.[1500]

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We can still judge to-day, from the writings of those who lived at that time, of the feelings, in some cases enthusiastic in others full of fear, with which they listened to the Wittenberger as he proclaimed war on all that was obsolete, or demanded in fiery language the reform of the Church, for which all were anxious.[1501] The more alluring and seductive the very word “reformation,” the more effective was the help proffered for the overthrow of the Church under the cloak of this watchword. In the field of learning there were the humanists who had fallen foul of Catholic authority and the spirit of the past; in the lower strata of society there were the peasants who aimed at bettering their position; among the burghers and in official circles hopes were entertained of an increase of authority at the expense of the bishops, now regarded with ever-increasing jealousy; finally the nobles and knights were allured by the prospect of the success of a revolt under the banner of the Evangel which would redound to the advantage of their caste. What chiefly brought Luther’s star into the ascendant was, however, the protection he obtained from the princes. Without his Elector, without the Landgrave of Hesse, without the allies of Schmalkalden, in a word, without political authority on his side, all the force of his words would have availed nothing, or at least would never have sufficed to enable him to found a new Church. The Princes who helped to spread his teaching and reformation saw the lands and privileges of the Church falling into their lap, and what was even more, the extension of their sphere of influence to the spiritual domain where, so far, the Pope and the bishops had reigned supreme.

Thus in his success those well versed in the conditions of the times recognised for the most part only the working of natural causes.

Luther, as all were aware, shortly after having been put under the Ban was wont to say that the movement he had begun was something so great and wonderful that it could not but owe its success to the manifest intervention of God. “It cannot be,” he exclaimed in 1521, “that a man should of himself be able to start such a work and carry it through.”[1502] He was fond of saying he wished no earthly means to be[403] used for arriving at the goal. Yet, in this very statement of 1521, for instance, he refers “to the sermons and writings” by which he had “begun” to disclose the Papists’ “knavery and trickery.” His burning words indeed acted as a spark flung on the inflammable material accumulating for so long. Anyone aware of the condition of Germany and of the artifices by which the author of the gigantic apostasy sought to consolidate his position at Wittenberg by means of the Court, and at the same time to excite the fanaticism of the masses, would feel but little impressed by Luther’s appeal to the apparent simplicity of his writings and sermons, as being out of all proportion to the unexampled success he attained.

He was indeed heard to say that he attributed everything to the words and the divine power of Christ: “Look what it has done in the few years that we have taught and written such truths. How has the Papists’ cloak shrunk and become so short!… What will it be when these words of Christ have threshed with His Spirit for another two years?”[1503] These words were, however, spoken the year after the publication of those fearfully violent writings: “On the Popedom at Rome” (against Alveld), “To the German Nobility,” “On the Babylonish Captivity,” “On the Freedom of a Christian Man” and “Against the Bulls of End-Christ.” When uttered, his seductive writing “On the Monastic Vows” was already there to unbar the gates through which crowds of doubtful helpers would flock to join him.

Catholic polemics of that day, in order to demolish the objection arising from the marvellous spread of Lutheranism, set themselves to examine the relation between the new dogmas and their dissemination. Luther’s doctrine, as they frequently pointed out, was bound to secure him a large following.

In this particular it was easy enough to prove that it was not merely the “greatness” of the man which drew such crowds to him. The persistent vaunting of the universal priesthood, the right bestowed on all of judging of Scripture, the abandoning of the outward and inward Word to the feelings of the individual, the sweet preaching of a faith which “no sin could harm,” the denial of the merit of good works, the assertion that, not they, but only faith was[404] required for salvation, and, not to speak of many other points, his contemptuous and unjust strictures on the Church and her doings, all this—human nature being what it is—could not fail for a time to help the cause of the New Evangel of freedom, and, under the conditions then prevailing, to assure it a real triumph.

This Evangel came upon Germany at a time when the Church’s life was in a state of decay, when the adequate religious instruction of the young was neglected by the Church, and when the dioceses were for the most part governed by younger sons of princely or noble houses, who were quite unfitted for their spiritual work. It is noteworthy that the defenders of the Church had very little good to say of the bishops.[1504]

Of the new preachers and promoters of Luther’s Reformation a large number was composed of apostate clergy and escaped monks and nuns whom Luther had won over. It was plain enough that it was no such “great and immortal” work as he claimed, to have attracted such people to his party thanks to theories which, while seeming to calm the conscience, really flattered the senses, for instance, by what he said on celibacy, vows and priestly ordination. “Do not seek to deny that you are a man, with flesh and blood; hence leave God to judge between the valiant angel-like heroes [those religious who were faithful to the Church] and the sickly, despised sinners [whom they upbraided as apostates].[1505]… Chastity is beyond healthy nature, let alone sinful nature.… There is no enticement so bad as these commands [of celibacy] and vows, forged by the devil himself.” Youthful religious were to be dragged out of their monasteries as quickly as possible, and priests were to learn that theirs was but a “Carnival ordination.” “Holy Orders are all jugglery and in God’s sight they have no value.”[1506]

Hence contemporaries, considering events from the standpoint just described, must needs have told themselves that Luther’s success, unexpected and astounding as it was, could not after all be laid down to the “greatness” of any one single man.[1507]

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What, moreover, must have been the thoughts of the observer regarding the permanence of Luther’s work who lived to see the master’s own Lutheranism falling to pieces, according to the statements of his most zealous admirers,[1508] as soon as he was dead? Luther himself almost seemed ready to ring down the curtain on the premature termination of the great tragedy of which he could not but despair.[1509]

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In the very year of Luther’s death Cochlæus passed in review the havoc wrought in the Church, embodying his observations in the work he had just finished and was to publish three years later, viz. his “De Actis et Scriptis Lutheri.”

These pages seem still to tremble with the excitement of the terrible period they describe. It is impressive to hear this voice of the Catholic spokesman coming as it were from Luther’s tomb and telling of the devastation of the storm raised by the Wittenberg professor. As Kawerau says, Cochlæus himself could point to a life “which, year after year, ever since 1521 had been devoted feverishly to the ecclesiastical debates of the day in which he was so keenly concerned and consumed in ceaseless controversy [with Lutheranism].”[1510] The grey-headed scholar, “illuminated and inspired as he was by the truest spirit of Christianity,”[1511] had once in 1533 declared: “Whatever I write now or at any time against Luther, I write for the glory of God, the service of the truth and the good of my neighbour. For I believe firmly that Luther is a malicious liar, heretic and rebel and I can find nothing but this in his books and in my own conscience.… I am not, however, bitter or hostile to Luther personally, but merely to his wickedness and vices. Were he to desist I would gladly go and fetch back so learned a man from Rome or Compostella and give him my love and my service.”[1512]

3. Luther’s Fate in the First Struggles for his Spiritual Heritage

Luther’s reputation was to suffer a sudden and tragic blow owing to the success of the Imperial arms in the War of Schmalkalden.

Hardly had the grave closed over him than, in the following year, after the battle of Mühlheim on April 24, 1547, won with the assistance of Duke Maurice of Saxony, the Kaiser’s troops entered Wittenberg. A notable change took place in the public position of Lutheranism when the vanquished Elector, Johann Frederick, was forced to resign his electoral dignity in favour of Maurice and to follow the Emperor as a captive. His abdication and the surrender of his fortresses to the Emperor was signed by him on May 19 in Luther’s own city of Wittenberg. The Landgrave of Hesse too found himself forced at Halle to submit unconditionally to the overlords of the Empire and to see Duke Henry of Brunswick released from captivity and honoured by the Emperor in the same city.

The dreaded Schmalkalden League, Luther’s shield and protection for so many years, was, so to speak, annihilated over night.

Luther’s theological friends were also made to feel the consequences. Flacius, after the taking of Wittenberg, fled[408] for a time to Brunswick. George Major, Luther’s intimate friend and associate, also escaped, but returned later. Amsdorf was obliged to give up the bishopric of Naumburg of which he had assumed possession, hand it over to the lawful Bishop Julius von Pflug, and hasten to Magdeburg, the new stronghold of the Lutheran spirit.

It is true that Luther’s cause soon recovered, at least politically speaking, from the defeat it had suffered in the War of Schmalkalden; the wounds inflicted on it in the theological quarrels among themselves of its own representatives were, however, more deep and lasting. Here Luther’s prediction was indeed fulfilled to the letter, viz. that his pupils would be the ruin of his doctrines.

The Osiandric, Majorite, Adiaphoristic and Synergistic Controversies

The theological warfare which followed on Luther’s decease opened with the Osiandric controversy which arose from the modifications of Luther’s idea of justification introduced subsequent to 1549 by Andreas Osiander, pastor and professor of theology at Königsberg. After Osiander’s death in 1552 the struggle was carried on by the Court preacher Johann Funk who held like views. Johann Brenz also defended Osiander’s opinion, whereas Melanchthon, Flacius Illyricus, Johann Æpinus, Joachim Westphal, Joachim Mörlin and others were opposed to it. Duke Albert of Prussia was for a long time a patron of Osiander’s doctrine, but was persuaded later to alter his views, and his Court preacher Funk did likewise. The old Lutherans, however, continued the struggle against Funk and, in 1566, owing to the charges brought against him by the Estates of abusing his position and of having violently championed “heretical doctrines,” he was beheaded.[1520] Osiander, however, the author of this new “heresy,” had himself been by no means wanting in Lutheran zeal where Catholics were concerned. Already in 1549 he wrote a tract against the Interim entitled: “On the new Idol and Antichrist at Babel,” in which he lashed those who “were sneaking back to Antichrist under cover of the Interim.”

The second, or Majorite controversy broke out at Wittenberg itself, and like the ones which followed was called forth[409] by the opposition of the Lutheran zealots to any Melanchthonian modifications of Luther’s doctrines. George Major, professor at Wittenberg, and subsequently Superintendent at Eisleben, backed by Justus Menius, Superintendent at Gotha, had the courage to declare that works were necessary for salvation, and that, without works, no one could be saved. For this he and Menius were branded as “heretics” by Flacius Illyricus, Nicholas Amsdorf, Johann Wigand, Joachim Mörlin and Alexius Prætorius. It was in the midst of this passionate wrangle, which deeply agitated the ranks of the preachers and disturbed the congregations, that Amsdorf, with a determination and defiance equal to Luther’s own went to the extremes of publishing his tract entitled “That the proposition ‘good works are harmful to salvation,’ is a sound and Christian one.”[1521] Flacius brought a writing against Major to a close with the pious wish that Christ would speedily crush the head of the serpent. Major, the confidant of Luther whom he had once despatched to attend the religious Conference at Ratisbon, was now obliged to give in; he made a shameful recantation. Menius, however, was denounced to the preachers and people as a “Papist,” and, in spite of his weak compliance, was unable to maintain his position against the inquisition put into motion by the higher powers. Although he resigned his office as Visitor and submitted patiently to a reprimand from the Court, he was obliged to leave the land; he besought the sovereign in vain for protection against his theological adversaries and freedom to communicate with the “dear gentlemen” at Wittenberg. The Town Council of Gotha was forbidden to give him a testimonial to the purity of his doctrine, and he himself, in spite of his protest that he was as much heir to Luther’s doctrine as Flacius, was summoned to take his trial before a sort of religious Synod at Eisenach in 1556, which also ousted him from his Superintendency. “He died on Aug. 11, 1558, from the effects of what he had undergone.”[1522]

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In the third great controversy, the Adiaphoristic, Flacius Illyricus behaved with great violence, indeed his extreme Lutheran views were the cause of the quarrel which in itself well illustrates the pettiness and acrimony of those concerned in it. The question under dispute was whether certain “indifferent matters” (ἀδιάφορα) sanctioned in the Augsburg Interim of 1547 might be allowed in Protestant circles even though Luther during his lifetime had frowned on them. Under the Elector Maurice the theologians and Estates of the Saxon Electorate had answered in the affirmative. This answer embodied in the so-called “Leipzig Interim,” was firmly contradicted by Flacius. It is true that what was in question was not only ceremonies, images, hymns and such-like external things but also the rites of Confirmation and Extreme Unction, and, in a certain sense, the use of Penance, the celebration of a kind of Mass and the veneration of Saints. Flacius was supported by Nicholas Gallus, Johann Wigand, Nicholas Amsdorf, Joachim Westphal, Caspar Aquila, Johann Aurifaber, Anton Otto and Matthæus Judex. These poured forth a stream of angry tracts against the opposite party, the Wittenbergers, who, however, defended themselves with a will, viz. against Melanchthon, Bugenhagen, George Major, and Paul Eber, and their friends elsewhere, such as the Provost of Magdeburg and Meissen, Prince George of Anhalt, Bernard Ziegler and Johann Pfeffinger of Leipsig, Justus Menius of Gotha, etc. Even the use of lights on the altar and of surplices were to these zealots “Popish abominations” and a sign of the abandoning of all that Luther had won; they even complained, though untruly, that the Wittenberg theologians no longer declared the Pope to be Antichrist.[1523] Bugenhagen, Luther’s right hand man at Wittenberg, had to hear himself charged by Flacius, Amsdorf and Gallus with having denied and falsified Luther’s doctrines and with teaching something not far short of Popery. These Adiaphorists, wrote Amsdorf, “in the name and under the semblance of the Word of God, seek to persuade us to worship the Antichrist[411] at Rome, the Whore of Babylon and the Beast on which she is seated (Apoc. xvii.).” Such dangerous men he brands as “belly servers” “who seek to make terms with the world.” He himself on the other hand was ready to meet the contempt of the world for the falling off in the number of Luther’s true followers, hence on the title-page of the new edition of Luther’s works, which he commenced when the quarrel was at its height (1555), he printed the consoling verses: “Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased the Father to give you a Kingdom” (Luke xii. 32), and “In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John xvi. 33).[1524] Towards the end of the Preface he consoles those who shared his way of looking at things, and, as Luther had done before, he alludes to the near end of the world, when everything would be righted.

At the time when the private judgment Luther had preached was thus bearing fruit we hear Melanchthon groaning: “You see how many teachers are fighting against us in our own Churches; every day new foes spring up, as it were, from the blood of the Titans; gladly would I leave these regions, nay, shake off my mortal coil, to escape the fury of such men.”[1525] Melanchthon too was accused of indirectly promoting Popery. An obstinate opponent of his was that very Johann Aurifaber who had been present at Luther’s death and who subsequently published the Table-Talk. Melanchthon included him in 1556 among the “unlearned fanatics, men filled with furious hate, lickspittles at the Court who seek to curry favour with the populace,” and with whom it was impossible to come to any understanding.[1526] Aurifaber, like many others of his party, was dismissed from his post as Court preacher at Weimar, and, subsequently, when pastor at Erfurt, was excommunicated on account of his teaching, particularly on original sin. His opponents he persisted in charging with Popery.

