[1] See Latin translation by J. G. L. Kosegarten, _Alii Ispahenensis
Liber ... Arabice editur adjectaque translatione adnotationibusque
illustratus_ (Greifswald, 1840).
[2] See _Hyksos and Israelite Cities_, by W. M. Flinders Petrie and
J. Garrow Duncan, 1906 (double volume), Brit. Sch. of Arch.
[3] J. de Morgan, _Délégation en Perse_ (Paris, 1900), vol. i. pl.
viii. Nos. 8, 7 and 9.
[4] See "The Treasures of the Oxus," catalogue of the Franks Bequest
to the British Museum by Ormonde M. Dalton (London, 1905), pl; xxvi.
No. 190; see also J. R. Aspelin, "Les antiquités du nord," No. 608;
also for further references, Kathleen Schlesinger, "Precursors of the
Violin Family," pt. ii. of _The Instruments of the Orchestra_, pp.
407-408, and appendix B, pp. 492-493; and _Gazette archéologique_
(Paris, 1886), vol. xi. pl. x. and p. 70.
[5] By John Griffiths (London, 1896), vol. ii. pl. 105, cave I. 10,
e.
[6] _Syntagm. Music._ pt. ii., "Organographie" (Wolfenbüttel, 1618),
pp. 30 and 58-61.
LUTHARDT, CHRISTOPH ERNST (1823-1902), German Lutheran theologian, was
born at Maroldsweisach, Bavaria, on the 22nd of March 1823. He studied
theology at Erlangen and Berlin, and in 1856 became professor ordinarius
of systematic theology and New Testament exegesis at Leipzig. In 1865 he
was made a counsellor to the consistory, in 1871 canon of Meissen
cathedral, and in 1887 a privy councillor to the church. He died at
Leipzig on the 21st of September 1902. A strictly orthodox theologian,
and a clear writer, though not a very profound scholar, Luthardt became
widely appreciated as the author of apologetic lectures. These were
collected under the title _Apologie des Christentums_ (vol. i., 1864,
14th ed. 1896; vol. ii. 7th ed., 1901; vol. iii. 7th ed., 1898; vol. iv.
2nd ed., 1880), a work of which the first three volumes have been
translated into English. In 1868 he founded and edited the _Allgemeine
evang.-lutherische Kirchenzeitung_, with its supplement the
_Theologisches Litteraturblatt_, and in 1880 became editor of the
_Zeitschrift für kirchl. Wissenschaft und kirchl. Leben._
His other works include _Das Johanneische Evangelium ... erklärt_
(1852-1853; 2nd ed. in 2 vols., 1875-1876), _Offenbarung Johannis
erklärt_ (1861), _Lehre von den letzten Dingen_ (1861; 3rd ed. 1885);
_Kompendium der Dogmatik_ (1865; 9th ed., 1893), _Geschichte der
christlichen Ethik_ (2 vols., 1888-1893), _Gnade und Wahrheit_ (1874),
_Das Wort des Lebens_ (1877) and _Gnade und Frieden_ (1880). His
autobiography was published with the title _Erinnerungen aus
vergangenen Tagen_ (1889; 2nd ed., 1891).
LUTHER, MARTIN (1483-1546), the great German religious reformer, was
born at Eisleben on the 10th of November 1483. His father, Hans Luther
(Lyder, Luder, Ludher), a peasant from the township of Möhra in
Thuringia, after his marriage with Margarethe Ziegler, had settled in
Mansfeld, attracted by the prospects of work in the mines there. The
counts of Mansfeld, who, many years before, had started the mining
industry, made a practice of building and letting out for hire small
furnaces for smelting the ore. Hans Luther soon leased one, then three.
In 1491 he became one of the four elected members of the village council
(_vier Herren von der Gemeinde_); and we are told that the counts of
Mansfeld held him in esteem. The boy grew up amid the poor, coarse
surroundings of the German peasant life, imbibing its simple beliefs. He
was taught that the Emperor protected the poor people against the Turk,
that the Church was the "Pope's House," wherein the Bishop of Rome had
all the rights of the house-father. He shared the common superstitions
of the time and some of them never left him.
Young Martin went to the village school at Mansfeld; to a school at
Magdeburg kept by the Brethren of the Common Lot; then to the well-known
St George's school at Eisenach. At Magdeburg and Eisenach Luther was "a
poor student," i.e. a boy who was received into a hospice where he lived
rent-free, attended school without paying fees, and had the privilege of
begging for his bread at the house-doors of the town; in return for
which he sang as a chorister in the church to which the school was
attached. Luther was never a "wandering student"; his parents were too
careful of their child to permit him to lead the life of wandering
licence which marked these pests of medieval German scholastic life. At
Eisenach he attracted the notice of the wife of a wealthy merchant of
Eisenach, whom his biographers usually identify as Frau Cotta.
After three happy years at Eisenach, Luther entered the university of
Erfurt (1501), then the most famous in Germany. Hans Luther had been
prospering, and was more than ever resolved to make his son a lawyer.
Young Luther entered his name on the matriculation book in letters which
can still be read "Martinus Ludher ex Mansfelt," a free student, no
longer embarrassed by great poverty. In Luther's time Erfurt was the
intellectual centre of Germany and its students were exposed to a
variety of influences which could not fail to stimulate young men of
mental ability.
Its theology was, of course, scholastic, but of what was then called the
modern type, the Scotist; its philosophy was the nominalist system of
William of Occam, whose great disciple, Gabriel Biel (d. 1495), had been
one of its most famous professors; Nicholas de Lyra's (d. 1340) system
of biblical interpretation had been long taught there by a succession of
able teachers; Humanism had won an early entrance to the university; the
anti-clerical teaching of John of Wessel, who had himself taught at
Erfurt for fifteen years (1445-1460), had left its mark on the place and
was not forgotten. Hussite propagandists, even in Luther's time,
secretly visited the town and whispered among the students their
anti-clerical Christian socialism. Papal legates to Germany seldom
failed to visit the university and by their magnificence bore witness to
the majesty of the Roman church.
A study of the scholastic philosophy was then the preliminary training
for a course of law, and Luther worked so hard at the prescribed studies
that he had little leisure, he said, for classical learning. He attended
none of the Humanist lectures, but he read a good many of the Latin
authors and also learned a little Greek. He never was a member of the
Humanist circle; he was too much in earnest about religious questions
and of too practical a turn of mind. The young Humanists would have
gladly welcomed him into their select band. They dubbed him the
"philosopher," the "musician," recalled in after days his fine social
disposition, his skill in playing the lute, and his ready power in
debate. He took the various degrees in an unusually brief time. He was
bachelor in 1502 and master in 1505. His father, proud of his son's
steady application and success, sent him the costly present of a _Corpus
Juris_. He may have begun to study law. Suddenly he plunged into the
Erfurt Convent of the Augustinian Eremites and after due noviciate
became a monk.
