Other complaints were due to the behaviour of Hans Polner, the son

of Luther’s sister, who was studying theology, but who nevertheless

frequently returned home the worse for drink and was given to

breaking out into acts of violence.[658] Another nephew, Fabian

Kaufmann, seems to have been the culprit who caused Luther to grumble

that someone in his own house had been secretly betrothed at the

very time when, in his bitter controversy with the lawyers, he was

denouncing such “clandestine marriages” as invalid.[659] Finally,

one of the servant-girls, named Rosina, gave great scandal by her

conduct, concerning which Luther has some strong things to say in his

letters.[660]

The quondam Augustinian priory at Wittenberg, which has often been

praised as the ideal of a Protestant parsonage, fell considerably

short, in point of fact, even of Luther’s own standard. There lacked

the supervision demanded by the freedom accorded to the numerous

inmates, whether relatives or boarders, of the famous “Black

monastery.”

4. The Table-Talk and the First Notes of the same

At the social gatherings of his friends and pupils, Luther was fond

of giving himself up unrestrainedly to mirth and jollity. His genius,

loquacity and good-humour made him a “merry boon companion,” whose

society was much appreciated. Often, it is true, he was very quiet and

thoughtful. His guests little guessed, nay, perhaps he himself was not

fully aware, how often his cheerfulness and lively sallies were due

to the desire to repress thereby the sad and anxious thoughts which

troubled him.

Liveliness and versatility, imagination and inventiveness, a good

memory and a facile tongue were some of the gifts with which nature

had endowed him. To these already excellent qualities must be added

that depth of feeling which frequently finds expression in utterances

of surprising beauty interspersed among his more profane sayings.

Unfortunately, owing to his incessant conflicts and to the trivialities

to which his pen and tongue were so prone, this better side of his

character did not emerge as fully as it deserved.

In order to become better acquainted with the conditions amid which

Luther lived at Wittenberg, we must betake ourselves to a room in the

former Augustinian convent, where we shall find him seated, after

the evening meal, amidst friends such as Melanchthon, Bugenhagen

and Jonas, surrounded by eager students—for the most part boarders

in his house, the former “Black monastery”—and strangers who had

travelled to the little University town attracted by the fame of the

Evangel. There it is that he imparts his views and relates his interior

experiences in all confidence. He was perfectly aware that what he said

was being noted down, and sometimes suggested that one saying or the

other should be carefully committed to writing.[661] The older group

of friends (1529-1535), to whom we owe relations of the Table-Talk,

comprised Conrad Cordatus, Veit Dietrich, Johann Schlaginhaufen,

Anton Lauterbach, Hieronymus Weller and Anton Corvinus; such of these

as remained with him from 1536 to 1539 form the middle group; the

last (1540-1546) was chiefly made up of Johann Mathesius, Caspar

Heydenreich, Hieronymus Besold, Master Plato, Johann Stoltz and Johann

Aurifaber. Apart from these there were a few who came into close,

personal contact with Luther, for instance, George Rörer, who assisted

him in translating the Bible and who is one of Aurifaber’s authorities

for the Table-Talk.[662]

In his twelfth Sermon on the “Historien von des ehrwürdigen ...

Manns Gottes Martini Lutheri,” etc., Mathesius was later on to write

that he had enjoyed at his table “many good colloquies and chats”

and had tasted “much excellent stuff in the shape of writings and

counsels.”[663] Luther himself refers incidentally to these social

evenings in his famous saying, that, while he “drank Wittenberg beer

with his friends Philip and Amsdorf,” God, by his means, had weakened

the Papacy and brought it nigh to destruction.[664] The wine was

drunk—at least on solemn occasions—from the famous bowl known as

the “Catechismusglas,” on which were painted in sections, placed one

below the other and separated by three ridges, various portions of

Christian doctrine: at the top the Ten Commandments, in the middle the

Creed and Our Father, and at the bottom the whole Catechism (probably

the superscriptions and numbers of the questions in the Catechism). We

read in the Table-Talk, that, on one occasion, Johann Agricola could

get only as far as the Ten Commandments at one draught, whereas Luther

was able to empty the bowl right off down to the very dregs, i.e.

“Catechism and all.”[665]

For Luther’s sayings given in what follows we have made use of the

so-called original versions of the Table-Talk recently edited by

various Protestant scholars, viz. the Diaries of Lauterbach and

Cordatus, the notes of Schlaginhaufen and the Collections made by

Mathesius and found in the “Aufzeichnungen” edited by Loesche and in

the “Tischreden (Mathesius)” published more recently still by Kroker,

the Leipzig librarian.[666]

The objection has frequently been raised that the Table-Talk ought

not to be made use of as a reliable source of information for the

delineation of Luther’s person. It is, however, remarkable that the

chapters which are favourable to Luther are referred to and exploited

in Protestant histories, only that which is disagreeable being usually

excluded as historically inaccurate. The fact is that we have merely

to comply conscientiously with the rules of historical criticism when

utilising the information contained in the Table-Talk, which, owing

to its fulness and variety, never fails to rivet attention. These

rules suggest that we should give the preference to those statements

which recur frequently under a similar form; that we should not take

mere questions, put forward by Luther simply to invite discussion

and correction, as conveying his real thought; that we consult the

original notes, if possible those made at the time of the conversation,

and that, where there is a discrepancy between the accounts (a rare

occurrence), we should prefer those which date from before the time

when Luther’s pupils arranged and classified his sayings according to

subjects. The chronological arrangement of Luther’s sayings has thereby

suffered, and here and there the text has been altered. For this reason

the Latin tradition, as we have it, for instance, from Lauterbach’s

pen,[667] ranks before the German version, which is of slightly later

date. Kroker’s new edition, when complete, promises to be the best.

If the rules of historical criticism are followed in this and other

points there is no reason why the historian should not thankfully avail

himself of this great fount of information, which the first collectors

themselves extolled as the most valuable authority on the spirit of

their master “of pious and holy memory,”[668] and as likely to prove

both instructive and edifying to a later generation. The doubt as to

the reliability of the notes has been well answered by Kroker: “Such

distrust, so far as the original documents are concerned, can now

no longer stand. In his rendering of Luther’s words Mathesius, and

likewise Heydenreich, Besold and Weller, whose notes his Collection

also embodies, does not differ substantially from the older table

companions, Dietrich, Schlaginhaufen and Lauterbach. All these men did

their utmost to render Luther’s sayings faithfully and to the best of

their knowledge and ability.”[669]

The spontaneous character of the Table-Talk gives it a peculiar value

of its own. “These [conversations] are children of the passing moment,

reliable witnesses to the prevailing mood” (Adolf Hausrath). In

intercourse with intimates our ideas and feelings express themselves

much more spontaneously and naturally than where the pen of the

letter-writer is being guided by reflection, and seeks to make a

certain impression on the mind of his reader. But if even letters are

no faithful index to our thought, how much less so are prints, intended

for the perusal of thousands and even to outlive the writer’s age? On

the other hand, it is true that the deliberation which accompanies the

use of the pen, imparts, in a certain sense, to the written word a

higher value than is possessed by the spoken word. We should, however,

expect to find in a man occupying such a position as Luther’s a

standard sufficiently high to ensure the presence of deliberation and

judgment even in ordinary conversation.

Among the valuable statements made by Luther, which on account of their

very nature were unsuited for public utterance but have been faithfully

transmitted in the Table-Talk, we have, for instance, certain

criticisms of friends and even patrons in high places. Such reflections

could not well be uttered save in the privacy of his domestic circle,

but, for this very reason, they may well be prized by the historian.

Then we have his candid admissions concerning himself, for instance,

that his fear lest the Landgrave of Hesse should fall away from the

cause of the Evangel constituted one of the motives which led him to

sanction this Prince’s bigamy. Then, again, there is the account of

his mental trouble, due to certain external events, of the influence

of biblical passages, old memories, etc. Finally, we have his strange

counsels concerning resistance to temptation, his own example held

up as a consolation to the faint-hearted, to those who wavered in the

faith or were inclined to despair; his excuse for a “good drink,” his

curious recipe for counteracting the evil done by witches at home, and

many other statements of an intimate nature which were quite unsuitable

for public writings or even for letters. All this, and much more,

offers the unprejudiced observer an opportunity for knowing Luther

better. It is true that all is not the Word of God; this Luther himself

states in a passage which has been wrongly brought forward in excuse of

the Table-Talk: “I must admit that I say many things which are not the

Word of God, when speaking outside my office of preacher, at home at

meals, or elsewhere and at other times.”[670]

The value of the Table-Talk (always assuming the use of the oldest

and authentic version) is enhanced if we take into consideration the

attitude assumed with regard to it by learned Protestant writers of

earlier times. As an instance of a certain type we may take Walch,

the scholarly editor of the important Jena edition of Luther’s works

prized even to-day.[671] He was much annoyed at the publication of

the Table-Talk, just because it furnished abundant material for a

delineation of Luther, i.e. for that very reason for which it is

esteemed by the modern historian. It was unjust, he says, and “quite

wrong to reveal what ought to have been buried in silence, to say

nothing of the opportunity thus afforded the Papists for abuse and

calumny of Luther’s person and life.” At most—he continues in a

tone in which no present-day historian would dare to speak—mere

“selections” from the Table-Talk “which could give no offence” ought to

have been published, but thus to bring everything ruthlessly to light

was a “perversion of the human will.” Fortunately, however, it was not

possible even so to prove much against Luther, for, “though the sayings

emanated from him originally,[672] still, they remained mere sayings,

spoken without deliberation and written down without his knowledge or

consent.”[673]

When he made this last statement Walch was not aware that Luther’s

utterances were committed to writing in his presence and with his

full “consent and knowledge” even, for instance, when spoken in the

garden. “Strange as it may appear to us, these men were usually busy

recording Luther’s casual words, just as though they were seated in a

lecture-hall.”[674] Once, in 1540, Catherine Bora said jestingly to

Luther, when they were at table with several industrious students:

“Doctor, don’t teach them without being paid; they have already written

down quite a lot; Lauterbach, however, has written the most and all

that is best.” To which the Doctor replied; “I have taught and preached

gratis for thirty years, why then should I now begin to take money for

it in my old age?”[675]

The style of the original notes of the Table-Talk in many instances

shows plainly that they were made while the conversation was actually

in progress; even the frequent defects in the construction of the

original notes, which have now been published, prove this.[676]

In 1844 E. Förstemann in his edition of the Table-Talk, as against

Walch, had expressed himself strongly in favour of its correctness; he

even went so far as to remark, with all the prejudice of an editor for

his own work, that these conversations constituted the most important

part of Luther’s spiritual legacy, and that here “the current of his

thoughts flows even more limpidly than elsewhere.”[677] Walter Köhler

likewise, speaking of the Table-Talk edited by Kroker, considers it a

“reliable source.”[678]

Of Johann Aurifaber, who was the first to publish the Table-Talk in

German, at Eisleben in 1566, and through whose edition it was most

widely known, F. X. Funk said in 1882: “As his devotion to Luther led

him to make public all the words and sayings which had come to his

knowledge, the book, in spite of its defective plan, is important for

the history of the Reformer and his time. Its value has always been

admitted, though from different standpoints; of this its numerous

editions are a proof.”[679] The defect in the arrangement consists in

the classifying of the sayings handed down according to the different

subjects, whereby they lose their historical setting. The large, new

edition of the Table-Talk now planned, will necessarily abandon this

confusing arrangement. It has been proved, however, that Aurifaber had

a reliable version to work on. “He most probably took for the basis of

his edition Lauterbach’s preliminary work,”[680] says Kawerau. This

collection of Lauterbach’s has been incorporated, for the most part,

in the Halle MS. edited by Bindseil under the title “_Colloquia_,”

etc.[681] In addition to this, Aurifaber made use of the notes by

Cordatus, Schlaginhaufen, Veit Dietrich, Mathesius and others. Kawerau

draws attention to the fact, that the coarseness to be found in the

German edition is not solely due to the compiler, as some of Luther’s

apologists had urged, but really belongs to the original texts. Gross

sayings of the sort not only gave no offence to Aurifaber, but he

delights to repeat them at great length. Yet in certain instances he

appears to have watered down and modified his text, as one investigator

has proved by a comparison with the notes of Cordatus.[682]

_The Pith of the New Religion. Doubts on Faith._

We shall begin by giving some practical theological examples out of the

Table-Talk which may serve further to elucidate certain of Luther’s

ideas already referred to, e.g. those concerning temptations and

their remedy, particularly that most serious temptation of all, viz.

regarding the saving power of fiducial faith, which, so Luther thinks,

comes through our “weakness.” To this, the tender spot and at the same

time cardinal point of his teaching and practical morality, Luther

returns again and again, with a frankness for which indeed we may be

grateful. Owing to the nature of the conversations and to his habitual

loquacity it may happen that some of the trains of thought and modes of

expression resemble those already quoted elsewhere; this, however, is

no reason for neglecting them, for they testify anew to the ideas of

which his mind was full, and also to the state of habitual depression

in which he lived.

