CHAPTER XXXVI

THE DARKER SIDE OF LUTHER’S INNER LIFE. HIS AILMENTS

The struggles of conscience which we already had occasion to consider

(vol. v., p. 319 ff.) were not the only gloomy elements in Luther’s

interior life. Other things, too, must be taken into our purview if we

wish to appreciate justly the more sombre side of his existence, viz.

his bodily ailments and the mental sufferings to which they gave rise

(e.g. paroxysms of terror and apprehension), his temptations, likewise

his delusions concerning his intercourse with the other world (ghosts,

diabolical apparitions, etc.), and, lastly, the revelations of which he

fancied himself the recipient.

1. Early Sufferings, Bodily and Mental

It is no easy task to understand the nature of the morbid phenomena which

we notice in Luther. His own statements on the subject are not only very

scanty but also prove that he was himself unable to determine exactly

their cause. Nevertheless, it is our duty to endeavour, with the help of

what he says, to glean some notion of what was going on within him. His

gloomy mental experiences are so inextricably bound up with his state of

health, that, even more than his “agonies of conscience” already dealt

with, they deserve to take their place on the darker background of his

psychic life. Here again, duly to appreciate the state of the case, we

shall have to review anew the whole of Luther’s personal history.

_Fits of Fear; Palpitations; Swoons_

What first claims our attention, even in the early days of Luther’s

life as a monk, are the attacks of what he himself calls fears and

trepidations (“_terrores_, _pavores_”). It seems fairly clear that these

were largely neurotic,—physical breakdowns due to nervous worry.

According to Melanchthon, the friend in whom he chiefly confided, Luther

gave these sufferings a place in the forefront of his soul’s history.

The reader may remember the significant passage where Melanchthon says,

that, when oppressed with gloomy thoughts of the Divine Judgments,

Luther “was often suddenly overwhelmed by such fits of terror (‘_subito

tanti terrores_’)” as made him an object of pity. These terrors he had

experienced for the first time when he decided to enter the monastic

life, led to this resolution by the sudden death of a dearly loved

friend.[306]

We hear from Luther himself of the strange paroxysms of fear from

which he suffered as a monk. On two occasions when he speaks of them

his words do not seem to come under suspicion of forming part of

the legend which he afterwards wove about his earlier history (see

below, xxxvii.). These statements, already alluded to once, may be

given more in detail here. In March, 1537, he told his friends: “When

I was saying Mass [his first Mass] and had reached the Canon, such

terror seized on me (_ita horrui_) that I should have fled had not the

Prior held me back; for when I came to the words, ‘Thee, therefore,

most merciful Father, we suppliantly pray and entreat,’ etc., I

felt that I was speaking to God without any mediator. I longed to

flee from the earth. For who can endure the Majesty of God without

Christ the Mediator? In short, as a monk I experienced those terrors

(_horrores_); I was made to experience them before I began to assail

them.”[307] Incidentally it may be noted that “Christ the Mediator,”

whom Luther declares he could not find in the Catholic ritual, is, as

a matter of fact, invoked in the very words which follow those quoted

by Luther: “Thee, therefore, most merciful Father, we suppliantly pray

and entreat through Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord to accept and bless

these gifts,” etc. Evidently when Luther recorded his impressions he

had forgotten these words and only remembered the groundless fear and

inward commotion with which he had said his first Mass.

Something similar occurred during a procession at Erfurt, when he had

to walk by the side of Staupitz, his superior, who was carrying the

Blessed Sacrament. Fear and terror so mastered Luther that he was

hardly able to remain. Telling Staupitz of this later in Confession,

the latter encouraged him with the words: “Christ does not affright,

He comforts.” The incident must have taken place after 1515, the

Eisleben priory having been founded only in that year.[308]

If we go back to the very beginning of his life in the monastery we

shall find that the religious scruples which assailed him at least

for a while, possibly also deserve to be reckoned as morbid. We shall

return below to the voice “from heaven” which drove him into the

cloister.

Unspeakable fear issuing in bodily prostration was also at work in

him on the occasion of the already related incident in the choir of

the Erfurt convent, when he fell to the ground crying out that he was

not the man possessed. Not only does Dungersheim relate it, on the

strength of what he had heard from inmates of the monastery,[309] but

Cochlæus also speaks of the incident, in his “Acta,” and, again, in

coarse and unseemly language in the book he wrote in 1533, entitled

“Von der Apostasey,” doubtless also drawing his information from the

Augustinian monks: “It is notorious how Luther came to be a monk;

how he collapsed in choir, bellowing like a bull when the Gospel

of the man possessed was being read; how he behaved himself in the

monastery,” etc.[310] We may recall, how, according to Cochlæus, his

brother monks suspected Luther, owing to this attack and on account of

a “certain singularity of manner,” of being either under diabolical

influence or an epileptic.[311] The convulsions which accompanied the

fit may have given rise to the suspicion of epilepsy, but, in reality,

they cannot be regarded as sufficient proof. Epilepsy is well-nigh

incurable, yet, in Luther’s case, we hear of no similar fits in later

life. In later years he manifested no fear of epileptic fits, though

he lived in dread of an apoplectic seizure, such as, in due course,

was responsible for his death. A medical diagnosis would not fail to

consider this seeming instance of epileptic convulsions in conjunction

with Luther’s state of fear. For the purpose of the present work it

will be sufficient to bring together for the benefit of the expert the

necessary data for forming an opinion on the whole question, so far as

this is possible.

From the beginning Luther seems to have regarded these “states of

terror” as partaking to some extent of a mystic character.

To what a height they could sometimes attain appears from the

description he embodied in his “_Resolutiones_” in 1518, and of which

Köstlin opines that, in it Luther portrayed the culminating point to

which his own fears had occasionally risen. It is indeed very probable

that Luther is referring to no other than himself when he says in the

opening words of this remarkable passage: “I know a man who assures me

that he has frequently felt these pains.”[312] G. Kawerau also agrees

with Köstlin in assuming that Luther is here speaking of himself,[313]

a view which is, in fact, forced upon us by other similar passages.

Walter Köhler declares: “Whether Luther intended these words to refer

to himself or not, in any case they certainly depict his normal

state.”[314]

Luther, after saying that, “many, even to the present day,” suffer

the pangs of hell so often described in the Psalms of David, and [so

Luther thinks], by Tauler, goes on to describe these pangs in words

which we shall now quote in full, as hitherto only extracts have been

given.[315]

“He often had to endure such pains, though in every instance they were

but momentary; they were, however, so great and so hellish that no

tongue can tell, no pen describe, no one who has not felt them believe

what they were. When at their worst, or when they lasted for half

an hour, nay, for the tenth part of an hour, he was utterly undone,

and all his bones turned to ashes. At such times God and the whole

of creation appears to him dreadfully wroth. There is, however, no

escape, no consolation either within or without, and man is ringed

by a circle of accusers. He then tearfully exclaims in the words of

Holy Scripture: ‘I am cast away, O Lord, from before Thy eyes’ [Ps.

xxx. 23], and does not even dare to say: ‘Lord, chastise me not in

Thy wrath’ [Ps. vi. 1]. At such a time the soul, strange to tell, is

unable to believe that it ever will be saved; it only feels that the

punishment is not yet at an end. And yet the punishment is everlasting

and may not be regarded as temporal; there remains only a naked

longing for help and a dreadful groaning; where to look for help the

soul does not know. It is as it were stretched out [on the cross] with

Christ, so that ‘all its bones are numbered.’ There is not a nook in

it that is not filled with the bitterest anguish, with terror, dread

and sadness, and above all with the feeling that it is to last for

ever and ever. To make use of a weaker comparison: when a ball travels

along a straight line, every point of the line bears the whole weight

of the ball, though it does not contain it. In the same way, when the

floods of eternity pass over the soul, it feels nothing else, drinks

in nothing else but everlasting pain; this, however, does not last

but passes. It is the very pain of hell, is this unbearable terror,

that excludes all consolation!… As to what it means, those who have

experienced it must be believed.”[316]

A physical accompaniment of these fears was, in Luther’s case, the

fainting fits referred to now and again subsequent to the beginning of

his struggle against the Church.

On the occasion of the attack of which we are told by Ratzeberger the

physician, when he was found by friends lying unconscious on the floor,

he had been “overpowered by melancholy and sadness.” It is also very

remarkable that when his friends had brought him to, partly by the help

of music, he begged them to return frequently, that they might play to

him “because he found that as soon as he heard the sound of music his

‘_tentationes_’ and melancholy left him.”[317] According to Kawerau

the circumstances point to this incident having taken place in 1523 or

1524.[318]

On the occasion of a serious attack of illness in 1527 his swoons again

caused great anxiety to those about him. This illness was preceded by a

fit in Jan., 1527. Luther informs a friend that he had “suddenly been

affrighted and almost killed by a rush or thickening of the blood in the

region of the heart,” but had as quickly recovered. His cure was, he

thinks, due to a decoction of milk-thistle,[319] then considered a very

efficacious remedy. The rush of blood to the heart, of which he here

had to complain, occurred at a time when Luther had nothing to say of

“temptations,” but only of the many troubles and anxieties due to his

labours.

The more severe bout of illness began on July 6, 1527, at the very

time of, or just after, some unusually severe “temptation.”[320] Jonas

prefaces his account of it by saying that Luther, “after having that

morning, as he admitted, suffered from a burdensome spiritual temptation,

came back partially to himself (‘_utcunque ad se rediit_’).” The words

seem to presuppose that he had either fainted or been on the verge of

fainting.[321] Having, as the same friend relates, recovered somewhat,

Luther made his confession and spoke of his readiness for death. In the

afternoon, however, he complained of an unendurable buzzing in his left

ear which soon grew into a frightful din in his head. Bugenhagen, in his

narrative, is of opinion that the cause of the mischief here emerges

plainly, viz. that it was the work of the devil. A fainting fit ensued

which overtook Luther at the door of his bedchamber. When laid on his bed

he complained of being utterly exhausted. His body was rubbed with cloths

wrung out of cold water and then warmth was applied. The patient now felt

a little better, but his strength came and went. Amongst other remarks

he then passed was one, that Christ is stronger than Satan. When saying

this he burst into tears and sobs. Finally, after application of the

remedies common at that time, he broke out into a sweat and the danger

was considered to be over.

