Martin Luther was born at Eisleben on the 10th of November, 1483, on
the eve of St. Martin’s day, in the same year as Raphael, nine years
after Michael Angelo, and ten after Copernicus. His father was a
miner and possessed forges in Mansfield, the profits of which enabled
him to send his son to the Latin school of the place. There Martin
distinguished himself so much that his father intended him for the
study of law. In the meantime Martin had often to go about as one of
the poor choristers singing and begging at the doors of charitable
people at Magdeburg and at Eisenach, to the colleges of which towns he
was successively sent. His remarkable appearance and serious demeanor,
his fine tenor voice and musical talent procured him the attention and
afterward the support and maternal care of a pious matron, into whose
house he was taken. Already, in his eighteenth year, he surpassed
all his fellow-students in knowledge of the Latin classics, and in
power of composition and of eloquence. His mind took more and more
a deeply religious turn; but it was not till he had been two years
studying at Eisenach that he discovered an entire Bible, having until
then only known the ecclesiastical extracts from the sacred volume
and the history of Hannah and Samuel. A dangerous illness brought him
within the near prospect of death; but he recovered and tried hard to
obtain inward peace by a pious life and the greatest strictness in all
external observances.[C] He then determined to renounce the world, and
in spite of the strong opposition of his father, became a monk of the
Augustine order of Erfurt. But in vain; he was tormented by doubt, and
even by despair, until he turned again to the Bible. A zealous study of
the exact language of the gospels gave him not only a firm faith, but a
peace and cheerfulness which was never afterward disturbed by trials or
dangers.[D]
In the year 1508 the elector of Saxony nominated him professor of
philosophy in the university of Wittenberg; and in 1509 he began to
give biblical lectures. These lectures were the awakening cause of
new life in the university, and soon a great number of students from
all parts of Germany gathered round Luther. Even professors came to
attend his lectures and hear his preaching. The year 1511 brought an
apparent interruption, but in fact only a new development of Luther’s
character and knowledge of the world. He was sent by his order to Rome
on account of some discrepancies of opinion as to its government. The
tone of flippant impiety at the court and among the higher clergy
of Rome shocked the devout German monk. He then discovered the real
state of the world in the center of the Western church. He returned
to the university and took the degree of Doctor of Divinity at the
end of 1512. The solemn oath he had to pronounce on that occasion,
“to devote his whole life to study, and faithfully expound and defend
the Holy Scripture,” was to him the seal of his mission. He began his
biblical teaching by attacking scholasticism, at that time called
Aristotelianism. He showed that the Bible was a deeper philosophy.
His contemporaries praised the clearness of his doctrine. Christ’s
self-devoted life and death was its center; God’s eternal love to
mankind, and the sure triumph of Faith, were his texts.[E]