“Early this morning the devil held a disputation with me on Zwingli,

and I learned that a full head is better able to wrangle with the

devil than an empty one.... Hence,” he says, “eat and drink and live

well, for bodies tempted in this way must have plenty of food and

drink; but lewdsters, and those tempted by sensual passion, ought to

fast.”[683]

“For those who are tempted fasting is a hundred times worse than

eating and drinking.”[684]

“When a man is tempted, or is in the company of those who are tempted,

let him put to death Moses [i.e. the Law] and cast stones at him; but,

when he recovers, the Law must be preached to him also; a man who is

troubled must not have new trouble heaped upon him.”[685]

“In the monastery the words ‘just and justice’ fell like a thunderbolt

upon my conscience. I was terrified when I heard it said: ‘He is

just, and He will punish.’”[686] [But now I know]: “Our justice is

a relative justice [a foreign righteousness]. Though I am not good,

yet Christ is good.”[687] “Hence I say to the devil: I, indeed, am a

sinner, but Christ is righteous.”[688]

Many admissions reveal his altered feelings, the inconstancy and

sudden changes to which he was so prone.

“I do not always take pleasure in the Word. Were I always so disposed

towards the Word of God as I was formerly, then I should indeed be

happy. Even dear St. Paul had to complain in this regard, for he

bewails another law which wars in his members. But is the Word to be

considered false because it does not happen to suit me?”[689]

“Unless we wrap ourselves round with this God, Who has become both Man

and Word, Satan will surely devour us.” “Hence the aim of the Prophets

and the Apostles, viz. to make us hold fast to the Word.” “It costs

God Almighty much to manifest His power and mercy even to a few. He

must slay many kings before a few men learn to fear Him, and He must

save many a rascal and many a prostitute before even a handful of

sinners learn to believe in Him.”[690]

“So soon as I say: ‘Yes, indeed, I am a poor sinner,’ Christ replies,

‘But I died for you, I baptised you and I teach you daily.’ ... Ever

bear this in mind, that it is not Christ Who affrights you, but Satan;

believe this as though God Himself were speaking.”[691]

“Is it not a curse that we should magnify our sins so greatly? Why do

we not exalt our baptism just as we exalt our inheritance? A princely

baby remains a prince even though he should s—— in his cradle. A

child does not cease being heir to his father’s property for having

soiled his father’s habiliments. If only we could see our way to make

much of our inheritance and patrimony before God!... Yet children

call God quite simply their Father.”[692]

“You are not the only man to be tempted; I also am tempted and have

bigger sins piled on my conscience than you and your fathers. I would

rather I had been a procurer or highwayman than that I should have

offered up Christ in the Mass for so long a time.”[693]

The last words may serve as an introduction to a remarkable series of

statements concerning the religious practices of the ancient Church.

As these words show, he does not shrink from dishonouring by the most

unworthy comparisons even those acts and doctrines which, by reason of

their religious value, were dear to the whole Church of antiquity and

had been regarded by some of the purest and most exalted souls as their

only consolation in this life.

Elsewhere he says of the sacrifice of the Mass: “The blind priestlings

run to the altar like pigs to the trough”; this, “the shame of our

scarlet woman of Babylon, must be exposed.” “I maintain that all

public houses of ill-fame, strictly forbidden by God though they be,

yea, manslaughter, thieving, murder and adultery, are not so wicked

and pernicious as this abomination of the Popish Mass.”[694]

He says of the Catholic preacher: “Where the undefiled Evangel is not

preached, the whoremonger is far less a sinner than the preacher, and

the brothel less wicked than the church; that the procurer should

daily make prostitutes of virgins, honest wives and cloistered nuns,

is indeed frightful to hear of; still, his case is not so bad as that

of the Popish preacher.”[695]

The Church’s exhortation to make use of fasting as a remedy in the

struggle against sin—in which counsel she had the support both of

Holy Scripture and of immemorial experience—was thus described by

Luther: “No eating or drinking, gluttony or drunkenness can be so bad

as fasting; indeed, it would be better to swill day and night rather

than to fast for such a purpose,” so “ludicrous and shameful in God’s

sight” was such fasting.[696]

“Confession” (as made by Catholics), Luther asserted in 1538, “is

less to be condoned than any infamy.” “The devil assails Christians

with pressing temptations, most of all on account of their

confessions.”[697]

The life of the Saints in the Catholic Church, he says elsewhere,

consisted in “their having prayed much, fasted, laboured, taken the

discipline, slept on hard pallets and worn poor clothing, a kind of

holiness which any dog or pig might practise any day.”[698]

He voices his abhorrence of the monastic life in figures such as the

following: “Discalced Friars are lice placed by the devil on God

Almighty’s fur coat, and Friars-preacher are the fleas of His shirt.”

“I believe the Franciscans to be possessed of the devil, body and

soul,”[699] and, reverting once again to his favourite image, he adds

elsewhere: “Neither the dens of evil women nor any secret sins are

so pernicious as those rules and vows which the devil himself has

invented.”[700]

We have to proceed to the uninviting task of collecting other sayings

of Luther’s, particularly from the Table-Talk, which are characteristic

of his more than plain manner of speaking, and to pass in review the

somewhat peculiar views held by him on matters sexual. As it is to be

feared that the delicacy of some of our readers will be offended, we

may point out that those who wish are at liberty to skip the pages

which follow and to continue from Section 7 of the present chapter

which forms the natural sequence of what has gone before. Certainly

no one would have had just cause for complaint had one of the guests

at Luther’s table chosen to take leave when the conversation began

to turn on matters distasteful to him. The historian, however, is

obliged to remain. True to his task he may not close his ears to what

is said, however unpleasant the task of listener. He must bear in mind

that Cordatus, one of Luther’s guests, in the Diary he wrote praises

Luther’s Table-Talk as “more precious than the oracles of Apollo.”

This praise Cordatus bestows not only on the “serious theological

discourses,” but also expressly on those sayings which were apparently

merely frivolous.[701] Another pupil, Mathesius, who was also

frequently present, assures us he never heard an improper word from

Luther’s lips.[702] This he writes in spite of the fact, that one of

the first anecdotes he relates, embellished with a Latin verse from

Philo, contains an unseemly jest,[703] and that he himself immediately

after tells how Luther on one occasion told the people from the pulpit

that: “Ein weiter Leib und zeitiger Mist ist gut zu scheiden”; he even

mentions that Luther was carried away to express himself yet more

plainly concerning the ventral functions, till he suddenly reined in

and corrected himself. The truth is that Mathesius was an infatuated

admirer of Luther’s.

As a matter of fact, terms descriptive of the lower functions of the

body again and again serve Luther not only to express his anger and

contempt, but as comparisons illustrative of his ideas, whether on

indifferent matters or on the highest and most sacred topics. It is

true that what he said was improper rather than obscene, coarse rather

than lascivious. Nor, owing to the rough and uncouth character of the

age and the plainness of speech then habitual, were his expressions,

taken as a whole, so offensive to his contemporaries as to us. Yet,

that Luther should have cultivated this particular sort of language so

as to outstrip in it all his literary contemporaries, scarcely redounds

to his credit. His readers and hearers of that day frequently expressed

their disgust, and at times his language was so strong that even

Catherine Bora was forced to cry halt.

As a matter of course the devil came in for the largest share of this

kind of vituperation, more particularly that devil who was filling

Luther with anxiety and trouble of mind. The Pope and his Catholic

opponents came a good second. Luther was, however, fond of spicing in

the same way even his utterances on purely worldly matters.

“When we perceive the devil tempting us,” he says, “we can easily

overcome him by putting his pride to shame and saying to him: ‘Leck

mich im Arss,’ or ‘Scheiss in die Bruch und hengs an den Halss.’”[704]

This counsel he actually put in practice: “On May 7, 1532, the devil

was tormenting me in the afternoon, and thoughts troubled me, such as

that a thunderbolt might kill me, so I replied to him: ‘Leck mich im

Arss, I am going to sleep, not to hold a disputation.’”[705] When the

devil would not cease urging his sins against him he had a drastic

method of effectually disposing of his importunity.[706]

He relates in the Table-Talk, in 1536, the “artifice” by which the

parish-priest of Wittenberg, his friend Johann Bugenhagen (Pomeranus),

had put the devil to flight. It was a question of the milk which the

devil had bewitched by means of sorceresses or witches. Luther says:

“Dr. Pommer’s plan was the best, viz. to plague them [the witches]

with filth and stir it into the milk so that everything stank. For

when his [Pommer’s] cows also lost their milk, he promptly took a

vessel filled with milk, relieved himself in it, poured out the

contents and said: ‘There, devil, eat that.’ After that he was no

longer deprived of the milk.”[707] Before this his wife and the maids

had worried themselves to death trying “to get the butter to come”—as

we read in another account of this occurrence in a version of the

Table-Talk which is more accurately dated—but all to no purpose.

“Then Pommer came up, mocked at the devil and eased himself in the

churn. Thereupon Satan ceased his tricks, for he is proud and cannot

bear to be laughed at.”[708]

Less formal, according to him, was the action of another individual,

who had put Satan to flight by a “_crepitus ventris_.”[709]

Still, all temptations of the devil are profitable to us, so Luther

says, for, if we were always at peace, the devil himself “would treat

us ignominiously,”[710] for he is full of nothing but deception and

filthiness. Luther, like many of his contemporaries and later writers,

was well acquainted with the devil’s private life, and convinced

that “devil’s prostitutes: ‘_cum quibus Sathan coiret_’” actually

existed.[711]

As the filthy details of the expulsion of the devil from the churn

are omitted in Lauterbach’s Diary, certain defenders of Luther

think they are warranted in drawing from this particular passage

the conclusion that the Table-Talk had been polluted by “unseemly”

additions in Aurifaber’s and other later versions (above, p. 224

f.) which “must not be laid to the charge of the Reformer.” “Not

Luther in his domestic circle, but the compilers and collectors of

the much-discussed Table-Talk, Aurifaber in particular, were rude,

obscene and vulgar.” The publication of the original documents, for

instance, by Kroker in 1903, has, however, shown the first version of

the Table-Talk to be even more intolerably coarse, and confirmed the

substantial accuracy of the text of the older German Table-Talk at

present under discussion.[712] Preger, the editor of Schlaginhaufen’s

notes, rightly repudiated such evasions even in 1888, together with

the alleged proofs urged by apologists. “We want to see Luther,” he

says, “under the actual conditions in which he moved, and in all his

own native rudeness.”[713] Kroker also pointed out that even the first

writers of the Table-Talk made use of certain signs in their notes

(e.g. × or |) in lieu of certain words employed by Luther which they

felt scrupulous about writing.[714]

“The entire lack of restraint with which Luther expresses himself,” a

Protestant writer says of the Table-Talk edited by Kroker, “makes a

remarkable impression on the reader of to-day, more particularly when

we consider that his wife and children were among the audience....