There followed, however, the days and months of dreadful spiritual

“temptations” already described (vol. v., p. 333 ff.). At first the

bodily weakness also persisted. Bugenhagen was obliged to take up his

abode in Luther’s house for a while because the latter was in such dread

of the temptations and wished to have help and comfort at hand. For a

whole week Luther was unable either to read or to write.

At the end of August and again in September the fainting fits recurred.

His friends, however, were more concerned about Luther’s mental anguish

than about his bodily sufferings. The latter gradually passed away,

whereas the struggles of conscience continued to be very severe. On Oct.

17, Jonas wrote to Johann Lang: “He is battling amidst the waves of

temptation and is hardly able to find any passage of Scripture wherewith

to console himself.”[322]

In 1530 again we hear of Luther’s life being endangered by a fainting

fit, though it seems to have been distinct from the above attack of

illness. This also occurred after an alarming incident during which he

believed he had actually seen the devil. It was followed the next day by

a loud buzzing in the head. Renewed trouble in the region of the heart,

accompanied by paroxysms of fear, is reported to have been experienced

in 1536.[323] After this we hear no more of any such symptoms till just

before Luther’s death. In the sudden attack of illness which brought his

life to a close he complained chiefly of feeling a great oppression on

the chest, though his heart was sound.[324]

_Nervousness and other Ailments_

Quite a number of Luther’s minor ills seem to have been the result of

overwrought nerves due partly to his work and the excitement of his life.

Here again it is difficult to judge of the symptoms; unquestionably some

sort of connection exists between his nervous state and his depression

and bodily fears;[325] the fainting fits are even reckoned by some as

simply due to neurasthenia.

There can be no doubt that his nervousness was, to some extent inherited,

to some extent due to his upbringing. His lively temper which enabled him

to be so easily carried away by his fancy, to take pleasure in the most

glaring of exaggerations, and bitterly to resent the faintest opposition,

proves that, for all the vigour of his constitution, nerves played an

important part.

Already in his monastic days his state was aggravated by mental

overstrain and the haste and turmoil of his work which led him to neglect

the needs of the body. His uninterrupted literary labours, his anxiety

for his cause, his carelessness about his health and his irregular mode

of life reduced him in those days to a mere skeleton. At Worms the

wretchedness of his appearance aroused pity in many. It is true that when

he returned from the Wartburg he was looking much stronger, but the years

1522-25, during which he led a lonely bachelor’s life in the Wittenberg

monastery, without anyone to wait on him, and sleeping night after night

on an unmade bed, brought his nervous state to such a pitch that he was

never afterwards able completely to master it. On the contrary, his

nervousness grew ever more pronounced, tormenting him in various ways.

So little, however, did he understand it that it was to the devil that he

attributed the effects, now dubiously, now with entire conviction.

Among these effects must be included the buzzing in the head and singing

in the ears, to which Luther’s letters allude for many a year. When, at

the end of Jan., 1529, the violent “agonies and temptations” recurred,

the buzzing in the ears again made itself felt. He writes: “For more

than a week I have been ailing from dizziness and humming in the head

(‘_vertigo et bombus_’), whether this be due to fatigue or to the malice

of the devil I do not know. Pray for me that I may be strong in the

faith.”[326] He also complains of this trouble in the head in the next

letter, dating from early in Feb.[327] He was then unable to preach or to

give lectures for nearly three weeks.[328]

He goes on to say of himself: “In addition to the buffets of the angel

of Satan [the temptations] I have also suffered from giddiness and

headache.”[329] It was, however, as he himself points out, no real

illness: “Almost constantly is it my fate to feel ill though my body is

well.”[330]

In the new kind of life he had to lead in the Castle of Coburg in 1530,

when, to want of exercise, was added overwork and anxiety of mind, these

neurasthenic phenomena again reappeared. He compares the noises in his

head to thunder, or to a whirlwind. There was also present a tendency

to fainting. At times he was unable even to look at any writing, or to

bear the light owing to the weakness of his head.[331] Simultaneously

the struggle with his thoughts gave him endless trouble; thus he writes:

“It is the angel of Satan who buffets me so, but since I have endured

death so often for Christ, I am quite ready for His sake to suffer this

illness, or this Sabbath-peace of the head.”[332] “You declare,” he

says laughingly in a letter to Melanchthon, “that I am pig-headed, but

my pig-headedness is nothing compared with that of my head (‘_caput

eigensinnigissimum_’); so powerfully does Satan compel me to make holiday

and to waste my time.”[333] Towards the middle of August his head

improved, but the tiresome buzzing frequently recurred. Luther complained

later that, during this summer, he had been forced to waste half his

time.[334]

When, from this time onwards, “we hear him ever saying that he feels

worn-out (‘_decrepitus_’), weary of life and desirous of death … all

this is undoubtedly closely bound up with these nerve troubles.”[335]

The morning hours became for him the worst, because during them he often

suffered from dizziness. After his “_prandium_,” between nine and ten

o’clock, he was wont to feel better. As a rule he slept well.

The attacks which occurred early in 1532 must also be noted.

In Jan., so his anxious pupil Veit Dietrich writes, Luther had a

foreboding of some illness impending and fancied it would come in March;

in reality it came on on Jan. 22. “Very early, about four o’clock, he

felt a violent buzzing in his ears followed by great weakness of the

heart.” His friends were summoned at his request as he did not wish to

be alone. “When, however, he had recovered and had his wits about him

(‘_confirmato animo_’), he proceeded to storm against the Papists, who

were not yet to make gay over his death.” “Were Satan able,” he says, “he

would gladly kill me; at every hour he is at my heels.” “The physician

declared,” so the account goes on, “after having examined the urine, that

Luther stood in danger of an attack of apoplexy, which indeed he would

hardly escape.” The prediction was, however, not immediately verified

and the patient was once more able to leave his bed. On Feb. 9, however

(if the date given in the Notes be correct),[336] after assisting at a

funeral in the church of Torgau, he was again seized with such a fit

of giddiness as hardly to be able to return to his lodgings. When he

recovered he said: “Do not be grieved even should I die, but continue to

further the Word of God after my death.… It may be we are still sinners

and do not perform our duty sufficiently; if so we shall cloak it over

with the forgiveness of sins.” This time again he was not able to work

for a whole month.

What he at times endured from the trouble in his head we learn from a

statement in the Notes of the Table-Talk made by Cordatus: “When I awake

and am unable to sleep again on account of the noise in my ears, I often

fancy I can hear the bells of Halle, Leipzig, Erfurt and Wittenberg, and

then I think: Surely you are going to have a fit. But God frequently

intervenes and gives me a short sleep afterwards.”[337]

No notable improvement took place until the middle of 1533.

The noises in the head began again in 1541. He fancied then that he could

hear “the rustling of all the trees and the breaking of the waves of

every sea” in his head.[338] When he wrote this he was also suffering

from a discharge from the ear, which, for the time, deprived him of his

hearing; so great was the pain as to force tears from him. Alluding to

this he says that his friends did not often see him in tears, but that

now he would gladly weep even more copiously; to God he had said: “Let

there be an end either of these pains or of me myself,” but, now that

the discharge had ceased, he was beginning to read and write again quite

confidently.[339]

From the commencement of his struggle, however, until the end of his

life his extreme nervous irritability found expression in the violence

of what he said and wrote. There can be no question that, had he not

been in a morbidly nervous state, he would never have given way to such

outbursts of anger and brutal invective. “There was a demoniacal trait,”

says a Protestant Luther biographer, “that awakened in him as soon as

he met an adversary, at which even his fellow-monks had shuddered,

and which carried him much further than he had at first intended.”

He became the “rudest writer of his age.” In his controversy with

the Swiss Sacramentarians he “was domineering and high-handed.” “His

disputatiousness and tendency to pick a quarrel grew ever stronger in

him after his many triumphs.”[340]—But, even among his friends and in

his home, he was careless about controlling his irritation. We find him

exclaiming: “I am bursting with anger and annoyance”; as we know, he

excited himself almost “to death” about a nephew and threatened to have a

servant-maid “drowned in the Elbe.”[341] (Cp. the passages from A. Cramer

quoted below, towards the end of section 5.)

Other maladies and indispositions, of which the effects were sometimes

lasting, also deserve to be alluded to. Of these the principal and worst

was calculus of which we first hear in 1526 and then again in 1535, 1536

and 1545. In Feb., 1537, Luther was overtaken by so severe an attack

at Schmalkalden that his end seemed near.—In 1525 he had to complain

of painful hæmorrhoids, and at the beginning of 1528 similar troubles

recurred. The “_malum Franciæ_,” on the other hand, cursorily mentioned

in 1523,[342] is not heard of any more. The severe constipation from

which he suffered in the Wartburg also passed away. Luther was also

much subject to catarrh, which, when it lasted, caused acute mental

depression. The “discharge in his left leg” which continued for a

considerable while[343] during 1533 had no important after-effects.

The maladies just mentioned, to which must be added an attack of the

“English Sweat,” in 1529, do not afford sufficient grounds for any

diagnosis of his physical and mental state in general.[344] On the

other hand, the oppression in the præcordial region and his nervous

excitability are of great importance to whoever would investigate his

general state of health.

_The so-called Temptations no Mere Morbid Phenomena_

Anyone who passes in review the startling admissions Luther makes

concerning his struggles of conscience (above, vol. v., pp. 319-75),

or considers the dreadful self-reproaches to which his apostasy and

destruction of the olden ecclesiastical system gave rise, reproaches

which lead to “death and hell,” and which he succeeded in mastering only

by dint of huge effort, cannot fail to see that these mental struggles

were something very different from any physical malady. Since, however,

some Protestants have represented mere morbid “fearfulness” as the

root-cause of the “temptations,” we must—in order not to be accused of

evading any difficulties—look into the actual connection between natural

timidity and the never-ending struggles of soul which Luther had to wage

with himself on account of his apostasy.

