LUTHER’S MODE OF CONTROVERSY A COUNTERPART OF HIS SOUL
1. Luther’s Anger. His Attitude towards the Jews, the Lawyers and the
Princes
WHAT above all strikes one in Luther’s mode of controversy is his
utter unrestraint in his scolding and abuse. Particularly remarkable,
especially in his later years, is the language which he has in
readiness for two groups of foes, viz. for Jews and Lawyers; then,
again, we have the invective which, throughout his career, he was
fond of hurling at such Princes and scholars as did not submit to his
teaching.
As, in what follows, and in studying the psychology of his anti-Papal
abuse, we shall have again occasion to encounter unpleasant passages,
we may well make our own the words of Sir Thomas More in his
“_Responsio ad convitia Lutheri_,” where he trounces Luther for his
handling of Henry VIII.: “The gentle reader must forgive me if much
that occurs offends his feelings. Nothing has been more painful to me
than to be compelled to pour such things into decent ears. The only
other alternative would, however, have been to leave the unclean book
untouched.”[936]
_The Jews._
In his earlier days Luther had been more friendly towards the Jews,
and had even cherished the childish hope that many of them would
embrace the new Evangel and help him in his warfare against the Papal
Antichrist. When this failed to come about Luther became more and more
angered with their blasphemy against Christ, their art of seducing the
faithful and their cunning literary attacks on Christian doctrine. He
was also greatly vexed because his Elector, in spite of having, in
1536, ordered all Jews to leave the country, nevertheless, in 1538,
granted them a conditional permit to travel through it; he was still
more exasperated with Ferdinand the German King who had curtailed the
disabilities of the Jews. Luther’s opinion was that the only thing to
do was to break their pride; he now relinquished all hope of convincing
any large number of them of the truth of Christianity; even the
biblical statements, according to which the Jews were to be converted
before the end of the world, appeared to him to have been shorn of
their value.[937]
Hence Luther was, above all, desirous of proving to the faithful that
the objections brought forward by the Jews against Christian doctrine
and their interpretation of the Old Testament so as to exclude the
Christian Messias were all wrong. This he did in three writings which
followed each other at short intervals: “Von den Jüden und jren Lügen,”
“Vom Schem Hamphoras,” both dating from 1542, and “Von den letzten
Worten Davids” (1543). Owing to his indignation these writings are no
mere works of instruction, but in parts are crammed with libel and
scurrilous abuse.[938]
In the first of these tracts, for instance, he voices as follows his
opinion of the religious learning of the Hebrews: “This passage [the
Ten Commandments] is far above the comprehension of the blind and
hardened Jews, and to discourse to them on it would be as useless as
preaching the Gospel to a pig. They cannot grasp the nature of God’s
law, much less do they know how to keep it.” “Their boast of following
the external Mosaic ordinances whilst disobeying the Ten Commandments,
fits the Jews just as well as ornaments do an evil woman”; “yet
clothes, adornments, garlands, jewels would serve far better to deck
the sow that wallows in the mire than a strumpet.”[939]
One point which well illustrates his anti-Semitism is the Talmud-Bible
he invents as best suited to them: “That Bible only should you
explore which lies concealed beneath the sow’s tail; the letters
that drop from it you are free to eat and drink; that is the best
Bible for prophets who trample under foot and rend in so swinish a
manner the Word of the Divine Majesty which ought to be listened to
with all respect, with trembling and with joy.” “Do they fancy that
we are clods and wooden blocks like themselves, the rude, ignorant
donkeys?... Hence, gentle Christian, beware of the Jews, for this
book will show you that God’s anger has delivered them over to the
devil.”[940]
The figure of the sow’s tail pleased him so well that he again used it
later in the same year in his “Vom Schem Hamphoras.” There he alludes
to the piece of sculpture which had originally supplied him with the
idea: “Here, at Wittenberg, outside our parish church there is a sow
chiselled in the stone; under her are piglets and little Jews all
sucking; behind the sow stands a Rabbi, who lifts, with his right hand
the sow’s hind leg and with his left her tail, and is intently engaged
poring over the Talmud under the sow’s tail, as though he wished to
read and bring to light something especially clever. That is a real
image of Schem Hamphoras.... For of the sham wise man we Germans say:
Where did he read that? To speak coarsely, in the rear parts of a
sow.”[941]
The “devil” also is drawn into the fray the better to enable Luther to
vent his ire against the Jews. At the end of the passage just quoted
he says: “For the devil has entered into the Jews and holds them
captive so that perforce they do his will, as St. Paul says, mocking,
defaming, abusing and cursing God and everything that is His....
The devil plays with them to their eternal damnation.”[942]--And
elsewhere: “Verily a hopeless, wicked, venomous and devilish thing
is the existence of these Jews, who for fourteen hundred years have
been, and still are, our pest, torment and misfortune. In fine, they
are just devils and nothing more, with no feeling of humanity for us
heathen. This they learn from their Rabbis in those devils’ aeries
which are their schools.”[943]--“They are a brood of vipers and the
children of the devil, and are as kindly disposed to us as is the
devil their father.”[944]--“The Turk and the other heathen do not
suffer from them what we Christians do from these malignant snakes
and imps.... Whoever would like to cherish such adders and puny
devils--who are the worst enemies of Christ and of us all--to befriend
them and do them honour simply in order to be cheated, plundered,
robbed, disgraced and forced to howl and curse and suffer every kind
of evil, to him I would commend these Jews. And if this be not enough
let him tell the Jew to use his mouth as a privy, or else crawl
into the Jew’s hind parts and there worship the holy thing, so as
afterwards to be able to boast of having been merciful, and of having
helped the devil and his progeny to blaspheme our dear Lord.”[945] The
last clause would appear to have been aimed at the Counts of Mansfeld,
who had allowed a large number of Jews to settle in Eisleben, Luther’s
birthplace.
The temporal happiness which the Jews looked for under the reign of
their Messias, Luther graphically compares to the felicity of a sow:
“For the sow lies as it were on a feather-bed whether in the street
or on the manure-heap; she rests secure, grunts contentedly, sleeps
soundly, fears neither lord nor king, neither death nor hell, neither
devil nor Divine anger.... She has no thought of death until it is
upon her.... Of what use would the Jews’ Messias be to me if he could
not help poor me against this great and horrible dread and misfortune
[the fear of death], nor make my life a tenth part as happy as that of
the sow? I would much rather say: Dear God Almighty, keep Your Messias
for Yourself, or give him to those who want him; as for me, change
me into a sow. For it is better to be a live pig than a man who is
everlastingly dying.”[946]
Such passages as the above are frequently to be met with in Luther’s
writings against the Jews. In them his object plainly was to confute
the misinterpretation of the Bible and the scoffing objections to
which Jewish scholars were given. Yet so utterly ungovernable was the
author’s passion that it spoiled the execution of his noble task. He
scarcely knew how to conduct a controversy without introducing sows,
devils and such like.
Was it really to Luther’s credit that the sty should loom so large in
his struggle with his foes?
Duke George he scolds as the “Dresden pig,” and Dr. Eck as “Pig-Eck”;
the latter Luther promises to answer in such a way “that the sow’s
belly shall not be too much inflated.”[947] The Bishops of the Council
of Constance who burnt Hus are “boars”; the “bristles of their backs
rise on end and they whet their snouts.”[948] Erasmus “carries within
him a sow from the herd of Epicurus.”[949] The learned Catholics of
the Universities are hogs and donkeys decked out in finery, whom God
has sent to punish us; these “devils’ masks, the monks and learned
spectres, from the Schools we have endowed with such huge wealth,
many of the doctors, preachers, masters, priests and friars are big,
coarse, corpulent donkeys, decked out with hoods red and brown, like
the market sow in her glass beads and tinsel chains.”[950]
The same simile is, of course, employed even more frequently of the
peasants. “To-day the peasants are the merest hogs, whilst the people
of position, who once prided themselves on being bucks, are beginning
to copy them.”[951]--The Papists have “stamped the married state under
foot”; their clergy are “like pigs in the fattening-pen,” “they wallow
in filth like the pig in his sty.”[952]--The Papists are fed up by
their literary men, as befits such pigs as they. “Eat, piggies, eat!