In the Table-Talk we meet with numerous statements, some of them

far-fetched, which are really coarse.... Although we can explain

Luther’s love of obscenities, still, this does not hinder us from

deploring his use of such and placing it to his discredit. It is

true,” the same writer proceeds, “that Luther is never lascivious or

merely frivolous.”[715] As regards the latter assertion the texts to

be adduced will afford a better opportunity of judging. That at any

rate in the instances already mentioned Luther did not intentionally

wish to excite his hearers’ passions is clear, and the fact has been

admitted even by Catholic polemics who have really read his writings

and Table-Talk.[716]

* * * * *

An alarming number of dirty expressions concerning the Pope and

Catholicism occur in the Table-Talk.

“Were the Pope to cite me to appear before him,” Luther says, “I

should not go. I should s—— upon the summons because he is hostile

to me; but were I summoned by a Council, then I should go.”[717]

Elsewhere, however, he says of the Council: “I should like, during my

lifetime, to see a Council deal with the matter, for they would give

one another a fine pummelling, and us a splendid reason for writing

against them.”[718]

What was the origin of the Pope’s authority? “I see plainly

whence the Pope came; he is the vomit of the lazy, idle Lords

and Princes.”[719]—“Then the Pope burst upon the world with his

pestilential traditions and bound men by his carnal ordinances, his

rules and Masses, to his filthy, rotten law.”[720]

Such unseemly expressions occur at times in conjunction with thoughts

intended to be sublime. “I hold that God has just as much to do in

bringing things back to nothingness as He has in creating them. This

he [Luther] said, referring to human excrement. He also said: I am

astounded that the dung-hill of the world has not reached the very

sky.”[721]—“He took his baby into his arms and perceived that it was

soiling its diaper. His remark was that the small folk by messing

themselves and by their howling and screaming earn their food and drink

just as much as we deserve heaven by our good works.”[722] He even

brings the holy name of God into conjunction with one such customary

vulgar expression. “I too have laid down rules and sought to be master,

Aber der frum Gott hat mich in sein Arss fahren lassen und meyn

Meystern ist nichts worden.”[723]

“There are many students here, but I do not believe there is one who

would allow himself to be anointed [by the Papists], or open his mouth

for the Pope to fill it with his filth; unless, perhaps, Mathesius or

Master Plato.”[724]

In his strange explanation of how far God is or is not the author of

evil, he says: Semei wished to curse and God merely directed his curse

against David (2 Kings xvi. 10). “God says: ‘Curse him and no one

else.’ Just as if a man wishes to relieve himself I cannot prevent him,

but should he wish to do so on the table here, then I should object and

tell him to betake himself to the corner.”[725]

“The Pope is a cuckoo who gobbles the eggs of his Church and vomits the

Cardinals.”[726]

It is not surprising that in Luther’s conversations on non-theological,

i.e. on secular subjects, similar and even more offensive expressions

occur.

He thinks that we “feed on the bowels of the peasants,” for they “expel

the stones” which produce the trees which produce the fruit on which we

feed.[727]—He has a joke at the expense of an unlearned man who had

mistaken the Latin equivalent of the German word “Kunst” for a common

German term: “Wenn man eynem auff die Kunst küsset so bescheist er

sich.”[728]

Speaking of women who had the impertinence to wish for a share in the

government, he says: “The ‘Furtzlecher’ want to rule and we suffer for

it; they really should be making cheese and milking the cows.”[729]

Elsewhere he says to the preachers: “We never seek to please anybody

nor to make our mouth the ‘Arschloch’ of another.”[730]

“Those who now grudge the preachers of the Word their bread will

persecute us until we end by disgracing ourselves. Then ... ‘_adorabunt

nostra stercora_.’” By a natural transition of ideas he goes on to

say: “They will be glad to get rid of us, and we shall be glad to

be out of them. We are as ready to part as ‘ein reiffer Dreck und

ein weit Arssloch.’”[731]—“Rather than let them have such a work [a

conciliatory writing requested by the inhabitants of Augsburg] I would

‘in einen Becher scheissen und bissen,’ that they might have whereof to

eat and drink.”[732]

“The lawyers scream [when we appropriate Church property]: ‘_Sunt bona

ecclesiae!_’ ... Yes [I say], but where are we to get our bread? ‘We

leave you to see to that,’ they say. Yes, the devil may thank them for

that. We theologians have no worse enemies than the lawyers.... We here

condemn all jurists, even the pious ones, for they do not know what

‘_ecclesia_’ means.... If a jurist wishes to dispute with you about

this, say to him: ‘Listen, my good fellow, on this subject no lawyer

should speak till he hears a sow s——, then he must say: ‘Thank you,

Granny dear, it is long since I listened to a sermon.’”[733]

After the above there is no need of giving further instances of the

kind of language with which opponents within his fold had to put

up from Luther. It will suffice to mention the poem “_De merda_”

with which he retaliated on the satirist Lemnius for some filthy

verses,[734] and the following prediction to his Zwickau opponents:

“When trouble befalls them, whenever it may be, they will ‘in die Hosen

scheissen und ein solchen Gestanck anrichten’ that nobody will be able

to tarry in their neighbourhood.”[735]

It is also difficult for us to tarry any longer over these texts,

especially as in what follows we shall meet with others of a similar

character.[736]

* * * * *

Not to do injustice to the general character of Luther’s Table-Talk,

we must again lay stress on the fact, that very many of his evening

conversations are of irreproachable propriety. We may peruse many

pages of the notes without meeting anything in the least offensive,

but much that is both fine and attractive. Events of the day, history,

nature, politics or the Bible, form in turn the subject-matter of the

Table-Talk, and much of what was said was true, witty and not seldom

quite edifying.

Still, the fact remains that filthy talking and vulgarity came so

natural to Luther as to constitute a questionable side to his character.

Even when writing seriously, and in works intended for the general

public, he seems unable to bridle his pen.

In the book “Wider das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teuffel gestifft,” he

introduces, for instance, the following dialogue: “We have enacted

in our Decretals [say the Papists] that only the Pope shall summon

Councils and appoint to benefices. [Luther]: My friend, is that really

true? Who commanded you to decree this? [Answer]: Be silent, you

heretic, what proceeds from our mouth must be hearkened to. [Luther]:

So you say; but which mouth do you mean? Da die Förze ausfahren? To

such an opinion you are welcome. Or that into which good Corso [wine]

is poured? Da scheiss ein Hund ein! [Answer]: Out upon you, you

shameless Luther, is it thus you talk to the Pope? [Luther]: Out upon

you rather, you rude asses and blasphemous desperadoes, to address the

Emperor and the Empire in such a manner! How can you venture to insult

and slight four such great Councils and the four greatest Christian

Emperors ‘umb euer Förze und Drecketal [_sic_] willen?’ What reason

have you to think yourselves anything but big, rude, senseless fools

and donkeys?”[737]

Before this he says in the same work, in personal abuse of Pope Paul

III.: “Dear donkey, don’t lick! Oh, dear little Pope-ass, were you to

fall and some filth escape you, how all the world would mock at you

and say: Lo, how the Pope-ass has disgraced itself!... Oh, fiendish

Father, do not be unmindful of your great danger.”[738]

“Dr. Luther is a rough sort of fellow; were he to hear that, he would

rush in booted and spurred like a countryman and say: The Pope had

been thrust into the Church by all the devils from hell.”[739] “‘As

much as the sun is greater than the moon, so does the Pope excel the

Emperor.’ ... Hearken, reader; if you forget yourself and your nether

garments have to be fumigated with incense and juniper, from such a

reeking sin the Most Holy Father would never absolve you.”[740]

“‘Whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.’ ‘Whatsoever’

means [according to the Catholics] all that there is on earth,

churches, bishops, emperors, kings and possibly ‘alle Förze aller Esel

und sein eigen Förze auch.’ Ah, dear brother in Christ, put it down

to my credit when I speak here and elsewhere so rudely of the cursed,

noxious, ungainly monster at Rome. Whoever knows my mind must admit

that I am far, far too lenient, and that no words or thoughts of mine

could repay his shameful and desperate abuse of the Word and Name of

Christ, our beloved Lord and Saviour.”[741]

“I must cease,” Luther says elsewhere in his “Wider das Bapstum,”

after speaking of a Decretal, “I cannot bear to wallow any longer in

this blasphemous, hellish, devils’ filth and stench; let someone else

read it. Whoever wants to listen to God’s Word, let him read Holy

Writ; whoever prefers to listen to the devil’s word, let him read the

Pope’s Drecket [_sic_] and Bulls,” etc.[742]

We must here consider more closely the statement, already alluded

to, made by some of Luther’s apologists. To remove the unfavourable

impression left on the mind of present-day readers by his unbridled

language an attempt has been made to represent it as having been quite

the usual thing in Luther’s day.

It is true that, saving some expressions peculiar to the Saxon peasant,

such obscenity is to be met with among the neo-Humanist writers of that

age, both in Germany and abroad. Even Catholic preachers in Germany,

following the manners of the time, show but scant consideration for the

delicacy of their hearers when speaking of sexual matters or of the

inferior functions of the human body. It is quite impossible to set up

a definite standard of what is becoming, which shall apply equally to

every age and every state of civilisation. But if Luther’s defenders

desire to exonerate him by comparing him with others, it is clear that

they are not justified in adducing examples taken from burlesque,

popular writers, light literature, or even from certain writings of

the Humanists. The filth contained in these works had been denounced

by many a better author even in that age. Luther, as already explained

(vol. ii., p. 150 f.), must not be judged by a profane standard, but

by that which befits a writer on religion and the spiritual life, a

reformer and founder of a new religion. The fact remains that it is

impossible to instance any popular religious writer who ever went so

far as, or even approached, Luther in his lack of restraint in this

particular. Luther, in the matter of licentiousness of language, stands

out as a giant apart. The passages to be quoted later on marriage and

the sexual question will make this still more apparent.

His own contemporaries declared aloud that he stood quite alone in

the matter of coarseness and in his incessant use of vituperation;

Catholics, such as Dungersheim, and opponents of the Catholic Church

like Bullinger, testify alike in the strongest terms to the impression

made upon them. Some of their numerous statements will be quoted below.

