Earlier than either we have Florimond de Raemond, whose “Histoire,”

etc. (above, p. 270, n. 3) contains the story even in the 1605

edition; he too gives no authority. So far no earlier mention of the

story is known. It seems to have been a current tale in Catholic

circles abroad and may have been printed. Strange to say the work of

the zealous Catholic convert and polemic, de Raemond (completed and

seen through the press by his son), contains the story under the least

likely shape, the dying Melanchthon being made to address the words to

his mother, who really had died long before.

It is quite likely that Ægidius Albertinus, the well-read priestly

secretary to the Munich Council, who busied himself much with

Italian, Spanish and Latin literature, was acquainted with this

passage. He nevertheless altered the narrative, relating how

Melanchthon’s “aged mother came to him” after he had “lived long in

the world and seen many things, and caused many scandals by his life.”

He translates as follows the Latin words supposed to have been uttered

by Melanchthon: “The new religion is much pleasanter, but the old one

is much safer.”[1024]

Next comes the Protestant Adam. The latter gives a plausible

historical setting to the story by locating it during the time of

Melanchthon’s stay at Spires, though without mentioning that the

mother was then at death’s door. “When asked by her,” so runs his

account, which is the commonest one, “what she was to believe of the

controversies, he listened to the prayers [she was in the habit of

reciting] and, finding nothing superstitious in them, told her to

continue to believe and to pray as heretofore and not be disturbed

by the discussions and controversies.”[1025] Here we do not meet the

sentence _Hæc plausibilior, illa securior_. The fact that Adam, who

as a rule is careful to give his authorities, omits to do so here,

points to the story having been verbally transmitted; for it is hardly

likely that he, as a Protestant, would have taken over the statements

of the two Catholic authorities Albertinus and Raemond, which were

so favourable to Catholicism and so unfavourable to Protestantism.

Probably, besides the Catholic version there was also a Protestant

one, which would explain here the absence of the sentence ending with

“_securior_.” Both may have risen at the time of the Diet of Spires,

where Catholics and Protestants alike attended, supposing that the

visit to Bretten took place at that time.

All things considered we may well accept the statement of the

“Realenzyklopädie,” that the story, as given by Adam, apart from the

time it occurred, is “not unlikely, though it cannot be proved with

certainty.” Taking into account the circumstances and the character

of Melanchthon, neither the incident nor his words involve any

improbability. He will have seen that his beloved mother—whether then

at the point of death or not—was in perfect good faith; he had no

wish to plunge her into inward struggles and disquiet and preferred to

leave her happy in her convictions; the more so since, in her presence

and amid the recollections of the past, his mind will probably have

travelled to the days of his youth, when he was still a faithful son

of the Church. He had never forgotten the exhortation given by his

father, nine days before his death, to his family “never to quit the

Church’s fold.”[1026] The exact date of the incident (1524 or 1529)

must however remain doubtful. N. Müller in his work on Melanchthon’s

brother, Jakob Schwarzerd, says rightly: “Nothing obliges us to place

the conversation between Melanchthon and his mother—assuming it to

be historical—in 1529, for it may equally well have taken place in

1524.”[1027]

Two unsupported stories connected with Melanchthon’s Augsburg

Confession must also be mentioned here. The twofold statement,

frequently repeated down to the present day, takes the following shape

in a recent historical work by a Protestant theologian: “When the

Confession was read out, the Bishop of Augsburg, Christoph von Stadion,

declared, ‘What has just been read here is the pure, unvarnished

truth’; Eck too had to admit to the Duke of Bavaria, that he might

indeed be able to refute this work from the Fathers of the Church,

but certainly not from Scripture.” So convincing and triumphant was

Melanchthon’s attitude at the Diet of Augsburg.

The information concerning Stadion is found only in the late,

Protestant history of the Diet of Augsburg written by George

Cœlestinus and published in 1577 at Frankfurt; here moreover the

story differs slightly, relating, that, during the negotiations

on the Confession on Aug. 6, Stadion declared: “It was plain that

those who inclined to the Lutheran views had, so far, not infringed

or overthrown a single article of the faith by what they had put

forward in defence of their views.”[1028] Any decisive advocacy of

the Catholic cause was of course not to be expected from this bishop,

in view of his general bearing. A good pupil of Erasmus, he had made

the latter’s reforming ideas his own. He was in favour of priestly

marriage, and was inclined to think that Christ had not instituted

auricular confession. There is, however, no proof that he went so

far in the direction of the innovations as actually to approve the

Lutheran teaching. It is true that the words quoted, even if really

his, do not assert this; it was one thing to say that no article of

the faith had been infringed by the Confession or by what had been

urged in vindication of Lutheranism, and quite another to say that the

Confession was nothing but the pure, unvarnished truth. At any rate,

in the one form this statement of Stadion’s is not vouched for by any

other authority before Cœlestinus and, in the other, lacks any proof

whatever. F. W. Schirrmacher, who relates the incident in his “Briefen

und Akten zur Geschichte des Reichstags zu Augsburg” on the authority

of Cœlestinus, admits that “its source is unknown.”[1029] Moreover

an historian, who some years ago examined into Stadion’s attitude at

Augsburg, pointed out, that, in view of the further circumstances

related by Cœlestinus, the story “sounds a little fabulous.”[1030] He

tells us how on the same occasion the bishops of Salzburg and Augsburg

fell foul of one another, the former, in his anger at Stadion’s

behaviour, even going so far as to charge the latter before the whole

assembly with immorality in his private life. All this, told at great

length and without mention of any authority, far from impressing us

as historically accurate, appears at best as an exaggerated hearsay

account of some incident of which the truth is no longer known.

As for what Johann Eck is stated to have said, viz. that he could

refute Melanchthon’s Confession from the Fathers but not from the

Bible, no proof whatever of the statement is forthcoming. The oldest

mention of it merely retails a piece of vague gossip, which may

well have gone the rounds in Lutheran circles. It is met with in

Spalatin’s Notes and runs: “_It is said_” that Eck, referring to

the whole doctrine of Melanchthon and Luther, told Duke William: “I

would not mind undertaking to refute it from the Fathers, but not

from Scripture.”[1031] It is true these notes go back as far as the

Diet of Augsburg, but they notoriously contain much that is false or

uncertain, and often record mere unauthenticated rumours. Neither

Melanchthon nor Luther ever dared to appeal to such an admission on

the part of their opponent, though it would certainly have been of the

utmost advantage to them to have done so.

Not only is no proof alleged in support of the saying, but it is in

utter contradiction with Eck’s whole mode of procedure, which was

always to attack the statements of his opponents, first with Scripture

and then with the tradition of the Fathers. This is the case with the

“_Confutatio confessionis_,” etc., aimed at Melanchthon’s Confession,

in the preparation of which Eck had the largest share and which he

presented at the Diet of Augsburg.

According to his own striking account of what happened at the

religious conference of Ratisbon in 1541, it was to his habitual and

triumphant use of biblical arguments against Melanchthon’s theses that

Eck appealed in the words he addressed to Bucer his chief opponent:

“Hearken, you apostate, does not Eck use the language of the Bible and

the Fathers? Why don’t you reply to his writings on the primacy of

Peter, on penance, on the Sacrifice of the Mass, and on Purgatory?”

etc.[1032]

What also weighs strongly against the tale is the fact that a charge

of a quite similar nature had been brought against Eck ten years

before the Diet of Augsburg by an opponent, who assailed him with

false and malicious accusations. What Protestant fable came wantonly

to connect with Melanchthon’s “Confession” had already, in 1520, been

charged against the Ingolstadt theologian by the author of “_Eccius

dedolatus_.” There he is told, that, in his view, one had perforce

(on account of the Bible) to agree with Luther secretly, though,

publicly, he had to be opposed.[1033]

Theodore Wiedemann, who wrote a Life of Eck and who at least hints at

the objection just made, was justified in concluding with the query:

“Is it not high time to say good-bye to this historic lie?”[1034]

When, as late as 1906, the story was once more burnished up by a

writer of note, N. Paulus, writing in the “Historisches Jahrbuch,”

could well say: “Eck’s alleged utterance was long ago proved to be

quite unhistorical.”[1035]

4. Demonology and Demonomania

“Come O Lord Jesus, Amen! The breath of Thy mouth dismays the

diabolical gainsayer.” “Satan’s hate is all too Satanic.”[1036]

Oh, that the devil’s gaping jaws were crushed by the blessed seed of

the woman![1037] How little is left for God.[1038] “The remainder

is swallowed by Satan who is the Prince of this world, surely an

inscrutable decree of Eternal Wisdom.”[1039] “Prodigies everywhere

daily manifest the power of the devil!”[1040]

Against such a devil’s world, as Luther descried, what can help save

the approaching “end of all”?

“The kingdom of God is being laid waste by Turk and Jew and Pope,”

the chosen tools of Satan; but “greater is He Who reigns in us

than he who rules the world; the devil shall be under Christ to

all eternity.”[1041] “The present rage of the devil only reveals

God’s future wrath against mankind, who are so ungrateful for the

Evangel.”[1042] “We cannot but live in this devil’s kingdom which

surrounds us”;[1043] “but even with our last breath we must fight

against the monsters of Satan.”[1044] Let the Papists, whose glory

is mere “devil’s filth,” rejoice in their successes.[1045] As little

heed is to be paid to them as to the preachers of the Evangel who

have gone astray in doctrine, like Agricola and Schwenckfeld; they

calmly “go their way to Satan to whom indeed they belong”;[1046]

“they are senseless fools, possessed of the devil.” The devil “spues

and ructates” his writings through them; this is the devil of heresy

against whom solemnly launch the malediction: “God’s curse be

upon thee, Satan! The spirit that summoned thee be with thee unto

destruction!”[1047]

Luther’s letters during his later years are crammed with things of this

sort.

The thought of the devil and his far-spread sphere of action, to which

Luther had long been addicted, assumes in his mind as time goes on a

more serious and gloomy shape, though he continues often enough to

refer to the Divine protection promised against the powers of darkness

and to the final victory of Christ.

In his wrong idea of the devil Luther was by no means without

precursors. On the contrary, in the Middle Ages exaggerations had long

prevailed on this subject, not only among the people but even among

the best-known writers; on the very eve of Luther’s coming forward

they formed no small part of the disorders in the ecclesiastical life

of the people. Had people been content with the sober teaching of Holy

Scripture and of the Church on the action of the devil, the faithful

would have been preserved from many errors. As it was, however, the

vivid imagination of laity and clergy led them to read much into the

revealed doctrine that was not really in it; witness, for instance,

the startling details they found in the words of St. Paul (Eph. vi.

12): “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood: but against

principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this

darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” Great

abuses had gradually crept into the use of the blessings and exorcisms

of the Church, more particularly in the case of supposed sorcery.

Unfortunately, too, the beliefs and practices common among the people

received much too ready support from persons of high standing in the

Church. The supposition, which in itself had the sanction of tradition,

that intercourse with the devil was possible, grew into the fantastic

persuasion that witches were lurking everywhere, and required to have

their malicious action checked by the authority of Church and State.

That unfortunate book, “The Witches’ Hammer,” which Institoris and

Sprenger published in 1487, made these delusions fashionable in circles

which so far had been but little affected by them, though the authors’

purpose, viz. to stamp out the witches, was not achieved.