The action was so unexpected that his contemporaries felt bound to give
all manner of explanations which have been woven into accounts which are
legendary. Nothing is known about the cause of the sudden plunge but
what Luther has himself revealed. He has told us that he entered the
monastery because he doubted of himself, and that his action was sudden
because he knew that his father would have disapproved of his intention.
The word "doubt" has made historians think of intellectual
difficulties--of the "theological scepticism" taught by Occam and Biel,
of the disintegrating criticism of Humanism. But there is no trace of
any theological difficulties in Luther's mind in the struggles which
sent him into the convent and distracted him there. He was driven to do
what he did by the pressure of a practical religious need, the desire to
save his soul. The fires of hell and the shades of purgatory, which are
the constant background of Dante's "Paradiso," were present to Luther
from childhood.
Luther was the greatest religious genius which the 16th century
produced, and the roots of the movement in which he was the central
figure must be sought for in the popular religious life of the last
decades of the 15th and opening decades of the 16th centuries--a field
which has been neglected by almost all his biographers. When it is
explored traces of at least five different types of religious sentiment
can be discovered. Pious parents, whether among the burghers or
peasants, seem to have taught their children a simple evangelical faith.
Martin Luther and thousands of children like him were trained at home to
know the creed, the ten commandments, the Lord's prayer, and such simple
hymns as _Ein Kindelein so lobelich_, _Nun bitten wir den Heiligen
Geist_ and _Crist ist erstanden_; and they were taught to believe that
God for Christ's sake freely pardons sin. They learned that simple faith
which Luther afterwards expounded in his _Small Catechism_ and called
the _Kinderlehre_. When lads trained like himself entered school and
college they came in contact with that religious revival which
characterized the last half of the 15th century. Fear seemed to brood
over the peoples of Western Europe. The plague devastated the badly
drained towns, new diseases spread death, the fear of the Turks was
permanent. All this went to feed revival, which, founded on fear,
refused to see in Jesus Christ anything but a stern judge, and made the
Virgin Mother and Anna the "grandmother" the intercessors; which found
consolation in pilgrimages from shrine to shrine; which believed in
crude miracles, and in the thought that God could be best served within
convent walls. Luther's mind was caught in this current of feeling. He
records how it was burnt into him by pictures which filled his boyish
imagination. Jesus in the painted window of Mansfeld church, stern of
face, sword in hand, sitting on a rainbow, coming to judge; an
altar-piece at Magdeburg, in which a ship with its crew was sailing on
to heaven, carrying no layman on board; the deeds of St Elizabeth
emblazoned on the window of St George's parish church at Eisenach; the
living pictures of a young nobleman who had turned monk to save his
soul, of a monk, the holiest man Luther had ever known, who was aged far
beyond his years by his maceration; and many others of the same kind.
Alongside this we can trace the growth of another religious movement of
a different kind. We can see a sturdy common-sense religion taking
possession of multitudes in Germany, which insisted that laymen might
rule in many departments supposed to belong exclusively to the clergy.
The _jus episcopale_ which Luther afterwards claimed for the secular
authorities had been practically exercised in Saxony and Brandenburg;
cities and districts had framed police regulations which set aside
ecclesiastical decrees about holidays and begging; the supervision of
charity was passing from the hands of the church into those of laymen;
and religious confraternities which did not take their guidance from the
clergy were increasing. Lastly, the medieval Brethren were engaged in
printing and distributing tracts, mystical, anti-clerical, sometimes
socialist. All these influences abounded as Luther was growing to
manhood and laid their marks upon him. It was the momentary power of the
second which drove him into the convent, and he selected the monastic
order which represented all that was best in the revival of the latter
half of the 15th century--the Augustinian Eremites.
In the convent Luther set himself to find salvation. The last word of
that Scotist theology which ruled at the close of the middle ages was
that man must work out his own salvation, and Luther tried to do so in
the most approved later medieval fashion by the strictest asceticism. He
fasted and scourged himself; he practised all the ordinary forms of
maceration and invented new ones, all to no purpose. His theological
studies, part of the convent education, told him that pardon could be
had through the Sacrament of Penance, and that the first part of the
sacrament was sorrow for sin. The older theology declared that such
sorrow must be based on love to God. Had he this love? God always
appeared to him as an implacable judge, threatening punishment for
breaking a law which it was impossible to keep. He confessed to himself
that he often hated this arbitrary Will which Scotist theology called
God. The later theology, taught in the convent by John of Palz and John
Nathin, said that sorrow might be based on a meaner motive provided the
Sacrament of Penance was continually resorted to. Luther wearied his
superiors with his attendance at the confessional. He was looked upon as
a young saint, and his reputation extended throughout the convents of
his order. The young saint felt himself to be no nearer the pardon of
God; he thought that he was "gallows-ripe." At last his superiors seemed
to discover his real difficulties. Partly by their help, partly by study
of the scriptures, he came to understand that God's pardon was to be won
by trusting to His promises. Thus after two years of indescribable
mental conflicts Luther found peace. The struggle marked him for life.
His victory gave him a sense of freedom, and the feeling that life was
given by God to be enjoyed. In all external things he remained
unchanged. He was a faithful son of the medieval church, with its
doctrines, ceremonies and usages.
Soon after he had attained inward peace, Luther was ordained. He
continued his studies in theology, devoting himself to the more
"experimental" portions of Augustine, Bernard and Gerson. He showed
himself a good man of business and was advanced in his order. In 1508 he
was sent with some other monks to Wittenberg to assist the small
university which had been opened there in 1502 by Frederick the Wise,
elector of Saxony. It was there that Luther began to preach, first in a
small chapel to the monks of his order; later taking the place of one of
the town's clergy who was in ill-health. From Wittenberg he was sent by
the chiefs of the German Augustinian Eremites to Rome on a mission
concerning the organization of the order. He went up with the feelings
of the medieval pilgrim rather than with the intoxication of the ardent
Humanist. On his return (1512) he was sent by Staupitz, his
vicar-general, to Erfurt to take the necessary steps for higher
graduation in theology, in order to succeed Staupitz himself as
professor of theology in Wittenberg. He graduated as Doctor of the Holy
Scripture, took the Wittenberg doctor's oath to defend the evangelical
truth vigorously (_viriliter_), became a member of the Wittenberg
Senate, and three weeks later succeeded Staupitz as professor of
theology.