Against any relapse into Popery the Lutherans were well guarded since 1555, by the Religious Peace of Augsburg and its principle: “Cuius regio, illius et religio.” This, however,[412] produced no inward unity, rather the opposite. The war among the theologians on account of the “adiaphora” still went on in the Protestant camp. The hopes entertained of the Protestant Convention at Coswig (1556) suffered shipwreck owing to Melanchthon’s disinclination to come to terms. Nor did the Conference at Altenburg (1568) settle things. It was not until 1577-1580 that the formulas of Concord established a “modus vivendi” by leaving to each individual Church the decision about the “adiaphora.” Flacius himself was compelled to leave Wittenberg early in the controversy. He went to Magdeburg, but fell into disgrace on account of his tendency to insist on the Church’s independence and had to go into exile to Ratisbon, Antwerp, Frankfurt, Strasburg, wandering about from place to place until, at last, he, Luther’s most ardent champion, died in want and poverty at Frankfurt-on-the-Main (1575).

With the Synergistic controversy the name of Flacius is likewise very closely linked.

Here, however, the question on which minds were divided was a vital one. Many refused to accept Luther’s rigid doctrine that, in Justification, the Holy Ghost worked on man as on a senseless block. Johann Pfeffinger of Leipsig agreed with Melanchthon in assuming some sort of co-operation (“synergia”) of the human will. In this he had the Leipsig Interim on his side; eventually Victorinus Strigel of Jena, George Major, Paul Eber, Christian Lasius and others also embraced this view. Against them stood the zealots like Flacius and Amsdorf, the latter of whom boldly attacked Pfeffinger’s “De libertate voluntatis” and insisted on the unfreedom of the will. Certain of the theologians of Jena also distinguished themselves by their opposition to the Synergists.

Nor was Spangenberg doing an injustice to the Wittenberg professors when he charged them with having thrown Luther over.

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Cryptocalvinism

At the time when Flacianism was being suppressed by force, a trend of opinion known as Cryptocalvinism had the upper hand in the Saxon Electorate where it was causing grave troubles. Such was the name given to the gradual leavening of the pure Lutheran doctrine with elements derived from Calvinism. In other Protestant districts on German soil Calvinism took root openly, and either supplanted Luther’s teaching, or prevented its springing up. This was the case in the Palatinate, where the Elector Frederick III exerted his influence in favour of Calvinism with the help of the Calvinistic professors of Heidelberg Caspar Olevian and Zacharias Ursinus. The Elector himself told his son-in-law Johann Frederick of Saxony, that though for more than forty years the “pure doctrine” of the Evangel and the holy Word of God had been proclaimed, “little amendment of life had followed,” and, in “excessive eating and drinking, gambling, avarice, immorality, envy and hatred we almost outdo the Papists.”[1529] He also said that it was not merely the lack of morality in Lutheranism that prejudiced him against it, but that he had decided to introduce Calvinism into his land because he had discovered in Luther’s writings many errors and contradictions which he must remove, particularly in his views on the “bodily presence of Christ” in the Sacrament of the Altar.[1530]

At the Court at Dresden, however, the opposition to the Cryptocalvinism described above gradually gathered strength. Finally the Elector August, too, was won over, partly on political, partly on theological grounds. As early as 1573 August declared: “It would not take much to make him send all the rogues to the devil,”[1536] and, on another occasion that, “for the sake of three persons he would not expose his lands to the harm wrought by the Sacramentarians.”[1537] When at last an unmistakably Calvinistic[417] writing by Joachim Curæus on the Supper was published by a Leipzig printer, known to be well disposed to the Wittenberger party, the fury of the Elector broke loose and he declared at a meeting at Torgau “The venomous plant must now be torn up by the roots.”[1538] In his name the so-called Articles of Torgau denoting more or less a return to Luther’s doctrines were drawn up by an ecclesiastical court. All the theologians who refused to subscribe to them were to be “arrested.” On this the Leipzig theologians all signed the Articles, that they agreed in their hearts to all the things contained in Luther’s writings including his controversial writings against the Heavenly Prophets and his “Kurtz Bekentnis” on the Supper.[1539] Among the many Cryptocalvinists who submitted without any protest was Nicholas Selnecker, the editor of Luther’s Table-Talk. In matters of faith he followed the bidding of the secular authorities, and on one occasion, wrote to the Elector that “he would gladly crawl on hands and knees to Dresden only to escape the suspicion which had been cast on him.”[1540]

Among the Wittenbergers, on the other hand, four theologians refused their assent: “Luther’s books,” they said, “were not positive; sometimes he wrote one way, sometimes another; besides which there were dirty spots and objectionable things in his controversial writings.”[1541] Such was the opinion of Widebram, Pezel, Moller and, particularly, Caspar Cruciger. The latter, a personal friend of Luther’s, called the Articles of Torgau “a medley of all sorts of things which Luther himself, had he been alive, would not have signed.” His fate like that of the three others was removal from his office and banishment from the country.

Of the four former favourites at Court Stössel the Superintendent though he craved pardon was kept a prisoner until his death; the Court-preacher Schütz, in spite of his promise to hold his tongue, was shut up in prison for twelve years; the Privy Councillor Craco was flung into the filthiest dungeon of the Pleissenburg at Leipzig, tortured on the[418] rack for four hours and died with mangled limbs on a miserable layer of straw (March 16, 1575).[1542] Finally Peucer, professor of medicine and history, who, owing to his influence, had once controlled the University, because he declared he would not “abjure the doctrine of the Sacrament that had been rooted in his heart for thirty-three years and adopt Luther’s instead,” was left pining in a damp, dirty dungeon in the Pleissenburg and was constantly harried with injunctions “to desist from his devilish errors” and “not to fancy himself wiser and more learned than His Highness the Elector and his distinguished theologians, who had also searched into and pondered over this Article [of the Sacrament].”[1543] He continued to languish in prison, after the death of his wife, Magdalene, Melanchthon’s daughter, sorrowing over his motherless children, until after wellnigh twelve years of captivity he was released at the instance of a prince. “The behaviour of the Elector and Electress and their advisers towards him gives us a glimpse into an abyss of injustice, brutality and malice made all the more revolting by the hypocritical religious cant and pretended zeal for the Church under which they were disguised. In spite of all the attempts made of old as well as later to excuse the course of the so-called cryptocalvinistic controversies, it remains—especially the case of Peucer—one of the darkest pages in the annals of the Lutheran Church and of civilisation in the 16th Century.”[1544]

But the intolerance displayed by orthodoxy in that struggle had been taught it by Luther. As has been shown already, he had urged that, whoever advocated blasphemous articles, even if not guilty of sedition, should be put to death by the authorities; the sovereign must take care that “there is but one religion in each place”; above all, such was the opinion of his friends,—the sovereign should “put a Christian bit in the mouth of all the clergy.”[1545]

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The so-called formula of concord (1580)

Owing partly to the wish of the secular authorities for some clearer rule, partly to the sight of the confusion in doctrine and the bad effects of the quarrels on faith, there arose a widespread desire for greater unity based on some new and thoroughly Lutheran formulary.

The Confession of Augsburg and the Apologia were found insufficient; they contained no decisions on the countless controversies which had since sprung up. Thus it came about that “one German province and town after another attempted to satisfy its desire for unity of doctrine by means of a confession of faith of its own.… This in itself, in view of the dismemberment of Germany and the attitude of the Emperor towards the reformation, would necessarily have resulted in a splitting up of the Lutheran Church into countless sects unless some means was found of counteracting individualism and of uniting the Lutherans in one body.”[1546]

It was, however, the politicians, who, in their own interests, were the chief promoters of union.

Elector August of Saxony wishful of achieving the desired end “by means of a princely dictum” led the way in 1576 with the so-called Book of Torgau.

This work was drawn up by the theologians Jakob Andreæ, Martin Chemnitz, David Chytræus, Andreas Musculus and Wolfgang Körner. The Book of Torgau was subsequently revised by Caspar Selnecker and reissued under the title of the Book of Bergen (1577). It was hoped that it would become the theological statute-book for all the Protestant Churches; the Protestant Estates of the Empire were to accept it and it was proposed by the theologians that all the Lutheran preachers and school-teachers should be required to give their assent to it.[1547]

Selnecker supported this attempt by referring to the Council of Trent which had been successfully concluded in 1563. They ought, so he said, at last to draw up a “common body of doctrine” as an “evangelical counterblast to the damnable conciliabulum of Trent”; he adds frankly that this was essential, “in order to check the corruption of[420] morals amongst the Evangelical people which was growing worse and worse”; at the same time he wished to see “a united front against the idolatrous Popedom and its devilish satellites the Jesuits, with all their verminous following.”[1548]

Hopes of preserving Luther’s work by means of the new Formula had risen high since Frederick, the zealous Calvinistic Elector of the Palatinate, had been called away by death in Oct., 1576; his successor, the Elector Louis held Lutheran views and was determined to make a stand for Lutheranism.

In spite, however, of the latter’s patronage, and notwithstanding the efforts of the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, the Formula, as Louis of the Palatinate sorrowfully admitted, was not approved by even one-half of the Protestant Princes and townships. One of the strongest objectors was Landgrave William of Hesse. He did not hesitate to abuse Luther’s memory in the rudest language, and asserted that the latter had written “contradictory things.”[1549]

The Unionists, not satisfied with their partial success, published on June 25, 1580, the “Formula Concordiæ,” consisting of an “Epitome” and a “Solida declaratio.” This document occupies an important place in the history of Lutheranism.

The doctrines of original sin, unfreedom, justification, the Supper, the ubiquity of Christ and of the “communicatio idiomatum” were taken as they had been by Luther, though they are often stated with deliberate ambiguity. Thrusts at Melanchthon, not to speak of Calvin, are found more particularly in the “Declaratio.”

The permanent rift with Calvinism was as strongly emphasised, as that with the Papacy. One of the propositions taken from the Articles of Schmalkalden ran: “All[421] Christians ought to shun the Pope and his members and followers as the kingdom of Antichrist, and execrate it as Christ has commanded.”[1550]

The cement, however, which was to bind together the antagonistic Lutheran views and schools was not very durable. The fact that “Melanchthon’s memory had been completely blotted out,”[1551] or that the Pope had been condemned afresh, did not suffice to bring people together, nor did much good come of the smoothing over, toning down and evasions to which it had been necessary to have recourse in the work in order to arrive at a written basis of outward unity. Over and above all this it became known that the Protestant Estates were at liberty to add printed prefaces of their own to the Concord, in which they might, if they chose, set forth their own theological position, and thus interpret as they liked the text of the Concord, so long as they did not interfere with the text itself.[1552] It was also known that the father of the whole scheme, Jakob Andreæ, Inspector General of the churches of Saxony, had quite openly made of the acceptance of the Formula a pure formality and had told the Nurembergers who showed signs of antipathy that all that was required was their signature, and that this would not prevent their being and remaining of the same opinion as before.[1553]

The authors of the Concord, however, displayed such mutual distrust, nay hatred of each other, as greatly to obscure even the origin of the Concord and to raise but scant hopes of its future success. Andreæ bewailed Selnecker’s “diabolical tricks”; he was very well aware that the latter would be delighted were he (Andreæ) strung up on the gallows. Selnecker, on the other hand, complained loudly of Andreæ as a dishonest, egotistical man; he accused Andreæ of calling him: “a damned rascal, a good-for-nothing scoundrel, an arch-villain and a hellish thief.”[1554] Andreæ was equally severe in his censure of the church-councillors and theologians for the part they took in the matrimonial questions: “After a theologian had dealt with marriage cases two years in the Consistory,” he said, “he[422] would by that time be well fitted to be appointed keeper of a brothel.”[1555] We hear an echo of Luther in the coarse language his followers were in the habit of using against each other.

In spite of all this the Concord constitutes the greatest and most important step ever taken by Lutheranism to define its position. The year 1580 gave to the Lutheran Churches a certain definite status, though, among the theologians, the controversies continued to rage as before.

The Concord itself, the supposed new palladium, became a theological bone of contention. The following years were taken up with wild quarrels about the Formula of Concord. At Strasburg alone in three years the different parties hurled against each other approximately forty screeds, full of vulgar abuse, and the literary feuds had their aftermath in the streets in the shape of hand-to-hand scuffles between the students and the burghers. Even at Wittenberg the quarrels went on.

The Calvinistic Count Palatine, Johann Casimir, notorious for his bloody deeds on behalf of the French Huguenots, instructed one of his theologians, Zacharias Ursinus, to draw up the so-called “Neustadt Admonition” in which the adherents of the Concord were accused of “making an idol of Luther”; it was a mere farce when the Concord professed to subordinate his books to Holy Scripture, because in reality they were exalted into a rule of faith and treated as the standard of doctrine; all subscribers to the Augsburg Confession were wont without exception to appeal to these writings whatever their opinions were; as a matter of fact, owing to the errors, exaggerations and contradictions they contained it was possible to quote passages from Luther’s writings in support of almost anything. His controversial works, above all, had no claim to any authority, though it was to these that the followers of the Concord preferred to appeal. “Here, as his own followers must admit,” so the “Admonition” declares, “he had been carried away into excitement and passion which exceeded all bounds and had been guilty of assertions which contradicted his own earlier declarations, and which he himself had often been under pressure obliged to withdraw or modify.”[1556]

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There was, however, a large party which did not make an “idol” of Luther, but openly rejected his teaching. It was in this that Aurifaber saw a fulfilment of Luther’s prophecy of the coming extinction of his doctrine among his followers. As early as 1566 he said that the master had not been wrong in his idea, that “the Word of God had seldom persisted for more than forty years in one place.” “The holy man,” he goes on, “had frequently told the theologians and his table companions that, though his teaching had thus far grown and thriven, yet it would begin to dwindle and collapse when its course was finished. And he had declared that his doctrine had stood highest and been at its best at the Diet of Augsburg, anno 1530. But that now it would go downhill.” That, as stated above, the Word of God seldom persisted in one place for more than forty years he had proved “by many examples” taken from the times of the Judges, Kings and Prophets; even the teaching of Christ had not remained pure and free from error for longer “in the land of the Jews, in Greece, Asia and elsewhere.”[1557]

4. Mutual Influence of the Two Camps. Growing Strength of the Catholic Church

One cannot but recognise in the history of the 16th century the religious influence indirectly exerted on one another by Lutheranism and Catholicism, an influence which indeed proved advantageous to both.

