Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Anne Folland,
Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
[Illustration: LUTHER. (From a Portrait by Cranach in the Town
Church at Weimar.)]
LIFE OF LUTHER
BY
JULIUS KOSTLIN
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS from AUTHENTIC SOURCES
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
_AUTHOR'S DEDICATION_
TO
MY DEAR WIFE PAULINE
WITH THE WORDS OF LUTHER
'God's highest gift on earth is to have a pious, cheerful,
God-fearing, home-keeping wife.'
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
No German has ever influenced so powerfully as Luther the religious
life, and, through it, the whole history, of his people; none has
ever reflected so faithfully, in his whole personal character and
conduct, the peculiar features of that life and history, and been
enabled by that very means to render us a service so effectual and
so popular. If we recall to fresh life and remembrance the great men
of past ages, we Germans shall always put Luther in the van: for us
Protestants, the object of our love and veneration, who will not
prevent, however, or prejudice the most candid historical inquiry;
for others, a rock of offence, whom even slander and falsehood will
never overcome.
I have already in my larger work, 'Martin Luther: his Life and
Writings,' 2 vols., 1875, put together all the materials available
for that subject, together with the necessary references, historical
and critical, and have endeavoured to explain and illustrate at
length the subject matter of his various writings. I now offer this
sketch of his life to the wide circle of what are called educated
German readers. For further explanations and proofs of statements
herein contained I would refer them to my larger work. Further
investigation has prompted me to make some alterations, but only a
few, in matters of detail.
For the illustrations and illustrative documents I beg to express my
warm thanks, and those of the publisher, to the friends who have
kindly assisted us in the work.
J. KOSTLIN, Professor at the University of Halle-Wittenberg.
_Oct_. 31, 1881, the anniversary of Luther's 95 Theses.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
_LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH, UP TO HIS ENTERING THE
CONVENT.--1483-1505._
I. Birth and Parentage
II. Childhood and School-days
III. Student-days at Erfurt and Entry into the Convent.--1501-1505
PART II.
_LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR, UNTIL HIS ENTRY ON THE WAR OF
REFORMATION.--1505-1517._
I. At the Convent at Erfurt, till 1508
II. Call to Wittenberg. Journey to Rome
III. Luther as Theological Teacher, to 1517
PART III.
_THE BREACH WITH ROME, UP TO THE DIET OF WORMS.--1517-1521._
I. The Ninety-five Theses
II. The Controversy concerning Indulgences
III. Luther at Angsburg before Caietan. Appeal to a Council
IV. Miltitz and the Disputation at Leipzig, with its Results
V. Luther's further Work, Writings, and Inward Progress until 1520
VI. Alliance with the Humanists and Nobility
VII. Crisis of Secession: Luther's Works--to the Christian Nobility
of the German Nation, and on the Babylonian Captivity.
VIII. The Bull of Excommunication, and Luther's Reply
IX. The Diet of Worms
PART IV.
_FROM THE DIET OF WORMS TO THE PEASANTS' WAR AND LUTHER'S
MARRIAGE._
I. Luther at the Wartburg, to his Visit to Wittenberg in 1521.
II. Luther's further Sojourn at the Wartburg, and his Return to
Wittenberg, 1522
III. Luther's Reappearance and fresh Labours at Wittenberg, 1522
IV. Luther and his anti-Catholic work of Reformation, up to 1525
V. The Reformer against the Fanatics and Peasants, up to 1525
VI. Luther's Marriage
PART V.
_LUTHER AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH, TO THE FIRST
RELIGIOUS PEACE.--1525-1532._
I. Survey
II. Continued Labours and Personal Life
III. Erasmus and Henry VIII. Controversy with Zwingli and his
Followers, up to 1528
IV. Church Divisions in Germany. War with the Turks. The Conference
at Marburg, 1529
V. The Diet of Augsburg, and Luther at Coburg, 1530
VI. From the Diet of Augsburg to the Religious Peace of Nüremberg,
1632. Death of the Elector John
PART VI.
_FROM THE RELIGIOUS PEACE OF NÜREMBERG TO THE DEATH OF LUTHER._
I. Luther under John Frederick
II. Negotiations respecting a Council and Union among the
Protestants. The Legate Vergerius, 1535. The Wittenberg Concord,
1536
III. Negotiations respecting a Council and Union among the
Protestants (continued). The Meeting at Schmalkald, 1537. Peace with
the Swiss.
IV. Other Labours and Proceedings, 1533-39. The Archbishop Albert
and Schönitz. Agricola
V. Luther and the Progress and Internal Troubles of Protestantism,
1538-41
VI. Luther and the Progress and Internal Troubles of Protestantism
(continued), 1541-44
VII. Luther's Later Life; Domestic and Personal
VIII. Luther's Last Year and Death
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
LUTHER. (From a Portrait by Cranach in the Town Church at Weimar)
1. COAT OF ARMS
2. HANS LUTHER
3. MARGARET LUTHER
4. LUTHER'S CELL AT ERFURT
5. STAUPITZ. (From the Portrait in St. Peter's Convent at Salzburg)
FACSIMILE FROM LUTHER'S PSALTER, AT WOLFENBUTTEL
6. TITLE AND PREFACE OF PENITENTIAL PSALMS
7. SPALATIN. (From L. Cranach's Portrait)
8. ERASMUS. (From the Portrait by A. Dürer)
9. LEO X. (From his Portrait by Raphael) FACSIMILE OF PLACARD OF
INDULGENCES, 1517
10. THE ABCHBISHOP ALBERT. (From Dürer's engraving)
11. TITLE-PAGE OF A PAMPHLET WRITTEN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE
REFORMATION, with an Illustration showing the Sale of Indulgences
12. THE CASTLE CHURCH. (From the Wittenberg Book of Relics, 1509)
13. THE EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN. (From his Portrait by Albert Dürer)
14. DUKE GEORGE OF SAXONY. (From an old woodcut)
15. LUTHER. (From an engraving of Cranach, in 1520)
16. DR. JOHN ECK. (From an old woodcut)
17. MELANCTHON. (From a Portrait by Dürer)
18. LUCAS CRANACH. (From a Portrait by himself)
19. W. PIRKHEIMER. (From a Portrait by Albert Dürer)
20. ULRICH VON HUTTEN. (From an old woodcut)
21. FRANCIS VON SICKINGEN. (From an old engraving)
22. TITLE-PAGE OF THE SECOND EDITION OF LUTHER'S TREATISE TO THE
CHRISTIAN NOBILITY OF THE GERMAN NATION
23. TITLE-PAGE, slightly reduced, of the original Tract 'On the
Liberty of a Christian Man'
24. CHARLES V. (From an engraving by B. Beham, in 1531)
25. LUTHER. (From an engraving by Cranach, in 1521)
26. LUTHER as "SQUIRE GEORGE." (From a woodcut by Cranach)
27. BUGENHAGEN. (From a picture by Cranach in his album, at Berlin,
1543)
28. MÜNZER. (From an old woodcut)
29. LUTHER. (From a Portrait by Cranach in 1525.) At Wittenberg.
30. CATHARINE VON BORA, LUTHER'S WIPE. (From a Portrait by Cranach
about 1525.) At Berlin
31. LUTHER'S RING FBOM CATHARINE
32. LUTHER'S DOUBLE RING
33. THE SAXON ELECTORS, FREDERICK THE WISE, JOHN, AND JOHN
FREDERICK. (From a Picture by Cranach.) At Nüremberg
34. FACSIMILE OF FREDERICK'S SIGNATURE
35. PHILIP OF HESSE. (From a woodcut of Brosamer)
36. LUTHER. (From a Portrait by Cranach in 1528.) At Berlin
37. LUTHER'S WIFE. (From a Portrait by Cranach in 1528.) At Berlin
38. ZWINGLI. (From an old engraving)
39. FACSIMILE OF THE SUPERSCRIPTION AND SIGNATURE TO THE MARBURG
ARTICLES
40. VEIT DIETRICH, as Pastor of Nüremberg. (From an old woodcut)
41. LUTHER'S SEAL. (Taken from letters written in 1517)
42. LUTHER'S COAT OF ARMS. (From old prints)
43. BUTZER. (From the old original woodcut of Beusner)
44. AGRICOLA. (From a miniature Portrait by Cranach, in the
University Album at Wittenberg, 1531)
45. JONAS. (From a Portrait by Cranach, in his Album at Berlin,
1543)
46. AMSDORF. (From an old woodcut)
47. LUTHER. (From a Portrait by Cranach, in his Album, at Berlin)
48. WITTENBERG. (From an old engraving)
49. THE "LUTHER-HOUSE" (previously the Convent), before its recent
restoration
50. LUTHER'S ROOM
51. LUTHER'S DAUGHTER 'LENE.' (From Cranach's Portrait)
52. DOOR OF LUTHER'S HOUSE AT WITTENBERG
53. MATHESIUS. (From an old woodcut)
54. LUTHER IN 1546. (From a woodcut of Cranach)
55. JONAS' GLASS
56. ADDRESS OF LUTHER'S LETTER OF FEBRUARY 7
57. LUTHER AFTER DEATH. (From a Picture ascribed to Cranach)
58. CAST OF LUTHER AFTER DEATH. (At Halle)
FACSIMILE OF PART OF THE EDICT OF WORMS, 8 MAY (1521), being the
title and conclusion, with the signature of the Emperor Charles
TITLE AND COMMENCEMENT OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW, IN THE FIRST
EDITION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, 1522. (From the original in the Royal
Public Library at Stüttgart)
FACSIMILE OF CONCLUDING PORTION OF LUTHER'S WILL, with the
attestations of Melancthon, Crueiger, and Bugenhagen. (At Pesth)
FACSIMILE OF LETTER OF LUTHER TO HIS WIFE, OF FEBRUARY 7, 1546. (At
Breslau)
LUTHER'S LIFE.
PART I.
LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH UP TO HIS ENTERING THE CONVENT.--1483-1505.
CHAPTER I.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
On the 10th of November, 1483, their first child was born to a young
couple, Hans and Margaret Luder, at Eisleben, in Saxony, where the
former earned his living as a miner. That child was Martin Luther.
His parents had shortly before removed thither from Möhra, the old
home of his family. This place, called in old records More and Möre,
lies among the low hills where the Thuringian chain of wooded
heights runs out westwards towards the valley of the Werra, about
eight miles south of Eisenach, and four miles north of Salzungen,
close to the railway which now connects these two towns. Luther thus
comes from the very centre of Germany. The ruler there was the
Elector of Saxony.
Möhra was an insignificant village, without even a priest of its
own, and with only a chapel affiliated to the church of the
neighbouring parish. The population consisted for the most part of
independent peasants, with house and farmstead, cattle and horses.
Mining, moreover, was being carried on there in the fifteenth
century, and copper was being discovered in the copper schist, of
which the names of Schieferhalden and Schlackenhaufen still survive
to remind us. The soil was not very favourable for agriculture, and
consisted partly of moorland, which gave the place its name. Those
peasants who possessed land were obliged to work extremely hard.
They were a strong and sturdy race.
From this peasantry sprang Luther. 'I am a peasant's son,' he said
once to Melancthon in conversation. 'My father, grandfather--all my
ancestors were thorough peasants.'
[Illustration: Coat of arms]
His father's relations were to be found in several families and
houses in Möhra, and even scattered in the country around. The name
was then written Luder, and also Ludher, Lüder, and Leuder. We find
the name of Luther for the first time as that of Martin Luther, the
Professor at Wittenberg, shortly before he entered on his war of
Reformation, and from him it was adopted by the other branches of
the family. Originally it was not a surname, but a Christian name,
identical with Lothar, which signifies one renowned in battle. A
very singular coat of arms, consisting of a cross-bow, with a rose
on each side, had been handed down through, no doubt, many
generations in the family, and is to be seen on the seal of Luther's
brother James. The origin of these arms is unknown; the device leads
one to conclude that the family must have blended with another by
intermarriage, or by succeeding to its property. Contemporaneous
records exist to show how conspicuously the relatives of Luther, at
Möhra and in the district, shared the sturdy character of the local
peasantry, always ready for self-help, and equally ready for
fisticuffs. Firmly and resolutely, for many generations, and amidst
grievous persecutions and disorders, such as visited Möhra in
particular during the Thirty Years' War, this race maintained its
ground. Three families of Luther exist there at this day, who are
all engaged in agriculture; and a striking likeness to the features
of Martin Luther may still be traced in many of his descendants, and
even in other inhabitants of Möhra. Not less remarkable, as noted by
one who is familiar with the present people of the place, are the
depth of feeling and strong common sense which distinguish them, in
general, to this day. The house in which Luther's grandfather lived,
or rather that which was afterwards built on the site, can still, it
is believed, but not with certainty, be identified. Near this house
stands now a statue of Luther in bronze.
At Möhra, then, Luther's father, Hans, had grown up to manhood. His
grandfather's name was Henry, but of him we hear nothing during
Luther's time. His grandmother died in 1521. His mother's maiden
name was Ziegler; we afterwards find relations of hers at Eisenach;
the other old account, which made her maiden name Lindemann,
probably originated from confusing her with Luther's grandmother.
What brought Hans to Eisleben was the copper mining, which here, and
especially in the county of Mansfeld, to which Eisleben belonged,
had prospered to an extent never known around Möhra, and was even
then in full swing of activity. At Eisleben, the miners' settlements
soon formed two new quarters of the town. Hans had, as we know, two
brothers, and very possibly there were more of the family, so that
the paternal inheritance had to be divided. He was evidently the
eldest of the brothers, of whom one, Heinz, or Henry, who owned a
farm of his own, was still living in 1540, ten years after the death
of Hans. But at Möhra the law of primogeniture, which vests the
possession of the land in the eldest son, was not recognised; either
the property was equally divided, or, as was customary in other
parts of the country, the estate fell to the share of the youngest.
This custom was referred to in after years by Luther in his remark
that in this world, according to civil law, the youngest son is the
heir of his father's house.
We must not omit to notice the other reasons which have been
assigned for his leaving his old home. It has been repeatedly
asserted, in recent times, and even by Protestant writers, that the
father of our great Reformer had sought to escape the consequences
of a crime committed by him at Möhra. The matter stands thus: In
Luther's lifetime his Catholic opponent Witzel happened to call out
to Jonas, a friend of Luther's, in the heat of a quarrel, 'I might
call the father of your Luther a murderer.' Twenty years later the
anonymous author of a polemical work which appeared at Paris
actually calls the Reformer 'the son of the Möhra assassin.' With
these exceptions, not a trace of any story of this kind, in the
writings of either friend or foe, can be found in that or in the
following century. It was at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, in an official report on mining at Möhra, that the story,
evidently based on oral tradition, assumed all at once a more
definite shape; the statement being that Luther's father had
accidentally killed a peasant, who was minding some horses grazing.
This story has been told to travellers in our own time by people of
Möhra, who have gone so far as to point out the fatal meadow. We are
forced to notice it, not, indeed, as being in the least
authenticated, but simply on account of the authority recently
claimed for the tradition. For it is plain that what is now a matter
of hearsay at Möhra was a story wholly unknown there not many years
ago, was first introduced by strangers, and has since met with
several variations at their hands. The idea of a criminal flying
from Möhra to Mansfeld, which was only a few miles off, and was
equally subject to the Elector of Saxony, is absurd, and in this
case is strangely inconsistent with the honourable position soon
attained, as we shall see, by Hans Luther himself at Mansfeld.
Moreover, the very fact that Witzel's spiteful remark was long known
to Luther's enemies, coupled with the fact that they never turned it
to account, shows plainly how little they ventured to make it a
matter of serious reproach. Luther during his lifetime had to hear
from them that his father was a Bohemian heretic, his mother a loose
woman, employed at the baths, and he himself a changeling, born of
his mother and the Devil. How triumphantly would they have talked
about the murder or manslaughter committed by his father, had the
charge admitted of proof! Whatever occurrence may have given rise to
such a story, we have no right to ascribe it either to any fault or
any crime of the father. More on this subject it is needless to add;
the two strange statements we have mentioned do not attempt to
establish any definite connection between the supposed crime and the
removal to Eisleben.
The day, and even the very hour, when her first-born came into the
world, Luther's mother carefully treasured in her mind. It was
between eleven and twelve o'clock at night. Agreeably to the custom
of the time, he was baptised in the Church of St. Peter the next
day. It was the feast of St. Martin, and he was called after that
saint. Tradition still identifies the house where he was born; it
stands in the lower part of the town, close to St. Peter's Church.
Several conflagrations, which devastated Eisleben, have left it
undestroyed. But of the original building only the walls of the
ground-floor remain: within these there is a room facing the street,
which is pointed out as the one where Luther first saw the light.
The church was rebuilt soon after his birth, and was then called
after St. Peter and St. Paul; the present font still retains, it is
said, some portions of the old one.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.--HANS LUTHER.]
When the child was six months old, his parents removed to the town of
Mansfeld, about six miles off. So great was the number of the miners
who were then crowding to Eisleben, the most important place in the
county, that we can well understand how Luther's father failed there
to realise his expectations, and went in search of better prospects
to the other capital of the rich mining district. Here, at Mansfeld,
or, more strictly, at Lower Mansfeld, as it is called, from its
position, and to distinguish it from Cloister-Mansfeld, he came among
a people whose whole life and labour were devoted to mining. The town
itself lay on the banks of a stream, inclosed by hills, on the edge
of the Harz country. Above it towered the stately castle of the
Counts, to whom the place belonged. The character of the scenery is
more severe, and the air harsher than in the neighbourhood of Möhra.
