"Luther," says Heine, "was not only the greatest, but also the most
thoroughly German, hero of our history." Carlyle says that "no more
valiant man, no mortal heart to be called _braver_, ever lived in that
Teutonic kindred, whose character is valor." Michelet calls him "the
Arminius of modern Germany." Twenty tributes to Luther's greatness might
be added, all more or less memorable; but these, from three very diverse
men, will suffice for our present purpose. Martin Luther _was_ a great
man. Whoever questions it must appeal to new definitions.
A great difference lay between the cold, saturnine Pope of Geneva and
the frank, exuberant hero of the German Reformation. Their doctrines
were similar; there was a likeness between their mistakes; but what
a diversity in their natures! Calvin was the perfect type of the
theological pedant--vain, meagre, and arid; while Luther had in him,
as Heine remarks, "something aboriginal"; and the world has, after all,
profited by "the God-like brutality of Brother Martin."
The nature of this great man was suited to his task. It required no
great intellectual power to see through the tricks of Papal priestcraft,
which had, indeed, been the jest of the educated and thoughtful for
generations. But it required gigantic courage to become the spokesman
of discontent, to attack an imposture which was supported by universal
popular credulity, by a well-nigh omnipotent Church, and by the
keen-edged, merciless swords of kings and emperors. Still more, it
required an indisputable elevation of nature to attack the imposture
where, as in the sale of indulgences, it threatened the very essence of
personal and social morality. Hundreds of persons may be hatching a
new truth in unknown concert, but when a battle for humanity has to be
fought, someone must begin, and begin decisively. Luther stepped out as
protagonist in the great struggle of his time; and Freethought is not
so barren in great names that it need envy Brother Martin his righteous
applause. Indeed, it seems to me that Freethinkers are in a position to
esteem Luther more justly than Christians. Seeing what was his task,
and how it demanded a stormy, impetuous nature, we can thank Luther for
accomplishing it, while recognising his great defects, his faults of
temper and the narrowness of his views; defects, I would add, which it
were unnecessary to dwell on if Protestants did not magnify them
into virtues, or if they did not illustrate the inherent vices of
Christianity itself.
Strong for his life-task, Luther was weak in other respects. Like Dr.
Johnson, there were strange depths in his character, but none in his
intellect. He emitted many flashes of genius in writing and talking, but
they all came from the heart, and chiefly from the domestic affections.
He broke away from the Papacy, but he only abandoned Catholicism so far
as it conflicted with the most obvious morality. He retained all its
capital superstitions. Mr. Froude puts the case very mildly when he says
that "Erasmus knew many things which it would have been well for Luther
to have known." Erasmus would not have called Copernicus "an old fool,"
or have answered him by appealing to Joshua. Erasmus would not have seen
a special providence in the most trifling accidents. Erasmus would not
have allowed devils to worry him. Above all, Erasmus would not have
pursued those who were heretics to _his_ doctrine with all the animosity
of a Papal bigot. Such differences induced Mr. Matthew Arnold to call
Luther a Philistine of genius; just as they led Goethe to say that
Luther threw back the intellectual progress of mankind for centuries.
Another poet, Shelley, seems to me to have hit the precise truth in his
"Ode to Liberty":
Luther caught thy wakening glance:
Like lightning from his leaden lance
Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance
In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay.
Shelley's epithet is perfect. Luther's lance was big and potent.
It wrought terrible havoc among the enemy. But it was _leaden_. It
overthrew, but it did not transfix.
This is not the place to relate how Luther played the Pope in his own
way; how he persecuted the Zwinglians because they went farther than
himself on the subject of the real presence; how he barked at the Swiss
reformers, how he pursued Andreas Bodenstein for a difference on infant
baptism; how he treated Münzer and the Anabaptists; how he hounded on
the nobles to suppress the peasant revolt and "stab, kill, and strangle
them without mercy"; or how he was for handing over to the executioner
all who denied a single article which rested on the Scripture or the
authority of the universal teaching of the Church. My purpose is to show
Luther's attitude towards the Devil, witches, apparitions, and all the
rest of that ghostly tribe; and in doing so I have no wish to indulge in
"the most small sneer" which Carlyle reprobates; although I do think
it a great pity that such a man as Luther should have been a slave to
superstitions which Erasmus would have met with a wholesome jest.
Neither Jews nor witches fared any the better for the Reformation, until
it had far outgrown the intention of its founders. Brother Martin hated
the Jews, thought many of them sorcerers, and praised the Duke of Saxony
for killing a Jew in testing a talisman. As for witches, he said,
"I would have no compassion on them--I would burn them all." Poor
creatures! Yet Luther was naturally compassionate. It was the fatal
superstition which steeled his heart. Still there are dainty sceptics
who tell us not to attack superstition. I point them to Martin Luther
burning witches.