Luther’s Churches

To begin with the phenomena grouped around the Formula of Concord we may say, that the movement towards greater religious unity, among the Lutherans was largely stimulated by the brilliant and to Luther’s adherents quite unexpected example of Catholic unity resulting from the religious struggle and particularly from the Council of Trent. Selnecker had insisted that Protestants must endeavour to produce an “evangelical counterblast” to Catholic theology and the Council.[1558] In the case of many others too, it was the harmony and united front of the Catholics[424] at the Council of Trent that served as an incentive to create a similar positive bond between their own Churches. Many once more mooted the question of a Protestant General Council, but others, as for instance Andreæ, pointed out how impossible this would be and what a danger it would involve of even greater dissensions. It was also of advantage to the Protestant writers on theology to have a clearly formulated statement of the Catholic doctrine set before them in the definitions of a General Council and explained in the “Roman Catechism.” Though Luther had distorted beyond recognition the Catholic doctrines he attacked, it was less possible than formerly to doubt—after so solemn a declaration—what the teaching of the despised Church was, or, with a good conscience, to deny how alien to her was the anti-Christian doctrine of which she had been accused. Catholic polemics, too, who were growing both in numbers and in strength, must necessarily have opened the eyes of many to the interior continuity, the firm foundation and the logical sequence of the Catholic propositions and, at least in the case of the learned and unprejudiced, led them to regret keenly the absence of clearness and logic on their own side. The latter holds good in particular of the untenability of the conciliatory Lutheran theology which sought to gloss over all the contradictions and which had given rise to the phantom of the Concordia.

“In the work of unifying Protestant theology,” Janssen justly writes, “no slight service was rendered by the Catholic controversialists and apologists and also and especially by the Tridentine Council and the Roman Catechism. Those who opposed to the hurly-burly and confusion of the new teaching the settled, uniform system of a theology, harmonious and consistent in all its parts, thereby made manifest to the dissentient theologians the defects and the glaring discords which Protestantism presented both in its formal and material principles. The sharply defined terminology and the wealth of speculative matter which they offered stood here also in very good stead.”[1559]

This thought also reminds us of the great store of spiritual treasure that Luther’s Churches carried away with them when they severed their connection with Mother Church.[425] Who can question that Luther bequeathed to his Churches much of the heritage of mysteries which Christianity brought to mankind? Faith in the Holy Trinity; in the Father as Source of all being; in the Eternal Son as the Redeemer and Mediator; in the Holy Spirit as the organ of sanctity; again, in the Incarnation, in Christ and His works, miracles and Resurrection; finally a firm belief in an eternal reward, in the again-rising of every man and the everlasting life of the just; in short all the consoling articles of the Apostles’ Creed must be included amongst the treasures which Luther not only took over from the olden Church but, in his own fashion, even defended with warmth and energy against those who differed from him.[1560]

On Catholic principles we may broadmindedly admit that countless well-meaning men since Luther’s day have found in the doctrine he preached the satisfaction of their religious cravings. Very many erred and still err “in good faith” and “with no stubbornness.”[1561] But wherever there is good faith and an honest conviction of having the best, there a religious life is possible. “This the Catholic Church does not deny when she claims to be the one ark of salvation. One would think that this had been repeated often enough to make any misapprehension impossible on the part of Protestants. As to how far this result is due to the Protestant Churches and how far to the Grace of God which instils into every willing heart peace and blessing, is no open question seeing that the Grace of God alone is the foundation of a truly religious life.”[1562]

But if, on the one hand, Lutheranism owes much to the ancient Church, on the other, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the revival in the Catholic Church during the 16th century was indirectly furthered by Luther and his work.

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Progress and Gains of Catholicism

There were Catholic contemporaries who pointed out that the going over to Luther of many who were members of the Church merely in name, and whose lives did not correspond with her demands, had a wholesome effect on the Church’s body. This held good of the monasteries in particular. In many places relief was felt and a revival of discipline became possible when those, who had entered the religious life from worldly motives, took their departure in order, as Luther himself lamented, to seek greater comfort in the bosom of the new Church. “God has purged His floor and separated the chaff from the wheat,” wrote the Cistercian Abbot, Wolfgang Mayer.[1563] Augustine Alveld, the Franciscan, portrayed with indignant words the evil lives of many apostate monks and declared with relief that: “Those who were of the same pack and lived among us have now, thanks be to God, all of them run away from their convents and institutions.”[1564] In lesser degree the same was true of the laity.

“Indirectly, though very much against his will, Luther helped to promote the regeneration of the Catholic Church by means of the Council of Trent.”[1565] It was his apostasy which made possible that gathering of the Bishops which hitherto external obstacles, shortsightedness, indolence and worldly aims had prevented.

Theological studies profited by the struggle with Protestantism. More attention was bestowed on the question of man’s natural and supernatural equipment; the dangers with which the excessive spread of Nominalism had threatened the doctrine of Grace were effectually circumvented, and the indispensable need of Grace for any work meritorious for heaven was more strongly emphasised. Thus, on the whole, there was a gain which we must not underrate, a new development of theological lore and a clearer formulation of dogma on threatened points similar to that which had resulted from the great controversies in Patristic times.

Under the Divine guidance the Church also more than made up for the numbers torn from her, by the rapid growth[427] of her missions in distant parts of the world, where the voyages of discovery and the conquest of the Western Continent at the dawn of the new century gave rise to unlooked-for new opportunities; this, too, at a time when Lutheranism and the other Protestant sects were still inclined to discountenance any universality and preferred to remain strictly local and national.

Above all it is indisputable that the Catholic Church, in order to emphasise her opposition to the so-called Evangelical freedom, devoted herself ever more assiduously to promoting a true inward life of religion among the people, the lower clergy and the bishops.

Whereas—at the close of the Middle Ages and dawn of the new era—the Papacy had been too eager in the pursuit of humanistic aims, had cultivated too exclusively merely human ideals of art and learning, and at the same time had become entangled in secular business and politics and was altogether too worldly, after Luther’s terrible attack on the formalism of the Church the Popes devoted themselves more and more to the real problems of the Kingdom of God, summoned to their side better advisers in the shape of Cardinals of strict morals, and introduced disciplinary new regulations in the spirit of a St. Charles Borromeo. The charge of shallowness brought against Catholic life was not—so far as it was justified—made in vain. From the new seminaries, from the sublime and saintly figures, who, in greater numbers than ever before, set an example of heroic virtue, and from the newly founded religious Orders such as the Theatines (1524), Capuchins (1528), Somaschans (1528), Barnabites (1530) and last but not least the Jesuits (1534), a new spirit breathed through the Church’s life and revived once more the practice of prayer, self-denial and neighbourly charity.

In this connection we need have no scruple in characterising the “Spiritual Exercises” of St. Ignatius Loyola as a phenomenon typical of the increasing religiousness of the age. Many, particularly amongst the influential representatives of the Church in Germany, under the guidance of such men as Pierre Favre, Peter Canisius and Claude Jaius, found in them a new wellspring of love for the Church and her aims.[1566]

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“To the Exercises, through which many of the great German nobles went,” so Pierre Favre wrote from Ratisbon, “almost all the good was due that was afterwards done in Germany.”[1567]

The struggle with the apostasy called forth everywhere an increase of intellectual activity on the part of the threatened Church. Not only was theology deepened, but all the cognate branches of learning were more sedulously cultivated. “I scarcely think,” wrote the Jesuit, Peter Canisius, to the General of his Order, speaking of religious writings, that “Our Order could undertake or carry out any work that would be more useful and more conducive to the general welfare of the Church. Fresh writings on religious questions make a great impression and are a source of immeasurable[429] comfort to the hard-pressed Catholics at a time when the writings of the false teachers are disseminated far and wide and cannot be exterminated.”[1568] Canisius was, however, of opinion that a simple exposition of the Catholic faith was more in place than polemics; he did not wish to see too much heat and human passion in the writings: “We do not heal the sick by such medicine but only make their case worse”;[1569] as he says in a memorandum: “In Germany there are countless numbers who err in religion, but they do not err from stubbornness or bitterness; they err after the manner of Germans who by nature are generally honest, very ready to accept everything that they, born and bred in the Lutheran heresies, have learnt, partly in schools, partly in churches, partly by the writings of false teachers.”[1570]

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In all these particulars, in the study of Holy Scripture, in the cultivation of historical and critical research among the clergy, in the use of the vernacular and of the art of printing for the instruction of the faithful, a real, though rather slow, change for the better took place. Had it not been for the misgivings felt even in the highest circles, and for a certain amount of prejudice against anything new, due to the fear of heresy, the gains doubtless would have been even greater and more quickly secured. In all this the Church owed much to Protestant example, for it was the innovators who involuntarily pointed out better methods of satisfying the spiritual needs of the new age, and a more effectual way of exerting a religious influence over the people.

Further examples of this are to be found in the sermons and in the catechism.

Clear-sighted Catholic contemporaries, like the worthy Dominican preacher and writer Johann Mensing, comparing the Bible preaching used and advocated by Luther with the empty, vapid sermons in vogue among many of the Catholic preachers were keenly conscious of what was lacking. At the close of a book written in 1532 Mensing exhorts the Catholic clergy to study Holy Writ and to make more use of it in the pulpit: “There are some now who say that Luther has driven the learned to Scripture. Would to God it were true that our well-beloved masters and brothers, the theologians, would turn their hearts wholly to Holy Scripture and leave out those other questions which serve no useful purpose. Some of them preach the laws and canons of heathen doctors and poets which are of small help to salvation, or they air their own opinions, and, where Scripture and Holy Church or the witness of the olden Doctors is not enough, reinforce them by incredible miracles, whereas, with the aid of Holy Scripture, they ought to endeavour to establish in men’s hearts the fear of God, faith, hope and charity, mildness and pity and such like.” If they learn something from the Lutherans in this then “we may hope that God has permitted Luther’s heresy for our good, it being to our profit that such heresy has arisen, and, as some declare, driven us to the Scriptures.” Mensing wonders, however, whether the dispersal of the monks, the plundering of the convents and lack of stipends for learned theologians[433] and preachers will not make study of any kind a difficult matter for a long while to come.[1582]

In the field of catechetical instruction it was clear that Luther and his followers had given their attention very skilfully to the young, the better to imbue the rising generation with their doctrines. At the time of Luther’s first appearance, as recent research has established, in many parts of Germany there was no regular, systematic religious instruction of the young by the clergy or in the schools, but the children were left to pick up what they could in the home or from the public sermons.[1583] There were indeed regulations in force for the priests and the schools, but they were not acted upon. About the very elementary home instruction, Cochlæus had words of commendation in 1533. As they were taken to the services and the sermons, the children had, he says, “sucked in” their religion “as it were with their mothers’ milk, and this is still the case to-day amongst Catholics.”[1584] In his sermons published in 1510 Gabriel Biel asks for no more than that the parents should impart to their children a knowledge of the things essential and prepare them for their first communion.[1585]

Luther, however, as our readers know, insisted that his preachers must concern themselves directly with the children.

He enjoined on them to preach from the pulpit at set times, even daily if necessary, on the most elementary points of doctrine, and again at home in the house to the children and servants in the mornings and evenings; if they wished to make Christians of them these points would have to be recited or read to them, “and this, not merely in such a way that they learn to say the words by heart, but that they be questioned on them one by one and made to say what each[434] means and how they understand it.”[1586] “Let no one think himself above giving such instruction to the children or look down upon it,” he wrote; “Christ, when He wished to train up men, had to become a man, hence, if we are to train up children, we must become children with them.” At Wittenberg and elsewhere from 1528 onwards four sermons a week for two weeks on end were preached on the Catechism four times a year. When, seeing the importance of the matter, Luther himself took the Catechism in hand he was so anxious to make it popular and practical, that he first published his “Smaller Catechism” (1529) in the form of sheets to hang upon the wall (this method had been used even before his day), and thus to act on the memory through the eye.

It would, however, be historically incorrect to describe Luther as the originator of the Catechism. Catholic Catechisms, even illustrated ones, had existed before Luther’s time, having been printed not only in Germany but also elsewhere. But, after the success attained by Luther’s Catechism, writers of Catholic Catechisms tried to profit by his example. The best of these Catholic works was the famous Catechism of Peter Canisius. It was first printed in Vienna in 1555 under the title “Summa doctrinæ christianæ”; eighteen years later it had already been translated into twelve different tongues.[1587] It is a work rich in thought and positive matter where almost every word is based on Holy Scripture or some utterance of the Fathers and other ecclesiastical authority. Abbreviated editions, the “Parvus Catechismus” (Viennæ, 1559), the “Institutiones” (1561), and particularly the short German one: “The Catechism or Sum of Christian Doctrine arranged in question and answer for the simple,” rendered it of greater use for the common people.[1588] “Canisius’s book,” writes a Protestant expert in pedagogics, “is a masterpiece of brevity, precision and erudition; in it one sees from beginning to end an[435] endeavour to excel in style even the great Protestant prototype” (viz. Luther’s Catechism).[1589]

Among the secular no less than among the regular clergy work for the souls of the children continued to win new friends. St. Ignatius of Loyola esteemed the teaching of the Catechism so highly that he expressly made it a duty incumbent on all members of his Order previous to their making their profession. Lainez, his companion and successor, when staying at Trent during the Council, instructed the people and the small folk in the Catechism. The Council itself impressed on the bishops in 1563 the duty of seeing that the children in each parish received religious instruction from the priest on Sundays and holidays.[1590]

The spread of the new religion had at first been followed by a lamentable decline in the educational system by no means confined to those regions torn away from the old faith.[1591] The Protestants were the first to recover their balance, partly owing to Luther’s vigorous appeals on behalf of the schools, partly thanks to the active co-operation of Melanchthon, who had great experience in this sphere and on whom his co-religionists in consequence bestowed the title of “Præceptor Germaniæ.” The methods followed by the Lutherans were borrowed principally, as indeed was only to be expected, from the treasure-house of the humanists. Protestant effort was largely crowned with success, especially since the old Catholic endowments of the Grammar Schools, and some part of the income of the sequestrated Church properties, were applied by the sovereigns and townships to the erection and maintenance of these new educational institutions.[1592]

The Catholics indeed were angry to see that these flourishing schools were at the same time hotbeds of the New Faith. They also lamented that, owing to the sad conditions of the times, they themselves had fallen astern of the other party in the matter of education. Their best leaders exhorted them to take a lesson from their opponents and thus reconquer the position the Catholic schools had lost. “With[436] the spread and development of the Jesuit schools a change came over the face of affairs.”[1593] Before this Archbishop Albert of Mayence had declared in 1541 that the Protestants were far ahead of Catholics in the matter of education and were drawing all the youth of Germany into their schools. In 1550 Julius Pflug, bishop of Naumburg-Zeitz, wrote to Julius III: “The Protestant schools public as well as private are in a flourishing condition; ours are crumbling into ruin; the Protestants attract men by large salaries, we do not do this.” Already in 1538 George Wicel had expressed his regret to Julius Pflug that so little was done for the schools among the Catholics as compared with the Protestants, and that already the want of men of learning was being felt.[1594]

To mention two other spheres in which Catholics received a stimulus from Luther’s example and work, we may call to mind the German translation of the Bible and the German hymns.