Luther himself called his Mansfeld countrymen sons of the Harz. In
the main, these Harz people are much rougher than the Thuringians.
[Illustration: MARGARET LUTHER.]
Here also, at first, Luther's parents found it a hard struggle to
get on. 'My father,' said the Reformer, 'was a poor miner; my mother
carried in all the wood upon her back; they worked the flesh off
their bones to bring us up: no one nowadays would ever have such
endurance.' It must not, however, be forgotten that carrying wood in
those days was less a sign of poverty than now. Gradually their
affairs improved. The whole working of the mines belonged to the
Counts, and they leased out single portions, called smelting
furnaces, sometimes for lives, sometimes for a term of years. Harts
Luther succeeded in obtaining two furnaces, though only on a lease
of years. He must have risen in the esteem of his town-fellows even
more rapidly than in outward prosperity.
The magistracy of the town consisted of a bailiff, the chief
landowners, and four of the community. Among these four Hans Luther
appears in a public document as early as 1491. His children were
numerous enough to cause him constant anxiety for their maintenance
and education: there were at least seven of them, for we know of
three brothers and three sisters of the Reformer. The Luther family
never rose to be one of the rich families of Mansfeld, who possessed
furnaces by inheritance, and in time became landowners; but they
associated with them, and in some cases numbered them among their
intimate friends. The old Hans was also personally known to his
Counts, and was much esteemed by them. In 1520 the Reformer publicly
appealed to their personal acquaintance with his father and himself,
against the slanders circulated about his origin. Hans, in course of
time, bought himself a substantial dwelling-house in the principal
street of the town. A small portion of it remains standing to this
day. There is still to be seen a gateway, with a well-built arch of
sandstone, which bears the Luther arms of cross-bow and roses, and
the inscription J.L. 1530. This was, no doubt, the work of James
Luther, in the year when his father Hans died, and he took
possession of the property. It is only quite recently that the stone
has so far decayed as to cause the arms and part of the inscription
to peel off.
The earliest personal accounts that we have of Luther's parents,
date from the time when they already shared in the honour and renown
acquired by their son. They frequently visited him at Wittenberg,
and moved with simple dignity among his friends. The father, in
particular, Melancthon describes as a man, who, by purity of
character and conduct, won for himself universal affection and
esteem. Of the mother he says that the worthy woman, amongst other
virtues, was distinguished above all for her modesty, her fear of
God, and her constant communion with God in prayer. Luther's friend,
the Court-preacher Spalatin, spoke of her as a rare and exemplary
woman. As regards their personal appearance, the Swiss Kessler
describes them in 1522 as small and short persons, far surpassed by
their son Martin in height and build; he adds, also, that they were
dark-complexioned. Five years later their portraits were painted by
Lucas Cranach: these are now to be seen in the Wartburg, and are the
only ones of this couple which we possess. [Footnote: Strange to
say, subsequently and even in our own days, a portrait of Martin
Luther's wife in her old age has been mistaken for one of his
mother.] In these portraits, the features of both the parents have a
certain hardness; they indicate severe toil during a long life. At
the same time, the mouth and eyes of the father wear an intelligent,
lively, energetic, and clever expression. He has also, as his son
Martin observed, retained to old age a 'strong and hardy frame.' The
mother looks more wearied by life, but resigned, quiet, and
meditative. Her thin face, with its large bones, presents a mixture
of mildness and gravity. Spalatin was amazed, on seeing her for the
first time in 1522, how much Luther resembled her in bearing and
features. Indeed, a certain likeness is observable between him and
her portrait, in the eyes and the lower part of the face. At the
same time, from what is known of the appearance of the Luthers who
lived afterwards at Möhra, he must also have resembled his father's
family.
CHAPTER II.
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS.
As to the childhood of Martin Luther, and his further growth and
mental development, at Mansfeld and elsewhere, we have absolutely no
information from others to enlighten us. For this portion of his
life we can only avail ourselves of occasional and isolated remarks
of his own, partly met with in his writings, partly culled from his
lips by Melancthon, or his physician Ratzeberger, or his pupil
Mathesius, or other friends, and by them recorded for the benefit of
posterity. These remarks are very imperfect, but are significant
enough to enable us to understand the direction which his inner life
had taken, and which prepared him for his future calling. Nor less
significant is the fact that those opponents who, from the
commencement of his war with the Church, tracked out his origin, and
sought therein for evidence to his detriment, have failed, for their
part, to contribute anything new whatever to the history of his
childhood and youth, although, as the Reformer, he had plenty of
enemies at his own and his parents' home, and several of the Counts
of Mansfeld, in particular, continued in the Romish Church. There
was nothing, therefore, dark or discreditable, at any rate, to be
found attaching either to his home or to his own youth.
It is said that childhood is a Paradise. Luther in after years found
it joyful and edifying to contemplate the happiness of those little
ones who know neither the cares of daily life nor the troubles of
the soul, and enjoy with light hearts the good thing which God has
given them. But in his own reminiscences of life, so far as he has
given them, no such sunny childhood is reflected. The hard time,
which his parents at first had to struggle through at Mansfeld, had
to be shared in by the children, and the lot fell most hardly on the
eldest. As the former spent their days in hard toil, and persevered
in it with unflinching severity, the tone of the house was unusually
earnest and severe. The upright, honourable, industrious father was
honestly resolved to make a useful man of his son, and enable him to
rise higher than himself. He strictly maintained at all times his
paternal authority. After his death, Martin recorded, in touching
language, instances of his father's love, and the sweet intercourse
he was permitted to have with him. But it is not surprising, if, at
the period of childhood, so peculiarly in need of tender affection,
the severity of the father was felt rather too much. He was once, as
he tells us, so severely flogged by his father that he fled from
him, and bore him a temporary grudge. Luther, in speaking of the
discipline of children, has even quoted his mother as an example of
the way in which parents, with the best intentions, are apt to go
too far in punishing, and forget to pay due attention to the
peculiarities of each child. His mother, he said, once whipped him
till the blood came, for having taken a paltry little nut. He adds,
that, in punishing children, the apple should be placed beside the
rod, and they should not be chastised for an offence about nuts or
cherries as if they had broken open a money-box. His parents, he
acknowledged, had meant it for the very best, but they had kept him,
nevertheless, so strictly that he had become shy and timid. Theirs,
however, was not that unloving severity which blunts the spirit of a
child, and leads to artfulness and deceit. Their strictness, well
intended, and proceeding from a genuine moral earnestness of
purpose, furthered in him a strictness and tenderness of conscience,
which then and in after years made him deeply and keenly sensitive
of every fault committed in the eyes of God; a sensitiveness,
indeed, which, so far from relieving him of fear, made him
apprehensive on account of sins that existed only in his
imagination. It was a later consequence of this discipline, as
Luther himself informs us, that he took refuge in a convent. He
adds, at the same time, that it is better not to spare the rod with
children even from the very cradle, than to let them grow up without
any punishment at all; and that it is pure mercy to young folk to
bend their wills, even though it costs labour and trouble, and leads
to threats and blows.
We have a reference by Luther to the lessons he learned in childhood
from his experience of poverty at home, in his remarks in later
life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise
themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to
strut and swagger, but must be humble and learn to be silent and to
trust in God, and to whom God also has given good sound heads.
As to Luther's relations with his brothers and sisters we have the
testimony of one who knew the household at Mansfeld, and
particularly his brother James, that from childhood they were those
of brotherly companionship, and that from his mother's own account
he had exercised a governing influence both by word and deed on the
good conduct of the younger members of the family.
His father must have taken him to school at a very early age. Long
after, in fact only two years before his death, he noted down in the
Bible of a 'good old friend,' Emler, a townsman of Mansfeld, his
recollection how, more than once, Emler, as the elder, had carried
him, still a weakly child, to and from school; a proof, not indeed,
as a Catholic opponent of the next century imagined, that it was
necessary to compel the boy to go to school, but that he was still
of an age to benefit by being carried. The school-house, of which
the lower portion still remains, stood at the upper end of the
little town, part of which runs with steep streets up the hill. The
children there were taught not only reading and writing, but also
the rudiments of Latin, though doubtless in a very clumsy and
mechanical fashion. From his experience of the teaching here, Luther
speaks in later years of the vexations and torments with declining
and conjugating and other tasks which school children in his youth
had to undergo. The severity he there met with from his teacher was
a very different thing from the strictness of his parents.
Schoolmasters, he says, in those days were tyrants and executioners,
the schools were prisons and hells, and in spite of blows,
trembling, fear, and misery, nothing was ever taught. He had been
whipped, he tells us, fifteen times one morning, without any fault
of his own, having been called on to repeat what he had never been
taught.
At this school he remained till he was fourteen, when his father
resolved to send him to a better and higher-class place of
education. He chose for that purpose Magdeburg; but what particular
school he attended is not known. His friend Mathesius tells us that
the town-school there was 'far renowned above many others.' Luther
himself says that he went to school with the Null-brethren. These
Null-brethren or Noll-brethren, as they were called, were a
brotherhood of pious clergymen and laymen, who had combined
together, but without taking any vows, to promote among themselves
the salvation of their souls and the practice of a godly life, and
to labour at the same time for the social and moral welfare of the
people, by preaching the Word of God, by instruction, and by
spiritual ministration. They undertook in particular the care of
youth. They were, moreover, the chief originators of the great
movement in Germany, at that time, for promoting intellectual
culture, and reviving the treasures of ancient Roman and Greek
literature. Since 1488 a colony of them had existed at Magdeburg,
which had come from Hildesheim, one of their head-quarters. As there
is no evidence of heir having had a school of their own at
Magdeburg, they may have devoted their services to the town-school.
Thither, then, Hans Luther sent his eldest son in 1497. The idea had
probably been suggested by Peter Reinicke, the overseer of the
mines, who had a son there. With this son John, who afterwards rose
to an important office in the mines at Mansfeld, Martin Luther
contracted a lifelong friendship. Hans, however, only let his son
remain one year at Magdeburg, and then sent him to school at
Eisenach. Whether he was induced to make this change by finding his
expectations of the school not sufficiently realised, or whether
other reasons, possibly those regarding a cheaper maintenance of his
son, may have determined him in the matter, there is no evidence to
show. What strikes one here only is his zeal for the better
education of his son.
Ratzeberger is the only one who tells us of an incident he heard of
Luther from his own lips, during his stay at Magdeburg, and this was
one which, as a physician, he relates with interest. Luther, it
happened, was lying sick of a burning fever, and tormented with
thirst, and in the heat of the fever they refused him drink. So one
Friday, when the people of the house had gone to church, and left
him alone, he, no longer able to endure the thirst, crawled off on
hands and feet to the kitchen, where he drank off with great avidity
a jug of cold water. He could reach his room again, but having done
so he fell into a deep sleep, and on waking the fever had left him.
The maintenance his father was able to afford him was not sufficient
to cover the expenses of his board and lodging as well as of his
schooling, either at Magdeburg or afterwards at Eisenach. He was
obliged to help himself after the manner of poor scholars, who, as
he tells us, went about from door to door collecting small gifts or
doles by singing hymns. 'I myself,' he says,' was one of those young
colts, particularly at Eisenach, my beloved town.' He would also
ramble about the neighbourhood with his school-fellows; and often,
from the pulpit or the lecturer's chair, would he tell little
anecdotes about those days. The boys used to sing quartettes at
Christmas-time in the villages, carols on the birth of the Holy
Child at Bethlehem. Once, as they were singing before the door of a
solitary farmhouse, the farmer came out and called to them roughly,
'Where are you, young rascals?' He had two large sausages in his
hand for them, but they ran away terrified, till he shouted after
them to come back and fetch the sausages. So intimidated, says
Luther, had he become by the terrors of school discipline. His
object, however, in relating this incident was to show his hearers
how the heart of man too often construes manifestations of God's
goodness and mercy into messages of fear, and how men should pray to
God perseveringly, and without timidity or shamefacedness. In those
days it was not rare to find even scholars of the better classes,
such as the son of a magistrate at Mansfeld, and those who, for the
sake of a better education, were sent to distant schools, seeking to
add to their means in the manner we have mentioned.
After this, his father sent him to Eisenach, bearing in mind the
numerous relatives who lived in the town and surrounding country,
and who might be of service to him. But of these no mention has
reached us, except of one, named Konrad, who was sacristan in the
church of St. Nicholas. The others, no doubt, were not in a position
to give him any material assistance.
About this time his singing brought him under the notice of one Frau
Cotta, who with genuine affection took up the promising boy, and
whose memory, in connection with the great Reformer, still lives in
the hearts of the German people. Her husband, Konrad or Kunz, was
one of the most influential citizens of the town, and sprang from a
noble Italian family who had acquired wealth by commerce. Ursula
Cotta, as her name was, belonged to the Eisenach family of Schalbe.
She died in 1511. Mathesius tells us how the boy won her heart by
his singing and his earnestness in prayer, and she welcomed him to
her own table. Luther met with similar acts of kindness from a
brother or other relative of hers, and also from an institution
belonging to Franciscan friars at Eisenach, which was indebted to
the Schalbe family for several rich endowments, and was named, in
consequence, the Schalbe College. At Frau Cotta's, Luther was first
introduced to the life in a patrician's house, and learned to move
in that society.
At Eisenach he remained at school for four years. Many years
afterwards we find him on terms of friendly and grateful intercourse
with one Father Wiegand, who had been his schoolmaster there.
Ratzeberger, speaking of the then schoolmaster at Eisenach, mentions
a 'distinguished poet and man of learning, John Trebonius,' who, as
he tells us, every morning, on entering the schoolroom, would take
off his biretta, because God might have chosen many a one of the
lads present to be a future mayor, or chancellor, or learned doctor;
a thought which, as he adds, was amply realised afterwards in the
person of Doctor Luther. The relations of these two at the school,
which contained several classes, must be a matter of conjecture. But
the system of teaching pursued there was praised afterwards by
Luther himself to Melancthon. The former acquired there that
thorough knowledge of Latin which was then the chief preparation for
University study. He learned to write it, not only in prose, but
also in verse, which leads us to suppose that the school at Eisenach
took a part in the Humanistic movement already mentioned. Happily,
his active mind and quick understanding had already begun to
develop; not only did he make up for lost ground, but he even
outstripped those of his own age.
As we see him growing up to manhood, the future hero of the faith,
the teacher, and the warrior, the most important question for us is
the course which his religious development took from childhood.
He who, in after years, waged such a tremendous warfare with the
Church of his time, always gratefully acknowledged, and in his own
teaching and conduct kept steadily in view, how, within herself, and
underneath all the corruptions he denounced, she still preserved the
groundwork of a Christian life, the charter of salvation, the
fundamental truths of Christianity, and the means of redemption and
blessing, vouchsafed by the grace of God. Especially did he
acknowledge all that he had himself received from the Church since
childhood. In that House, he says on one occasion, he was baptised,
and catechised in the Christian truth, and for that reason he would
always honour it as the House of his Father. The Church would at any
rate take care that children, at home and at school, should learn by
heart the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten
Commandments; that they should pray, and sing psalms and Christian
hymns. Printed books, containing them, were already in existence.
Among the old Christian hymns in the German language, of which a
surprisingly rich collection has been formed, a certain number, at
least, were in common use in the churches, especially for festivals.
'Fine songs' Luther called them, and he took care that they should
live on in the Evangelical communities. Those old verses form in
part the foundation of the hymns which we owe to his own poetical
genius. Thus for Christmas we still have the carol of those times,
_Ein Kindelein so lobelich_; and the first verse of Luther's
Whitsun hymn, _Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist_, is taken, he
tells us, from one of those old-fashioned melodies. Of the portions
of Scripture read in church, the Gospels and Epistles were given in
the mother-tongue. Sermons, also, had long been preached in German,
and there were printed collections of them for the use of the
clergy.
The places where Luther grew up were certainly better off in this
respect than many others. For, in the main, very much was still
wanting to realise what had been recommended and striven for by
pious Churchmen, and writers and religious fraternities, or even
enjoined by the Church herself. The Reformers had, indeed, a heavy
and an irrefutable indictment to bring against the Catholic Church
system of their time. The grossest ignorance and shortcomings were
exposed by the Visitations which they undertook, and from these we
may fairly judge of the actual state of things existing for many
years before. It appeared, that even where these portions of the
catechism were taught by parents and schoolmasters, they never
formed the subject of clerical instruction to the young. It was
precisely one of the charges brought against the enemies of the
Reformation, that, notwithstanding the injunctions of their Church,
they habitually neglected this instruction, and preferred teaching
the children such things as carrying banners in processions and holy
tapers. Priests were found, in the course of these visitations, who
had scarcely any knowledge of the chief articles of the faith. His
own personal experience of this neglect, when young, is not noticed
by Luther in his later complaints on the subject.
But the main fault and failing which he recognised in after life,
and which, as he tells us, was a source of inward suffering to him
from childhood, was the distorted view, held up to him at school and
from the pulpit, of the conditions of Christian salvation, and,
consequently, of his own proper religious attitude and demeanour.
Luther himself, as we learn from him later life, would have
Christian children brought up in the happy assurance that God is a
loving Father, Christ a faithful Saviour, and that it is their
privilege and duty to approach their Father with frank and childlike
confidence, and, if aroused to a consciousness of sin or wrong, to
entreat at once His forgiveness. Such however, he tells us, was not
what he was taught. On the contrary, he was instructed, and trained
up from childhood in that narrowing conception of Christianity, and
that outward form of religiousness, against which, more than
anything, he bore witness as a Reformer.