It is clear that at home in Saxony, and in his own family, Luther had

lived in an atmosphere where the belief in spirits and the harm wrought

by the devil was very strong; miners are credited with being partial

to such gloomy fancies owing to the nature of their dangerous work in

the mysterious bowels of the earth. As a young monk he had fancied he

heard the devil creating an uproar nightly in the convent, and the

state of excitement in which he lived and which accompanied him ever

afterwards was but little calculated to free him from the prejudices

of the age concerning the devil’s power. His earlier sermons, for

instance those to be mentioned below on the Ten Commandments, contain

much that is frankly superstitious, though this must be set down in

great part to the beliefs already in vogue and above which he failed

to rise. Had Luther really wished to play the part of a reformer of

the ecclesiastical life of his day, he would have found here a wide

field for useful labour. In point of fact, however, he only made bad

worse. His lively descriptions and the weight of his authority merely

served to strengthen the current delusions among those who looked to

him. Before him no one had ever presented these things to the people

with such attractive wealth of detail, no one had brought the weight of

his personality so strongly to bear upon his readers and so urgently

preached to them on how to deal with the spirits of evil.

Among non-Catholics it has been too usual to lay the whole blame on

the Middle Ages and the later Catholic period. They do not realise how

greatly Luther’s influence counted in the demonology and demonomania

of the ensuing years. Yet Luther’s views and practice show plainly

enough, that it was not merely the Catholic ages before his day that

were dishonoured with such delusions concerning the devil, and that it

was not the Catholics alone, of his time and the following decades, who

were responsible for the devil-craze and the bloody persecutions of the

witches in those dark days of German history in the 17th century.[1048]

_The Mischief Wrought by the Devil_

Luther’s views agree in so far with the actual teaching of the olden

Church, that he regards the devils as fallen angels condemned to

eternal reprobation, who oppose the aims of God for the salvation of

the world and the spiritual and temporal welfare of mankind. “The devil

undoes the works of God,” so he says, adding, however, in striking

consonance with the teaching of the Church and to emphasise the devil’s

powerlessness, “but Christ undoes the devil’s works; He, the seed [of

the woman] and the serpent are ever at daggers drawn.”[1049] But Luther

goes further, and depicts in glaring and extravagant colours the harm

which the devil can bring about. He declares he himself had had a taste

of how wrathful and mighty a foe the devil is; this he had learned

in the inward warfare he was compelled to wage against Satan. He was

convinced that, at the Wartburg, and also later, he had repeatedly to

witness the sinister manifestations of the Evil One’s malignant power.

Hence in his Church-postils, home-postils and Catechism, to mention

only these, he gives full vent to his opinions on the hostility and

might of Satan.

In the Larger Catechism of 1529,[1050] “when enumerating the evils

caused by the devil,” he tells of how he “breaks many a man’s neck,

drives others out of their mind or drowns them in the water”;[1051]

how he “stirs up strife and brings murder, sedition and war, _item_

causes hail and tempests, destroying the corn and the cattle, and

poisoning the air,” etc.;[1052] among those who break the first

commandment are all “who make a compact with the devil that he may

give them enough money, help them in their love-affairs, preserve

their cattle, bring back lost property, etc., likewise all sorcerers

and magicians.”[1053]

In his home-postils he practically makes it one of the chief dogmas

of the faith, that all temporal misfortune hails from the devil; “the

heathen” alone know this not; “but do you learn to say: This is the

work of the hateful devil.” “The devil’s bow is always bent and his

musket always primed, and we are his target; at us he aims, smiting

us with pestilence, ‘Franzosen’ [venereal disease], war, fire, hail

and cloudburst.” “It is also certain that wherever we be there too is

a great crowd of demons who lie in wait for us, would gladly affright

us, do us harm, and, were it possible, fall upon us with sword and

long spear. Against these are pitted the holy angels who stand up in

our defence.”[1054]

The devil, so he teaches in his Church-postils, a new edition of which

he brought out in 1543 towards the end of his life, could either

of himself or by the agency of others “raise storms, shoot people,

lame and wither limbs, harrow children in the cradle, bewitch men’s

members, etc.”[1055] Thanks to him, “those who ply the magic art are

able to give to things a shape other than their own, so that what in

reality is a man looks like an ox or a cow; they can make people to

fall in love, or to bawd, and do many other devilish deeds.”[1056]

How accustomed he was to enlarge on this favourite subject in his

addresses to the people is plain from a sermon delivered at the Coburg

in 1530, which he sent to the press the following year: “The devil

sends plagues, famines, worry and war, murder, etc. Whose fault is it

that one man breaks a leg, another is drowned, and a third commits

murder? Surely the devil’s alone. This we see with our own eyes and

touch with our hands.” “The Christian ought to know that he sits in

the midst of demons and that the devil is closer to him than his coat

or his shirt, nay, even than his skin, that he is all around us and

that we must ever be at grips with him and fighting him.” In these

words there is already an echo of his fancied personal experiences,

particularly of his inward struggles at the time of the dreaded

Diet of Augsburg, to which he actually alludes in this sermon; the

subjective element comes out still more strongly when he proceeds in

his half-jesting way: “The devil is more at home in Holy Scripture

than Paris, Cologne and all the godless make-believes, however learned

they may be. Whoever attempts to dispute with him will assuredly be

pitched on the ash heap, and when it comes to a trial of strength,

there too he wins the day; in one hour he could do to death all the

Turks, Emperors, Kings and Princes.”[1057] “Children should be taught

at an early age to fear the dangers arising from the devil; they

should be told: ‘Darling, don’t swear, etc.; the devil is close beside

you, and if you do he may throw you into the water or bring down

some other misfortune upon you.’”[1058] It is true that he also says

children must be taught that, by God’s command, their guardian angel

is ever ready to assist them against the devil; “God wills that he

shall watch over you so that when the devil tries to cast you into the

water or to affright you in your sleep, he may prevent him.” Still one

may fairly question the educational value of such a fear of the devil.

Taking into account the pliant character of most children and their

susceptibility to fear, Luther was hardly justified in expecting that:

“If children are treated in this way from their youth they will grow

up into fine men and women.”

According to an odd-sounding utterance of Luther’s, every bishop who

attended the Diet of Augsburg brought as many devils to oppose him “as

a dog has fleas on its back on Midsummer Day.”[1059] Had the devil

succeeded in his attempt there, “the next thing would have been that

he would have committed murder,”[1060] but the angels dispatched by

God had shielded him and the Evangel.

When a fire devastated that part of Wittenberg which lay beyond the

Castle gate, Luther was quite overwhelmed; watching the conflagration

he assured the people that, “it was the devil’s work.” With his eyes

full of tears he besought them to “quench it with the help of God and

His holy angels.” A little later he exhorted the people in a sermon to

withstand by prayer the work of the devil manifested in such fires.

One of his pupils, Sebastian Fröschel, recalled the incident in a

sermon on the feast of St. Michael. After the example and words of

the “late Dr. Martin,” he declares, “the devil’s breath is so hot and

poisonous that it can even infect the air and set it on fire, so that

cities, land and people are poisoned and inflamed, for instance by the

plague and other even more virulent diseases.... The devil is in and

behind the flame which he fans to make it spread,” etc.[1061] This

tallies with what Luther, when on a journey, wrote in later years to

Catherine Bora of the fires which were occurring: “The devil himself

has come forth possessed with new and worse demons; he causes fires

and does damage that is dreadful to behold.” The writer instances the

forest fires then raging (in July) in Thuringia and at Werda, and

concludes: “Tell them to pray against the troublesome Satan who is

seeking us out.”[1062]

Madness, in Luther’s view, is in every case due to the devil; “what

is outside reason is simply Satanic.”[1063] In a long letter to his

friend Link, in 1528, dealing with a case raised, he proves that

mad people must be regarded “as teased or possessed by the devil.”

“Medical men who are unversed in theology know not how great is

the strength and power of the devil”; but, against their natural

explanations, we can set, first, Holy Scripture (Luke xiii. 16; Acts

x. 38); secondly, experience, which proves that the devil causes

deafness, dumbness, lameness and fever; thirdly, the fact that he can

even “fill men’s minds with thoughts of adultery, murder, robbery and

all other evil lusts”; all the more easily then was he able to confuse

the mental powers.[1064] In the case of those possessed, the devil,

according to Luther, either usurps the place of the soul, or lives

side by side with it, ruling such unhappy people as the soul does the

body.[1065]

Thus it is the devil alone who is at work in those who commit suicide,

for the death a man fancies he inflicts on himself is nothing but the

“devil’s work”;[1066] the devil simply hoodwinks him and others who

see him. To Frederick Myconius he wrote, in 1544: “It is my habit to

esteem such a one as killed ‘_simpliciter et immediate_’ by the devil,

just as a traveller might be by highwaymen.... I think we must stick

to the belief that the devil deceives such a man and makes him fancy

that he is doing something quite different, for instance praying, or

something of the sort.”[1067] In the same sense he wrote to Anton

Lauterbach, in 1542, when the latter informed him of three men who

had hanged themselves: “Satan, with God’s leave, perpetrates such

abominations in the midst of our congregation.... He is the prince

of this world who in mockery deludes us into fancying that those men

hanged themselves, whereas it was he who killed them. By the images he

brought before their mind, he made them think that they were killing

themselves”—a statement at variance with the one last given.[1068]

Whereas in this letter he suggests that the people should be told of

such cases from the pulpit so that they may not despise the “devil’s

power from a mistaken sense of security,” previously, in conversation

he had declared, that it ought not to be admitted publicly that such

persons could not be damned not having been masters of themselves:

“They do not commit this wilfully, but are impelled to it by the

devil.... But the people must not be told this.”[1069] Speaking of a

woman who was sorely tempted and worried, he said to his friends, in

1543: “Even should she hang herself or drown herself through it, it

can do her no harm; it is just as though it all happened in a dream.”

The source of this woman’s distress was her low spirits and religious

doubts.[1070]

_On all that the Devil is able to do_

Many, in Luther’s opinion, had been snatched off alive by the devil,

particularly when they had made a compact or had dealings with him, or

had given themselves up to him.

For instance, he had carried off Pfeifer of Mühlberg, not far from

Erfurt, and also another man of the same name at Eisenach; indeed,

the devil had fetched the latter away in spite of his being watched

by the preacher Justus Menius and “many of his clergymen,” and though

“doors and windows had been shut so as to prevent his being carried

away”; the devil, however, broke away some tiles “round the stove” and

thus got in; finally he slew his victim “not far from the town in a

hazel thicket.”[1071] Needless to say it is a great crime to bargain

with the devil.[1072] This Dr. Eck had done and likewise the Elector

Joachim I of Brandenburg († 1535), who wanted to live another fifteen

years; this, however, the devil did not allow.[1073] Amsdorf too was

dragged into the diabolical affair; one night at an inn two dead men

appeared to him, thanks to some “Satanic art,” and compelled him to

draw up a document in writing and hand it over to Joachim. Two spirits

assisted on the occasion, bearing candles.[1074]

During battles the devil is able to carry men off more easily, but

then the angels also kill by Divine command, as the Old Testament

bears witness, for there “one angel could cause the death of many

persons.”[1075] In war the devil is at work and makes use of the

newest weapons “which indeed are Satan’s own invention,” for these

cannon “send men flying into the air” and that “is the end of

all man’s strength.”[1076] It is also the devil who guides the

sleep-walkers “so that they do everything as though wide awake,” “but

still there is something wanting and some defect apparent.”[1077]

Elsewhere too Luther discerns the work of the devil; for instance,

when Satan sends a number of strange caterpillars into his

garden,[1078] pilfers things, hampers the cattle and damages the

stalls[1079] and interferes with the preparation of the cheese and

milk.[1080] “Every tree has its lurking demon.[1081] You can see how,

to your damage, Satan knocks down walls and palings that already

totter;[1082] he also throws you down the stairs so as to make a

cripple of you.”[1083]

In cases of illness it is the devil who enables the Jews to be so

successful in effecting cures, more particularly in the case of the

“great and those of high standing”;[1084] on the other hand he is

also able maliciously to hinder the good effect of any medicine, as

Luther himself had experienced when he lay sick in 1537. He can alter

every medicine or medicament in the boxes, so that what has served its

purpose well once or twice no longer works at all; “so powerful is

the devil.”[1085] Luther, as his pupils bear witness, had frequently

maintained that many of his bodily ailments were inflicted on him

solely by the devil’s hatred.