Luther’s temptations, according to his own accurate and circumstantial

statements, consisted chiefly of remorse of conscience and doubts about

his undertaking; they made their appearance only at the commencement

of his apostasy, whereas the morbid sense of fear was present in him

long before. Of such a character were the “_terrores_” which led him to

embrace monasticism, the unrest he experienced during his first zealous

years of religious life, and the dread of which he was the victim while

saying his first Mass and accompanying Staupitz in the procession;

this morbid fear is also apparent in the monk’s awful thoughts on

predestination and in his subsequent temptations to despair. Moreover,

such crises, characterised by temptations and disquieting palpitations

ending in fainting fits, were in every case preceded by “spiritual

temptations,” and only afterwards did the physical symptoms follow.

Likewise the bodily ailments occasionally disappeared, leaving behind

them the temptations, though Luther seemed outwardly quite sound and able

to carry on his work.[345]

Hence the “spiritual temptations” or struggles of conscience were of a

character in many respects independent of this morbid state of fear.

They occur, however, on the one hand, in connection with other physical

disorders, as in the case of the attack of the “English Sweat” or

influenza which Luther had in 1529, and which was accompanied by severe

mental struggles; on the other hand, they appear at times to excite the

bodily emotion of fear and in very extreme cases undoubtedly tended

to produce entire loss of sleep and appetite, cardiac disturbance and

fainting fits. Luther himself once said, in 1533, that his “gloomy

thoughts and temptations” were the cause of the trouble in his head and

stomach;[346] in his ordinary language the temptations were, however,

“buffets given him by Satan.”[347] He is fond of clothing the temptations

in this Pauline figure and of depicting them as his worst trials, and

only quite exceptionally does he call his purely physical sufferings

“_colaphi Satanæ_,” they, too, coming from Satan. Now we cannot of

course entirely trust Luther’s own diagnosis—otherwise we should have to

reduce all his maladies to a work of evil spirits—yet his feeling that

the “temptations” were on the one hand a malady in themselves and on the

other a source of many other ills, should carry some weight with us.

It is also clear that, in the case of an undertaking like Luther’s, and

given his antecedents, remorse of conscience was perfectly natural even

had there been no ailment present. It was impossible that a once zealous

monk should become faithless to his most solemn vows and, on his own

authority and on alleged discoveries in the Bible, dare to overthrow

the whole ecclesiastical structure of the past without in so doing

experiencing grave misgivings. Add to this his violence, his “wild-beast

fury” (J. von Walther), his practical contradictions and the theological

mistakes which he was unable to hide. Hence we need have no scruple about

admitting what is otherwise fairly evident, viz. that his ghostly combats

stand apart and cannot be attributed directly to any bodily ailment.

It remains, however, true that such struggles and temptations throve

exceedingly on the morbid fear which lay hidden in the depths of his

soul. It must also be granted that neurasthenia sometimes gives rise to

symptoms of fear similar to those experienced by Luther, as we shall hear

later on from an expert in nervous diseases, whom we shall have occasion

to quote (see section 5 below). Consideration for such facts oblige the

layman to leave the question open as to how much of Luther’s fear is to

be attributed to nervousness or to other physical drawbacks.

We do not think it desirable here to enter further into the views of

the older Catholic polemics, already referred to, who looked upon

Luther as possessed (as labouring under an “_obsessio_” or at least a

“_circumsessio_”). The fits of terror he endured both before and after

his apostasy seemed to them to prove that he was really a demoniac. As

already pointed out above (vol. iv., p. 359), this field is too obscure

and too beset with the danger of error to allow of our venturing upon

it.[348] Quite another matter is it, however, with regard to temptations,

with which, according to Holy Scripture and the constant teaching of

the Church, the devil is allowed to assail men, and to discuss which in

Luther’s case we will now proceed, using his own testimonies.

2. Psychic Problems of Luther’s Religious Development

From the beginning of his apostasy and public struggle we find in Luther

no peace of soul and clearness of outlook; rather, he is the plaything of

violent emotions. He himself complains of having to wrestle with gloomy

temptations of the spirit. It is these that we now propose to investigate

more narrowly. In so doing we must also examine how his nervous state

reacted on these temptations, whereby we shall, maybe, discern more

clearly than before the connection of Luther’s doctrine with his distress

of soul.

_Temptations to Despair_

As to the temptations admitted by Luther to be such, we must first of

all recall the involuntary thoughts of despair which occurred to him in

the convent and the inclination he felt, against his will, to abandon

all hope of his salvation and even to blaspheme God. Everybody in the

least acquainted with the spiritual life knows that such darkening of the

soul may be caused by the Spirit of Evil and often accompanies certain

morbid conditions of the body. When the two, as is often the case, are

united, the effects are all the more far-reaching. Now, on his own

showing, this was precisely the case with the unhappy inmate of the

Erfurt monastery. Luther felt himself compelled, as he says, to lay bare

his temptations (the “_horrendæ et terrificæ cogitationes_”) to Staupitz

in confession.[349] The latter comforted him by pointing out the value of

such temptations as a mental discipline. Staupitz, and others too, had,

however, also told him that his case was to some extent new to them and

beyond their comprehension.[350] Hence, understood by none, he passed his

days sunk in sadness. All to whom he applied for consolation had answered

him: “I do not know.”[351] His fancy must, indeed, have strayed into

strange bypaths for both Pollich, the Wittenberg professor, and Cardinal

Cajetan expressed amazement at the oddness of his thoughts.

His theological system finally became the pivot around which his

thoughts revolved; to it he looked for help. He had created it under

the influence of other factors to which it is not here needful to refer

again; particularly it had grown out of his own relaxation in the virtues

of his Order and religious life.[352] His system, however, had for its

aim to combat despair, overmastering concupiscence and the consciousness

of sin by means of a self-imposed tranquillity. He was determined to

arrive by main force at peace and certainty. Only little by little, so

he wrote in 1525, had he discovered, “God leads down to hell those whom

He predestines to heaven, and makes alive by slaying”; whoever had read

his writings “would understand this now very well”; a man must learn to

despair utterly of himself, and allow himself to be helplessly saved by

the action of God, i.e. by virtue of the forgiveness won by fiducial

faith.[353] How he himself was led by God down to hell he sets forth in

his “_Resolutiones_,” in the account of his mental sufferings given above

(p. 101 f.), a passage which transports the reader into the midst of the

pains which Luther endured in his anxiety.

The man most deeply initiated into the darker side of Luther’s

temptations and struggles was the friend of his youth, the

Augustinian, Johann Lang. He, too, apparently suffered severely

beneath the burden of temptations regarding predestination and the

forgiveness of sins. It was in a letter to him, that, not long after

the nailing up of the Wittenberg Theses, Luther penned those curious

words: They would pray earnestly for one another, “that our Lord Jesus

may help us to bear our temptations which no one save us two has ever

been through.”[354] Shortly before this Luther had commended to the

care of his friend, then prior at Erfurt, a young man, Ulrich Pinder

of Nuremberg, who had opened his heart to him at Wittenberg; on this

occasion he wrote that Pinder was “troubled with secret temptations

of soul which hardly anyone in the monastery with the exception

of yourself understands.”[355] He also alludes to the temptations

peculiar to himself in that letter to Lang, in 1516, in which he

describes his overwhelming labours, which “seldom leave him due time

for reciting the hours or saying Mass.” On the top of his labours, he

says, there were “his own temptations from the world, the flesh and

the devil.”[356] To this same recipient of his confidences Luther was

wont regularly to give an account of the success attending his attacks

on the ancient Church and doctrine; he kindled in him a burning

hatred of those Augustinians at Erfurt who were well disposed towards

scholasticism and Aristotle, and forwarded him the controversial

Theses for the Disputations at the Wittenberg University embodying

his new doctrine of the necessity of despairing of ourselves and of

mystically dying, viz. the new “Theology of the Cross.”

Some mysterious words addressed to Staupitz, in which Luther hints

at his inward sufferings, find their explanation when taken in

conjunction with the above. He assured Staupitz (Sep. 1, 1518) in a

letter addressed to him at Salzburg, that the summons to Rome and

the other threats made not the slightest impression on him: “I am

enduring incomparably worse things, as you know, which make me look

upon such fleeting, shortlived thunders as very insignificant.”[357]

His temptations against God and His Mercy were of a vastly different

character. By the words just quoted he undoubtedly meant, says

Köstlin, “those personal, inward sufferings and temptations, probably

bound up with physical emotions, to which Staupitz already knew him

to be subject and which frequently came upon him later with renewed

violence. They were temptations in which, as at an earlier date, he

was plunged into anxiety concerning his personal salvation as soon as

he started pondering on the hidden depths of the Divine Will.”[358]

_The Shadow of Pseudo-Mysticism_

In this connection it will be necessary to return to Luther’s earlier

predilection for a certain kind of mysticism.[359]

As we know, at an early date he felt drawn to the writings of the

mystics, for one reason, because he seemed to himself to find there

his pet ideas about spiritual death and wholesome despair. Their

description of the desolation of the soul and of its apparent

abandonment by God appeared to him a startling echo of his own

experiences. He did not, however, understand or appreciate aright the

great mystics, particularly Tauler, when he read into them his own

peculiar doctrine of passivity.

To a certain extent throughout his whole life he stood under the

shadow of this dim, sad mysticism.

He will have it that he, like the mystics, had frequently been plunged

in the abyss of the spirit, had been acquainted with death and with

states weird and unearthly. He refuses to relate all he has been

through and actually gives as his ground for silence the very words

used by St. Paul when speaking of his own revelations: “But I forbear,

lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth in me, or

anything he heareth from me” (2 Cor. xii. 6). When speaking thus of

the mystic death he fails to distinguish between such thoughts and

feelings as may have been the result solely of a morbid state of fear,

or of remorse of conscience, and the severe trials through which the

souls of certain great and holy men had really to pass.

It is indeed curious to note how he was led astray by a combination of

fear, mysticism and temptation.

He was deluded into seeing in his own states just what he desired,

viz. the proof of the truth of his own doctrine and exalted mission

to proclaim it; he will not hear of this being a mere figment of

his own brain. On the contrary, he is convinced that he, like the

inspired Psalmist, has passed through every kind of the terrors which

the latter so movingly describes. Like the Psalmist, he too must

pray, “O Lord, chastise me not in thy wrath,” and like him, again, he

is justified in complaining that his bones are broken and his soul

troubled exceedingly (Ps. vi.). He even opines that those who have

endured such things rank far above the martyrs; David, according to

him, would much rather have perished by the sword than have “endured

this murmuring of his soul against God which called forth God’s

indignation.”[360]

There is no doubt that Johann Lang might have been able to tell us

much about these gloomy aberrations of Luther’s, for he had a large

share in Luther’s development.