God was pictured to him as a Being unapproachably sublime, and of
awful holiness; Christ, the Saviour, Mediator, and Advocate, whose
revelation can only bring judgment to those who reject salvation, as
the threatening Judge, against whose wrath, as against that of God,
man sought for intercession and mediation from the Virgin and the
other saints. This latter worship, towards the close of the middle
ages, had increased in importance and extent. Peculiar honour was
paid to particular saints, in particular places, and for the
furtherance of particular interests. The warlike St. George was the
special saint of the town and county of Mansfeld: his effigy still
surmounts the entrance to the old school-house. Among the miners the
worship of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin, soon became popular
towards the end of the century, and the mining town of Annaberg,
built in 1496, was named after her. Luther records how the 'great
stir' was first made about her, when he was a boy of fifteen, and
how he was then anxious to place himself under her protection. There
is no lack of religious writings of that time, which, with the view
of preserving the Catholic faith, warn men earnestly against the
danger of overvaluing the saints, and of placing their hopes more in
them than in God; but we see from those very warnings how necessary
they were, and later history shows us how little fruit they bore. As
for Luther, certain beautiful features in the lives and legends of
the saints exercised over him a power of attraction which he never
afterwards renounced; and of the Virgin he always spoke with tender
reverence, only regretting that men wished to make an idol of her.
But of his early religious belief, he says that Christ appeared to
him as seated on a rainbow, like a stern Judge; from Christ men
turned to the saints, to be their patrons, and called on the Virgin
to bare her breasts to her Son, and dispose him thereby to mercy. An
example of what deceptions were sometimes practised in such worship
came to the notice of the Elector John Frederick, the friend of
Luther, and probably originated in a convent at Eisenach. It was a
figure, carved in wood, of the Virgin with the infant Saviour in her
arms, which was furnished with a secret contrivance by means of
which the Child, when the people prayed to him, first turned away to
His mother, and only when they had invoked her as intercessor, bowed
towards them with His little arms outstretched.
On the other hand, the sinner who was troubled with cares about his
soul and thoughts of Divine judgment, found himself directed to the
performance of particular acts of penance and pious exercises, as
the means to appease a righteous God. He received judgment and
commands through the Church at the confessional. The Reformers
themselves, and Luther especially, fully recognised the value of
being able to pour out the inner temptations of the heart to some
Christian father-confessor, or even to some other brother in the
faith, and to obtain from his lips that comfort of forgiveness which
God, in His love and mercy, bestows freely on the faithful. But
nothing of this kind, they said, was to be found in the
confessional. The conscience was tormented with the enumeration of
single sins, and burdened with all sorts of penitential formalities;
and it was just with a view that everyone should be drawn to this
discipline of the Church, should use it regularly, and should seek
for no other way to make his peace with God, that the educational
activity of the Church, both with young and old, was especially
directed.
Luther, in after life, as we have already remarked, always
recognised and found comfort in the fact that, even under such
conditions as the above, enough of the simple message of salvation
in the Bible could penetrate the heart, and awaken a faith which, in
spite of all artificial restraints and perplexing dogmas, should
throw itself, with inward longing and childlike trust, into the arms
of God's mercy, and so enjoy true forgiveness. He received, as we
shall see, some salutary directions for so doing from later friends
of his, who belonged to the Romish Church, nor was that character of
ecclesiastical religiousness, so to speak, stamped everywhere, or to
the same degree, on Christian life in Germany during his youth.
Nevertheless, his whole inner being, from boyhood, was dominated by
its influence; he, at all events, had never been taught to
appreciate the Gospel as a child. Looking back in later years on his
monastic days, and the whole of his previous life, he declared that
he never could feel assured that his baptism in Christ was
sufficient for his salvation, and that he was sorely troubled with
doubt whether any piety of his own would be able to secure for him
God's mercy. Thoughts of this kind he said induced him to become a
monk.
Men have never been wanting, either before or since the time of
Luther's youth, to denounce the abuses and corruptions of the
Church, and particularly of the clergy. Language of this sort had
long found its way to the popular ear, and had proceeded also from
the people themselves. Complaints were made of the tyranny of the
Papal hierarchy, and of their encroachments on social and civil
life, as well as of the worldliness and gross immorality of the
priests and monks. The Papacy had reached its lowest depth of moral
degradation under Pope Alexander VI. We hear nothing, however, of
the impressions produced on Luther, in this respect, in the
circumstances of his early life. The news of such scandals as were
then enacted at Rome, shamelessly and in open day, very likely took
a long while to reach Luther and those about him. With regard to the
carnal offences of the clergy, against which, to the honour of
Germany be it said, the German conscience especially revolted, he
made afterwards the noteworthy remark, that although during his
boyhood the priests allowed themselves mistresses, they never
incurred the suspicion of anything like unbridled sensuality or
adulterous conduct. Examples of such kind date only from a later
period.
The loyalty with which Mansfeld, his home, adhered to the ancient
Church, is shown by several foundations of that time, all of which
have reference to altars and the celebration of mass. The overseer
of the mines, Reinicke, the friend of Luther's family, is among the
founders: he left provision for keeping up services in honour of the
Virgin and St. George.
A peculiarly reverential demeanour, in regard to religion and the
Church, is observable in Luther's father, and one which was common
no doubt among his honest, simple, pious fellow townsfolk. His
conduct was consistently God-fearing. In his house it was afterwards
told how he would often pray at the bedside of his little Martin,--how,
as the friend of godliness and learning, he had enjoyed the friendship
of priests and school-teachers. Words of pious reflection from his
lips remained stamped on Luther's memory from his boyhood. Thus
Luther tells us, in a sermon preached towards the close of his life,
how he had often heard his dear father say, that, as his own parents
had told him, the earth contains many more who require to be fed
than there are sheaves, even if collected from all the fields in the
world; and yet how wondrously does God know how to preserve mankind!
In common with his fellow-townsmen, he followed the precepts and
commands of his Church. When, in the year in which he sent his son to
Magdeburg, two new altars in the church at Mansfeld were consecrated
to a number of saints, and sixty days' indulgence was granted to
anyone who heard mass at them, Hans Luther, with Reinicke and other
fellow-magistrates, was among the first to make use of the invitation.
The enemies of the Reformer, while fain to trace his origin to a
heretic Bohemian, had not a shadow of a reason for suspecting his real
father of any leanings to heresy. Nor do we hear a word in later years
from the Reformer, after his father had separated with him from the
Catholic Church, to show a trace of any hostile or critical remark
against that Church, remembered from the lips of his father during
childhood. Quietly but firmly the latter asserted his own judgment,
and framed his will accordingly. He was firm, in particular, in the
consciousness of his paternal rights and duties, even against the
pretensions of the clergy. Thus, as his son Martin tells us, when he
lay once on the point of death, and the priest admonished him to
leave something to the clergy, he replied in the simplicity of his
heart, 'I have many children: I will leave it them, for they want it
more.' We shall see how unyieldingly, when his son entered a convent,
he insisted, as against all the value and usefulness of monasticism,
on the paramount obligation of God's command, that children should
obey their parents. Luther also tells us how his father once praised
in high terms the will left by a Count of Mansfeld, who without
leaving any property to the Church, was content to depart from this
world trusting solely to the bitter sufferings and death of Christ,
and commending his soul to Him. Luther himself, when a young student,
would have considered, as he tells us, a bequest to churches or
convents a proper will to make. His father afterwards accepted his
son's doctrine of salvation without hesitation, and with the full
conviction that it was right. But remarks of his such as we have
quoted, were consistent with a perfectly blameless demeanour in
regard to the forms of conduct and belief as prescribed by the Church,
with an avoidance of criticism and argument on ecclesiastical matters,
which he knew were not his vocation, and above all with a complete
abstention from such talk in the presence of his children. As to what
concerns further the positive religious influence which he exercised
over his children, any such impressions as he might have given by what
he said of the Count of Mansfeld, were fully counterbalanced by the
severity and firmness of his paternal discipline.
Concurrent with the doctrine of salvation through the intercession
of the saints and the Church, and one's own good works, which Luther
had been taught from his youth, were the dark popular ideas of the
power of the devil--ideas, which, though not actually invented, were
at least patronised by the Church, and which not only threaten the
souls of men, but cast a baneful spell over all their natural life.
Luther, as is well known, has frequently expressed his own opinions
about the devil, in connection with the enchantments supposed to be
practised by the Evil One on mankind, and, more especially, on the
subject of witchcraft. Of one thing he was certain, that in God's
hand we are safe from the Evil One, and can triumph over him. But
even he believed the devil's work was manifested in sudden accidents
and striking phenomena of Nature, in storms, conflagrations, and the
like. As to the tales of sorcery and magic, which were told and
believed in by the people, some he declared to be incredible, others
he ascribed to the hallucinations effected by the devil. But that
witches had power to do one bodily harm, that they plagued children
in particular, and that their spells could affect the soul, he never
seriously doubted.
From his earliest childhood, and especially at home, ideas of that
kind had been instilled into Luther, and accordingly they ministered
strong food to his imagination. They had just then spread to a
remarkable extent among the Germans, and had developed in remarkable
ways. They had affected the administration of ecclesiastical and
civil law, they had given rise to the Inquisition and the most
barbarous cruelties in the punishment of those who were pretended to
be in league with the devil, and they had gradually multiplied their
baneful effects. The year after Luther's birth, appeared the
remarkable Papal bull which sanctioned the trial of witches. When a
boy, Luther heard a great deal about witches, though later in life
he thought there was no longer so much talk about them, and he would
not scruple to tell stories of how they harmed men and cattle, and
brought down storms and hail. Nay, of his own mother he believed
that she had suffered much from the witcheries of a female
neighbour, who, as he said, 'plagued her children till they nearly
screamed themselves to death.' Delusions such as these are certainly
dark shadows in the picture of Luther's youth, and are important
towards understanding his inner life as a man.
But while admitting the existence of these superstitious and
pseudo-religious notions, we must not imagine that they composed the
whole portraiture of Luther's early life. He was, as Mathesius
describes him, a merry, jovial young fellow. In his later reflections
on himself and his youthful days, the very war he was waging against
the false teachings of the Church, from which he himself had
suffered, made him dwell, as was natural, on this side of his early
life. But amidst all those trials and depressing influences, the
fresh and elastic vigour of his nature stood the strain--a vigour
innate and inherited, and which afterwards shone forth in a new and
brighter light, under a new aspect of religious life. His childlike
joy in Nature around him, which afterwards distinguished so
remarkably the theologian and champion of the faith, must be
referred back to his original bent of mind and his life, when a boy,
amid Nature's surroundings.
How much he lived, from childhood, with the peasantry, is shown by
the natural ease with which he spoke in the popular dialect, even
when he was learning Latin and enjoying a higher culture, and by the
frequency with which the native roughnesses of that dialect broke
out in his learned discourses or sermons. In no other theologian,
nay, in no other known German writer of his century, do we meet with
so many popular proverbs as in Luther, to whom they came naturally
in his conversations and letters. German legends also, and popular
tales, such as the history of Dietrich von Bern and other heroes, or
of Eulenspiegel or Markolf, would hardly have been remembered so
accurately by him in later years, if he had not familiarised himself
with them in childhood. He would at times inveigh against the
worthless, and even shameless tales and 'gossip,' as he called it,
which such books contained, and especially against the priests who
used to spice their sermons with such stories; but that he also
recognised their value we know from his allusion to 'some people,
who had written songs about Dietrich and other giants, and in so
doing had expounded much greater subjects in a short and simple
manner.' The pleasure with which he himself may have read or
listened to them, can be gathered from his remark that 'when a story
of Dietrich von Bern is told, one is bound to remember it
afterwards, even though one has only heard it once.'
He maintained through life a faithful devotion to the places where he
had grown up. Eisenach remained, as we have already seen, his beloved
town. Mansfeld was particularly dear to him as his home, and the whole
county as his 'fatherland;' he calls it with pride a 'noble and famous
county.' The miners also, who were his fellow-countrymen and his dear
father's work-mates, he loved all his life long. But a wider horizon
was not opened to him among the people of the little town of Mansfeld,
or where he afterwards went to school. To this fact, and to his quiet
life as a monk, we must ascribe the peculiar feature of his later
activity, namely, that while prosecuting with far-seeing eye and a
warm heart the highest and most extensive tasks for his Church and
for the German people in general, still, at the beginning of his work
and campaign, he understood but little of the great world outside,
and of politics, or even of the general state of Germany; nay, he
shows at times a touchingly childlike simplicity in these matters.
The last few years of his school-life enabled him to make brave
progress on the road to intellectual culture, which his father
wished him to pursue. Thus equipped, he was prepared at the age of
eighteen, to remove, in the summer of 1501 to the university at
Erfurt.
CHAPTER III.
STUDENT-DAYS AT ERFURT AND ENTRY INTO THE CONVENT. 1501-1505.
Among the German universities, that of Erfurt, which could count
already a hundred years of prosperous existence, occupied at this
time a brilliant position. So high, Luther tells us, was its
standing and reputation, that all its sister institutions were
regarded as mere pigmies by its side. His parents could now afford
to give him the necessary means for studying at such a place. 'My
dear father,' he says, 'maintained me there with loyal affection,
and by his labour and the sweat of his brow enabled me to go there.'
He had now begun to feel a burning thirst for learning, and here, at
the 'fountain of all knowledge,' to use Melancthon's words, he hoped
to be able to quench it.
He began with a complete course of philosophy, as that science was
then understood. It dealt, in the first place, with the laws and
forms of thought and knowledge, with language, in which Latin formed
the basis, or with grammar and rhetoric, as also with the highest
problems and most abstruse questions of physics, and comprised even
a general knowledge of natural science and astronomy. A complete
study of all these subjects was not merely requisite for learned
theologians, but frequently served as an introduction to that of
law, and even of medicine.
When Luther first came from Eisenach to Erfurt, there was nothing
yet about him that attracted the attention of others so far as to
call forth any contemporary account of him. Enough, however, is
known of the most eminent teachers there, at whose feet he sat, and
also of the general kind of intellectual food which they
administered. He gained entrance into a circle of older and younger
men than himself, teachers and fellow-students, who in later years,
either as friends or opponents, were able to bear witness,
favourably or the reverse, as to his life and work at Erfurt.
The leading professor of philosophy at Erfurt was then Jodocus
Trutvetter, who, three years after Luther's arrival, became also
doctor of theology and lecturer of the theological faculty. Next to
him, in this department, ranked Bartholomew Arnoldi of Usingen. It
was to these two men above others, and particularly to the former,
that Luther looked for his instruction.
The philosophy which was then in vogue at Erfurt, and which found its
most vigorous champion in Trutvetter, was that of the Scholasticism of
later days. It is common to associate with the idea of Scholasticism,
or the theological and philosophical School-science of the middle
ages, a system of thought and instruction, embracing, indeed, the
highest questions of knowledge and existence, but at the same time
not venturing to strike into any independent paths, or to deviate an
inch from tradition, but submitting rather, in everything connected,
or supposed to be connected, with religious belief, to the dogmas and
decrees of the Church and the authority of the early Fathers, and
wasting the understanding and intellect in dry formalism or subtle
but barren controversies. This conception fails to appreciate the
vast labour of thought bestowed by leading minds on the attempt to
unravel the mass of ecclesiastical teaching which had twined round
the innermost lives of themselves and their fellow-Christians, and
at the same time to follow those general questions under the guidance
of the old philosophers, especially Aristotle, of whom they knew but
little. But it is applicable, at any rate, to the Scholasticism of
later days. The confidence with which its older exponents had thought
to explain and establish orthodoxy by means of their favourite science,
was gone; all the more, therefore, should that science keep silence in
face of the commands of the Church. Men, moreover, had grown tired of
the old questions of philosophy about the reality and real existence
of Universals. It had been formerly a question of dispute whether our
general ideas had a real existence, or whether they were nothing
more than words or names, mere abstractions, comprehending the
individual, which alone was supposed to possess Reality. At that
time the latter doctrine, that of Nominalism, as it was called,
prevailed. At length, these new or 'modern' philosophers abandoned
the question of Realism, and the relation of thought to Reality, in
favour of a system of pure logic or dialectics, dealing with the
mere forms and expressions of thought, the formal analysis of ideas
and words, the mutual relation of propositions and conclusions--in
short, all that constitutes what we call formal logic, in its widest
acceptation. At this point, the far-famed scholastic intellect, with
its subtleties, its fine distinctions, its nice questions, its
sophistical conclusions, reached its zenith.
To this logic Trutvetter also devoted himself, and in it he taught
his pupils. He had just then published a series of treatises on the
subject. To him this study was real earnest. Compared with others,
he has shown in these excursions a cautious and discreet moderation,
and no inclination for the quarrels and verbal combats often dear to
logicians. The same can be said of his colleague Usingen. Trutvetter
has shown also that he enjoyed and was widely read in earlier and
modern, especially, of course, in Scholastic literature, including
the works not only of the most important, but also of very obscure
authors. We can imagine what delight he took in all this when in his
professor's chair, and how much he expected from his pupils.
At Erfurt meanwhile, and by this same philosophical facility, a
fresh and vigorous impulse was being given to that study of
classical antiquity, which gave birth to a new learning, and ushered
in a new era of intellectual culture in Germany. We have already had
occasion to refer to the movement and influence of Humanism at the
schools which Luther attended at Magdeburg and Eisenach. He now
found himself at one of the chief nurseries of these 'arts and
letters' in Germany, nay, at the very place where their richest
blossoms were unfolded. Erfurt could boast of having issued the
first Greek book printed in Germany in Greek type, namely, a
grammar, printed in Luther's first year at the University. It was
the Greek and Latin poets, in particular, whose writings stirred the
enthusiasm and emulation of the students. For refined expression and
learned intercourse, the fluent and elegant Latin language was
studied, as given in the works of classical writers. But far more
important still was the free movement of thought, and the new world
of ideas thus opened up.