What was good in Luther’s translation of the Bible was very soon turned to account in Catholic circles. If Catholic writers made use of Luther’s translation in their own editions, they probably excused themselves by arguing that Luther himself was undoubtedly indebted to the Catholic translations of the past. In the same way Luther had made use of some of the old hymns of the Church, amended and popularised them and published them as his own. Catholic hymns in the German language there were already in plenty. But, after 1524, when the first Protestant hymn-books made their appearance, Catholics copied these efforts to collect and improve on the originals, and the first Catholic hymn-book brought out by Michael Vehe, Provost at Leipzig as early as 1537, contained fifty-two hymns with forty-seven tunes—though, strange to say, the old Catholic hymns were given in the new Protestant version.[1595] A much bigger hymn-book was that of Johann Leisentritt, a Dean (1567); it contained in the first edition 250 hymns and 147 tunes. In the following century hymns well known to be Protestant but of which the words were orthodox were incorporated without demur in the Catholic collections.

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The Middle Ages had been too neglectful of positive studies, particularly of history and languages, both of which are of such vast importance to theology. Since the dawn of humanism, however, a good beginning had been made, and the need of meeting the demands of the new age was recognised, as, in the domain of Biblical languages, the example of Faber Stapulensis and Jodocus Clichtoveus shows.[1596] The methods of the Protestants made further progress in this field imperative.

In criticism and church-history, where much good work had been done by the Protestants, Peter Canisius was one of the first to suggest that it would be advisable to devote more pains to the study and examination of the history of the Papacy, since, as he wrote, our “people seem to be still quite asleep” and unaware of all that had been done in the opposite camp. He was anxious for books that should be in no way inferior to those of the other side, and of which “the style must be in keeping with the present method and trend of scholarship.”[1597] It is not as yet enough known generally what great success crowned the labours of Onuphrius Panvinius (1529-1568) the Augustinian Roman antiquarian and historian, who was spurred on by the labours of the Protestants, though even more by the humanist traditions of his native country. Better known is the Oratorian, Cardinal Baronius (1538-1607), whose “Ecclesiastical Annals” unquestionably laid the foundation of a new era in the writing of Church history.[1598]

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Good and useful work was done by some of the Protestant scholars who edited the writings of the Fathers.

Thus Luther, for instance, encouraged Bugenhagen to edit certain works of St. Athanasius on the Trinity and himself wrote (1532) a Preface to them which is well worth reading.[1599] The Patristic labours subsequently undertaken by Catholics, even the great work of Marguérin de la Bigne,[1600] that forerunner of the French Maurists of the 17th century, had their raison d’être in the very ideas which Luther had set forth in his above-mentioned Preface to Bugenhagen’s work.

The worksomeness of the Catholic Church showed that people were beginning to understand the new era and to mould themselves to its requirements. “How can one deny,” asks Adolf Harnack, “that Catholicism, as soon as it pulled itself together for the counter-reformation … was for over a century in far closer touch with the new era than Luther’s Protestantism? Hence the many converts from Protestantism to Catholicism, particularly among learned Protestants, down to the days of Queen Christina of Sweden and even after.”[1601]

---

As for the ideas, however, which constituted the essence of the religious innovations the Catholic Church could not accept them short of being untrue to herself and betraying what had been committed to her custody. Whereas she gradually found a way to comply with all just demands for betterment and progress, she was nevertheless obliged relentlessly to close her ears to proposals for the subversion of her dogma and the alteration of her constitution.

She steadfastly refused to make her own the new and mistaken conception of the Church, of Bible interpretation, of faith, justification and good works. In spite of the heart-rending sight of the growing apostasy around her, she kept her eyes fixed on the promises of her Founder and remained true to her olden conception of the Church as a visible society controlled by Chief Pastors who are the vicars of Christ.

Ulrich Zasius of Freiburg in Baden, one of the greatest[439] lawyers and humanists of the 16th century, who had for a while dallied with some of the demands of the innovators, afterwards repudiated as follows any idea of going over to their side:

When passions were at their height voices such as these failed to secure a hearing. The deep chasm torn open by the wanton act of one man could no longer be bridged over; the bond of religion that had hitherto united the German nation had been rudely severed.

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5. Luther as described by the Olden “Orthodox” Lutherans

It is a study that will well repay us to follow through the history of Protestantism the changes that Luther’s description underwent. The awakened historical sense of the present day has already led more than one critic to undertake this task, with a crop of interesting results.[1603]

It would be a mistake to think that Luther’s memory survived anywhere among the orthodox Protestants with that freshness and distinctness which the statements of some of his old friends might lead us to expect. Of the actual personality of the man no clear picture had been transmitted. His words and deeds were commented on according to the outlook of the different schools, needless to say, always with a certain affection and admiration, but no one troubled to leave to posterity a living picture of his unique character as a whole.

Tracing the history of the Protestant representation of Luther down to the present day three periods may be distinguished, the so-called Orthodox one, the Pietistic and Freethinking one that followed, and the last hundred years. Orthodoxy, with its rigid attachment to the formularies of Faith, with the assistance of the State was for a long while able to suppress all contrary tendencies; towards the middle of the 18th century, however, the Pietists and, at the other extreme, a free-thinking party also made their appearance on the field.

Pietism was a reaction against the hard-and-fast doctrinal system of an earlier age, which, clinging desperately to Luther’s doctrine of works, tended to be neglectful of the Christian life and of the revival of morals. If Pietism rather exaggerated the moral side of religion, the so-called “Enlightenment” erred in another direction, setting out as it did to vindicate the rights of reason and, in so doing, making scant account of subordination to the truths of Divine revelation.

On the whole, Orthodoxy retained a supernaturalist view[441] of Luther, though it was apt to assume different colours according to the leanings of the several schools.

Pietism, in its conception of his person, frankly throws over the real Luther and seeks to “vindicate his spirit against the claims of his more orthodox adherents.”

The period of the enlightenment also presents a “sadly distorted” picture of Luther; it had “not the least comprehension of his fiery spirit” and, as was its wont, was “anxious to wipe out everything too distinctive.”[1604]

“Misunderstood and disfigured ‘beyond recognition,’ Luther steps over the threshold of the new era. But here again misfortune awaits him: ‘Sectarians, Anabaptists, Pietists, Democrats, Rationalists, Orthodox’ … all these set to work to improve upon the hero until they can stamp him as their own.”[1605] Finally, “the latest phase of theological development spells a revision of the whole idea and appreciation of Luther.” In the consciousness of having far outrun Luther on the road to a purely natural religion minus any faith, people are beginning to “emphasise more strongly the fact, that he was held captive in the bonds of mediæval feelings and ideas.”[1606]

“Who really knows him?” asked Adolf Harnack in 1883, “and who can be expected to know him? People are willing enough to worship him as what they wish him to be, as the upholder of their own ideals; but in their heart of hearts, they feel that, after all, he was really quite different. His character impresses all, but his convictions are left in the background, or else are worked up into new and more serviceable coin.”[1607]

Yet all these Protestant impressions of Luther, to be examined more in detail below, however they may differ have at least this much in common, that Luther must be acclaimed as the great opponent of the authority of the olden Church.

Maybe we shall come nearest to a correct picture of Luther if we combine the modern view of his being a “mediævalist” with the olden orthodox claim that he was a Prophet of God. Luther stood partly for the old supernaturalist Christianity,[442] partly for a new pseudo-supernaturalism; so far those who speak of his “mediævalism” are in the right. He himself, however, summed up his own character in that of the God-sent “Prophet of Germany,” and divinely appointed conqueror of Antichrist and the devil—a point which was rightly emphasised by his orthodox followers.

To go back now to the various descriptions of Luther. The Orthodox derived their idea of Luther from the oldest traditions. In these there was a breath of the supernaturalism in which Luther’s own view of himself was decked out, of the inbreathing of the Spirit, of his mysterious struggles with a power unseen, and of his divinely assured victory over the Roman Babylon.

At the present day one marvels to see how cheerfully and naïvely members of the old “orthodox” school were wont to magnify the founder of their denomination on the lines sketched out by Luther himself. All that interested them was the teacher, Luther the theologian; to them he appeared a sort of “professor of divinity of heroic dimensions.” In the century which followed his death it was the custom to exalt him “into the region of the marvellous and more-than-human.” So fond were they of “depicting his divine halo” that it became quite the usual thing to “set Luther side by side with the olden Prophets and Apostles.”

6. Luther as seen by the Pietists and Rationalists

Luther, as pictured to themselves by the Pietists, differed widely from the Luther of the orthodox. To Pietists like Spener, Luther’s actual doctrine—regarded by them as contradictory and wavering—appealed far less than certain personal mystic traits of his. To them the inward struggles of soul to which Luther ascribes his transition from despair into the peace of the Gospel, his remarks on piety and the interior life, his realisation of the universal priesthood, and the breathing of the Spirit were very dear. They were less enamoured of Luther’s views on faith, the outward Word, or the State-Government of the Church. At any rate, the Pietists wove from the material at their disposal a new Luther who was practically a counterpart of themselves. They preferred to dwell on his earlier years, when Luther, as Gottfried Arnold said in 1699 in his “Kirchenhistorie,” yet lived “in the Spirit,” and before he had ended “in the flesh” as he did later. They either said nothing of his worldlier side or else openly censured it as the fruit of his backsliding and later errors.

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“Thus quite a struggle raged around Luther’s person.”[1619]

Books appeared on the one side with such titles as “Lutherus Antipietista” and on the other: “Luther the precursor of Spener who faithfully followed in the footsteps of the former.” Count L. von Zinzendorf, with his Pietistic leanings, claimed to be a perfect counterpart of Luther; he wished, as he said in 1749, to be “what Luther had been in part, and what, according to the logical sequence from given premises, he should and ought to have been.” “The Luther who still lives and teaches in Count von Zinzendorf,”[446] was the title of a work by one of the latter’s followers. Things went so far that, in the controversies, it became necessary to ask: Which Luther do you mean, the earlier or the later? Nor was even this sufficient, for Consistorialrat J. A. Bengel of Württemberg (†1752) actually distinguished three Luthers: “the first and the last,” he said, “were all right, but the middle one, owing to the heat of controversy, was sometimes rather spoiled.”[1620]

Among the Protestant writers of the so-called “Enlightenment” we again find Luther under a different guise.

They disagreed with the Pietists’ renunciation both of the conclusions arrived at by reason and of worldly pleasures; in the latter respect they found in Luther a welcome advocate of enjoyment of the good things of the world. His advocacy of a cheerful addiction to earthly pleasures was summed up by them in the saying attributed to him: Who loves not women, wine and song, etc.[1621] On the other hand, by setting Luther on a rationalist plane, they blotted out his essential characteristics; they showed no comprehension for his faith though they were not disposed to minimise his labours for the amendment of religion and for the bringing of light out of darkness.

Gottfried Herder extols him, now as a church founder, now as a writer, and yet again as a great German. Luther’s doctrines seem to him of comparatively small account, but he is willing enough to depict him as a model of cheerful, “strong, free, wholesome and exalted sensibility.”[1622] He is unsparing in his criticism of Luther’s attacks on the Epistle of James and adds: “The sphere of the Spirit of God is wider than Luther’s field of vision.”[1623] In these circles critics were disposed to be bolder and more outspoken than among the orthodox and the Pietists; they also found other things to censure in Luther. Lessing condemns in the severest language his vanity and irascibility: “O God, what a terrible lesson to our pride,” he exclaims, “and how much do anger and revenge degrade even the best and holiest of men.”[1624] He nevertheless opines that Luther’s faults had been of service to him in his great task.

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Those few who really perused Luther’s writings marvelled at his extravagant ideas about his divine mission and struggles with the devil, about the end of the world and Antichrist. As a general rule, however, they conveniently skipped all that Luther said against human reason and had no eye for his energetic supernaturalism and his insistence on the bare letter of Scripture.[1625]

Among those infected with the rationalism of the age, antagonism to Catholicism undoubtedly helped to shape their view of Luther. They felt their whole outlook to be at variance with that of Catholicism. Under these circumstances it was natural that Luther should be depicted first and foremost as the liberator from the Papacy; in Luther they recognised, not without some show of reason, “the opponent of all outward authority, of everything Catholic in every domain of the life of the mind”[1626]—an argument, moreover, which occasionally they turned against the Lutheran “Church” itself.

Thus was the dictator of Wittenberg, such as the Orthodox knew him, transformed into a “champion of freedom”; the rationalists made his pen the vehicle of their own ideas. Luther became the “herald of the Enlightenment.” He began what others were to carry on later. “A little longer,” so one wrote in 1797, “and the heavenly light which Luther only saw dimly as in a dream will stream in upon us in all its brightness.”[1627]

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7. The Modern Picture of Luther

In the so-called Romantic School the picture of Luther tends to become as shifty as the character of the age.

The Romanticists, like the poets they were, were anxious, as in other fields so also in respect of Luther, to make a stand against the shallowness of the “Enlightenment.”

The religious spirit which had animated the Romanticists and had led them to cast yearning eyes at the Middle Ages was soon extinguished by the new criticism, historical and Biblical, and by the spread of infidelity.