It is worthy of note that it was to this bosom friend that Luther

sent his edition of “Eyn Deutsch Theologia.”[361] “_Taulerus tuus_”

(“Your Tauler”[362]) so he calls the German mystic when writing to

his friend, and in a similar way, in a letter to Lang, he speaks of

the new theology built entirely on grace and passive reliance as “our

theology.” “Our theology and St. Augustine,” he says, “are progressing

bravely at our University and gaining the upper hand, thanks to the

working of God, whereas Aristotle is now taking a back seat.”[363] We

must not be of those who, “like Erasmus, fail to give the first place

to Christ and grace,” so he writes to Lang, knowing that here he would

meet with a favourable response. The man who “knows and acknowledges

nothing but grace alone” judges very differently from one “who

attributes something to man’s free-will.”[364]

It was not long before Luther’s pseudo-mysticism translated itself

into deeds. He persuades himself that he is guided in all his actions

and resolutions by a sort of Divine inspiration. A singular sort of

super-naturalism and self-sufficiency gleams in the words he once wrote

to Lang. After reminding him of the unquestioned truth, that “man must

act under God’s power and counsel and not by his own,” he goes on to

explain defiantly, that, for this reason, he scorns once and for all any

objections the Erfurt Augustinians might urge against the “paradoxical

theses” he had sent them a little earlier, also their charge that he

had shown himself hasty and precipitate: God was enough for him; of

their counsel and instruction he stood in no need.[365] As though

real wisdom and true mysticism did not teach us to welcome humbly the

opinion of well-meaning critics, and not to trust too implicitly our own

ideas, particularly in fields where one is so liable to trip. But the

“Theology of the Cross,” sealed by his fears, now seemed to him above all

controversy. During his temptations he had come to see its truth, and

it also fell in marvellously with his changed views on the duties of a

religious and with his renunciation of humility and self-denial.

At a time when mysticism and the study of Tauler still exercised a

powerful influence over him he was wont in his fits of terror to

revert to Tauler’s misapprehended considerations on the inward trials

of the soul.

In pursuance of this idea and hinting at his own mental state he

declares in his “_Operationes in psalmos_” (1519-21), that, according

to St. Paul (Rom. v. 3 f.), tribulations work in us patience

and trial and hope, and thus the love of God and justification;

tribulation, however, consisted chiefly of inward anxiety, and trial

called for patience and calm endurance of this anxiety; the greater

the tribulation, the higher would hope rise in the soul. “Thus it is

plain that the Apostle is speaking of the assurance of the heart in

hope,[366] because, after anxiety cometh hope, and then a man feels

that he hopes, believes and loves.” “Hence Tauler, the man of God,

and also others who have experienced it, say that God is never more

pleasing, more lovable, sweeter and more intimate with His sons than

after they have been tried by temptation.”[367] It is quite true that

Tauler said this; he also teaches that the greater the desolation

by which God tries the souls of the elect, the higher the degree of

mystical union to which He wishes to call them; for death is the road

to life. It is quite another thing, however, whether Tauler would have

approved of Luther’s application of what he wrote.

Luther also refers both to Tauler and to himself elsewhere in the

“Operationes,” where he speaks of the fears of conscience regarding

the judgment of God which no one can understand who had not himself

experienced them; Job, David, King Ezechias and a few others had

endured them; “and finally that German theologian, Johannes Tauler,

often alludes to such a state of soul in his sermons.”[368] Tauler,

however, when speaking of such afflictions, is thinking of those souls

who seek God and are indeed united to Him in love, but who are tried

and purified by the withdrawal of sensible grace, and by being made to

feel a sense of separation from Him and the burden of their nature.

In his church-postils he again summons Tauler to his aid in order to

depict the fears with which he was so familiar, seeking consolation,

as it were, both for himself and for others. In his sermon for the

2nd Sunday in Advent (1522) he speaks of “those exalted temptations

concerning death and hell, of which Tauler wrote.” Evidently speaking

from experience he says: “This temptation destroys flesh and blood,

nay, penetrates into the marrow of the bones and is death itself, so

that no one can endure it unless marvellously borne up. Some of the

patriarchs tasted this, for instance, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and

Moses, but, towards the end of the world, it will become more common.”

Finally, he assures his hearers, that, there were such as were “still

daily tried” in this way, “of which but few people are aware; these

are men who are in the agony of death, and who grapple with death”;

still Christ holds out the hope that they are not destined to death

and to hell; on the other hand, it is certain that the “world, which

fears nothing, will have to endure, first death, and, after that,

hell.”[369]

_Other Ordeals_

Other temptations that assailed Luther must be taken into account.

Unfortunately he does not say what “new” form of temptation it was

of which he wrote to Johann Lang in 1519. He says: A temptation had

now befallen him which showed him “what man was, though he had fondly

believed that he was already well enough aware of this before”; he

felt it even more severely than the trials he had to endure before the

Leipzig Disputation; he would discuss it with him only by word of mouth

when Lang came to see him.[370] Is he here referring to temptations of

the flesh of an unusual degree of intensity? We have already heard him

bewail his temptations to ambition and hate. Moreover, in this very year

he speaks of temptations against chastity in his Sermon on Marriage:

It is a “shameful temptation,” he says; “I have known it well, and I

imagine you too are acquainted with it; ah, I know well how it is when

the devil comes and excites and inflames the flesh.… When one is on

fire and the temptation comes I know well what it is; then the eye is

already blind.”[371] Already before this he had had to fight against

“very many temptations” of the sort, which are “wont to attend the age

of youth.”[372] Later on they startled him by their waxing strength. Of

the temptations of the senses (“_titillatio_”) to which he was exposed

he had complained, for instance, in the same year (1519) in a letter to

his superior Staupitz,[373] and the worldly intercourse into which he

was drawn, “the social gatherings, excessive indulgence in the pleasures

of the table, and general lukewarmness,” of which he speaks on the same

occasion, make such temptations all the more likely in the case of a

young man of a temper so lively and impressionable, especially as his

lukewarmness took the shape of neglect of prayer and the means of grace,

and of the help he might have derived from the exercises of the Order.

Such fleshly temptations he bewailed even more loudly when at the

Wartburg. There, as we may recall, he became the plaything of evil lust

(“_libido_”) and the “fire of his untamed flesh.” “Instead of glowing in

spirit, I glow in the flesh.”[374] Admitting that he himself “prayed and

groaned too little for the Church of God,” he exclaims: “Pray for me,

for in this solitude I am falling into the abyss of sin!”[375] Though in

bodily health and well cared for, he is “being well pounded by sins and

temptations,” so he wrote to his old friend Johann Lang.

To all this was still added great trouble of conscience concerning his

undertaking as a whole. When he was passionately declaring that his

misgivings were from the devil and resolving never to flinch in his

antagonism to the hated vow of chastity he was himself falling into the

state which he himself describes: “You see how I burn within (‘_quantis

urgear æstibus_’).” This to Melanchthon, after having explained to him

the struggle waging within between his feelings and his knowledge of

the Bible in the matter of the vow of chastity. He is being carried

away to take action, and yet is unable, as he here admits, to prove

his object by means of the text of Scripture.[376] He feels himself

to be “the sport of a thousand devils” in the Wartburg on account of

this and other temptations; he falls frequently, yet the right hand of

God upholds him.[377] The castle is full of devils, so he wrote from

within its walls, and very cunning devils to boot, who never leave him

at peace but behave in such a way that he “is never alone” even when he

seems to be so.[378] Hence he was writing “partly under the stress of

temptation, partly in indignation.” What he was writing was his “_De

votis monasticis_,” by means of which, as he here says, he is about “to

free the young folk from the hell of celibacy.”[379]

Ten years later he still recalls the “despair and the temptation

concerning God’s wrath” which had then been raging within him.[380]

His temptations at that time must have been rendered even worse by the

morbid conditions then awakening in him, by the dismal, racking sense

of fear that peopled his imagination with thousands of devils, and the

mental confusion resulting from his state of nervous overstrain.

It would carry us too far to pursue the diabolical temptations to despair

(or what he held to be such) throughout the rest of his life, and to

examine their connection with his maladies. We shall only remark, that,

even at a later date, when we find him the butt of severe temptations

of this sort, an under-current of other trouble is frequently to be

detected. The “terrors” he endured in his youthful years indeed moderated

but never altogether disappear. The “spiritual sickness” of 1537 of which

he speaks, when for a whole fortnight he could scarcely eat, drink or

sleep, shows the degree to which these thoughts of despair and struggles

of conscience could reach.

_Summary_

To sum up what we have said of Luther’s temptations, a distinction must

be made between the temptations of the Evil One, which Luther himself

regarded as such, and certain other things the real nature of which he

failed to grasp. Moreover, there are those “temptations” which bore on

his work and doctrines and which he wrongly regarded as temptations of

the devil, whereas they were no more than the prick of conscience. All

three are at times reacted on by a morbid state which he likewise failed

rightly to understand, but which was made up of that predisposition

to anxiety to which his nature was so prone and a kind of nervous

irritability due to his struggles and over-great labours. Only those of

the first and second class have any title to be regarded as temptations.

To the first class, i.e. to the temptations he felt and described as

such, belongs first of all that despair which often disquieted him even

in his later years; then again the temptations of the flesh of which we

have also heard him speak. Though he ascribes both to the machinations

of the Evil One, yet his method of fighting them was fatally mistaken.

The temptations to despair he withstood by his erroneous doctrine of

grace and faith alone, and, the more such thoughts torment him, the more

defiantly does he stand by this doctrine. In the case of the temptations

against chastity he failed to make sufficient use of the remedies of

Christian penance and piety; on the contrary, under the stress of their

allurements, he finally saw fit to demolish even the barrier raised by

solemn vows made unto God.