In proportion as these young disciples of antiquity learned to
despise the barbarous Latin and insipidity of the monkish and
scholastic education of the day, they began to revolt against
Scholasticism, against the dogmas of faith propounded by the Church,
and even against the religious opinions of Christendom in general.
History shows us the different paths taken, in this respect, by the
Humanists; and we shall come across them, in another way, during the
career of the Reformer, as having an important influence on the
course of the Reformation. With many, an honest striving after
religion and morality allied itself with the impulse for independent
intellectual culture, and tried to utilise it for improving the
condition of the Church. When the struggle of the Reformation began,
some followed Luther and the other religious teachers on his side,
some, shrinking back from his trenchant conclusions, and, above all,
concerned for their own stock-in-trade of learning, counselled
others to practise prudence and moderation, and themselves retired
to the service of their muses. Others again, broke away altogether
from the Christian faith and the principles of Christian morality.
They took delight in a new life of Heathenism, devoted sometimes to
sensual pleasures and gross immoralities, sometimes to the
indulgence of refined tastes and the enjoyment of art. These latter
never raised a weapon against the Church, but for the most part
accommodated themselves to her forms. In her teachings, her
ordinances, and her discipline, they saw something indispensable to
the multitude, as whose conscious superiors they behaved. Indeed,
they themselves wielded this government in the Church, and
comfortably enjoyed their authority and its fruits. In Italy, at
Rome, and on the Papal chair these despotic pretensions were then
asserted without shame or reserve. In Germany, on the other hand,
the leading champions of the new learning, even when in open arms
against the barbarism of the monks and clergy, sought, for
themselves and their disciples, to remain faithful on the ground of
their Mother Church. At Erfurt, in particular, the relations between
them and the representatives of Scholasticism were peaceful,
unconstrained, and friendly. The dry writings of a Trutvetter they
prefaced with panegyrics in Latin verse, and the Trutvetter would
try to imitate their purer style.
Some talented young students of the classics at Erfurt formed
themselves into a small coterie of their own. They enjoyed the
cheerful pleasures of youthful society, nor were poetry and wine
wanting, but the rules of decorum and good manners were not
overlooked. Several men, whom we shall come across afterwards in the
history of Luther, belonged to this circle;--for instance, John
Jager, known as Crotus Eubianus, the friend of Ulrich Hutten, and
George Spalatin (properly Burkhard), the trusted fellow-labourer of
the Reformer. Both had already been three years at the university
when Luther entered it. Three years after his arrival, came Eoban
Hess, the most brilliant, talented, and amiable of the young
Humanists and poets of Germany.
Such was the learned company to which Luther was introduced in the
philosophical faculty at Erfurt. So far, different avenues of
intellectual culture were opened to him. He threw himself into the
study of that philosophy in all its bearings, and, not content with
exploring the tangled and thorny paths of logic, took counsel how to
enjoy, as far as possible, the fruits of the newly-revived knowledge
of antiquity.
As regards the latter, he carried the study of Ovid, Virgil, and
Cicero, in particular, farther than was customary with the professed
students of Humanism, and the same with the poetical works of more
modern Latin writers. But his chief aim was not so much to master
the mere language of the classical authors, or to mould himself
according to their form, as to cull from their pages rich
apophthegms of human wisdom, and pictures of human life and of the
history of peoples. He learned to express pregnant and powerful
thoughts clearly and vigorously in learned Latin, but he was himself
well aware how much his language was wanting in the elegance,
refinement, and charm of the new school; indeed, this elegance he
never attempted to attain.
With the members of this circle of young Humanists, Luther was on
terms of personal friendship. Crotus was able to remind him in after
life how, in close intimacy, they had studied the fine arts together
at the university. But there is no mention of him in the numerous
letters and poems left to posterity by the aspiring Humanists at
Erfurt. He had made himself, Crotus adds, a name among his
companions as the 'learned philosopher' and the 'musician,' but he
never belonged to the 'poets,' which was the favourite title of the
young Humanists. Many, including even Melancthon, have lamented that
he was not more deeply imbued with the spirit of those 'noble arts
and letters,' which educate the mind, and would have tended to
soften his rugged nature and manner. But they would have been of
little value to him for the quick decision and energy required for
the war he had afterwards to wage. Those intellectual treasures and
enjoyments kept aloof not only from such contests, but also from
sharp and searching investigations of the highest questions of
religion and morality, and from the inward struggle, so often
painful, which they bring. As regards the merits of Humanism, which
Luther again, as a Reformer, eagerly acknowledged, we must not
forget how selfishly it withdrew itself from contact and communion
with German popular life, nor how it helped to create an exclusive
aristocracy of intellect, and allowed the noblest talents to become
as clumsy in their own natural mother-tongue, as they were clever in
the handling of foreign, acquired forms of art. Luther, in not
yielding further to those influences, remained a German.
Philosophy, then, engrossed him, and allowed him but little time for
other things. And in studying this, he sought to grapple with the
highest problems of the human understanding. These problems occupied
also the labours of the later Scholastics, however faulty were the
forms in which they clothed their ideas. At the same time, these
very forms attracted him, from the scope they gave to the exercise
of his natural acuteness and understanding. Disputation was his
great delight; and argumentative contests were then in fashion at
the universities. But in after years, as soon as the contents of the
Bible were opened to his inner understanding, and he recognised in
its pages the object of real theological knowledge, he regretted the
time and labour which he had wasted on those studies, and even spoke
of them with disgust.
Crotus has already told us of the sociable life that Luther led with his
friends. The love for music, which he had shown in school-days, he
continued to keep up, and indulged in it merrily with his fellow-students.
He had a high-pitched voice, not strong, but audible at a distance.
Besides singing, he learned also to play the lute, and this without a
master, and he employed his time in this way when laid up once by an
accident to his leg.
Such rapid progress did he make in his philosophical studies, that
in his third term he was able to attain his baccalaureate, the first
academical degree of the theological faculty. This degree, according
to the general custom of the universities, preceded that of Master,
corresponding to the present Doctor, of philosophy. The examination
for it, which Luther passed on Michaelmas day 1502, professed to
include the most important subjects in the province of philosophy.
But it could not have been very severe. The chief work came when he
took his next degree as Master, which was at the beginning of 1505.
He then experienced what afterwards, speaking of Erfurt's former
glory, he thus describes: 'What a moment of majesty and splendour
was that, when one took the degree of Master, and torches were
carried before, and honour was paid one. I consider that no temporal
or worldly joy can equal it.' Melancthon tells us, on the authority
of several of Luther's fellow-students, that his talent was then the
wonder of the whole university.
In accordance with the wish of his father and the advice of his
relations, he was now to fit himself for a lawyer. In this
profession, they thought, he would be able to turn his talents to
the best account, and make a name in the world. And in this
department also, the university of Erfurt could boast of one of the
most distinguished men of learning of that time, Henning Goede, who
was now in the prime of his vigour. Luther, accordingly, began to
attend the lectures on law, and his father allowed him to buy some
valuable books for that purpose, particularly a 'Corpus Juris.'
Meanwhile, however, in his inner religious life a change was being
prepared, which proved the turning-point of his career.
Luther himself, as we have seen, frequently pointed out in after
life the influences which, even from childhood, under the discipline
of home, the experiences of school, and the teaching of the Church,
combined to bring about this result. He could never shake off for
any length of time, even when in the midst of learned study or the
enjoyment of student life, the consciousness that he must be pious
and satisfy all the strict commands of God, that he must make good
all the shortcomings of his life, and reconcile himself with Heaven,
and that an angry Judge was throned above who threatened him with
damnation. Inner voices of this kind, in a man of sensitive and
tender conscience, were bound to assert themselves the more loudly
and earnestly, as, in his progress from youth to manhood, he
realised more fully his personal responsibility to God, and also his
personal independence. To religious observances, in which he had
been trained from childhood, Luther, as a student, remained
faithful. Regularly he began his day with prayer, and as regularly
attended mass. But of any new or comforting means of access to God
and salvation, he heard nothing, even here. In the town of Erfurt
there was an earnest and powerful preacher, named Sebastian
Weinmann, who denounced in incisive language the prevalent vices of
the day, and exposed the corruption of ecclesiastical life, and whom
the students thronged to hear. But even he had nothing to offer to
satisfy Luther's inward cravings of the soul. It was an episode in
his life when he once found a Latin Bible in the library of the
university. Though then nearly twenty years of age, he had never yet
seen a Bible. Now for the first time he saw how much more it
contained than was ever read out and explained in the churches. With
delight he perused the story of Samuel and his mother, on the first
pages that met his eye; though, as yet, he could make nothing more
out of the Sacred Book. It was not on account of any particular
offences, such as youthful excesses, that Luther feared the wrath of
God. Staunch Catholics at Erfurt, including even later avowed
enemies of the Reformer, who knew him there as a student, have never
hinted at anything of that sort against him. 'The more we wash our
hands, the fouler they become,' was a favourite saying of Luther's.
He referred, no doubt, to the numerous faults in thought, word, and
deed, which, in spite of human carefulness, every day brings, and
which, however insignificant they might seem to others, his
conscience told him were sins against God's holy law. Disquieting
questions, moreover, now arose in his mind, so sorely troubled with
temptation; and his subtle and penetrating intellect, so far from
being able to solve them, only plunged him deeper in distress. Was
it then really God's own will, he asked himself, that he should
become actually purged from sin and thereby be saved? Was not the
way to hell or the way to heaven already fixed for him immutably in
God's will and decree, by which everything is determined and
preordained? And did not the very futility of his own endeavours
hitherto prove that it was the former fate that hung over him? He
was in danger of going utterly astray in his conception of such a
God. Expressions in the Bible such as those which speak of serving
Him with fear became to him intolerable and hateful. He was seized
at times with fits of despair such as might have tempted him to
blaspheme God. It was this that he afterwards referred to as the
greatest temptation he had experienced when young.
His physical condition probably contributed to this gloomy frame of
mind. Already during his baccalaureate we hear of an illness of his,
which awakened in him thoughts of death. A friend, represented by
later tradition as an aged priest, said to him on his sick bed,
'Take courage; God will yet make you the means of comfort to many
others;' and these words impressed him strongly even then. An
accident also, which threatened to be fatal, must have tended to
alarm him. As he was travelling home at Easter, and was within an
hour's distance of Erfurt, he accidentally injured the main artery
of his leg with the rapier which, like other students, he carried at
his side. Whilst a friend who was with him had gone for a doctor,
and he was left alone, he pressed the wound tightly as he lay on his
back, but the leg continued to swell. In the anguish of death he
called upon the Virgin to help him. That night his terror was
renewed when the wound broke open afresh, and again he invoked the
Mother of God. It was during his convalescence after this accident
that he resolved upon learning to play the lute.
He was terribly distressed also, a few months after he had taken his
degree as Master, by the sudden death of one of his friends, not
further known to us, who was either assassinated or snatched away by
some other fatality.
Well might the thought even then have occurred to him, while so
disturbed in his mind and overpowered by feelings of sadness,
whether it would not be better to seek his cure in the monastic
holiness recommended by the Church, and to renounce altogether the
world and all the success he had hitherto aspired to. The young
Master of Arts, as he tells us himself in later years, was indeed a
sorrowful man.
Suddenly and offhand he was hurried into a most momentous decision.
Towards the end of June 1505, when several Church festivals fall
together, he paid a visit to his home at Mansfeld, in quest, very
possibly, of rest and comfort to his mind. Returning on July 2, the
feast of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, he was already near
Erfurt, when, at the village of Stotternheim a terrific storm broke
over his head. A fearful flash of lightning darted from heaven
before his eyes. Trembling with fear, he fell to the earth, and
exclaimed, 'Help, Anna, beloved Saint! I will be a monk.' A few days
after, when quietly settled again at Erfurt, he repented having used
these words. But he felt that he had taken a vow, and that, on the
strength of that vow, he had obtained a hearing. The time, he knew,
was past for doubt or indecision. Nor did he think it necessary to
get his father's consent; his own conviction and the teaching of the
Church told him that no objection on the part of his father could
release him from his vow. Thus he severed himself at once from his
former life and companions. On July 16 he called his best friends
together to bid them leave. Once more they tried to keep him back;
he answered them, 'To-day you see me, and never again.' The next
day, that of St. Alexius, they accompanied him with tears to the
gates of the Augustinian convent in the town, which he thought was
to receive him for ever.
It is chiefly from what Luther himself has told us that we are
enabled to picture to ourselves this remarkable occurrence. Rumour,
and rumour only, has given the name of Alexius to that unknown
friend whose death so terrified him, and has represented this friend
as having been struck dead by lightning at his side.
The Luther of later days declared that his monastic vow was a
compulsory one, forced from him by terror and the fear of death.
But, at the same time, he never doubted that it was God who urged
him. Thus he said afterwards, 'I never thought to leave again the
convent. I was entirely dead to the world, until God thought that
the time had come.'
PART II.
_LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR, UNTIL HIS ENTRY ON THE WAR OF
REFORMATION--1505-1517._
CHAPTER I.
AT THE CONTENT AT ERFURT, TILL 1508.
Luther's resolve to follow a monastic life was arrived at suddenly,
as we have seen. But he weighed that resolve well in his mind, and
just as carefully considered the choice of the convent which he
entered.
The Augustinian monks, whose society he announced his intention to join,
belonged at that time to the most important monastic order in Germany.
So much had already been said with justice, in the way of complaint and
ridicule, of the depravation of monastic life, its idleness, hypocrisy,
and gross immorality, that many of them fancied that the solemn
renunciation of marriage and the world's goods, and the absolute
submission of their wills to the commands of their superiors and the
regulations of their Order, constituted true service to God, and raised
them to a peculiar position of holiness and merit. Outward discipline,
at all events, was universally insisted on. Among the German institutions
of this Order, whilst neglect and depravity had crept in elsewhere, a
large number had, for some time past, distinguished themselves by a
strict adherence to their old statutes, originating, it was supposed,
from their founder St. Augustine, but relating, at the best, to mere
matters of form. These institutions formed themselves into an
association, presided over by a Vicar of the Order, as he was called,
a Vicar-General for Germany. To this association belonged the convent
at Erfurt. Its inmates were treated with marked favour and respect by
the higher and educated classes in the town. They were said to be
active in preaching and in the care of souls, and to cultivate among
themselves the study of theology. Arnoldi, Luther's teacher,
belonged to this convent. As the Order possessed no property, but
all its members lived on alms, the monks went about the town and
country to collect gifts of money, bread, cheese, and other
victuals.
According to the rules of the Order, applications for admission were
not granted at once, but time was taken to see whether the applicant
was in earnest. After that he was received as a novice for at least
a year of probation. Until that year expired he was at liberty to
reconsider his wish.
Luther, before taking this final step, thought of his parents, with
a view to lay before them his resolve. The monastic brethren,
however, endeavoured to dissuade him, by reminding him how one must
leave father and mother for Christ and His Cross, and how no one who
has put his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom
of God. Upon his writing to his father on the subject, the latter,
strong in the conviction of his paternal rights, flew into a passion
with his son. 'My father,' says Luther later, 'was near going mad
about it; he was ill satisfied, and would not allow it. He sent me
an answer in writing, addressing me in terms that showed his
displeasure, and renouncing all further affection. Soon after he
lost two of his sons by the plague. This epidemic had likewise
broken out so violently at Erfurt, that about harvesttime whole
crowds of students fled with their teachers from the town, and
Luther's father received news that his son Martin had also fallen a
victim. His friends then urged him that, if the report proved false,
he ought at least to devote his dearest to God, by letting this son
who still remained to him, enter the blessed Order of God's
servants. At last the father let himself be talked over; but he
yielded, as Luther informs us, with a sad and reluctant heart.
The young novice was welcomed among his brethren with hymns of joy,
and prayers, and other ceremonies. He was soon clothed in the garb
of his Order. Over a white woollen shirt he was made to wear a frock
and cowl of black cloth, with a black leathern girdle. Whenever he
put these on or off a Latin prayer was repeated to him aloud, that
the Lord might put off the old and put on the new man, fashioned
according to God. Above the cowl he received a scapulary, as it was
called--in other words, a narrow strip of cloth hanging over
shoulders, breast, and back, and reaching down to his feet. This was
meant to signify that he took upon him the yoke of Him who said, 'My
yoke is easy, and my burden is light.' At the same time, he was
handed over to a superior, appointed to take charge of the novices,
to introduce them to the practices of monastic devotion, to
superintend their conduct, and to watch over their souls.
Above all, it was held important that the monks should be taught to
subdue their own wills. They had to learn to endure, without
opposition, whatever was imposed upon them, and that, indeed, all
the more cheerfully, the more distasteful it appeared. Any tendency
to pride was overcome by enjoining immediately the most menial
offices on the offender. Friends of Luther tell us how, during his
first period of probation in particular, he had to perform the
meanest daily labour with brush and broom, and how his jealous
brethren took particular pleasure in seeing the proud young graduate
of yesterday trudge through the streets, with his beggar's wallet on
his back, by the side of another monk more accustomed to the work.