This is good for you.”[953]--We Germans are “hopeless pigs.”[954]
Henry of Brunswick is “as expert in Holy Writ as a sow is on the
harp.” Let him and his Papists confess that they are “verily the
devil’s whore-church.”[955] “You should not write a book,” Luther
tells him, “until you have heard an old sow s----; then you should
open your jaws and say: Thank you, lovely nightingale, now I have the
text I want. Stick to it; it will look fine printed in a book against
the Scripturists and the Elector; but have it done at Wolfenbüttel.
Oh, how they will have to hold their noses!”[956]
Another favourite image, which usually accompanies the sow, is
provided by the donkey. Of Clement VII. and one of his Bulls Luther
says: “The donkey pitched his bray too high and thought the Germans
would not notice it.”[957] Of Emser and the Catholic Professors he
writes: “Were I ignorant of logic and philosophy you rude asses
would be after setting yourselves up as logicians and philosophers,
though you know as much about the business as a donkey does about
music.”[958] Of Alveld the Franciscan he says: “The donkey does not
understand music, he must rather be given thistles.”[959] The fanatics
too, naturally, could not expect to escape. All that Luther says of
heavenly things is wasted upon them. “They understand it as little as
the donkey does the Psalter.”[960]
The devil, however, plays the chief part. Luther’s considered judgment
on the Zwinglians, for instance, is, that they are “soul-cannibals and
soul-assassins,” are “endeviled, devilish, yea, ultra-devilish and
possessed of blasphemous hearts and lying lips.”[961]
_The Lawyers._
Luther’s aversion for the “Jurists” grew yearly more intense. His
chief complaint against them was that they kept to the Canon Law and
put hindrances in his way. Their standpoint, however, as regards Canon
Law was not without justification. “Any downright abrogation of Canon
Law as a whole was out of the question. The law as then practised, not
only in the ecclesiastical but even in the secular courts, was too
much bound up with Canon Law; when it was discarded, for instance, in
the matrimonial cases, dire legal complications threatened throughout
the whole of the German Empire.”[962] To this Luther’s eyes were not
sufficiently open.
His crusade against the validity of clandestine engagements which he
entered upon in opposition to his friend and co-religionist, Hieronymus
Schurf, his colleague in the faculty of jurisprudence at the University
of Wittenberg, was merely one episode in his resistance to those who
represented legalism as then established.
In another and wider sphere his relations with those lawyers, who
were the advisers at the Court of his Elector and the other Princes,
became more strained. This was as a result of their having a hand in
the ordering of Church business. Here again his action was scarcely
logical, for he himself, forced by circumstances, had handed over to
the State the outward guidance of the Church; that the statesmen would
intervene and settle matters according to their own ideas was but
natural; and if their way of looking at things failed to agree with
Luther’s, this was only what might have been foreseen all along.
In a conference with Melanchthon, Amsdorf and others in Dec., 1538,
he complained bitterly of the lawyers and of the “misery of the
theologians who were attacked on all sides, especially by the mighty.”
To Melchior Kling, a lawyer who was present, he said: “You jurists
have a finger in this and are playing us tricks; I advise you to
cease and come to the assistance of the nobles. If the theologians
fall, that will be the end of the jurists too.” “Do not worry us,” he
repeated, “or you will be paid out.” “Had he ten sons, he would take
mighty good care that not one was brought up to be a lawyer.” “You
jurists stand as much in need of a Luther as the theologians did.”
“The lawyer is a foe of Christ; he extols the righteousness of works.
If there should be one amongst them who knows better, he is a wonder,
is forced to beg his bread and is shunned by all the other men of
law.”[963]
On questions affecting conscience he considered that he alone, as
theologian and leader of the others, had a right to decide; yet
countless cases which came before the courts touched upon matters of
conscience. He exclaims, for instance, in 1531: Must not the lawyers
come to me to learn what is really lawful? “I am the supreme judge of
what is lawful in the domain of conscience.” “If there be a single
lawyer in Germany, nay, in the whole world, who understands what is
‘lawful _de jure_’ and ‘lawful _de facto_’ then I am ... surprised.”
The recorder adds: “When the Doctor swears thus he means it very
seriously.” Luther proceeds: “In fine, if the jurists don’t crave
forgiveness and crawl humbly to the Evangel, I shall give them such a
doing that they will not know how to escape.”[964]
Thus we can understand how, in that same year (1531), when
representatives of the secular law interfered in the ecclesiastical
affairs at Zwickau against his wishes, he declared: “I will never
have any more dealings with those Zwickau people, and I shall carry
my resentment with me to the grave.” “If the lawyers touch the Canons
they will fly in splinters.... I will fling the Catechism into their
midst and so upset them that they won’t know where they are.”[965] If
they are going to feed on the “filth of the Pope-Ass,” and “to put
on their horns,” then he, too, will put on his and “toss them till
the air resounds with their howls.” This from the pulpit on Feb. 23,
1539.[966]
_The Princes._
With what scant respect Luther could treat the Princes is shown in his
work “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt, wie weyt man yhr Gehorsam schuldig
sey” (1523).[967]
Here he is not attacking individual Princes as was the case, for
instance, in his writings against King Henry of England, Duke George of
Saxony and Duke Henry of Brunswick, hence there was here no occasion
for the abuse with which these polemical tracts are so brimful. Here
Luther is dealing theologically with the relations which should
obtain between Princes and subjects and, according to the title and
the dedicatory note to Johann of Saxony, professes to discuss calmly
and judicially the respective duties of both. Yet, carried away by
vexation, because the Princes and the nobles had not complied with his
request in his “An den christlichen Adel” that they should rise in a
body against Rome, and reform the Church as he desired, he bitterly
assails them as a class.
Even in the opening lines all the Princes who, like the Emperor, held
fast to the olden faith and sought to preserve their subjects in it,
were put on a par with “hair-brained fellows” and loose “rogues.” “Now
that they want to fleece the poor man and wreak their wantonness on
God’s Word, they call it obedience to the commands of the Emperor....
Because the ravings of such fools leads to the destruction of the
Christian faith, the denial of God’s Word and blasphemy of the Divine
Majesty, I neither can nor will any longer look on calmly at the
doings of my ungracious Lords and fretful squires.”[968]
Of the Princes in general he says, that they ought “to rule the
country and the people outwardly; this, however, they neglect. They
do nothing but rend and fleece the people, heaping impost upon impost
and tax upon tax; letting out, here, a bear, and there, a wolf; nor is
there any law, fidelity or truth to be found in them, for they behave
in such a fashion that to call them robbers and scoundrels would be to
do them too great an honour.... So well are they earning the hatred of
all that they are doomed to perish with the monks and parsons whose
rascality they share.”[969]
It is here that Luther tells the people that, “from the beginning a
wise Prince has been a rare find, and a pious Prince something rarer
still. Usually they are the biggest fools or the most arrant knaves
on earth; hence one must always expect the worst from them and little
good, particularly in Divine things which pertain to the salvation of
souls. For they are God’s lictors and hangmen.”[970] “The usual thing
is for Isaias iii. 4 to be verified: ‘I will give children to be their
princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them.’”[971]
We have to look on while “secular Princes rule in spiritual matters
and spiritual Princes in secular things.” In what else does the
devil’s work on earth consist but in making fun of the world and
turning it into a pantomime.
In conclusion he hints to the Princes plainly that the “mob and the
common folk are beginning to see through it all.”[972]
A Protestant writer, in extenuation of such dangerous language against
the rulers, recently remarked: “It never entered Luther’s head that
such words might bring the Princes into contempt and thus, indirectly,
promote rebellion.... If we are to draw a just conclusion from his
blindness to the obvious psychological consequences of his words, it
can only be, that Luther was no politician.”[973]
It may, indeed, be that he did not then sufficiently weigh the
consequences. Nevertheless, in his scurrilous writings against
individual Princes he was perfectly ready to brave every possible
outcome of his vituperation. “What Luther wrote against the German
Princes,” justly remarks Döllinger, “against Albert, Elector of
Mayence, against the Duke of Brunswick and Duke George of Saxony, puts
into the shade all the libels and screeds of the more recent European
literature.”[974]
One of the chief targets for his shafts was the Archbishop of Mayence.