Satan is a great foe of marriage and the blessing of children.

“This is why you find he has so many malicious tricks and ways of

frightening women who are with child, and causes such misfortune,

cunning, murder, etc.”[1086] “Satan bitterly hates matrimony,” he

says in 1537,[1087] and, in 1540, “he has great power in matrimonial

affairs, for unless God were to stand by us how could the children

grow up?”[1088] In matrimonial disputes “the devil shows his finger”;

the Pope gets along easily, “he simply dissolves all marriages”; but

we, “on account of the contentions instigated by the devil,” must have

“people who can give advice.”[1089]

Not him alone but many others had the devil affrighted by the “noisy

spirits.”[1090] These noisy spirits were, however, far more numerous

before the coming of the Evangel. They were looked upon, quite

wrongly, as the souls of the dead, and Masses and prayers were said

and good works done to lay them to rest;[1091] but now “you know

very well who causes this; you know it is the devil; he must not be

exorcised[1092], we must despise him and waken our holy faith against

him;[1093] we must be willing to abide the ‘spooks and spirits’ calmly

and with faith if God permits them to ‘exercise their wantonness on

us’ and ‘to affright us.’”[1094] Nevertheless, as he adds with much

truth, “we must not be too ready to give credence to everyone, for

many people are given to inventing such things.”[1095]

At the present time the noisy spirits are not so noticeable;

“among us they have thinned”;[1096] the chief reason is, that the

devils now prefer the company of the heretics, anabaptists and

fanatics;[1097] for Satan “enters into men, for instance into the

heretics and fanatics, into Münzer and his ilk, also into the

usurers and others”;[1098] “the fanatic spirits are greatly on the

increase.”[1099] The false teachers prove by their devilish speech how

greatly the devil, “clever and dangerous trickster that he is,” “can

deceive the hearts and consciences of men and hold them captive in his

craze.” “What is nothing but lies, idle error and gruesome darkness,

that they take to be the pure, unvarnished truth!”[1100]

If the devil can thus deceive men’s minds, surely it is far easier

for him to bewitch their bodily senses. “He can hoax and cheat all

the senses,”[1101] so that a man thinks he sees something that he

can’t see, or hears what isn’t, for instance, “thunder, pipes or

bugle-calls.” Luther fancies he finds an allusion to something of the

sort in the words of Paul to the Galatians iii. 1: “Who hath bewitched

you before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been set forth [that you

should not obey the truth]?”[1102] Children can be bewitched by the

evil eye of one who is under a spell, and Jerome was wrong when he

questioned whether the illness of children in a decline was really

due to the evil eye.[1103] It is certain that “by his great power

the devil is able to blind our eyes and our souls,” as he did in the

case of the woman who thought she was wearing a crown, whereas it was

simply “cow dung.”[1104] He tells how, in Thuringia, eight hares were

trapped, which, during the night, were changed into horses’ heads,

such as we find lying on the carrion heap.[1105] Had not St. Macarius

by his prayers dispelled the Satanic delusion by which a girl had

been changed into a cow in the presence of many persons, including

her own parents? The distressed parents brought their daughter in the

semblance of a cow to Macarius “in order that she might recover her

human shape,” and “the Lord did in point of fact dissolve the spell

whereby men’s senses had been misled.” Luther several times relates

this incident, both in conversation and in writing.[1106]

There is certainly no lack of marvellous tales of devils either in his

works or in his Table-Talk.[1107]

The toils of the sorcerer are everywhere. Magic may prove most

troublesome in married life, more particularly where true faith

is absent; for, as he told the people in a sermon on May 8, 1524,

“conjugal impotence is sometimes produced by the devil, by means of

the Black Art; in the case of [true] Christians, however, this cannot

happen.”[1108]

_On the Abode of the Devil; his Shapes and Kinds_

It is worth while to glance at what Luther says of the dwelling-places

of the devil, the different shapes he is wont to assume, and the

various categories into which demons may be classed.

First, as to his abode. In a sermon recently published, and dating

from June 13, 1529, Luther says: “The devil inhabits the forests, the

thickets, and the waters, and insinuates himself amongst us everywhere

in order to destroy us; sleep he never does.” Preaching in the hot

weather, he warns his hearers against the cool waters in which the

devil lurks: “Be careful about bathing in the cold water.... Every

year we hear of people being drowned [by the devil] through bathing in

the Elbe.”[1109]

In another sermon incorporated in the Church-postils he explains how

in countries like ours, “which are well watered,” the devils are fond

of infesting the waters and the swamps; they sometimes drown those who

venture there to bathe or even to walk. _Item_, in some places Naiades

are to be met with who entice the children to the water’s edge, drag

them in and drown them: all these are devils.[1110] Such devils can

commit fornication with the maidens, and “are able to beget children

which are simply devils”;[1111] for the devil will often drag a girl

into the water, get her with child and keep her by him until she has

borne her baby; he then lays these children in other people’s cradles,

removing the real children and carrying them off.[1112]

Elsewhere the devils prefer “bare and desolate regions,” “woods and

wildernesses.”[1113] “Some are to be found in the thick black clouds,

these cause hailstorms, thunder and lightning, and poison the air, the

pastures, etc.” Hence “_philosophi_” ought not to go on explaining

these phenomena as though they were natural.[1114] Further, the devil

has a favourite dwelling-place deep down in the earth, in the mines,

where he “pesters and deceives people,” showing them for instance what

appears to be “solid silver, whereas it is nothing of the kind.”[1115]

“Satan hides himself in the apes and long-tailed monkeys,” who lie in

wait for men and with whom it is wrong to play.[1116] That he inhabits

these creatures, and also the parrots, is plain from their skill in

imitating human beings.[1117]

In some countries many more devils are to be found than in others.

“There are many evil spirits in Prussia and also in Pilappen

[Lapland].” In Switzerland the devils make a “frightful to-do” in the

“Pilatus tarn not far from Lucerne”; in Saxony, “in the Poltersberg

tarn,” things are almost as bad, for if a stone be thrown in, it

arouses a “great tempest.”[1118] “Damp and stuffy places” are however

the devils’ favourite resort.[1119] He was firmly convinced that in

the moist and swampy districts of Saxony all the devils “that Christ

drove out of the swine in Jerusalem and Judæa had congregated”;

“so much thieving, sorcery and pilfering goes on that the Evil One

must indeed be present in person.”[1120] The fact of so many devils

inhabiting Saxony was perhaps the reason, so he adds quaintly enough,

“why the Evangel had to be preached there, i.e. that they might be

chased away.” It was for this reason, so he repeats, “that Christ came

amongst the Wends [Prussians], the worst of all the nations, in order

to destroy the work of Satan and to drive out the devils who there

abide among the peasants and townspeople.”[1121] That he was disposed

to believe that a number, by no means insignificant, of devils could

assemble in one place is plain from several statements such as, that

at the Wartburg he himself had been plagued by “a thousand devils,”

that at Augsburg every bishop had brought as many devils with him to

the Diet as a dog has fleas in hot weather, and, finally, that at

Worms their number was probably not far short of the tiles on the

roofs.

* * * * *

The forms the devil assumes when he appears to men are very varied; to

this the accounts sufficiently bear witness.

He appeared as a goat,[1122] and often as a dog;[1123] he tormented a

sick woman in the shape of a calf from which Luther set her free—at

least for one night.[1124] He is fond of changing himself into cats

and other animals, foxes, hares, etc., “without, however, assuming

greater powers than are possessed by such animals.”[1125] The

semblance of the serpent is naturally very dear to the devil. To a

sick girl at Wittenberg with whom Luther happened to be, he appeared

under the form of Christ, but afterwards transformed himself into a

serpent and bit the girl’s ear till the blood came.[1126] The devil

comes as Christ or as a good angel, so as to be the better able to

tempt people. He has been seen and heard under the guise of a hermit,

of a holy monk, and even, so the tale runs, of a preacher; the latter

had “preached so earnestly that the whole church was reduced to

tears”; whereupon he showed himself as the devil; but “whether this

story be true or not, I leave you to decide.”[1127] The form of a

satyr suits him better, what we now call a hobgoblin; in this shape

he “frequently appeared to the heathen in order to strengthen them in

their idolatry.”[1128] A prettier make under which he appears is that

of the “brownie”; it was in this guise that he was wont to sit on a

clean corner of the hearthstone beside a maid who had strangled her

baby.[1129] From the behaviour of the devils we may infer that, “so

far they are not undergoing any punishment though they have already

been sentenced, for were they being punished they would not play so

many roguish tricks.”[1130]

* * * * *

Amongst the different kinds of devils he enumerates, using names which

recall the humorous ones common in the old folk-lore of Germany, are

not merely the stupid, the playful, the malicious and the murderous

fiends, but also the more sightly ones,[1131] viz. the familiar and

friendly demons; then again there are the childish little devils who

allure to unchastity and so forth though not to unbelief or despair

like the more dangerous ones.[1132] He is familiar with angelic,

shining, white and holy devils, i.e. who pretend to be such, also

with black devils and the “supreme majestic devil.” The majestic

devil wants to be worshipped like God, and, in this, being “so

quick-witted,” he actually succeeded in the ages before Luther’s day,

for “the Pope worshipped him.”[1133] The devil repaid the Pope by

bewitching the world in his favour; he brought him a large following

and wrought much harm by means “of lies and magic,” doing on a vast

scale what the “witches” do in a smaller way.[1134]

There are further, as Luther jestingly explains, house-devils,

Court-devils and church-devils; of these “the last are the

worst.”[1135] “Boundless is the devils’ power,” he says elsewhere,

“and countless their number; nor are they all childish little devils,

but great national devils, devils of the sovereigns, devils of the

Church, who, with their five thousand years’ experience, have grown

very knowing ... in fact, far too cunning for us in these latter

days.”[1136] “Satan knows his business and no one but Jesus Christ can

cope with him.”[1137] Very dangerous indeed are the Court-devils, who

“never rest,” but “busy themselves at Court, and work all the mischief

in the councils of the kings and rulers, thwarting all that is good;

for the devil has some fine rakehells at Court.”[1138] As for the

noisy devils, they had troubled him even in his youth.[1139]

The Papists have their own devils who work supposed miracles on

their behalf, for the wonders which occur amongst them at the places

of pilgrimage or elsewhere in answer to their prayers are not real

miracles but devil’s make-believe. In fact, Satan frequently makes a

person appear ill, and, then, by releasing him from the spell, cures

him again.[1140]

The above ideas Luther had to a large extent borrowed from the past,

indeed we may say that the gist of his fancies concerning the devil

was but part of the great legacy of credulity, folk-lore and the

mistaken surmises of theologians handed down verbally and in writing

from the Middle Ages. Only an age-long accumulation of prejudice,

rife particularly among the Saxon people, can explain Luther’s rooted

attachment to such a congeries of wild fancies.

Assisted by the credulity of Melanchthon and other of his associates

Luther not only added to the number of such ideas, but, thanks to his

gift of vivid portraiture, made them far more strong and life-like

than before. Through his widely-read works he introduced them into

circles in which they were as yet scarcely known, and, in particular,

established them firmly in the Lutheran world for many an age to come.