The latest efforts to portray Luther

Luther had now to submit to being criticised by scholars who prided themselves on being dispassionate and were not slow to pass judgment on the characteristics, whether actual or imaginary, which they seemed to discover in him. What the Göttingen Church-historian, Gottlieb Jakob Planck, representing the so-called “Pragmatic” writers had begun—much to the disgust of the then Luther devotees[1634]—was pushed forward by many other Protestants. The lengths to which independent criticism has gone of recent years is emphasised in the Göttingen theologian, Paul de Lagarde. Typical of his remarks is the following: “That great scold Luther, who could see no further than the tips of his toes, by his demagogy threw Germany into barbarism and[450] dissension.”[1635] It was particularly with Luther’s “coarseness” and tendency to indulge in vulgar abuse that the critics were disposed to find fault. Some indeed were inclined to excuse him. Hardly any other writer, however, in seeking to exculpate Luther has used language so startling as that of Adolf Hausrath the Heidelberg scholar who, in his Life of Luther (1904), “thanks God for the barbarism of these polemics,” and goes so far as to say that, “since Luther’s road led to the goal it must have been the right one.”[1636]

Of the three comprehensive and most widely known biographies of Luther, that of Hausrath depicts Luther from the standpoint of a liberal divine. Here Luther almost ceases to be a theologian, or at any rate the theological problems amidst which Luther lived are scarcely even mentioned. On the other hand, in the biography by Theodore Kolde of Erlangen (2nd ed., 1893), the Wittenberg professor again figures as a teacher; his scholarly two-volume work is positive in tendency and regards Luther as a preacher of truth against the darkness of the Middle Ages—which, however, the author has misunderstood and fails to treat fairly. The third large modern work on Luther, also in two volumes, is by the late Julius Köstlin of Halle and Breslau; a new edition was published in 1903 with the collaboration of G. Kawerau; here the picture of Luther is a product of the so-called theology of compromise.[1637]

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[453]

Protestant theologians of more “positive” leanings have protested against the Rationalist views of those other theologians who hold that Luther banished dogma from his Christianity, and rediscovered Christianity “as a religion.”[1641] They declare that, not only did he not abrogate dogma but that he actually “revived and preserved” it. A religion without dogma was unthinkable to him.[1642]

It is true that these positive theologians who believe in the existence of Lutheran “dogmas” are at variance when it comes to stating clearly the actual dogmas which Luther “revived,” or in what his essential message consisted. Some insist above all on the ethical side; thanks to Luther there came a “deeper understanding for the idiosyncracies of the individual” than was the rule in mediæval Christianity.

Where such inveterate differences of opinion prevailed even the theology of conciliation was bound to fail. Reinhold Seeberg, the Berlin theologian, tried to promote some sort of settlement in his “Grundwahrheiten der christlichen Religion,” a work “framed on the lines of the olden Gospel and in the spirit of Paul and Luther which seeks to make the Christian standpoint understood in wider circles.” But his scheme met with a poor reception; the more orthodox looked at it “askance, and, on the other hand, the progressive party were only the more confirmed in their antagonism.”[1643]

Several Protestant theologians of late years have compared Luther to St. Paul. This, for instance, was also done by Walter Köhler of Zürich, a liberal theologian, who does not hesitate to reprehend in Luther whatever he finds amiss, and who also shows considerably more broad-mindedness than many others in his appreciation of the works of Catholics.

The Janus-Picture of the Mediæval and Modern Luther

Thanks to Denifle’s work Luther’s relation to the Middle Ages is now more clearly seen. The need for bestowing more attention than has hitherto been done on that side of Luther’s picture which belongs to the Middle Ages has been strongly insisted on by another liberal theologian, viz.[454] Ernst Troeltsch of Heidelberg. In Troeltsch’s writings Luther’s features become to a great extent mediæval. His views on grace and faith, his ethics, his Churches, the stress he lays on the Word—all this, in reality, is an echo of Catholic times. All that forms the very being of Luther is mediæval and the Protestant traits are merely the wrapping.[1644] With the belief in revelation, which he still retained, he had been unable to rise above the hedge of the mediæval way of thought.

From the recent studies on Luther we can now see more clearly than before that a “revision of the whole conception and appreciation of Luther” is imperative in his own household. But, in view of all the work already done, “is it not high time for us to expect an estimate of the Reformation as a whole which shall also be just to the whole Luther?” Stephan, who asks this question, answers it as follows: “We are still to-day in the midst of a new development that started more than a century since from the contrast presented by the different schools of thought.”[1647]

The “Religious” Reformer and the Hero of “Kultur”

Two other conceptions are in vogue at the present day, which are in part a reaction against the rather over-bold assertions sometimes made about Luther’s mediævalism. Some have insisted that Luther is to be taken as a “religious” teacher, without examining his actual doctrines too narrowly. To others he appears in the light of the founder of modern “Kultur,” i.e. of civilisation in its widest sense. Neither of these ideas can boast of being very clear, nor have they met with any great success.

The aim of other modern thinkers is to breathe new life into Luther by depicting him as the founder and the hero of modern “Kultur.” The conception of the author of Protestantism as the fount and origin of all present-day civilisation is certainly new and different from the earlier portraitures we have thus far considered. In this picture the “cultural” traits are put in so strong a light that his “religiousness” tends to vanish.

If, however, we examine those elements of the new “Kultur” which from the religious or moral standpoint are somewhat questionable (though, amongst Protestant unbelievers, writers are not wanting who are ready to justify them) we meet with many indications which lead us back to Luther. Yet, here again, on the other hand, there were other great and far-reaching causes at work which account for them, which have but little to do with Lutheranism. Such were, for instance, the English Deism which reached Germany by way of France and which helped to produce the infidelity of the Enlightenment; also the revolutionary ideas of 1789 on liberty, the Rights of Man and the lawfulness of rising in revolt, ideas to which the masses are still addicted; then again the luxury that was imported from abroad; above all the inclination of the human heart everywhere to sensuality, to egotism and to promote one’s own standing and temporal welfare even at the expense of one’s neighbour. These maladies to which human nature is prone have, by various causes, been sadly aggravated in modern times. How far Luther was responsible for some of these causes should not be difficult to determine after all that has been said above. At any rate his repudiation of authority in religious matters, his new ideas on faith and good works, and, again his whole system of subjectivism, were poor barriers[459] against the inrush of those elements hostile to faith in God, to Christianity and to ethics, which, in modern civilisation, have a place side by side with much that is good.

Nietzsche laid it down that Luther was the first to free the German people from Christianity by teaching them to be un-Roman and to say: Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.[1655] He was anxious to make Luther the patron of his newest brand of “Kultur.” But this new, antichristian and atheistic “Kultur” is largely repudiated in Protestant circles. Many, like Walter Köhler, refuse to admit that Luther was in any sense the father of modern freethought; how could he have been, asks Köhler, since he would not sanction any freedom of conscience, and did not even understand what such a thing was?[1656]

Hence Luther makes a rather unsatisfactory “Hero of Kultur.” To depict him in this light his relations with the more favourable side of “Kultur” have to be so much exaggerated and distorted that one almost expects him, the sworn opponent of “fool reason” and champion of the “enslaved will,” to leap from his grave in protest; on the other hand, it is quite impossible to claim Luther as an advocate of that side of modern “Kultur” which is antagonistic to religion and morality. Protestant authorities have also protested against any claim being made on his behalf that he at least abolished that “Kultur which was directed by the Church”; on the contrary, so they declare, the “Kultur” for which he stood was in many respects “still tied up to the one and only Church” and was quite “mediæval in its character.”[1657] Thus, here again, a sort of dual picture, painted partly in the gay colours of the present day, partly in the sombre tints of the past.

A “Political” Luther?—Conclusion

Over and above all the previous presentations of Luther another strange portrait has recently appeared, which finds admirers among lay historians and students of political history. Here Luther’s political traits are emphasised. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, in his much-read work[460] “Grundlagen des 19 Jahrhunderts,” insists on this view of Luther, starting from the assumption which is beyond question “that the separation from Rome for which Luther fought with such passion all his life was in itself the greatest political upheaval that could possibly occur.… However pitiful the later history of the Reformation may have been, still Luther’s deed was an undying one for this reason, that it rested on a firm political groundwork.” Chamberlain quite rightly makes much of Luther’s attempt to link his cause with that of the princes and with the German national sentiment.

Discouraged by the failure of all these attempts to portray Luther others, at present, are inclined to deny him any mark of distinction and, in particular, any creative power, and depict him simply as the sum, or “product, of existing historical forces.” They emphasise strongly the pre-existing factors and regard him less as a mover than as one moved. This view, however, has also been stigmatised by Protestants as “Mythological.” They object that even “the masses also have a certain share in the achievements of genius,” and that genius itself is but “a child of its time.”[1659]

“The literary portraits of Luther,” says the Protestant author of “Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung,” “are all more or less unlike the original. They are not in the strict sense of the word portraits at all but rather represent a type.… Every age has to some degree altered the traditional picture of the Reformer to make it fit its own ideals.” “The naïve way of idealising which credits the hero of history with our own ideals … is still at work even at the present day. If we cannot claim the whole Luther for ourselves, we can at least claim a bit of Luther.”

“In most of the popular Luther biographies of recent times,” the same author says, “all that is harsh and rude, violent and demagogic, rough and crude in the physiognomy of the Reformer has been obliterated.”[1660]

Adolf Harnack, also, seeks to discourage the practice of “hero painting”; he speaks unkindly of the common, “emotional pictures” of Luther as the reformer of civilisation which are fabricated somehow or other with the help of a select collection of artificial strokes. He adds: “The reformer himself would not recognise such a picture as his.” “Such a thing would be to him,” to quote an expression of Luther’s own, simply “a painted Luther.”[1661]

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To get as close as possible to the real Luther and not to present a painted or fictitious one has been our constant endeavour in the present work. We venture to hope that the claims of objective history may be recognised even in a field which trenches so closely on religious convictions. There is so much that is purely historical and may be judged quite apart from denominational considerations, so much neutral ground where it is merely a question of facts. To construct an opinion of one’s own based on the incontrovertible facts is open to everyone. We trust that the new discussions that seem called for for a further sifting of facts will be undertaken in all calm and in the dispassionate temper befitting the historian. Should these volumes serve as a stimulus in this direction, the author will feel that, by this alone, he has achieved something great.

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APPENDICES

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XLI—APPENDIX I
LUTHER’S WRITINGS AND THE EVENTS OF THE DAY ARRANGED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

[The list in the original was compiled by Peter Sinthern, S.J. We have retained it intact, save that here, as in the body of the work, we give the title of each of Luther’s German writings in the quaint spelling of the earliest “Urdruck” to which we had access. Note of the English Editor.]

Till 1516. Accession of Pope Leo X, 1513; of Kaiser Maximilian I, 1493; of Frederick, Elector of Saxony, 1486; of George, Duke of Saxony, 1500; of William IV, Duke of Bavaria, 1508; of Joachim I, Elector of Brandenburg, 1499; of Albert Archbishop of Mayence, 1514; of Scultetus, Bishop of Brandenburg, 1507.—In 1502 foundation of the University of Wittenberg. In 1503 death of Andreas Proles. Johann Lang, professor (since 1511) at Wittenberg goes (1515-16) back to Erfurt. In 1510 Eck is appointed professor at Ingolstadt;[466] Carlstadt wins his doctorate. In 1511, Amsdorf becomes a licentiate in theology. In 1513, Spalatin is appointed Court-chaplain and secretary to the Elector Frederick. In 1513-1514, the attitude of the peasants becomes threatening. In 1515, publication of the “Epistolæ obscurorum virorum” of Crotus Rubeanus, etc.—1483, Nov. 10, Birth of Martin Luther. In 1497, he is sent to Magdeburg to the Brothers of the Common Life. In 1498, he goes to Eisenach and, in 1501, to Erfurt. 1502, he becomes a Baccalaureus. In 1505, he is made a Master and enters the cloister (July 17). In 1506, he makes his vows; his first Mass (May 2?). He begins to study theology. In 1508, he goes to Wittenberg to study; his lectures on dialectics and ethics. In 1509, he becomes a Baccalaureus biblicus (March 9); late in the year he returns to Erfurt and becomes Sententiarius. At the end of 1510 he goes to Rome and early in 1511 returns to Germany; “deserts to Staupitz” and removes again to Wittenberg. In 1512, the Cologne Chapter; beginning of his friendship with Lang and Eberbach; his doctorate (Oct. 18); he succeeds Staupitz as professor of Holy Scripture. In 1514 he takes Reuchlin’s side. In 1515 is made District-Vicar at the Chapter of Gotha; his discourse “Against the Little Saints.” His opinions become fixed whilst engaged on his Exposition of Romans (1515-1516); echoes of the new doctrine in his sermons at Christmas.

1516. Hermann von Wied becomes Archbishop of Cologne; Erasmus’s “Colloquia”; his first edition of the Greek New Testament with a new Latin translation; Lang as Prior of Erfurt.—Luther’s first mention of Tauler, in his “Commentary on Romans”; his mystical letters to Spenlein and Leiffer (April 8, 15); his quarrel with the Erfurt monks (June 16); his Catholic sermon on Indulgences (July 27); his sermons against the “holy-by-works” (July-Aug.); Opposition to his new theology at[467] Wittenberg and Erfurt (Sept.); back to Augustine! (Oct. 19); Carlstadt’s Theses; Luther busy on Galatians and Titus, 1516-1517.

1517. Creation of 31 new Cardinals (July 1); ridicule of the German Humanists; Hutten settles in Germany; his edition of the “Donatio Constantini”; “our” Erasmus (March 1) publishes his paraphrases on the Epistles, and, later, on the Gospels; the old exegesis fares badly; “De planctu ecclesiæ” reprinted at Lyons; Tetzel visits Magdeburg, Halberstadt and (in Oct.) Berlin; Luther nails up his Latin Indulgence-Theses (Oct. 31).

1518. Philip II Landgrave of Hesse (March 31); Sickingen and his men desert the French for the Kaiser (May 16); Melanchthon goes to Wittenberg (Aug. 25).—Early in 1518 Archbishop Albert sends his report to Rome; Tetzel’s counter-theses (Jan. 18); Leo X directs the Augustinian superiors to take steps; the[468] Heidelberg Chapter and the Disputation in Luther’s favour; Lang displaces Luther as District-Vicar; charges formulated at Rome against Luther as a spreader of heretical opinions (middle of June); he is summoned to Rome (Aug. 7); the Augsburg trial (Oct.); Papal Bull to defend the doctrine of Indulgences (Nov. 9); Luther appeals to a General Council (Nov. 28); he discovers the secret of the certainty of salvation.

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1519. Death of Maximilian I, Charles V succeeds him (June 28); Ulrich becomes Duke of Würtemberg; the “Onus ecclesiæ” of B. Pirstinger of Chiemsee; death of Tetzel (Aug. 11); Capito becomes cathedral-preacher at Mayence; Zwingli at Zürich (Jan. 1); Oldecop visits Rome; Miltitz calls on Luther (Jan.); the Leipzig Disputations (June-July).