From the first Luther's lectures in theology differed from those
ordinarily given at the time. He had no opinions on theological subjects
at variance with the theology taught at Erfurt and elsewhere. No one
attributed any heretical views to the young Wittenberg professor. He
differed from others because he looked at theology in a more practical
way. He thought it ought to be made useful to guide men to the grace of
God and to tell them how to persevere in a life of joyous obedience to
God and His commandments. His teaching was "experimental" from the
beginning. Besides he believed that he had been specially set apart to
lecture on the Holy Scriptures, and he began by commenting on the Psalms
and on the Epistles of St Paul. He never knew much Hebrew and was not
specially strong in Greek; so he used the Vulgate in his prelections. He
had a huge widely printed volume on his desk, and wrote the notes for
his lectures on the margins and between the lines. Some of the pages
survive. They contain in the germ the leading thoughts of what became
Lutheran theology. At first he expressed himself in the phrases common
to scholastic theology, when these were found to be inadequate in words
borrowed from the mystical writers of the 14th and 15th centuries, and
then in new phrases more appropriate to the circle of fresh thoughts.
Those new thoughts at first simply pushed aside the ordinary theology
taught in the schools without staying to criticize it. Gradually,
however, Luther began to find that there was some real opposition
between what he was teaching and the theology he had been taught in the
Erfurt convent. It appeared characteristically enough on the practical
and not on the speculative side of theology in a sermon on _Indulgences_
preached in July 1516. Once begun the breach widened, until Luther
could contrast "our theology" with what was taught at Erfurt, and by
September he began to write against the scholastic theology, to declare
that it was Pelagian at heart, that it repudiated the Augustinian
doctrines of grace, and neglected to teach the supreme value of that
faith "which throws itself upon God."
These lectures and the teaching they contained soon made a great
impression. Students began to flock to the small obscure university of
Wittenberg, and the elector grew proud of the teacher who was making his
university famous. It was at this interesting stage of his own religious
career that he felt himself compelled to stand forth in opposition to
what he believed to be a great religious scandal, and almost
unconsciously to become a Reformer.
Luther began his work as a Reformer by proposing to discuss the true
meaning of Indulgences. The occasion was an Indulgence proclaimed by
Pope Leo X., farmed by the archbishop of Mainz, and preached by John
Tetzel, a Dominican monk and a famed seller of Indulgences. Many of the
German princes had no great love for Indulgence sellers, and Frederick
of Saxony had prohibited Tetzel from entering his territories. But it
was easy to reach most parts of Electoral Saxony without actually
crossing the frontiers. The Red Cross of the Indulgence seller had been
set up at Zerbst and at Jüterbogk, and people had gone from Wittenberg
to buy the _Papal Tickets_. Luther believed that the sales were
injurious to the morals of the townsmen; he had heard reports of
Tetzel's sermons; he had become wrathful on reading the letter of
recommendation of the archbishop; and friends had urged him to
interfere. He protested with a characteristic combination of caution and
courage. The church of All Saints (the castle church) was closely
connected with the university of Wittenberg. Its doors were commonly
used for university proclamations. The Elector Frederick was a great
collector of relics and had stored them in his church. He had procured
an Indulgence for all who attended its services on All Saints' Day, and
crowds commonly gathered. Luther nailed ninety-five _theses_ on the
church door on that day, the 1st of November 1517, when the crowd could
see and read them.
The proceeding was strictly academic. The matter discussed, to judge by
the writings of theologians, was somewhat obscure; and Luther offered
his _theses_ as an attempt to make it clearer. No one was supposed to be
committed to every opinion he advanced in such a way. But the _theses_
posted somehow touched heart and conscience in a way unusual in the
common subjects of academic disputation. Every one wanted to read them.
The University Press could not supply copies fast enough. They were
translated into German, and were known throughout Germany in less than a
fortnight. Within a month they had been heard of all over western and
southern Europe. Luther himself was staggered at the way they were
received. He said he had never meant to determine, but to debate.
The _theses_ were singularly unlike what might have been expected from a
professor of theology. They made no attempt at theological definition,
no pretence at logical arrangement; they were anything but a brief
programme of reformation. They were simply ninety-five sledge-hammer
blows directed against the most flagrant ecclesiastical abuse of the
age. They were addressed to the "common" man and appealed to his common
sense of spiritual things.
The practice of offering, selling and buying Indulgences (see
INDULGENCE) was everywhere common in the beginning of the 16th century.
The beginnings go back more than a thousand years before the time of
Luther. In the earliest church life, when Christians fell into sin, they
were required to make public confession before the congregation, to
declare their sorrow, and to vow to perform certain acts which were
regarded as evidence of the sincerity of their repentance. When the
custom of public confession before the congregation had changed to
private confession to the clergy, it became the confessor's duty to
impose these satisfactions. It was thought only right that there should
be some uniformity in dealing with repentant sinners, and books
appeared giving lists of sins and what were supposed to be suitable
satisfactions. When the sins confessed were very heinous the
satisfactions were correspondingly severe and sometimes lasted over many
years. About the 7th century arose a custom of commuting or relaxing
these imposed satisfactions. A penance of several years fasting might be
commuted into saying so many prayers, or giving an arranged amount in
alms, or even into a money-fine. In the last case the analogy of the
Wergeld of the German tribal codes was commonly followed. The usage
generally took the form that any one who visited a church, to which the
Indulgence had been attached, on a day named, and gave a contribution to
its funds, had his penance shortened by one-seventh, one-third or
one-half, as might be arranged. This was the origin of Indulgences
properly so-called. They were always mitigations of satisfactions or
penances which had been imposed by the church as outward signs of inward
sorrow, tests of fitness for pardon, and the needful precedents of
absolution. Luther uttered no protest against Indulgences of this kind.
He held that what the church had imposed the church could remit.
This old and simple conception of Indulgences had been greatly altered
since the beginning of the 13th century. The institution of penance had
been raised to the dignity of a sacrament, and this had changed both the
place and the character of satisfactions. Under the older conception the
order had been Sorrow (_Contritio_), Confession, Satisfaction (or due
manifestation of sorrow in ways prescribed) and Absolution. Under the
newer theory the order was Sorrow, Confession, Absolution, Satisfaction,
and both satisfaction and sorrow took new meanings. It was held that
Absolution removed guilt and freed from eternal punishment, but that
something had to be done to free the penitent from temporal punishment
whether in this life or in purgatory. Satisfactions took the new meaning
of the temporal punishments due in this life and the substitute for the
pains of purgatory. The new thought of a treasury of merits (_thesaurus
meritorum_) introduced further changes. It was held that the good deeds
over and above what were needed for their own salvation by the living or
by the saints in heaven, together with the inexhaustible merits of
Christ, were all deposited in a treasury out of which they could be
taken by the pope and given by him to the faithful. They could be added
to the satisfactions actually done by penitents. Thus Satisfactions
became not merely signs of sorrow but actual merits, which freed men
from the need to undergo the temporal pains here and in purgatory which
their sins had rendered them liable to. By an Indulgence merits could be
transferred from the storehouse to those who required them. The change
made in the character of Sorrow made Indulgences all the more necessary
for the indifferent penitent. On the older theory Sorrow (_Contritio_)
had for its one basis love to God; but on the newer theory the
starting-point might be a less worthy king of sorrow (_Attritio_) which
it was held would be changed into the more worthy kind in the Sacrament
of Penance. The conclusion was naturally drawn that a process of
penitence which began with sorrow of the more unworthy kind needed a
larger amount of Satisfactions or penance than what began with
Contrition. Hence for the indifferent Christian, _Attrition_,
_Confession_ and _Indulgence_ became the three heads in the scheme of
the church of the later middle ages for his salvation. The one thing
which satisfied his conscience was the burdensome thing he had to do,
and that was to procure an Indulgence--a matter made increasingly easy
for him as time went on.