Albert, Elector of Mayence, “is a plague to all Germany; the
ghastly, yellow, earthen hue of his countenance--a mixture of mud
and blood--exactly fits his character; ... he is deserving of death
under the First Table” (viz. because of his transgression of the
first commandments of the Decalogue by his utter godlessness).[975]
It was, however, not so much on account of his moral shortcomings,
notorious though they were, but more particularly because he did
not take his side, that Luther regarded him as a “most perfidious
rogue” (“_nebulo perfidissimus_”). “If thieves are hanged, then
surely the Bishop of Mayence deserves to be hanged as one of the
first, on a gallows seven times as high as the Giebenstein.... For he
fears neither God nor man.”[976] When Simon Lemnius, the Humanist,
praised Archbishop Albert in a few epigrams, Luther’s anger turned
against the poet, whom he soundly rated for making “a saint out of
a devil.” He issued a sort of mandate against Lemnius of which the
conclusion was: “I beg our people, and particularly the poets or his
[the Archbishop’s] sycophants, in future not publicly to praise the
shameful merd-priest”; he threatens sharp measures should anyone at
Wittenberg dare to praise “the self-condemned lost priest.”[977]
The satirical list of relics which, in 1542, he published with a
preface and epilogue against the same Elector amounted practically to
a libel, and was described by lawyers as a lying slander punishable at
law. As a “_libellus famosus_” against a reigning Prince of the Empire
it might have entailed serious consequences for its author.
In it Luther says: The Elector, as we learn, is offering “big pardons
for many sins,” even for sins to be committed for the next ten years,
to all who “help in decking out in new clothes the poor, naked bones”;
the relics in question, during their translation from Halle to
Mayence, had, so Luther tells us, been augmented by other “particles,”
enriched by the Pope with Indulgences, amongst them, “(1) a fine piece
of the left horn of Moses; (2) three flames from the bush of Moses on
Mount Sinai; (3) two feathers and one egg of the Holy Ghost,” etc., in
all, twelve articles, specially chosen to excite derision.
Justus Jonas appears to have been shocked at Luther’s ribaldry and
to have given Luther an account of what the lawyers were saying. At
any rate, we have Luther’s reply in his own handwriting, though the
top part of the letter has been torn away. In the bottom fragment we
read: “[Were it really a libel] which, however, it cannot be, yet I
have the authority, right and power [to write such libels] against the
Cardinal, Pope, devil and all their crew; and not to have the term
‘_libellus famosus_’ hurled at me. Or have the ‘asinists’--I beg your
pardon, jurists--studied their jurisprudence in such a way as to be
ignorant of what ‘_subjectum_’ and ‘_finis_’ mean in secular law?
[the end in his eyes was a good one]. If I have to teach them, I shall
exact smaller fees and teach them unwashed. How has the beautiful
Moritzburgk [belonging to the see of Mayence] been turned into a
donkey-stable! If they are ready to pipe, I am quite willing to dance,
and, if I live, I hope to tread yet another measure with the bride of
Mayence.”[978] Thus the revolting untruths to which his tactics led
him to have recourse, the better to excite the minds of the people,
seemed to him a fit subject for jest; in spite of the wounds which the
religious warfare was inflicting on the German Church he still saw
nothing unseemly in the figure of the dance and the bridal festivity.
An incident of his controversy with the Duke of Brunswick may serve to
complete the picture. In 1540, during the hot summer, numerous fires
broke out in North and Central Germany, causing widespread alarm;
certain alleged incendiaries who were apprehended were reported to
have confessed under torture that this was the doing of Duke Henry
of Brunswick and the Pope. Before even investigations had commenced
Luther had already jumped to the conclusion that the real author was
his enemy, the Catholic Duke, backed up by the Pope and the monks;
for had not the Duke (according to Luther) explained to the burghers
of Goslar that he recognised no duties with regard to heretics?[979]
The Franciscans had been expelled and were now in disguise everywhere
“plotting vengeance”; they it was who had done it all with the
assistance of the Duke of Brunswick and the Elector of Mayence, who,
of course, remained behind the scenes.[980] “If this be proved, then
there is nothing left for us but to take up arms against the monks and
priests; and I too shall go, for miscreants must be slain like mad
dogs.”[981] Hieronymus Schurf, as the cautious lawyer he was, expressed
himself in Luther’s presence against the misuse of torture in the case
of those accused and against their being condemned too hastily. Luther
interrupted him: “This is no time for mercy but for rage!” According
to St. Augustine many must suffer in order that many may be at peace;
so is it also in the law courts, “now and again some must suffer
injustice, so long as it is not done knowingly and intentionally by the
judge. In troublous times excessive severity must be overlooked.”[982]
He became little by little so convinced of the guilt of Henry the
“incendiary” and his Papists, that, in October, 1540, he refers
half-jestingly to the reputation he was acquiring as “prophet and
apostle” by so correctly discerning in the Papists a mere band of
criminals.[983] He also informed other Courts of the supposed truth of
his surmise, viz. that “Harry of Brunswick has now been convicted as an
arch-incendiary-assassin and the greatest scoundrel on whom the sun has
ever shone. May God give the bloodhound and werewolf his reward. Amen.”
Thus to Duke Albert of Prussia on April 20, 1541.[984]
Considerably before this, in a letter to the same princely patron,
he expressly implicates in these absurd charges the Pope, the chief
object of his hate: After telling Albert of the report, that the
Duke of Brunswick “had sent out many hundred incendiaries against
the Evangelical Estates” of whom more than 300 had been “brought to
justice,” many of them making confessions implicating the Duke, the
Bishop of Mayence and others, Luther goes on to say that the business
must necessarily have been set on foot “by great people, for there is
plenty of money.”
“The Pope is said to have given 80,000 ducats towards it. This is the
sort of thing we are compelled to hear and endure; but God will repay
them abundantly ... in hell, in the fire beneath our feet.”[985]
“The Doctor said,” we read in the Table-Talk, taken down by Mathesius
in September (2-17), 1540: “The greatest wonder of our day is that
the majesty of the Pope--who was a terror to all monarchs and against
whom they dared not move a muscle, seeing that a glance from him or a
movement of his finger sufficed to keep them all in a state of fear and
obedience--that this god should have collapsed so utterly that even his
defenders loathe him. Those who still take his part, without exception
do this simply for money’s sake and their own advantage, otherwise
they would treat him even worse than we do. His malice has now been
thoroughly exposed, since it is certain that he sent eighteen thousand
crowns for the hiring of incendiaries.”[986] The perfect seriousness
with which he relates this in the circle of his friends furnishes an
enigma.
His consciousness of all that he had accomplished against the Pope,
combined with his hatred of Catholicism, seems often to cloud his mind.
2. Luther’s Excuse: “We MUST Curse the Pope and His Kingdom”[987]
In Luther’s polemics against the Pope and the Papists it is
psychologically of importance to bear in mind the depth of the passion
which underlies his furious and incessant abuse.
The further we see into Luther’s soul, thanks especially to his
familiar utterances recorded in the Table-Talk, the more plainly does
this overwhelming enmity stand revealed. In what he said privately to
his friends we find his unvarnished thought and real feelings. Far
from being in any sense artificial, the intense annoyance which rings
throughout his abuse seems to rise spontaneously from the very bottom
of his soul. That he should have pictured to himself the Papacy as a
dragon may be termed a piece of folly, nevertheless it was thus that
it ever hovered before his mind, by day and by night, whether in the
cheery circle of his friends or in his solitary study, in the midst of
ecclesiastical or ecclesiastico-political business, when engaged in
quiet correspondence with admirers and even when he sought in prayer
help and comfort in his troubles.
In Lauterbach’s Diary we find Luther describing the Pope as the
“Beast,”[988] the “Dragon of Hell” towards whom “one cannot be too
hostile,”[989] as the “Dragon and Crocodile,” whose whole being “was,
and still is, rascality through and through.”[990] “Even were the
Pope St. Peter, he would still be godless.”[991] “Whoever wishes to
glorify the Blood of Christ must needs rage against the Pope who
blasphemes it.”[992] “The Pope has sold Christ’s Blood and the state
of matrimony, hence the money-bag [of this Judas] is chock-full of
the proceeds of robbery.... He has banned and branded me, and stuck
me in the devil’s behind. Hence I am going to hang him on his own
keys.”[993] This he said when a caricature was shown him representing
the Pope strung up next to Judas, with the latter’s money-bag.