We may, however, remark that the severest strictures of all came from

Sir Thomas More, who, for all his kindliness of disposition, condemned

most indignantly the filthy language of the assailant of King Henry

VIII. of England. The untranslatable passage may be read in its Latin

original in the note below.[743] Caspar Schatzgeyer, another learned

opponent of Luther’s, and likewise a man of mild temper, also rebuked

Luther with great vehemence for the ignoble and coarse tone he was

wont to employ against theological adversaries; he plainly hints that

no one within living memory had brought into the literary arena such

an arsenal of obscene language. Luther behaved “like a conqueror,

assured by the spirit that he was able to walk upon the sea.” Spirits

must, however, be tried. “The triumphal car of the victor can only be

awarded to Luther and his followers if it be admitted that to triumph

is synonymous with befouling the face and garments of all foes with

vituperative filth (‘_conviciorum stercora_’), so that they are forced

to save themselves by flight from the intolerable stench and dirt.

Never in any literary struggle has such an array of weapons of that

sort been seen.” One could well understand how such a man inspired fear

amongst all who valued the cleanliness of their garments. Well might he

be left to triumph with his assertion, which his adversaries would be

the last to gainsay, “that everything which is not Gospel, must make

room for the Gospel.”[744]

Some have gone so far as to say, that the tone of the popular religious

writers of the period, from 1450-1550, was frequently so vulgar that

there is little to choose between them and Luther. This is an unfair

and unhistorical aspersion on a sort of literature then much read and

which, though now little known, is slowly coming to its due owing

to research. We may call to mind the long list of those in whose

writings Luther could have found not merely models of decency and good

taste—which might well have shamed him—but also much else worthy of

imitation; for instance, Thomas à Kempis, Jacob Wimpfeling, Johann

Mensing, Johann Hoffmeister, Michael Vehe, Johann Wild, Matthias

Sittard, Caspar Schatzgeyer, Hieronymus Dungersheim, Ulrich Krafft,

Johannes Fabri, Marcus de Weida, Johann Staupitz, and lastly Peter

Canisius, who also belonged practically to this period. Many other

popular religious authors might be enumerated, but it is impossible to

instance a single one among them who would have descended to the level

of the language employed by Luther.

Moreover, those secular writers of that day whose offensive crudities

have been cited in excuse of Luther, all differed from him in one

particular, viz. they did not employ these as he did, or at least

not to the same extent, as controversial weapons. It is one thing

to collect dirty stories and to dwell on them at inordinate length

in order to pander to the depraved taste of the mob; it is quite

another to pelt an enemy with filthy abuse. Hate and fury only make a

vulgar tone more repulsive. There are phrases used by Luther against

theological adversaries which no benevolent interpretation avails to

excuse. Such was his rude answer to the request of the Augsburgers

(above, p. 233), or, again, “I would rather advise you to drink

Malvasian wine and to believe in Christ alone, and leave the monk (who

through being a monk has denied Christ) to swill water or ‘seinen

eigenen Urin.’”[745]

It may occur to one to plead in justification the language of the

peasants of that day, and it must be conceded, that, even now, in

certain districts the countryman’s talk is such as can only be

appreciated in the country. The author of a book, “Wie das Volk

spricht” (1855), who made a study of the people in certain regions not

particularly remarkable for culture or refinement, says quite rightly

in his Preface, that his examples are often quite unsuited “for the

ears of ladies, and those of a timorous disposition”; “the common

people don’t wear kid gloves.” This writer was dealing with the present

day, yet one might ask what indulgence an author would find were he to

draw his language from such a source, particularly did he happen to

be a theologian, a spiritual writer or a reformer? Luther undoubtedly

savours of his time, but his expressions are too often reminiscent

of Saxon familiarity; for instance, when he vents his displeasure

in the words: “The devil has given his mother ‘eine Fliege in den

Hintern.’”[746]

Luther was fond of introducing indelicacies of this sort even into

theological tracts written in Latin and destined for the use of

the learned, needless to say to the huge scandal of foreigners not

accustomed to find such coarseness in the treatment of serious

subjects. Under the circumstances we can readily understand the

indignation of men like Sir Thomas More (above, p. 237, n. 1) at the

rudeness of the German.

Luther’s example proved catching among his followers and supporters.

A crowd of writers became familiar with the mention of subjects on

which a discreet silence is usually observed, and grew accustomed to

use words hitherto banished from polite society. So well were Luther’s

works known that they set the tone. His favourite pupils, Mathesius

and Aurifaber, for instance, seem scarcely aware of the unseemliness

of certain questions discussed. Sleidan, the well-known Humanist

historian, described the obscene woodcuts published by Luther and

Lucas Cranach in 1545 in mockery of the Papacy, “as calmly as though

they had been no worse than Mr. Punch’s kindly caricatures.”[747]

Luther actually told the theologians and preachers (and his words

carried even more weight with secular writers, who were less hampered

by considerations of decency) that “those who filled the office of

preacher must hold the filth of the Pope and the bishops up to their

very noses,”[748] for the “Roman court, and the Pope who is the bishop

of that court, is the devil’s bishop, the devil himself, nay, the

excrement which the devil has ... into the Church.”[749]

One of Luther’s most ardent defenders in the present day, Wilhelm

Walther of Rostock, exonerates Luther from any mere imitation of the

customary language of the peasants or the monks, for, strange to say,

some have seen in his tone the influence of monasticism; he claims

originality for Luther. “Such a mode of expression,” he says, “was

not in Luther’s case the result of his peasant extraction or of his

earlier life. For, far from becoming gradually less noticeable as

years went on, it is most apparent in his old age.”[750] It is plain

that Luther’s earlier Catholic life cannot be held responsible, nor

the monastic state of celibacy, often misjudged though it has been in

certain quarters. As regards the reassertion in him of the peasant’s

son, we are at liberty to think what we please. At any rate, we cannot

but endorse what Walther says concerning the steady growth of the

disorder; in all likelihood the applause which greeted his popular

and vigorous style reacted on Luther and tended to confirm him in his

literary habits. As years passed he grew more and more anxious that

every word should strike home, and delighted in stamping all he wrote

with the individuality of “rude Luther.” Under the circumstances it was

inevitable that his style should suffer.

Walther thinks he has found the real explanation in Luther’s “energy

of character” and the depth of his “moral feeling”; here, according to

him, we have cause of his increasingly lurid language; Luther, “in his

wish to achieve something,” and to bring “his excellent ideas” home

to the man in the street, of set purpose disregarded the “esthetic

feelings of his readers” and his own “reputation as a writer.”

Melanchthon, says Walther, “took offence at his smutty language.

Luther’s reply was to make it smuttier still.”

This line of defence is remarkable enough to deserve to be chronicled.

From the historical standpoint, however, we should bear in mind that

Luther had recourse to “smuttiness” not merely in theological and

religious writings or when desirous of producing some effect with “his

excellent ideas.” The bad habit clings to him quite as much elsewhere,

and disfigures his most commonplace conversations and casual sallies.

Thus the psychological root of the problem lies somewhat deeper. We

shall not be far wrong in believing, that a man who moved habitually

amidst such impure imaginations, and gave unrestrained expression to

statements of a character so offensive, bore within himself the cause.

Luther was captain in a violent warfare on vows, religious rules,

celibacy and many other ordinances and practices of the Church, which

had formerly served as barriers against sensuality. Consciously or

unconsciously his rude nature led him to cast off the fetters of shame

which had once held him back from what was low and vulgar. After all,

language is the sign and token of what is felt within. It was chiefly

his own renunciation of the higher standard of life which led him to

abandon politeness in speech and controversy, and, in word and imagery,

to sink into ever lower depths. Such is most likely the correct answer

to the psychological problem presented by the steady growth of this

questionable element in his language.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (“Werke,” 7, p. 401) has a few words,

not devoid of admiration for Luther, which, however, apply to the

whole man and not merely to his habits of speech. They may well serve

as a transition to what follows: “Luther’s merit lies in this, that

he possessed the courage of his sensuality—in those days tactfully

described as the ‘freedom of the Gospel.’”

5. On Marriage and Sexuality

Christianity, with its doctrine of chastity, brought into the heathen

world a new and vital element. It not only inculcated the controlling

of the sexual instinct by modesty and the fear of God, but, in

accordance with the words of our Saviour and His Apostle, St. Paul, it

represented voluntary renunciation of marriage and a virgin life as

more perfect and meritorious in God’s sight. What appeared so entirely

foreign to the demands of nature, the Christian religion characterised

as really not only attainable, but fraught with happiness for those

who desired to follow the counsel of Christ and who trusted in the

omnipotence of His grace. The sublime example of our Lord Himself, of

His Holy Mother, and of the disciple whom Jesus loved, also St. Paul’s

praise for virginity and the magnificent description in the Apocalypse

of the triumphal throng of virgins who follow the Lamb, chanting a

song given to them alone to sing—all this inspired more generous

souls to tread with cheerfulness the meritorious though thorny path of

continence. Besides these, countless millions, who did not choose to

live unwedded, but were impelled by their circumstances to embrace the

married state, learnt in the school of Christianity, with the help of

God’s grace, that in matrimony too it was possible for them to serve

God cheerfully and to gain everlasting salvation.

_The Necessity of Marriage._

After having violated his monastic vows, Luther not only lost a true

appreciation of the celibate state when undertaken for the love of

God, but also became disposed to exaggerate the strength of the

sexual instinct in man, to such an extent, that, according to him,

extra-matrimonial misconduct was almost unavoidable to the unmarried.

In this conviction his erroneous ideas concerning man’s inability for

doing what is good play a great part. He lays undue stress on the

alleged total depravity of man and represents him as the helpless

plaything of his evil desires and passions, until at last it pleases

God to work in him. At the same time the strength of some of his

statements on the necessity of marriage is due to controversial

interests; to the desire to make an alluring appeal to the senses

of those bound by vows or by the ecclesiastical state, to become

unfaithful to the promises they had made to the Almighty. Unfortunately

the result too often was that Luther’s invitation was made to serve as

an excuse for a life which did not comply even with the requirements of

ordinary morality.

“As little as it is in my power,” Luther proclaims, “that I am not a

woman, so little am I free to remain without a wife.”[751]

“It is a terrible thing,” he writes with glaring exaggeration to

Albert, Archbishop of Mayence, “for a man to be found without a wife

in the hour of death; at the very least he should have an earnest

purpose of getting married. For what will he say when God asks him: ‘I

made you a man, not to stand alone but to take a wife; where then is

your wife?’”[752]

To another cleric who fancied himself compelled to marry, he writes

in the year of his own wedding: “Your body demands and needs it; God

wills it and insists upon it.”[753]

“Because they [the Papists] rejected marriage [!],” he says, “and

opposed the ordinance of God and the clear testimony and witness of

Scripture, therefore they fell into fornication, adultery, etc., to

their destruction.”[754]

“Just as the sun has no power to stop shining, so also is it implanted

in human nature, whether male or female, to be fruitful. That God

makes exceptions of some, as, for instance, on the one hand of the

bodily infirm and impotent, and on the other of certain exalted

natures, must be regarded in the same light as other miracles....