The second class of temptations, which to him, however, did not seem to

be such, includes all the mental aberrations we have had occasion to

note during the course of his life story, particularly at the beginning

of his apostasy. Here we shall only indicate the more important. It

may be allowed that many of them masqueraded under specious pretexts

and the appearance of good (“_sub specie boni_”). Thus, e.g. there was

something fine and inspiring in his plans of exalting the grace of

Christ at the expense of the mere works of the faithful; of giving the

religious freedom of the Christian full play, regardless of unwarranted

human ordinances; of improving the cut-and-dry theology of the day by

a deeper and more positive study of the Bible; and of stopping the

widespread decline in ecclesiastical learning and ecclesiastical life by

stronghanded reforms. He allowed himself, however, to be altogether led

astray in both the conception and the carrying out of these plans.

There was grave peril to himself in that sort of spiritualism, thanks

to which he so frequently attributes all his doings to the direct

inspiration and guidance of Almighty God; real and enlightened dependence

on God is something very different; again, there was danger in his

perverted interpretation of the teaching of the mystics of the past,

in his exaggeration of the strength of man’s sinful concupiscence and

neglect of the remedies prescribed in ages past, particularly of the

practices of his own Order, also in his passionate struggles against the

so-called holiness-by-works prevalent among the Augustinians, in his

characteristic violence and tendency to pick a quarrel, and, above all,

in the working of his inordinate self-esteem and unbounded appreciation

of his own achievements as the leader of the new movement, which led him

to exalt himself above all divinely appointed ecclesiastical authority.

In the above we were obliged to hark back to Luther’s earlier days, and

this we shall again have to do in the following pages. The truth is,

that many of the secrets of his earlier years can be explained only in

the light of his later life, whilst, conversely, his youth and years of

ripening manhood assist us in solving some of the riddles of later years.

Hence we cannot be justly charged with repeating needlessly incidents

that have already been related.

* * * * *

Just as the Wartburg witnessed the strongest temptations that Luther

had ever to bear, so, too, it formed the stage of certain of those

manifestations from the other world of which he fancied himself the

recipient. Such manifestations, which lead one to wonder whether Luther

suffered from hallucinations, are of frequent occurrence in his story. We

shall now proceed to review them in their entirety.

3. Ghosts, Delusions, Apparitions of the Devil

In investigating the many ghostly apparitions with which Luther believed

he had been favoured, our attention is perforce drawn to the Wartburg.

We must, however, be careful to distinguish the authentic traditions

from what has been unjustifiably added thereto. As to the explaining

and interpreting of such testimonies as have a right to be regarded as

historical, that will form the matter of a special study. In order that

the reader may build up an opinion of his own we shall meanwhile only

set on record what the sources say, the views of those concerned being

given literally and unabridged. This method, essential though it be for

the purposes of an unbiassed examination, has too often been set aside,

recourse being had instead to mere assertions, denials and pathological

explanations.

_The Statements Concerning Luther’s Intercourse with the Beyond_

On April 5, 1538, Luther, in the presence of his friends, spoke of the

personal “annoyance” to which the devil had subjected him while at the

Wartburg by means of visible manifestations. The pastor of Sublitz,

then staying at Wittenberg, had complained of being pestered at his

home by noisy spooks; they flung pots and pans at his head and created

other disturbances. Referring to such outward manifestations of the

spirit-world, Luther remarked: “I too was tormented in my time of

captivity in Patmos, in the castle perched high up in the kingdom of the

birds. But I withstood Satan and answered him in the words of the Bible:

God is mine, Who created man and ‘set all things under his feet’ (Ps.

viii. 7). If thou hast any power over them, try what thou canst do.”[381]

On another occasion he related before his friend Myconius and in the

presence of Jonas and Bugenhagen, “how the devil had twice appeared at

the Wartburg in the shape of a great dog and had tried to kill him.”

It is Myconius who relates this, mentioning that it had been told him

by Luther at Gotha in 1538,[382] “in the house of Johann Löben, the

Schosser.”

Of one of these two apparitions, the physician Ratzeberger, Luther’s

friend, had definite information. He, however, quotes it only as an

instance of the many ghostly things which Luther had experienced there:

“Because the neighbourhood was lonely many ghosts appeared to him

and he was much troubled by disturbances due to noisy spooks. Among

other incidents, one night, when he was going to bed, he found a huge

black bull-dog lying on his bed that refused to let him get in. Luther

thereupon commended himself to our Lord God, recited Ps. viii. [the same

as that mentioned above], and when he came to the verse ‘Thou hast set

all things under his feet’ the dog at once disappeared and Luther passed

a peaceful night. Many other ghosts of a like nature visited him, all of

whom he drove off by prayer, but of which he refused to speak, for he

said he would never tell anyone how many spectres had tormented him.”[383]

According to the account of his pupil Mathesius, Luther often “called to

mind how the devil had tormented him in mind and caused him a burning

pain which sucked the very marrow out of his bones.”[384] Of visible

apparitions Mathesius has, however, very little to say: “The Evil

Spirit,” so we read in his account of Luther’s sayings, “most likely

wished to affright me palpably, for on many nights I heard him making a

noise in my Patmos, and saw him at the Coburg under the form of a star,

and in my garden in the shape of a black pig. But my Christ strengthened

me by His Spirit and Word so that I paid no heed to the devil’s

spectre.”[385] Mathesius, in his enthusiasm, actually goes so far as to

compare such things to Satan’s tempting of Christ in the wilderness.

The encounter with the great black dog in the Wartburg is related in an

old edition of Luther’s Table-Talk with a curious addition, which tells

how Luther, on one occasion, calmly lifted from the bed the dog, which

had frequently tormented him, carried him to the window, and threw him

out without the animal even barking. Luther had not been able to learn

anything about it afterwards from others, but no such dog was kept in the

Castle.[386]

Of the strange din by which the devil annoyed him within those walls

Luther speaks more in detail in the German Table-Talk. “When I was

living in Patmos … I had a sack of hazel nuts shut up in a box. On

going to bed at night I undressed in my study, put out the light, went

to my bedchamber and got into bed. Then the nuts began to rattle over

my head, to rap very hard against the rafters of the ceiling and bump

against me in bed; but I paid no attention to them. After I had got to

sleep there began such a din on the stairs as though a pile of barrels

was being flung down them, though I knew the stairs were protected

with chains and iron bars so that no one could come up; nevertheless,

the barrels kept rolling down. I got up and went to the top of the

stairs to see what it was, but found the stairs closed. Then I said:

‘If it is you, so be it,’ and commended myself to our Lord Christ of

Whom it is written: ‘Thou shalt set all things under his feet,’ as

Ps. viii. says, and got into bed again.” All this, so the account

proceeds, had been related by Luther himself at Eisenach in 1546.[387]

Cordatus, however, must have heard the story of the nuts from his own

lips even before this. He tells it in 1537 as one of the numerous

instances of the persecution Luther had had to endure from the spooks

of the Wartburg: “Then he [the devil] took the walnuts from the table

and flung them up at the ceiling the whole night long.”[388]

It also happened (this supplements an incident touched upon above in

vol. ii., p. 95), so Luther related on the above occasion, in 1546,

that the wife of Hans Berlips, who “would much have liked to see

[Luther], which was, however, not allowed,” came to the Castle. His

quarters were changed and the lady was put into his room. “That night

there was such an ado in the room that she fancied a thousand devils

were in it.”[389] This story is not quite so well authenticated as the

incidents which Luther relates as having happened to himself, for

it is clear that he had it directly, or indirectly, only from this

lady’s account. Her anxiety to see Luther would seem to stamp her as

a somewhat eccentric person, and it may also be that she went into

a room, already reputed to be haunted, quite full of the thought of

ghosts and that her imagination was responsible for the rest.

Luther goes on to allude to another ghostly visitation, possibly a

new one. He says: “On such occasions we must always say to the devil

contemptuously: “If you are Christ’s Master, so be it!” For this is

what I said at Eisenach.”[390] Nothing further is known, however, of

any such occurrence having taken place at Eisenach. He may quite well

have taken Eisenach as synonymous with the Wartburg.

* * * * *

To pass in review the other ghostly apparitions which occurred during

his lifetime, we must begin with his early years.

When still a young monk at Wittenberg Luther already fancied he heard

the devil making a din. “When I began to lecture on the Psalter, and,

after we had sung Matins, was seated in the refectory studying and

writing up my lecture, the devil came and rattled in the chimney three

times, just as though someone were heaving a sack of coal down the

chimney. At last, as it did not cease, I gathered up my books and went

to bed.”[391] “Once, too, I heard him over my head in the monastery,

but, when I noticed who it was, I paid no attention, turned over and

went to sleep again.”[392]

Luther can tell some far more exciting stories of ghosts and

“Poltergeists,” of which others, with whom he had come in contact in

youth or manhood, had been the victims. Since, however, he seems to

have had them merely on hearsay, they may be passed over. Of himself,

however, he says: “I have learnt by experience that ghosts go about

affrightening people, preventing them from sleeping and so making them

ill.”[393]

We find also the following statement: “The devil has often had me by

the hair of my head, yet was ever forced to let me go”;[394] from the

context this, however, may refer to mental temptations.

He says, however, quite definitely of certain experiences he himself

had gone through in the monastery: “Oh, I saw gruesome ghosts and

visions.” This was probably at the time when “no one was able

to comfort” him.[395] He was referring to incidents to which no

definite date can be assigned, when, anxious to refute their claim to

illumination by the spirits, he told the fanatics: “Ah, bah, spirits …

I too have seen spirits!”

The Table-Talk relates how on one occasion Luther himself, in a

strange house, was witness of a remarkable spectral visitation. He

is said to have related the incident and to “have seen it with his

own eyes as did also many others.”[396] A maiden, a friend of the

old proctor [at the University], was lying in bed ill at Wittenberg.

She had a vision; Christ appearing to her under a glorious form,

whereupon she joyfully adored her visitor. A messenger was at once

sent “from the college to the monastery” to fetch Luther. He came

and exhorted the young woman “not to allow herself to be deceived by

the devil.” She thereupon spat in the face of the apparition. “The

devil then disappeared and the vision turned into a great snake which

made a dash at the maiden in her bed and bit her on the ear so that

the drops of blood trickled down, after which the snake was seen

no more.” This story was introduced into the German Table-Talk by

Aurifaber (1566).[397] The young woman was probably hysterical and was

the only beholder of the vision. In all likelihood what the others

saw was merely the blood, which might quite well have come from a

scratch otherwise caused. The story has been quoted as a proof of the

dispassionate way in which Luther regarded visions.