“I am the Pope’s devil,” so he declared to his companions, “hence it
is that he hates and persecutes me.”[994]
And yet the chief crime of this execrated Papacy was its
non-acceptance of Luther’s innovations. The legal measures taken
against him agreeably with the olden law, whether of the State or of
the Church, were no proof of “hatred,” however much they might lame
his own pretensions.
In other notes of his conversations we read: “Formerly we looked at
the Pope’s face, now we look only at his posterior, in which there is
no majesty.”[995] “The city of Rome now lies mangled and the devil
has discharged over it his filth, i.e. the Pope.”[996] It is a true
saying, that, “if there be a hell, Rome is built upon it.”[997]
“Almost all the Romans are now sunk in Epicurism; they trouble
themselves not at all about God or a good conscience. Alack for our
times! I used to believe that the Epicurean doctrine was dead and
buried, yet here it is still flourishing.”[998]
At the very commencement of the Diary of Cordatus, Luther is recorded
as saying: “The Pope has lost his cunning. It is stupid of him still
to seek to lead people astray under the pretence of religion, now that
mankind has seen through the devil’s trickery. To maintain his kingdom
by force is equally foolish because it is impracticable.”[999]--He
proceeds in a similar strain: “The Papists, like the Jews, insist
that everyone who wishes to be saved must observe their ceremonies,
hence they will perish like the Jews.”[1000]--He maliciously quotes
an old rhyme in connection with the Pope, who is both the “head of
the world” and “the beast of the earth,” and, in support of this,
adduces abundant quotations from the Apocalypse.[1001]--When Daniel
declared that Antichrist would trouble neither about God nor about
woman (xi. 37), this meant that “the Pope would recognise neither God
nor lawful wives, that, in a word, he would despise religion and all
domestic and social life, which all turned on womankind. Thus may
we understand what was foretold, viz. that Antichrist would despise
all laws, ordinances, statutes, rights and every good usage, contemn
kings, princes, empires and everything that exists in heaven or on
earth merely the better to extol his fond inventions.”[1002]--It is
difficult to assume that all this was mere rhetoric, for, then, why
was it persisted in? Intentionally hyperbolical utterances are as a
rule brief. In these conversations, however, the tone never changes,
but merely becomes at times even more emphatic.
On the same page in Cordatus we read: “Children are lucky in that they
come into the world naked and penniless; for the Pope levies toll on
everything there is on the earth, save only upon baptism, because he
can’t help it.”[1003] And immediately after: “The Pope has ceased to
be a teacher and has become, as his Decretals testify, a belly-server
and speculator. In the Decretals he treats not at all of theological
matters but merely pursues three self-seeking ends: First, he does
everything to strengthen his domination; secondly, he does his best
to set the kings and princes at loggerheads with each other whenever
he wants to score off one of the great, in doing which he does not
scruple to show openly his malice; thirdly, he plays the devil most
cunningly, when, with a friendly air, he allays the dissensions he had
previously stirred up among the sovereigns; this, however, he only
does when his own ends have been achieved. He also perverts the truth
of God’s Word [thus invading the theological field]. This, however, he
does not do as Pope, but as Antichrist and God’s real enemy.”[1004]
The whole mountain of abuse expressed here and in what follows rests
on this last assumption, viz. that the Pope perverts “the truth of
God’s Word”; thanks to this the Wittenberg Professor fancied he could
overthrow a Church which had fifteen centuries behind it. His hate
is just as deeply rooted in his soul as his delusion concerning his
special call.
According to the German Colloquies the Pope, like Mohammed, “began
under the Emperor Phocas”: “The prophecy [of the Apocalypse] includes
both, the Pope and the Turk.”[1005] Still, the Pope is the “best
ruler” for the world, because he does know how to govern; “he is lord
of our fields, meadows, money, houses and everything else, yea, of our
very bodies”; for this “he repays the world in everlasting curses and
maledictions; this is what the world wants and it duly returns thanks
and kisses his feet.”[1006]--“He is rather the lawyers’ than the
theologians’ god.”[1007]
He is determined to turn me “straightway into a slave of sin” and
to force me to “blaspheme,” but instead of “denying God” I shall
withstand the Pope; “otherwise we would willingly have borne and
endured the Papal rule.”[1008]--“No words are bad enough to describe
the Pope. We may call him miserly, godless and idolatrous, but all
this falls far short of the mark. It is impossible to grasp and put
into words his great infamies;”[1009] in short, as Christ says, “he is
the abomination of desolation standing in the Holy Place.”[1010]
The Pope is indeed the “father of abominations and the poisoner of
souls.” “After the devil the Pope is a real devil.”[1011] “After
the devil there is no worse man than the Pope with his lies and
his man-made ordinances”;[1012] in fact, he is a masked devil
incarnate.[1013] No one can become Pope unless he be a finished
and consummate knave and miscreant.[1014] The Pope is a “lion” in
strength and a “dragon” in craft.[1015] He is “an out-and-out Jew
who extols in Christ only what is material and temporal”;[1016]
needless to say, he is “far worse than the Turk,”[1017] “a mere
idolater and slave of Satan,”[1018] “a painted king but in reality a
filthy pretence,”[1019] his kingdom is a “Carnival show,”[1020] and
he himself “Rat-King of the monks and nuns.”[1021] Popery is full of
murder;[1022] it serves Moloch,[1023] and is the kingdom of all who
blaspheme God.
“For the Pope is, not the shepherd, but the devil of the Churches;
this comforts me as often as I think of it.”[1024]
“Anno 1539, on May 9,” we read in these Colloquies, “Dr. Martin for
three hours held a severe and earnest Disputation in the School at
Wittenberg, against that horrid monster, the Pope, that real werewolf
who excels in fury all the tyrants, who alone wishes to be above all
law and to act as he pleases, and even to be worshipped, to the loss
and damnation of many poor souls.... But he is a donkey-king [he
said] ... I hope he has now done his worst [now that I have broken
his power]; but neither are the Papists ever to be trusted, even
though they agree to peace and bind themselves to it under seal and
sign-manual.... Therefore let us watch and pray!”[1025]
The Disputation, of which all that is known was published by Paul
Drews in 1895,[1026] dealt principally with the question, which had
become a vital one, of armed resistance to the forces of the Empire
then intent on vindicating the rights of the Pope. The Theses solve
the question in the affirmative. “The Pope is no ‘authority’ ordained
by God ... on the contrary he is a robber, a ‘Bearwolf’ who gulps
down everything. And just as everybody rightly seeks to destroy this
monster, so also it is everyone’s duty to suppress the Pope by force,
indeed, penance must be done by those who neglect it. If anyone is
killed in defending a wild beast it is his own fault. In the same way
it is not wrong to offer resistance to those who defend the Pope, even
should they be Princes or Emperors.”[1027]
A German version of the chief Theses (51-70) was at once
printed.[1028]
Among the explanations given by Luther previous to the Disputation
(“_circulariter disputabimus_”) the following are worthy of note: “We
will not worship the Pope any longer as has been done heretofore....
Rather, we must fight against this Satan.”[1029] “The Pope is such a
monstrous beast that no ruler or tyrant can equal him.... He requires
us to worship his public blasphemy in defiance of the law; it is as
though he said: I will and command that you adore the devil. It is
not enough for him to strangle me, but he will have it that even the
soul is damned at his word of command.... The Pope is the devil. Were
I able to slay the devil, why should I not risk my life in doing so?