Therefore it is likewise not my will that such should marry.”[755]

“A man cannot dispense with a wife for this reason: The natural

instinct to beget children is as deeply implanted as that of eating

and drinking.” Hence it is that God formed the human body in the

manner He did, which Luther thereupon proceeds to describe to his

readers in detail.[756]

“Before marriage we are on fire and rave after a woman.... St. Jerome

writes much of the temptations of the flesh. Yet that is a trivial

matter. A wife in the house will remedy that malady. Eustochia

[Eustochium] might have helped and counselled Jerome.”[757]

One sentence of Luther’s, which, as it stands, scarcely does honour

to the female sex, runs as follows: “The Word and work of God

is quite clear, viz. that women were made to be either wives or

prostitutes.”[758]

By this statement, which so easily lends itself to misunderstanding,

Luther does not mean to put women in the alternative of choosing

either marriage or vice. In another passage of the same writing he

says distinctly, what he repeats also elsewhere: “It is certain that

He [God] does not create any woman to be a prostitute.” Still, it

is undeniable that in the above passage, in his recommendation of

marriage, he allows himself to be carried away to the use of untimely

language.—In others of the passages cited he modifies his brutal

proclamation of the force of the sexual craving, and the inevitable

necessity of marriage, by statements to quite another effect, though

these are scarcely noticeable amid the wealth of words which he

expends in favour of man’s sensual nature; for instance, he speaks of

the “holy virgins,” who “live in the flesh as though not of the flesh,

thanks to God’s sublime grace.”[759] “The grace of chastity”[760]

was, he admits, sometimes bestowed by God, yet he speaks of the

person who possesses it as a “prodigy of God’s own”;[761] such a one

it is hard to find, for such a man is no “natural man.”[762] Such

extravagant stress laid on the fewness of these exceptions might,

however, be refuted from his own words; for instance, he urges a woman

whose husband is ill to do her best with the ordinary grace of God

bestowed on her as on all others, and endure with patience the absence

of marital intercourse. “God is much too just to rob you of your

husband by sickness in this way without on the other hand taking away

the wantonness of the flesh, if you on your part tend the sick man

faithfully.”[763]

That for most men it is more advisable to marry than to practise

continence had never been questioned for a moment by Catholics, and if

Luther had been speaking merely to the majority of mankind, as some

have alleged he was, his very opponents could not but have applauded

him. It is, however, as impossible to credit him with so moderate

a recommendation as it is to defend another theory put forward by

Protestants, viz. that his sole intention was to point out “that the

man in whom the sexual instinct is at work cannot help being sensible

of it.”

His real view, as so frequently described by himself, is linked up to

some extent with his own personal experiences after he had abandoned

the monastic life. It can scarcely be by mere chance that a number of

passages belonging here synchronise with his stay at the Wartburg, and

that his admission to his friend Melanchthon (“I burn in the flames of

my carnal desires ... ‘_ferveo carne, libidine_’”)[764] should also

date from this time.

In an exposition often quoted from his course of sermons on

Exodus, Luther describes with great exaggeration the violence and

irresistibility of the carnal instinct in man, in order to conclude

as usual that ecclesiastical celibacy is an abomination. His strange

words, which might so readily be misunderstood, call for closer

consideration than is usually accorded them; they, too, furnished a

pretext for certain far-fetched charges against Luther.

With the Sixth Commandment, says Luther, God “scolds, mocks and

derides us”; this Commandment shows that the world is full of

“adulterers and adulteresses,” all are “whore-mongers”; on account

of our lusts and sensuality God accounted us as such and so gave us

the Sixth Commandment; to a man of good conduct it would surely be an

insult to say: “My good fellow, see you keep your plighted troth!”

God, however, wished to show us “what we really are.” “Though we may

not be so openly before the world [i.e. adulterers and whore-mongers],

yet we are so at heart, and, had we opportunity, time and occasion, we

should all commit adultery. It is implanted in all men, and no one is

exempt ... we brought it with us from our mother’s womb.”[765] Luther

does not here wish to represent adultery as a universal and almost

inevitable vice, or to minimise its sinfulness. Here, as so often

elsewhere, he perceives he has gone too far and thereupon proceeds

to explain his real meaning. “I do not say that we are so in very

deed, but that such is our inclination, and it is the heart that God

searches.” Luther is quite willing to admit: “There are certainly many

who do not commit fornication, but lead quite a good life”; “this is

due either to God’s grace, or to fear of Master Hans” (the hangman).

“Our reason tells us that fornication, adultery and other sins are

wrong.... All these laws are decreed by nature itself,” just like the

Commandment not to commit murder.[766] “But we are so mad,” “when once

our passions are aroused, that we forget everything.” Hence we cannot

but believe, that “even though our monks vowed chastity twice over,”

they were adulterers in God’s sight. The conclusion he arrives at is:

“Such being our nature, God forbids no one to take a wife.”

The whole passage is only another instance of Luther’s desire to

magnify the consequences of original sin without making due allowance

for the remedies provided by Christianity, the sacraments in

particular. It is also in keeping with his usual method of clothing

his attack on Catholicism in the most bitter and repulsive language, a

method which gradually became a second nature to him.

In insisting on the necessity of marriage, Luther does not stop

to consider that the Church of antiquity, for all her esteem for

matrimony, was ever careful to see that the duties and interests of

the individual, of the State and of the Church were respected, and

not endangered by hasty marriages. Luther himself was not hampered by

considerations of that sort, whether in the case of priests, monks or

laymen. The unmarried state revolted him to such a degree, that he

declares nothing offended his “ears more than the words nun, monk and

priest,” and that he looked on marriage as “a Paradise, even though the

married pair lived in abject poverty.”[767] A couple, who on account

of their circumstances should hesitate to marry, he reproaches with a

“pitiful want of faith.” “A boy not later than the age of twenty, and

a girl when she is from fifteen to eighteen years of age [ought to

marry]. Then they are still healthy and sound, and they can leave it to

God to see that their children are provided for.”[768]

If we are to take him at his word, then a cleric ought to marry merely

to defy the Pope. “For, even though he may have the gift so as to be

able to live chastely without a wife, yet he ought to marry in defiance

of the Pope, who insists so much on celibacy.”[769]

_The “Miracle” of Voluntary and Chaste Celibacy._

Of the celibate and continent life Luther had declared (above, p.

242-3) that practically only a miracle could render it possible.[770]

If we compare his statements on virginity, we shall readily see how

different elements were warring within him. On the one hand he is

anxious to uphold the plain words of Scripture, which place voluntary

virginity above marriage. On the other, his conception of the great

and, without grace, irresistible power of concupiscence draws him in

the opposite direction. Moreover, man, being devoid of free will, and

incapable of choosing of his own accord the higher path, in order not

to fall a prey to his lusts, must resolutely embrace the married state

intended by God for the generality of men. Then, again, we must not

discount the change his views underwent after his marriage with a nun.

In view of the “malady” of “the common flesh,” he says of the man who

pledges himself to voluntary chastity, that “on account of this malady,

marriage is necessary to him and it is not in his power to do without

it; for his flesh rages, burns and tends to be fruitful as much as

that of any other man, and he must have recourse to marriage as the

necessary remedy. Such passion of the flesh God permits for the sake

of marriage and for that of the progeny.”[771]—And yet, according to

another passage in Luther’s writings, even marriage is no remedy for

concupiscence: “Sensual passion (‘_libido_’) cannot be cured by any

remedy, not even marriage, which God has provided as a medicine for

weak nature. For the majority of married people are adulterers, and

each says to the other in the words of the poet: ‘Neither with nor

without you can I live.’”[772] “Experience teaches us, that, in the

case of many, even marriage is not a sufficient remedy; otherwise there

would be no adultery or fornication, whereas, alas, they are only too

frequent.”[773]

It is merely a seeming contradiction to his words on the miraculous

nature of virginity when Luther says on one occasion: “_Many_ are to

be met with who have this gift; I also had it, though with many evil

thoughts and dreams,”[774] for possibly, owing to his reference to

himself, modesty led him here to represent this rare and miraculous

gift as less unusual. Here he speaks of “many,” but usually of the

“few.” “We find so few who possess God’s gift of chastity.”[775]

“They are rare,” he says in his sermon on conjugal life, “and among

a thousand there is scarcely one to be found, for they are God’s own

wonder-works; no man may venture to aspire to this unless God calls him

in a special manner.”[776]

Luther acknowledges that those in whom God works this “miracle”—who,

while remaining unmarried, do not succumb to the deadly assaults

of concupiscence—were to be esteemed fortunate on account of the

happiness of the celibate state. It would be mere one-sidedness to

dwell solely upon Luther’s doctrine of the necessity and worth of

marriage and not to consider the numerous passages in which he speaks

in praise of voluntary and chaste celibacy.

He says in the sermon on conjugal life: “No state of life is to be

regarded as more pleasing in the sight of God than the married state.

The state of chastity is certainly better on earth as having less of

care and trouble, not in itself, but because a man can give himself

to preaching and the Word of God [1 Cor. vii. 34].... In itself it is

far less exalted.”[777] In the following year, 1523, in his exposition

of 1 Corinthians, chapter vii., St. Paul’s declaration leads him to

extol virginity: “Whoever has grace to remain chaste, let him do so

and abstain from marriage and not take upon himself such trouble

unless need enforce it, as St. Paul here counsels truly; for it is

a great and noble freedom to be unmarried and saves one from much

disquietude, vexation and trouble.”[778] He even goes so far as to

say: “It is a sweet, joyous and splendid gift, for him to whom it

is given, to be chaste cheerfully and willingly,”[779] and for this

reason in particular “is it a fine thing,” because it enables us the

better to serve the “Christian Churches, the Evangel and the preaching

of the Word”; this is the case “when you refrain from taking a wife so

as to be at peace and to be of service to the Kingdom of Heaven.” The

preacher, he explains, for instance, was not expected to ply a trade,

for which reason also he received a stipend for preaching. “Hence,

whoever wishes to serve the Churches and to enjoy greater quiet, would

do well to remain without a wife, for then he would have neither

wife nor child to support.”[780] “Whoever has the gift of being able

to live without a wife, is an angel on earth and leads a peaceful

life.”[781]

In this way Luther comes practically to excuse, nay, even to eulogise,

clerical celibacy; elsewhere we again find similar ideas put forward.

In his Latin exposition of Psalm cxxviii. he says: “There must be

freedom either to remain single or to marry. Who would force the

man who has no need to marry to do so? Whoever is among those who

are able ‘to receive this word,’ let him remain unmarried and glory

in the Lord.... They who can do without marrying do well (_recte

faciunt_) to abstain from it and not to burden themselves with

the troubles it brings.”[782] And again: “Whoever is set free by

such a grace [a ‘special and exalted grace of God’], let him thank

God and obey it.”[783] For “if we contrast the married state with

virginity, chastity is undoubtedly a nobler gift than marriage, but,

still, marriage is as much God’s gift—so St. Paul tells us—as

chastity.”[784] Compared with the chastity of marriage, “virgin

chastity is more excellent (_virginalis castitas excellentior

est_).”[785] “Celibacy is a gift of God and we commend both this and

the married state in their measure and order. We do not extol marriage

as though we should slight or repudiate celibacy.”[786]

Usually Luther represents virginity as not indeed superior but quite

equal to the married state: “To be a virgin or a spouse is a different

gift; both are equally well pleasing to God.”[787] As we might expect,

we find the warmest appreciation of celibacy expressed before Luther

himself began to think of marriage, whereas, subsequent to 1525,

his strictures on celibacy become more frequent. In 1518, without

any restriction, he has it that virginity is held to be the highest

ornament and “an incomparable jewel”; in the case of religious,

chastity was all the more precious because “they had of their own

free will given themselves to the Lord.”[788] In the following year,

comparing the married state with virginity, he says that “virginity is

better,” when bestowed by the grace of God.[789]

“The breach with the past caused by his marriage,” says M. Rade, was

“greater and more serious” than any change effected in later years in

matrimonial relationship.[790] By his advocacy of marriage, as against

celibacy and his glorification of family life, Luther brought about “a

reversal of all accepted standards.”[791] Rade, not without sarcasm,

remarks: “There is something humorous in the way in which Luther in his

exposition of 1 Corinthians vii., which we have repeatedly had occasion

to quote, after praising virginity ever passes on to the praise of the

married state.”[792] It is quite true that his interpretation seems

forced, when he makes St. Paul, in this passage, extol continency, not

on account of its “merit and value in God’s sight,” but merely for the

“tranquillity and comfort it insures in this life.”[793] To Luther it

is of much greater interest, that St. Paul should be “so outspoken in

his praise of the married state and should allude to it as a Divine

gift.” He at once proceeds to prove from this, that “the married state

is the holiest state of all, and that certain states had been falsely

termed ‘religious’ and others ‘secular’; for the reverse ought to be

the case, the married state being truly religious and spiritual.”[794]

Luther’s animus against celibacy became manifest everywhere. He refused

to give sufficient weight to the Bible passages, to the self-sacrifice

so pleasing to God involved in the unmarried state, or to its merits

for time and for eternity. It is this animus which leads him into

exaggeration when he speaks of the necessity of marriage for all men,

and to utter words which contradict what he himself had said in praise

of celibacy.