As a further proof of the “sobriety which he coupled with a faith

so ardent and enthusiastic” Köstlin quotes the following:[398] “He

himself related this tale,” the Table-Talk says [the date is uncertain

but it was after he had already begun to preach the “Word”]; “he was

once praying busily in his cell, and thinking of how Christ had hung

on the cross, suffered and died for our sins, when suddenly a bright

light shone on the wall, and, in the midst, a glorious vision of the

Lord with His five wounds appeared and gazed at him, the Doctor, as

though it had been Christ Himself. When the Doctor saw it he fancied

at first it was something good, but soon he bethought him it must be

a devilish spectre, because Christ appears to us only in His Word and

in a lowly and humble form, just as He hung in shame upon the cross.

Hence the Doctor adjured the vision: ‘Begone thou shameless devil! I

know of no other Christ than He Who was crucified, and Who is revealed

and preached in His Word,’ and soon the apparition, which was no

less than the devil in person, disappeared.”[399]—This story told by

his pupils must refer to some statement made by Luther, though the

dramatic liveliness of its imagery may well lead us to suspect that

it has been touched up. Some natural effect of light and shade might

well account for the appearance which the young monk so “busy” at his

prayers thought he saw.

ed., 58, p. 129.

It is hardly possible to suppress similar doubts concerning other

accounts we have from his lips; his statements also refer to events

which occurred long previous. At any rate, in a select circle of his

pupils, the opinion certainly prevailed that Luther was tried by

extraordinary other-world apparitions, and this conviction was the

result of remarks dropped by him.

Greater stress must be laid on those statements of his which bear on

inward experiences, where the most momentous truths were concerned and

which occurred at certain crises of his life.

In Nov., 1525, he assured Gregory Casel, the Strasburg theologian, in so

many words, that “he had frequently had inward experience that the body

of Christ is indeed in the Sacrament; he had seen dreadful visions; also

angels (‘_vidisse se visiones horribiles, sæpe se angelos vidisse_’), so

that he had been obliged to stop saying Mass.”[400]

He spoke in this way in the course of the official negotiations with

Casel, the delegate of the Protestant theologians of Strasburg. The words

occur in Casel’s report of the interview published by Kolde. It is true

that Luther also speaks here of the outward “Word” as the support of his

doctrine, particularly on the Sacrament. “We shall,” he says, “abide

quite simply by the words of Scripture—until the Spirit and the unction

teach us something different.” He avers that the Strasburgers who denied

the Sacrament come with their “Spirit” and wish to explain away the words

of the Bible concerning the body of Christ in the Bread. This, however,

is not the “light of the Spirit,” but the “light of reason”; he himself

had long since learnt to reject reason in the things of God. They were

not convinced of their cause as he was, otherwise they would defend their

teaching publicly as he did, for he would rather the whole world were

undone than be silent on God’s doctrine, because it was God’s business to

watch over it.

His opponents declared they had their own inward experience. “How many

inward experiences have I not had,” he replies, “at those times when

my mind was idle (‘_cum eram otiosus_’)! All sorts of things came

before my mind and everything seemed as reasonable as could be. But,

by God’s grace, I addressed myself to greater and more earnest matters

and began to distrust reason. I too, like them, was ‘in dangers’ [2

Cor. xi. 26], and in even greater ones. And if it is a question of

piety of life, I hope that there, too, we are blameless.” Coming back

once more to the spirit which the Strasburgers had set up against the

Word of God, he describes in his own defence the “terrors of death

he himself had been through (‘_mortis horrorem expertus_’)” and then

speaks of the angelic visions referred to above which had disturbed

him even at the Mass.[401]

He also will have it that at other times he had been consoled by

angels, though he does not tell us that he had seen them. In 1532 he

said to Schlaginhaufen: “God strengthened me ten years ago by His

angels, in my struggles and writings.”[402]

Luther, repeatedly and in so many words, appeals to his realisation of

the divine truths, and it may be assumed he imagined he felt something

of the sort within him, or that he thus interpreted certain emotions.

“I am resolved to acknowledge Christ as Lord. And this I have not only

from Holy Scripture but also from experience. The name of Christ has

often helped me when no one was able to help. Thus I have on my side

the deed and the Word, experience and Scripture. God has given both

abundantly. But my temptations made things sour for me.”[403]

The Table-Talk assures us that, “Dr. Martin proved it from his own

experience that Jesus Christ is truly God; this he also confessed openly;

for if Christ were not God then there was certainly no God at all.”[404]

It was no difficult task for him to include himself in the ranks of those

“who had received the first fruits of the spirit.”[405]

In addition to this, however, as will be shown below,[406] he thinks his

doctrine has been borne in upon him by God through direct revelation.

More than once, without any scruple, he uses the word “_revelatum_”; he

is also fond of setting this revelation in an awesome background: it had

been “strictly enjoined on him (‘_interminatum_’) under pain of eternal

malediction” to believe in it.[407]

In fact a certain terror is the predominating factor in this gloomy

region where he comes in touch with the other world. He has not merely

had experience that there are roving spirits who affright men,[408]

but, in a letter from the Wartburg, he insists quite generally, that,

“the visions of the Saints are terrifying.” Of course, as we well know,

delusions and hallucinations very often do assume a terrifying character.

Luther also asserts that “divine communications” are always accompanied

by inward tortures like unto death, words which give us a glimpse into

his own morbid state.[409] And yet he fully admits elsewhere the very

opposite, for he is aware that God is, above all things, the consoler.

“It is not Christ Who affrights us”;[410] and “it is Satan alone who

wounds and terrifies.”[411] But, in practice, according to him, things

work differently; there the fear from which he and others suffer comes

to the fore. “We are oftentimes affrighted even when God turns to us the

friendliest of glances.”[412]

This change of standpoint reminds us of another instance of the same

sort. Luther’s teaching on the terrifying character of the divine

action is much the same as his theological teaching that fear is the

incentive to good deeds. While, as a rule, he goes much too far in

seeking to rid the believer of any fear of God as the Judge, preaching an

unbounded confidence and even altogether excluding fear from the work of

conversion, yet, elsewhere, he emphasises most strongly this same fear,

as called for and quite indispensable; this he did in his controversies

with the Antinomians and, even earlier, as on the occasion of the

Visitations, on account of its religious influence on the people.

No change or alteration is, however, apparent in the accounts he gives

above of the cases in which he came in touch with the other world; he

sticks firmly by his statement that he had experienced such things both

mentally and palpably. Hence the difficulty of coming to any decision

about them.

* * * * *

But there are further alleged experiences, also detailed at length, which

have a place here, viz. the apparitions of the devil himself.

In 1530 Luther was thrown into commotion by a glimpse of the devil,

under the shape of a fiery serpent, outside the walls of the Coburg.

One evening in June, about nine o’clock, as his then companion Veit

Dietrich relates, Luther was looking out of the window, down on the

little wood surrounding the castle. “He saw,” says this witness, “a

fiery, flaming serpent, which, after twisting and writhing about,

dropped from the roof of the nearest tower down into the wood. He

at once called me and wanted to show me the ghost (‘_spectrum_’) as

I stood by his shoulder. But suddenly he saw it disappear. Shortly

after, we both saw the apparition again. It had, however, altered

its shape and now looked more like a great flaming star lying in the

field, so that we were able to distinguish it plainly even though

the weather was rainy.” Here the pupil undoubtedly did his best to

see something. On his master, however, the firm conviction of having

seen the devil made a deep impression. He had just enjoyed a short

respite after a bout of ill-health. The night after the apparition he

again collapsed and almost lost consciousness. On the following day he

felt, so Dietrich says, “a very troublesome buzzing in the head”; the

apparition leads the narrator to infer that Luther’s bodily trouble,

which now recommenced in an aggravated form, had been entirely “the

work of the devil.”[413] So certain was Luther of having seen the

devil that he mentioned the occurrence in 1531 at one of the meetings

held for the revision of his translation of the Psalms. The words of

the Psalmist concerning “_sagittæ_” and “_fulgura_,” etc. (Ps. xviii.

(xvii.) 15), he applies directly to his own personal experiences and

to the incident in question, “Just as I saw my devil flying over

the wood at the Coburg.”[414] He means by this the fading away and

disappearance of the above-mentioned fiery shape; this psalm speaks of

a “_materia ignita_,” which no doubt suggested his remarks.—Later, as

Mathesius relates, he said he had seen the “evil spirit at the Coburg,

in the form of a star.”[415] Kawerau terms the apparition an “optical

hallucination.”[416]

By the word hallucination is understood an apparent perception of an

external object not actually present. That the “apparition” at the Coburg

and other similar ones already mentioned or yet to be referred to were

hallucinations is quite possible though not certain. It is true that

the excessive play Luther gave to his imagination, particularly at the

Wartburg and, later, at the Coburg, was such that it is quite within the

bounds of possibility that he fancied he saw or heard things which had

no real existence. On the other hand, moreover, we know what a large

share his superstition had in distorting actual facts. Hence, generally

speaking, most of the ghosts or visions he is said to have seen can be

explained by a mistaken interpretation of the reality, without there

being any need to postulate an hallucination properly so-called. Much

of what has been related might come under the heading of illusions,

though, probably, not everything. To analyse them in detail is, however,

impossible as the circumstances are not accurately known. Certainly no

one, however much inclined to the supernatural, who is familiar with

Luther and his times, will be content, as was once the case, to believe

that the devil sought to interfere visibly and palpably with his person

and his teaching.

As to the apparition of the devil at the Coburg in the shape of a

flame, a serpent and a star, we may point out that the whole may well

have been caused simply by a lantern or torch carried by somebody in

that lonely neighbourhood. We might also be tempted to think of St.