_The Devil and the Witches_

“It is quite certain,” says Paulus in his recent critical study of the

history of witchcraft, “that Luther in his ideas on witchcraft was

swayed by mediæval opinion.” “In many directions the innovators in the

16th century shook off the yoke of the Middle Ages; why then did they

hold fast to the belief in witches? Why did Luther and many of his

followers even outstrip the Middle Ages in the stress they laid on the

work of the devil?”[1141]

Paulus here touches upon a question which the Protestant historian,

Walter Köhler, had already raised, viz.: “Is it possible to explain

the Reformers’ attachment to the belief in witchcraft simply on the

score that they received it from the Middle Ages? How did they treat

mediæval tradition in other matters? Why then was their attitude

different here?”[1142]

G. Steinhausen, in his “Geschichte der deutschen Kultur,” writes: “No

one ever insisted more strongly than Luther on his role [the devil’s];

he was simply carried away by the idea.... Though in his words and the

stories he tells of the devil he speaks the language of the populace,

yet the way in which he weaves diabolical combats and temptations into

man’s whole life is both new and unfortunate. Every misfortune, war

and tempest, every sickness, plague, crime and deformity emanates from

the Evil One.”[1143]

Some of what Luther borrowed from the beliefs of his own day goes back

to pre-Christian times. The belief in witches comprised much heathen

tradition too deeply rooted for the early missionaries to eradicate.

Moreover, certain statements of olden ecclesiastical writers

incautiously exploited enabled even the false notions of the ancient

Græco-Roman world to become also current. Fear of hidden, dangerous

forces, indiscriminating repetition of alleged incidents from the

unseen, the ill-advised discussions of certain theologians and

thoughtless sermons of popular orators, all these causes and others

contributed to produce the crass belief in witches as it existed even

before Luther’s day at the close of the Middle Ages, and such as we

find it, for instance, in the sermons of Geiler von Kaysersberg.

The famous Strasburg preacher not only accepted it as an undoubted

fact, that witches were able with the devil’s help to do all kinds of

astounding deeds, but he also takes for granted the possibility of

their making occasional aerial trips, though it is true he dismisses

the nocturnal excursions of the women with Diana, Venus and Herodias

as mere diabolical delusion. He himself never formally demanded the

death-penalty for witches, but it may be inferred that he quite

countenanced the severe treatment advocated in the “Witches’ Hammer.”

In his remarks on witches he follows partly Martin Plantsch, the

Tübingen priest and University professor, partly, and still more

closely, the “_Formicarius_” of the learned Dominican Johannes Nider

(1380-1438).[1144]

Concerning the witches and their ways Luther’s works contain an

extraordinary wealth of information.

In the sermons he delivered on the Ten Commandments as early as 1516

and 1517, and which, in 1518, he published in book form,[1145] he took

over an abundance of superstition from the beliefs current amongst

the people, and from such writers as Geiler. In 1518 and 1519 were

published no less than five editions in Latin of the sermons on the

Decalogue; the book was frequently reprinted separately and soon made

its appearance in Latin in some collections of Luther’s writings; later

on it figures in the complete Latin editions of his works; six German

editions of it had appeared up to 1520 and it is also comprised in the

German collections of his works. In his old age, when the “evils of

sorcery seemed to be gaining ground anew,” he deemed it “necessary,”

as he said,[1146] “to bring out the book once more with his own hand”;

certain tales, amongst which he instances one concerning the devil’s

cats and a young man, might serve to demonstrate “the power and malice

of Satan” to all the world. One cannot but regard it as a mistake on

Luther’s part, when, in his sermons on the Ten Commandments, he takes

his hearers and readers into the details of the magic and work of

the witches, though at the same time emphasising very strongly the

unlawfulness of holding any communication with Satan. This stricture

tells, however, as much against many a Catholic writer of that day.

It is in his commentary on the 1st Commandment that he gives us a

first glimpse into the world of witches which later was to engross his

attention even more.

He is anxious to bring home to the “weaklings” how one can sin against

the 1st Commandment.[1147] He therefore enumerates all the darkest

deeds of human superstition; of their reality he was firmly convinced,

and only seldom does he speak merely of their “possibility,” or say,

“it is believed” that this or that took place. He also divides into

groups the people who sin against the virtue of Divine love, doing so

according to their age, and somewhat on the lines of a Catechism, in

order that “the facts may be more easily borne in mind.”

“The third group,” he says, “is that of the old women, etc.” “By their

magic they are able to bring on blindness, cause sickness, kill,

etc.”[1148] “Some of them have their fireside devil who comes several

times a day.” “There are _incubi_ and _succubi_ amongst the devils,”

who commit lewdness with witches and others. Devil-strumpetry and

ordinary harlotry are amongst the sins of these women. Luther also

speaks of magic potions, desecration of the sacrament in the devil’s

honour, and secret incantations productive of the most marvellous

effects.

His opinion he sums up as follows: “What the devil himself is unable

to do, that he does by means of old hags”;[1149] “he is a powerful

god of this world”;[1150] “the devil has great power through the

sorceresses.”[1151] He prefers thus to make use of the female sex

because, “it comes natural to them ever since the time of Mother Eve

to let themselves be duped and fooled.”[1152] “It is as a rule a

woman’s way to be timid and afraid of everything, hence they practise

so much magic and superstition, the one teaching the other.”[1153]

Even in Paradise, so he says, the devil approached the woman rather

than the man, she being the weaker.[1154]

It is worthy of note that he does not merely base his belief in

witchcraft on the traditions of the past but preferably on Scripture

directly, and the power of Satan to which it bears witness.

In 1519 he had attempted to prove on St. Paul’s authority against the

many who refused to believe in such things, that sorcery can cause

harm, omitting, however, to make the necessary distinctions.[1155]

In 1538 he declares: “The devil is a great and powerful enemy. Verily

I believe, that, unless children were baptised at an early age no

congregations could be formed; for adults, who know the power of

Satan, would not submit to be baptised so as to avoid undertaking the

baptismal vows by which they renounce Satan.”[1156]

In the Commentary on Galatians he not merely appeals anew to the

apostolic authority in support of his doctrine concerning the devil,

but also directly bases his belief in witchcraft on the principle,

that it is plain that Satan “rules and governs the whole world,” that

we are but guests in the world, of which the devil is prince and god

and controls everything by which we live: food, drink, clothing, air,

etc.[1157] By means of sorcery he is able to strangle and slay us;

through the agency of his whores and sorceresses, the witches, he is

able to hurt the little children, with palpitations, blindness, etc.

“Nay, he is able to steal a child and lay himself in the cradle in its

stead, for I myself have heard of such a child in Saxony whom five

women were not able to supply with sufficient milk to quiet it; and

there are many such instances to be met with.”[1158]

The numerous other instances of harm wrought by witches with which he

is acquainted, such as the raising of storms, thefts of milk, eggs

and butter,[1159] the laying of snares to entrap men, tears of blood

that flow from the eyes, lizards cast up from the stomach,[1160]

etc., all recede into the background in comparison with the harlotry,

substitution of children, etc., which the devil carries out with the

witches’ help. “It is quite possible that, as the story goes, the Evil

Spirit can carnally know the sorceresses, get them with child and

cause all manner of mischief.”[1161] Changeling children of the sort

are nothing but a “lump of flesh without a soul”; the devil is the

soul, as Luther says elsewhere,[1162] for which reason he declared, in

1541, such children should simply be drowned; he recalls how he had

already given this advice in one such case at Dessau, viz. that such a

child, then twelve years of age, should be smothered.[1163]

It sometimes happens, so he says, that animals, cats for instance,

intent on doing harm, are wounded and that afterwards the witches

are found to have wounds in the same part of the body. In such case

the animals were all sham.[1164] A mouse trying to steal milk is hurt

somewhere, and the next day the witch comes and begs for oil for the

wound which she has in the very same place.[1165] If milk and butter

are placed on coals the devil, he says, will be obliged to call up the

witches who did the mischief.[1166] “It is also said that people who

eat butter that has been bewitched, eat nothing but mud.”[1167]

In such metamorphoses into animals it was not, however, the witches

who underwent the change, nor were the animals really hurt, but it was

“the devil who transformed himself into the animal” which was only

apparently wounded; afterwards, however, “he imprints the marks of the

wounds on the women so as to make them believe they had taken part

in the occurrence.”[1168] At any rate this is the curiously involved

explanation he once gives of the difficult problem.

In some passages he, like others too, is reluctant to accept the

theory that afterwards grew so prevalent, particularly during the

witch persecutions in the 17th century, viz. that the witches were in

the habit of flying through the air. In 1540 he says that this, like

the changes mentioned above, was merely conjured up before the mind

by the devil, and was thus a delusion of the senses and a Satanic

deception.[1169] Yet in 1538 he assumes that it was in Satan’s power

to carry those who had surrendered themselves to him bodily through

the air;[1170] he had heard of one instance where even repentance and

confession could not save such a man, when at the point of death,

from being carried off by the devil. At an earlier date he had

spoken without any hesitation of the witches who ride “on goats and

broom-sticks and travel on mantles.”[1171]

The witches are the most credulous and docile tools of the devil; they

are his hand and foot for the harm of mankind. They are “devil’s own

whores who give themselves up to Satan and with whom he holds fleshly

intercourse.”[1172]

“Such persons ought to be hurried to justice (‘_supplicia_’). The

lawyers want too much evidence, they despise these open and flagrant

proofs.” When questioned on the rack they answer nothing, “they are

dumb, they despise punishment, the devil will not let them speak. Such

deeds are, however, evidence enough, and for the sake of frightening

others they ought to be made an example.”[1173]

“Show them no mercy!” so he has it on another occasion. “I would burn

them myself, as we read in the Law [of Moses] that the priests led the

way in stoning the evildoer.”[1174] And yet here all the ado was simply

about ... a theft of milk! But sorcery as such was regarded by him

as “lèse majesté” [against God], as a rebellion, a crime whereby the

Divine Majesty is insulted in the worst possible of ways. “Hence it is

rightly punished by bodily pains and death.”[1175] He first expresses

himself in favour of the death-penalty in a sermon in 1526,[1176] and

to this point of view he adhered to the end.[1177]

Luther’s words and his views on witches generally became immensely

popular. The invitation to persecute the witches was read in the German

Table-Talk compiled by Aurifaber and published at Eisleben in 1566. It

reappeared, together with the rest of the contents, in the two reprints

published at Frankfurt in 1567, also in the new edition which Aurifaber

himself undertook in 1568, as well as in the Frankfurt and Eisleben

editions of 1569.[1178] Not only were the people exhorted to persecute

the witches, but, intermixed with the other matter, we find all

sorts of queer witch-stories just of the type to call up innumerable

imitations. He relates, for instance, the experiences of his own mother

with a neighbour who was a “sorceress,” who used to “shoot at her

children so that they screamed themselves to death”; also the tale told

him by Spalatin, in 1538, of a little maid at Altenburg over whom a

spell had been cast by a witch and who “shed tears of blood.”

The demonological literature which soon assumed huge proportions and

of which by far the greater part emanated from the pen of Protestant

writers, appealed constantly to Luther, and reproduced his theories and

stories, and likewise his demands that measures should be taken for

the punishment of the witches. It may suffice to draw attention to the

curious book entitled “Pythonissa, i.e. twenty-eight sermons on witches

and ghosts,” by the preacher Bernard Waldschmidt of Frankfurt. He

demonstrates from Luther’s Table-Talk that the devil was able to assume

all kinds of shapes, for instance, of “cats, goats, foxes, hares,

etc.,” just as he had appeared at Wittenberg in Luther’s presence,

first as Christ, and then as a serpent.[1179]

Many Lutheran preachers and religious writers were accustomed to

remind the people not only of the tales in the Table-Talk, but also of

what was contained in the early exposition of the Ten Commandments,

in the Prayer-book of 1522 and in the Church-postils, Commentary on

Galatians, etc. Books of instances such as those of Andreas Hondorf

in 1568 and Wolfgang Büttner in 1576 made these things widely known.