He paints in truly revolting colours the moral abominations of the

Papacy, exaggerating in unmeasured terms the notorious disorders

which had arisen from the infringement of clerical celibacy. His

controversial writings contain disgusting and detailed descriptions of

the crimes committed against morality in the party of his opponents;

the repulsive tone is only rivalled by his prejudice and want of

discrimination which lead him to believe every false report or stupid

tale redounding to the discredit of Catholicism.

His conception of the rise of clerical celibacy is inclined to be

hazy: “The celibacy of the clergy commenced in the time of Cyprian.”

Elsewhere he says that it began “in the time of Bishop Ulrich, not more

than five hundred years ago.”[795]

He assures us that “St. Ambrose and others did not believe that they

were men.”[796] “The infamous superstition [of celibacy] gave rise to,

and promoted, horrible sins such as fornication, adultery, incest ...

also strange apparitions and visions.... What else could be expected of

monks, idle and over-fed pigs as they were, than that they should have

such fancies?”[797]—In the Pope’s Ten Commandments there was, so he

said, a sixth which ran: “Thou shalt not be unchaste, but force them

to be so” (by means of vows and celibacy), and a ninth: “Thou shalt not

covet thy neighbour’s wife, but say, it is no sin.”[798]

“Were all those living under the Papacy kneaded together, not one would

be found who had remained chaste up to his fortieth year. Yet they

talk much of virginity and find fault with all the world while they

themselves are up to their ears in filth.”[799]—“It pleases me to see

the Saints sticking in the mud just like us. But it is true that God

allows nature to remain, together with the spirit and with grace.”[800]

_Luther’s Loosening of the Marriage Tie._

Luther, advocate and promoter of marriage though he was, himself did

much to undermine its foundations, which must necessarily rest on

its indissolubility and sanctity as ordained by Christ. In the six

following cases which he enumerates he professes to find sufficient

grounds for dissolving the marriage tie, overstepping in the most

autocratic fashion the limits of what is lawful to the manifest

detriment of matrimony.

He declares, first, that if one or other of the married parties should

be convicted of obstinately refusing “to render the conjugal due, or to

remain with the other,” then “the marriage was annulled”; the husband

might then say: “If you are unwilling, some other will consent; if the

wife refuse, then let the maid come”; he had the full right to take

an Esther and dismiss Vasthi, as King Assuerus had done (Esther ii.

17).[801] To the remonstrances of his wife he would be justified in

replying: “Go, you prostitute, go to the devil if you please”;[802] the

injured party was at liberty to contract a fresh union, though only

with the sanction of the authorities or of the congregation, while the

offending party incurred the penalty of the law and might or might not

be permitted to marry again.[803]

The words: “If you won’t ... then let the maid come” were destined

to become famous. Not Catholics only, but Protestants too, found in

them a stone of offence. As they stand they give sufficient ground

for scandal. Was it, however, Luther’s intention thereby to sanction

relations with the maid outside the marriage bond? In fairness the

question must be answered in the negative. Both before and after the

critical passage the text speaks merely of the dissolution of the

marriage and the contracting of another union; apart from this, as is

clear from other passages, Luther never sanctioned sexual commerce

outside matrimony. Thus, strictly speaking, according to him, the

husband would only have the right to threaten the obstinate wife

to put her away and contract a fresh union with the maid. At the

same time the allusion to the maid was unfortunate, as it naturally

suggested something different from marriage. In all probability it

was the writer’s inveterate habit of clothing his thought in the most

drastic language at his command that here led him astray. It may be

that the sentence “Then let the maid come” belonged to a rude proverb

which Luther used without fully adverting to its actual meaning, but

it has yet to be proved that such a proverb existed before Luther’s

day; at any rate, examples can be quoted of the words having been used

subsequently as a proverb, on the strength of his example.[804]—It

was on this, the first ground for the dissolution of marriage,

that Luther based his decision in 1543, when one of the Professors

turned preacher and his wife refused to follow him to his post at

Frankfort-on-the-Oder, saying that “she wasn’t going to have a parson.”

Luther then wrote: “I should at once leave her and marry another,”

should she categorically refuse compliance; in reality the authorities

ought to coerce her, but unfortunately no authority “with ‘_executio_’

existed, having power over the ‘_ministerium_.’”[805]

Secondly, according to Luther, the adultery of one party justified

the other in assuming that the “guilty party was already _ipso facto_

divorced”; “he can then act as though his spouse had died,” i.e. marry

again, though Christian considerations intimate that he should wait at

least six months.[806]

Thirdly, if one party “will not suffer the other to live in a Christian

manner,” then the other, finding a separation from bed and board of

no avail, has the right to “make a change,” i.e. to contract another

union. “But how,” he asks, “if this new spouse should turn out ill and

try to force the other to live like a heathen, or in an unchristian

manner, or should even run away; what then, supposing this thing went

on three, four or even ten times?” Luther’s answer to the conundrum is

the same as before: “We cannot gag St. Paul, and therefore we cannot

prevent those who desire to do so from making use of the freedom he

allows.” Luther’s conviction was that the well-known passage in 1

Corinthians vii. 15 sanctioned this dangerous doctrine.[807]

Fourthly, if subsequent to the marriage contract one party should prove

to be physically unfit for matrimony, then, according to Luther, the

marriage might be regarded as dissolved without any ecclesiastical

suit solely by “conscience and experience.” He would in that case

advise, he says, that the woman, with the consent of the man, should

enter into carnal relations with someone else, for instance, with

her partner’s brother, for her husband would really be no husband at

all, but merely a sort of bachelor life-partner; this marriage might,

however, be kept secret and the children be regarded as those of the

putative father.[808] Even where it was not a question of impotence

but of leprosy Luther decided in much the same way, without a word

of reference to any ecclesiastical or legal suit: should the healthy

party “be unable or unwilling to provide for the household” without

a fresh marriage, and should the sick party “consent willingly to a

separation,” then the latter was simply to be looked upon as dead, the

other party being free to re-marry.[809]

To these grounds of separation Luther, however, added a fifth. He

declared, on the strength of certain, biblical passages, that marriage

with the widow of a brother—for which, on showing sufficient grounds,

it was possible to obtain a dispensation in the Catholic Church—was

invalid under all circumstances, and that therefore any person married

on the strength of such a dispensation might conclude a fresh union. At

first, in 1531, such was not his opinion, and he declared quite valid

the marriage of Henry VIII. with his sister-in-law Catherine of Aragon,

which was the outcome of such a dispensation; later on, however,

in 1536, on ostensibly biblical grounds he discarded the Catholic

view.[810]

His views, not here alone but elsewhere, on matrimonial questions,

were founded on an altogether peculiar interpretation of Scripture; he

sought in Scripture for the proofs he wished to find, interpreting the

Sacred Text in utter disregard of the teaching of its best authorised

exponents and the traditions of the Church. The consequences of such

arbitrary exegetical study he himself described characteristically

enough. Speaking of Carlstadt, who, like him, was disposed to lay

great stress on Old-Testament examples and referring to one of his

matrimonial decisions which he was not disposed to accept, Luther

exclaims: “Let him [Carlstadt] do as he pleases; soon we shall have

him introducing circumcision at Orlamünde and making Mosaists of them

all.”[811]

Yet he was perfectly aware of the danger of thus loosening the marriage

tie. He feared that fresh grounds for severing the same would be

invented day by day.[812] On one occasion he exclaims, as though to

stifle his rising scruples, that it was clear that all God cares for is

“faith and confession.... It does not matter to Him whether you dismiss

your wife and break your word. For what is it to Him whether you do

so or not? But because you owe a duty to your neighbour,” for this

reason only, i.e. on account of the rights of others, it is wrong.[813]

These strange words, which have often been misunderstood and quoted

against Luther by polemics, were naturally not intended to question the

existence of the marriage tie, but they are dangerous in so far as they

do not make sufficient account of the nature of the commandment and the

sin of its breach.

Most momentous of all, however, was the sixth plea in favour of

divorce, an extension of those already mentioned. Not merely the

apostasy of one party or his refusal to live with the Christian party,

justified the other to contract a fresh union, but even should he

separate, or go off, “for any reason whatever, for instance, through

anger or dislike.” Should “husband or wife desert the other in this

way, then Paul’s teaching [!] was to be extended so far ... that the

guilty party be given the alternative either to be reconciled or to

lose his spouse, the innocent party being now free and at liberty to

marry again in the event of a refusal. It is unchristian and heathenish

for one party to desert the other out of anger or dislike, and not to

be ready patiently to bear good and ill, bitter and sweet with his

spouse, as his duty is, hence such a one is in reality a heathen and no

Christian.”[814]

Thus did Luther write, probably little dreaming of the incalculable

confusion he was provoking in the social conditions of Christendom by

such lax utterances. Yet he was perfectly acquainted with the laws

to the contrary. He declaims against “the iniquitous legislation of

the Pope, who, in direct contravention of this text of St. Paul’s (1

Cor. vii. 15), commands and compels such a one, under pain of the loss

of his soul, not to re-marry, but to await either the return of the

deserter or his death,” thus “needlessly driving the innocent party

into the danger of unchastity.” He also faces, quite unconcernedly, the

difficulty which might arise should the deserter change his mind and

turn up again after his spouse had contracted a new marriage. “He is

simply to be disregarded and discarded ... and serve him right for his

desertion. As matters now are the Pope simply leaves the door open for

runaways.”[815]

The new matrimonial legislator refuses to see that he is paving the

way for the complete rupture of the marriage tie. If the mere fact of

one party proving disinclined to continue in the matrimonial state

and betaking himself elsewhere is sufficient to dissolve a marriage,

then every barrier falls, and, to use Luther’s own words of the Pope a

little further, “it is no wonder that the world is filled with broken

pledges and forsaken spouses, nay, with adultery which is just what the

devil is aiming at by [such a] law.”[816]

On the other hand, Luther, in his reforms, attacks those matrimonial

impediments which, from the earliest Christian times, had always

been held to invalidate marriages. The marriage of a Christian with

a heathen or a Jew he thinks perfectly valid, though, as was to be

expected, he does not regard it with a friendly eye. We are not to

trouble at all about the Pope’s pronouncements concerning invalidity:

“Just as I may eat and drink, sleep and walk, write and treat, talk and

work with a pagan or a Jew, a Turk or a heretic, so also can I contract

a marriage with him. Therefore pay no heed to the fool-laws forbidding

this.” “A heathen is just as much a man or woman as St. Peter, St. Paul

or St. Lucy.”[817]

M. Rade, the Protestant theologian quoted above, considers that on

the question of divorce Luther took up “quite a different attitude,”

and “opened up new prospects” altogether at variance with those of

the past.[818] By his means was brought about a “complete reversal of

public opinion on the externals of sexual life”; in this connection

to speak of original sin was in reality mere “inward contradiction.”