This doctrine of _Attrition_ had not the undivided support of the
theologians of the later medieval church; but it was taught by the
Scotists and was naturally a favourite theme with the sellers of
Indulgences. Nor were all theologians at one upon the whole theory of
Indulgences. The majority of the best theologians held that
Indulgences had nothing to do with the pardoning of guilt, but only
with freeing from temporal penalties in this life or in purgatory. But
the common people did not discriminate, and believed that when they
bought an Indulgence they were purchasing pardon from sin; and Luther
placed himself in the position of the ordinary Christian uninstructed
in the niceties of theological distinctions.
His _Ninety-five Theses_ made six different assertions about
Indulgences and their efficacy:--
i. An Indulgence is and can only be the remission of a merely
ecclesiastical penalty; the church can remit what the church has
imposed; it cannot remit what God has imposed.
ii. An Indulgence can never remit guilt; the pope himself cannot do
such a thing; God has kept that in His own hand.
iii. It cannot remit the divine punishment for sin; that also is in
the hands of God alone.
iv. It can have no efficacy for souls in Purgatory; penalties imposed
by the church can only refer to the living; death dissolves them; what
the pope can do for souls in Purgatory is by prayer, not by
jurisdiction or the power of the keys.
v. The Christian who has true repentance has already received pardon
from God altogether apart from an Indulgence, and does not need one;
Christ demands this true repentance from every one.
vi. The Treasury of Merits has never been properly defined; it is hard
to say what it is, and it is not properly understood by the people; it
cannot be the merits of Christ and of His saints, because these act of
themselves and quite apart from the intervention of the pope; it can
mean nothing more than that the pope, having the power of the keys,
can remit ecclesiastical penalties imposed by the church; the true
Treasure-house of merits is the Holy Ghost of the grace and glory of
God.
The unexpected effect of the _Theses_ was that the sale of Indulgences
began to decline rapidly, and the archbishop of Mainz, disappointed in
his hopes of revenue, sent a copy to Rome. The pope thinking that the
whole dispute was a monkish quarrel, contented himself with asking the
general of the Augustinian Eremites to keep his monks quiet. This was
not easy. Tetzel, in conjunction with a friend, Conrad Wimpina, had
published a set of counter-theses. John Mayr of Eck, a noted
controversialist and professor of theology in the university of
Ingolstadt, scented the Hussite heresy in the _Theses_, and denounced
them in a tract entitled _Obelisks_. Luther at once answered in his
_Asterisks_. A controversy raged in Germany. Meanwhile, at Rome,
Silvester Mazzolini of Prierio, a Dominican monk and Inquisitor, had
been studying the _Theses_, was profoundly dissatisfied with them, and
wrote a _Dialogue about the Power of the Pope, against the presumptuous
conclusions of Martin Luther_. This book reached Germany about the
middle of January 1518, and increased the tumult.
Luther's friends had been provokingly silent about the _Theses_; but in
April 1518, at the annual chapter of the Augustinian Eremites held at
Heidelberg, Luther heard his positions temperately discussed, and found
somewhat to his astonishment that his views were not acceptable to all
his fellow monks. On his return to Wittenberg he began an answer to his
opponents. He carefully considered his positions, found them
unassailable, and published his _Resolutions_, the most carefully
written of all his works. The book practically discarded all the ideas
and practices concerning Indulgences which had come into the medieval
church since the beginning of the 13th century, and all the ingenious
explanations of the scholastic theologians from Bonaventura and Thomas
Aquinas downwards. The effect of the controversy was a great decrease in
the sale of Indulgences in Germany, and the Papal Curia saw with alarm a
prolific source of revenue decaying. It was felt that Luther must be
silenced. He was accordingly summoned to Rome. To obey would have meant
death; to refuse in his own name would have been contumacy. But the
peremptory summons could be construed as an attack on the university of
Wittenberg, and both the elector of Saxony and the emperor Maximilian so
regarded it. The result was that Pope Leo cancelled the summons, and it
was arranged that Luther should appear before the papal Legate to the
German Diet, Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajedtan, at Augsburg. The
interview was not very successful. At its conclusion Luther wrote two
appeals--one from the pope ill-informed to the pope well-informed, and
the other to a General Council. True to his habit of taking the German
people into his confidence, he wrote an account of his interview with
the Legate, and published it under the title of the _Acta Augustana_.
The publication greatly increased the sympathy of almost all classes in
Germany for Luther. They saw in him a pious man, an esteemed professor,
who had done nothing but propose a discussion on the notoriously
intricate subject of Indulgences, peremptorily ordered to recant and to
remain silent. The elector Frederick shared the common feelings and
resolved to defend the man who had made his university so famous. His
action compelled the Roman Curia to pause. Germany was on the eve, it
was believed, of an election of a king of the Romans; it was possible
that an imperial election was not far distant; Frederick was too
important a personage to offend. So the condemnation by the
Cardinal-Legate was withdrawn for the time, and the pope resolved to
deal with the matter otherwise. He selected one of his chamberlains,
Charles von Miltitz, the elector's private agent at Rome, and
commissioned him to deal with the matter as he best could. Miltitz
received the "golden rose" to give to Frederick, and was furnished with
several letters in all of which the pope spoke of Luther as a "child of
the devil." His holiness had probably forgotten the fact when he
addressed Luther some months later as "his dear son."
When Miltitz arrived in Germany he discovered that the movement was much
more important than the Roman Curia had imagined. He had not to deal
with the opposition of a recalcitrant monk, but with the awakening of a
nation. He resolved to meet with Tetzel and with Luther privately before
he produced his credentials. Tetzel he could not see; the man was afraid
to leave his convent; but he had lengthy interviews with Luther in the
house of Spalatin the chaplain and private secretary of the elector
Frederick. There he disowned the sermons of the pardon-sellers, let it
be seen that he did not approve of the action of the Legate, and so
prevailed with Luther that the latter promised to write a submissive
letter to the pope, to exhort people to reverence the Roman See, to say
that Indulgences were useful to remit canonical penances, and to promise
to write no more on the matter unless he happened to be attacked. Luther
did all this. A reconciliation might have taken place had the Roman
Curia supported Miltitz. But the Curia did not support Miltitz, and
placed more faith in Eck, who was eager to extinguish Luther in a public
discussion.