Look not on the Pope as a man; his very worshippers declare that
he is no mere man, but partly man and partly God. For ‘God’ here
read ‘devil.’ Just as Christ is God-made-flesh, so the Pope is the
devil incarnate.”[1030]--“Who would not lend a hand against this
arch-pestilential monster? There is none other such in the whole
world as he, who exalts himself far above God. Other wolves there
are indeed, yet none so impudent and imperious as this wolf and
monster.”[1031]
In this celebrated Disputation some of the objections are couched in
scholastic language. Such is the following: According to the Bible,
Antichrist is to be destroyed by the breath of God’s mouth and not
by the sword; therefore armed resistance to the Pope and the Papists
is not allowed. Luther replies: “That we concede, for what we say is
that he will escape and remain with us till the end of the world. He
is nevertheless to be resisted, and the Emperor too, and the Princes
who defend him, not on the Emperor’s account, but for the sake of this
monstrous beast.”[1032]--Another objection runs: “Christ forbade Peter
to make use of his sword against those sent out by the Pharisees;
therefore neither must we take up arms against the Pope.” The reply
was: “_Negabitur consequens_,” and Luther goes on to explain: “The
Pope is no authority as Caiphas and Pilate were. He is the devil’s
servant, possessed of the devil, a wolf who tyrannically carries off
souls without any right or mandate.” According to the report Luther
suddenly relapsed into German: “If Peter went to Rome and slew him,
he would be acting rightly, ‘_quia papa non habet ordinationem_,’”
etc.[1033] Justus Jonas and Cruciger also took a part, bringing
forward objections in order to exercise others in refuting them.
This theological tournament, with its crazy ideas couched in learned
terminology, might well cause the dispassionate historian to smile
were it not for the sombre background and the vision of the religious
wars for which ardent young students were being fitted and equipped.
What we have quoted from Luther’s familiar talks and from his
disputations affords overwhelming proof, were such wanting, that
the frenzied outbursts against the Pope we find even in his public
writings, were, not merely assumed, but really sprang from the depths
of his soul. It is true that at times they were regarded as rhetorical
effusions or even as little more than jokes, but as a matter of fact
they bear the clearest stamp of his glowing hate. They indicate a
persistent and eminently suspicious frame of mind, which deserves
to be considered seriously as a psychological, if not pathological,
condition; what we must ask ourselves is, how far the mere hint of
Popery sufficed to call forth in him a delirium of abuse.
In his tract of 1531 against Duke George he boasted, that people would
in future say, that “his mouth was full of angry words, vituperation
and curses on the Papists”; that “he intended to go down to his grave
cursing and abusing the miscreants”;[1034] that as long as breath
remained in him he would “pursue them to their grave with his thunders
and lightnings”;[1035] again, he says he will take refuge in his
maledictory prayer against the Papists in order to “kindle righteous
hatred in his heart,” and even expounds and recommends this prayer
in mockery to his opponent[1036]--in all this we detect an abnormal
feature which characterises his life and temper. This abnormity is
apparent not only in the intense seriousness with which he utters the
most outrageous things, more befitting a madman than a reasonable
being, but also at times in the very satires to which he has recourse.
That the Papacy would have still more to suffer from him after he was
dead, is a prophecy on which he is ever harping: “When I die,” he
remarks, “I shall turn into a spirit that will so plague the bishops,
parsons and godless monks, that one dead Luther will give them more
trouble than a thousand living Luthers.”[1037]
No theological simile is too strange for him in this morbid state of
mind and feeling. As in the case of those obsessed by a fixed idea the
delusion is ever obtruding itself under every possible shape, so, in a
similar way, every thought, all his studies, his practice, learning,
theology and exegesis, even when its bearing seems most remote, leads
up to this central and all-dominating conviction: “I believe that
the Pope is a devil incarnate in disguise, for he is Endchrist. For
as Christ is true God and true man, so also is Antichrist a devil
incarnate.”[1038] And yet, in the past, so he adds with a deep sigh,
“we worshipped all his lies and idolatry.”
He is very painstaking in his anatomy of the Pope-Antichrist.
“The head of Antichrist,” he said, “is both the Pope and the
Turk; a living creature must have both body and soul; the Pope is
Antichrist’s soul or spirit, but the Turk is his flesh or body; for
the latter lays waste, destroys and persecutes the Church of God
materially, just as the Pope does so spiritually.” Considering,
however, that he had unduly exonerated the Pope, he corrects himself
and adds: And materially also; “materially, viz. by laying waste
with fire and sword, hanging, murdering, etc.” The Church, however,
so he prophesies, will nevertheless “hold the field and resist the
Pope’s hypocrisy and idolatry.” He then goes on to make a fanciful
application of Daniel’s prophecy concerning the kingdoms of the world
to the Pope’s downfall. “The text compels us” to take the prophecy
(Apoc. xiii. 7) as also referring to the “Papal abomination.”
“The Pope shall be broken without hands and perish and die of
himself.”[1039]
That the Pope was spiritually destroying the Church he had already
asserted as early as 1520 in his “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome”: “Of
all that is of Divine appointment not one jot is now observed at
Rome; indeed, if anyone thought of doing what is manifestly such,
it would be derided as folly. They let the Gospel and the Christian
faith perish everywhere and turn never a hair; moreover, every bad
example of mischief, spiritual and secular, flows from Rome over
the whole world as from an ocean of wickedness. All this the Romans
laugh at, and whoever laments it is looked upon as a ‘bon Christian’
[’_cristiano_’], i.e. a fool.”[1040]
The strength of Luther’s delusion that the Pope was Antichrist and
shared the diabolical nature furnishes the chief explanation of the
hopelessly bitter way in which he deals with all those who ventured to
defend the Papacy. On all such he heaps abuse and assails them with
that worst of the weapons at his command, viz. with calumny, calling
into question their good faith and denying to them the character of
Christians.
Johann Eck, so he assured his friends in 1538, “when at Rome, profited
splendidly by the example of Epicurus; his short stay there was
quite sufficient for him. No doubt he possesses great talent and a
good memory, but he is impudence itself, and, at the bottom of his
heart, cares as little about the Pope as he does about the Gospel.
Twenty years ago I should never have thought it possible to find
such Epicureans within the Church.”[1041] Eck is “a bold-lipped and
bloodthirsty sophist.”[1042] In 1532, somewhat more indulgently,
Luther had said of him: “Eccius is no preacher.... He can indeed talk
_ad lib._ of drinking, gambling, light women and boon companions”;
what, however, he says in his sermons he either does not take
seriously or at any rate his heart is not in it.[1043] In 1542,
nevertheless, Luther was heard to say: “I believe he has made himself
over to the devil and entered into a bargain with him how long he will
be allowed to live.”[1044] As was but natural, the man who had “never
really taken the defence of the Pope seriously” died impenitent.
According to Luther he passed away without making any confession,
without even saying, “God be gracious to me.”[1045]
Could we trust Luther, Johannes Fabri, another Catholic opponent,
“blasphemed himself to death.” Surely, thus “to sin deliberately and
of set purpose, exceeds all bounds.”[1046]
Joachim I., Elector of Brandenburg († 1535), who remained faithful to
the Church, was abused by Luther as a “liar, mad bloodhound, devilish
Papist, murderer, traitor, desperate miscreant, assassin of souls,
arch-knave, dirty pig and devil’s child, nay, the devil himself.”
We may recall the epithets he bestowed on Henry VIII. for having
presumed to criticise him: “Crowned donkey, abandoned, senseless man,
excrement of hogs and asses, impudent royal windbag, mad Harry, arrant
fool.”[1047]
Cardinal Cajetan, the famous theologian, was, according to Luther,
“an ambiguous, secretive, incomprehensible, mad theologian, and as
well qualified to understand and judge his cause as an ass would be to
play upon the harp.”[1048] Hoogstraaten, the Cologne Dominican, “does
not know the difference between what is in agreement with and what
contrary to Scripture; he is a mad, bloodthirsty murderer, a blind and
hardened donkey, who ought to be put to scratch for dung-beetles in
the manure-heaps of the Papists.”
Of his attacks on Duke George of Saxony, the “Dresden Assassin,” we
need only mention the parting shaft he flung into his opponent’s
grave: “Let Pharao perish with all his tribe; even though he [the
Duke] felt the prick of conscience yet he was never truly contrite....
Now he has been rooted out.... God sometimes consents to look on
for a while, but afterwards He punishes the race even down to the
children.”[1049]
No one who in any way stood up for the Papal Decrees was safe from
Luther’s ungovernable abuse, not even those statesmen who followed
them from necessity rather than out of any respect for the Church.