At first, we are told, the university interceded on his behalf as a
member of their own body, and obtained for him at least some
relaxation from his menial duties. From Luther's own lips, in after
life, we hear not a word of complaint about any special vexations
and burdens. As far as was possible, he did not allow them to daunt
him; nay, he longed for even severer exercises, to enable him to win
the favour of God. Even as a Reformer he remembered with gratitude
the 'Pedagogue,' or superintendent of his noviciate; he was a fine
old man, he tells us, a true Christian under that execrable cowl.
The novice found each day, as it went by, fully occupied with the
repetition of set prayers and the performance of other acts of
devotion. For the day and night together there were seven or eight
appointed hours of prayer, or _Horae_. During each of these the
brethren who were not yet priests had to say twenty-five
Paternosters with the Ave Maria, more ample formulas of prayer being
prescribed meanwhile to the priests. Luther was also introduced
already then to certain theological studies, which were under the
supervision of two learned fathers of the monastery. But what was of
the most importance for him was that a Bible--the Latin translation
then in general use in the Church--was put into his hands. Just
about this time, a new code of statutes had come in force for these
Augustinian convents, drawn up by Staupitz, the Vicar of the Order,
which enjoined, as matters of duty, assiduous reading, devout
attention to the Hours, and a zealous study of Holy Writ. Teachers
were wanting to Luther, and he found it very difficult to understand
all he read. But with genuine appetite he read himself, so to speak,
into his Bible, and clung to it ever afterwards.
At the end of his year of probation followed his solemn admission to
the Order. Faithfully 'unto death' did Luther then promise to live
according to the rules of the holy father Augustine, and to render
obedience to Almighty God, to the Virgin Mary, and to the prior of
the monastery. Before doing so, he put on anew the dress of his
Order, which had been consecrated with holy water and incense. The
prior received his vows and sprinkled holy water upon him as he
prostrated himself upon the ground in the form of a cross. When the
ceremony was over, his brethren congratulated him on being now like
an innocent child fresh from the baptism. He was then given a cell
of his own, with table, bedstead, and chair. It looked out upon the
cloistered yard of the monastery. It was destroyed by a fire on
March 7, 1872.
[Illustration: Fig. 4.--LUTHER'S CELL AT ERFURT.]
Luther now, by an inviolable promise, had bound himself to that
vocation through which he aspired to gain heaven. The means whereby
he hoped to realise his aspiration were abundantly provided for him
in his new home. If he sought the favour of the Virgin and of other
saints who should intercede for him before the judgment-seat of God
and Christ, he found at once in his Order a fervent worship of the
Virgin in particular, and all possible directions for her service.
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which Pius IX., in our
own days, first ventured to raise into a dogma of the Church, was
zealously defended by the Augustinians, and firmly maintained by
Luther himself, even after the beginning of his war of Reformation.
John Palz, one of his two theological teachers in the convent, wrote
profusely in honour of this doctrine, and described all Christians
as its spiritual children. Under its mantle, says Luther, he had to
creep into the presence of Christ. From the multitude of other
saints Luther selected a number as his constant helpers in need. We
notice particularly that among these, in addition to St. Anne and
St. George, was the Apostle Thomas; from him who himself had once
betrayed such cowardice and want of faith he might well hope for
peculiar sympathy. We have already mentioned the set prayers which
filled up a great portion of the day. He was required above all
things to learn and repeat them accurately, word by word.
Afterwards, as he tells us, the _Horae_ were read aloud after
the manner of magpies, jackdaws, or parrots.
If he wished in penitence to be freed from the sins which had
tormented him so long, and were a daily burden on his conscience,
the means of confession provided by the Church were always ready for
him in the convent. Once a week, at the least, every brother had to
attend the private confessional. All his sins, without exception,
had then to be revealed, if he wished to obtain for them
forgiveness. Luther endeavoured to unbosom to his father-confessor
all he had done from his youth up; but this was too much even for
the priest. It was by means of a complete inward contrition,
corresponding to the infinite burden of sin, that the person
confessing was to make himself worthy of the forgiveness which the
priest then testified to him by absolution. According to the
prevailing doctrine, however, what was wanting to the penitent in
completeness of contrition, was supplied by the Sacrament of
Absolution. But the punishments reserved by God for sinners were not
supposed to be ended by this absolution or forgiveness; these had to
be atoned for by peculiar observances, imposed by the priest, and by
prayer, alms, fasting, and other acts of mortification. For him who
was not forgiven, remained hell; for him who had not expiated his
sins, at least the fear and pains of purgatory. Such was and still
is the teaching of the Catholic Church.
Thus Luther was now summoned and directed to pursue methodically the
painful work of self-examination, which had oppressed him even
before he entered the convent, and to use all the means of grace
here offered to him. But the more he searched into his life and
thoughts, the more transgressions of God's will he found, and the
more grievously did they afflict his conscience. It was not, indeed,
as might have been imagined with a strong young man like himself, a
question of any sensual appetites, stimulated all the more by the
restraints of the convent. It was with the passions of anger,
hatred, and envy against his brethren and fellow-creatures, that he
had to reproach himself. Those who disliked him accused him in
particular of self-conceit, and of letting his temper break out too
easily. Faults of that description, in thought, word, or deed, were
to his own conscience as deadly sins, though to the priest who
listened to him at confession, they seemed too trifling to call for
enumeration. To these were added a number of smaller offences
against the ordinances of the Church and the convent, with reference
to outward observances and forms of worship, prayers, and so on, all
of which, insignificant as they must seem to us, the Church was
accustomed to treat as grievous sins. Finally, there arose in his
mind a constant restlessness, which made him look for sins where
none in reality existed. What he had said once before about washing
one's hands, that it only made them become fouler, he had now to
experience for himself. His contrition made him feel pain and fear
in abundance, but not so as to enable him to say to himself that it
purged the evil in the sight of God. Absolution was pronounced over
him again and again, but who ever gave him any assurance that he had
fulfilled its conditions, and therefore could really confide in its
efficacy? As for acts of penance, he willingly performed them, and,
indeed, did far more in the way of prayer, fasting, and vigil than
either the rules of the convent demanded or his father-confessor
enjoined. His body, from his hardy training as a child, was well
prepared for such austerities, but in spite of that, he had for a
long while to suffer from their results. Luther, in later years,
could well bear witness of himself that he had caused his own body
far more pain and torture with those practices of penance than all
his enemies and persecutors had caused to theirs.
What leisure remained, after his other monastic duties were over, he
devoted most industriously to the study of theology. He read, in
particular, the writings of the later Scholastic theologians, with
whom he had partly occupied himself during his philosophical course.
Of some of these, such as the Englishman Occam, in particular, whose
acuteness of reasoning he especially admired, there were writings
which, in reference to questions of external Church polity, might
have led him even then into paths of his own, if his mind had been
disposed for it. These writings were directed against the absolute
power of the Pope in the Church, and against his aggressions in the
territory of Empire and State. But any such aim was very far removed
from the monastic Order to which Luther had devoted himself, and
from the theologians who were here his teachers. Palz, whom we have
mentioned already, had especially distinguished himself by his
glorification of the Papal indulgences. Moreover, the whole Order,
and the German convents belonging to it in particular, were indebted
to the Pope for various acts of favour. Nor was Luther himself less
careful to hold firmly to the ordinances of the hierarchy, than to
avail himself of the means of salvation offered by the Church.
What at all times in his theological studies enlisted his warmest
personal interest was the difficult question, how sinners could
obtain everlasting salvation. And all that he came to read on that
subject in the writings of those theologians, and to hear from his
learned teachers in the convent, served only to increase his
fruitless inward wrestlings, and his anxiety and sense of need. The
great father of the Church, from whom his Order was named, and to
whom their rules were ascribed, had once, on the ground of his own
experiences of the struggle with sin and the flesh, laid down with
great force, and in a triumphant controversy with his opponents, the
doctrine that, as the Apostle says, salvation depends not on the
conduct of man, but on the grace of God, not on the will of man, but
on the willingness of God to pardon, Who alone transforms the
sinner, and grants him the power and the will for good. But any
knowledge or understanding of this theology of Augustine was as
strange to his own Order as to the Scholastics. It was taught,
indeed, that heaven was too high for man to attain to otherwise than
by the grace of God. But it was also taught that the sinner, by his
own natural strength, both could and ought to do enough in God's
sight to earn that grace which would then help him further on the
way to heaven. He who had thus obtained that grace, it was said,
felt himself enabled and impelled to do even more than God's
commands require. Reference to the bitter passion and death of the
Saviour was not omitted, it is true, by the theologians with whom
Luther had to do, and frequently, as, for example, by his teacher
Palz, was impressed on Christian hearts in words full of feeling.
But the chief stress was laid, not on the redeeming love on which
man could rest his confident assurance, but on the necessity of
offering oneself to Him who had offered Himself for man, and of
submitting even to the pains of death, in imitation of Him, and to
pay the penalty of sin. In this way, again and again, Luther saw
before him claims on the part of God which he could never hope to
satisfy. His sorest trial was caused by the thought that God Himself
should have the will to let him fail after all his fruitless
efforts, and finally be numbered with the lost. And it was just with
the later Scholastics that he found, not indeed a theory according
to which God had simply predestined a part of mankind to perdition,
but a general conception of God which would represent Him as a Being
not so much of holy love, as of arbitrary, absolute will.
Luther spent two years in the convent amidst these strivings and
inward sufferings. His spiritual life, as it was called, of strict
discipline and asceticism was quoted in other convents as a model
for imitation. Now and then, indeed, he felt himself puffed up with
a sense of superior sanctity--'a proud saint,' as he afterwards
called himself. But humility was the ruling temper of his mind.
Frequently, in after life, he described his condition as a warning
to others. Thus he speaks of the disciples of the law, who try by
their own works, by constant labour, by wearing shirts of hair, by
self-scourging, by fasting, by every means, in short, to satisfy the
law. Such a one, he tells us, he himself had been. But he had also
learned by experience, he adds, what happens when a man is tempted,
and death or danger frightens him; how he despairs, nay, would fly
from God as from the devil, and would rather that there were no God
at all. So great became his inward sufferings, that he thought both
body and soul must succumb. Thus he tells us later on, when speaking
of the torments of purgatory, of a man, who doubtless was himself,
how he had often endured such agony, only momentary it is true, but
so hellish in its violence, that no tongue could express nor pen
describe it; that, had it lasted longer, even for half an hour, or
only five minutes, he must have died then and there, and his bones
have been consumed to ashes. He himself saw afterwards in these
pains, visitations of a special kind, such as God does not send to
everyone. But they served him then as a proof, and one of universal
application, that that school of the law, as he called it, would
bring no real holiness either to others or himself, but must teach a
man to despair of himself and of any claims or merits of his own.
And, indeed, as we know from all that had gone before, it was not
simply the external barrenness of the regulations of Church and
convent, or a sense of imperfect fulfilment on his part, that caused
his restlessness of conscience; what gave him the deepest anxiety
and harassed him the most were those very inward stirrings, which
revealed to him his opposition to God's eternal demands, the
fulfilment of which he thought indispensable for reconciliation to
God.
His experiences at the convent led him to the perception of those
principles which formed the groundwork of his preaching as a
Reformer. From his exemplary conduct there, and his wonderful and
active conversion, he was compared to St. Paul. In quite another
sense he resembled the great Apostle. The latter, when a Pharisee,
had laboured to justify himself before God by the law and the
prophets. 'O wretched man that I am,' Luther there must have
exclaimed of himself, and afterwards looking back on his
experiences, have counted all as 'dung and loss' in order to be
justified rather by faith through the grace of God and the Saviour,
and to become free and holy.
Just as, meanwhile, inside the Catholic Church, the laws, dogmas,
and School theories relating to the means of salvation, were never
able to supplant entirely the thought of the simple testimony of the
Bible, and of the Church's own confession of God's forgiving love
and His redeeming and absolving grace, or to prevent simple, pious
Christians from seeking here a refuge in the inmost depths of their
hearts, so now, at this very convent of Erfurt, where Luther's
inward development in those theories and dogmas had reached so high
a pitch, he received also the first serious impressions in the other
direction. They found with him a difficult and gradual entrance,
from the energy and consistency with which he had taken up his
original standpoint. But with all the more energy, and with perfect
consistency, did he abandon that standpoint, when new light dawned
upon him from his new conception of the truth.
Luther's teacher at the convent, by whom we shall have to understand
the superintendent of the novices, had already made a deep
impression upon him, by reminding him of the words of the Apostles'
Creed about the forgiveness of sins, and representing to him, what
Luther had never ventured to apply to himself, that the Lord himself
had commanded us to hope. For this he referred him to a passage in
the writings of St. Bernard, where that fervent preacher, imbued
though he was in his theology with the Church notions of the middle
ages, insists on the importance of this very faith in God's
forgiveness, and appeals to the words of St. Paul that man is
justified by grace through faith. Remarks of this kind sank into
Luther's mind, and took root there, though their fruit only ripened
by degrees. Of his teacher Arnoldi, also, he spoke with admiration
and gratitude, for the comfort he had known how to impart to him.
But the one who at this time acquired by far the most potent,
wholesome, and lasting influence upon Luther, was the Vicar-General,
John von Staupitz. He was a remarkable man, of a noble and pious
disposition, and a refined and far-seeing mind. A master of the
forms of Scholastic theology, he was also deeply read in Scripture;
he made its teachings the special standard of his life, and was
careful to enjoin others to do the same. He strove after an inward,
practical life in God, not confined to mere forms and observances.
Sharp conflicts and controversies were not to his taste; but mildly
and discreetly he sought to plant, in his own field of work, and to
leave what he had planted in God's name to grow up.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--STAUPITZ. (From the Portrait in St. Peter's
Convent at Salzburg.)]
It was during his visits to Erfurt that Staupitz came in contact
with the gifted, thoughtful, and melancholy young monk. He treated
Luther, both in conversation and letter, with fatherly confidence,
and Luther unlocked to him, as to a father, his heart and its cares.
Upon his wishing to confess to him all his many small sins, Staupitz
insisted first on distinguishing between what were really sins, and
what were not; as for self-imagined sins, or such a patchwork of
offences as Luther laid before him, he would not listen to them;
that was not the kind of seriousness, he would say, that God wished
to have. Luther tormented himself with a system of penance,
consisting of actual pain, punishments, and expiations. Staupitz
taught him that repentance, in the Scriptural meaning, was an inward
change and conversion, which must proceed from the love of holiness
and of God; and that, for peace with God, he must not look to his
own good resolutions to lead a better life, which he had not the
strength to carry out, or to his own acts, which could never satisfy
the law of God, but must trust with patience to God's forgiving
mercy, and learn to see in Christ, whom God permitted to suffer for
the sins of man, not the threatening Judge, but rather the loving
Saviour. To Christ above all he referred him, when Luther pondered
on the secret eternal will of God, and was near despair. God's
eternal purpose, he would say, shines clearly in the wounds of
Christ. Did his temptations not cease, he bade him see in them means
to draw him to the love of God. The thoughts of Staupitz turned in
this on the temptations to pride, which might themselves be the
means of curing that pride, and on the great things for which God
wished to prepare him. In a simple, practical manner, and from the
experiences of his own life, he would thus counsel and converse with
Luther. During the long course of a confidential intercourse with
his friend, his own theology in later years became visibly
developed, and his pupil of earlier days became afterwards his
teacher. But Luther, both then and throughout his life, spoke of him
with grateful affection as his spiritual father, and thanked God
that he had been helped out of his temptations by Dr. Staupitz,
without whom he would have been swallowed up in them and perished.
The first firm ground, however, for his convictions and his inner
life, and the foundation for all his later teachings and works, was
found by Luther in his own persevering study of Holy Writ. In this
also he was encouraged by Staupitz, who must, however, have been
amazed at his indefatigable industry and zeal. For the
interpretation of the Bible the means at his command were meagre in
the extreme. He himself explored in all cases to their very centre
the truths of Christian salvation and the highest questions of moral
and religious life. A single passage of importance would occupy his
thoughts for days. Significant words, which he was not able yet to
comprehend, remained fixed in his mind, and he carried them silently
about with him. Thus it was, for example, as he tells us, with the
text in Ezekiel, 'I will not the death of a sinner,' a passage which
engrossed his earnest thoughts.
It was the third and last year of his monastic life at Erfurt that
brought with it, as far as we see, the decisive turn for his inward
struggles and labours.
In his second year, on May 2, 1507, he received, by command of his
superiors, his solemn ordination as a priest. It was then for the
first time since his entry into the convent against his father's
will, that the latter saw him again. A convenient day was expressly
arranged for him, to enable him to take part personally at the
solemnity. He rode into Erfurt with a stately train of friends and
relations. But in his opinion of the step taken by his son he
remained unalterably firm. At the entertainment which was given in
the convent to the young priest, the latter tried to extort from him
a friendly remark upon the subject, by asking him why he seemed so
angry, when monastic life was such a high and holy thing. His father
replied in the presence of all the company, 'Learned brothers, have
you not read in Holy Writ, that a man must honour father and
mother?' And on being reminded how his son had been called, nay,
compelled to this new life by heaven, 'Would to God,' he answered,
'it were no spirit of the devil!' He let them understand that he was
there, eating and drinking, as a matter of duty, but that he would
much rather be away.
To Luther, however, the post of high dignity to which he was now
promoted brought new fear and anxiety. He had now to appear before God
as a priest; to have Christ's Body, the very Christ Himself, and God
actually present before him at the mass on the altar; to offer the
Body of Christ as a sacrifice to the living and eternal God. Added
to this, there were a multitude of forms to observe, any oversight
wherein was a sin. All this so overpowered him at his first mass,
that he could scarcely remain at the altar; he was well-nigh, as he
said afterwards, a dead man.
