TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.

—The transcriber of this project created the book cover image using the title page of the original book. The image is placed in the public domain.

LUTHER

Nihil Obstat

C. Schut, s.t.d.,

Censor Deputatus.

Imprimatur

Edm. Can. Surmont,

Vic. Gen.

Westmonasterii, die 10 Julii, 1913.

LUTHER

BY

HARTMANN GRISAR, S. J.

PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK

AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN BY

E. M. LAMOND

EDITED BY

LUIGI CAPPADELTA

Volume IV

LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., Ltd. BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-74 CARTER LANE, E.C. 1915

A FEW PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUMES I-III.

“His most elaborate and systematic biography ... is not merely a book to be reckoned with; it is one with which we cannot dispense, if only for its minute examination of Luther’s theological writings.”—The Athenæum (Vol. I).

“The second volume of Dr. Grisar’s ‘Life of Luther’ is fully as interesting as the first. There is the same minuteness of criticism and the same width of survey.” The Athenæum (Vol. II).

“Its interest increases. As we see the great Reformer in the thick of his work, and the heyday of his life, the absorbing attraction of his personality takes hold of us more and more strongly. His stupendous force, his amazing vitality, his superhuman interest in life, impress themselves upon us with redoubled effect. We find him the most multiform, the most paradoxical of men.... The present volume, which is admirably translated, deals rather with the moral, social, and personal side of Luther’s career than with his theology.”—The Athenæum (Vol. III).

“There is no room for any sort of question as to the welcome ready among English-speaking Roman Catholics for this admirably made translation of the first volume of the German monograph by Professor Grisar on the protagonist of the Reformation in Europe.... The book is so studiously scientific, so careful to base its teaching upon documents, and so determined to eschew controversies that are only theological, that it cannot but deeply interest Protestant readers.”—The Scotsman.

“Father Grisar has gained a high reputation in this country through the translation of his monumental work on the History of Rome and the Popes in the Middle Ages, and this first instalment of his ‘Life of Luther’ bears fresh witness to his unwearied industry, wide learning, and scrupulous anxiety to be impartial in his judgments as well as absolutely accurate in matters of fact.”—Glasgow Herald.

“This ‘Life of Luther’ is bound to become standard ... a model of every literary, critical, and scholarly virtue.”—The Month.

“Like its two predecessors, Volume III excels in the minute analysis not merely of Luther’s actions, but also of his writings; indeed, this feature is the outstanding merit of the author’s patient labours.”—The Irish Times.

“This third volume of Father Grisar’s monumental ‘Life’ is full of interest for the theologian. And not less for the psychologist; for here more than ever the author allows himself to probe into the mind and motives and understanding of Luther, so as to get at the significance of his development.”—The Tablet.

CONTENTS

VOL. IV.

THE REFORMER (II)

LUTHER

CHAPTER XXI

PRINCELY MARRIAGES

[1. Luther and Henry VIII of England. Bigamy instead of Divorce]

In King Henry the Eighth’s celebrated matrimonial controversy the Roman See by its final decision was energetically to vindicate the cause of justice, in spite of the fear that this might lead to the loss of England to Catholicism. The considered judgment was clear and definite: Rather than countenance the King’s divorce from Queen Catherine, or admit bigamy as lawful, the Roman Church was prepared to see the falling away of the King and larger portion of the realm.[1]

In the summer, 1531, Luther was drawn into the controversy raging round the King’s marriage, by an agent of King Henry’s. Robert Barnes, an English Doctor of Divinity who had apostatised from the Church and was residing at Wittenberg, requested of Luther, probably at the King’s instigation, an opinion regarding the lawfulness of his sovereign’s divorce.

To Luther it was clear enough that there was no possibility of questioning the validity of Catherine’s marriage. It rightly appeared to him impossible that the Papal dispensation, by virtue of which Catherine of Aragon had married the King after having been the spouse of his deceased brother, should be represented as sufficient ground for a divorce. This view he expressed with praiseworthy frankness in the written answer he gave Barnes.[2]

At the same time, however, Luther pointed out to the King a loophole by which he might be able to succeed in obtaining the object of his desire; by this concession, unfortunately, he branded his action as a pandering to the passions of an adulterous King. At the conclusion of his memorandum to Barnes he has the following: “Should the Queen be unable to prevent the divorce, she must accept the great evil and most insulting injustice as a cross, but not in any way acquiesce in it or consent to it. Better were it for her to allow the King to wed another Queen, after the example of the Patriarchs, who, in the ages previous to the law, had many wives; but she must not consent to being excluded from her conjugal rights or to forfeiting the title of Queen of England.”[3]

It has been already pointed out that Luther, in consequence of his one-sided study of the Old Testament, had accustomed himself more and more to regard bigamy as something lawful.[4] That, however, he had so far ever given his formal consent to it in any particular instance there is no proof. In the case of Henry VIII, Luther felt less restraint than usual. His plain hint at bigamy as a way out of the difficulty was intended as a counsel (“suasimus”). Hence we can understand why he was anxious that his opinion should not be made too public.[5] When, in the same year (1531), he forwarded to the Landgrave of Hesse what purported to be a copy of the memorandum, the incriminating passage was carefully omitted.[6]

Melanchthon, too, had intervened in the affair, and had gone considerably further than Luther in recommending recourse to bigamy and in answering possible objections to polygamy.

In a memorandum of Aug. 23, Melanchthon declared that the King was entirely justified in seeking to obtain the male heirs with whom Catherine had failed to present him; this was demanded by the interests of the State. He endeavours to show that polygamy is not forbidden by Divine law; in order to avoid scandal it was, however, desirable that the King “should request the Pope to sanction his bigamy, permission being granted readily enough at Rome.” Should the Pope refuse to give the dispensation, then the King was simply and of his own authority to have recourse to bigamy, because in that case the Pope was not doing his duty, for he was “bound in charity to grant this dispensation.”[7] “Although I should be loath to allow polygamy generally, yet, in the present case, on account of the great advantage to the kingdom and perhaps to the King’s conscience, I would say: The King may, with a good conscience (‘tutissimum est regi’), take a second wife while retaining the first, because it is certain that polygamy is not forbidden by the Divine law, nor is it so very unusual.” Melanchthon’s ruthless manner of proceeding undoubtedly had a great influence on the other Wittenbergers, even though it cannot be maintained, as has been done, that he, and not Luther, was the originator of the whole theory; there are too many clear and definite earlier statements of Luther’s in favour of polygamy to disprove this. Still, it is true that the lax opinion broached by Melanchthon in favour of the King of England played a great part later in the matter of the bigamy of the Landgrave of Hesse.[8]

In the same year, however, there appeared a work on matrimony by the Lutheran theologian Johann Brenz in which, speaking generally and without reference to this particular case, he expressed himself very strongly against the lawfulness of polygamy. “The secular authorities,” so Brenz insists, “must not allow any of their subjects to have two or more wives,” they must, on the contrary, put into motion the “penalties of the Imperial Laws” against polygamy; no pastor may “bless or ratify” such marriages, but is bound to excommunicate the offenders.[9] Strange to say, the work appeared with a Preface by Luther in which, however, he neither praises nor blames this opinion.[10]

The Strasburg theologians, Bucer and Capito, as well as the Constance preacher, Ambrosius Blaurer, also stood up for the lawfulness of bigamy. When, however, this reached the ears of the Swiss theologians, Œcolampadius, in a letter of Aug. 20, exclaimed: “They were inclined to consent to the King’s bigamy! But far be it from us to hearken more to Mohammed in this matter than to Christ!”[11]

In spite of the alluring hint thrown out at Wittenberg, the adulterous King, as everyone knows, did not resort to bigamy. It was Henry the Eighth’s wish to be rid of his wife, and, having had her removed, he regarded himself as divorced. After the King had repudiated Catherine, Luther told his friends: “The Universities [i.e. those which sided with the English King] have declared that there must be a divorce. We, however, and the University of Louvain, decided differently.... We [viz. Luther and Melanchthon] advised the Englishman that it would be better for him to take a concubine than to distract his country and nation; yet in the end he put her away.”[12]

When Clement VII declared the first marriage to be valid and indissoluble, and also refused to countenance any bigamy, Henry VIII retorted by breaking with the Church of Rome, carrying his country with him. For a while Clement had hesitated on the question of bigamy, since, in view of Cardinal Cajetan’s opinion to the contrary, he found it difficult to convince himself that a dispensation could not be given, and because he was personally inclined to be indulgent and friendly; finally, however, he gave Bennet, the English envoy, clearly to understand that the dispensation was not in his power to grant.[13] That he himself was not sufficiently versed in Canon Law, the Pope repeatedly admitted. “It will never be possible to allege the attitude of Clement VII as any excuse for the Hessian affair” (Ehses). It is equally impossible to trace the suggestion of bigamy back to the opinions prevailing in mediæval Catholicism.[14] No mediæval pope or confessor can be instanced who sanctioned bigamy, while there are numbers of theologians who deny the Pope’s power to grant such dispensations; many even describe this negative opinion as the “sententia communis.”[15]

Of Cardinal Cajetan, the only theologian of note on the opposite side (see above, vol. iii., p. 261), W. Köhler remarks, alluding particularly to the recent researches of N. Paulus: “It never entered Cardinal Cajetan’s head to deny that the ecclesiastical law categorically forbids polygamy.”[16] Further: “Like Paulus, we may unhesitatingly admit that, in this case, it would have been better for Luther had he had behind him the guiding authority of the Church.”[17]

Henry VIII, as was only natural, sought to make the best use of the friendship of the Wittenberg professors and Princes of the Schmalkalden League, against Rome and the Emperor. He despatched an embassy, though his overtures were not as successful as he might have wished.