David Meder, Lutheran preacher at Nebra in Thuringia, in his “Eight

witch-sermons” (1605), referred in the first sermon to the Table-Talk,

also to Luther’s exposition of the Decalogue, to his Commentary

on Genesis and his work “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen.” Bernard

Albrecht, the Augsburg preacher, in his work on witches, 1628, G. A.

Scribonius, J. C. Gödelmann and N. Gryse all did the same.

In what esteem Luther’s sayings were held by the Protestant lawyers

is plain from certain memoranda of the eminent Frankfurt man of law,

Johann Fischart, dating from 1564 and 1567. Fischart was against the

“Witches’ Hammer” and the other Catholic productions of an earlier

day, such as Nider’s “_Formicarius_,” yet he expresses himself in

favour of the burning of witches and appeals on this point to Luther

and his interpretation of Holy Scripture.

Holy Scripture and Luther were as a rule appealed to by the

witch-zealots on the Protestant side, as is proved by the writings

of Abraham Saur (1582) and Jakob Gräter (1589), of the preacher

Nicholas Lotichius and Nicholas Krug (1567), of Frederick Balduin

of Wittenberg (1628)—whose statements were accepted by the famous

Saxon criminalogist Benedict Carpzov, who signed countless death

sentences against witches—and by J. Volkmar Bechmann, the opponent

of the Jesuit Frederick von Spee. We may pass over the many other

names cited by N. Paulus with careful references to the writings in

question.[1180]

It must be pointed out, however, that an increase in the severity

of the penal laws against witches is first noticeable in the Saxon

Electorate in 1572, when it was decreed that they should be burnt at

the stake, even though they had done no harm to anyone, on account

of their wicked compact with the devil.[1181] As early as 1540, at

a time when elsewhere in Germany the execution of witches was of

rare occurrence, four persons were burnt at Wittenberg on June 29 as

witches or wizards.[1182] Shortly before this Luther had lamented that

the plague of witches was again on the increase.[1183]

Even the Catholic clergy occasionally quoted Luther’s statements

on witches, as given in his widely read Table-Talk; thus, for

instance, Reinhard Lutz in his “True Tidings of the godless Witches”

(1571).[1184] This writing, at the very beginning and again at the

end, contains a passage from the Table-Talk dealing with witches,

devils’ children, incubi and succubi; on the other hand, it fails to

refer either to the “Witches’ Hammer” of 1487 or to the Bull, “_Summis

desiderantes_,” of Innocent VIII (1484).

Thus the making of this regrettable mania was in great part Luther’s

doing.[1185] And yet a reformer could have found no nobler task than to

set to work to sweep away the abusive outgrowths of the belief in the

devil’s power.

We still have instructive writings by Catholic authors of that day

which, whilst by no means promoting the popular ideas concerning the

devil, are unquestionably rooted in the Middle Ages. Such a work is

the Catechism of Blessed Peter Canisius. One particular in which

the “Larger” Canisian Catechism differs from Luther’s Larger German

Catechism is, that, whereas in the latter the evil power of Satan

over material things is dealt with at great length, the Catechism

of Canisius says never a word on the material harm wrought by the

devil. While Luther speaks of the devil sixty-seven times, Canisius

mentions him only ten times. Canisius’s book was from the first widely

known amongst German-speaking Catholics and served down to the last

century for purposes of religious instruction.[1186] Though this is

true of this particular book of Canisius, the influence of which was

so far-reaching, it must in honesty be added that even a man like

Canisius, both in his other writings and in his practical conduct, was

not unaffected by the prevailing ideas concerning the devil.

_Luther’s Devil-mania; its Connection with his Character and his

Doctrine_

Had Luther written his Catechism during the last period of his life he

would undoubtedly have brought the diabolical element and his belief in

witches even more to the fore. For, as has been pointed out (above, pp.

227, 238), Luther’s views on the power the devil possesses over mankind

and over the whole world were growing ever stronger, till at last they

came to colour everything great or small with which he had to deal;

they became, in fact, to him a kind of fixed idea.

In his last year (1546), having to travel to Eisleben, he fancies so

many fiends must be assembled there on his account, i.e. to oppose

him, “that hell and the whole world must for the nonce be empty of

devils.”[1187] At Eisleben he even believed that he had a sight of the

devil himself.[1188]

Three years before this he complains that no one is strong enough in

belief in the devil; the “struggle between the devils and the angels”

affrights him; for it is to be apprehended that “the angels whilst

fighting for us often get the worst for a time.”[1189] His glance

often surveys the great world-combat which the few who believe wage

on Christ’s side against Satan, and which has lasted since the dawn

of history; now, at the very end of the world, he sees the result

more clearly. Christ is able to save His followers from the devil’s

claws only by exerting all His strength; they, like Luther, suffer

from weakness of faith, just as Christ Himself did in the Garden of

Olives(!); they, like Luther, stumble, because Christ loves to show

Himself weak in the struggle with the devil; mankind’s and God’s

rights have come off second best during the age-long contest with the

devil. In Jewry, for which Luther’s hatred increases with age, he sees

men so entirely delivered over to the service of the devil that “all

the heathen in a lump” are simply nothing in comparison with the Jews;

but even the “fury of the Jews is mere jest and child’s play” compared

with the devilish corruption of the Papacy.

“The devil is there; he has great claws and whosoever falls into them

him he holds fast, as they find to their cost in Popery. Hence let

us always pray and fear God.” This in 1543.[1190] But we must also

fear the devil, and very much too, for, as he solemnly declares in

1542: “Our last end is that we fear the devil”; for the worst sins are

“delusions of the devil.”[1191] “The whole age is Satanic,”[1192] and

the “activity of the devil is now manifest”; the speaker longs for

“God at length to mock at Satan.”[1193] “The devil is all-powerful at

present, several foreign kings are his train-bearers.... God Himself

must come in order to resist the proud spirit.... Shortly Christ will

make an end of his lies and murders.”[1194]

The whole of his work, the struggle for the Evangel, seems to him at

times as one long wrestling with the boundless might of Satan.[1195]

All his life, so he said in his old age, he had forged ahead

“tempestuously” and “hit out with sledge-hammer blows”; but it was

all against Satan. “I rush in head foremost, but ... against the

devil.”[1196] As early as 1518, however, he knew the “thoughts of

Satan.”[1197]

It is not difficult to recognise the different elements which, as

Luther grew older, combined permanently to establish him in his

devil-mania.

Apart from his peculiar belief in the devil, of which he was never

to rid himself, there was the pessimism which loomed so large in his

later years;[1198] there was also his habit of regarding himself and

his work as the pet aversion and chief object of Satan’s persecution,

for since, according to his own contention, his great struggle against

Antichrist was in reality directed against the devil, the latter

naturally endeavoured everywhere to bar his way. If great scandals

arise as the result of his sermons, it is Satan who is to blame; “he

smarts under the wounds he receives and therefore does he rage and

throw everything into confusion.”[1199] The disorderly proceedings

against the Catholics at Erfurt which brought discredit on his teaching

were also due to the devil. The Wittenberg students who disgrace him

are instigated by the devil. Dr. Eck was incited against him by Satan.

The Catholic princes who resist him, like Duke George of Saxony, have

at least a “thousand devils” who inspire them and assist them. Above

all, it is the devil himself who delivers his oracles through the

mouthpiece of those teachers of the innovations who differ from Luther,

deluding them to such an extent that they lose “their senses and their

reason.”[1200] If Satan can do nothing else against the Evangel he

sends out noisy spirits so as to bolster up the heresy of the existence

“of a Purgatory.”[1201]

Such ideas became so habitual with him, that, in later years, the

conviction that the devil was persecuting his work developed into an

abiding mania, drawing, as it were, everything else into its vortex.

Everywhere he hears behind him the footsteps of his old enemy, the

devil.

“Satan has often had me by the throat.... He has frequently beset

me so hard that I knew not whether I was dead or alive ... but with

God’s Word I have withstood him.”[1202] He lies with me in my bed,

so he says on one occasion; “he sleeps much more with me than my

Katey.”[1203] His struggle with him degenerates into a hand-to-hand

brawl, “I have to be at grips with him daily.”[1204] His pupils

related, that on his own giving, when he was an old man “the devil

had walked with him in the dormitory of the [former] monastery ...

plaguing and tormenting him”; that “he had one or two such devils

who were in the habit of lying in wait” for him, and, “that, when

unable to get the better of his heart, they attacked and troubled his

head.”[1205] Whether the narrators of these accounts are referring to

actual apparitions or not does not much matter.

Later on, when dealing with his delusions, we shall have to speak of

the diabolical apparitions Luther is supposed to have had. There is

no doubt, however, that Luther’s first admirers took his statements

concerning his experiences with the devil rather more seriously than

he intended, as, for instance, when Cyriacus Spangenberg in his

“Theander Lutherus”[1206] relates a disputation on the Winkle-Mass

which he supposed Luther to have actually held with the devil, and

even goes so far as to prove from the bruises which the devil in

person inflicted on him that Luther was “really a holy martyr.”[1207]

Even some of his opponents, like Cochlæus, fancied that because

Luther said “in a sermon that he had eaten more than one mouthful of

salt with the devil, he had therefore most probably been in direct

communication with the devil himself, the more so since some persons

were said to have seen the two hobnobbing together.”[1208] Here we

shall merely point out generally that to Luther the power of Satan,

his delusions and persecutions, were something that seemed very

near,[1209] an uncanny feeling that increased as he grew older and as

his physical strength gave out.

“The devil is now very powerful,” he says in 1540, “for he no longer

deals with us through the agency of others, of Duke George, for

instance, or the Englishman [Henry VIII], or of the Mayence fellow

[Albert], but fights against us visibly. Against him we must pray

diligently.”[1210] “Didn’t he even ride many grand and holy prophets.

Was not David a great prophet? And yet even he was devil-ridden, and

so was Saul and ‘Bileam’ too.”[1211]

We must, moreover, not overlook the link which binds Luther’s

devil-mania to his doctrinal system as a whole, particularly to his

teaching on the enslaved will and on justification.

Robbed of free-will for doing what is good, when once the devil assumes

the mastery, man must needs endure his anger and perform his works.

Luther himself found a cruel rider in the devil. Again, though man by

the Grace of God is justified by faith, yet the old diabolical root of

sin remains in him, for original sin persists and manifests itself in

concupiscence, which is essentially the same thing as original sin. All

acts of concupiscence are, therefore, sins, being works of our bondage

under Satan; only by the free grace of Christ can they be cloaked

over. The whole outer world which has been depraved by original sin

is nothing but the “devil’s own den”; the devil stands up very close

(“_propinquissimus_”)[1212] even to the pious, so that it is no wonder

if we ever feel the working of the spirit of darkness. “Man must bear

the image either of God or of the devil.” Created to the image of God

he failed to remain true to it, but “became like unto the devil.”[1213]

Hence his doctrines explain how he expected every man to be so keenly

sensible of “God’s wrath, the devil, death and hell”; everyone should

realise that ours is “no real life, but only death, sin and power of

the devil.”[1214] It is true that in his doctrine faith affords a man

sufficient strength, and even makes him master of the devil; but, as

he remarks, this is “in no wise borne out by experience and must be

believed beforehand.” Meanwhile we are painfully “sensible” that we are

“under the devil’s heel,” for the “world and what pertains to it must

have the devil for its master, who also clings to us with all his might

and is far stronger than we are; for we are his guests in a strange

hostelry.”[1215]

_The Weapons to be used against the Devil_

On the fact that faith gives us strength against all Satanic influences

Luther insists frequently and in the strongest terms.