Elmo’s fire, except that the form of the apparition presents some

difficulty.—So, too, the black dog in the Wartburg was most likely

some harmless intruder. The noise of the nuts flying up against the

ceiling may have been produced by the creaking of a weather-cock, or

of a door or shutter in the wind [or by the rats]. Other tales again

may be rhetorical inventions, simple fictions of Luther’s brain, not

involving the least suggestion of any illusion or hallucination, for

instance, when he speaks of the angels who appeared to him at Mass.

Such an apparition was a convenient weapon to use against opponents

who alleged they were under the influence of the “Spirit.” Moreover,

some of these tales were told so long after the event as to leave a

wide scope to the imagination.

To proceed with the accounts of the apparitions of the devil: About the

reality of two of such, Luther is quite positive.

One of these took place close to his dwelling. The devil he then

espied in the shape of a wild-boar in his garden under his window.

“Once Martin Luther was looking out of the window,” so an account

dating from 1548 tells us, “when a great black hog appeared in the

garden.” He recognised it as a diabolical apparition and jeered at

Satan who appeared in this guise, though he had once been a “beautiful

angel.” “Thereupon the hog melted into nothing.”[417] He himself

refers to this apparition in the words already recorded, in which he

classes it with the work of the noisy spirits in the Wartburg and the

“appearance of the star” at the Coburg.[418]

Indeed the hog and the flaming vision at the Coburg even found their

way into his printed sermons. We read in the home-postils: “The devil

is always about us in disguise, as I myself witnessed, taking, e.g.

the form of a hog, of a burning wisp of straw, and such like”[419]

(cp. above, vol. v., p. 287 ff.).

The other apparition, the one which possibly suggests most strongly

an hallucination, was that which he experienced at Eisleben at the

time he was trying to adjust the quarrels between the Counts of

Mansfeld, i.e. just before his death. We have accounts of this from

two different quarters, based on statements made by Luther; first

that of Michael Cœlius, a friend who was present at his death, in the

funeral oration he delivered immediately after at Eisleben on Feb. 20,

and, secondly, that of Luther’s confidant, the physician Ratzeberger.

The former in his address recounts for the edification of the people

how Luther “during his lifetime” had suffered trials and persecutions

at the hands of the devil before going to his eternal rest; hence in

this world he had been “disturbed and troubled in his peace of mind”

by Satan. It was true that latterly he had “enjoyed some happiness”

at Eisleben, but “that had not lasted long; one evening indeed,” so

Cœlius continues, “Luther had lamented with tears, that, while raising

his heart to God with gladness and praying at his open window, he had

seen the devil, who hindered him in all his labours, squatting on the

fountain and making faces at him. But God would prove stronger than

Satan, that he knew well.”[420]—Ratzeberger’s account quite agrees

with this as to the circumstances; he had learnt that Luther “related

the incident to Dr. Jonas and Mr. Michael Cœlius.” His information

is not derived from the funeral oration just mentioned, but clearly

from elsewhere. He is right in implying that it was Luther’s habit to

say his night prayers at the window; he has, however, some further

particulars concerning the behaviour of the devil: “It is said that

when Dr. Martin Luther was saying his night prayers to God at the open

window, as his custom was before going to bed, he saw Satan perched

on the fountain that stood outside his dwelling, showing him his

posterior and jeering at him, insinuating that all his efforts would

come to nought.”[421] The first place, however, belongs to the account

of Cœlius, who, by his mention of the tears Luther shed, sets vividly

before the reader the commotion into which the apparition, which had

occurred shortly before, had thrown him.

Excitement and trouble of mind were then pressing heavily on the aging

man. His frame of mind was caused not merely by the quarrel between

the “wrangling Counts” of Mansfeld with whom “no remonstrances or

prayers brought any help,”[422] not merely by his usual “temptations,”

but also, as Ratzeberger tells us, by the healing up of the incision

in the left leg, he (Ratzeberger) had made, and which now led to

bodily disorders. The disorders now made common cause with his

“annoyance melancholy and grief.” The “violent mental excitement,”

together with the bad effects of the healing up of the artificial

wound, were, according to this physician, what “brought about his

death.” Ratzeberger was not, however, then at Eisleben and we are in

possession of more accurate accounts of the circumstances attending

Luther’s death.

In explanation of Luther’s singular delusion regarding the jeering

devil we may remark that he is fond of attributing the obstacles

in the way of peace to the devil’s wrath and envy. “It seems to me

that the devil is mocking us,” he writes of the difficulties on Feb.

6, “may God mock at him in return!”[423] The Eisleben councillor,

Andreas Friedrich, writes to Agricola on Feb. 17 (18) of these same

concerns, that Luther, when he found there was still no prospect of

a settlement, had complained: “As I see, Satan turns his back on me

and jeers as well.”[424] Here, curiously enough, we have exactly what

occurred at the fountain. If the apparition, as is highly probable,

belongs somewhat later, then we may assume that the vivid picture

of the devil under this particular shape with which Luther was so

familiar led finally to some sort of hallucination. His extravagant

ideas of Satan generally might, in fact, have been sufficient.

Everything that went against him was “Satanic,” and his only hope is

that “God will make a mockery of Satan.”[425]

The account Luther gives in his Table-Talk of the two devils who, in

his old age, accompanied him whenever he went to the “sleep-house” may

be dealt with briefly. In this passage he is alluding in his joking

way to his bodily infirmities.[426] Hence the “one or two” devils who

dogged his footsteps are here described as quite familiar and ordinary

companions, which is not in keeping with the idea of true apparitions;

they were the nicer sort, i.e. pretty, well-mannered devils; they

“attacked his head” and thus caused the malady to which he was most

subject, hence in his usual style he threatens to “bid them begone

into his a⸺,” in short he is here merely jesting. This forbids our

taking the statement as meant in earnest though it is twice quoted in

the German Table-Talk quite seriously. In the early days, immediately

after Luther’s death, the statements concerning the “two devils” were,

strange to say, reverently repeated by his pupils as an historic fact;

in reality they were all too eager to unearth miraculous incidents in

his life.

At a later period, when rationalism had made some headway, Protestant

biographers of Luther as a rule preferred to say nothing about the

apparitions Luther had met with, or to treat them as pious, harmless

jests misinterpreted by his pupils. This, however, is not at all in

accordance with historic criticism. Luther admirers of an earlier

date, on the other hand, went too far in the contrary direction and

showed themselves only too ready to follow their master into the other

world, or to represent him as holding intercourse with it. Cyriacus

Spangenberg (1528-1604), a Luther zealot, is an instance in point. In

his “Theander Lutherus,” speaking of Luther “the real holy martyr,”

he says: He deserved to be termed a martyr on account of the visible

hostility of the devil; one or two devils had been in the habit of

accompanying him in his walks in the dormitory in order to attack him,

and his illnesses were caused simply by the devil. Needless to say, he

does not allow the incidents mentioned above to escape him: Satan had

tormented him at the Coburg in the shape of a fiery star and in the

garden under that of a hog; he had tried to deceive him in his cell

under the dazzling image of Christ, had affrighted him in the Wartburg

by making a devilish noise with the nuts, and, finally, even in his

monkish days had driven the student at a late hour from his studies by

the din he made.[427]

It is a fact worthy of note that the older Protestant writers, when

speaking of the apparitions Luther had, never mention any such or any

revelations of a consoling character, but merely terrifying stories of

devils and diabolical persecutions. This agrees with the observation

already made above (p. 128 f.). It is evident that as good as nothing

was known of any consoling apparitions; nor would the mild and friendly

angels have been in place in the warlike picture which his friends

transmitted of Luther. That he did not think himself a complete stranger

to such heavenly communications has, however, been proved above, and it

may be that his imagination would have had more to relate concerning this

friendlier world above had he not had particular reasons for being chary

about speaking of such visions.

_The Disputation with the Devil on the Mass_

In Spangenberg even Luther’s famous disputation with the devil on private

Masses is also made to do duty among the other apparitions. He, like many

others, takes it as an actual occurrence and represents it as further

proof of the “real martyrdom” of his hero.[428] As, conversely, this

disputation also plays a part in the works of Luther’s adversaries, it

may be worth while to examine it somewhat more narrowly. It is urged

that Luther admits he had been instructed by the devil regarding the

falsity of the Catholic doctrine of the Mass, and, that, by thus tracing

it back to the devil, he stamps with untruth an important portion of his

teaching, seeing, that, from the father of lies, nothing but lies can be

expected.

What then are we to believe concerning this disputation, judging from

Luther’s own words which constitute our sole source? The only possible

answer is, that Luther is merely making use of a rhetorical device.

It is true, that, in his “Von der Winckelmesse” (1533), Luther speaks

in so elusive a way of his dispute with the devil, and of the truth

he had learnt from the latter, that the incident was taken literally,

not merely by Spangenberg and other of Luther’s oldest friends, but

actually by Cochlæus too, and was, at a later date, made the subject

of many disquisitions. Yet, if we look into the matter carefully, we

shall find he speaks from the very outset not of any actual apparition

of the devil, but merely of his inward promptings: “On one occasion,”

so he introduces the story, “I woke up at midnight and the devil began

a disputation with me _in my heart_,” such as he has with me “many a

night.”[429] He then goes on, however, to describe the disputation as

graphically as had it been a real incident.

Luther’s object with the writing in question is to fling at the

Papists his arguments against private Masses under a new and striking

form. He pretends that the Papists would be at a loss to answer

Satan, but would be forced to despair “were he to bring forward

these and other arguments against them at the hour of death.” Hence

he introduces himself and shows how the devil had driven him into

a corner on account of his former celebration of Mass. As for the

arguments they are his usual ones. Here, put in the mouth of the

devil, they are to overwhelm him with despair for his former evil

wont of saying Masses. The only reason he can espy why he should not

despair is that he has now repented and no longer says the Mass.

He himself alludes to the artifice; writing to a friend, he says, that

by the introduction of the devil he intends to attack the Papists

“with a pamphlet of a new kind”; even those friendly to the Evangel

would be astonished at his new way of writing; they were, however, to

be told that this was merely a challenge thrown to the Papists; that

it only represented himself as driven into a corner by the devil on

account of the Masses he had formerly said, in order to induce the

Papists to examine their consciences and see how they could vindicate

themselves with regard to the Mass.[430]—Thus, for once, the devil

might well figure as an upholder of Luther’s doctrine.