We may describe briefly the facts of the case.

The Schmalkalden Leaguers, from the very inception of the League, had been seeking the support both of England and of France. In 1535 they made a determined effort to bring about closer relations with Henry VIII, and, at the Schmalkalden meeting, the latter made it known that he was not unwilling to “join the Christian League of the Electors and Princes.” Hereupon he was offered the “title and standing of patron and protector of the League.” The political negotiations nevertheless miscarried, owing to the King’s excessive demands for the event of an attack on his Kingdom.[18] The project of an alliance with the King of Denmark, the Duke of Prussia, and with Saxony and Hesse, for the purpose of a war against the Emperor, also came to nothing.

In these negotiations the Leaguers wanted first of all to reach an agreement with Henry in the matter of religion, whereas the latter insisted that political considerations should have the first place.

In the summer, 1535, Robert Barnes, the English plenipotentiary, was raising great and exaggerated hopes in Luther’s breast of Henry’s making common cause with the Wittenberg reformers.

Into his plans Luther entered with great zest, and consented to Melanchthon’s being sent to England as his representative, for the purpose of further negotiations. As we now know from a letter of recommendation of Sep. 12, 1535, first printed in 1894, he recommended Barnes to the Chancellor Brück for an interview with the Elector, and requested permission for Melanchthon to undertake the journey to England. Joyfully he points out that “now the King offers to accept the Evangel, to join the League of our Princes and to allow our ‘Apologia’ entry into his Kingdom.” Such an opportunity must not be allowed to slip, for “the Papists will be in high dudgeon.” Quite possibly God may have something in view.[19]

In England hopes were entertained that these favourable offers would induce a more friendly attitude towards the question of Henry’s divorce. Concerning this Luther merely says in the letter cited: “In the matter of the royal marriage, the ‘suspensio’ has already been decided,” without going into any further particulars; he, however, reserves the case to be dealt with by the theologians exclusively.

In August, 1535, Melanchthon had dedicated one of his writings to the King of England, and had, on this occasion, lavished high praise on him. It was probably about this time that the King sent the presents to Wittenberg, to which Catherine Bora casually alludes in the Table-Talk. “Philip received several gifts from the Englishman, in all five hundred pieces of gold; for our own part we got at least fifty.”[20]

Melanchthon took no offence at the cruel execution of Sir Thomas More or at the other acts of violence already perpetrated by Henry VIII; on the contrary, he gave his approval to the deeds of the royal tyrant, and described it as a commandment of God “to use strong measures against fanatical and godless men.”[21] The sanguinary action of the English tyrant led Luther to express the wish, that a similar fate might befall the heads of the Catholic Church at Rome. In the very year of Bishop Fisher’s execution he wrote to Melanchthon: “It is easy to lose our tempers when we see what traitors, thieves, robbers, nay devils incarnate the Cardinals, the Popes and their Legates are. Alas that there are not more Kings of England to put them to death!”[22] He also refers to the alleged horrors practised by the Pope’s tools in plundering the Church, and asks: “How can the Princes and Lords put up with it?”

In Dec., 1535, a convention of the Schmalkalden Leaguers, at Melanchthon’s instance, begged the envoys despatched by Henry, who were on their way to Wittenberg, to induce their master to promote the Confession of Augsburg—unless, indeed, as they added with unusual consideration, “they and the King should be unanimous in thinking that something in the Confession might be improved upon or made more in accordance with the Word of God.”[23]

Just as in the advances made by the King to Wittenberg “the main point had been to obtain a favourable pronouncement from the German theologians in the matter of his divorce,” so too in consenting to discuss the Confession of Augsburg he was actuated by the thought that this would lead to a discussion on the Papal power and the question of the divorce, i.e. to those points which the King had so much at heart.[24]

On the arrival immediately after of the envoys at Wittenberg they had the satisfaction of learning from Luther and his circle, that the theologians had already changed their minds in the King’s favour concerning the lawfulness of marriage with a brother’s widow. Owing to the influence of Osiander, whom Henry VIII had won over to his side, they now had come to regard such marriages as contrary to the natural moral law. Hence Henry’s new marriage might be considered valid. They were not, however, as yet ready to draw this last inference from the invalidity of the previous marriage between the King and Catherine.[25]

Luther, however, became more and more convinced that marriage with a brother’s widow was invalid; in 1542, for instance, on the assumption of the invalidity of such a union, he unhesitatingly annulled the marriage of a certain George Schud, as a “devilish abomination” (“abominatio diaboli”).[26]

The spokesman of the English mission, Bishop Edward Fox, demanded from Luther the admission that the King had separated from his first wife “on very just grounds.” Luther, however, would only agree that he had done so “on very many grounds.” He said later, in conversation, that his insistence on this verbal nicety had cost him three hundred Gulden, which he would have received from England in the event of his compliance. [27] He cannot indeed be accused of having been, from ecclesiastico-political motives, too hasty in gratifying the King’s demands in the matter of the divorce. Yet, on the other hand, it is not unlikely that the desire to pave the way for a practical understanding was one of the motives for his mode of action. His previous outspoken declarations against any dissolution of the Royal marriage compelled him to assume an attitude not too strongly at variance with his earlier opinion.

After the new marriage had taken place negotiations with England continued, principally with the object of securing such acceptance of the new doctrine as might lead to a politico-religious alliance between that country and the Schmalkalden Leaguers. Luther, however, stubbornly refused to concede anything to the King in the matter of his chief doctrines, for instance, regarding Justification or the rejection of the Mass.

The articles agreed upon at the lengthy conferences held during the early months of 1536—and made public only in 1905 (see above, p. 9, n. 4)—failed to satisfy the King, although they displayed a very conciliatory spirit. Melanchthon outdid himself in his endeavour to render the Wittenberg teaching acceptable. “It is true that the main points of faith were not sacrificed,” remarks the discoverer and editor of the articles in question, “but the desire to please noticeable in their form, even in such questions as those concerning the importance of good works, monasteries, etc., is nevertheless surprising.”[28] Luther himself, in a letter of April 29, 1536, to the Electoral Vice-Chancellor Burkhard, spoke of the concessions made in these articles as the final limit; to go further would be to concede to the King of England what had been refused to the Pope and the Emperor; “at Augsburg [in 1530] we might have come to terms more easily with the Pope and the Emperor, nay, perhaps we might do so even now.” To enter into an ecclesiastico-political alliance with the English would, he considers, be “dangerous,” for the Schmalkalden Leaguers “were not all of one mind”; hence the (theological) articles ought first to be accepted; the League was, however, a secular matter and therefore he would beg the “beloved Lords and my Gracious Master to consider” whether they could accept it without a previous agreement being reached on the point of theology.[29]

Though Luther and the Princes set great store on the projected alliance, on account of the increase of strength it would have brought the German Evangelicals, yet their hopes were to be shattered, for the articles above referred to did not find acceptance in England. Luther was later on to declare that everything had come to nought because King Henry wished to be head of the Protestants in Germany, which the Elector of Saxony would not permit: “Let the devil take the great Lords! This rogue (‘is nebulo’) wanted to be proclaimed head of our religion, but to this the Elector would in no wise agree; we did not even know what sort of belief he had.”[30] Probably the King demanded a paramount influence in the Schmalkalden League, and the German Princes were loath to be deprived of the direction of affairs.

After all hopes of an agreement had vanished Henry VIII made no secret of his antipathy for the Lutheran teaching.

The quondam Defender of the Faith even allowed himself to be carried away to acts of bloodshed. In 1540 he caused Luther’s friend, Robert Barnes, the agent already referred to, to be burnt at the stake as a heretic. Barnes had adopted the Lutheran doctrine of Justification. It was not on this account alone, however, that he was obnoxious to the King, but also because the latter had grown weary of Anne of Cleves, whom Barnes and Thomas Cromwell, the King’s favourite, had given him as a fourth consort, after Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. Cromwell, though not favourably disposed to Lutheranism, was executed a few days before. On April 9, 1536, Luther had written to Cromwell a very polite letter, couched in general terms,[31] in answer to a courteous missive from that statesman handed to him by Barnes. From Luther’s letter we see that Cromwell “had been described to him in too favourable a light,”[32] as though predisposed to the Lutheran doctrine or to regard Luther as a divinely sent teacher. Luther deceived himself if he fancied that Cromwell was ready to “work for the cause”; the latter remained as unfriendly to Lutheranism proper as the King himself.

In the year of Barnes’s execution Melanchthon wrote the letter to Veit Dietrich in which he expresses the pious wish, that God would send a brave murderer to bring the King to the end he deserved.[33]

Luther, on his side, declared: “The devil himself rides astride this King”; “I am glad that we have no part in his blasphemy.” He boasted, so Luther says, of being head of the Church of England, a title which no bishop, much less a King, had any right to, more particularly one who with his crew had “vexed and tortured Christ and His Church.”[34] In 1540 Luther spoke sarcastically of the King’s official title: “Under Christ the supreme head on earth of the English Church,”[35] remarking, that, in that case, “even the angels are excluded.”[36] Of Melanchthon’s dedication of some of his books to the King, Luther says, that this had been of little service. “In future I am not going to dedicate any of my books to anyone. It brought Philip no good in the case of the bishop [Albert of Mayence], of the Englishman, or of the Hessian [the Landgrave Philip].”[37] Still more fierce became his hatred and disappointment when he found the King consorting with his sworn enemies, Duke George, and Albert, Elector of Mayence.[38] When he heard the news of Barnes having been cast into prison, he said: “This King wants to make himself God. He lays down articles of faith and forbids marriage under pain of death, a thing which even the Pope scrupled to do. I am something of a prophet and, as what I prophesy comes true, I shall refrain from saying more.”[39]

Luther never expressed any regret regarding his readiness to humour the King’s lusts or regarding his suggestion of bigamy.