1520. Suleiman II begins his career. The war in Hungary. Coronation of Charles V at Aachen (Oct. 23). Hutten offers Luther his own and Sickingen’s protection; his “Vadiscus” and “Inspicientes” (April). Münzer at Zwickau (May 17); Urban Rhegius cathedral-preacher at Augsburg; Link succeeds Staupitz as General Vicar (Aug. 28). Eck goes to Rome; the first Consistory against Luther (Jan. 9). The Stolpen decree of the Bishop of Meissen (Jan. 24). Luther’s letter to Charles V (Aug. 30); his third and last epistle to Leo X (after Oct. 13). The Bull “Exsurge” and its condemnation of 41 theses (June 15), published in Germany by Eck (in Sept.) and burnt by Luther (Dec. 10). Luther’s open attack on the freedom of the will.

1521. First war between Charles V and François I (lasting till 1526). Henry VIII publishes his “Assertio.” Death of Leo X (Dec. 1). Fall of Belgrad. Bugenhagen comes to Wittenberg and Eberlin of Günzburg goes to Ulm. The Bull “Decet Rom. Pontif.” is issued (Jan. 3). The Diet of Worms; the “Gravanima”; Aleander’s discourse (Feb. 13). Luther is summoned to the Diet (March 6), his sermon at Erfurt (April 7), his condemnation by the Sorbonne (April 15), his arrival at Worms (April 16); he refuses to recant (April 18); his stay at the Wartburg (May 4, 1521-March 1, 1522); the sentence of outlawry, May 8 (May 26). Carlstadt assails clerical celibacy; the turmoil at Erfurt (July); the Mass is abolished among the Wittenberg Augustinians (Oct.). Luther busies himself with the translation of the Bible (Dec. 1521-1534); Melanchthon’s Commonplace-Book (Dec.). Luther’s secret visit to Wittenberg (Dec. 3-11). Carlstadt introduces a new rite for the Supper (Dec. 25). The Zwickau “prophets” come to Wittenberg.

1522. Hadrian VI (Pope from Jan. 9, 1522, to Sept. 14, 1523). Charles V goes to Spain, remaining there till 1529; the Diet of Nuremberg (Dec.); the Turkish question, the “Centum gravamina,” the fall of Rhodes (Dec. 25). Iconoclastic riot at Wittenberg (Jan.); the Wittenberg Augustinians abolish their rule about begging (Jan. 6); relics no longer to be exposed at the Collegiate Church (April 16). Jonas (Feb. 22) and Bugenhagen (Oct. 13) take wives. Luther returns from the Wartburg (March 1); his sermons against Carlstadt (March 9-16). Hartmuth von Cronberg’s missive; Luther returns to Erfurt (Oct.). The innovations forcibly introduced into Altenburg, Schwarzburg, Eilenburg, etc.

1523. Clement VII (Pope from Nov. 19, 1523, to Sept. 25, 1534). In Sweden, Gustavus Vasa (†1560). In Denmark, Frederick I (†1533). Edict of the Diet of Nuremberg (Feb. 8). The Lutherans begin to form parishes apart. The innovations introduced into Prussia. Luther has the Mass done away with at Wittenberg. Two Augustinians of Lutheran sympathies are burnt at Antwerp. Flight of Bora and the other Nimbschen nuns; Lang’s marriage. End of the German Augustinians. Luther’s illness. His interview with Carlstadt at Jena (Aug. 22). Link goes to Altenburg. The attempt to establish a new order of things at Leisnig. Luther drafts a constitution for the Churches of Bohemia.

1524. Diet of Nuremberg for the execution of the Edict of Worms. Amsdorf introduces the Reformation into Magdeburg. Münzer sacks the chapel at Malderbach near Eisleben. The Peasant War (beginning in June and lasting till the following year). League of the South-German Catholic Estates entered into at Ratisbon (July 6). Joh. Walther’s “Spiritual Song-book.” Münzer’s “Well-grounded plea” in his own defence (Sept.). Erasmus’s “Diatribe” (Sept.). Catholic worship is forbidden at Altenburg. Luther throws off the Augustinian habit (Dec.).

1525. Charles V is victorious near Pavia (Feb. 24). Prussia becomes a secular principality (April 10). Luther opposes the so-called fanatics, Carlstadt and the rest. The massacre at Weinsberg (April 16). Death of the Elector Frederick (May 5). Johann succeeds him on the Saxon throne and reigns till 1532. Münzer is vanquished near Frankenhausen (May 15). The[478] Erfurt Articles. League of the North German Catholic princes, meeting at Dessau (July 19). Link becomes preacher at Nuremberg (Aug.). The Mayence assembly (Nov.). Eck’s “Enchiridion.” Carlstadt’s humiliation. Luther’s marriage (June 13). He calls for the entire suppression of “idolatry” at Altenburg (July 20). The Reformation is violently carried through in the Saxon Electorate (Oct. 1). Interview with Schwenckfeld (Dec. 1). Nuremberg openly comes over to Luther’s side.

1526. The Diet of Augsburg demands (Jan. 9) an Œcumenical Council. Luther lays it down (Feb. 9) that, in each locality there must be but one doctrine. The new worship in the Saxon Electorate. The Electorate and Hesse enter into a league (at Gotha, and, later, at Torgau, May 2). Lambert of Avignon helps Philip of Hesse to introduce the innovations. The Kaiser threatened by the League of Cognac (May 22). The Diet of Spires (Aug. 27) tempers the Edict of Worms. The Battle of Mohacs (Aug. 29). Charles V politically estranged from the Pope. The “Hyperaspistes” of Erasmus.

1527. Second war between Charles V and François I (lasting till 1529). Henry the Eighth’s plans for a divorce. Ferdinand I is crowned at Prague as King of Bohemia (Feb. 24). Sack of Rome (May 6-14). Peace between Charles V and Clement VII (Nov.). Gustavus Vasa takes Luther’s side. The Visitation of the Saxon Electorate (lasting till 1529) and introduction of the office of Superintendent. Emser’s translation of the New Testament (Dec.). Melanchthon in his “Commonplace Book” modifies his teaching on Predestination. Luther falls ill; beginning of his worst “struggles of conscience.” Commencement of the controversy with Zwingli, etc., on the Supper. Wittenberg is invaded by the Plague.

1528. The Pack negotiations. Anabaptists are threatened with the death-penalty. Death of Albert Dürer (April 6) and Emser (Nov. 8). Cochlæus, Court-chaplain to Duke George. Cruciger and other friends come to Wittenberg. Letters of Hasenberg and von der Heyden. Bugenhagen’s work in Brunswick. Progress of the Visitation of the Saxon Electorate. The “catechetical sermons” at Wittenberg. Philip of Hesse’s breach of the peace and hostilities against Bamberg, Würzburg and Mayence. The Turks threaten new inroads.

1529. Peace of Barcelona (June 29). Peace of the Ladies (Cambrai, Aug. 5). Retreat of the Turks from Vienna (Oct. 14). Diet of Spires. “Protest” of the Lutheran Estates (April 19). They promise each other mutual support (April 22). Philip of Hesse and Melanchthon seek a union with the Zwinglians; the Marburg Conference (Oct. 1-4). Luther submits to the Upper German townships his so-called Schwabach Articles which are rejected by Strasburg and Ulm at the Schwabach Conference (Oct. 16). The same thing happens again at the Schmalkalden Conference (Nov. 29) and spoils all prospect of an arrangement with the South-Germans. Nuremberg alone stands true to the union.

1530. Charles V is crowned Emperor at Bologna (Feb. 24). Death of Willibald Pirkheimer and of Luther’s father, Hans (Feb.). The “Confessio tetrapolitana” of Strasburg, Constance, Lindau and Memmingen (drawn up by Bucer and Capito). The Torgau Articles (March). Diet of Augsburg (June 20-Nov. 19). Luther at the Coburg (April 23-Oct. 4). At Torgau he begins to favour the use of armed resistance to the Emperor (Oct.). The “Confessio Augustana” (June 25), the “Confutatio” and Melanchthon’s “Apologia” (Sept.). Bucer at the Coburg (Sept. 25). The warlike league planned by the Protesting Estates at the Schmalkalden Assembly (Dec. 22). Spread of the innovations in Hungary.

[485]

1531. Ferdinand becomes the German King (Jan. 5). League of Schmalkalden (Feb. 27). Bavaria takes the field against Ferdinand (24 Oct.). Archbishop Albert stays at Halle (till 1540). Melanchthon prepares for the press his “Confessio Aug.” and its “Apologia.” Luther suggests to Henry VIII that bigamy would be preferable to divorce (Sept. 3). England (1531-1545) is carried into schism by Henry VIII. Zwinglian iconoclastic riots in Swabia. Zwingli slain in Battle (Oct. 11) is succeeded by Bullinger. Luther’s revision of his translation of the Psalms; his memoranda on the means of stamping out the Anabaptist movement (end of Oct.).

1532. The Turkish invasion of Hungary and Austria (June); Suleiman II does not venture to attack Vienna. Elector Johann dies and is succeeded by Johann Frederick (till 1547). Calvin stays for a while in Geneva. The Nuremberg proposals for a religious truce (June 23) are rejected by the Catholic Estates at Ratisbon (July 2). Melanchthon thinks of leaving Wittenberg.

1533. Clement VII takes steps for the assembling of an Œcumenical Council (Jan.). The Schmalkaldeners refuse to hear of a Council (June). Henry VIII weds Anne Boleyn (Jan). Progress of Protestantism in the Duchy of Jülich-Cleves, in Anhalt-Köthen and Mecklenburg.

[487]

1534. Death of Clement VII (Sept. 25). Paul III (from Oct. 13, 1534-Nov. 10, 1549). Bull against Henry VIII (March 23). Act of Supremacy is passed by the English Parliament (Nov. 3). Ulrich of Würtemberg is reinstated by Philip of Hesse; his treaty with King Ferdinand signed at Baden (June 29). Reformation of Anhalt (March) of Würtemberg (May) of Augsburg (July) of Pomerania (Dec.). Carlstadt at Basle. Luther again attacks Erasmus, the latter’s “Purgatio adv. epistolam non sobriam Lutheri.” Death of Cardinal Cajetan (Aug. 9). Strasburg the centre of the Anabaptist movement. The Anabaptists’ orgies at Münster (Feb., 1534, to June 25, 1535). First edition of Calvin’s “Institutio.”

1535. Growth of the Schmalkalden League after the accession of Würtemberg. Death of Joachim I of Brandenburg (July 11). Joachim II his successor (†1571) a friend of Luther’s. Execution of Sir Thomas More. Vergerio’s interview with Luther (Nov. 7). Amended edition of Melanchthon’s Commonplace-Book. The ordination-oath introduced at Wittenberg. The Schmalkalden League is prolonged for ten years (Dec.). King Ferdinand to the Emperor on Germany’s downfall (Dec.).

1536. Third war between Charles V and François I (lasting till 1538). The Turkish peril. Denmark converted to Protestantism (Aug.). The “Consilium de emendanda ecclesia” drafted by Cardinals Pole, Contarini, Sadoleto and Caraffa. A General Council is summoned (June 2) to meet at Mantua in 1537. Death of Erasmus (July 12). Luther makes advances to Henry VIII and admits the lawfulness of his divorce. Articles are drafted to the object of inducing the King of England to make common cause with the German Reformers. The Articles are thrown over by Henry. The Wittenberg Concord (May). Luther endeavours to win over Augsburg, Ulm and the Swiss. Bucer labours for a union. Synods held by the Swiss at Basle and Bern (Sept., Nov.). Memoranda of the Wittenberg theologians regarding the Council (Aug.). Bull for the bettering of the City of Rome and the Papal Court (Sept. 23). Calvin begins his work at Geneva.

[489]

1537. Ferdinand’s defeat in Slavonia. Paul the Third’s Bull on the Turkish question (July 14). Bugenhagen helps in the conversion of Denmark to Protestantism. Luther’s so-called Schmalkalden Articles sent by him to the Elector (Jan. 3). The Schmalkalden Meeting (Feb.). Luther is taken ill and returns home. The Princes decide to have nothing to do with the Council. They accept the Augsburg Confession and the “Apologia.” The Schmalkaldeners call on the King of France for help (March 5). Melanchthon’s “De potestate papæ.” Luther returns sound to Wittenberg (March 14). Cordatus opposes Melanchthon. The cleavage between Luther and Melanchthon is carefully veiled. On Oct. 8 the Council is summoned to meet at Vicenza on May 1, 1538. Efforts of Bucer and others to promote a Protestant Council. Luther’s spiritual indisposition.

1538. The Truce of Nice between the Kaiser and François I (June 15). Luther in conflict with the Antinomianism of Agricola (1537-1540). His quarrels with Lemnius, Schenk and Joh. von Metzsch. His antagonism to Albert of Mayence. The assembly of the Protestants at Brunswick (April 8). The Schmalkaldeners enter into a league with Christian III of Denmark (April 9). They send missions to the Kings of France and England (Aug., Oct.). The strength of the League in Germany increases the danger of a religious war. The Kaiser (aided by his vice-chancellor Held) succeeds in inducing the Catholic princes to form the so-called Holy Alliance at Nuremberg (June 10). Calvin is banished from Geneva.

[491]

1539. Death of Duke George (April 17). Apostasy of Joachim II. The Duchy of Saxony, the Electorate of Brandenburg, and Livonia become Protestant. Memorandum of Luther and Melanchthon to Elector Johann Frederick, in favour of armed resistance. The Frankfurt meeting of the Protestants (April 19); their decision not to appeal as yet to force and to promote a simple conference rather than a Council; a new mission dispatched to England (April 29). The Protestant Visitation of the Duchy of Saxony. Luther and his friends again at work (1539-1541) revising the German Bible. The Consistories established in the Saxon Electorate. The Hessian “Order of Church-Discipline.” In England, dissolution of the Monasteries. Luther’s disputation on the “Papal Werewolf” (May 9). He sanctions the Bigamy of Philip II (Nov. 10).

1540. Death of Duke William IV of Bavaria. The Jesuits approved by the Pope (Sept. 27); Pierre Favre in Germany. Philip II of Hesse weds his second wife in Melanchthon’s presence (March 4). Luther at the Conference of Eisenach (July 10). Melanchthon’s “miraculous” cure at Weimar; the “Confessio variata.” Meeting at Schmalkalden (March); Catholic worship not to be tolerated. Persecution of Schwenckfeld by the Lutherans. Religious conferences at Hagenau (June) and Worms (Nov. 25-Jan.). Agricola goes to Berlin to the Elector of Brandenburg[492] (Sept.). Morone the Papal Legate complains of the apathy of the German Bishops.

