Luther was a Saxon German--a German of the Germans--born of that blood
out of which, with but few exceptions, have sprung the ruling powers
of the West since the last of the old Roman emperors. He came out of
the bosom of the freshest, strongest, and hardiest peoples then
existing--the direct descendants of those wild Cimbrian and Teutonic
tribes who, even in their heathenism, were the most virtuous, brave,
and true of all the Gentiles.
Nor was he the offspring of enfeebled, gouty, aristocratic blood. He
was the son of the sinewy and sturdy yeomanry. Though tradition
reports one of his remote ancestors in something of imperial place
among the chieftains of the semi-savage tribes from which he was
descended, when the period of the Reformation came his family was in
like condition with that of the house of David when the Christ was
born. His father and grandfather and great-grandfather, he says
himself, were true Thuringian peasants.