Luther had been spending the time between his interview with the Legate
at Augsburg (Oct. 1518) and the Leipzig Disputation (June 1519) in
severe and disquieting studies. He had found that all his opponents had
pursued one line of argument: the power to issue an Indulgence is simply
one case of the universal papal jurisdiction; Indulgences are what the
pope proclaims them to be, and to attack them is to attack the power of
the pope; the pope represents the Roman church, which is actually the
universal church, and to oppose the pope is to defy the whole church of
Christ; whoever attacks such a long-established system as that of
Indulgences is a heretic. Such was the argument. Luther felt himself
confronted with the pope's absolute supremacy in all ecclesiastical
matters. It was a plea whose full force he felt. The papal supremacy was
one of his oldest inherited beliefs. He re-examined his convictions
about justifying faith and whether they did lead to his declarations
about Indulgences. He could come to no other conclusion. It then became
necessary to examine the papal claims. He set himself to study the
Decretals, and to his amazement and indignation he found that they were
full of frauds. It is hard to say whether the discovery brought him more
joy or more grief. His letters show him half-exultant and
half-terrified. While he was in this state of mind he received Eck's
challenge to dispute with him at Leipzig on the papal supremacy.
This Leipzig Disputation was perhaps the most important point in
Luther's career. He met Eck in June 1519. It soon appeared that the
intention of that practised debater was to force Luther into some
admission which would justify opponents in accusing him of holding the
opinions of Huss, who had been condemned by the great German Council of
Constance. In this he was eminently successful. Eck left Leipzig
triumphant, and Luther returned to Wittenberg much depressed. As usual
he wrote out and published an account of the Disputation, which was an
appeal to his fellow Germans. The result surpassed his expectations. The
Disputation made him see that his protest against the abuses of
Indulgences was no criticism of an excrescence on the medieval
ecclesiastical system, but an attack on its centre of existence. He saw
that he stood for the spiritual priesthood of all believers and that
medievalism in religion meant that man cannot approach God without a
priestly mediator. The people also saw his position and rallied round
him; and the Humanists discerned in him a champion against the old
intolerance against which they had been revolting in vain. Luther's
depression fled. Sermons, pamphlets, letters from his tireless pen
flooded the land, and Luther began to be the leader of a German revolt
against Rome.
The year 1520 saw the publication of his three most important works, all
written at a time when he was fully convinced that he had broken for
ever with Rome. They were, _On the Liberty of a Christian Man_, _An
Address to the Nobility of the German Nation_, and _On the Babylonian
Captivity of the Church of God_--the three primary treatises, as they
have been called.
Meanwhile at Rome the pope had entrusted Eck and Prierias with the
preparation of a bull (_Exurge Domine_) against Luther--a bull which
followed the line of Eck's charges at Leipzig. The reformer had been
expecting it ever since the Disputation at Leipzig, and had resolved to
answer it by one striking act which would impress the imagination of
every man. He posted up a notice inviting the Wittenberg students to
witness the burning of the bull (10th of December 1520). Rome had shot
its last ecclesiastical bolt. Nothing remained but an appeal to the
secular power, and this was at once prepared.
The emperor Maximilian had died suddenly (12th January 1519), and for
long Germany was disturbed with intrigues about the succession--the
papal policy being specially tortuous. The widely expressed desire for a
German emperor secured the unanimous election of Charles, the grandson
of Maximilian and the king of Spain. Never were a people more mistaken
and disappointed. The veins of Charles were full of German blood, but he
was his mother's son. It was the Spaniard, not the German, who faced
Luther at Worms.
Charles was crowned at Aachen, 23rd of October 1520, and opened his
first German diet at Worms, 22nd of January 1521. The pope had selected
two envoys to wait on the young emperor, one of them, Jerome Aleander,
being specially appointed to secure the outlawry of Luther. The agenda
of the diet contained many things seriously affecting all Germany, but
the one problem which every one was thinking about was how Luther would
be dealt with. The Electoral College was divided. The archbishop of
Cologne, the elector of Brandenburg and his brother the archbishop of
Mainz were for instant outlawry, while the elector of Saxony, who was
resolved to protect Luther, had great influence with the archbishop of
Trier and the Count Palatine of the Rhine.
Aleander had no difficulty in persuading Charles, while both were still
in the Netherlands, to put Luther under the ban within his hereditary
dominions, and the papal nuncio expected that the decree would be
extended to the whole German empire. But Charles at first refused to
deal summarily with Luther so far as Germany was concerned. The emperor
even wrote to the elector of Saxony, asking him to bring Luther with him
to the diet for examination. Gradually he came to think that Luther
might be condemned without appearing. The members of the diet were slow
to come to any conclusion. At last they made up their minds, and
presented a memorial to the emperor (19th of February 1521) in which
they reminded him that no imperial edict could be published against
Luther without their sanction, and proposed that he should be invited to
Worms under a safe-conduct and be there examined. They also suggested
that Luther should be heard upon the papal claims, and ended by asking
the emperor to deliver Germany from the papal tyranny. The emperor
agreed to summon Luther under a safe-conduct, and that he should be
heard; but he refused to mix his case with that of grievances against
Rome. He had no sooner made the promise than he seems to have repented
it. He saw no need for Luther's appearance. He tried to get him
condemned unheard. An edict against Luther had been drafted (15th of
February) which the diet refused to sanction. A few days later a second
edict was drafted which ordered the burning of Luther's books. The diet
again objected. Finally four days after the safe-conduct had been
despatched the emperor revised this second edict, limited it to the
seizure of Luther's books, and published it on his own authority without
consulting the diet (10th March). After Luther had begun his journey,
this edict was posted up along his route in order to intimidate him;
other means were taken to make him turn aside from Worms; but he was
resolved to go there and nothing daunted him. He reached the town (16th
April) and was met by encouraging crowds. He was summoned to appear
before the diet on the 17th and measures were taken to prevent him doing
more than answering definite questions put to him. He was asked whether
certain books had been written by him and whether he was prepared to
maintain or to abjure what he had written. He asked time to prepare an
answer to the second question. The diet was anxious to hear Luther, if
the emperor was not, and his request was granted. He thus defeated the
plot to keep him silent. On the 18th he made his second appearance and
delivered the speech, which electrified his audience. At the close he
was threatened by Spaniards in the diet. The Germans ringed him round,
and, with their hands raised high in the fashion of a landsknecht who
had struck a successful blow, passed out into the street and escorted
him to his lodgings. Next day (April 19th) the emperor proposed to place
Luther under the ban of the empire and read to the assembly a brief
statement of his own views. The diet objected, and asked for a
conference between Luther and some selected members. Conferences were
held, but came to nothing. No compromise was possible between the
declaration that man's conscience could only be bound by the Word of God
and the emperor's belief in the infallibility of a general council. The
commission had to report that its efforts had failed. Luther was ordered
to leave Worms and to return to Wittenberg. His safe-conduct was to
expire twenty-one days after the 16th of April. Then he was liable to be
seized and put to death as a pestilent heretic. There only remained to
draft and publish the edict containing the ban. Days passed and it did
not appear. Suddenly the startling news reached Worms that Luther had
disappeared, no one knew where. It was reported that his body had been
found in a silver-mine pierced with a dagger. The news flew over Germany
and beyond it that he had been slain by papal emissaries. At Worms the
indignation of the populace was intense. The public buildings were
placarded during the night with an intimation that four hundred knights
had sworn not to leave Luther unavenged, and the ominous words
_Bundschuh, Bundschuh, Bundschuh_ (the watchword of peasant revolts)
were written at the foot. The combination suggested an alliance between
the lesser knights and the peasants, dreaded by all the ruling classes.