With these priestly functions he united an assiduous devotion to his
saints. By reading mass every morning, he invoked twenty-one
particular saints, whom he had chosen as his helpers, taking three
at a time, so as to include them all within the week.
As regards the most important problems of life, his study of the
Scriptures gradually revealed to him the light which determined his
future convictions. The path had already been pointed out to him by
the words of St. Paul quoted by St. Bernard. When looking back, at
the close of his life, on this his inward development, he tells us
how perplexed he had been by what St. Paul said of the
'righteousness of God' (Rom. i. 17). For a long time he troubled
himself about the expression, connecting it as he did, according to
the ruling theology of the day, with God's righteousness in His
punishment of sinners. Day and night he pondered over the meaning
and context of the Apostle's words. But at length, he adds, God in
His great mercy revealed to him that what St. Paul and the gospel
proclaimed was a righteousness given freely to us by the grace of
God, Who forgives those who have faith in His message of mercy, and
justifies them, and gives them eternal life. Therewith the gate of
heaven was opened to him, and thenceforth the whole remaining
purport of God's word became clearly revealed. Still it was only by
degrees, during the latter portion of his stay at Erfurt, and even
after that, that he arrived at this full perception of the truth.
After their ordination the monks received the title of fathers.
Luther was not as yet relieved of the duty of going out with a
brother in quest of alms. But he was soon employed in the more
important business of the Order, as, for instance, in transactions
with a high official of the Archbishop, in which he displayed great
zeal for the priesthood and for his Order.
With the Scholastic theology of his time, albeit even now in a path
marked out by himself, his keen understanding and happy memory had
enabled him to become thoroughly familiar. He was scarcely twenty-five
years old when Staupitz, occupied with making provision for the
newly-founded university of Wittenberg, recognised in him the right
man for a professorial chair.
CHAPTER II.
CALL TO WITTENBERG. JOURNEY TO ROME.
Wittenberg was at that time the youngest of the German universities.
It was founded in 1502 by the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony,
a man pre-eminent among the German princes, not only from his
prudence and circumspection, but also from his faithful care for his
country, his genuine love for knowledge, and his deep religious
feeling. His country was not a rich one. Wittenberg itself was a
poor, badly-built town of about three thousand inhabitants. But the
Elector showed his wisdom above all by his right choice of men whom
he consulted in his work, and to whose hands he entrusted its
conduct. These, in their turn, were very careful to select talented
and trustworthy teachers for the institution, which was to depend
for its success on the attractions offered by pure learning, and not
those of outward show and a luxurious style of life among the
students. The supervision of theology was entrusted by Frederick to
Staupitz, whom personally he held in high esteem, and who, together
with the learned and versatile Martin Pollich of Melrichstadt, had
already been the most active in his service in promoting the
foundation of the university. Staupitz himself entered the
theological faculty as its first Dean. A constant or regular
application to his duties was rendered impossible by the
multifarious business of his Order, and the journeys it entailed.
But in his very capacity of Vicar-General, he strove to supply the
theological needs of the university, and, by the means of education
thus offered, to assist the members of his Order. Already before
this the Augustinian monks had had a settlement at Wittenberg,
though little is known about it. A handsome convent was built for
them in 1506. In a short time young inmates of this convent, and
afterwards more monks of the same Order who came from other parts,
entered the university as students and took academical degrees. The
patron saint of the University was, next to the Virgin Mary, St.
Augustine. Trutvetter of Erfurt became professor of theology at
Wittenberg in 1507. It was early in the winter of 1508-9, when
Staupitz, who had been re-elected for the second time, was still
dean of the theological faculty, that Luther was suddenly and
unexpectedly summoned thither. He had to obey not merely the advice
and wish of an affectionate friend, but the will of the principal of
his Order.
As hitherto he had simply graduated as a master in philosophy, and
had not qualified himself academically for a professor of theology,
Luther at first was only called on to lecture on those philosophical
subjects which, as we have seen, occupied his studies at Erfurt.
Theologians, it is true, had been entrusted with these duties, just
as, here at Wittenberg, the first dean of the philosophical faculty
was a theologian, and, in addition to that indeed, a member of the
Augustinian Order. But from the beginning, Luther was anxious to
exchange the province of philosophy for that of theology, meaning
thereby, as he expressed it, that theology which searched into the
very kernel of the nut, the heart of the wheat, the marrow of the
bones. So far, he was already confident of having found a sure
ground for his Christian faith, as well as for his inner life, and
having found it, of being able to begin teaching others. Indeed,
while busily engaged in his first lectures on philosophy, he was
preparing to qualify himself for his theological degrees. Here also
he had to begin with his baccalaureate, comprising in fact three
different steps in the theological faculty, each of which had to be
reached by an examination and disputation. The first step was that
of bachelor of biblical knowledge, which qualified him to lecture on
the Holy Scriptures. The second, or that of a _Sententiarius_,
was necessary for lecturing on the chief compendium of mediaeval
School-theology, the so-called Sentences of Peter Lombardus, the due
performance of which duly led to the attainment of the third step.
Above the baccalaureate, with its three grades, came the rank of
licentiate, which gave the right to teach the whole of theology, and
lastly the formal, solemn admission as doctor of theology. Already,
on March 9, 1509, Luther had attained his first step in the
baccalaureate. At the end of six months he was qualified, by the
statutes of the university, to reach the second step, and in the
course of the next six months he actually reached it.
But before gaining his new rights as a _Sententiarius_, he was
summoned back by the authorities of his Order to Erfurt. The reason
we do not know; we only know that he entered the theological faculty
there as professor, receiving, at the same time, the recognition of
the academical rank he had acquired at Wittenberg. At Erfurt he
remained about three terms, or eighteen months. After that he
returned to the university at Wittenberg. Trutvetter, towards the
end of 1510, had received a summons back to Erfurt from Wittenberg.
The void thus caused by his summons away may have had something to
do with Luther's return thither. At all events his position at
Wittenberg was now vastly different from that which he had
previously held. No theologian, his superior in years or fame, was
any longer above him.
Ere long, however, Luther received another commission from his
Order; a proof of the confidence reposed also in his zeal for the
Order, his practical understanding, and his energy. It was about a
matter in which, by Staupitz's desire, other Augustinian convents in
Germany were to enter into a union with the reformed convents and
the Vicar of the Order. As opposition had been raised, Luther in
1511, no doubt at the suggestion of Staupitz, was sent on this
matter to Rome, where the decision was to be given. The journey
thither and back may easily have taken six weeks or more. According
to rule and custom, two monks were always sent out together, and a
lay-brother was given them for service and company. They used to
make their way on foot. In Rome the brethren of the Order were
received by the Augustinian monastery of Maria del Popolo. Thus
Luther went forth to the great capital of the world, to the throne
of the Head of the Church. He remained there four weeks, discharging
his duties, and surrounded by all her monuments and relics of
ecclesiastical interest.
No definite account of the result of the business he had to
transact, has been handed down to us. We only learn that Staupitz,
the Vicar of the Order, was afterwards on friendly relations with
the convents which had opposed his scheme, and that he refrained
from urging any more unwelcome innovations. For us, however, the
most important parts of this journey are the general observations
and experiences which Luther made in Italy, and, above all, at the
Papal chair itself. He often refers to them later in his speeches
and writings, in the midst of his work and warfare, and he tells us
plainly how important to him afterwards was all that he there saw
and heard.
The devotion of a pilgrim inspired him as he arrived at the city
which he had long regarded with holy veneration. It had been his
wish, during his troubles and heart-searchings, to make one day a
regular and general confession in that city. When he came in sight
of her, he fell upon the earth, raised his hands, and exclaimed
'Hail to thee, holy Rome!' She was truly sanctified, he declared
afterwards, through the blessed martyrs, and their blood which had
flowed within her walls. But he added, with indignation at himself,
how he had run like a crazy saint on a pilgrimage through all the
churches and catacombs, and had believed what turned out to be a
mass of rank lies and impostures. He would gladly then have done
something for the welfare of his friends' souls by mass-reading and
acts of devotion in places of particular sanctity. He felt downright
sorry, he tells us, that his parents were still alive, as he might
have performed some special act to release them from the pains of
purgatory.
But in all this he found no real peace of mind: on the contrary, his
soul was stirred to the consciousness of another way of salvation
which had already begun to dawn upon him. Whilst climbing, on his
knees and in prayer, the sacred stairs which were said to have led
to the Judgment-hall of Pilate, and whither, to this day,
worshippers are invited by the promise of Papal absolutions, he
thought of the words of St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans (i.
17), 'The just shall live by faith. As for any spiritual
enlightenment and consolation, he found none among the priests and
monks of Rome. He was struck indeed with the external administration
of business and the nice arrangement of legal matters at the Papal
see. But he was shocked by all that he observed of the moral and
religious life and doings at this centre of Christianity; the
immorality of the clergy, and particularly of the highest
dignitaries of the Church, who thought themselves highly virtuous if
they abstained from the very grossest offences; the wanton levity
with which the most sacred names and things were treated; the
frivolous unbelief, openly expressed among themselves by the
spiritual pastors and masters of the Church. He complains of the
priests scrambling through mass as if they were juggling; while he
was reading one mass, he found they had finished seven: one of them
once urged him to be quick by saying 'Get on, get on, and make haste
to send her Son home to our Lady.' He heard jokes even made about
the priests when consecrating the elements at mass, repeating in
Latin the words 'Bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain: wine
thou art, and wine thou shalt remain.' He often remarked in later
years how they would apply in derision the term 'good Christian' to
those who were stupid enough to believe in Christian truth, and to
be scandalised by anything said to the contrary. No one, he
declared, would believe what villanies and shameful doings were then
in vogue, if they had not seen and heard them with their own eyes
and ears. But the truth of his testimony is confirmed by those very
men whose life and conduct so shocked and revolted him. He must have
been indignant, moreover, at the contemptuous tone in which the
'stupid Germans' or 'German beasts' were spoken of, as persons
entitled to no notice or respect at Rome.
He was astonished at the pomp and splendour which surrounded the
Pope when he appeared in public. He speaks, as an eye-witness, of
the processions, like those of a triumphing monarch. But the
horrible stories were then still fresh at Rome of the late Pope
Alexander and his children, the murder of his brother, the
poisoning, the incest, and other crimes. Of the then Pope, Julius
II., Luther heard nothing reported, except that he managed his
temporal affairs with energy and shrewdness, made war, collected
money, and contracted and dissolved, entered into and broke,
political alliances. At the time of Luther's visit, he was just
returning from a campaign in which he had conducted in person the
sanguinary siege of a town. Luther did not fail to observe that he
had established in the sacred city an excellent body of police, and
that he caused the streets to be kept clean, so that there was not
much pestilence about. But he looked upon him simply as a man of the
world, and afterwards fulminated against him as a strong man of
blood.
All these experiences at Rome did not, however, then avail to shake
Luther's faith in the authority of the hierarchy which had such
unworthy ministers; though, later on, when he was forced to attack
the Papacy itself, they made it easier for him to shape his judgment
and conclusions. 'I would not have missed seeing Rome,' he then
declared, 'for a hundred thousand florins, for I might then have
felt some apprehension that I had done injustice to the Pope. But as
we see, we speak.'
During his visit he also roamed about among the ruins of the ancient
capital of the world, and was astonished at the remains of bygone
worldly splendour. The works of the new art which Pope Julius was
then beginning to call into existence, did not appear to have
particularly engaged his attention. The Pope was then progressing
with the building of the new Church of St. Peter. The indulgence, of
which the proceeds were to enable the completion of this vast
undertaking, led afterwards to the struggle between the Augustinian
monk and the Papacy.
CHAPTER III.
LUTHER AS THEOLOGICAL TEACHER, TO 1517
On his return to his Wittenberg convent, Luther was made sub-prior.
At the university he entered fully upon all the rights and duties of
a teacher of theology, having been made licentiate and doctor. Here
again it was Staupitz, his friend and spiritual superior, who urged
this step: Luther's own wish was to leave the university and devote
himself entirely to the office of his Order. The Elector Frederick,
who had been struck with Luther by hearing one of his sermons, took
this, the first opportunity, of showing him personal sympathy, by
offering to defray the expenses of his degree. Luther was reluctant
to accept this, and years after he was fond of showing his friends a
pear-tree in the courtyard of the convent, under which he discussed
the matter with Staupitz, who, however, insisted on his demand. He
must have felt the more sensibly the responsibility of his new task,
from his own personal strivings after new and true theological
light. It was a satisfaction to him afterwards, amidst the endless
and unexpected labours and contests which his vocation brought with
it, to reflect that he had undertaken it, not from choice, but so
entirely from obedience. 'Had I known what I now know,' he would
exclaim in his later trials and dangers, 'not ten horses would ever
have dragged me into it.'
After the necessary preliminaries and customary forms, he received
on October 4, 1512, the rights of a licentiate, and on the 18th and
19th was solemnly admitted to the degree of doctor. As licentiate he
promised to defend with all his power the truth of the gospel, and
he must have had this oath particularly in his mind when he
afterwards appealed to the fact of his having sworn on his beloved
Bible to preach it faithfully and in its purity. His oath as doctor,
which followed, bound him to abstain from doctrines condemned by the
Church and offensive to pious ears. Obedience to the Pope was not
required at Wittenberg, as it was at other universities.
Others, besides Staupitz, expected from the beginning something
original and remarkable from the new professor. Pollich, the first
great representative of Wittenberg in its early days, and who died
in the following year, said of him, 'This monk will revolutionise
the whole system of Scholastic teaching.' He seems, like others whom
we hear of afterwards, to have been especially struck with the depth
of Luther's eyes, and thought that they must reveal the working of a
wonderful mind.
A new theology, in fact, presented itself at once to Luther in the
subject which, as doctor, he chose and exclusively adhered to in his
lectures. This was the Bible, the very book of which the study was
so generally undervalued in School-theology, which so many doctors
of theology scarcely knew, and which was usually so hastily forsaken
for those Scholastic sentences and a corresponding exposition of
ecclesiastical dogmas.
Luther began with lectures upon the Psalms. It is his first work on
theology which has remained to posterity. We still possess a Latin
text of the Psalter furnished with running notes for his lectures (a
copy of it is given in these pages), and also his own manuscript of
those lectures themselves. In these also he states that his task was
imposed upon him by a distinct command: he frankly confessed that as
yet he was insufficiently acquainted with the Psalms; a comparison
of his notes and lectures shows further, how continually he was
engaged in prosecuting these studies. His explanations indeed fall
short of what is required at present, and even of what he himself
required later on. He still follows wholly the mediaeval practice of
thinking it necessary to find, throughout the words of the Psalmist,
pictorial allegories relating to Christ, His work of salvation, and
His people. But he was thus enabled to propound, while explaining
the Psalms, the fundamental principles of that doctrine of salvation
which for some years past had taken such hold on his inmost thoughts
and so engrossed his theological studies. And in addition to the
fruits of his researches in Scripture, especially in the writings of
St. Paul, we observe the use he made of the works of St. Augustine.
His acquaintance with the latter did not commence until years after
he had joined the Order, and had acquired independently an intimate
knowledge of the Bible. It was mainly through them that he was
enabled to comprehend the teaching of St. Paul, and to find how the
doctrine of Divine grace, which we have already alluded to, was
based on Pauline authority. Thus the founder of the Order became, as
it were, his first teacher among human theologians.
From his lectures on the Psalms Luther proceeded a few years later
to an exposition of those Epistles which were to him the main source
of his new belief in God's mercy and justice, namely, the Epistles
to the Romans and the Galatians.
In the convent also at Wittenberg, the direction of the theological
studies of the brethren was entrusted to Luther. His fellow-labourer
in this field was his friend John Lange, who had been with him also
in the convent at Erfurt. He was distinguished for a rare knowledge
of Greek, and was therefore a valuable help even to Luther, to whom
he was indebted in turn for a prolific advance in learning of
another kind. Closely allied with Luther also was Wenzeslaus Link,
the prior of the convent, who obtained his degree as doctor of the
theological faculty a year before him. These men were drawn together
by similarity of ideas, and by a strong and enduring personal
friendship; they had possibly been acquainted at the school at
Magdeburg. The new life and activity awakened at Wittenberg
attracted clever young monks more and more from a distance. The
convent, not yet quite finished, had scarcely room enough for them,
or means for their maintenance.
When in 1515 the associated convents had to choose at Gotha, on a
chapter-day, their new authorities, Luther was appointed, Staupitz
being still Vicar-General, the Provincial Vicar for Meissen and
Thuringia. He obtained by this office the superintendence of eleven
convents, to which in the next year he paid the customary
visitation. In person, by word of mouth, and equally by letters, we
see him labouring with self-sacrificing zeal for the spiritual
welfare of those committed to his care, for the correction of bad
monks, for the comfort of those oppressed with temptations, as also
for the temporal and domestic, and even the legal business of the
different convents.
In addition to his academical duties, he performed double service as
a preacher. In the first place he had to preach in his convent, as
he had already done at Erfurt. When the new convent at Wittenberg
was opened, the church was not yet ready; and in a small, poor,
tumbledown chapel close by, made up of wood and clay, he began to
preach the gospel and unfold the power of his eloquence. When,
shortly after, the town-priest of Wittenberg became weak and ailing,
his congregation pressed Luther to occupy the pulpit in his place.