He tries to find here a wholesome remedy against the fear that presses

on him. He describes his own attempts to lay hold on it and to fill

himself with Christ boldly and trustfully. Even in his last days such

words of confidence occasionally pierce the mists of his depression.

“We see well,” he says, “that when the devil attacks a [true] Christian

he is put to shame, for where there is faith and confidence he has

nothing to gain.” This he said in 1542 when relating the story of

an old-time hermit who rudely accosted the devil as follows, when

the latter sought to disturb him at his prayers: “Ah, devil, this

serves you right! You were meant to be an angel and you have become a

swine.”[1216]

“We must muster all our courage so as not to dread the devil.”[1217]

We must “clasp the faith to our very bosom” and “cheerfully fling

to the winds the apparitions of the spirits”; “they seek in vain to

affright men.”[1218] Contempt of the devil and awakening of faith are,

according to Luther, the best remedies against all assaults of the

devil.[1219] A man who really has the faith may even set an example

that others cannot imitate.[1220] Luther knows, for instance, of a

doctor of medicine who with boundless faith stood up to Satan when the

latter, horns and all, appeared to him; the brave man even succeeded

in breaking off the horns; but, in a similar case, when another tried

to do the same in a spirit of boasting, he was killed by Satan.[1221]

Hence let us have faith, but let our faith be humble!

But, provided we have faith and rely on Christ, we may well show the

devil our contempt for him, vex him and mock at his power and cunning.

He himself, as he says, was given to breaking out into music and song,

the better to show the devil that he despised him, for “our hymns are

very galling to him”; on the contrary, he rejoices and has a laugh

when we are upset and cry out “alas and alack!”[1222] To remain alone

is not good. “This is what I do”; rather than be alone “I go to my

swine-herd Johann or to see the pigs.”[1223]

In this connection Luther can tell some very coarse and vulgar jokes,

both at his own and others’ expense, in illustration of the contempt

which the devil deserves; they cannot here be passed over in silence.

Thus, on April 15, 1538, he relates the story of a woman of Magdeburg

whom Satan vexed by running over her bed at night “like rats and

mice. As he would not cease the woman put her a—— over the bedside,

presented him with a f—— (if such language be permissible) and said:

‘There, devil, there’s a staff, take it in your hand and go pilgriming

with it to Rome to the Pope your idol.’” Ever after the devil left

her in peace, for “he is a proud spirit and cannot endure to be

treated contemptuously.”[1224] According to Lauterbach, who gives

the story in somewhat briefer form, Luther sapiently remarked: “Such

examples do not always hold good, and are dangerous.”[1225]

He himself was nevertheless fond of expressing his contempt for the

devil after a similar way when the latter assailed him with remorse of

conscience.

“I can drive away the devil with a single f——.”[1226] “To shame

him we may tell him: Kiss my a——”,[1227] or “Ease yourself into

your shirt and tie it round your neck,” etc.[1228] On May 7, 1532,

when troubled in mind and afraid lest “the thunder should strike

him, he said: ‘Lick my a——, I want to sleep, not to hold a

disputation.’”[1229] On another occasion he exclaims: “The devil shall

lick my a—— even though I should have sinned.”[1230] When the devil

teased him at night, “suggesting all sorts of strange thoughts to

him,” he at last said to him: “Kiss me on the seat! God is not angry

as you would have it.” Of course, seeing that the devil “‘fouls’ the

knowledge of God,” he must expect to be “fouled” in his turn. Luther

frequently said, so the Table-Talk relates, that he would end by

sending “into his a—— where they belonged” those “twin devils” who

were in the habit of prying on him and tormenting him mentally and

bodily; for “they had brought him to such a pass that he was fit for

nothing.”[1231] The Pope had once played him (Luther) the same trick:

“He has stuck me into the devil’s behind”;[1232] “for I snap at the

Pope’s ban and am his devil, therefore does he hate and persecute

me.”[1233]

He relates, in May, 1532, according to Schlaginhaufen’s Notes, his

method of dismissing the devil by the use of stronger and stronger

hints: When the devil came to him at night in order to plague him, he

first of all told him to let him sleep, because he must work during

the day and needed all the rest he could get. Then, if Satan continued

to upbraid him with his sins, he would answer mockingly that he had

been guilty of a lot more sins which the devil had forgotten to

mention, for instance, he had, etc. (there follows the choice simile

of the shirt as given above); thirdly, “if he still goes on accusing

me of sins I say to him contemptuously: ‘_Sancte Satanas ora pro me_;

you have never done a wrong and you alone are holy; be off to God and

get grace for yourself.’”[1234]

The way in which Bugenhagen or Pomeranus, the pastor of Wittenberg,

with Luther’s fullest approval, drove the devil out of the butter

churn (vol. iii., p. 229 f.) became famous at Wittenberg, and, thanks

to the Table-Talk, elsewhere too. It may here be remarked that the

incident was no mere joke. For when, in 1536, the question of the

harm wrought by the witches was discussed amongst Luther’s guests,

and Bartholomew Bernhardi, the Provost, complained that his cow had

been bewitched for two years, so that he had been unable to get any

milk from her, Luther related quite seriously what had taken place

in Bugenhagen’s house. (“Then Pommer came to the rescue, scoffed at

the devil and emptied his bowels into the churn,” etc.). According

to Lauterbach’s “Diary” Luther returned to the incident in 1538 and

stamped the whole proceeding with his approval: “Dr. Pommer’s plan

is the best, viz. to plague them [the witches] with muck and stir it

well up, for then all their things begin to stink.”[1235] What is even

more remarkable than the strange practice itself is the way in which

Luther comes to speak of “Pommer’s plan.” It is his intention to show

that the method of combating witches had made progress since Catholic

times. For, in Lauterbach, the passage runs: “The village clergy and

schoolmasters had a plan of their own [for counteracting spells] and

plagued them [the witches] not a little, but Dr. Pommer’s plan, etc.

(as above).”[1236] Hence not only did Luther sanction the superstition

of earlier ages, but he even sought to improve on it by the invention

of new practices of his own.

Luther is also addicted to the habit dear to the German Middle Ages

of using the devil as a comic figure; as he advanced in age, however,

he tended to drop this habit and also the kindred one of chasing

the devil away by filthy abuse; the truth is that the devil had now

assumed in his eyes a grimmer and more tragic aspect.

Formerly he had been fond of describing in his joking way how the

devil, “though he had never actually taken his doctor’s degree,”[1237]

proved himself an “able logician” in his suggestions and disputations;

when he brought forward objections Luther would reply: “Devil, tell

me something new; what you say I already know.”[1238] In his book on

the “Winkle-Mass,” pretending to “make a little confession,” he tells

how, “on one occasion, awakening at midnight,” the devil began a

disputation against the Mass with the words: “Hearken, oh most learned

Doctor, are you aware that for some fifteen years you said such

Winkle-Masses nearly every day?”[1239] Whereupon he had “seized on

the old weapons” which “in Popery he had learnt to put on and to use”

and had sought an excuse. “To this the devil retorted: ‘Friend, tell

me where this is written, etc.’”[1240] Formerly he had been fond of

poking fun at the Papists by telling them how they “were beset merely

by naughty little devils, legal rather than theological ones;[1241]

that they were tempted only to homicide, adultery and fornication,”

in short, to sins of the second table of the Law, by “puny fiendkins

and little petty devils,” whereas we on the other hand have “by us the

great devils who are _doctores theologiæ_”; “these attack us as the

leaders of the army, for they tempt us to the great sins against the

first table,” to question the forgiveness of sins, to doubts against

faith and to despair.[1242]

He was very inventive and quite indefatigable in devising new epithets

with the help of the devil’s name; his adversaries were, according to

him, “full of devils, on whose backs moreover lived other and worse

devils”; it seems to him to fall all too short of the truth to say

they are “endevilled,” “perdevilled,” or “superdevilled” and “the

children of Satan.”[1243] The devil’s mother, grandmother and brothers

and sisters are frequently alluded to by Luther, particularly when in

a merry mood. In hours of gloom or emotion he could, however, curse

people with such words as “may the devil take you,”[1244] “May the

devil pay you out,” or “May he tread you under foot!”

He was perfectly aware, nevertheless, of the failings of his tongue,

and even expressed his regret for them to his friends. During his

illness, in 1527, we are told how he begged pardon for and bewailed the

“hasty and inconsiderate words he had often used the better to dispel

the sadness of a weak flesh.”[1245]

Melancholy is “a devil’s bath” (“_balneum diaboli_”), so he remarked on

another occasion, against which there is no more effective remedy than

cheerfulness of spirit.[1246]

5. The Psychology of Luther’s Jests and Satire

Joking was a permanent element of Luther’s psychology. Often, even in

his old age, his love of fun struggles through the lowering clouds of

depression and has its fling against the gloomy anxiety that fills his

mind, and against the world and the devil.

Gifted with a keen sense of the ridiculous, it had been, in his

younger days, almost a second nature to him to delight in drollery

and particularly to clothe his ideas in playful imagery. His mind was

indeed an inexhaustible source of rich and homely humour.

Nature had indeed endowed Luther from his cradle with that rare talent

of humour which, amidst the trials of life, easily proves more valuable

than a gold mine to him who has it. During his secular studies at

Erfurt he had been able to give full play to this tendency as some

relief after the hardships of early days. His preference for Terence,

Juvenal, Plautus and Horace amongst the classic poets leads us to

infer that he did so; and still more does Mathesius’s description, who

says that, at that time, he was a “brisk and jolly fellow.” Monastic

life and, later, his professorship and the strange course on which he

entered must for a while have placed a rein on his humour, but it broke

out all the more strongly when be brought his marvellous powers of

imagination and extraordinary readiness in the use of the German tongue

to the literary task of bringing over the masses to his new ideas.

Anyone desirous of winning the hearts of the German masses has always

had to temper earnestness with jest, for a sense of humour is part of

the nation’s birthright. The fact that Luther touched this chord was

far more efficacious in securing for him loud applause and a large

following than all his rhetoric and theological arguments.

_Humour in his Writings and at his Home_

It was in his polemics that Luther first turned to account his gift of

humour; his manner of doing so was anything but refined.

The first of his German controversial works against a literary

opponent was his “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome wider dem hochberumpten

Romanisten tzu Leiptzk”[1247] (the Franciscan Alveld or Alfeld),

dating from May and June, 1520. Here he starts with a comical

description of the “brave heroes in the market place at Leipzig,

so well armed as we have never seen the like before. Their helmets

they wear on their feet, their swords on their heads, their shields

and breastplates hang down their back, and their lances they grip

by the blade.... If Leipzig can produce such giants then that land

must indeed be fertile.” On the last page of the same writing he

puts the concluding touch to his work by telling Alveld, the “rude

miller’s beast,” that he does “not yet know how to bray his hee-haw,

hee-haw”; were I, says Luther, “to permit all the wantonness of these

thick-heads even the very washerwomen would end by writing against

me.” “What really helps it if a poor frog [like this fellow] blows

himself out? Even were he to swell himself out to bursting-point he

would never equal an ox.”