Such were, according to him, the results of the “Christian freedom”

proclaimed by Luther.[819]

August Bebel, in his book “Die Frau und der Sozialismus,” says of

Luther: “He put forward, regarding matrimony, views of the most radical

character.”[820] “In advocating liberty with regard to marriage, what

he had in mind was the civil marriage such as modern German legislation

sanctions, together with freedom to trade and to move from place to

place.”[821] “In the struggle which it now wages with clericalism

social democracy has the fullest right to appeal to Luther, whose

position in matrimonial matters was entirely unprejudiced. Luther

and the reformers even went further in the marriage question, out of

purely utilitarian motives and from a desire to please the rulers

concerned, whose powerful support and lasting favour they were desirous

of securing and retaining. Landgrave Philip I. of Hesse, who was well

disposed towards the reformation,” etc. etc.[822]

_Polygamy._

Sanctity of marriage in the Christian mind involves monogamy. The

very word polygamy implies a reproach. Luther’s own feelings at the

commencement revolted against the conclusions which, as early as

1520, he had felt tempted to draw from the Bible against monogamy,

for instance, from the example of the Old Testament Patriarchs,

such as Abraham, whom Luther speaks of as “a true, indeed a perfect

Christian.”[823] It was not long, however, before he began to incline

to the view that the example of Abraham and the Patriarchs did, as a

matter of fact, make polygamy permissible to Christians.

In September, 1523, in his exposition on Genesis xvi., he said without

the slightest hesitation: “We must take his life [Abraham’s] as an

example to be followed, provided it be carried out in the like faith”;

of course, it was possible to object, that this permission of having

several wives had been abrogated by the Gospel; but circumcision

and the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb had also been abrogated, and

yet they “are not sins, but quite optional, i.e. neither sinful nor

praiseworthy.... The same must hold good of other examples of the

Patriarchs, namely, if they had many wives, viz. that this also is

optional.”[824]

In 1523 he advanced the following: “A man is not absolutely forbidden

to have more than one wife; I could not prevent it, but certainly I

should not counsel it.” He continues in this passage: “Yet I would

not raise the question but only say, that, should it come before the

sheriff, it would be right to answer that we do not reject the example

of the Patriarchs, as though they were not right in doing what they

did, as the Manicheans say.”[825]

The sermons where these words occur were published at Wittenberg in

1527 and at once scattered broadcast in several editions. We shall have

to tell later how the Landgrave Philip of Hesse expressly cited on his

own behalf the passage we have quoted.

Meanwhile, however, i.e. previous to the printing of his sermons on

Genesis, Luther had declared, in a memorandum of January 27, 1524,

addressed to Brück, the electoral Chancellor, regarding a case in

point, viz. that of an Orlamünde man who wished to have two wives, that

he was “unable to forbid it”; it “was not contrary to Holy Scripture”;

yet, on account of the scandal and for the sake of decorum, which at

times demanded the omission even of what was lawful, he was anxious

not to be the first to introduce amongst Christians “such an example,

which was not at all becoming”; should, however, the man, with the

assistance of spiritual advisers, be able to form a “firm conscience

by means of the Word,” then the “matter might well be left to take

its course.”[826] This memorandum, too, also came to the knowledge of

Landgrave Philip of Hesse.[827]

Subsequently Luther remained faithful to the standpoint that polygamy

was not forbidden but optional; this is proved by his Latin Theses

of 1528,[828] by his letter, on September 3, 1531,[829] addressed

to Robert Barnes for Henry VIII. and in particular by his famous

declaration of 1539 to Philip of Hesse, sanctioning his bigamy.

His defenders have taken an unfinished treatise which he commenced in

the spring of 1542[830] as indicating, if not a retractation, at least

a certain hesitation on his part; yet even here he shows no sign of

embracing the opposite view; in principle he held fast to polygamy

and merely restricts it to the domain of conscience. The explanation

of the writing must be sought for in the difficulties arising out of

the bigamy of Landgrave Philip. Owing to Philip’s representations

Luther left the treatise unfinished, but on this occasion he expressly

admitted to the Prince, that there were “four good reasons” to justify

his bigamy.[831]

Needless to say, views such as these brought Luther into conflict with

the whole of the past.

Augustine, like the other Fathers, had declared that polygamy

was “expressly forbidden” in the New Testament as a “crime”

(“_crimen_”).[832] Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure speak

in similar terms in the name of the scholasticism of the Middle Ages.

Peter Paludanus, the so-called “_Doctor egregius_” († 1342), repeated

in his work on the Sentences, that: “Under the Gospel-dispensation it

never had been and never would be permitted.”[833]

It is, however, objected that Cardinal Cajetan, the famous theologian

and a contemporary of Luther, had described polygamy as allowable

in principle, and that Luther merely followed in his footsteps. But

Cajetan does not deny that the prohibition pronounced by the Church

stands, he merely deals in scholastic fashion with the questions

whether polygamy is a contravention of the natural law, and whether it

is expressly interdicted in Holy Scripture. True enough, however, he

answers both questions in the negative.[834] In the first everything of

course depends on the view taken with regard to the patriarchs and the

Old Testament exceptions; the grounds for these exceptions (for such

they undoubtedly were) have been variously stated by theologians. In

the second, i.e. in the matter of Holy Scripture, Cajetan erred. His

views on this subject have never been copied and, indeed, a protest

was at once raised by Catharinus, who appealed to the whole body of

theologians as teaching that, particularly since the preaching of the

Gospel, there was no doubt as to the biblical prohibition.[835]

Thus, in spite of what some Protestants have said, it was not by

keeping too close to the mediæval doctrine of matrimony, that Luther

reached his theory of polygamy.

It is more likely that he arrived at it owing to his own arbitrary

and materialistic ideas on marriage. It was certainly not the Catholic

Church which showed him the way; as she had safeguarded the sanctity

of marriage, so also she protected its monogamous character and its

indissolubility. In Luther’s own day the Papacy proved by its final

pronouncement against the adultery of Henry VIII. of England, that she

preferred to lose that country to the Church rather than sanction the

dissolving of a rightful marriage (vol. iv., xxi. 1).

_Toleration for Concubinage? Matrimony no Sacrament._

In exceptional cases Luther permitted those bound to clerical celibacy,

on account of “the great distress of conscience,” to contract “secret

marriages”; he even expressly recommended them to do so.[836] These

unions, according to both Canon and Civil law, amounted to mere

concubinage. Luther admits that he had advised “certain parish priests,

living under the jurisdiction of Duke George or the bishops,” to “marry

their cook secretly.”[837]

At the same time, in this same letter written in 1540, he explains

that he is not prepared to “defend all he had said or done years ago,

particularly at the commencement.” Everything, however, remained in

print and was made use of not only by those to whom it was actually

addressed, but by many others also; for instance, his outrageous letter

to the Knights of the Teutonic Order who were bound by vow to the

celibate state. Any of them who had a secret, illicit connection, and

“whoever found it impossible to live chastely,” he there says, “was

not to despair in his weakness and sin, nor wait for any Conciliar

permission, for I would rather overlook it, and commit to the mercy of

God the man who all his life has kept a pair of prostitutes, than the

man who takes a wife in compliance with the decrees of such Councils.”

“How much less a sinner do you think him to be, and nearer to the grace

of God, who keeps a prostitute, than the man who takes a wife in that

way?”[838]

Of the Prince-Abbots, who, on account of the position they occupied

in the Empire, were unable to marry so long as they remained in the

monastery, he likewise wrote: “I would prefer to advise such a one

to take a wife secretly and to continue as stated above [i.e. remain

in office], seeing that among the Papists it is neither shameful nor

wrong to keep women, until God the Lord shall send otherwise as He will

shortly do, for it is impossible for things to remain much longer as

they are. In this wise the Abbot would be safe and provided for.”[839]

Here again we see how Luther’s interest in promoting apostasy from Rome

worked hand in hand with the lax conception he had been led to form of

marriage.

Of any sacrament of matrimony he refused to hear. To him marriage was

really a secular matter, however much he might describe it as of Divine

institution: “Know, that marriage is an outward, material thing like

any other secular business.”[840] “Marriage and all that appertains to

it is a temporal thing and does not concern the Church at all, except

in so far as it affects the conscience.”[841] “Marriage questions do

not concern the clergy or the preachers, but the authorities; theirs it

is to decide on them”; this, the heading of one of the chapters of the

German Table-Talk, rightly describes its contents.[842]

In Luther’s denial of the sacramental character of matrimony lies

the key to the arbitrary manner in which, as shown by the above, he

handled the old ecclesiastical marriage law. It was his ruling ideas

on faith and justification which had led him to deny that it was a

sacrament. The sacraments, in accordance with this view, have no other

object or effect than to kindle in man, by means of the external sign,

that faith which brings justification. Now marriage, to his mind, was

of no avail to strengthen or inspire such faith. As early as 1519 he

bewails the lack in matrimony of that Divine promise which sets faith

at work (“_quae fidem exerceat_”),[843] and in his Theses of February

13, 1520, he already shows his disposition to question its right to

be termed a sacrament.[844] In his work “On the Babylonish Captivity”

of the same year he bluntly denies its sacramental character, urging

that the Bible was silent on the subject, that matrimony held out no

promise of salvation to be accepted in faith, and finally that it was

in no way specifically Christian, since it had already existed among

the heathen.[845] He ignores all that the Fathers had taught regarding

marriage as a sacrament, with special reference to the passage in

Ephesians v. 31 ff., and likewise the ancient tradition of the Church

as retained even by the Eastern sects separated from Rome since the

fifth century.