Luther is determined, so he says, “not to endure the excrement and
filth of the Pope-Ass.... For goodness’ sake don’t come stirring up
the donkey’s dung and papal filth in the churches, particularly in
this town [Wittenberg].... The Pope defiles the whole world with his
donkey’s dung, but why not let him eat it himself?... Let sleeping
dogs lie, this I beg of you [and do not worry me with the Pope],
otherwise I shall have to give you what for.... I must desist,
otherwise I shall get too angry.”[1050]
With the real defenders of the Papal Decrees, or the olden faith, he
was, however, never afraid of becoming “too angry”; the only redeeming
feature being, that, at times the overwhelming consciousness of his
fancied superiority brings his caustic wit to his assistance and
his anger dissolves into scorn. Minus this pungent ingredient, his
polemics would be incomprehensible, nor would his success have been
half so great.
An example of his descriptions of such Catholics who wrote and
spoke against him is to be found in his preface to a writing of
Klingenbeyl’s. He there jokingly congratulates himself on having been
the means of inducing his opponents to study the Bible in order to
refute him: “Luther has driven these blockheads to Holy Scripture,
just as though a man were to bring a lot of new animals to a
menagerie. Here Dr. Cockles [Cochlæus] barks like a dog; there Brand
of Berne [Johann Mensing] yelps like a fox; the Leipzig preacher of
blasphemy [Johann Koss] howls like a wolf; Dr. Cunz Wimpina grunts
like a snorting sow, and there is so much noise and clamour amongst
the beasts that really I am quite sorry to have started the chase....
They are supposed to be conversant with Scripture, and yet are quite
ignorant of how to handle it.”[1051]
In a more serious and tragic tone he points out, how many of his foes
and opponents had been carried off suddenly by a Divine judgment. He
even drafted a long list of such instances, supplied with hateful
glosses of his own, which he alleged as a proof of the “visible action
of God” in support of his cause.[1052] Johann Koss, the “preacher
of blasphemy,” mentioned above, was given a place in this libellous
catalogue after he had been seized with a stroke of apoplexy in the
pulpit (Dec. 29, 1532). At the instance of Duke George he had been
appointed assistant preacher under Hieronymus Dungersheim, that, by
means of his elocutionary talent, he might defend the town of Leipzig
against the inroads of the new teaching. What particularly incensed
Luther was the use this preacher made of his Postils to refute him
by his own words. The stroke came on him while he was vindicating
the Catholic doctrine of good works. This circumstance, taken in
conjunction with the “place, time and individual,” was for Luther an
irrefutable proof of the intervention of “God’s anger.” “Christ,” he
says, “struck down His enemy, the Leipzig shouter, in the very midst of
his blasphemy.”[1053] The zealous preacher died about a month later.
“None are more pitiable,” Luther says elsewhere of this incident,
“than the presumptuous, such as are all the Papists.”[1054] It was
impossible for him to inveigh with sufficient severity against the
presumption which threatened him on all sides, despite the excessive
kindliness and moderation with which he occasionally credits himself;
for were not those who confronted him “the devil and his hirelings”? He
was forced to combat the frightful presumption of these men who acted
as though they were “steeped in holiness”; for in reality they are
“dirty pig-snouts”; as Papists they are “at the very least, murderers,
thieves and persecutors”; hence let all rise up against the “servers of
idols.”[1055]
“We must curse the Pope and his kingdom and revile and abuse it,
and not close our jaws but preach against it without ceasing. There
are some now who say we are capable of nothing else but of damning,
scolding and slandering the Pope and his followers.” “Yes, and so it
must be.”[1056]
Elsewhere he hints which vilely vulgar terms of opprobrium were to be
applied to the Pope, and, after instancing them, adds: “It is thus
that we should learn to make use of these words.” The Catholic Princes
were also aimed at in this instruction which occurs in one of his
sermons. This discourse, pronounced on Jan. 12, 1531, at a time when
the intervention of the hostile secular powers was feared, was printed
ten years later under the title “Ein trostlich Unterricht wie man
sich gegen den Tyrannen, so Christum und sein Wort verfolgen halten
soll.”[1057]
“Our mad and raving Princes,” he says, “are now raging and blustering
and planning to root out this teaching. Whoever is desirous of devoting
himself to Christ must daily be ready to suffer any peril to life and
limb.” Amongst the grounds for encouragement he adduces is the fact
that even his very foes admitted, “that we preach and teach God’s Word;
the only thing amiss being, that it was not done at their bidding,
but that we at Wittenberg started it all unknown to them.” He calls
the angry Princes “great merd-pots,” who are “kings and rulers of
the pig-sty of the earth where the belly, the universal cesspool,
reigns supreme.” “But we will be of good cheer and put our fingers
to our noses at them”; because we hold fast to Christ therefore we
suffer persecution from the world. “Who is the Pope, that he should
be angry?... A sickly, smelly scarecrow.” “The Pope says: I will
excommunicate you, thrust you down to the abyss of hell. [I tell him]
Stick your tongue in my----. I am holy, am baptised, have God’s Word
and His Promises to proclaim, but you are a sickly, syphilitic sack
of maggots. It is thus that we should learn to make use of these
words.”[1058]
3. The Psychology of Luther’s Abusive Language
_Various Psychological Factors._
Psychologically to appreciate the phenomenon in question we must first
of all take into account Luther’s temperament.
To every unprejudiced observer it must be clear, that, without the
unusual excitability natural to him, many of his utterances would be
quite inexplicable; even when we have given due weight to Luther’s
ungovernable temper and all too powerful imagination they still present
many difficult questions to the observer. Luther himself, as early as
1520, excuses to Spalatin his offensive language on the ground of his
natural “hot-bloodedness”; as everybody knew what his temper was, his
opponents ought not to annoy him as they did; yet these “monsters” only
provoked him the more, and made him “overstep the bounds of modesty and
decency.”[1059] It is perfectly true that some of his foes did provoke
him by their mode of attack, yet on the other hand his own violence
usually put theirs in the shade. (See below, xxvii., 4.)
In addition to his natural impetuosity which furnishes the chief basis
of the phenomenon under consideration, several other factors must
also be envisaged, depending on the objects or persons arousing his
indignation.
It is clear that he was within his rights when he scourged the
anti-Christian blasphemy and seductive wiles of the Jews, however much
he may have been in the wrong in allowing himself to be carried away by
fanaticism so far as to demand their actual persecution. The same holds
good of many of the instances of his ungenerous and violent behaviour
towards “heretics” in his own fold. As against the many and oftentimes
very palpable defects of their position, he knew how to stand up for
truth and logic, though his way of doing so was not always happy, nor
his strictures untouched by his own theological errors.
Nor can it be denied that he was in the right when he assailed the
real, and, alas, all too many abuses of the olden Church. The lively
sense that, at least in this respect, he was in the right may quite
possibly have fed the inward fire of his animosity to Catholics, all
the more owing to his being in the wrong in those new doctrines which
were his principal concern. To the assurance, and the offensive manner
in which he insisted on a reform, his visit to Rome, a distorted
recollection of which ever remained with him, no doubt contributed.
His mind was ever reverting to the dismal picture--by no means an
altogether imaginary one--of the immorality prevailing in even the
highest ecclesiastical circles of Rome.
Rome’s unworthy treatment of the system of indulgences, which had
afforded the occasion of his action in 1517, continued to supply new
fuel for his indignation; to it he was fond of tracing back his whole
undertaking. What increased his anger was the thought that it was this
same Rome, whose ignoble practices both in the matter of indulgences
and in other fields was notorious, who had called him to judgment. It
is painful to the Catholic to have to confess that many of Luther’s
complaints were by no means unfounded. He will, however, call to mind
the better churchmen of those days, who, though indignant at the sad
corruption then prevalent, never dreamt of apostasy, knowing as they
did, that even far worse scandals could never justify a revolt against
the institution appointed by Christ for the salvation of souls.