The Landgrave Philip of Hesse, however, referred directly to the proposal of bigamy made to the King of England, when he requested Luther’s consent to his own project of taking a second wife. The Landgrave had got to hear of the proposal in spite of the unlucky passage having been struck out of the deed.

The history of the Hessian bigamy is an incident which throws a curious light on Luther’s exceptional indulgence towards princely patrons of the Evangel in Germany.

[2. The Bigamy of Philip of Hesse]

As early as 1526 Philip of Hesse, whose conduct was far from being conspicuous for morality, had submitted to Luther the question whether Christians were allowed to have more than one wife. The Wittenberg Professor gave a reply tallying with his principles as already described;[40] instead of pointing out clearly that such a thing was divinely forbidden to all Christians, was not to be dispensed from by any earthly authority, and that such extra marriages would be entirely invalid, Luther refused to admit unconditionally the invalidity of such unions. Such marriages, he stated, gave scandal to Christians, “for without due cause and necessity even the old Patriarchs did not take more than one wife”; it was incumbent that we should be able “to appeal to the Word of God,” but no such Word existed in favour of polygamy, “by which the same could be proved to be well pleasing to God in the case of Christians”; “hence I am unable to recommend it, but would rather dissuade from it, especially for Christians, unless some great necessity existed, for instance were the wife to contract leprosy or become otherwise unfit.”[41] It is not clear whether Philip was interested in the matter for personal reasons, or simply because some of his subjects were believers in polygamy.

Luther’s communication, far from diverting the Prince from his project, could but serve to make him regard it as feasible; provided that the “great necessity” obtained and that he had “the Word of God on his side,” then the step could “not be prevented.” By dint of a judicious interpretation of Scripture and with expert theological aid, the obstacles might easily be removed.

The Hessian Prince also became acquainted with Luther’s statements on bigamy in his Commentary on Genesis published in the following year. To them the Landgrave Philip appealed expressly in 1540; the preacher Anton Corvinus having suggested that he should deny having committed bigamy, he replied indignantly: “Since you are so afraid of it, why do you not suppress what Luther wrote more than ten years ago on Genesis; did he and others not write publicly concerning bigamy: ‘Advise it I do not, forbid it I cannot’? If you are allowed to write thus of it publicly, you must expect that people will act up to your teaching.”[42]

The question became a pressing one for Luther, and began to cast a shadow over his wayward and utterly untraditional interpretation of the Bible, when, in 1539, the Landgrave resolved to take as an additional wife, besides Christina the daughter of George of Saxony, who had now grown distasteful to him, the more youthful Margeret von der Sale. From Luther Margeret’s mother desired a favourable pronouncement, in order to be able with a good conscience to give her consent to her daughter’s wedding.

Philip Seeks the Permission of Wittenberg.

Early in Nov., 1539, Gereon Sailer, an Augsburg physician famous for his skill in handling venereal cases, who had treated the Landgrave at Cassel, was sent by Philip to Bucer at Strasburg to instruct the latter to bring the matter before the theologians of Wittenberg. Sailer was a friend of the innovations, and Bucer was highly esteemed by the Landgrave as a theologian and clever diplomatist.

Bucer was at first sorely troubled in conscience and hesitated to undertake the commission; Sailer reported to the Landgrave that, on hearing of the plan, he had been “quite horrified” and had objected “the scandal such an innovation in a matter of so great importance and difficulty might cause among the weak followers of the Evangel.”[43] After thinking the matter over for three days Bucer, however, agreed to visit the Landgrave on Nov. 16 and receive his directions. A copy of the secret and elaborate instructions given him by Philip concerning the appeal he was to make to Luther still exists in the handwriting of Simon Bing, the Hessian Secretary, in the Marburg Archives together with several old copies,[44] as also the original rough draft in Philip’s own hand.[45] The envoy first betook himself to the meeting of the Schmalkalden Leaguers, held at Arnstadt on Nov. 20, to confer upon a new mission to be sent to England; on Dec. 4 he was at Weimar with the Elector of Saxony and on the 9th he had reached Wittenberg.

The assenting answer given by Luther and Melanchthon bears the date of the following day.[46] It is therefore quite true that the matter was settled “in haste,” as indeed the text of the reply states. Bucer doubtless did his utmost to prevent the theologians from having recourse to subterfuge or delay.

The above-mentioned instructions contain a sad account of the “dire necessity” which seemed to justify the second marriage: The Landgrave would otherwise be unable to lead a moral life; he was urged on by deep distress of conscience; not merely did he endure temptations of the flesh beyond all measure, but, so runs his actual confession, he was quite unable to refrain from “fornication, unchastity and adultery.”[47] The confession dealt with matters which were notorious. It also contains the admission, that he had not remained true to his wife for long, in fact not for more than “three weeks”; on account of his sense of sin he had “not been to the Sacrament.” As a matter of fact he had abstained from Communion from 1526 to 1539, viz. for thirteen years, and until his last attack of the venereal disease.

But were the scruples of conscience thus detailed to the Wittenbergers at all real? Recently they have been characterised as the “outcome of a bodily wreck.”

“I am unable to practise self-restraint,” Philip of Hesse had declared on another occasion, “I am forced to commit fornication or worse, with women.” His sister Elisabeth had already advised him to take a concubine in place of so many prostitutes. In all probability Philip would have abducted Margaret von der Sale had he not hoped to obtain her in marriage through the intervention of her relations and with Luther’s consent. A Protestant historian has recently pointed this out when dealing with Philip’s alleged “distress of conscience.”[48]

Bucer was well able to paint in dismal hues the weakness of his princely client; he pointed out, “how the Landgrave, owing to his wife’s deficiencies, was unable to remain chaste; how he had previously lived so and so, which was neither good nor Evangelical, especially in one of the mainstays of the party.”[49] In that very year Philip of Hesse had, as a matter of fact, been ailing from a certain malady brought upon him by his excesses; he himself spoke of it as a “severe attack of the French sickness [syphilis], which is the penalty of an immoral life.”[50]

True to his instructions, Bucer went on to say that the Landgrave had firmly “resolved” to make use against his unchastity—which he neither could nor would refrain from with his present wife—of “such means as God permitted and did not forbid,” viz. to wed a second wife. The two Wittenbergers had perforce to listen while Bucer, as the mouthpiece of the Landgrave, put forth as the grounds of his client’s firm resolve the very proofs from Scripture which they themselves had adduced in favour of polygamy; they were informed that, according to the tenor of a memorandum, “both Luther and Philip had counselled the King of England not to divorce his first wife, but rather to take another.”[51] It was accordingly the Landgrave’s desire that they should “give testimony” that his deed was not unjust, and that they should “make known in the press and from the pulpit what was the right course to pursue in such circumstances”; should they have scruples about doing this for fear of scandal or evil consequences, they were at least to give a declaration in writing: “That were I to do it secretly, yet I should not offend God, but that they regard it as a real marriage, and would meanwhile devise ways and means whereby the matter might be brought openly before the world”; otherwise, the instructions proceeded, the “wench” whom the Prince was about to take to himself might complain of being looked upon as an improper person; as “nothing can ever be kept secret,” “great scandal” would indeed arise were not the true state of the case known. Besides, he fully intended to retain his present wife and to consider her as a rightful spouse, and her children alone were to be the “lawful princes of the land”; nor would he ask for any more wives beyond this second one. The Landgrave even piously reminds Luther and Melanchthon “not to heed overmuch the opinion of the world, and human respect, but to look to God and what He has commanded or forbidden, bound or loosened”; he, for his part, was determined not to “remain any longer in the bonds of the devil.”

Philip was careful also to remind them that, if, after putting into execution his project, he was able to “live and die with a good conscience,” he would be “all the more free to fight for the Evangelical cause as befitted a Christian”; “whatever they [Luther and Melanchthon] shall tell me is right and Christian—whether it refers to monastic property or to other matters—that they will find me ready to carry out at their behest.” On the other hand, as an urgent motive for giving their consent to his plan, he broadly hinted, that, “should he not get any help from them” he would, “by means of an intermediary, seek permission of the Emperor, even though it should cost me a lot of money”; the Emperor would in all likelihood do nothing without a “dispensation from the Pope”; but in such a matter of conscience neither the Pope nor the Emperor were of any great account, since he was convinced that his “design was approved by God”; still, their consent (the Pope and Emperor’s) would help to overcome “human respect”; hence, should he be unable to obtain “consolation from this party [the Evangelical],” then the sanction of the other party was “not to be despised.” Concerning the request he felt impelled to address to the Emperor, he says, in words which seem to convey a threat, that although he would not for any reason on earth prove untrue to the Evangel, or aid in the onslaught on the Evangelical cause, yet, the Imperial party might “use and bind” him to do things “which would not be to the advantage of the cause.” Hence, it was in their interest to assist him in order that he might “not be forced to seek help in quarters where he had no wish to look for it.”

After again stating that he “took his stand on the Word of God” he concludes with a request for the desired “Christian, written” testimony, “in order that thereby I may amend my life, go to the Sacrament with a good conscience and further all the affairs of our religion with greater freedom and contentment. Given at Milsungen on the Sunday post Catharine anno etc. 39.”