In his first German booklet against Emser, viz. his “An den Bock zu

Leyptzck” (1521),[1248] he plays on the motto of Emser’s coat-of-arms

“Beware of the goat.” There was really no call for Emser to inscribe

these words on his note-paper, for from his whole behaviour there was

no doubt that he was indeed a goat, and also that he could “do no more

than butt.” Luther’s reply to all his threats would be: “Dear donkey,

don’t lick! But God save the poor nanny-goats, whose horns are wrapped

in silk, from such a he-goat; as for me, so God wills, there is no

fear. Have you never heard the fable of the ass who tried to roar as

loud as the lion? I myself might have been afraid of you had I not

known you were an ass,” etc.

It is certainly not easy to believe his assertion, that it was only

against his will that he had recourse to all this derision which

he heaped on his adversaries in religious matters of such vital

importance. He has it that his words, “though maybe biting and

sarcastic,” are really “spoken from a heart that is breaking with

grief and has been obliged to turn what is serious into abuse.”[1249]

As a matter of fact the temptation to use just such weapons was too

great, and the prospect of success too alluring for us to place much

reliance in such an assurance. His “grief” was of quite another kind.

At a later date his humour, or rather his caustic and satirical manner

of treating his opponents, looked to him so characteristic of his

way of writing, that as he said, it would be quite easy to tell at a

glance which were the polemical tracts due to his pen, even though

they did not bear his name. This was his opinion of his “satirical

list” of the relics of the Cardinal of Mayence.[1250] Writing of this

work to his friend Jonas he says: “Whoever reads it and has ever been

familiar with my ideas and my pen will say: Here is Luther; the

Cardinal too will say: This is the work of that scamp Luther!... But

never mind; if they pipe then I insist on dancing, and, if I survive,

I hope one day to tread a measure with the bride of Mayence [the

Cardinal].” He had still “some sweet tit-bits” which he would like “to

lay on her red and rosy lips.”[1251] This last quotation may serve as

a specimen of the rough humour found in his controversial letters.

The reader already knows how the Papacy had to bear the brunt of such

jests and of an irony which often descends to the depths of vulgarity.

(Above, vol. iii., p. 232-235; vol. iv., pp. 295 f., 304 f, 318 ff.)

But it was not only in his polemics that his jests came in useful. The

jovial tone which often characterises his domestic life, the humour

that seasons his Table-talk (even though too often it oversteps the

bounds of the permissible) and makes itself felt even in his business

letters and intimate correspondence with friends, appears as Luther’s

almost inseparable companion, with whose smile and whose caustic irony

he cannot dispense.

The monotony and the hardships of his daily life were alleviated by his

cheerfulness. His intercourse with friends and pupils was rendered more

stimulating and attractive, and in many cases more useful. Under cover

of a jest he was often able to enforce good instruction more easily and

almost without its being noticed. His cheerful way of looking at things

often enabled Luther lightheartedly to surmount difficulties from which

others would have shrunk.

There is not the slightest doubt that his extraordinary influence over

those who came into contact with him was due in no small part to his

kindly addiction to pleasantry. It was indeed no usual thing to see

such mighty energy as he devoted to the world-struggle, so agreeably

combined with a keen gift of observation, with an understanding for

the most trivial details of daily life, and, above all, with such

refreshing frankness and such a determination to amuse his hearers.

In order to dispel the anxiety felt by Catherine Bora during her

husband’s absence, he would send her letters full of affection and of

humorous accounts of his doings. He tells her, for instance, how, in

consequence of her excessive fears for him “which hindered her from

sleeping,” everything about him had conspired to destroy him; how a

fire “at our inn just next door to our room” had tried to burn him,

how a heavy rock had fallen in order to kill him; “the rock really

had a mind to justify your solicitude, but the holy angels prevented

it.”[1252] In such cheerful guise does he relate little untoward

incidents. “You try to take care of your God,” he writes to her in a

letter already quoted, “just as though He were not Almighty and able

to create ten Dr. Martins were the old one to be drowned in the Saale,

suffocated in the coal-hole, or eaten up by the wolf.”[1253]

He was also joking, when, about the same time, i.e. during his stay

with the Counts of Mansfeld, he used the words which recently were

taken all too seriously by a Catholic polemist and made to constitute

a charge against Luther’s morals: “At present, thank God, I am well,

only that I am so beset by pretty women as once more to fear for my

chastity.”[1254]

The irony with which he frequently speaks and writes of both himself

and his friends is often not free from frivolity; we may recall, for

instance, his ill-timed jest concerning his three wives;[1255] or

his report to Catherine from Eisleben: “On the whole we have enough

to gorge and swill, and should have a jolly time were this tiresome

business to let us.”[1256] The last passage reminds us of his words

elsewhere: I feed like a Bohemian and swill like a German.[1257]

Among other jests at Catherine’s expense we find in the Table-Talk

the threat that soon the time will come when “we men shall be allowed

several wives,” words which perhaps are a humorous echo of the

negotiations concerning the Hessian bigamy.[1258]

Now and again Luther, by means of his witticisms, tried to teach his

wife some wholesome lessons. The titles by which he addresses her

may have been intended as delicate hints that her management of the

household was somewhat lordly and high-handed: My Lord Katey, Lord

Moses, my Chain (Kette) (“_catena mea_”). To seek to infer from this

that she was a “tyrant,” or to see in it an admission on his part that

he was but her slave, would be as mistaken as to be shocked at his

manner of addressing her elsewhere in his letters, e.g. “to the holy,

careful lady, the most holy lady Doctor; to my beloved lady Doctor

Self-martyr; to the deeply-learned Lady Catherine,” etc.

It has already been pointed out that many of the misunderstandings

of which Luther’s opponents were guilty are due to their inability

to appreciate his humour; they were thereby led to take seriously

as indicative of “unbelief,” statements which in reality were never

meant in earnest.[1259] On the other hand, however, certain texts and

explanations of Luther’s have, on insufficient grounds, been taken as

humorous even by Protestant writers, often because they seemed in some

way to cast a slur upon his memory. For instance, his interpretation of

the Monk-Calf was quite obviously never intended as a joke,[1260] nor

can it thus be explained away as some have recently tried to do. Nor,

again, to take an example from Luther’s immediate circle, can Amsdorf’s

offer of the nuns in marriage to Spalatin[1261] be dismissed as simply

a broad piece of pleasantry.

_Humour a Necessity to Luther in his Struggle with Others and with

Himself_

There can be no doubt that a remarkable psychological feature is

afforded by the combination in Luther of cheerfulness with intense

earnestness in work, indeed the persistence of his humour even in later

years when gloom had laid a firm hold on his soul constitutes something

of a riddle; for even the sufferings of the last period of his life did

not avail to stifle his love of a joke, though his jests become perhaps

less numerous; they serve, however, to conceal his sadder feelings, a

fact which explains why he still so readily has recourse to them.

First of all, a man so oppressed with inner difficulties and mental

exertion as Luther was, felt sadly the need of relaxation and

amusement. His jests served to counteract the strain, physical and

mental, resulting from the rush of literary work, sermons, conferences

and correspondence. In this we have but a natural process of the

nervous system.

A further explanation of his cheerfulness is, however, to be found

in the wish to prove against his own misgivings and his theological

opponents how joyous and confident he was at heart concerning his cause.

He hints at this himself. I will answer for the “Word of Christ,” so

he assures Alveld in his writing against him, “with a cheerful heart

and fresh courage, regardless of anyone; for which purpose God too

has given me a cheerful, fearless spirit, which I trust they will be

unable to sadden to all eternity.”[1262] He often gives the impression

of being anxious to show off his cheerfulness. He is fond of speaking

of his “steadfast and undaunted spirit”; let Emser, he says, take note

and bite his lips over the “glad courage which inspires him day by

day.”

Seeking to display this confidence in face of his opponents he

exclaims satirically in a writing of 1518: “Here I am.” If there be an

inquisitor in the neighbourhood he had better hurry up.[1263]

His courage and entire confidence he expressed as early as 1522 to

the Elector Frederick of Saxony who had urged him to fight shy of

Duke George: “Even if things at Leipzig were indeed as bad as at

Wittenberg [they think they are], I should nevertheless ride thither

even though—I hope your Electoral Highness will excuse my foolish

words—for nine days running it were to rain Duke Georges, each one

nine times as furious as he. He actually looks upon my Lord Christ as

a man of straw!”[1264] In such homely words did he speak, even to his

own sovereign whose protection counted for so much, in order to make

it yet clearer, that he was quite convinced of having received his

Evangel, “not from man, but solely from heaven through our Lord Jesus

Christ”; the Prince, his protector, should know, that God, “thanks to

the Evangel, has made us happy lords over death and all the devils.”

For this reason, according to his famous boast, he would still have

ridden to Worms in defiance of the devils, even had they outnumbered

the tiles on the roofs.[1265]

From the castle of Coburg, though himself a prey to all sorts of

anxiety, he addressed the following ironical, though at the same time

encouraging, admonition to faint-hearted Melanchthon: Why don’t you

fight against your own self? “What more can the devil do than slay

us? What then? You fight in every other field, why not then fight

also against your own self, viz. your biggest enemy who puts so many

weapons against you in Satan’s hands?”[1266] It was thus that Luther

was wont to fight against himself and to rob the devil of his fancied

weapons.

Often enough did he find salvation in humour alone, for instance, when

he had to overcome serious danger, or to beat down difficulties or

the censure of his friends and followers. The plague was threatening

Wittenberg; hence he jokes away his own fears and those of others with

a jest about his “trusty weathercock,” the governor Metzsch; the latter

had a nose which could detect the plague while yet five ells below the

ground; as he still remained in Wittenberg they had good reason to know

that no danger existed. On the same occasion he laughs and cries in

the same breath over the behaviour of the schoolboys, all the schools

having been already closed as a measure of precaution; the plague had

got into their pens and paper so that it would be impossible to make of

them “either preachers, pastors,. or schoolmasters; in the end swine

and dogs will be our best cattle, towards which end the Papists are

busily working.”[1267]

Further instances of jests of this sort, made under untoward

circumstances, are met with in connection with his marriage. His union

with Catherine Bora, as the reader already knows, set tongues wagging,

both in his own camp and outside. The resentment this aroused in him he

attempted to banish by a sort of half-jesting, half-earnest defiance.

“Since they are already cracked and crazy, I will drive them still

madder and so have done with it!”[1268] He jests incidentally over the

suddenness of his marriage, over the proof needed to convince even

himself that he was really a married man, over his surprise at finding

plaits of hair beside him when he awoke; he also makes merry over his

not very seemly play on the words Bore and bier.[1269]

At a later date he found the arrangement of the new ritual very

irksome, both on account of the difficulty of introducing any sort of

uniformity and also owing to the petty outside interests which intruded

themselves. Here again he tries to throw such questions to the winds

by the use of humour: “Put on three copes instead of one, if that

pleases you,” he wrote to Provost George Buchholzer of Berlin, who had

sent him an anxious letter of inquiry; and if Joachim, the Brandenburg

Elector, is not content with one procession “go around seven times as

Josue did at Jericho, and, if your master the Margrave does not mind,

His Electoral Highness is quite at liberty to leap and dance, with

harps, kettledrums, cymbals and bells as David did before the ark of

the Lord.”[1270]

During the whole of his career he felt the embarrassment of being

called upon by the Catholics to produce proof of his higher mission.

At times he sought to escape the difficulty, so far as miracles went,

by arguing on, and straining for all they were worth, certain natural

occurrences; on other occasions, however, he took refuge in jests.