Even when voicing his real grievances Luther was seldom either prudent
or moderate. He never seems to have quite taken to heart the scriptural
injunction: “Let every man be slow to speak, slow to anger, for the
anger of man worketh not the justice of God.” He expounds in his
Postils the Epistle where the admonition in question occurs,[1060] but
it is curious to note how cursorily he dismisses the words, with which,
maybe, he felt somewhat out of sympathy, though here, as elsewhere, he
refers to the evil consequences of any proneness to anger. On the other
hand, he insists, that “our censures and rebukes” must be in accordance
with the “right and true Word,” i.e. with theology as he understood
it.[1061] He prefers to devote far the greater portion of the
exposition to proving his favourite thesis, that, thanks to the Evangel
now proclaimed, “we have a good and cheerful conscience, stronger than
all fear, sin and temptation, and containing the sure hope of life
everlasting”;[1062] “it is a Word that has power to save your souls;
what more can you desire?”[1063] He seems averse to inculcating that
meekness which the text requires.
* * * * *
One factor which frequently fanned the flames was jealousy, when,
for instance, he had to deal with theological opponents who appeared
to be making too small account of him. The new Evangel, he said, was
endangered by none more than by the “fanatics and sacramentarians”;
to defend his personal position against them had cost him the hardest
struggle of his whole life; no wonder that against them he opened wide
the sluice-gates of his eloquence. He was keenly sensitive to any
slight. “Things are going all wrong in the world,” he sighed in 1532.
“We are already looked upon with contempt, but let us gather up the
fragments when they are cheapest, that is what I advise.”[1064] Of
Carlstadt twelve years previous he had written: “If he has no respect
for me, which of us then will he respect? And what is the good of
admonishing him? I believe he reckons me one of the most learned men
in Wittenberg, and yet he actually tells me to my very face that I am
nobody.... He writes right and left just as he chooses and looks on
poor Wittenberg as quite beneath his notice.”[1065] Luther’s vexation
explains his language. A pity one of the Princes did not let him taste
cold steel; if Carlstadt believed in a God in heaven, then might
Christ never more be gracious to him (Luther); he was no man, but an
incarnation of the evil spirit, etc.
Not merely his former friend Carlstadt but others too he accused of
inordinate ambition because they wished to discredit his discoveries
and his position. “It is the ‘_gloria_’ that does the mischief,” he
said in 1540 in his Table-Talk, “Zwingli was greedy of honour, as
we see from what he wrote, viz. that he had learnt nothing from me.
I should indeed be sorry had he learnt from me, for he went astray.
Œcolampadius thought himself too learned to listen to me or to learn
from me; of course, he too, surpassed me. Carlstadt also declares: ‘I
care nothing for you,’ and Münzer actually declaimed against two Popes,
the new one [myself] and the old.[1066] All who shun us and attack
us secretly have departed from the faith, like Jeckel and Grickel
[Jakob Schenk and Johann Agricola]; they reached their understanding by
their own efforts and learnt nothing from us! Just like Zwingli.” Yet
twenty-five years before (i.e. previous to his great discovery in 1515)
no one “knew anything,” and, twenty-one years before, he, all alone,
under the Divine guidance had put the ball in motion. “Ah, κενοδοξία
[vainglory], that’s the mischief.”[1067]
Jealousy played its part also, when, in 1525, he rounded so violently
upon Zwingli and the Zwinglians at Strasburg. Zwingli’s crime in
his eyes lay not merely in his having, like Œcolampadius, adopted a
divergent doctrine on the Eucharist, but in his claim to have been
before Luther in preaching the Gospel of Christ openly according to
its true meaning.[1068] Both circumstances contributed to Luther’s
ire, which, after finding vent in many angry words, culminated at last
in the rudest abuse of Zwingli and his “devilish” crew. Already in
1525, he wrote in the instruction for the people of Strasburg which he
gave to Gregory Casel, who had come to Wittenberg to negotiate:[1069]
“One of the parties must be the tool of Satan, i.e. either they or
we.”[1070] “Christ can have no part with Belial.” And, before this:
“They [Zwingli and Œcolampadius] disturb our Church and weaken
our repute. Hence we cannot remain silent. If they would be vexed
to see their own reputation suffer, let them also think of ours.”
“They ought to have held their tongues long ago [on the question of
the Sacrament]; now silence comes too late.” He concludes with the
assurance, that their error was refuted by “the Spirit,” and that it
was impossible they could have any certainty concerning their doctrine,
whereas he could justly boast, that he had the experience of the faith
and the testimony of the Spirit (“_experimentum fidei et spiritus
testimonium_”). “They will never win the day. It pains me that Zwingli
and his followers take offence at my saying that ‘What I write must be
true.’”
Apart from the doctrine on the Sacrament, the other thing which helped
to annoy him stands revealed more plainly in the letter addressed on
the same day to the Strasburg preachers: “We dare to boast that Christ
was first made known by us, and now Zwingli actually comes and accuses
us of denying Christ.”[1071] Bossuet was quite right in arguing that
such petty jealousy on Luther’s part is scarcely to his credit.[1072]
He quotes a criticism on Luther’s behaviour by George Calixt, the
famous Lutheran professor of theology at Helmstädt: “The sweetness of
vainglory is so seductive and human weakness so great, that even those
who despise all things and risk their goods, yea life itself, may
succumb to inordinate ambition.” Luther, too, had high aims; “we cannot
be surprised that, even a man so large-minded as Luther, should have
written such things to the people of Strasburg.”[1073]
Offended vanity played a part as great and even more obvious in
Luther’s furious polemics against the literary defenders of the Church.
One cannot help noticing how, especially when they had succeeded in
making out a clear case against him, his answer was a torrent of most
unsparing abuse.
* * * * *
The eloquence which he had at his command also constituted a
temptation. He was well aware of the force with which his impassioned
language carried others away. Very little was thus needed to induce him
to take up this formidable weapon which at least ensured his success
among the masses. He himself revelled in the unquenchable wealth of his
vituperative vocabulary, and with it he caught the fancy of thousands
who loved nothing more than a quarrel. If it be true that all popular
orators are exposed to the temptation to exaggerate, to say things
which are striking rather than correct, and, generally, to court the
applause of the crowd, this danger was even greater in Luther’s case
owing to the whole character of the controversy he had stirred up. In
the midst of a stormy sea one does not speak softly. Luther’s abuse
was, however, powerful enough to be heard above even the most furious
tempest.
For his work Luther required an extraordinary stimulus. He would have
succumbed under the countless and burdensome labours which devolved
on him had he not constantly aroused himself anew by the exercise of
a sort of violence. Vituperation thus became to him a real need. When
he had succeeded thereby in working himself up into a passion his mind
grew clearer and his imagination more vigorous, so that he found it all
the easier to borrow from the lips of the mob that rude language of
which he makes such fell use. He kindles his animation by dwelling on
the “vermin and running sores of Popery.”
In the same way from time to time he found the need of unburdening
himself of his ill-humour. The small success of his labours for the
reform of morals and his other annoying experiences gave him many an
unhappy hour. His bad humour found an outlet in abuse and vituperation,
particularly against the enemies of the Evangel. He himself was unable
to conceal the real grounds of the vexation which he vented on the
Papacy, for, often enough, after storming against the Papists, he
complains bitterly of his own followers’ contempt for the “Word” and of
their evil lives.
After the utterance already recorded: “We must curse the Pope and his
kingdom,” he goes on to levy charges of the worst character against
those of his own party, and pours forth on them, too, all the vials of
his wrath and disappointment. It was in this connection that he said,
that the Evangelicals were seven times worse than before; for the one
devil that had been expelled, seven worse had entered in, so horribly
did they lie, cheat, gorge and swill and indulge in every vice;
princes, lords, nobles, burghers and peasants alike had lost all fear
of God.[1074]
Another example, taken this time from the year 1536. Full of anger
against the Pope he said to a friend who held a high post: “My dear
fellow, do hurl a Paternoster as a curse against the Papacy that it
may be smitten with the Dance of St. Vitus.” He adds: “Don’t mind
my way of speaking, for indeed you know it well; I am coarse and
rough ... so sore beset, oppressed and overwhelmed with business of
all kinds, that, to save my poor carcase I must sometimes indulge
in a little pleasure, for, after all, man is only human”[1075]--an
utterance psychologically valuable. The real reason for the
depression against which he was struggling is, however, clearer in
other letters dating from that time. In them we get a glimpse of his
grievous vexation and annoyance with the false teachers within the
Evangelical fold: “New prophets are arising one after the other. I
almost long to be delivered [by death] so as not to have to go on
seeing so much mischief, and to be free at last from this kingdom
of the devil. I implore you to pray to God that He would grant me
this.”[1076]
Lastly, his outbursts against the Papacy served to cover his own
anxiety of conscience.