The Wittenberg theologians now found themselves in a quandary. Luther says: “We were greatly taken aback at such a declaration on account of the frightful scandal which would follow.”[52] Apart from other considerations, the Landgrave had already been married sixteen years and had a number of sons and daughters by his wife; the execution of the project would also necessarily lead to difficulties at the Courts of the Duke of Saxony and of the Elector, and also, possibly, at that of the Duke of Würtemberg. They were unaware that Margaret von Sale had already been chosen as a second wife, that Philip had secured the consent of his wife Christina, and that the way for a settlement with the bride’s mother had already been paved.[53]

The view taken by Rockwell, viz. that the form of the memorandum to be signed by Luther and Melanchthon had already been drawn up in Hesse by order of Philip, is, however, erroneous; nor was the document they signed a copy of such a draft.[54]

It is much more likely that the lengthy favourable reply of the Wittenbergers was composed by Melanchthon. It was signed with the formula: “Wittenberg, Wednesday after St. Nicholas, 1539. Your Serene Highness’s willing and obedient servants [and the signatures] Martinus Luther, Philippus Melanchthon, Martinus Bucerus.”[55] The document is now among the Marburg archives.

Characteristically enough the idea that the Landgrave is, and must remain, the protector of the new religious system appears at the commencement as well as at the close of the document. The signatories begin by congratulating the Prince, that God “has again helped him out of sickness,” and pray that heaven may preserve him, for the “poor Church of Christ is small and forsaken, and indeed stands in need of pious lords and governors”; at the end God is again implored to guide and direct him; above all, the Landgrave must have nothing to do with the Imperialists.

The rest of the document, apart from pious admonitions, consists of the declaration, that they give their “testimony that, in a case of necessity,” they were “unable to condemn” bigamy, and that, accordingly, his “conscience may be at rest” should the Landgrave “utilise” the Divine dispensation. In so many words they sanction the request submitted to them, because “what was permitted concerning matrimony in the Mosaic Law was not prohibited in the Gospel.” Concerning the circumstances of the request they, however, declined “to give anything in print,” because otherwise the matter would be “understood and accepted as a general law and from it [i.e. a general sanction of polygamy] much grave scandal and complaint would arise.” The Landgrave’s wish that they should speak of the case from the pulpit, is also passed over in silence. Nor did they reply to his invitation to them to consider by what ways and means the matter might be brought publicly before the world. On the contrary, they appear to be intent on burying in discreet silence a marriage so distasteful to them. It even looks as though they were simple enough to think that such concealment would be possible, even in the long run. What they fear is, above all, the consequences of its becoming common property. In no way, so they declare, was any universal law, any “public precedent” possible, whereby a plurality of wives might be made lawful; according to its original institution marriage had signified “the union of two persons only, not of more”; but, in view of the examples of the Old Covenant, they “were unable to condemn it,” if, in a quite exceptional case, “recourse were had to a dispensation ... and a man, with the advice of his pastor, took another wife, not with the object of introducing a law, but to satisfy his need.”

As for instances of such permission having been given in the Church, they were able to quote only two: First, the purely legendary case of Count Ernest of Gleichen—then still regarded as historical—who, during his captivity among the Turks in 1228, had married his master’s daughter, and, then, after his escape, and after having learnt that his wife was still living, applied for and obtained a Papal dispensation for bigamy; secondly, the alleged practice in cases of prolonged and incurable illness, such as leprosy, to permit, occasionally, the man to take another wife. The latter, however, can only refer to Luther’s own practice, or to that followed by the teachers of the new faith.[56] In 1526 Luther had informed the Landgrave that this was allowable in case of “dire necessity,” “for instance, where the wife was leprous, or had been otherwise rendered unfit.”[57] Acting upon this theory he was soon to give a decision in a particular case;[58] in May or June, 1540, he even stated that he had several times, when one of the parties had contracted leprosy, privately sanctioned the bigamy of the healthy party, whether man or woman.[59]

They are at great pains to impress on the Landgrave that he must “take every possible care that this matter be not made public in the world,” otherwise the dispensation would be taken as a precedent by others, and also would be made to serve as a “weapon against them and the Evangel.” “Hence, seeing how great scandal would be caused, we humbly beg your Serene Highness to take this matter into serious consideration.”

They also admonish him “to avoid fornication and adultery”; they had learnt with “great sorrow” that the Landgrave “was burdened with such evil lusts, of which the consequences to be feared were the Divine punishment, illness and other perils”; such conduct, outside of matrimony, was “no small sin”—as they proceed to prove from Scripture; they rejoiced, however, that the Prince felt “pain and remorse” for what he had done. Although monogamy was in accordance with the original institution of marriage, yet it was their duty to tell him that, “seeing that your Serene Highness has informed us that you are not able to refrain from an immoral life, we would rather that your Highness should be in a better state before God, and live with a good conscience for your Highness’s own salvation and the good of your land and people. And, as your Serene Highness has determined to take another wife, we consider that this should be kept secret, no less than the dispensation, viz. that your Serene Highness and the lady in question, and a few other trustworthy persons, should be apprised of your Highness’s conscience and state of mind in the way of confession.”

“From this,” they continue, “no great gossip or scandal will result, for it is not unusual for Princes to keep ‘concubinas,’ and, though not everyone is aware of the circumstances, yet reasonable people will bear this in mind and be better pleased with such a manner of life than with adultery or dissolute and immoral living.”

Yet, once again, they point out that, were the bigamy to become a matter of public knowledge, the opinion would gain ground that polygamy was perfectly lawful to all, and that everyone might follow the precedent; the result would also be that the enemies of the Evangel would cry out that the Evangelicals were not one whit better than the Anabaptists, who were likewise polygamists and, in fact, just the same as the Turks. Further, the great Lords would be the first to give the example to private persons to do likewise. As it was, the Hessian aristocracy was bad enough, and many of its members were strongly opposed to the Evangel on earthly grounds; these would become still more hostile were the bigamy to become publicly known. Lastly, the Prince must bear in mind the injury to his “good name” which the tidings of his act would cause amongst foreign potentates.

A paragraph appended to the memorandum is, according to recent investigation, from Luther’s own pen and, at any rate, is quite in his style.[60] It refers to Philip’s threat to seek the Emperor’s intervention, a step which would not have been at all to the taste of the Wittenbergers, for it was obvious that this would cripple Philip’s action as Protector of the Evangelicals. This menace had plainly excited and troubled Luther. He declares in the concluding sentences, that the Emperor before whom the Prince threatened to lay the case, was a man who looked upon adultery as a small sin; there was great reason to fear that he shared the faith of the Pope, Cardinals, Italians, Spaniards and Saracens; he would pay no heed to the Prince’s request but only use him as a cat’s-paw. They had found him out to be a false and faithless man, who had forgotten the true German spirit. The Emperor, as the Landgrave might see for himself, did not trouble himself about any Christian concerns, left the Turks unopposed and was only interested in fomenting plots in Germany for the increase of the Burgundian power. Hence it was to be hoped that pious German Princes would have nothing to do with his faithless practices.

Such are the contents of Luther and Melanchthon’s written reply. Bucer, glad of the success achieved, at once proceeded with the memorandum to the Electoral Court.

This theological document, the like of which had never been seen, is unparalleled in the whole of Church history. Seldom indeed has exegetical waywardness been made to serve a more momentous purpose. The Elector, Johann Frederick of Saxony, was, at a later date, quite horrified, as he said, at “a business the like of which had not been heard of for many ages.”[61] Sidonie, the youthful Duchess of Saxony, complained subsequently, that, “since the Birth of Christ, no one had done such a thing.”[62] Bucer’s fears had not been groundless “of the scandal of such an innovation in a matter of so great importance and difficulty among the weak followers of the Evangel.”[63]

Besides this, the sanction of bigamy given in the document in question is treated almost as though it denoted the commencement of a more respectable mode of life incapable of giving any “particular scandal”; for amongst the common people the newly wedded wife would be looked upon as a concubine, and such it was quite usual for Princes to keep. Great stress is laid on the fact that the secret bigamy would prevent adultery and other immorality. Apart, however, from these circumstances, the sanctioning, largely on the strength of political considerations, of an exception to the universal New-Testament prohibition, is painful. Anyone, however desirous of finding extenuating circumstances for Luther’s decision, can scarcely fail to be shocked at this fact. The only excuse that might be advanced would be, that Philip, by his determination to take this step and his threat of becoming reconciled to the Emperor, exercised pressure tantamount to violence, and that the weight of years, his scorn for the Church’s matrimonial legislation and his excessive regard for his own interpretation of the Old Testament helped Luther to signify his assent to a plan so portentous.

The Bigamy is Consummated and made Public.

The object of Bucer’s hasty departure for the Court of the Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony was to dispose him favourably towards the impending marriage. In accordance with his instructions from Hesse, he was to submit to this Prince the same arguments which had served him with the two Wittenbergers, for the superscription of the instructions ran: “What Dr. Martin Bucer is to demand of D. Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, and, should he see fit, after that also of the Elector.”[64] In addition to this he had in the meantime received special instructions for this delicate mission to Weimar.[65]

The Landgrave looked upon an understanding with the Elector as necessary, not merely on account of his relationship with him and out of consideration for Christina his first wife, who belonged to the House of Saxony, but also on account of the ecclesiastico-political alliance in which they stood, which made the Elector’s support seem to him quite as essential as the sanction of the Wittenberg theologians.