He performed these different duties with alacrity, energy, and
power. He would preach sometimes daily for a week together,
sometimes even three times in one day; during Lent in 1517 he gave
two sermons every day in addition to his lectures at the university.
The zeal which he displayed in proclaiming the gospel to his hearers
in church, was quite as new and peculiar to himself as the lofty
interest he imparted to his professorial lectures on the Scriptures.
Melancthon says of these first lectures by Luther on the Psalms and
the Epistle to the Romans, that after a long and dark night, a new
day was now seen to dawn on Christian doctrine. In these lectures
Luther pointed out the difference between the law and the gospel. He
refuted the errors, then predominant in the Church and schools, the
old teaching of the Pharisees, that men could earn forgiveness by
their works, and that mere outward penance would justify them in the
sight of God. Luther called men back to the Son of God; and just as
John the Baptist pointed to the Lamb of God who bore our sins, so
Luther showed how, for his Son's sake, God in His mercy will forgive
us our sins, and how we must accept such mercy in faith.
In fact, the whole groundwork of that Christian faith on which the
inner life of the Reformer rests, for which he fought, and which gave
him strength and fresh courage for the fight, lies already before us
in his lectures and sermons during those years, and increases in
clearness and decision. The 'new day' had, in reality, broken upon
his eyes. That fundamental truth which he designated later as the
article by which a Christian Church must stand or fall, stands here
already firmly established, before he in the least suspects that it
would lead him to separate from the Catholic Church, or that his
adopting it would occasion a reconstruction of the Church. The primary
question around which everything else centred, remained always this--how
he, the sinful man, could possibly stand before God and obtain salvation.
With this came the question as to the righteousness of God; and now he
was no longer terrified by the avenging justice of God, wherewith He
threatens the sinner; but he recognised and saw the meaning of that
righteousness declared in the gospel (Rom. i. 17, iii. 25), by which
the merciful God justifies the faithful, in that He of His own grace
re-establishes them in His sight, and effects an inward change, and
lets them thenceforth, like children, enjoy His fatherly love and
blessing. Luther, in teaching now that justification proceeds from
faith, rejects, above all, the notion that man by any outward acts
of his own can ever atone for his sins and merit the favour of God.
He reminds us, moreover, with regard to moral works especially, that
good fruits always presuppose a good tree, upon which alone they can
grow, and that, in like manner, goodness can only proceed from a
man, if and when, in his inward being, his inward thoughts,
tendencies, and feelings, he has already become good; he must be
righteous himself, in a word, before he works righteousness. But it
is faith, and faith alone, which in the inward man determines real
communion with God. Then only, and gradually, can a man's own inner
being, trusting to God, and by means of His imparted grace, become
truly renovated and purged from sin. Had Luther, indeed, made
salvation depend on such a righteousness, derived from a man's own
works, as should satisfy the holy God, the very consciousness of his
own sins and infirmities would have made him despair of such
salvation. Moreover, all the working of the Holy Spirit, and His
gifts in our hearts, presuppose that we are already participators of
the forgiving mercy and grace of God, and are received into
communion with Him. To this, as Luther teaches after St. Paul, we
can only attain through faith in the joyful message of His mercy, in
His compassion, and in His Son, whom He has sent to be our Redeemer.
Thus he speaks of faith, even in his earliest notes on the Psalter,
as the keystone, the marrow, the short road. The worst enemy, in his
sight, is self-righteousness; he confesses having had to combat it
himself.
Herein also Luther found the theology of St. Augustine in accord
with the testimony of the great Apostle. While studying that
theology, his conviction of the power of sin and the powerlessness
of man's own strength to overcome it, grew more and more decided.
But St. Paul taught him to understand that belief somewhat
differently to St. Augustine. To Luther it was not merely a
recognition of objective truths or historical facts. What he
understood by it, with a clearness and decision which are wanting in
St. Augustine's teaching, was the trusting of the heart in the mercy
offered by the message of salvation, the personal confidence in the
Saviour Christ and in that which He has gained for us. With this
faith, then, and by the merits and mediation of the Saviour in whom
this faith is placed, we stand before God, we have already the
assurance of being known by God and of being saved, and we are
partakers of the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies more and more the inner
man. According to St. Augustine, on the contrary, and to all
Catholic theologians who followed his teaching, what will help us
before God is rather that inward righteousness which God Himself
gives to man by His Holy Spirit and the workings of His grace, or,
as the expression was, the righteousness infused by God. The good,
therefore, already existing in a Christian is so highly esteemed
that he can thereby gain merit before the just God and even do more
than is required of him. But to a conscience like Luther's, which
applied so severe a standard to human virtue and works, and took
such stern count of past and present sins, such a doctrine could
bring no assurance of forgiveness, mercy, and salvation. It was in
faith alone that Luther had found this assurance, and for it he
needed no merits of his own. The happy spirit of the child of God,
by its own free impulse, would produce in a Christian the genuine
good fruit pleasing in God's sight. It was a long time before Luther
himself became aware how he differed on this point from his chief
teacher amongst theologians. But we see the difference appear at the
very root and beginning of his new doctrine of salvation; and it
comes out finally, based on apostolic authority, clear and sharp, in
the theology of the Reformer.
And inseparably connected with this is what Melancthon said about
the Law and the Gospel. Luther himself always declared in later
days, that the whole understanding of the truth of Christian
salvation, as revealed by God, depends on a right perception of the
relation of one to the other, and this very relation he explained,
shortly before the beginning of his contest with the Church, upon
the authority of St. Paul's Epistles. The Law is to him the epitome
of God's demands with regard to will and works, which still the
sinner cannot fulfil. The Gospel is the blessed offer and
announcement of that forgiving mercy of God which is to be accepted
in simple faith. By the Law says Luther, the sinner is judged,
condemned, killed; he himself had to toil and disquiet himself under
it, as though he were in the hands of a gaoler and executioner. The
Gospel first lifts up those who are crushed, and makes them alive by
the faith which the good message awakens in their hearts. But God
works in both; in the one, a work which to Him, the God of love,
would properly be strange; in the other, His own work of love, for
which, however, he has first prepared the sinner by the former.
Whilst Luther was prosecuting his labours in this path, he became
acquainted in 1516 with the sermons of the pious, deep-thinking
theologian Tauler, who died in 1361; and at the same time an old
theological tract, written not long after Tauler, fell into his
hands, to which he gave the name of 'German Theology.' Now for the
first time, and in the person of their noblest representatives, he
was confronted with the Christian and theological views which were
commonly designated as the practical German mysticism of the middle
ages. Here, instead of the value which the mediaeval Church, so
addicted to externals, ascribed to outward acts and ordinances, he
found the most devout absorption in the sentiments of real Christian
religion. Instead of the barren, formal expositions and logical
operations of the scholastic intellect, he found a striving and
wrestling of the whole inner man, with all the mind and will, after
direct communion and union with God, who Himself seeks to draw into
this union the soul devoted to Him, and makes it become like to
himself. Such a depth of contemplation and such fervour of a
Christian mind Luther had not found even in an Augustine. He
rejoiced to see this treasure written in his native German, and it
certainly was the noblest German he had ever read. He felt himself
marvellously impressed by this theology; he knew of no sermons, so
he wrote to a friend, which agreed more faithfully with the gospel
than those of Tauler. He published that tract--then not quite
complete--in 1516, and again afterwards in 1518. It was the first
publication from his hand. His further sermons and writings show how
deeply he was imbued with its contents. The influences he here
received had a lasting effect on the formation of his inner life and
his theology.
With regard to sin, he now learned that its deepest roots and
fundamental character lay in our own wills, in self-love and
selfishness. To enjoy communion with God it is necessary that the
heart should put away all worldliness, and let its natural will be
dead, so that God alone may live and work in us. So, as he says on
the title-page of 'German Theology,' shall Adam die in us and Christ
be made alive. But the essential peculiarity of Luther's doctrine of
salvation, grounded as it was directly on Scripture, still remained
intact, despite the theology no less of the mystics than of
Augustine, and, after passing through these influences, developed
its full independence during his struggles as a Reformer. For this
communion with God he never thought it necessary, as the mystics
maintained, to renounce one's personality and retire altogether from
the world and things temporal: a purely passive attitude towards
God, and a blessedness consisting in such an attitude, was not his
highest or ultimate ideal. A man's personality, he held, should only
be destroyed so far as it resists the will of God, and dares to
assert its self-righteousness and merits before Him. The road to
real communion with God was always that 'short road' of faith, in
which the contrite sinner, who feels his personality crushed by the
consciousness of sin, grasps the hand of Divine mercy, and is lifted
up by it and restored. Christ was manifested, as the mystics said
with Scripture, in order that the man's personality should die with
Him, and imitate Him in self-renunciation. But the faith, on which
Luther insisted, saw in Christ above all the Saviour who has died
for us, and who pleads for us before God with His holy life and
conduct, that the faithful may obtain through Him reconciliation and
salvation. What the Saviour is to us in this respect Luther has thus
summarised in words of his own: 'Lord Jesus,' he says, 'Thou hast
taken to Thyself what is mine, and given to me what is Thine.' The
main divergence between Luther and the German mysticism of the
middle ages consists primarily in a different estimate of the
general relations between God and the moral personality of man. With
the mystics, behind the Christian and religious, lay a metaphysical
conception of God, as a Being of absolute power, superior to all
destiny, apparently rich in attributes, but in reality an empty
Abstraction,--above all, a Being who suffers nothing finite to exist
in independence of Himself. With Luther the fundamental conception
of God remained this, that He is the perfect Good, and that, in His
perfect holiness, He is Love. This is the God by whom the sinner who
has faith is restored and justified. From this conception as a
starting-point, Luther acquired fresh strength and energy for
advancing in the fight, whilst the pious mystic remained passively
and quietly behind. From this also he learned to realise Christian
liberty and moral duty in regard to daily life and its vocations,
whilst the mystics remained shut off altogether from the world. The
intimate connection between the conclusions to which the views of
Tauler tended, and the principles from which Luther started, is
shown further by the superior attraction which those sermons, so
warmly recommended by Luther, continued to exercise upon members of
the Evangelical, compared with those of the Catholic Church.
What Christ has suffered and done for us, and how we gain through
Him the righteousness of God, peace, and real life,--these thoughts
of practical religion pervaded now all Luther's discourses. To the
saving knowledge of these facts he endeavoured to direct his
lectures, and discarded the dogmatical inquiries and subtle
investigations and speculations of School-theology. At first, and
even in his sermons at the convent, he had employed in his
exposition of Biblical truths, as was the custom of learned
preachers, philosophical expressions and references to Aristotle and
famous Scholastics. But latterly, and at the time we are speaking
of, he had entirely left this off; and, as regards the form of his
sermons, instead of a stiff, logical construction of sentences, he
employed that simple, lively, powerful eloquence which distinguished
him above all preachers of his time. In 1516 and 1517 he delivered a
course of sermons on the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer
before his town congregation, with the view of showing the
connection of the truths of Christian religion. He further had
printed in 1517, for Christian readers generally, an explanation of
the seven penitential psalms. He wished, as the title stated, to
expound them thoroughly in their Scriptural meaning, for setting
forth the grace of Christ and God, and enabling true self-knowledge.
It is the first of his writings, published by himself, and in the
German language, which we possess; for the later lectures that were
published were delivered by him in Latin, and the first sermons we
have of his were also written by him in that language. We give here
the title and preface from the original print.
[Illustration: FIG. 6--Title and Preface of Penitential Psalms.]
Luther had now become possessed with a burning desire to refute, by
means of the truth he had newly learned, the teaching and system of
that School-theology on which he himself had wasted so much time and
labour, and by which he saw that same truth darkened and obstructed.
He first attacked Aristotle, the heathen philosopher from whom this
theology, he said, received its empty and perverted formalism, whose
system of physics was worthless, and who, especially in his
conception of moral life and moral good, was blind, since he knew
nothing of the essence and ground of true righteousness. The
Scholastics, as Luther himself remarked against them, had failed
signally to understand the genuine original philosophy of Aristotle.
But the real greatness and significance which must be allowed to
that philosophy, in the development of human thought and knowledge,
were far removed from those profound questions of Christian morality
and religion which engrossed Luther's mind, and from those truths to
which he again had to testify. In theses which formed the subject of
disputation among his followers, Luther expressed with particular
acuteness his own doctrine, and that of Augustine, concerning the
inability of man, and the grace of God, and his opposition to the
previously dominant Schoolmen and their Aristotle. He was anxious
also to hear the verdict of others, particularly of his teacher
Trutvetter, upon his new polemics.
He already could boast that, at Wittenberg, his, or as he called it,
the Augustinian theology, had found its way to victory. It was
adopted by the theologians who had taught there, though wholly in
the old Scholastic fashion, before him, especially by Carlstadt, who
soon strove to outbid him in this new direction, and who, later on,
in his own zeal for reform, fell into disputes with the great
Reformer himself, and also by Nicholas von Amsdorf, whom we shall
see afterwards at Luther's side as his personal friend and strongest
supporter. At Erfurt, Luther's former convent, his friend and
sympathiser Lange was now prior, having returned thither from
Wittenberg, where indeed his former teachers could not yet
accommodate themselves to his new ways. Of great importance to
Luther's work and position was his friendship with George Spalatin
(properly Burkardt of Spelt), the court preacher and private
secretary of the Elector Frederick, a conscientious, clear-minded
theologian, and a man of varied culture and calm, thoughtful
judgment. He was of the same age as Luther; he had been with him at
Erfurt as a fellow-student, and at Wittenberg afterwards, whither he
came as tutor to the prince, and had remained on terms of intimacy
with him. To Luther he proved an upright, warmhearted friend, and to
the Elector a faithful and sagacious adviser. It was mainly due to
his influence that the Elector showed such continued favour to
Luther, marks of which he displayed by presents, such as that of a
piece of richly-wrought cloth, which Luther thought almost too good
for a monk's frock. Spalatin had also been a member of that circle
of 'poets' at Erfurt; he kept up his connection with them, and
corresponded with Erasmus, the head of the Humanists, and thus acted
as a medium of communication for Luther in this quarter. Elsewhere
in Germany we find the theology of Augustine or of St. Paul, as
represented by Luther, taking root first among his friends at
Nüremberg; in 1517 W. Link came there as prior of the Augustinian
convent.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.--SPALATIN. (from L. Cranach's Portrait.)]
We have seen how Luther as a student associated with the young
Humanists at Erfurt, and now, whilst striving further on that road
of theology which he had marked out for himself, he was still
accessible to the general interests of learning as represented by
the Humanistic movement. He made the acquaintance, at least by
letter, of the celebrated Mutianus Rufus of Gotha, whom those
'poets' honoured as their famous master, and with whom Lange and
Spalatin maintained a respectful intercourse. When the Humanist John
Reuchlin, then the first Hebrew scholar in Germany, was declared a
heretic by zealous theologians and monks, on account of the protests
he raised against the burning of the Rabbinical books of the Jews,
and a fierce quarrel broke out in consequence, Luther, on being
asked by Spalatin for his opinion, declared himself strongly for the
Humanists against those who, being gnats themselves, tried to
swallow camels. His heart, he said, was so full of this matter that
his tongue could not find utterance. Still, the bold satire with
which his former college friend Crotus and other Humanists lashed
their opponents and held them up to ridicule, as in the famous
'Epistolae Virorum Obscurorum,' was not to Luther's taste at all.
The matter was to him far too serious for such treatment.
The first place among the men who revived the knowledge of
antiquity, and strove to apply that knowledge for the benefit of
their own times and particularly of theology, belongs undoubtedly to
Erasmus, from his comprehensive learning, his refinement of mind,
and his indefatigable industry. Just when, in 1516, he brought out a
remarkable edition of the New Testament, with a translation and
explanatory comments, which forms in fact an epoch in its history.
Luther recognised his high talents and services, and was anxious to
see him exercise the influence he deserved. He speaks of him in a
letter to Spalatin as 'our Erasmus.' But nevertheless he steadily
asserted his own independence, and reserved the right of free
judgment about him. Two things he lamented in him; first of all that
he lacked, as was the case, the comprehension of that fundamental
doctrine of St. Paul as to human sin and righteousness by faith; and
further, that he made even the errors of the Church, which should be
a source of genuine sorrow to every Christian, a subject of
ridicule. He sought, however, to keep his opinion of Erasmus to
himself, to avoid giving occasion to his jealous and unscrupulous
enemies to malign him.
[Illustration: Fig. 8.--ERASMUS. (From the Portrait by A. Dürer.)]
Bitterness and ill-will, aroused by Luther's words and works, were
already not wanting among the followers of the hitherto dominant
views of theology and the Church. But of any separation from the
Church, her authority and her fundamental forms, he had as yet no
intention or idea. Nor, on the other hand, did his enemies take
occasion to obtain sentence of expulsion against him, until he found
himself forced to conclusions which threatened the power and the
income of the hierarchy.
As yet he had not expressed or entertained a thought against the
ordinances which enslaved every Christian to the priesthood and its
power. He certainly showed, in his new doctrine of salvation, the
way which leads the soul, by simple faith in the message of mercy
sent to all alike, to its God and Saviour. But he had no idea of
disputing that everyone should confess to the priests, receive from
them absolution, and submit to all the penances and ordinances
ordained by the Church. And in that very doctrine of salvation he
knew that he was at one with Augustine, the most eminent teacher of
the Western Church, whilst the opposite views, however dominant in
point of fact, had never yet received any formal sanction of the
Church. Zealously, indeed, he soon exposed many practical abuses and
errors in the religious life of the Church. But hitherto these were
only such as had been long before complained of and combated by
others, and which the Church had never expressly declared as
essential parts of her own system. He gave vent freely to his
opinions about the superstitious worship of saints, about absurd
legends, about the heathen practice of invoking the saints for
temporal welfare or success. But praying to the saints to intercede
for us with God he still justified against the heresy originating
with Huss, and with fervour he invoked the Virgin from the pulpit.