In the same way as others who leave their Church, fling themselves
into the turmoil and distractions of the world in order to escape
their scruples, Luther too, allayed the reproach of his conscience by
precipitating himself into the midst of the storm he had evoked; with
this advantage, that the sharp weapons of abuse and scorn he employed
could be turned against the enemy both without and within. Accustomed
as he was to treat the voice of conscience as the voice of Satan, he
willingly clung to the doubtful consolation that the stronger his
abuse of his opponents the greater his own encouragement. The evil
which he detected in Popery seemed to him to load the scale in his own
favour. He even admits this with the most engaging frankness.
“I am quite ready to allow that the Pope’s abomination is, after
Christ, my greatest consolation. Hence those are hopeless simpletons
who say we should not abuse the Pope. Don’t be slow in abuse,
particularly when the devil attacks you on Justification.” He intends
“to infuse courage into himself by considering the abomination and
horror” of the Pope; and to “hold it up under the devil’s nose.”[1077]
Döllinger remarks justly: “Here [in these anxieties of conscience]
is to be found at least a partial psychological explanation of that
wealth of bitter abuse which marks off Luther’s writings from all
other literary products, ancient or mediæval.... Not seldom he sought
to deaden the interior terrors of a reproving conscience with the
noisy clamour of his vituperation.”[1078]
We have just heard Luther promise to hold up the Pope’s abomination to
the devil’s nose. This saying brings us to the principal explanation of
the phenomenon under consideration.
_Connection of Luther’s Abusiveness with his Mystic Persuasion of his
Special Call._
Luther had brought himself to such a pitch as to see in the existing
Church the devil’s kingdom, to overthrow which, with its Antichrist,
was his own sublime mission. This theological, anti-diabolical motive
for his anger and boundless invective, throws all others into the shade.
“Even were I not carried away by my hot temper and my style of
writing,” he says, “I should still be obliged to take the field, as I
do, against the enemies of truth” (“children of the devil” he calls
them elsewhere). “I am hot-headed enough, nor is my pen blunt.” But
these foes “revel in the most horrible crimes not merely against me,
but even against God’s Word.” Did not Christ Himself have recourse
to abuse, he asks, against the “wicked and adulterous generation of
the Jews, against the brood of vipers, the hypocrites and children of
the devil”? “Whoever is strong in the consciousness of the truth, can
display no patience towards its furious and ferocious enemies.”[1079]
The more vividly he persuaded himself of his mission, the blacker
were the colours in which he painted the devil of Popery who refused
to believe in it, and the more strangely did there surge up from
the sombre depths of his soul and permeate his whole being a hatred
the like of which no mortal man had ever known before. In such
outbursts Luther thinks he is “raving and raging [’_debacchari_’]
against Satan”; for instance, in a letter to Melanchthon, dated from
the fortress of Coburg, “from the stronghold full of devils where
Christ yet reigns in the midst of His foes.” Even when unable from
bodily weakness to write against the devil, yet he could at least
rage against him in thought and prayer; “the Pope’s enormities
(‘_portenta_’) against God and against the common weal” supplied him
with material in abundance.[1080]
God had appointed him, so we read elsewhere, “to teach and to
instruct,” as “an Apostle and Evangelist in the German lands” (were
it his intention to boast); for he knows that he teaches “by the
Grace of God, whose name Satan shall not destroy nor deprive me of
to all eternity”; therefore I must unsparingly “expose my back parts
to the devil ... so as to enrage him still more.” To the wrath of
all the devils, bishops, and princes he will pay as little heed as
to the rustle of a bat’s wing, nor will he spare the “traitors and
murderers.”[1081]
As early as 1520 he revealed to an intimate friend the morbidly
exaggerated ideas which moved him: As an excuse for his dreadful
vituperation he alleges his pseudo-mystic conception of the life and
death struggle he was to engage in with the devil, and his sense
of the “_impetus Spiritus_”; this he pleads in extenuation to his
friend, who would appear to have reminded him of the dangers of
pride. “All condemn my sarcasm,” he admits, but, now that the Spirit
has moved him, he may set himself on a line with the “prophets” of
the Old Law who “were so harsh in their invective,” nay, with Paul
the Apostle, whose severe censures were ever present in his mind. In
fact, God Himself, according to Luther, is to some extent present in
these utterances by means of His power and action, and, “sure enough,
intends in this way to unmask the inventions of man.”[1082]
As compared with the interior force with which the idea of his mission
inspired him, all his violence, particularly in his polemics with the
Catholic theologians and statesmen, appeared to him far too weak. Thus
his “Wider Hans Worst” against the Catholic Duke of Brunswick, though
reeking of blood and hate, seemed to him to fall short of the mark
and to be all too moderate, so at least he told Melanchthon, to all
appearance quite seriously.[1083] His inability ever to exhaust his
indignation goes back to the idea expressed by him in the same letter
with such startling candour and conviction as to remind one of the
ravings of a man possessed by a fixed delusion: “It is certain that it
is God Who is fighting.” “Our cause is directed by the hand of God, not
by our own wisdom. The Word makes its way and prayer glows ... hence
we might well sleep in peace were we not mere flesh.” His hint at the
near approach of the Last Judgment, the many signs of which could not
escape notice, more than confirms the pseudo-mystic character both of
his confidence and of his hate.[1084]
On other occasions traces of his pet superstitions are apparent, and,
when we take them together, prove beyond a doubt the unhealthy state
of the mind from which they sprang. For instance, Luther professes to
know particulars of the approaching end of the world concerning which
the Bible says nothing; he also has that curious list of opponents
miraculously slain by the Divine hand, and even fancies he can increase
it by praying for the death of those who, not sharing his opinions,
stood in his way: “This year we must pray Duke Maurice to death; we
must slay him by our prayers, for he is likely to prove a wicked man.”
On the same occasion he also attributes to himself a sort of prophetic
gift: “I am a prophet.”[1085] The foretelling of future events and
the fulfilment in his own person of olden prophecies and visions, and
again the many miracles and expulsions of the devil which accompany the
spread of his teaching, confirm his Evangel and impress the stamp of
Divine approbation on his hatred of Antichrist.[1086] Divine portents,
which, however, no one but Luther would have recognised as such, were
also exploited: the birth of the monstrous Monk-Calf; the Pope-Ass
fished from the Tiber; signs in the heavens and on the earth. The Book
of Daniel and St. John’s Apocalypse supplied him when necessary with
the wished-for interpretation, though his far-fetched speculations
would better become a mystic dreamer than a sober theologian and
spiritual guide of thousands. All this was crowned by the diabolical
manifestations which he himself experienced, though what he took for
apparitions of the devil was merely the outcome of an overwrought
mind.[1087]
This enables us to seize that second nature of his, made up of
superhuman storming and vituperation, and to understand, how, in his
hands, wild abuse of the Papacy became quite a system.
“I shall put on my horns,” he wrote to a friend in 1522, “and vex
Satan until he lies stretched out on the ground. Don’t be afraid, but
neither expect me to spare my gainsayers; should they be hard hit by
the new movement, that is not our fault, but a judgment from above on
their tyranny.”[1088] Shortly after he wrote in a similar strain to
reassure some unknown correspondent concerning his unusual methods
of controversy: “Hence, my dear friend, do not wonder that many take
offence at my writings. For it _must_ be that only a few hold fast
to the Gospel [the friend had pointed out to him that many of his
followers were being scared away by his abuse].... His Highness my
master has admonished me in writing, and many other friends have done
the same. But my reply is ever that I neither can nor will refrain
from it.”[1089]
Abuse becomes almost inseparable from his teaching, or at least seems
entailed by it. “Whoever accepts my teaching with a right heart,”
he says, “will not be scandalised by my abuse.” Indeed, he adds,
emulating Hus, he was ready “to risk his life should persecution or
the needs of the time demand it.” Nor have we any reason to doubt that
his misguided enthusiasm would have rendered him capable of such a
sacrifice.[1090]