Bucer treated with Johann Frederick at Weimar on 15 or 16 Dec. and reached some sort of understanding, as we learn from the Elector’s written reply to the Landgrave bearing the latter date. Bucer represents him as saying: If it is impossible to remove the scandal caused by the Landgrave’s life in any other way, he would ask, as a brother, that the plan should not be executed in any other way than “that contained in our—Dr. Luther’s, Philip’s and my own—writing”; upon this he was unable to improve; he was also ready to “lend him fraternal assistance in every way” should any complications arise from this step.[66] In return, in accordance with the special instructions given to Bucer, he received from the Landgrave various political concessions of great importance: viz. support in the matter of the Duke of Cleves, help in his difficulties about Magdeburg, the eventual renunciation of Philip’s title to the inheritance of his father-in-law, Duke George, and, finally, the promise to push his claims to the Imperial crown after the death of Charles V, or in the event of the partitioning of the Empire.

The Elector, like his theologians, was not aware that the “lady” (she is never actually named) had already been chosen. Margaret von der Sale, who was then only seventeen years of age, was the daughter of a lady-in-waiting to Philip’s sister, Elisabeth, Duchess of Rochlitz. Her mother, Anna von der Sale, an ambitious lady of the lower nobility, had informed the Landgrave that she must stipulate for certain privileges. As soon as Philip had received the replies from Wittenberg and Weimar, on Dec. 23, 1539, the demands of the mother were at once settled by persons vested with the necessary authority. Even before this, on the very day of the negotiations with Luther, Dec. 11, the Landgrave and his wife Christina had each drawn up a formal deed concerning what was about to take place: Christina agreed to Philip’s “taking another wedded wife” and promised that she would never on that account be unfriendly to the Landgrave, his second wife, or her children; Philip pledged himself not to countenance any claim to the Landgraviate on the part of any issue by the second wife during the lifetime of Christina’s two sons, but to provide for such issue by means of territories situated outside his own dominions.[67] Such was the assurance with which he proceeded towards the cherished goal.

Several Hessian theologians of the new faith, for instance, the preacher Dionysius Melander, a personal friend of the Landgrave’s, and Johann Lening were on his side.[68] To the memorandum composed by Luther and Melanchthon the signatures of both the above-mentioned were subsequently added, as well as those of Anton Corvinus, then pastor at Witzenhausen, of Adam Fuldensis (Kraft), then Superintendent at Marburg, of Justus Winther—since 1532 Court Schoolmaster at Cassel and, from 1542, Superintendent at Rotenburg on the Fulda—and of Balthasar Rhaide (Raid), pastor at Hersfeld, who, as Imperial Notary, certified the marriage. The signature of the last was, however, subsequently erased.[69]

About the middle of Jan., 1540, Philip informed the more prominent Councillors and theologians that he would soon carry out his project. When everything was ready the marriage was celebrated on March 4 in the Castle of Rotenburg on the Fulda by the Court Chaplain, Dionysius Melander, in the presence of Bucer and Melanchthon; were also present the Commandant of the Wartburg, Eberhard von der Thann, representing the Elector of Saxony, Pastor Balthasar Rhaide, the Hessian Chancellor Johann Feige of Lichtenau, the Marshal Hermann von Hundelshausen, Rudolf Schenk zu Schweinsberg (Landvogt of Eschwege on the Werra), Hermann von der Malsburg, a nobleman, and the mother of the bride, Anna von der Sale.[70] The draft of the short discourse still exists with which the Landgrave intended to open the ceremony. Melander delivered the formal wedding address. On the following day Melanchthon handed the Landgrave an “admonition,” i.e. a sort of petition, in which he warmly recommended to his care the welfare of education. It is possible that when summoned, to Rotenburg from a meeting of the Schmalkalden League at which he had been assisting, he was unaware of the object of the invitation. Subsequent explanations, furnished at the last moment, by Melander and Lening, seem to have drawn a protest from Melanchthon which roused the anger of the two preachers. This shows that “everything did not pass off smoothly at Rotenburg.”[71] Both were, not long after, stigmatised by Melanchthon as “ineruditi homines” and made chiefly responsible for the lax principles of the Landgrave.[72] Luther tried later to represent Lening, the “monster,” as the man by whom the idea of the bigamy, a source of extreme embarrassment to the Wittenbergers, had first been hatched.[73]

Although the Landgrave was careful to preserve secrecy concerning the new marriage—already known to so many persons,—permitting only the initiate to visit the “lady,” and even forbidding her to attend Divine Worship, still the news of what had taken place soon leaked out. “Palpable signs appeared in the building operations commenced at Weissenstein, and also in the despatch of a cask of wine to Luther.”[74] At Weissenstein, in the former monastery near Cassel, now Wilhelmshöhe, an imposing residence was fitted up for Margaret von der Sale. In a letter of May 24, 1540, to Philip, Luther expresses his thanks for the gift of wine: “I have received your Serene Highness’s present of the cask of Rhine wine and thank your Serene Highness most humbly. May our dear Lord God keep and preserve you body and soul. Amen.”[75] Katey also received a gift from the Prince, for which Luther returned thanks on Aug. 22, though without mentioning its nature.[76] On the cask of wine and its destination the Schultheiss of Lohra spoke “openly before all the peasants,” so Anton Corvinus informed the Landgrave on May 25, saying that: “Your Serene Highness has taken another wife, of which he was perfectly sure, and your Serene Highness is now sending a cask of wine to Luther because he gave your Serene Highness permission to do such a thing.”[77]

On June 9 Jonas wrote from Wittenberg, where he was staying with Luther—who himself was as silent as the tomb—to George of Anhalt: Both in the Meissen district and at Wittenberg there is “much gossip” (‘ingens fama’) of bigamy with a certain von Sale, though, probably, it was only “question of a concubine.”[78] Five days later, however, he relates, that “at Würzburg and similar [Catholic] localities the Papists and Canons were expressing huge delight” over the bigamy.[79]

The behaviour of the Landgrave’s sister had helped to spread the news. On March 13 the Landgrave, through Marshal von Hundelshausen, had informed the latter of the fact, as he had formally promised Margaret’s mother to do. The “lady began to weep, made a great outcry and abused Luther and Bucer as a pair of incarnate scamps.”[80] She was unable to reconcile herself to the bigamy or to refrain from complaining to others. “My angry sister has been unable to hold her tongue,” wrote the Landgrave Philip on June 8.[81] The Ducal Court of Saxony at Dresden was anxious for reliable information. Duke Henry was a patron of Lutheranism, but one of the motives for his curiosity in this matter is to be found in the fact that the Landgrave was claiming a portion of the inheritance of the late Duke George, who had died on April 17, 1539. In accordance with Henry’s orders Anna von der Sale, as a subject of the Saxon duchy, was removed by force on June 3 from her residence at Schönfeld and carried to Dresden. There the mother confessed everything and declared, not without pride, that her daughter Margaret “was as much the rightful wife of the Landgrave as Christina.”[82] About Whitsun the Landgrave personally admitted the fact to Maurice of Saxony.

The Court of Dresden at once informed the Elector of Saxony of its discovery and of the very unfavourable manner in which the news had been received, and the latter, in turn, communicated it, through Chancellor Brück, to Luther and Melanchthon.

The Elector Johann Frederick, in view of the change of circumstances, became more and more vexed with the marriage. To a certain extent he stood under the influence of Elisabeth Duchess of Rochlitz. In his case, too, the question of property played a part, viz. whether, in view of the understanding existing between Hesse and Saxony as to the succession, the children of the second wife were to become the heirs in the event of the death of the children of the first wife, this being what the Landgrave demanded. Above all, however, the cautious Elector was anxious about the attitude of the Empire and Emperor. He feared lest steps should be taken against the general scandal which had been given and to obviate the danger of the spread of polygamous ideas. Hence he was not far from withdrawing from Luther the favour he had hitherto shown him, the more so now that the Court of Dresden was intent on raising trouble against all who had furthered the Landgrave’s plan.

Meanwhile the news rapidly spread, partly owing to persons belonging to the Court. It reached King Ferdinand, and, by him, and still more by Morone, the Nuncio, it was carried to the Emperor.

Morone wrote on June 15, from the religious conference then proceeding at Hagenau, to Cardinal Farnese at Rome: “During the lifetime of his first wife, a daughter of Duke George of Saxony of good memory, the Landgrave of Hesse, has, as we hear, taken a second wife, a lady of distinction, von der Sale by name, a native of Saxony. It is said, his theologians teach that it is not forbidden to Christians to have several wives, except in the case of a Bishop, because there is no such prohibition in Holy Scripture. I can hardly credit it, but since God has ‘given them over to a reprobate mind’ [Rom. i. 28] and as the King has assured me that he has heard it from several quarters, I give you the report for what it is worth.”[83]

Philip of Hesse, who was already in disgrace with the Emperor on account of his expedition into Würtemberg and his support of Duke Ulrich, knew the penalties which he might expect unless he found some means of escape. The “Carolina” (1532) decreed “capital punishment” against bigamists, no less than against adulterers.[84] The Landgrave himself was even fully prepared to forfeit one-third of his possessions should it be impossible to arrive otherwise at a settlement.[85] He now openly declared—as he had already hinted he would—that, in case of necessity, he would make humble submission to the Emperor; if the worst came to the worst, then he would also make public the memorandum he had received from Wittenberg in order to exculpate himself—a threat which filled the Elector with alarm on account of his University and of Luther.