1541. The Turks secure their footing in Hungary. Naumburg given over to the Protestants; the Bishop-Elect, Julius von Pflug shut out from his See by the Saxon Elector (Jan.). The Archbishop of Cologne, Hermann von Wied is won over to Protestantism. Accession of Maurice of Saxony (†1553). Philip of Hesse comes to an understanding with Charles V. Jonas goes to Halle to convert it to Protestantism; Schenk at Leipzig. Death of Carlstadt (Dec. 24). Religious conferences of Worms (Jan.) and Ratisbon (April 27-May 22); Diet of Ratisbon and Ratisbon Interim. The Catholic spokesmen: Eck, Julius von Pflug and J. Gropper; the Protestant: Melanchthon, Bucer and Frederick Pistorius. Calvin in supreme power at Geneva (till 1564).

1542. Fourth War of Charles V with François I (lasting till 1544); Diet of Spires meets on Feb. 9 to vote supplies for the war against the Turks. The Elector and Duke of Saxony fall out over Wurzen (March); Luther’s mediation; his last will (Jan. 6). Amsdorf is “consecrated” Bishop of Naumburg (Jan. 20). A Bull dated May 22 summons the Council to assemble on Nov. 1[493] at Trent. The Schmalkaldeners are successful in their attack on the Duchy of Brunswick (July). Bucer goes to Bonn to the Elector Hermann von Wied (Dec.).

1543. Diet of Nuremberg (Feb.). The Protestants refuse to vote supplies for the Turkish War. The Emperor is victorious in his campaign against the Duke of Cleves though the latter is supported by the Elector of Saxony and by France (Aug., Sept.). The Bishop of Münster and Osnabrück connives at the introduction of Lutheranism into his diocese. Canisius the first German Jesuit (May 8). Death of Eck (Feb. 10). Schenk in Brandenburg; The Cologne Book of Reform drafted by Melanchthon and Bucer is severely handled by Luther.

[494]

1544. Peace of Crespy between the Kaiser and France (Sept. 18). Diet at Spires (beginning in Feb.). Concessions to the Protestants. The Abschied of June 10 postpones the religious controversy to a later Diet and “A free Christian Council within the German Nation.” The Pope’s protest to the Kaiser (Aug. 24). Luther again at daggers drawn with the lawyers (on the question of secret espousals). The people of Cologne denounce their Archbishop to the Pope (Oct. 9). The theses of the Louvain theologians against Luther (Nov. 6). The Council is yet again summoned (Nov. 19, to meet on March 15, 1545) to avert the schism and the inroads of the Turks.

1545. Diet of Worms. The Abschied hints at a religious conference and the imminent danger of a War of Religion. George, the Protestant Prince of Anhalt, is “consecrated as Evangelical Bishop” of Merseburg (Aug. 2). The “Wittenberg Reformation” (Jan.). The final edition of the German Bible. “Popery Pictured.” Luther goes in disgust to Leipzig (July, Aug.). Goes as arbiter to Mansfeld (Oct.). Duke Henry of Brunswick is taken prisoner by the Schmalkaldeners (Oct. 20). A final Bull of Dec. 4 convokes the Council to Trent for Dec. 13, where it is opened in the presence of 34 Fathers qualified to vote. The Schmalkaldeners’ meeting (Dec. 15) at Frankfurt to devise a counterblast. Death of Spalatin (Jan. 16) and of Albert of Mayence (Sept. 24).

1546. The Diet opens at Ratisbon (March 29) without the Schmalkalden Leaguers. Luther’s last journey to Mansfeld (Jan. 23). His death at Eisleben (Feb. 18) and burial at Wittenberg (Feb. 22).—Treaty between the Kaiser and King Ferdinand, and Duke William of Bavaria in view of the eventual war (June 7). The Kaiser also makes an alliance with the Pope (June 7) and comes to an agreement with Maurice of Saxony (June 19). Schärtlin as commander of the South German townships begins hostilities at Füssen (July 9). Outlawry of Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony and of Landgrave Philip of Hesse (July 20). The Schmalkalden War (ending in the Kaiser’s victory at Mühlberg, April 24, 1547).

[496]

XLII—APPENDIX II
ADDITIONS AND EMENDATIONS

[In the following Appendix we have ruthlessly excised all that seemed to us merely personal and to have no direct bearing on Luther. Many of the smaller emendations have already been incorporated in their proper place in the body of this translation. Note of the English Editor.]

1-2. Luther’s Visit to Rome

The Scala Santa: According to Paul Luther, when his father “was about to say the usual preces graduales in scala Lateranensi, there suddenly came into his mind the text of Habacuc ‘the just shall live by his faith,’ whereupon he refrained from his prayer.” As we pointed out in vol. i., p. 33, it is most unlikely that Luther should, at this time, have seen this text in such a light. Moreover, as it now turns out, Luther actually did perform the usual devotions at the Scala Santa. It is to G. Buchwald (“Zeitschr. f. Kirchengesch.,” 1911, p. 606 ff.) that we are indebted for a quotation from a yet unpublished sermon of Luther’s own, which shows that he conformed to the common usage and ascended the famous steps on his knees: “I climbed the stairs of Pilate, orabam quolibet gradu pater noster. Erat enim persuasio, qui sic oraret redimeret animam. Sed in fastigium veniens cogitabam: quis scit an sit verum? Non valet ista oratio, etc.”

As for the doubt expressed in the latter portion of the text, it seems at variance with Luther’s general credulity in those early days. On the other hand, it is by no means unlikely that the scepticism of the Renaissance suggested a doubt to Luther’s mind regarding this supposed trophy of Christ’s Passion.

The projected General Confession: In “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil (3, p. 169, n. 33), Luther says: “Causa profectionis meæ erat confessio, quam volebam a pueritia usque texere, et pietatem exercere. Erphordiæ talem confessionem bis habui. Sed homines indoctissimos Romæ inveni, qui me plus offendebant quam ædificabant” (cp. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” ed. Kroker, p. 414). In this text it is to be noted that Luther falsely makes out the main object of his journey to Rome to have been his proposed general confession, and his progress in piety. The truth is that he went there first and foremost for the business of his Order. That the general[497] confession was probably never made may be inferred from Luther’s use of the word “sed” in the above text (cp. vol. i., pp. 30-31).

Oldecop’s account of Luther’s petition to be secularised: (Against Kawerau, “Schriften d. Vereins f. Reformationsgesch.,” 1912). Though but little notice has hitherto been taken of Oldecop’s narrative, yet there is no solid ground for distrusting it. As we were careful to point out (vol. i., p. 36, n. 1), he was indeed wrong in saying that Luther had gone to Rome without his superiors’ authorisation, for the journey was at least authorised by the seven priories whose representative Luther was. Luther had, however, no authorisation to seek secularisation, nor was his mission countenanced by the minister-general of the Augustinians. This may have led Oldecop to suppose that his whole undertaking was unauthorised. Regarding Jacob, the Jew mentioned in Oldecop’s account, Kawerau (ib., p. 36) makes out a likely case for distinguishing him from his German homonym with whom (vol. i., p. 37, n. 1) we tentatively identified him.

The outcome for the Order of Luther’s visit to Rome: Under the title “Aus den Actis generalatus Ægidii Viterbiensis,” G. Kawerau has published in the “Zeitschr. f. Kirchengesch.” (1911, p. 603 ff.) a few short extracts from a MS. in the Royal Berlin Library. One of these seems to bear on Luther’s mission from the seven priories opposed to Staupitz: “MDXI. Jan. Appellare ex legibus Germani prohibentur. Ut res germanæ ad amorem et integram obedientiam redigerentur, Fr. Joh. Germanus ad vicarium missus est.” Hence Luther’s appeal was prohibited, nor had his mission the slightest support from Ægidius of Viterbo the minister-general. That, on the contrary, he was opposed to the movement then afoot against Staupitz, is also clear from the expression he uses on March 18, 1511, viz. that “obedience to the Order and its head” must be reintroduced into the German Congregation. At any earlier date (May 1, 1510) we are told that Staupitz himself had come to Rome “[Germanicæ] congregationis colla religionis iugo subiecturus.” His visit, however, had nothing to do with the matter of the seven priories, but concerned the general discipline of the Congregation.

3. Luther’s conception of “Observance” and his conflict with his brother friars

What we said of Luther’s early antagonism to the Observantines in his Order has been very diversely appreciated by Protestant experts. Kawerau and Scheel, for instance, are of opinion that no proof is forthcoming of the continuance of the conflict between Observantines and Conventuals. On the other hand, A. Harnack, K. A. Meissinger and W. Braun hold that the persistence of the conflict has been made out and that it really formed one of the starting-points of Luther’s new conception of faith. Modesty,[498] however, dictates a protest on our part against being considered the inventor of this explanation, for it had, even previously, been suggested by Protestant scholars (cp. vol. i., p. 200, n. 3), though they may not have used it to such purpose. Again, a word of warning must be uttered against the supposition that, for instance as late as 1515-1516, there was still in Luther’s Congregation a clear-cut division between those devoted to the “observance” and the others who inclined to “Conventualism.” Of such a schism we hear no more after the Cologne Chapter of 1512. Nevertheless, that the partisan spirit that had once led to the appeal of the seven priories still smouldered, so much at least seems obvious from those addresses and writings of Luther in which he trounces the Pharisaism of certain members of his Congregation and their attachment to their statutes, privileges and exemptions. It must not be lost to sight that the Congregation to which Luther belonged was in name and fact an “observantine” one, having been founded to promote the stricter observance of the Augustinian Rule; for this reason it was exempted from the jurisdiction of the German Provincial of the Order and placed directly under the Roman minister-general, whose representative in Germany was the Vicar.

Regarding the mediæval cleavage of several of the Orders into Observantines and Conventuals we must be on our guard against flying to the conclusion that all mere Conventuals were necessarily slack in the performance of their duties. This was by no means the case; in many localities the Franciscan Observantines, e.g. were scarcely more zealous than the Franciscan Conventuals, though the latter had at an early date mitigated their rule of poverty; much the same held good among the Dominicans, Servites and Carmelites. In the event, so far as the Augustinians are concerned, the Saxon Observantines, for all their “observance,” were among the first to fall before the storm let loose from Wittenberg, whereas the German Conventuals, under such worthy provincials as Träger and Hoffmeister, showed themselves better able to cope with the innovations. The Dominican Conventuals under a Vicar like Johann Faber also furnished several protagonists of the faith.

---

In view of the doubts raised in certain quarters we shall now submit to a closer scrutiny Luther’s utterances on the question of the “observance.”

On one occasion Luther complains of those who made so small account of obedience, though this virtue was the very soul of good works:

Obedience is something which cannot be dispensed (non eximibilis, “Werke,” Weim. ed., 3, p. 155; O. Scheel, “Dokumente[499] zu Luthers Entwicklung,” 1911, p. 74 f.; above, vol. i., p. 68 f.). Truth, so Luther argues, hides its face from the unwise and the particularist:

In the former text he was speaking of “all Observantines,” here he speaks of “ours,” presumably, of the more zealous Augustinians. These “observantes” are the same opponents whom he goes on to describe as “superbi in sanctitate et observantia, qui destruunt humilitatem et obedientiam.” The real meaning here of the words “observantia” and “observare” can scarcely escape the reader, particularly when Luther couples this “observance” with disobedience to superiors. Thus he says:

“Observantia” means of course outward practices, but there can be little doubt that the word is here used in the more exclusive sense defined in the text first quoted. Thus he denounces those who defend their own “traditiones et leges,” which “usque hodie statuere conantur”; those who busy themselves about ceremonies and the “vanitas observantiæ exterioris”; he several times repeats the “usque hodie,” as though to show that the practices he had in view were present ones. (Cp. Weim. ed., 3, p. 61.)

It must be borne in mind that Luther delivered his Lectures on the Psalms (in which most of the texts in question are found) to an audience composed in the main of young Augustinians sent by the various priories to prosecute their studies at Wittenberg. Some of these may well have brought with them some of those stricter ideas which the seven “Observantine” priories had once championed against Staupitz. To one, who, as Luther now was, was against such ideas, it was an easy matter, even though in itself wrong, to make the question one of obedience, by urging either that their exemption from the jurisdiction of the Provincial was irregular, or that Staupitz had now abandoned his one-time projects.

Luther charges the other faction, not only with disobedience, but also with pigheadedness, e.g. in refusing to conform to the usages of the other priories, and in laying such stress on their own customs and institutions.

Though what Luther here says might be applied to other religious Orders, yet it seems more natural to take it as referring chiefly to what was going on in his own.

Luther’s then Conception of Cloistral Life and Religious Mendicancy: Luther spoke very plainly about that part of the Rule which enjoined mendicancy; as Conventuals no less than Observantines were bound to observe this enactment it follows that Luther’s attack was directed, not so much against the Observantines as such, as against any attempt seriously to put in practice the Evangelical Counsels. Thus, in the passage quoted above (vol. i., p. 71) he says: “O mendicantes, mendicantes, mendicantes! At excusat forte quod elemosynas propter Deum recipitis et verbum Dei ac omnia gratis rependitis. Esto sane. Vos videritis.” (Weim. ed., 3, p. 425.) Here, it is true, he is speaking of the abuses to which the system led, yet he is also annoyed that their vow of poverty should be the motive of their preaching: “Horribilis furor et cæca miseria, quod nunc nonnisi ex necessitate evangelizamus.”

Now, though these hasty words were open to a perfectly sound interpretation, yet their effect must have been to arouse a certain contempt for their calling in the minds of the young men to whom they were spoken. At any rate Luther had then not yet lost his esteem for the religious life, particularly as an incentive to humility and general Godliness. (See vol. i., p. 218 f.)

It is scarcely necessary to say that the fact that, in 1518 (at Augsburg), Staupitz released Luther “from the observance” has nothing whatever to do with the question in hand. Luther says: “me absolvit ab observantia et regula ordinis.” (Weim. ed., of the Table-Talk, 1, p. 96.) All that his superior did was to dispense him from his obligation of carrying out outwardly the rule of the Order, e.g. from dressing as a monk, etc. Even had Luther been a Conventual he could still have spoken thus of his having been absolved from the “observance.” It may be that Staupitz, for his own freedom of action, also absolved Luther from his duty of obedience to him as Vicar. Even so, however, Luther remained an Augustinian, returned to his monastery, wrote on behalf of the vows, and, long after, still continued to wear the Augustinian habit.