The true story of Luther's disappearance was not known until long
afterwards. After the failure of the conference the elector of Saxony
had commissioned two of the councillors to convey Luther to a place of
safety without telling him where it was. Many weeks elapsed before
Frederick himself learned that Luther was safe in his own castle of the
Wartburg. The disappearance did not mean that Luther had ceased to be a
leader of men; but it marked the beginning of an organized national
opposition to Rome.
It was not till the 25th of May that the edict against Luther was
presented to a small number of members of the diet, after the elector of
Saxony and many important members had left Worms. It threatened all
Luther's sympathisers with extermination, and practically proclaimed an
Albigensian war in Germany. But few public documents prepared with so
much care have proved so futile. The latter half of 1521 saw the silent
spread of Lutheran opinions all over Germany. This was not unaccompanied
with dangers. Every movement for reform carries within it the seeds of
revolution, and Luther's was no exception to the rule.
The revolution began in Wittenberg during Luther's seclusion in the
Wartburg. Andrew Boden of Carlstadt, a colleague of Luther's in the
university of Wittenberg, was strongly impressed with the contradiction
which he believed to exist between evangelical teaching and the usages
of medieval ecclesiastical life. He denounced monastic vows, a
distinctive dress for the clergy, the thought of a propitiatory mass,
and the presence of images and pictures in the churches. Zwilling, a
young Augustinian Eremite, added his fiery denunciations. His preaching
stirred the commonalty. Turbulent crowds invaded two of the churches and
rioted inside. The excitement of the people was increased by the arrival
of three men known in history as the _Zwickau prophets_. Melanchthon
felt himself powerless to restrain the tumult. The magistrates of the
town were won over and issued an ordinance which attempted to express in
legislation the new evangelical ideas. Duke George of Saxony, a resolute
opponent of the Reformation, threatened to make the diet interfere.
Luther became alarmed, and, not without a private hint from the elector
of Saxony,[1] left his retreat and appeared among his townsmen. His
presence and exertions restored order, and the conservative reformation
resumed its quiet course. From this time onwards to the outbreak of the
Peasants' War (1525) Luther was the real leader of the German nation,
and everything seemed to promise a gradual reformation without tumult.
The Peasants' War ended this anticipation. From one point of view this
insurrection was simply the last, the most wide-spreading and the most
disastrous of these revolts, which had been almost chronic in Germany
during the later decades of the 15th and earlier years of the 16th
century and which had been almost continuous between 1503 and 1517. All
the social and economic causes which produced them were increasingly
active in 1524 and 1525. But it is undoubted that the religious revolt
intensified the rebellion of the lower classes. Luther's voice awoke
echoes he never dreamt of. The times were ripe for revolution, and the
message which spoke of a religious democracy could not fail to suggest
the social democracy also. In his appeal to the _Nobility of the German
Nation_ he had stated with severe precision the causes of social
discontent. Himself a peasant's son and acquainted with the grievances
under which the peasant lived, he had at various times formulated most
of the demands which afterwards figured conspicuously in the Twelve
Articles. The insurgents had good cause to regard him as a sympathiser.
But Luther, rightly or wrongly, believed that of the two ways in which
wrongs can be set right--the way of war and the path of peace--the
latter is the only sure road in the long run. He did his best therefore
to prevent the rising and risked his life among the infuriated peasants
as readily as when he stood before the emperor and the diet. When the
rebellion was at its height and Thomas Münzer had sent forth fiery
proclamations urging the peasantry "not to let the blood cool on their
swords," Luther issued the pamphlet, which casts a stain on his whole
life, in which he hounds on the ruling classes to suppress the
insurgents with all violence. In the end the rebellion, formidable as it
seemed for a few months, was crushed, and a heavier yoke was laid on the
shoulders of the unfortunate peasants.
This year, 1525, saw the parting of the ways in the movement for reform.
It ceased to be national and became ecclesiastical. It divided into
three separate parts. One, guided by Luther himself, ended, after a long
struggle with pope and emperor, in the establishment of evangelical
churches under the rule of the secular authorities of the territories
which adopted the Lutheran Reformation. Another, remaining true to the
principles, doctrines, usages and hierarchy of the medieval church,
dreamt only of a purification of moral life, and saw its end realised in
the reforms of the council of Trent. The third, gathering together the
more revolutionary impulses, expanded into that complex movement called
Anabaptism--which spread over western Europe from England to Poland and
from Scandinavia to northern Italy, and endured a long and sanguinary
persecution at the hands of the civil authorities in most European
countries. Its strength and popularity, especially among the artizan
classes, have been very much underrated by most historians.
During the storm of the Peasants' War (13th of June 1525) Luther married
Catherine von Bora, the daughter of a noble but impoverished family
belonging to Meissen. She had been a Cistercian nun in the convent of
Nimtzch near Grimma--a convent reserved for ladies of noble birth.
Luther's writings, circulating through Saxony, had penetrated the
convent walls and had convinced most of the inmates of the unlawfulness
of monastic vows. Catherine and eight companions resolved to escape.
Their relatives refused to aid them, and they applied to Luther. He
entrusted the business to Leonhard Koppe of Torgau, and the rescue was
safely carried out (4th of April 1523). The rescued nuns found places of
refuge in the families of Wittenberg burghers. The elector John of
Saxony (who had succeeded his brother Frederick) gave Luther the house
which had served as the Augustinian Convent. The family gathered in this
three-storeyed building, with its back windows looking over the Elbe and
its front door opening on a great garden, was latterly Luther and his
wife, their three sons and two daughters, Magdelena von Bora,
Catherine's aunt, two orphan nieces and a grandniece. At the beginning
of his married life Luther must have been in straitened circumstances.
He married a portionless nun. On to 1532 his salary was two hundred
gulden annually (about £160 in present money); after 1532 the stipend
was increased to £240 with various payments in kind--corn, wood, malt,
wine, &c.--which meant a great deal more. The town added occasional
gifts to enable Luther to entertain the great personages who came to
consult him frequently. Princes made him presents in money. This enabled
Luther to purchase from his wife's brother the small estate of Zulsdorf.