Bucer, the first to be summoned to the aid of the Hessian Court, advised the Landgrave to escape from his unfortunate predicament by downright lying. He wrote: If concealment and equivocation should prove of no avail, he was to state in writing that false rumours concerning his person had come into circulation, and that no Christian was allowed to have two wives at the same time; he was also to replace the marriage-contract by another contract in which Margaret might be described as a concubine—such as God had allowed to His beloved friends—and not as a wife within the meaning of the calamitous Imperial Law; an effort was also to be made to induce the Court of Dresden to keep silence, or to deny any knowledge of the business, and, in the meantime, the “lady” might be kept even more carefully secluded than before.[86]

The Landgrave’s reply was violent in the extreme. He indignantly rejected Bucer’s suggestion; the dissimulation alleged to have been practised by others, notably by the Patriarchs, Judges, Kings and Prophets, etc., in no wise proved the lawfulness of lying; Bucer had “been instigated to make such proposals by some worldly-wise persons and jurists whom we know well.”[87] Philip wrote to the same effect to the Lutheran theologians, Schnepf, Osiander and Brenz, who urged him to deny that Margaret was his lawful wife: “That, when once the matter has become quite public, we should assert that it was invalid, this we cannot bring ourselves to do. We cannot tell a lie, for to lie does not become any man. And, moreover, God has forbidden lying. So long as it is possible we shall certainly reply ‘dubitative’ or ‘per amphibologiam,’ but to say that it is invalid, such advice you may give to another, but not to us.”[88]

The “amphibologia” had been advised by the Hessian theologians, who had pointed out that Margaret could best be described to the Imperial Court of Justice as a “concubina,” since, in the language of the Old Testament, as also in that of the ancient Church, this word had sometimes been employed to describe a lawful wife.[89] They also wrote to Luther and Melanchthon, fearing that they might desert the Landgrave, telling them that they were expected to stand by their memorandum. Although they were in favour of secrecy, yet they wished that, in case of necessity, the Wittenbergers should publicly admit their share. Good care would be taken to guard against the general introduction of polygamy.[90]

Dispensation; Advice in Confession; a Confessor’s Secret?

Was the document signed by Luther, Melanchthon and Bucer a dispensation for bigamy?

It has been so described. But, even according to the very wording of the memorandum, the signatories had no intention of issuing a dispensation. On the contrary, according to the text, they, as learned theologians, declared that the Divine Law, as they understood it, gave a general sanction, according to which, in cases such as that of Philip of Hesse, polygamy was allowed. It is true that they and Philip himself repeatedly use the word “dispensation,” but by this they meant to describe the alleged general sanction in accordance with which the law admitted of exceptions in certain cases, hence their preference for the term “to use” the dispensation, instead of the more usual “to beg” or “to grant.” Philip is firmly resolved “to use” the dispensation brought to his knowledge by Luther’s writings, and the theologians, taking their cue from him, likewise speak of his “using” it in his own case.[91]

It was the same with the “dispensation” which the Wittenbergers proposed to Henry VIII of England. (See above, p. 4 f.) They had no wish to invest him with an authority which, according to their ideas, he did not possess, but they simply drew his attention to the freedom common to all, and declared by them to be bestowed by God, viz. in his case, of taking a second wife, telling him that he was free to have recourse to this dispensation. In other words, they gave him the power to dispense himself, regardless of ecclesiastical laws and authorities.

Another question: How far was the substance of the advice given in the Hessian case to be regarded as a secret? Can it really be spoken of as a “counsel given in confession,” or as a “secret of the confessional”?

This question later became of importance in the negotiations which turned upon the memorandum. In order to answer it without prejudice it is essential in the first place to point out, that the subsequent interpretations and evasions must not here be taken into account. The actual wording of the document and its attendant historical circumstances have alone to be taken into consideration, abstraction being made of the fine distinctions and meanings afterwards read into it.

First, there is no doubt that both the Landgrave’s request for the Wittenberg testimony and its granting were intended to be confidential and not public. Philip naturally assumed that the most punctilious secrecy would be preserved so long as no decision had been arrived at, seeing that he had made confidential disclosures concerning his immorality in pleading for a second marriage. The Wittenbergers, as they explicitly state, gave their reply not merely unwillingly, with repugnance and with great apprehension of the scandal which might ensue, but also most urgently recommended Philip to keep the bigamy to himself. Both the request and the theological testimony accordingly came under the natural obligation of silence, i.e. under the so-called confidential seal of secrecy. This, however, was of course broken when the suppliant on his part allowed the matter to become public; in such a case no one could grudge the theologians the natural right of bringing forward everything that was required for their justification, even to the reasons which had determined them to give their consent, though of course they were in honour bound to show the utmost consideration; for this the petitioner himself was alone to blame.

As a matter of fact, however, strange though it may seem, Philip’s intention all along had been ultimately to make the marriage public. It cannot be proved that he ever made any written promise to observe the recommendation of absolute secrecy made by the theologians. Those who drew up the memorandum disregarded his wish for publicity, and, on the contrary, “advised” that the matter should be kept a dead secret. Yet ought they not to have foreseen that a Prince so notoriously unscrupulous would be likely to disregard their “advice”? The theologians were certainly no men of the world if they really believed that the Landgrave’s bigamy—and their memorandum by which it was justified—would or could remain concealed. They themselves had allowed a number of other parties to be initiated into the secret, nor was it difficult to foresee that Philip, and Margaret’s ambitious mother, would not allow the stigma of concubinage to rest permanently on the newly wedded bride. The mother had expressly stipulated that Margaret should be treated as a lawful wife and given this title, and not as a concubine, though of this the Wittenbergers were not aware.

Further, the theological grounds for the Wittenberg “advice” must not be lost sight of in considering the question of the obligation of silence or secrecy. The theologians based their decision on a doctrine which they had already openly proclaimed. Nor did Luther ever withdraw from the standpoint that polygamy was lawful; he even proclaimed it during the height of the controversy raised by the Hessian bigamy, though he was careful to restrict it to very rare and exceptional cases and to make its use dependent on the consent of the authorities. Thus the grounds for the step he had taken in Philip’s favour were universally and publicly known just as much as his other theological doctrines. If, however, his teaching on this matter was true, then, strictly speaking, people had as much right to it as to every other piece of truth; in fact, it was the more urgent that this Evangelical discovery should not be put under a bushel, seeing that it would have been a veritable godsend to many who groaned in the bonds of matrimony. Hence everything, both on Philip’s side and on that of the theologians, pointed to publicity. But may, perhaps, the Wittenberg “advice” have been esteemed a sort of “counsel given in Confession,” and did its contents accordingly fall under the “secret of Confession”?

The word “Confession,” in its sacramental meaning, was never used in connection with the affair dealt with at Wittenberg, either in Philip’s instructions to Bucer or in the theologians’ memorandum, nor does it occur in any of the few documents relating to the bigamy until about six months later. “Confession” is first alleged in the letter of excuse given below which Luther addressed to the Elector of Saxony. It is true that the expression “in the way of Confession” occurs once in the memorandum, but there it is used in an entirely different sense and in no way stamps the business as a matter of Confession. There it is stated (above, p. 21), that those who were to be apprised of the bigamy were to learn it “in the way of Confession.” Here the word Confession is employed by metonymy and merely emphasises the need of discretion. Here there was naturally no idea of the sacramental seal, or of the making of a real Confession. In the Middle Ages the term Confession was not seldom used to denote the imparting of an ordinary confidential secret, just as the word to confess originally meant to admit, to acknowledge, or to communicate something secret. This, however, was not the meaning attached to it by those who sought to shelter themselves behind the term in the controversies which ensued after the bigamy had become generally known. To vindicate the keeping secret of his so-called “advice in Confession,” Luther falls back upon his Catholic recollections of the entire secrecy required of the Confessor, in other words, on the sacramental “seal.”

Undoubtedly the Seal of Confession is inexorable; according to the Catholic view it possesses a sacramental sanction and surrounds, like a protecting rampart, the sanctuary of the Sacrament of Penance, which otherwise would be shunned by all. But this absolute and sacramental obligation of silence attends only the administration of the Sacrament of Penance.

The idea that Luther and his comrades when signing the “advice” were dispensing the Sacrament of Penance cannot but raise a smile. In connection with this matter non-Catholic theologians and historians would never have spoken as they have done of Luther as a Confessor, had they been better acquainted with the usages of the older Church. In the case of such writers all that is known of the system of Confession is often a few distorted quotations from casuists. Even under its altered form, as then in use among the Protestants, Confession could only mean an admission of one’s sins, made to obtain absolution. In Lutheranism, confession, so far as it was retained at all, meant the awakening and animating of faith by means of some sort of self-accusation completed by the assurance given by the preacher of the Divine promise and forgiveness, a process which bears no analogy to the “testimony” given by the theologians to Philip of Hesse. In the Catholic Church, moreover, in whose practice Luther seems anxious to take refuge, Confession involves an accusation of all grievous sins, contrition, a firm resolve to amend, satisfaction and absolution. What was there of all this in the Landgrave’s so-called Confession?[92] Where was the authority to absolve, even had this been what the Landgrave sought? How then could there come into play the Seal of Confession, i.e. any sacramental obligation apart from the purely natural obligation of keeping silence concerning a communication made in confidence? Again, Confession, even according to Lutheran ideas, is not made at a distance, or to several persons simultaneously, or with the object of securing a signed document.