He was anxious that the priests and bishops should do their duty
much better and more conscientiously than was the case, and that
instead of troubling themselves about worldly matters, they should
care for the good of souls, and feed their flocks with God's word.
He saw in the office of bishop, from the difficulties and
temptations it involved, an office fraught with danger, and one
therefore that he did not wish for his Staupitz. But the Divine
origin and Divine right of the hierarchical offices of pope, bishop,
and priest, and the infallibility of the Church, thus governed, he
held inviolably sacred. The Hussites who broke from her were to him
'sinful heretics.' Nay, at that time he used the very argument by
which afterwards the Romish Church thought to crush the principles
and claims of the Reformation, namely, that if we deny that power of
the Church and Papacy, any man may equally say that he is filled
with the Holy Ghost; everyone will claim to be his own master, and
there will be as many Churches as heads.
As yet he was only seeking to combat those abuses which were outside
the spirit and teaching of the Catholic Church, when the scandals of
the traffic in indulgences called him to the field of battle. And it
was only when in this battle the Pope and the hierarchy sought to
rob him of his evangelical doctrine of salvation, and of the joy and
comfort he derived from the knowledge of redemption by Christ, that,
from his stand on the Bible, he laid his hands upon the strongholds
of this Churchdom.
PART III.
THE BREACH WITH ROME, UP TO THE DIET OF WORMS. 1517-21.
CHAPTER I.
THE NINETY-FIVE THESES.
The first occasion for the struggle which led to the great division
in the Christian world was given by that magnificent edifice of
ecclesiastical splendour intended by the popes as the creation of
the new Italian art; by the building, in a word, of St. Peter's
Church, which had already been commenced when Luther was at Rome.
Indulgences were to furnish the necessary means. Julius II. had now
been succeeded on the Papal chair by Leo X. So far as concerned the
encouragement of the various arts, the revival of ancient learning,
and the opening up, by that means, to the cultivated and upper
classes of society of a spring of rich intellectual enjoyment, Leo
would have been just the man for the new age. But whilst actively
engaged in these pursuits and pleasures, he remained indifferent to
the care and the spiritual welfare of his flock, whom as Christ's
vicar he had undertaken to feed. The frivolous tone of morals that
ruled at the Papal see was looked upon as an element of the new
culture. As regards the Christian faith, a blasphemous saying is
reported of Leo, how profitable had been the fable of Christ. He had
no scruples in procuring money for the new church, which, as he
said, was to protect and glorify the bones of the holy Apostles, by
a dirty traffic, pernicious to the soul. Meanwhile, the popes were
not ashamed to appropriate freely to their own needs that indulgence
money, which was nominally for the Church and for other objects,
such as the war against the Turks.
In order to appreciate the nature of these indulgences and of
Luther's attack upon them, it is necessary first to realise more
exactly the significance which the teachers of the Church ascribed
to them. The simple statement that absolution or forgiveness of sins
was sold for money, must in itself be offence enough to any moral
Christian conscience; and we can only wonder that Luther proceeded
so prudently and gradually towards his object of getting rid of
indulgences altogether. But the arguments by which they were
explained and justified did not sound so simple or concise.
[Illustration: Leo X. (From his Portrait by Raphael.)]
Forgiveness of sins, it was maintained, must be gained by penance, namely,
by the so-called sacrament of penance, including the acts of private
confession and priestly absolution. In this the father-confessor promised
to him who had confessed his sins, absolution for them, whereby his guilt
was forgiven and he was freed from eternal punishment. A certain
contrition of the heart was required from him, even if only imperfect,
and proceeding perhaps solely from the fear of punishment, but which
nevertheless was deemed sufficient, its imperfection being supplied by
the sacrament. But though absolved, he had still to discharge heavy
burdens of temporal punishment, penances imposed by the Church, and
chastisements which, in the remission of eternal punishment, God in His
righteousness still laid upon him. If he failed to satisfy these penances
in this life, he must, even if no longer in danger of hell, atone for the
rest in the torments of the fire of purgatory. The indulgence now came in
to relieve him. The Church was content with easier tasks, as, at that
time, with a donation to the sacred edifice at Rome. And even this
was made to rest on a certain basis of right. The Church, it was
said, had to dispose of a treasure of merits which Christ and the
saints, by their good works, had accumulated before the righteous
God, and those riches were now to be so disposed of by Christ's
representatives, that they should benefit the buyer of indulgences.
In this manner penances which otherwise would have to be endured for
years were commuted into small donations of money, quickly paid off.
The contrition required for the forgiveness of sins was not
altogether ignored; as, for instance, in the official announcements
of indulgences, and in the letters or certificates granting
indulgences to individuals in return for payment. But in those
documents, as also in the sermons exhorting the multitude to
purchase, the chief stress, so far as possible, was laid upon the
payment. The confession, and with it the contrition, was also
mentioned, but nothing was said about the personal remission of sins
depending on this rather than on the money. Perfect forgiveness of
sins was announced to him who, after having confessed and felt
contrition, had thrown his contribution into the box. For the souls
in purgatory nothing was required but money offered for them by the
living. 'The moment the money tinkles in the box, the soul springs
up out of purgatory.' A special tariff was arranged for the
commission of particular sins, as, for example, six ducats for
adultery.
The traffic in indulgences for the building of St. Peter's was
delegated by commission from the Pope, over a large part of Germany, to
Albert, Archbishop of Mayence and Magdeburg. We shall meet with this
great prince of the Church, as now in connection with the origin of
the Reformation, so during its subsequent course. Albert, the brother
of the Elector of Brandenburg, and cousin of the Grand-Master of the
Teutonic Order in Prussia, stood in 1517, though only twenty-seven
years old, already at the head of those two great ecclesiastical
provinces of Germany; Wittenberg also belonged to his Magdeburg
diocese. Raised to such an eminence and so rapidly by good fortune,
he was filled with ambitious thoughts. He troubled himself little
about theology. He loved to shine as the friend of the new Humanistic
learning, especially of an Erasmus, and as patron of the fine arts,
particularly of architecture, and to keep a court the splendour of
which might correspond with his own dignity and love of art. For this
his means were inadequate, especially as, on entering upon his
Archbishopric of Mayence, he had had to pay, as was customary, a heavy
sum to the Pope for the _pallium_ given for the occasion. For
this he had been forced to borrow thirty thousand gulden from the
house of Fugger at Augsburg, and he found his aspirations incessantly
crippled by want of money and by debts. He succeeded at last in
striking a bargain with the Pope, by which he was allowed to keep half
of the profits arising from the sale of indulgences, in order to repay
the Fuggers their loan. Behind the preacher of indulgences, who announced
God's mercy to the paying believers, stood the agents of that commercial
house, who collected their share for their principals. The Dominican monk,
John Tetzel, a profligate man, whom the Archbishop had appointed his
sub-commissioner, drove the largest trade in this business with an
audacity and a power of popular declamation well suited to his work.
[Illustration: Fig. 10.--The Archbishop Albert. (From Dürer's
engraving.)]
Contemporaries have described the lofty and well-ordered pomp with
which such a commissioner entered on the performance of his exalted
duties. Priests, monks, and magistrates, schoolmasters and scholars,
men, women, and children, went forth in procession to meet him, with
songs and ringing of bells, with flags and torches. They entered the
church together amidst the pealing of the organ. In the middle of
the church, before the altar, was erected a large red cross, hung
with a silken banner which bore the Papal arms. Before the cross was
placed a large iron chest to receive the money; specimens of these
chests are still shown in many places. Daily, by sermons, hymns,
processions round the cross, and other means of attraction, the
people were invited and urged to embrace this incomparable offer of
salvation. It was arranged that auricular confession should be taken
wholesale. The main object was the payment, in return for which the
'contrite' sinners received a letter of indulgence from the
commissioner, who, with a significant reference to the absolute
power granted to himself, promised them complete absolution and the
good opinion of their fellow-men.
[Illustration: Fig. 11--Title-page of a Pamphlet Written at the
Beginning of the Reformation, with an Illustration showing the Sale
of Indulgences.]
We have evidence to show how Tetzel preached himself, and what he
wished these sermons on indulgences to be like. Calling upon the
people, he summoned all, and especially the great sinners, such as
murderers and robbers, to turn to their God and receive the medicine
which God, in his mercy and wisdom, had provided for their benefit.
St. Stephen once had given up his body to be stoned, St. Lawrence
his to be roasted, St. Bartholomew his to a fearful death. Would
they not willingly sacrifice a little gift in order to obtain
everlasting life? Of the souls in purgatory it was said, 'They, your
parents and relatives, are crying out to you, "We are in the
bitterest torments, you could deliver us by giving a small alms, and
yet you will not. We have given you birth, nourished you, and left
to you our temporal goods; and such is your cruelty that you, who
might so easily make us free, leave us here to lie in the flames."'
To all who directly or indirectly, in public or in private, should
in any way depreciate, or murmur against, or obstruct these
indulgences, it was announced that, by Papal edict, they lay already
by so doing under the ban of excommunication, and could only be
absolved by the Pope or by one of his commissioners.
After Luther had once ventured to attack openly this sale of
indulgences, it was admitted even by their defenders and the violent
enemies of the Reformer, that in those days 'greedy commissioners,
monks and priests, had preached unblushingly about indulgences, and
had laid more stress upon the money than upon confession,
repentance, and sorrow.' Christian people were shocked and
scandalised at the abuse. It was asked whether indeed God so loved
the money, that for the sake of a few pence He would leave a soul in
everlasting torments, or why the Pope did not out of love empty the
whole of purgatory, since he was willing to free innumerable souls
in return for such a trifle as a contribution to the building of a
church. But not one of them found it then expedient to incur the
abuse and slander of a Tetzel by a word spoken openly against the
gross misconduct the fruits of which were so important to the Pope
and the Archbishop.
Tetzel now came to the borders of the Elector of Saxony's dominion,
and to the neighbourhood of Wittenberg. The Elector would not allow
him to enter his territory, on account of so much money being taken
away, and accordingly he opened his trade at Jüterbok. Among those
who confessed to Luther, there were some who appealed to letters of
indulgence which they had purchased from him there.
In a sermon preached as early as the summer of 1516, Luther had
warned his congregation against trusting to indulgences, and he did
not conceal his aversion to the system, whilst admitting his doubts
and ignorance as to some important questions on the subject. He knew
that these opinions and objections would grieve the heart of his
sovereign; for Frederick, who with all his sincere piety, still
shared the exaggerated veneration of the middle ages for relics, and
had formed a rich collection of them in the Church of the Castle and
Convent at Wittenberg, which he was always endeavouring to enrich,
rejoiced at the Pope's lavish offer of indulgences to all who at an
annual exhibition of these sacred treasures should pay their
devotions at the nineteen altars of this church. A few years before
he had caused a 'Book of Relics' to be printed, which enumerated
upwards of five thousand different specimens, and showed how they
represented half a million days of indulgence. Luther relates how he
had incurred the Elector's displeasure by a sermon preached in his
Castle Church against indulgences: he preached, however, again
before the exhibition held in February 1517. The honour and
interest, moreover, of his university had to be considered, for that
church was attached to it, the professors were also dignitaries of
the convent, and the university benefited by the revenues of the
foundation.
[Illustration: FIG. l2.--THE CASTLE CHURCH. (From the Wittenberg
Book of Relics, 1509: the hill in the background is an addition by
the artist.)]
Luther was then, as he afterwards described himself, a young doctor
of divinity, ardent, and fresh from the forge. He was burning to
protest against the scandal. But as yet he restrained himself and
kept quiet. He wrote, indeed, on the subject to some of the bishops.
Some listened to him graciously; others laughed at him; none wished
to take any steps in the matter.
He longed now to make known to theologians and ecclesiastics
generally his thoughts about indulgences, his own principles, his
own opinions and doubts, to excite public discussion on the subject,
and to awake and maintain the fray. This he did by the ninety-five
Latin theses or propositions which he posted on the doors of the
Castle Church at Wittenberg, on October 31, 1517, the eve of All
Saints' Day and of the anniversary of the consecration of the
Church.
These theses were intended as a challenge for disputation. Such
public disputations were then very common at the universities and
among theologians, and they were meant to serve as means not only of
exercising learned thought, but of elucidating the truth. Luther
headed his theses as follows:--
_'Disputation to explain the virtue of indulgences._-In charity
and in the endeavour to bring the truth to light, a disputation on
the following propositions will be held at Wittenberg, presided over
by the Reverend Father Martin Luther.... Those who are unable to
attend personally may discuss the question with us by letter. In the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.'
It was in accordance with the general custom of that time that, on
the occasion of a high festival, particular acts and announcements,
and likewise disputations at a university, were arranged, and the
doors of a collegiate church were used for posting such notices.
The contents of these theses show that their author really had such
a disputation in view. He was resolved to defend with all his might
certain fundamental truths to which he firmly adhered. Some points
he considered still within the region of dispute; it was his wish
and object to make these clear to himself by arguing about them with
others.
Recognising the connection between the system of indulgences and the
view of penance entertained by the Church, he starts with
considering the nature of true Christian repentance; but he would
have this understood in the sense and spirit taught by Christ and
the Scriptures, as, indeed, Staupitz had first taught it to him. He
begins with the thesis 'Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He
says Repent, desires that the whole life of the believer should be
one of repentance.' He means, as the subsequent theses express it,
that true inward repentance, that sorrow for sin and hatred of one's
own sinful self, from which must proceed good works and
mortification of the sinful flesh. The Pope could only remit his sin
to the penitent so far as to declare that God had forgiven it.
Thus then the theses expressly declare that God forgives no man his
sin without making him submit himself in humility to the priest who
represents Him, and that He recognises the punishments enjoined by
the Church in her outward sacrament of penance. But Luther's leading
principles are consistently opposed to the customary announcements
of indulgences by the Church. The Pope, he holds, can only grant
indulgences for what the Pope and the law of the Church have
imposed; nay, the Pope himself means absolution from these
obligations only, when he promises absolution from all punishment.
And it is only the living against whom those punishments are
directed which the Church's discipline of penance enjoins: nothing,
according to her own laws, can be imposed upon those in another
world.
Further on, Luther declares, 'When true repentance is awakened in a
man, full absolution from punishment and sin comes to him without
any letters of indulgence.' At the same time he says that such a man
would willingly undergo self-imposed chastisement, nay, he would
even seek and love it.
Still, it is not the indulgences themselves, if understood in the
right sense, that he wishes to be attacked, but the loose babble of
those who sold them. Blessed, he says, be he who protests against
this, but cursed be he who speaks against the truth of apostolic
indulgences. He finds it difficult, however, to praise these to the
people, and at the same time to teach them the true repentance of
the heart. He would have them even taught that a Christian would do
better by giving money to the poor than by spending it in buying
indulgences, and that he who allows a poor man near him to starve
draws down on himself, not indulgences, but the wrath of God. In
sharp and scornful language he denounces the iniquitous trader in
indulgences, and gives the Pope credit for the same abhorrence for
the traffic that he felt himself. Christians must be told, he says,
that if the Pope only knew of it, he would rather see St. Peter's
Church in ashes, than have it built with the flesh and bones of his
sheep.
Agreeably with what the preceding theses had said about the true
penitent's earnestness and willingness to suffer, and the temptation
offered to a mere carnal sense of security, Luther concludes as
follows: 'Away therefore with all those prophets who say to Christ's
people "Peace, peace!" when there is no peace, but welcome to all
those who bid them seek the Cross of Christ, not the Cross which
bears the Papal arms. Christians must be admonished to follow Christ
their Master through torture, death, and hell, and thus through much
tribulation, rather than by a carnal feeling of false security, hope
to enter the kingdom of heaven.
The Catholics objected to this doctrine of salvation advanced by
Luther, that by trusting to God's free mercy and by undervaluing
good works, it led to moral indolence. But on the contrary, it was
to the very unbending moral earnestness of a Christian conscience,
which, indignant at the temptations offered to moral frivolity, to a
deceitful feeling of ease in respect to sin and guilt, and to a
contempt of the fruits of true morality, rebelled against the false
value attached to this indulgence money, that these Theses, the
germ, so to speak, of the Reformation, owed their origin and
prosecution. With the same earnestness he now for the first time
publicly attacked the ecclesiastical power of the Papacy, in so far
namely as, in his conviction, it invaded the territory reserved to
Himself by the Heavenly Lord and Judge. This was what the Pope and
his theologians and ecclesiastics could least of all endure.
On the same day that these theses were published, Luther sent a copy
of them with a letter to the Archbishop Albert, his 'revered and
gracious Lord and Shepherd in Christ.' After a humble introduction,
he begged him most earnestly to prevent the scandalising and
iniquitous harangues with which his agents hawked about their
indulgences, and reminded him that he would have to give an account
of the souls entrusted to his episcopal care.
The next day he addressed himself to the people from the pulpit, in
a sermon he had to preach on the festival of All Saints. After
exhorting them to seek their salvation in God and Christ alone, and
to let the consecration by the Church become a real consecration of
the heart, he went on to tell them plainly, with regard to
indulgences, that he could only absolve from duties imposed by the
Church, and that they dare not rely on him for more, nor delay on
his account the duties of true repentance.