---

One notice brought to light from the Weimar archives and published by Kawerau (loc. cit., p. 68) is of interest. It deals with the practices of the severer Observantine priories (about the year 1489) with which the laxer members were later to find fault. Among their practices was that of “not speaking at meal-time[501] but of listening to a reader, of fasting from All Hallows till Christmas (in addition to the other fasts), of singing Matins every night, of abstaining from food and drink outside of meal-time, and of holding a Chapter every Friday with public admission of shortcomings and imposition of penance.”

4. Attack upon the “Self-righteous”

In 1516 Luther presided at Bernhardi’s Disputation, “De viribus et voluntate hominis sine gratia.” (Above, vol. i., p. 310 f.) In the letter to Lang about it he says that Bernhardi had held the debate “motus oblatratorum lectionum mearum garritu.” Some opinions therein put forward had much scandalised the adherents of Gabriel Biel (“cum et mei [Gabrielistæ] vehementer hucusque mirentur”), but, at any rate, the Disputation had served its purpose (“ad obstruendum ora garrientium vel ad audiendum iudicium aliorum”). He goes on to speak of the offence his denial of the authenticity of the tract “De vera et falsa pænitentia”—hitherto ascribed to St. Augustine—had given at Wittenberg (“sane gravius offendi omnes”). Mathesius (above, vol. i., p. 304) also alludes to the opposition he encountered about this time among his brethren. At any rate a few months later Luther could triumphantly tell Lang:

Before this, the young Professor (at Christmas, 1515) had told his hearers, that, just as the Prophets, wise men and scribes had been persecuted, so he was being persecuted now:

The supposed “saints” he goes on to describe in their true character. What they were bent on persecuting was really Grace, viz. what he preaches under the figure of “Christ our mother-hen”:

A few pages further on, the new Lutheran teaching on Grace is clearly seen in its process of growth:

To the “vultures,” i.e. his opponents, he returns again in the same lectures. They build only on their “sapientia carnis” when they set out to gain what they consider to be virtue and the gifts of grace. (Weim. ed., 1, pp. 61, 62, 70.)

A trace of the antagonism within the Order is also found in the notes of the sermons preached in the summer of 1516. On July 6, Luther speaks of the greatest plague now rampant in the Church:

As we know, his theology was professedly the “theology of the cross.” As for his foes, lay, clerical or monastic, their outward works were but the lamb-skins concealing the wolves beneath:

On July 27 he speaks of the “darts” which the foes let fly from their ambush at those who are right of heart.

In another sermon preached on the same day, speaking of the Pharisee and the Publican, he says:

In this sentence, and elsewhere, stress should not be laid on the use of the first person plural, as it is merely a rhetorical embellishment. The Pharisee is the self-righteous man; he bears “idolum iustitiæ suæ in corde statutum”; he refuses to be accounted a sinner, hence:

[503]

This indeed, in itself, is all capable of a perfectly orthodox interpretation, not, however, if we take it in conjunction with all the circumstances. On Aug. 3, the preacher again inveighs against the “sensuales iustitiarii,” who hang on their works and observances: This is to remain

True piety on the other hand consisted in allowing oneself to be ridden by God. The man of God

The “holy-by-works” soil themselves with the seven deadly sins of the spirit. Hence, let us not befoul ourselves by making a rock of the “opera iustitiæ.” Let us leave that sort of thing to beginners to whom indeed we may teach

These words must have been addressed to men with some theological training, for, in this discourse, Luther dilates at some length on a text of Alexander of Hales; doubtless those present were members of his Order; but what then must we think of the teacher who thus proclaims a freedom from all the observances and traditional rules by which his fellow-monks were bound? Luther’s point of view was one, which, if adopted, spelt the end not only of the Observantines but even of Conventualism. Hence it is no wonder that it caused murmuring.

5. The collapse of the Augustinian Congregation

The fifth Council of the Lateran took measures against many abuses which had crept in among the mendicant Orders, particularly among the Hermits of St. Augustine. As we know, the German Congregation under Staupitz and with Luther as Rural Vicar was no better off than the other branches. It is from June 30, 1516, i.e. during the period of Luther’s “vicariate” that we find a curious note in the “Acta Generalatus Ægidii Viterbiensis.” (Above, p. 497.)

In thus doing the Minister-General’s intention, to judge by the few scraps his Acts contain, was to bring back his people “ad communem vitam.” No doubt too many dispensations had been given for the sake of making study easier, or for other reasons.[504] The reader may remember the incident (above, vol. i., p. 297, n. 1) of Gabriel Zwilling’s being sent to Erfurt and the words used by Luther in his letter to Lang. Zwilling, who, after leaving the Augustinians, became one of the Zwickau “Prophets” but afterwards accepted an appointment as Lutheran minister at Torgau, had joined the Augustinians in 1502 and matriculated at Wittenberg University in 1512; hence he had already been sixteen years an Augustinian at the time when Luther wrote that he had “not yet seen or learnt the rites and usages of the Order.” Does not this seem to prove that the Rule must have been greatly relaxed and that too many exceptions were allowed in the common way of life? Luther himself, as we know, had been dispensed in his student-days from attending Matins and had been assigned a serving-brother; this is proved by the manuscript notes of the Table-Talk made by Rörer. “(Staupitzius) absolvit eum a matutinis et addidit fratrem famulum.” (Kroker, “Archiv für Reformationsgesch.,” 1908, p. 370.) It has indeed been urged that Zwilling’s ignorance of the “rites” was due to the smallness of the Wittenberg monastery. But, as Luther wrote to Lang on Oct. 26, 1516, the house contained “twenty-two priests, twelve students, and, in all, forty-one persons.” (“Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 67). This was surely enough to allow of the carrying out of the “rites and usages of the Order.” Zwilling, moreover, was sent to Erfurt, not only to get a better insight into the ways of the Order, but, mainly, to learn Greek: “Ut et ipse et alii quam optime, i.e. christianiter, græcisent.”

6. The Tower Incident (vol. I, pp. 388-400)

To avoid giving unnecessary offence we did not unduly insist on the locality in which Luther professed to have received his chief revelation. To have suppressed all mention of the locality would, however, have been wrong seeing that the circumstance of place is here so closely bound up with the historicity of the event. We, however, confined ourselves to a bald statement and explanation of what is found in the sources, and chose the most discreet heading possible for the section in question. In spite of this, Adolf Harnack (“Theol. Literaturztng.,” 1911, p. 302), dealing with our first volume, informed his readers that, on this point, we had made our own “the olden fashion of vulgar Catholic polemics” and had made of the “locality a capital question,” no doubt in the hope that Catholic readers would take the matter very much as the olden Christians took Arius’s death in the closet. Needless to say, what Harnack wrote was repeated and aggravated by the lesser lights of German Protestantism. The truest remark, however, made by Harnack in this connection, is that, the actual “locality in which Luther first glimpsed this thought is of small importance,” and that, even had I made out my case, “what would it really matter?”

As to our authorities the chief one is Johann Schlaginhaufen’s notes of Luther’s Table-Talk in which the words are related as having been spoken some time between July and Sept., 1532.

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The forms in which Luther’s utterance has been handed down: The friends who, in 1532, either habitually or occasionally, attended at Luther’s parties and noted down his sayings were three in number, viz. Schlaginhaufen, Cordatus and Veit Dietrich. The (yet unpublished) notes of the last as given in the Nuremberg MS. contain nothing about this utterance. From Cordatus we have the version given below as No. III. But, according to Preger, the editor of Schlaginhaufen, Cordatus “at this time was no longer at Wittenberg”; if this be true, then what he says on the subject must have come to him at second hand, though, otherwise, his notes contain much valuable first-hand information. Nevertheless both Preger and Kroker, two experts on the Table-Talk, are at one in arguing that an attentive comparison of Cordatus’s notes with those of the other guests, proves that Cordatus not seldom fails to keep closely enough to Luther’s actual words and sometimes misses his real meaning, which is less so the case with Schlaginhaufen. As for Lauterbach, as Kawerau points out, he was not at that time a regular visitor at Luther’s house, though we several times hear of his being present at the Table-Talk. It is more than doubtful whether his version of the utterance in question (given below as IV) was taken down from Luther’s lips. Moreover his notes, as printed by Bindseil, often show traces of subsequent correction.

In Schlaginhaufen, on the other hand, we find throughout first-hand matter, the freshness, disorder, and even faulty grammar, showing how little it has been touched up by the collector’s hand. He was a personal friend of Luther’s, and, whilst awaiting a call to the ministry, stayed at the latter’s house from November, 1531, where he was always present at the evening repast. Luther was aware that he was taking notes of the conversations, and, on one occasion (Preger, p. 82) particularly requested him to put down something. He was comforted in his anxieties by Luther (above, vol. v., p. 327), nor, when he left Wittenberg at the end of 1532 to become minister at Zahna, did he break his friendly relations with Luther. He quitted Zahna in Dec., 1533, and took over the charge of Köthen.

The notes of Schlaginhaufen made public by Preger in 1888 are not in his own handwriting. The Munich codex (Clm. 943) used by Preger is rather the copy made by some unknown person about 1551, written with a hasty hand, and (as we were able to convince ourselves by personal inspection) by one, who, in places, could not quite decipher the original (now lost). There are, however, three other versions of Schlaginhaufen’s notes of the utterance under consideration: That of Khummer (mentioned above, vol. i., p. 396), that made in 1550 by George Steinhart, minister in the Chemnitz superintendency, and that of Rörer, which, thanks to E. Kroker the Leipzig city-librarian, we are now able to give. That of Steinhart is found bound up in a Munich codex entitled “Dicta et facta Lutheri et aliorum.” (Clm. 939, f., 10.) Steinhart evidently made diligent use of the papers left by Schlaginhaufen, Lauterbach and others. Generally speaking, his work is well done. Steinhart’s rendering of the utterance in[506] question agrees word for word with that of Khummer, though they both differ from the Munich copy published by Preger and show it to be lacking in some respects. Rörer’s text V, in many ways, stands by itself.

Khummer had fled from Austria on account of his Lutheran leanings and gone to Wittenberg, where he matriculated on May 11, 1529. He was then a fellow-student of Lauterbach. He is supposed to have been given by Luther (between 1541 and 1545) charge of the parish of Ortrand, where he still was in 1555 when the Visitors gave a good account of him. His collection, now in the Royal Dresden Library, contains a copy (not all in his own handwriting) made in 1554 from Lauterbach’s Diary (1538), and, further, in the second part, this time all in his own handwriting, copies of many things said by Luther at table. “We shall not be far wrong,” says Seidemann (p. x.), “if we surmise that Khummer obtained his version from Pirna [where Lauterbach had been superintendent since 1539].” Below we give his version as printed in Seidemann (p. 81, n.):

Luther’s words as they were heard by Schlaginhaufen:

I. Copies of Steinhart (1550) and Khummer (1554):

II. Anonymous Copy of (Preger) 1551:

“Hæc vocabula iustus et iustitia dei erant mihi fulmen in conscientia. Mox reddebar pavidus auditor. Iustus, ergo punit. Sed cum semel in hac turri speculabar de istis vocabulis Iustus ex fide vivit, iustitia dei, mox cogitaveram, [Steinhart: cogitabam] si vivere debemus iusti ex fide et iustitia dei debet esse ad salutem omni credenti, mox erigebatur mihi animus. Ergo iustitia dei est, quæ nos iustificat et salvat. Et facta sunt mihi hæc verba iucundiora, Dise khunst hat mir der heilig geist aüff diser cloaca aüff dem Thorm (ein)gegeben.”[1662]

“Hæc vocabula: iustus et iustitia erant mihi fulmen in conscientia. Mox reddebar pavidus auditis: Iustus—ergo puniet, Iustus ex fide vivit, Iustitia dei revelatur sine lege. Mox cogitabam, si vivere debemus ex fide et si iustitia dei debet esse ad salutem omni credenti, mox erigebatur mihi animus: ergo iustitia dei est, quo nos iustificat et salvat, et facta sunt mihi hæc verba iucundiora. Dise kunst hatt mir d[er] S[piritus] S[anctus] auf diss Cl. eingeben.”

Here the identical text of Khummer and Steinhart (I) supplies certain missing parts in text II, and, as it is the more understandable of the two, is more likely to represent the earlier form of Schlaginhaufen’s rendering. Thus in text II, line 1-2, the word “Dei” after “iustitia” is wrongly omitted; so also, the words “Sed cum semel in hac turri speculabar de istis vocabulis,” or others to that effect, are required to introduce the “mox cogitabam” a few lines below. Read alone the “Iustus ex fide,” as in II, is not intelligible. In both I and II there is, on the other[507] hand, an omission, viz. after the words “omni credenti” which III, IV and V seek to supply each in their own way. Here we shall not be far wrong in assuming the omission to have been the fault of the lost original of Schlaginhaufen of which they made use. The fact that No. I here refrains from completing the passage is in itself a testimony to its copyist’s integrity. Again, in the Steinhart-Khummer version, the final allusion in the German words at the end to the “Thorm” (tower) brings us back to the “turris” mentioned earlier. Now, what is noteworthy, is that, at the conclusion of this version which seems the better of the pair, the word “cloaca” is spelt out in full (as it also is below, in Rörer’s copy).

In II, however, we find only the abbreviation “Cl.” Now, in the MS. followed by the editor of text II, though we find a large number of abbreviations, they are merely the ones in use in those times. “Cl.,” however, is a most singular one, and, were it not explained by other texts, would be very difficult to understand. Why then is it used? It can hardly be merely from the desire to avoid using any word in the least offensive to innocent ears, for, elsewhere, in the same pages (e.g. in Preger’s edition, Nos. 364, 366, 375) the coarsest words are written out in full without the slightest scruple. Hence in this connection the copyist must have had a special reason to avoid spelling out so comparatively harmless a word.

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The remaining texts are those of Cordatus, Lauterbach and Rörer.

Cordatus was assigned too high a place by his modern editor, Wrampelmeyer (1885). He had, indeed, his merits, but, as Preger points out, an inspection of the many items he took from Schlaginhaufen shows him to have been careless and often mistaken. Moreover, he has wantonly altered the order of the utterances instead of retaining Schlaginhaufen’s chronological one. Those utterances which he had not heard himself (such as the one in question) have naturally suffered most at his hands. As for Lauterbach’s so-called “Colloquia” preserved at Gotha (ed. H. E. Bindseil), it also betrays signs of being a revision and rearrangement of matter collected together or heard personally by this most industrious of all the compilers of Luther’s sayings. Whether Lauterbach was actually present on the occasion in question cannot be told, but it seems scarcely likely that he was if we compare his account carefully with that of Schlaginhaufen. On Rörer’s connection with Schlaginhaufen, see Kroker, “Archiv für Reformationsgesch.,” 7, 1910, p. 56 ff.