Apart from all this one may even question whether the Landgrave’s disclosures were really honestly meant. Not everyone would have taken them from the outset as intended seriously, or have regarded them as above suspicion. Melanchthon, for instance, soon began to have doubts. (See below.) The readiness, nay, eagerness, shown by Philip later to repeat his Confession to others, to reinforce it by even more appalling admissions of wickedness, and to give it the fullest publicity, is really not favourable to the “Confession” idea; on the contrary, it reminds us of the morbid pleasure which persons habituated to vice and who have lost all respect whether for themselves or for the virtue of others, take in speaking openly of their moral lapses. The most important point to bear in mind is, however, the fact, that with Philip of Hesse it was a question of a marriage which he intended should be kept secret only for a time, and further that the Wittenbergers were aware of Philip’s readiness to lay his case before the Emperor, nay, even the Pope should necessity arise.[93] Owing to this they could not be blind to the possibility of the marriage, and, incidentally, of the Landgrave’s admission of moral necessity, and further of their own “advice” being all disclosed. Thus the “Seal of Confession” was threatened from the very first. Philip himself never recognised a binding obligation of secrecy on the part of the Wittenbergers; on the contrary, his invitation to them was: Speak out freely, now that the step has been taken with your sanction! What was Luther’s answer? He appealed to the Secret of the Confessional and refused to defend the act before the world and the Empire, but merely “before God”; all he was willing to do was to vindicate it “before God, by examples such as that of Abraham, etc., and to conceal it as much as possible.” And yet, to forestall what will be related below, full publicity would surely have been the best thing for himself, as then the world would at least have learnt that he was not desirous of introducing polygamy generally, and that the whole business had only been made common property through Philip’s disregard of the recommendation of secrecy. Instead of this, however, he preferred to profess his readiness (it was probably no more than a threat) to admit publicly that he had been in the wrong all along and had acted foolishly; here again, had he been true to his word, the “Secret of the Confessional” would assuredly have fared badly.

Even in his letter of excuse to the Elector Johann Frederick concerning his sanction of the bigamy, Luther explained so much of the incident, that the “Seal of Confession” was practically violated; quite unmindful of the inviolability of the Seal he here declared, that he would have preferred to say nothing of the “counsel given in Confession had not necessity” forced him to do so. But what kind of Seal of Confession was this, we may ask, which could thus be set aside in case of necessity?

Melanchthon acted differently. He, without any necessity, at once recounted everything that had happened to a friend in a letter eloquent with grief. He, the author of the “Counsel of Confession,” felt under no obligation to regard the Seal. He considers himself liberated, by Philip’s behaviour, from the obligation even of confidential secrecy.[94] Bucer expressed himself on Aug. 8, 1540, in a similar fashion concerning the counsel given to the Landgrave “in Confession”: Luther would certainly publish and defend it, should the “marriage have to be admitted” through no fault of the Landgrave’s.[95] No one, in fact, displayed the slightest scruple regarding the secrecy of the Confession—except Luther and those who re-echo his sentiments.

According to the above we are justified in saying that the term “Counsel given in Confession” is in no wise descriptive of the Wittenberg document. The word “testimony,” or “certificate,” used both in Philip’s instructions and in an important passage of the document signed by Luther, Melanchthon and Bucer, is historically more correct; the terms “opinion” or “memorandum” are equally applicable.

The Wittenbergers gave their testimony or opinion—such is the upshot of the matter—but no Dispensation or Counsel in Confession in the sense just determined. They gave a testimony, which was asked for that it might be made public, but which was given in confidence, which was moreover based on their openly expressed teaching, though it actually dealt only with Philip’s own case, a testimony which no longer involved them in any obligation of secrecy once the marriage had been made public by Philip, and once the latter had declared his intention of making the testimony public should circumstances demand it.

Luther’s Embarrassment on the Bigamy becoming Public.

At the commencement of June, 1540, Luther was in great distress on account of the Hessian bigamy. His embarrassment and excitement increased as the tidings flew far and wide, particularly when the Court of Dresden and his own Elector began to take fright at the scandal, and the danger of complications arising with the Emperor. On the other hand, Luther was not unaware of the Landgrave’s doubts as to whether he would stand by his written declaration. Jonas wrote from Wittenberg on June 10 to George of Anhalt: “Philip is much upset and Dr. Martin full of thought.”[96]

On that very day Brück, the Electoral Chancellor, discussed the matter with both of them at Wittenberg. He acquainted them with his sovereign’s fears. They had gone too far, and the publication of the affair had had the most disastrous results; a young Princess and Landgravine had appeared on the scene, which was not at all what the Elector had expected; the Court of Dresden was loud in its complaints and spared not even the Elector; the Dresden people were bringing forward against Luther what he had taught in favour of polygamy thirteen years before; the door had now been opened wide to polygamists.

Not long after Luther wrote, that, were it necessary, he would know how to “extricate himself.”[97] Even before dropping this curious remark he had shown himself very anxious to make his position secure. It was with this object in view, that, after his interview with Brück, probably on the same day, he proceeded to explain the case to his sovereign in the lengthy letter[98] in which he appeals to Confession and its secrecy.

“Before the world and against the laws of the Empire it cannot be defended,” but “we were desirous of glossing it over before God as much as possible with examples, such as that of Abraham, etc. All this was done and treated of as in Confession, so that we cannot be charged as though we had done it willingly and gladly, or with joy and pleasure.... I took into consideration the unavoidable necessity and weakness, and the danger to his conscience which Master Bucer had set forth.”

Luther goes on to complain, that the Landgrave, by allowing this “matter of Confession” and “advice given in Confession” to become to a certain extent public, had caused all this “annoyance and contumely.” He relates in detail what Bucer, when seeking to obtain the Wittenberg sanction, had recounted concerning his master’s immorality, so contrary to the Evangel, “though he should be one of the mainstays of the party.” They had at first looked askance at the idea, but, on being told that “he was unable to relinquish it, and, should we not permit it, would do it in spite of us, and obtain permission from the Emperor or the Pope unless we were beforehand, we humbly begged His Serene Highness, if he was really set on it, and, as he declared, could not in conscience and before God do otherwise, that he would at least keep it secret.” This had been promised them [by Bucer]; their intention had been to “save his conscience as best we might.”

Luther, far from showing himself remorseful for his indulgence, endeavours in his usual way to suppress any scruples of conscience: “Even to-day, were such a case to come before me again, I should not know how to give any other advice than what I then gave, nor would it trouble me should it afterwards become known.” “I am not ashamed of the testimony even should it come before the world, though, to be spared trouble, I should prefer it to be kept secret so long as possible.” Still, no angel would have induced him to give such advice “had he known that the Landgrave had long satisfied and could still satisfy his cravings on others, for instance, as I now learn, on lady von Essweg.” This lady was perhaps a relative of Rudolf Schenk, Landvogt of Eschwege on the Werra.[99] We may recall, that the proposal of taking a “concubine” in place of the too numerous “light women” had been made to Philip by his sister.[100]

Luther goes on to excuse his conduct still further to the Elector: “Still less would I have advised a public marriage”; that the second wife was to become a Princess or Landgravine—a plan at which the whole Empire would take offence—had been kept from him altogether; “what I expected was, that, since he was obliged owing to the weakness of the flesh to follow the ordinary course of sin and shame, he would perhaps keep an honest girl in some house, and wed her secretly—though even this would look ill in the sight of the world—and thus overcome his great trouble of conscience; he could then ride backwards and forwards, as the great lords do frequently enough; similar advice I gave also to certain parish priests under Duke George and the bishops, viz. that they should marry their cook secretly.”

Though what he here says may be worthy of credence, yet to apply the term Confession to what passed between Philip and Wittenberg is surely to introduce an alien element into the affair. Yet he does use the word three times in the course of the letter and seemingly lays great stress on it. The Confession, he says, covered all that had passed, and, because it “was seemly” to “keep matters treated of in Confession private” he and Melanchthon “preferred not to relate the matter and the counsel given in Confession” to the Elector; but, since the Landgrave “had revealed the substance of the Confession and the advice,” it was easier for him to speak. Hence he would now reveal the “advice given in Confession; though I should much have preferred to keep it secret, unless necessity had forced it from me, now I am unable to do so.” The fact is, however, that the real Seal of Confession (and of this Luther was quite aware) does not allow the confessor who has received the Confession to make any communication or disclosure concerning it; even should the penitent make statements concerning other matters which occurred in the Confession, under no circumstances whatsoever, however serious these may be, not even in the case of danger to life and limb, may “necessity” “force out” anything. Although in this case Luther had not heard a Confession at all, yet he refers to the Secret of the Confessional with which he was acquainted from his Catholic days, and his own former exercise of it: “I have received in Confession many confidences, both in Popery and since, and given advice, but were there any question of making them public I should be obliged to say no.... Such matters are no business of the secular courts nor ought they to be made public.”

This uncalled-for introduction of Confession was intended to save him from being obliged to admit his consent publicly; it was meant to reassure so weak a theologian as the Elector, who dreaded the scandal arising from Luther’s advice to commit bigamy, and the discussion of the case before the Imperial Court of Justice; possibly he also hoped it would serve against that other princely theologian, viz. the Landgrave, and cause him to withdraw his demand for a public acknowledgment of the sanction given. His tactics here remind us of Luther’s later denial, when he professed himself ready simply to deny the bigamy and his share in it—because everything had been merely a matter of Confession.

Even in this first letter dealing with the question, he is clearly on the look-out for a loophole by which he may escape from the calamitous business.

The publication of the “testimony” was to be prevented at all costs. But, as a matter of fact, not only did the “Seal of Confession” present no obstacle, but even the common secrecy referred to above (p. 31) was no longer binding. This had been cancelled by the indiscretion of the Landgrave. Moreover, apart from this, the natural obligation of secrecy did not extend to certain extreme cases which might have been foreseen by both parties and in the event of which both would recover their freedom. It should be noted, that Luther hardly made any appeal to this natural obligation of secrecy, probably because it could not be turned to account so easily. The Seal of Confession promised to serve him better in circles so little acquainted with theology.