On one occasion he even whimsically promised to perform a manifest

miracle. This was at a time when he was hard put to provide lodgings

for the nuns who had fled to Wittenberg and when it was rumoured that

he had undertaken a journey simply to escape the trouble. “‘I shall arm

myself with prayer,’ he said, ‘and, if it is needful, I shall assuredly

work a miracle.’ And at this he laughed,” so the notes of one present

relate.[1271]

Luther frequently lays it down that merry talk and good spirits are a

capital remedy against temptations to doubts on the faith and remorse

of conscience.

He exhorts Prince Joachim of Anhalt, who had much to suffer from the

“Tempter” and from “melancholy,” to be always cheerful, since God

has commanded us “to be glad in His presence.” “I, who have passed

my life in sorrow and looking at the black side of things, now seek

for joy, and find it whenever I can. We now have, praise be to God,

so much knowledge [through the Evangel] that we can afford to be

cheerful with a good conscience.” It was perfectly true—so he goes on

in a strangely shamefaced manner, to tell the pious but faint-hearted

Prince—that, at times, he himself still dreaded cheerfulness, as

though it were a sin, just as the Prince was inclined to do; “but

God-fearing, honourable, modest joy of good and pious people pleases

God well, even though occasionally there be a word or merry tale too

much.”[1272]

“Nothing does more harm than a sadness,” he declares in 1542. “It

drieth up the bones, as we read in Prov. xvii. [22]. Therefore let

a young man be cheerful, and for this reason I would inscribe over

his table the words ‘Sadness hath killed many, etc.’” (Eccles. xxx.

25).[1273]—“Thoughts of fear,” he insists on another occasion, “are

the sure weapons of death”; “Such thoughts have done me more harm than

all my enemies and all my labours.” They were at times so insistent

that my “efforts against them were in vain.” ... “So depraved is our

nature that we are not then open to any consolation; still, they must

be fought against by every means.”[1274]

For certain spells, particularly in earlier years, Luther nevertheless

succeeded so well in assuming a cheerful air and in keeping it up for

a considerable while, in spite of the oppression he felt within, that

those who came into contact with him were easily deceived. Of this

he once assures us himself; after referring to the great “spiritual

temptations” he had undergone with “fear and trembling” he proceeds:

“Many think that because I appear outwardly cheerful mine is a bed of

roses, but God knows how it stands with me in my life.”[1275]

In a word, we frequently find Luther using jocularity as an antidote

against depression. As he had come to look upon it as the best

medicine against what he was wont to call his “temptations” and had

habituated himself to its use, and as these “temptations” practically

never ceased, so, too, he was loath to deprive himself of so welcome

a remedy even in the dreariest days of his old age. In 1530, to all

intents and purposes, he openly confesses that such was the case. In

a letter to Spalatin, written from the Coburg at a time when he was

greatly disturbed, he describes for his friend’s amusement the Diet

which the birds were holding on the roof of the Castle. His remarks he

brings to a conclusion with the words: “Enough of such jests, earnest

and needful though they be for driving away the thoughts that worry

me—if indeed they can be driven away.”[1276]

Still deeper is the glimpse we get into his inmost thoughts when,

in his serious illness of 1527, he voiced his regret for his free

and offensive way of talking, remarking that it was often due to his

seeking “to drive away the sadness,” to which his “weak flesh” was

liable.

One particular instance in which he resorted to jest as a remedy is

related in the Table-Talk; “In 1541, on the Sunday after Michaelmas,

Dr. Martin was very cheerful and jested with his good friends at

table.... He said: Do not take it amiss of me, for I have received

many bad tidings to-day and have just read a troublesome letter.

Things are ever at their best,” so he concludes defiantly, “when the

devil attacks us in this way.”[1277]—It is just the same sort of

defiance, that, for all his fear of the devil, leads him to sum up

all the worst that the devil can do to him, and then to pour scorn

upon it. During the pressing anxieties of the Coburg days at the time

of the Diet of Augsburg, it really seemed to him that the devil had

“vowed to have his life.” He comforts himself with the words: “Well,

if he eats me, he shall, please God, swallow such a purge as shall

gripe his belly and make his anus seem all too small.”[1278]

It is a matter of common knowledge that people addicted to melancholy

can at certain hours surpass others in cheerfulness and high spirits.

When one side of the scale is weighed down with sadness many a man

will instinctively mend things by throwing humour into the other; at

first, indeed, such humour may be a trifle forced, but later it can

become natural and really serve its purpose well. The story often told

might quite well be true: an actor consulted a physician for a remedy

against melancholy; the latter, not recognising the patient, suggested

that he might be cheered by going to see the performance of a famous

comedian—who was no other than the patient himself.

_More on the Nature of Luther’s Jests_

The character of Luther’s peculiar and often very broad and homely

humour is well seen in his letter-preface to a story on the devil which

he had printed in 1535 and which made the round of Germany.[1279]

The devil, according to this “historia ... which happened on Christmas

Eve, 1534,” had appeared to a Lutheran pastor in the confessional, had

blasphemed Christ and departed leaving behind a horrible stench. In

the Preface Luther pretends to be making enquiries of Amsdorf, “the

chief and true Bishop of Magdeburg,” as he calls him, as to the truth

and the meaning of the apparition. He begs him “to paint and depict

the pious penitent as he deserves,” though quite aware that Amsdorf,

the Bishop, would refer back the matter to him as the Pope (“which

indeed I am”). He had ready the proper absolution which Amsdorf was

to give the devil: “I, by the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ and

the most holy Father Pope Luther the First, deny you the grace of God

and life everlasting and herewith consign you to hell,” etc. Meanwhile

he himself gives his view of the tale, which he assumes to be true,

and, as so often elsewhere when he has to do with the devil, proceeds

to mingle mockery of the coarsest sort with bitter earnest. When the

Evil One ventures to approach so close to the Evangel, every nerve of

Luther is strung to hatred against the devil and his Roman Pope, both

of whom he overwhelms with a shower of the foulest abuse.

“The devil’s jests are for us Christians a very serious matter”;

having a great multitude of kings, princes, bishops and clergy on

his side he makes bold to mock at Christ; but let us pray that he

may soil himself even as he soiled himself in Paradise; our joy, our

consolation and our hope is, that the seed of the woman shall crush

his head. Hence, so he exclaims, the above absolution sent to Amsdorf

is amply justified. Like confession, like absolution; “as the prayer,

so the incense,” with which words he turns to another diabolical

apparition, which a drunken parson had in bed; he had meant to

conclude the canonical hours by reciting Compline in bed, and, while

doing so, “_se concacavit_,”[1280] whereupon the devil appeared to him

and said: “As the prayer, so also is the incense.”[1281]

He applies the same “humorous” story to the Pope and his praying monks

in his “An den Kurfursten zu Sachsen und Landgraven zu Hesse von dem

gefangenen H. von Brunswig” (1545).[1282] “They neither can pray nor

want to pray, nor do they know what it is to pray nor how one ought to

pray, because they have not the Word and the faith”; moreover, their

only aim is to make the “kings and lords” believe they are devout and

holy.[1283] “On one occasion when a tipsy priest was saying Compline

in bed, he heaved during the recital and gave vent to a big ‘bombart’;

Ah, said the devil, that’s just right, as the prayer so also is the

incense!” All the prayers of the Pope and “his colleges and convents”

are not one whit better “than that drunken priest’s Compline and

incense. Nay, if only they were as good there might still be some hope

of the Pope growing sober, and of his saying Matins better than he did

his stinking Compline. But enough of this.”[1284]

Of this form of humour we have many specimens in Luther’s books,

letters and Table-Talk, which abound in unsavoury anecdotes,

particularly about the clergy and the monks. He and his friends,

many of whom had at one time themselves been religious, seem to have

had ready an inexhaustible fund of such stories. Some Protestants

have even argued that it was in the convent that Luther and his

followers acquired this taste, and that such was the usual style of

conversation among “monks and celibates.” It is indeed possible that

the sweepings of the monasteries and presbyteries may have furnished

some contributions to this store, but the truth is that in many cases

the tales tell directly against the monks and clergy, and are really

inventions made at their expense, some of them in pre-Reformation

times. Frequently they can be traced back to those lay circles in

which it was the fashion to scoff at the clergy. In any case it would

be unjust, in order to excuse Luther’s manner of speech, to ascribe

it simply to “cloistral humour” and the “jokes of the sacristy.” The

evil had its root far more in the coarseness on which Luther prided

himself and in the mode of thought of his friends and table companions,

than in the monastery or among the clergy. Nearly everywhere there

were regulations against foul speaking among the monks, and against

frivolous conversation on the part of the clergy, though, of course,

the existence of such laws does not show that they were always complied

with. That Luther’s manner of speech was at all general has still to

be proved. Moreover, the reference to Luther’s “monkish” habits is all

the less founded, seeing that the older he gets and the dimmer his

recollections become, the stronger are the proofs he gives of his love

for such seasoning; nor must we forget that, even in the monastery, he

did not long preserve the true monastic spirit, but soon struck out a

way of his own and followed his own tastes.

Luther was in high spirits when he related in his Table-Talk the

following tales from the Court of Brandenburg and the city of Florence.

At the Offertory of the Mass the grandfather of Margrave Casimir of

Brandenburg, attended by a trusty chamberlain, watching the women as

they passed up to make their offering at the altar, amused themselves

by counting up the adulteresses, supposed or real; as each passed the

Margrave told the chamberlain to “draw” a bead of his rosary. The

chamberlain’s wife happening to pass, the Margrave, to his courtier’s

mortification, told him to draw a bead also for her. When, however,

the Margrave’s mother came forward the chamberlain had his revenge and

said: Now it’s your turn to draw. Upon which the Margrave gathered up

his rosary indignantly with the words: “Let us lump all the whores

together!”[1285]—The Florentine storiette he took from a book entitled

“The Women of Florence.” An adulteress was desirous of entering

into relations with a young man. She accordingly complained quite

untruthfully to his confessor, that he had been molesting her against

her will; she also brought the priest the presents she alleged he had

brought her, and described how by night he climbed up to her window by

means of a tree that stood beneath it. The zealous confessor thereupon,

no less than three times, takes the supposed peccant lover to task;

finally he speaks of the tree. Ah, thinks the young man, that’s rather

a good idea, I might well try that tree. Having learned of this mode

of entry he accordingly complies with the lady’s wishes. “And so,”

concludes Luther, “the confessor, seeking to separate them, actually

brought them together. Boundless indeed is the poetic ingenuity and

cunning of woman.”[1286]

* * * * *

Strong as was Luther’s whimsical bent, yet we are justified in asking

whether the delightful and morally so valuable gift of humour in its

truest sense was really his.

“Genuine humour is ever kindly,” rightly says Alb. Roderich, “and only

savages shoot with poisoned darts.” Humour as an ethical quality is

the aptitude so to rise above this petty world as to see and smile

at the follies and light sides of human life; it has been defined as

an optimistic kind of comedy which laughs at what is funny without,

however, hating it, and which lays stress on the kindlier side of what

it ridicules.

Of this happy, innocent faculty gently to smooth the asperities of

life Luther was certainly not altogether devoid, particularly in

private life. But if we take him as a whole, we find that his humour

is as a rule disfigured by a bitter spirit of controversy, by passion

and by hate. His wit tends to pass into satire and derision. Here we

have anything but the overflowing of a contented heart which seeks to

look at everything from the best side and to gratify all. He may have

delighted his own followers by his unmatched art of depreciating others

in the most grotesque of fashions, of exaggerating their foibles, and,

with his keen powers of imagination, of giving the most amusingly

ignominious account of their undoing, but, when judged impartially from

a literary and moral standpoint, his output appears more as irritating

satire, as clever, bitter word-play and sarcasm, rather than as real

humour.