In advocating matrimony, instead of appealing to it as a sacrament,

he lays stress on its use as a remedy provided by God against

concupiscence, and on its being the foundation of that family life

which is so pleasing to God. Incidentally he also points out that it is

a sign of the union of Christ with the congregation.[846]

Luther did not, as has been falsely stated, raise marriage to a higher

dignity than it possessed in the Middle Ages. No more unjustifiable

accusation has been brought against Catholic ages than that marriage

did not then come in for its due share of recognition, that it was

slighted and even regarded as sinful. Elsewhere we show that the

writings dating from the close of the Middle Ages, particularly German

sermonaries and matrimonial handbooks, are a direct refutation of these

charges.[847]

_Luther on Matters Sexual._

Examples already cited have shown that, in speaking of sexual questions

and of matters connected with marriage, Luther could adopt a tone

calculated to make even the plainest of plain speakers wince. It is our

present duty to examine more carefully this quality in the light of

some quotations. Let the reader, if he chooses, look up the sermon of

1522, “On Conjugal Life,” and turn to pages 58, 59, 61, 72, 76, 83, 84;

or to pages 34, 35, 139, 143, 144, 146, 152, etc., of his Exposition

of Corinthians.[848] We are compelled to ask: How many theological or

spiritual writers, in sermons intended for the masses, or in vernacular

works, ever ventured to discuss sexual matters with the nakedness that

Luther displays in his writing “Wyder den falsch genantten geystlichen

Standt des Bapst und der Bischoffen” (1522), in which through several

pages Luther compares, on account of its celibacy, the Papacy with

the abominable Roman god Priapus.[849] In this and like descriptions

he lays himself open to the very charge which he brings against the

clergy: “They seduce the ignorant masses and drag them down into the

depths of unchastity.”[850] He thus compares Popery to this, the most

obscene form of idolatry, with the purpose of placing before the German

people in the strongest and most revolting language the abomination by

which he will have it that the Papacy has dishonoured and degraded the

world, through its man-made ordinances. Yet the very words in which he

wrote, quite apart from their blatant untruth, were surely debasing. In

the same writing he also expresses himself most unworthily regarding

the state of voluntary celibacy and its alleged moral and physical

consequences.[851]

Here again it has been urged on Luther’s behalf, that people in his

day were familiar with such plain speaking. Yet Luther himself felt

at times how unsuitable, nay, revolting, his language was, hence his

excuses to his hearers and readers for his want of consideration, and

also his attempt to take shelter in Holy Writ.[852] That people then

were ready to put up with more in sermons is undeniable. Catholic

preachers are to be met with before Luther’s day who, although they do

not speak in the same tone as he, do go very far in their well-meant

exhortations regarding sexual matters, for instance, regarding the

conjugal due in all its moral bearings. Nor is it true to say that such

things occur only in Latin outlines or sketches of sermons, intended

for preacher rather than people, for they are also to be found in

German sermons actually preached. This disorder even called forth a

sharp rebuke from a Leipzig theologian who was also a great opponent of

Luther’s, viz. Hieronymus Dungersheim.[853]—In none of the Catholic

preachers thus censured, do we, however, find quite the same seasoning

we find in Luther, nor do they have recourse to such, simply to spice

their rhetoric or their polemics, or to air new views on morality.

His contemporaries even, more particularly some Catholics, could not

see their way to repeat what he had said on sexual matters.[854] “It

must be conceded” that Luther’s language on sexual questions was “at

times repulsively outspoken, nay, coarse, and that not only to our

ears but even to those of his more cultured contemporaries.” Thus a

Protestant writer.[855] Another admits with greater reserve: “There are

writings of Luther’s in which he exceeds the limits of what was then

usual.”[856]

* * * * *

Certain unseemly anecdotes from the Table-Talk deserve to be mentioned

here; told in the course of conversation while the wine-cup went the

rounds, they may well be reckoned as instances of that “buffoonery”

for which Melanchthon reproves Luther. Many of them are not only to

be found in Bindseil’s “_Colloquia_” based on the Latin collection of

Lauterbach, and in the old Latin collection of Rebenstock, but have

left traces in the original notes of the Table-Talk, for instance, in

those of Schlaginhaufen and Cordatus. It is not easy to understand why

Luther should have led the conversation to such topics; in fact, these

improper stories and inventions would appear to have merely served the

company to while away the time.

For example, Luther amuses the company with the tale of a Spandau

Provost who was a hermaphrodite, lived in a nunnery and bore a

child;[857] with another, of a peasant, who, after listening to a

sermon on the use of Holy Water as a detergent of sin, proceeded to

put what he had heard into practice in an indecent fashion;[858]

with another of self-mutilated eunuchs, in telling which he is

unable to suppress an obscene joke concerning himself.[859] He

entertains the company with some far from witty, indeed entirely

tactless and indecent stories, for instance, about the misfortune of

a concubine who had used ink in mistake for ointment;[860] of the

Beghine who, when violence was offered her, refused to scream because

silence was enjoined after Compline;[861] of a foolish young man’s

interview with his doctor;[862] of an obscene joke at the expense

of a person uncovered;[863] of a young man’s experience with his

bathing dress;[864] of women who in shameless fashion prayed for a

husband;[865] of the surprise of Duke Hans, the son of Duke George of

Saxony, by his steward, etc.[866]

These stories, in Bindseil’s “Colloquia,” are put with the filthy

verses on Lemnius,[867] the “_Merdipoeta_,” and form a fit sequence

to the account of Lustig, the cook, and the substitute he used for

sauces.[868]

These anecdotes are all related more or less in detail, but, apart

from them, we have plentiful indelicate sayings and jokes and

allusions to things not usually mentioned in society, sufficient in

fact to fill a small volume.

Luther, for instance, jests in unseemly fashion “amid laughter” on

the difference in mind and body which distinguishes man from woman,

and playfully demonstrates from the formation of their body that

his Catherine and women in general must necessarily be deficient in

wit.[869] An ambiguous sally at the expense of virginity and the

religious life, addressed to the ladies who were usually present at

these evening entertainments, was received with awkward silence and a

laugh.[870]

On another occasion the subject of the conversation was the female

breasts, it being queried whether they were “an ornament” or intended

for the sake of the children.[871] Then again Luther, without any

apparent reason, treats, and with great lack of delicacy, of the

circumstances and difficulties attending confinement;[872] he also

enters fully into the troubles of pregnancy,[873] and, to fill

up an interval, tells a joke concerning the womb of the Queen of

Poland.[874]

In the Table-Talk Luther takes an opportunity of praising the mother’s

womb and does so with a striking enthusiasm, after having exclaimed:

“No one can sufficiently extol marriage.” “Now, in his old age,” he

understood this gift of God. Every man, yea, Christ Himself, came from

a mother’s womb.[875]

Among the passages which have been altered or suppressed in later

editions from motives of propriety comes a statement in the Table-Talk

concerning the Elector Johann Frederick, who was reputed a hard

drinker. In Aurifaber’s German Table-Talk the sense of the passage is

altered, and in the old editions of Stangwald and Selnecker the whole

is omitted.[876]

Of the nature of his jests the following from notes of the Table-Talk

gives a good idea: “It will come to this,” he said to Catherine Bora,

“that a man will take more than one wife.” The Doctoress replied:

“Tell that to the devil!” The Doctor proceeded: Here is the reason,

Katey: a wife can have only one child a year, but the husband several.

Katey replied: “Paul says: ‘Let everyone have his own wife.’ Whereupon

the Doctor retorted: ‘His own,’ but not ‘only one,’ that you won’t

find in Paul. The Doctor teased his wife for a long time in this way,

till at last she said: ‘Sooner than allow this, I would go back to the

convent and leave you with all the children.’”[877]

When the question of his sanction of Philip of Hesse’s bigamy and the

scandal arising from it came under discussion, his remarks on polygamy

were not remarkable for delicacy. He says: “Philip (Melanchthon) is

consumed with grief about it.... And yet of what use is it?... I, on

the contrary am a hard Saxon and a peasant.... The Papists could have

seen how innocent we are, but they refused to do so, and so now they

may well look the Hessian ‘_in anum_.’ ... Our sins are pardonable,

but those of the Papists, unpardonable; for they are contemners of

Christ, have crucified Him afresh and defend their blasphemy wittingly

and wilfully. What are they trying to get out of it [the bigamy]? They

slay men, but we work for our living and marry many wives.” “This

he said with a merry air and amid much laughter,” so the chronicler

relates. “God is determined to vex the people, and if it comes to my

turn I shall give them the best advice and tell them to look Marcolfus

‘_in anum_,’” etc.[878] On rising from table he said very cheerfully:

“I will not give the devil and the Papists a chance of making me

uneasy. God will put it right, and to Him we must commend the whole

Church.”[879] By such trivialities did he seek to escape his burden of

oppression.

On one occasion he said he was going to ask the Elector to give orders

that everybody should “fill themselves with drink”; then perhaps they

would abandon this vice, seeing that people were always ready to do

the opposite of what was commanded; what gave rise to this speech on

drinking was the arrival of three young men, slightly intoxicated,

accompanied by a musical escort. The visitors interrupted the

conversation, which had turned on the beauty of women.[880]

Many of Luther’s letters, as well as his sermons, lectures and

Table-Talk, bear sad witness to his unseemly language. It may suffice

here to mention one of the most extraordinary of these letters, while

incidentally remarking, that, from the point of view of history, the

passages already cited, or yet to be quoted, must be judged of in

the light of the whole series, in which alone they assume their true

importance. In a letter written in the first year of his union, to his

friend Spalatin, who though also a priest was likewise taking a wife,

he says: “The joy at your marriage and at my own carries me away”;

the words which follow were omitted in all the editions (Aurifaber,

De Wette, Walch), Enders being the first to publish them from the

original. They are given in the note below.[881]

Luther himself was at times inclined to be ashamed of his ways of

speaking, and repeatedly expresses regret, without, however, showing

any signs of improvement. We read in Cordatus’s Diary that (in 1527,

during his illness) “he asked pardon for the frivolous words he had

often spoken with the object of banishing the melancholy of a weak

flesh, not with any evil intent.”[882] At such moments he appears

to have remembered how startling a contrast his speeches and jests

presented to the exhortation of St. Paul to his disciples, and to all

the preachers of the Gospel: “Make thyself a pattern to all men ...

by a worthy mode of life; let thy conversation be pure and blameless”

(Titus ii. 7 f.). “Be a model to the faithful in word, in act, in faith

and charity, in chastity” (1 Tim. iv. 12).

It would be wrong to believe that he ever formally declared foul

speaking to be permissible. It has been said that, in any case in

theory, he had no objection to it, and, that, in a letter, he even

recommends it. The passage in question, found in an epistle addressed

to Prince Joachim of Anhalt, who was much troubled with temptations to

melancholy, runs thus: “It is true that to take pleasure in sin is the

devil, but to take pleasure in the society of good, pious people in the

fear of God, sobriety and honour is well pleasing to God, even with

possibly a word or ‘Zötlein’ too much.”[883] The expression “Zötlein”

(allied with the French “sottise”) did not, however, then bear the bad

meaning suggested by the modern German word “Zote,” and means no more

than a jest or merry story; that such a meaning was conveyed even by

the word “Zote” itself can readily be proved.

Especially was it Luther’s practice to load his polemics with a

superabundance of filthy allusions to the baser functions of the body;

at times, too, we meet therein expressions and imagery positively

indecent.

In his work “Vom Schem Hamphoras” against the Jews he revels in scenes

recalling that enacted between Putiphar’s wife and Joseph, though here

it is no mere temptation but actual mutual sin; the tract contains

much else of the same character.[884] In the notorious tract entitled

“Wider Hans Worst,” which he wrote against Duke Henry of Brunswick

(1541), he begins by comparing him with a “common procuress walking

the street to seize, capture and lead astray honest maidens”;[885]

he gradually works himself up into such a state of excitement as to

describe the Church of Rome as the “real devil’s whore”; nay, the

“archdevil’s whore,” the “shameless prostitute” who dwells in a

“whores’ church” and houses of ill-fame, and compared with whom, as

we have already heard him say elsewhere, “common city whores, field

whores, country whores and army whores”[886] may well be deemed

saints. In this work such figures of speech occur on almost every

page. Elsewhere he describes the motions of the “Roman whore” in the

most repulsive imagery.[887]

The term “whore” is one of which he is ever making use, more

particularly in that connection in which he feels it will be most

shocking to Catholics, viz. in connection with professed religious.

Nor does he hesitate to use this word to describe human reason as

against faith. In such varied and frenzied combinations is the term

met with in his writings that one stands aghast. As he remarked on

one occasion to his pupil Schlaginhaufen, people would come at last

to look upon him as a pimp. He had been asked to act as intermediary

in arranging a marriage: “Write this down,” he said, “Is it not a

nuisance? Am I expected to provide also the women with husbands?

Really they seem to take me for a pander.”[888]

Even holy things were not safe in Luther’s hands, but ran the risk

of being vilified by outrageous comparisons and made the subject of

improper conversations.