In the course of the drama the devil never grows weary of proving,

that, owing to the Masses Luther had said, and the idolatry he had

thus practised, he had been brought to the verge of everlasting

destruction. The devil’s arguments are given at great length and

Luther concedes everything save that he refuses to despair. The

statement that he should, so he urges, is worthy of the devil, who,

in his temptations, constantly confuses the false with the true.[431]

Luther, here, even introduces the devil in a quasi-comic light: “Do

you hear, you great, learned man?” etc. “Yes, my dear chap, that is

not the same,” etc. In a similar tone Luther then turns on the Papists

who say to him: “Are you a great Doctor and yet have no answer ready

for the devil?”

Certain Protestant writers, even down to our own times, have, however,

insisted that, at any rate inwardly, the devil had sought to reduce

Luther to despair on account of his celebration of Mass as a Catholic;

that the spirit of darkness had attached so much importance to the

suppression of the Gospel, that he attempted to disquiet Luther with

such self-reproaches.[432] It is true Luther once says that the devil

reproached him with his “misdeeds, for instance, with the sacrifice of

the Mass,” and other Catholic practices of which he had formerly been

guilty.[433] On other occasions, however, he quite absolves the devil

of any change concerning the Mass. He says, e.g.: “The devil is such a

miscreant that he does not reproach me with my great and awful crimes

such as the celebration of Mass,”[434] etc. Thus he had persuaded himself

quite independently of the devil that the Mass was a grievous crime. We

have, in fact, in Luther’s statements concerning his inward experiences

a crying instance of his changeableness. We shall return below to his

self-reproach on account of his celebration of Mass (see section 4).

_Possession and Exorcism_

We may conclude our examination of diabolical apparitions by some

statements concerning the exorcisms Luther undertook and his treatment of

cases of possession.

His first followers believed he had been successful in 1545 in driving

out Satan in the case of a person possessed. The testimony of two

witnesses of the incident must here come under consideration, both young

men who were present on the occasion, viz. Sebastian Fröschel, Deacon at

Wittenberg, and Frederick Staphylus, a man of learning who afterwards

abandoned Lutheranism and became Superintendent of the University of

Ingolstadt.[435] The latter knows nothing of any success having attended

Luther’s efforts, whereas the former boasts that such was the case,

though he somewhat invalidates his testimony by saying nothing of the

embarrassing situation in which Luther found himself at the close of

the scene. According to both accounts the incident was more or less as

follows:

A girl of eighteen from Ossitz in the neighbourhood of Meissen who was

said to be possessed was brought one Tuesday to Luther, and, while at

his bidding reciting the Creed, was “torn” by the devil as soon as she

reached the words “and in Jesus Christ.” Luther hesitated at first to

set about the work of liberation and expressed his contempt for the

devil whom he “well knew.” The next day, after his sermon, he caused

the “possessed” girl to be brought to him in the sacristy of the

parish church of Wittenberg by the above-mentioned Fröschel.

We hear nothing of any regular examination as to whether it was a

case of possession, or not rather hysteria, as seems more likely.

At any rate, the unhappy girl when passing from the church through

the entrance to the sacristy, was seen to “fall down and hit about

her.” The door of the sacristy, where several doctors, ecclesiastics

and students were gathered, was locked. Luther delivered an address

on his method of driving out the devil: He did not intend to do this

in the way usual in Apostolic time, in the early Church and later,

viz. by a command and authoritative exorcism, but rather by “prayer

and contempt”; the Popish exorcism was too ostentatious and of it the

devil was not worthy; at the time when exorcism had been introduced

miracles were necessary for the confirmation of the faith, but this

was now no longer the case; God Himself knew well when the devil had

to depart and they ought not to tempt Him by such commands, but, on

the contrary, pray until their prayers were answered. Thus Luther, not

unwisely, refused to perform any actual “driving out of the devil.”

The Church’s ritual for exorcism was, however, not so ostentatious as

Luther pretends, and combined commands issued in a tone of authority

in the name of Christ (Matt. x. 8; Mark xvi. 17) with an expression

of contempt for the devil and reprobation of his evil deeds. Fröschel

noted down the address in question together with everything that

occurred and said later in a sermon, that Luther’s action ought to

serve as a model in future cases.

In the sacristy the Creed and Our Father were recited, two passages on

prayer (from John xvi. and xiv.) were also read aloud by Luther. Then

he, together with the other ecclesiastics present, laid hands on the

head of the girl and continued reciting prayers. When no sign appeared

of the devil’s departure, Luther wished to go, but first took care to

spurn the girl with his foot, the better to mark anew his disdain for

the devil. The poor creature whom he had thus insulted followed him

with threatening looks and gestures. This was all the more awkward

since Luther was unable to escape, the key of the sacristy door having

been mislaid; hence he was obliged, he the devil’s greatest and

best-hated foe on earth, to remain cheek by jowl with the Evil One.

The satirical description Staphylus gives of the situation cannot be

repeated here, especially as the writer seems to have added to its

colour.[436] Luther was unable to jump out of the window, so he says,

because it was protected with iron bars; “hence he had to remain shut

up with us until the sacristan could pass in a strong hatchet to us

through the bars; this was handed to me, as I was young, for me to

burst open the door, which I then did.” In place of all this, Fröschel

merely says of the girl, who was taken home the following day, that

afterwards “on several occasions” reports came to Wittenberg to the

effect that the evil spirit no longer “tormented and tore her as

formerly.”

In the pulpit the Deacon immortalised the incident for his Wittenberg

hearers and made it known to the whole world in his printed sermon

“Vom Teuffel.”[437]

Luther himself says nothing of it, though disposed in later life to lay

great stress on stories of the devil.[438] Earlier than this, in 1540,

he had hastened to tell his Katey of the supposed deliverance of a girl

at Arnstadt from the devil’s power through the ministrations of the

Evangelical pastor there; the latter had “driven a devil out of the girl

in a truly Christian manner.”[439] He does not, however, mention this

incident in his published works.

On the other hand we have in the Table-Talk a full account of his

treatment of a woman “possessed,” or, rather, clearly ailing from a

nervous disorder. Her symptoms were regarded, as was customary at a time

when so little was known of this class of maladies, as “purely the work

of the devil, as something unnatural, due to fright and devil-spectres,

seeing that the devil had overlaid her in the shape of a calf.” Luther,

on visiting the woman thus “bodily persecuted by the devil,” again laid

great stress on the need of praying that she might be rid of her guest,

though this time he did not scorn the use of the formula of exorcism.

“The night after, she was left in peace, but, later, the weakness

returned. Finally, however, she was completely delivered from it;”[440]

in other words, the malady simply took its natural course.

Another much-discussed case which occurred after the middle of the

’thirties was that of a girl at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, a report of which

came to Luther from Andreas Ebert, the Lutheran pastor there (see above,

vol. iii., p. 148). In his reply to the circumstantial account of how the

“possessed” girl was able to produce coins by magic Luther shows himself

in so far cautious that he is anxious to have it made clear whether the

story is quite true and whether the coins are real. Nevertheless, he

does not hesitate to declare, that, should the incident be proved, it

would be a great omen (“_ostentum_”), as Satan, with God’s permission,

was thus setting before them a picture of the greed of money prevailing

among certain of the princes. He was loath to see exorcism resorted

to, “because the devil in his pride laughs at it”; all the more were

they to pray for the girl and against the devil, and this, with the help

of Christ, would finally spell her liberation; meanwhile, however, he

expresses his readiness to make public all the facts of the case that

could be proved. In his sermons he spoke of the occurrence to his hearers

as a “warning.”[441]

Theodore Kirchhoff, who, in the “Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie,”

mentions “Luther’s exorcisms of hysterical women folk,” not without

bewailing his error, points out that it was in part his own fancied

experience with the devil which led him to regard “similar phenomena

in others as diabolical”; “his many nervous ailments,” he says,

“strengthened his personal belief in the devil.” “Indeed, so far did he

go in his efforts to drive out the devil that once he actually proposed

that an idiot should be done to death.”[442] “Such a doctrine [on the

devil’s action], backed by the authority of so great a man, took deep

root.” It would be incorrect, writes Kirchhoff, to say, that Luther

inaugurated a healthier view of “possession”; on the contrary his

opinion is, “that, owing to Luther’s hard and fast theories, the right

understanding and treatment of the insane was rendered more difficult

than ever; for, if we consider the immense spread of his writings and

what their influence became, it is but natural to infer that this also

led to his peculiar view becoming popular.”[443] Needless to say, other

circumstances also conspired to render difficult the treatment of the

mentally disordered; long before Luther’s day they had been regarded by

many as possessed, and as the physicians would not undertake to cure

possessions, this condition was neglected by the healing art. In many

instances, too, the relatives were against any cure being attempted by

physicians.

4. Revelation and Illusion. Morbid Trains of Thought

One ground for considering the question of Luther’s revelations

in connection with the darker side of his life lies in the gloomy

and unearthly circumstances, which, according to his own account,

accompanied the higher communications he received (“_sub æternæ iræ

maledictione_”),[444] or else preceded them, inducing within his soul

a profound disturbance (“_ita furebam._”…), “I was terrified each

time.”[445]

A further reason is the unfortunate after-effect that the supposed

revelations from above had upon his mind. Outwardly, indeed, he seemed an

incarnation of confidence, but, inwardly, the case was very different.

Chapter xxxii. (vol. v.) of the present work will have shown how it was

his new doctrines, and his overturning of the Church which accounted for

his “agonies of soul,” his “pangs of hell” and “nightly combats” with the

devil, or rather with his own conscience. “Why do you raise the standard

of revolt against the house of the Lord?… Such thoughts upset one very

much.”[446] His irritation, melancholy and pessimism were largely due

to his disappointment with the results of his revelations. “They know

it is God Whose Word we preach and yet they say: We shan’t listen.”

“We are poor and indifferent trumpeters, but to the assembly of the

heavenly spirits ours is a mighty call.” “My only remaining consolation

is that the end of all cannot be far off.” “It must soon come to a head.

Amen.”[447] And yet, for all that, he insisted on his divine mission so

emphatically (above, vol. iii., p. 109 ff.).