Catherine, too, was an excellent house-wife. She made the long-neglected
garden profitable; kept pigs and poultry; rented other gardens; stocked
a fishpond; farmed in a small way; and had her house full of boarders.
Luther had a high opinion of her intelligence; she took rank among those
consulted on all important occasions; in one letter to her, seldom
quoted, he gives the fairest statement he ever made about the views of
Zwingli on the Sacrament of the Supper.
The diet of Speyer (1526) saw Germany divided into a Protestant and a
Romanist party. After much debate a compromise was arrived at, which
foreshadowed the religious peace of Augsburg of 1555. It was resolved
that the Word of God should be preached without disturbance, that
indemnity should be given for past offences against the edict of Worms,
and that meanwhile each state should live religiously as it hoped to
answer for its conduct to God and the emperor. The Lutherans interpreted
this to mean the right to frame ecclesiastical regulations for various
principalities and to make changes in public worship. Luther busied
himself in simplifying the service, in giving advice, anxiously sought
for, about the best modes of organising ecclesiastical affairs. In the
diet held at Speyer in 1529 a compact Roman Catholic majority faced a
weak Lutheran minority. The emperor declared through his commissioners
that he abolished "by his imperial and absolute authority" the clause in
the ordinance of 1526 on which the Lutherans had relied when they began
to organize their territorial churches. The majority of the diet
supported the emperor in this, and further proceeded to decree that no
ecclesiastical body was to be deprived of its revenues or authority.
This meant that throughout all Germany medieval ecclesiastical rule was
to be upheld, and that none of the revenues of the medieval church could
be appropriated for Protestant uses. On this a portion of the Protestant
minority drafted a legal protest, in which the signers declared that
they meant to abide by the decision of the diet of 1526 and refused to
be bound by that of 1529. From this protest came the name _Protestant_.
A minority in such a case could only maintain their protest if they were
prepared to defend each other by force in case of an attack. Three days
after the protest had been read, many of the protesting cities and
states concluded "a secret and particular treaty," and Philip of Hesse,
the ablest statesman among the Protesters, saw the need for a general
union of all evangelical Christians in the empire. The difficulties in
the way were great. The Saxons and the Swiss, Luther and Zwingli, were
in fierce controversy about the true doctrine of the sacrament of the
Supper. Luther was a patriotic German who was for ever bewailing the
disintegration of the Fatherland; Zwingli was full of plans for
confederations of Swiss cantons with South German cities, which could
not fail to weaken the empire. Luther had but little trust in the
"common man"; Zwingli was a thorough democrat. When Luther thought of
the Swiss reformer he muttered as Archbishop Parker did of John
Knox--"God keep us from such visitations as Knox hath attempted in
Scotland; the people to be orderers of things." Above all Luther had
good grounds for believing that at the conference at Memmingen friends
of Zwingli had helped to organize a Peasants' War and to link the social
revolution to the religious awakening. All these suspicions were in
Luther's mind when he consented very half-heartedly to meet Zwingli at a
conference to be held in Philip of Hesse's castle at Marburg. The debate
proceeded as such debates usually do. Zwingli attacked the weakest part
of Luther's theory--the _ubiquity_ of the body of Christ; and Luther
attacked Zwingli's exegesis of the words of the institution. Neither
sought to bring out their points of agreement. Yet the conference did
good; it showed that the Protestants were agreed on all doctrinal points
but one. If union was for the present impossible, there were hopes for
it in the future.
In 1530 the emperor Charles, resolved to crush the Reformation, himself
presided at the diet. The Protestant divisions were manifest. Three
separate confessions were presented to the emperor--one from Zwingli,
one by the theologians of the four cities of Strassbourg, Constance,
Lindau and Memmingen (_Confessio Tetrapolitana_), and the _Augsburg
Confession_, the future symbol of the Lutheran church. The third was the
most important, and the emperor seriously set himself to see whether it
might not be made the basis of a compromise. He found that
reconciliation was hopeless. Thereupon the diet resolved that the edict
of Worms was to be enforced against Luther and his partizans; that the
ecclesiastical jurisdictions were to be preserved; and that all the
church property taken possession of by the Lutheran princes was to be
restored; and that in all cases of dispute the last court of appeal was
to be the Imperial Court of Appeals. The last provision meant that the
growing Protestantism was to be fought by harrassing litigation--_nicht
fechten sondern rechten_ was the phrase.
Luther was not present at the diet nor at the negotiations. He was still
an outlaw according to imperial ideas. Melanchthon took his place as
leader.
The decision of the diet compelled the Protestant princes to face the
new and alarming situation. They met in conference in mid-winter at the
little town of Schmalkald, and laid the foundations of what became the
powerful Schmalkald League, which effectually protected the Protestants
of Germany until it was broken up by the intrigues of the imperial
party. From the time of the formation of this league, Luther retired
gradually from the forefront of a reformation movement which had become
largely political, and busied himself with reforms in public worship and
suggestions for an organization of the polity of the Evangelical church.
In this work his natural conservatism is apparent, and he contented
himself with such changes as would make room for the action of
evangelical principles. He disclaimed the right of suggesting a common
order of worship or a uniform ecclesiastical polity; and Lutheran ritual
and polity, while presenting common features, did not follow one common
use. It may be said generally that while Luther insisted on a service in
the vernacular, including the singing of German hymns, he considered it
best to retain most of the ceremonies, the vestments and the uses of
lights on the altar, which had existed in the unreformed church, while
he was careful to explain that their retention might be dispensed with
if thought necessary. To the popular mind the great distinction between
the Lutheran and the medieval church service, besides the use of the
vernacular and the supreme place assigned to preaching, was that the
people partook of the cup in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; and the
Lutheran service became popularly distinguished from the Reformed
because it retained, while the Reformed did away with, most of the
medieval ceremonies and vestments (see LUTHERANS). The variations in the
details of the polity of the Lutheran churches were very numerous, but
they all preserved the same distinctive principles. Two conceptions lay
at the basis--the thought of the spiritual priesthood of all believers
and the belief that the state was a divine ordinance, that the
magistracy might represent the whole body of believers and that
discipline and administration might be exercised through courts
constituted somewhat like the consistorial courts of the medieval
bishops, their members being appointed by the magistracy.
The last years of Luther's life were spent in incessant labour disturbed
by almost continuous ill-health. He was occupied in trying to unite
firmly together the whole evangelical movement; he laboured to give his
countrymen a good system of schools; he was on the watch to defeat any
attempt of the Roman Curia to regain its hold over Germany; and he was
the confidential adviser of a large number of the evangelical princes.