Brother Martin lived in God's presence, but they were generally three,
for the Devil was seldom absent. His Satanic Majesty plagued the poor
Reformer's life till he wished himself safe in heaven. Sometimes
the fiend suggested impious doubts, and at ether times suicide. He
attributed his chronic vertigo to the Devil, because the physic he took
did him no good. So familiar did the Devil become that Luther, hearing
him walk overhead at night, would say "Oh, is it you?" and go to sleep
again. Once, when he was marrying-an aristocratic couple, the wedding
ring slipped out of his fingers at a critical moment. He was frightened,
but, recovering himself, he exclaimed, "Listen, Devil, it is not your
business, you are wasting your time." The famous scene in which Luther
threw an inkstand at the Devil is legendary, though Coleridge, Carlyle
and others have made it the theme of their eloquence; and the ink-stain
still shown on the wall at Wartburg is like the stain of Rizzio's blood
in Holyrood Palace.
Luther's own visions were largely due to dyspepsia and an active
imagination. He said that the Devil troubled him less at night when he
took a good "nightcap," which made him sleep soundly. He found that the
Devil could not stand music, being a sad and sombre personage; just as,
long before, music was found a sovereign recipe for the melancholia of
King Saul. But the surest specific was railing and derision. When Luther
called him names, or laughed at him, the Devil vanished in a huff.
Brother Martin was plain-spoken at the best of times, but on these
occasions he was too-downright for quotation. Michelet gives a choice
sample; but though the French language allows more licence than ours,
he is obliged to give but the first letter of one of Luther's vigorous
substantives. Brother Martin displayed a sly humor in one of his stories
about Satan. A possessed person was taken into a monastery, and
the devil in him said to the monks, "O my people, what have I
done?"--"_Popule meus, quid feci tibi?_"
According to Luther, fair and foul winds were caused by good and evil
spirits. He spoke of a terrible lake in Switzerland, haunted by the
Devil, and said there was a similar one in his own country. If a stone
was thrown into it, a frightful storm shook the whole locality. The
Devil made people idiots, cripples, blind, deaf and dumb; and Luther
declared that the doctors who treated such infirmities as natural had
a great deal to learn in demonology. One or two of his stories of
possession are extremely gruesome. With his own lusty love of life,
Luther could not understand suicide, so he attributed that also to the
Devil. Satan made the suicides think they were doing something else;
even praying, and thus he killed them. Brother Martin, indeed, sometimes
feared the Devil would twist his neck or press his skull into his
brains. Nor did he shrink from the darkest developments of this
superstition. He held that the Devil could assume the form of a man or
a woman, cohabit with human beings of the opposite sex, and become a
father or a mother. "Eight years ago," said Luther, "I saw and touched
myself at Dessau a child who had no parents, and was born of the Devil.
He was twelve years old, and shaped like an ordinary child. He did
nothing but eat, and ate as much as three peasants or threshers. When he
was touched he cried out like one possessed; if any unfortunate accident
happened in the house, he rejoiced and laughed; if, on the contrary, all
went well, he wept continually. I said to the princes of Anhalt, with
whom I then was: If I commanded here I would have that child thrown into
the Moldau, at the risk of being its murderer. But the Elector of Saxony
and the princes were not of my opinion."
Here is a case in which the Doctor of Divinity, though naturally a
kind man, is quite ready to take human life at the behest of a
devilish superstition, while the less fanatical laymen shrink from
such inhumanity. The only devil in this story is the devil of fearful
ignorance and misbelief in Brother Martin. He it was who needed the
exorcist, although the truth would have greatly surprised him. Carlyle
may use his snarling muscles at the "apothecary's apprentice" who is
able to give a scientific explanation of Luther's visions; but, after
all, the unfortunate persons whom Luther would have murdered by mistake
might be pardoned for preferring the apothecary's apprentice to the
Protestant Pope. The fact is, the doctrine of devils, of demoniacal
possession, of incubi and succubi, and of sorcery and witchcraft, was
not fostered by laymen so much as by the clergy. Lecky remarks that
"almost all the great works written in favor of the executions were
written by ecclesiastics," and Tylor asserts that "the guilt of thus
bringing down Europe intellectually and morally to the level of
negro Africa" lies mainly upon the Church, Protestant being as bad as
Catholic, for they vied in outraging and killing those who were doomed,
by the ghastliest of superstitions, to be "for life and death of all
creatures the most wretched." Eternal honor to Luther for the heroism
which sent him to Worms, and made him exclaim to his dissuaders: "I will
go if there are as many devils in Worms as there are tiles upon the
roofs of the houses." But eternal hatred and contempt for the Creed
which degraded heroes into Jack the Rippers. I say _the Creed_; for
Christianity cannot be exculpated. Witchcraft, possession, and sexual
intercourse between human and superhuman beings, are distinctly taught
in the Bible; and if there were no other indictment of Christianity, the
awful massacre and torture of millions of helpless women and children
would suffice to damn it everlastingly.