Luther's intimacy with his own elector, first John, then John Frederick,
helped to give him the place accorded to him by the princes. The chiefs
of the Houses of Anhalt and Lüneburg, Duke Henry of Saxony, Joachim II.
of Brandenburg, Albert of Brandenburg and the counts of Mansfeld, were
among Luther's most devoted supporters and most frequently sought his
advice. Princely correspondence was not always pleasant. It took its
most disagreeable form when Philip of Hesse besieged Luther with
requests to give his sanction to taking a second wife while his first
was still alive. Luther's weakness brought the second great blot on his
career. The document sanctioning the bigamy of the landgrave was signed
by Martin Bucer, Luther and Melanchthon, and is a humiliating paper. It
may be thus summarized. According to the original commandment of God,
marriage is between one man and one woman, and this original precept has
been confirmed by our Lord; but sin brought it about that first Lamech,
then the heathen, and then Abraham, took more than one wife, and this
was permitted under the law. We are now living under the Gospel, which
does not give prescribed rules for the external life and has not
expressly prohibited bigamy. The law of the land expresses the original
commandment of God, and the plain duty of the pastorate is to denounce
bigamy. Nevertheless, the pastorate, in single cases of the direst need
and to prevent worse, may sanction bigamy in a purely exceptional way.
Such a bigamous marriage is a true marriage in the sight of God (the
necessity being proved), but it is not a true marriage in the eye of
public law and custom. Such a marriage and the dispensation for it ought
to be kept secret; if it is made known, the dispensation becomes _eo
ipso_ invalid and the marriage is mere concubinage. The principle which
underlies this extraordinary paper is probably the conception that the
Protestant church has the same dispensing power which the medieval
church claimed, but that it was to be exercised altogether apart from
fees of any kind.
In his later years Luther became more tolerant on the sacramental
question which divided him from the South German cities, although he
never departed from his strong opposition to the supposed views of
Zwingli himself. He consented to a conference, which, as he was too ill
to leave home, met at Wittenberg (May-June 1536). After prolonged
discussion the differences were narrowed to one point--the presence of
the body of Christ _extended in space_ in the sacrament of the Supper.
It was agreed in the _Wittenberg Concord_ to leave this an open
question. Thus North and South Germany were united. It is possible that
had Luther lived longer his followers might have been united with the
Swiss. He repeatedly expressed an admiration for Calvin's writings on
the subject of the sacrament; and Melanchthon believed that if the Swiss
accepted Calvin's theory of the Supper, the Wittenberg Concord could be
extended to include them. But the _Consensus Tigurinus_, which dates the
adhesion of the Swiss to the views of Calvin, was not signed until 1549,
when Luther was already dead.
Year by year Luther had been growing weaker, his attacks of illness more
frequent and his bodily pains more continuous. Despite the entreaties
of wife and elector he resolved to do what he could to end some trifling
dispute about inheritance which threatened the peace of the House of
Mansfeld. He left Wittenberg in bitterly cold weather on the 23rd of
January 1546, and the journey was tedious and hazardous. He was accepted
as arbiter and his decision brought an end to the strife. He preached in
Eisleben (February 14) with all his old fervour; but suddenly said
quietly: "This and much more is to be said about the Gospel; but I am
too weak and we will close here." These were his last words in the
pulpit. On the 16th and 17th the deeds of reconciliation were signed and
Luther's work was done. The end came swiftly. He was very ill on the
evening of the 17th; he died on the early morning of the 18th of
February 1546 in his sixty-third year.
The elector of Saxony and Luther's family resolved that he must be
buried at Wittenberg, and on the 20th the funeral procession began its
long march. The counts of Mansfeld, the magistrates of the city and all
the burghers of Eisleben accompanied the coffin to the gates of their
town. A company of fifty light-armed troops commanded by the young
counts of Mansfeld headed the procession and went with it all the way to
Wittenberg. The following was temporarily swelled as it passed through
villages and towns. Delegates from the elector of Saxony met it as it
crossed the boundaries of the principality. Luther was laid to rest in
the Castle church on whose door he had nailed the _theses_ which had
kindled the great conflagration.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--(a) For Luther's life as a whole: Melanchthon,
"Historia de vita et actis Lutheri" (Wittenberg, 1545), in the _Corpus
Reformatorum_, vi.; Mathesius, _Historien von ... Martini Lutheri,
Anfang, Lehre, Leben und Sterben_ (Prague, 1896); Myconius, _Historia
Reformationis 1517-1542_ (Leipzig, 1718); Ratzeberger, _Geschichte
über Luther und seine Zeit_ (Jena, 1850); Wrampelmeyer, _Tagebuch über
Dr Martin Luther geführt von Dr Conrad Cordatus, 1537_ (Halle, 1885);
Förstemann, _Neues Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der evangelischen
Kirchenreformation_ (Hamburg, 1842); Kolde, _Analecta Lutherana_
(Gotha, 1883); G. Lösche, _Analecta Lutherana et Melanchthoniana_
(Gotha, 1892); G. Lösche, _Vollständige Reformations-Acta und
Documenta_ (Leipzig, 1720-1729); Enders, _Dr Martin Luther's
Briefwechsel_ (5 vols., Frankfurt, 1884-1893); J. Cochlaeus (Rom.
Cath.), _Commentarius de actis et scriptis M. Lutheri, &c_. (St Victor
prope Moguntium). See also J. Köstlin, _Martin Luther, sein Leben und
seine Schriften_ (2 vols., Berlin, 1889); Th. Kolde, _Martin Luther,
Eine Biographie_ (2 vols., Gotha, 1884-1893); A. Hausrath, _Luther's
Leben_ (2 vols., Berlin, 1904); Lindsay, _Luther and the German
Reformation_ (Edinburgh, 1900); _Cambridge Modern History_, ii.
(Cambridge, 1903); _History of the Reformation_, i. (Edinburgh, 1906).
(b) For special incidents: The _Theses_ and their publication: W.
Köhler, _Luthers 95 Theses sammt seinen Resolutionen, den
Gegenschriften von Wimpina-Tetzel, Eck und Prierias, und den Antworten
Luthers darauf_ (Leipzig, 1903); Emil Reich, _Select Documents
illustrating Medieval and Modern History_ (London, 1905); The Leipzig
Disputation: Seidemann, _Die Leipziger Disputation im Jahre 1519_
(Dresden, 1843); Luther before the Diet of Worms: _Deutsche
Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Karl V_. (Gotha, 1893-1901), ii.; The
Marburg Colloquy; Schirrmacher, _Briefe und Acten zu der Geschichte
des Religionsgespräches zu Marburg, 1529, und des Reichstages zu
Augsburg 1530_ (Gotha, 1876); Hospinian, _Historia Sacramentaria_, ii.
123b-126b; Ehrard, _Das Dogma vom heiligen Abendmahl und seine
Geschichte_, ii. (Frankfurt a M., 1846); The Augsburg Confession:
Schaff, _The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches_ (London,
1877), _History of the Creeds of Christendom_ (London, 1877).
(T. M. L.)