In the second letter dealing with the bigamy, dated June 27, 1540, and addressed to Philip’s intimate, Eberhard von der Thann, Luther speaks with an eye on Hesse.[101] Thann, through Chancellor Brück, had informed him of what was being said of him there, and had asked what Luther would advise the Hessian Prince, and whether, in order to obviate other cases of polygamy in Hesse, it would be advisable for the authorities to issue an edict against the universal lawfulness of having several wives. Luther replied, that he agreed with the Landgrave’s intention as announced by Thann concerning his second marriage, viz. to wait until the Emperor “should approach His Serene Highness on the subject”; and then to write to the Emperor: “That he had taken a concubine but that he would be perfectly ready to put her away again if other Princes and Lords would set a good example.” If the Emperor were compelled “to regard the ‘lady’ as a concubine,” “no one else would dare to speak or think differently”; in this wise the real state of things would be “covered over and kept secret.” On the other hand, it would not be at all advisable to issue any edict, or to speak of the matter, for then “there would be no end or limit to gossip and suspicions.”

“And I for my part am determined [here he comes to his ‘testimony’ and the meaning he now put on it] to keep silence concerning my part of the confession which I heard from His Serene Highness through Bucer, even should I suffer for it, for it is better that people should say that Dr. Martin acted foolishly in his concession to the Landgrave—for even great men have acted foolishly and do so, even now, as the saying goes: A wise man makes no small mistakes—rather than reveal the reasons why we secretly consented; for that would greatly disgrace and damage the reputation of the Landgrave, and would also make matters worse.” To the Elector his sovereign Luther had said that, even to-day, he “would not be able to give any different advice” and that he saw no reason to blush for it. Hence it is hard to believe that he seriously contemplated admitting that he had been guilty of an act of “folly” and had “acted foolishly.” It will be shown more clearly below what his object was in threatening such a repudiation of his advice to the Landgrave.

In his letter to Thann, Luther decides in favour of the expedient suggested by the Hessian theologians, viz. of the amphibological use of the word concubine; here it should, however, be noted, that this term, if used officially to counteract the common report concerning the new marriage, plainly implied a denial of the reality of the bigamy.

But how if the Landgrave were directly confronted in a Court of Justice with the question: Have you, or have you not, married two wives?

Here belongs the third letter of Luther’s which we have on the subject and which was despatched to Hesse before the middle of July. It is addressed to “a Hessian Councillor” who has been identified, with some probability, as the Hessian Chancellor Johann Feige.[102]

To the addressee, who was acquainted with the whole matter and had applied to Luther for his opinion on behalf of the Landgrave, the writer defines his own position still more clearly; if people say openly that the Landgrave has contracted a second marriage, all one need answer is, that this is not true, although it is true that he has contracted a secret union; hence he himself was wont to say, “the Landgrave’s other marriage is all nonsense.”

The justification of this he finds in the theory of the secrecy of confession upon which he insists strongly in this letter. Not only is his own share in the matter nil because ostensibly done in confession, but the marriage itself is merely a sort of “confession marriage,” a thing concealed and therefore non-existent so far as the world is concerned. “A secret affirmative cannot become a public affirmative ... a secret ‘yes’ remains a public ‘no’ and vice versa.... On this I take my stand; I say that the Landgrave’s second marriage is nil and cannot be convincing to anyone. For, as they say, ‘palam,’ it is not true, and although it may be true ‘clam,’ yet that they may not tell.”

He is very bitter about the Landgrave’s purpose of making the marriage and the Wittenberg “advice” public, should need arise. The fate of the latter was, in fact, his chief anxiety. “In this the Landgrave touches us too nearly, but himself even more, that he is determined to do ‘palam’ what we arranged with him ‘clam,’ and to make of a ‘nullum’ an ‘omne’; this we are unable either to defend or to answer for, and we should certainly come to high words.” The last sentence was, however, felt by Luther to be too strong and he accordingly struck it out of the letter.

He also says that the Landgrave’s appeal to his sermon on Genesis would be of no avail, because he (Luther) had taught, both previous to and after it, that the law of Moses was not to be introduced, though some of it “might be used secretly in cases of necessity, or even publicly by order of the authorities.” But advice extorted from him in Confession by the distress of a suffering conscience could “not be held to constitute a true precedent in law.” He here touches upon a thought to which he was to return in entirely different circumstances: Neither the preachers, nor the Gospel, lay down outward laws, not even concerning religion; the secular authorities are the only legislators; ecclesiastical guidance comprises only advice, direction and the expounding of Scripture, and has to do only with the interior life, being without any jurisdiction, even spiritual; as public men, the pastors were appointed to preach, pray and give advice; to the individual they rendered service amidst the “secret needs of conscience.”[103]

He thereby absolves himself from the consequence apparently involved in the step he had taken, viz. the introduction of polygamy as a “general right”; it does not follow that: “What you do from necessity, I have a right to do”; “necessity knows no law or precedent,” hence a man who is driven by hunger to steal bread, or who kills in self-defence is not punished, yet what thus holds in cases of necessity cannot be taken as a law or rule. On the other hand, Luther will not listen to the proposal then being made in Hesse, viz. that, in order to counteract the bad example, a special edict should be issued declaring polygamy unlawful as a general rule, but allowable in an exceptional case, on the strength “of secret advice given in Confession”; on the contrary, it would be far better simply to denounce polygamy as unlawful.

Hence if the Landgrave, so Luther concludes, “will not forsake the sweetheart” on whom “he has so set his heart that she has become a need to him,” and if, moreover, he will “keep her out of the way,” then “we theologians and confessors shall vindicate it before God, as a case of necessity to be excused by the examples of Genesis. But defend it before the world and ‘iure nunc regente,’ that we cannot and shall not do. Short of this the Landgrave may count upon our best service.”

The Landgrave was, however, not satisfied with either of these letters, both of which came into his hands. He wanted from Luther a clear and public admission of his share in the business, which, to the Prince’s peril, had now become as good as public, and threatened to constitute a precedent. By this invitation the Prince naturally released Luther from all obligation of secrecy. Even the making public of the immorality, which had served as a pretext for the new marriage, he did not mind in the least, for his laxity in morals was already a matter of common knowledge; he discussed his lapses with the theologians as openly as though all of them had been his confessors and spiritual directors; he was also quite ready to repeat his admissions, “as in Confession,” before secular witnesses. Such was the depth of depravity into which his passions had brought him.

Yielding to pressure brought to bear on him by Saxony, Luther had meanwhile conceived the idea of publishing a work against polygamy. The new expedient had indeed been foreshadowed in his last letter. On June 17, 1540, Jonas wrote to George of Anhalt that Luther might be expected to write a work “Contra polygamiam.”[104] Martin Beyer of Schaffhausen, on his return from Wittenberg, also brought the news, so Bullinger was informed, that “Luther was being compelled by the Hessian business to write a work against the plurality of wives.”[105]

The project was, however, never realised, probably on account of the insuperable difficulties it involved.

But though this work never saw the light, history has preserved for us a number of Luther’s familiar conversations, dating from this period and taken down directly from his lips, utterances which have every claim to consideration and faithfully mirror his thoughts.

Luther’s Private Utterances Regarding the Bigamy.

The Table-Talk, dating from the height of the hubbub caused by the bigamy, affords us a vivid psychological picture of Luther.

Of this Table-Talk we have the detailed and authentic notes from the pen of Johann Mathesius, who was present. These notes, in their best form, became known only in 1903, thanks to Kroker’s edition, but, for the better understanding of Luther’s personality, his intimate descriptions of what was passing in his mind are of inestimable value. Conjointly with the principal passage, which probably dates from June 18, 1540, other sayings dropped regarding the same matter may be considered.[106]

The scene in the main was as follows: The usual guests, among them the disciples with their note-books, were assembled after the evening meal in Luther’s house, grouped around the master, who seemed sunk in thought; Melanchthon, however, was missing, for he lay seriously ill at Weimar, overwhelmed by anxiety now that his consent to the bigamy was leaking out. Whilst yet at table two letters were handed to Luther, the first from Brück, the Electoral Chancellor, the second from the Elector himself. Both referred to Melanchthon. The Elector requested Luther to betake himself as soon as possible to Weimar to his friend, who seemed in danger of death, and informed him at the same time of the measures threatened by the Landgrave in the matter of the second marriage.

Luther, after glancing at Brück’s missive concerning Melanchthon, said to the guests: “Philip is pining away for vexation, and has fallen into a fever (‘tertiana’). But why does the good fellow crucify himself so about this business? All his anxiety will do no good. I do wish I were with him! I know how sensitive he is. The scandal pains him beyond measure. I, on the other hand, have a thick skin, I am a peasant, a hard Saxon when such × are concerned.[107] I expect I shall be summoned to Philip.”

Someone thereupon interjected the remark: “Doctor, perhaps the Colloquium [which was to be held at Hagenau] will not now take place”; Luther replied: “They will certainly have to wait for us....”

A second messenger now came in with the Elector’s letter, conveying the expected summons to proceed to Weimar. On the reader the news it contained concerning the Landgrave fell like the blows of a sledge-hammer. After attentively perusing the letter “with an earnest mien,” he said: “Philip the Landgrave is cracked; he is now asking the Emperor to let him keep both wives.”

The allusion to the Landgrave’s mental state is explained by a former statement of Luther’s made in connection with some words uttered by the Landgrave’s father: “The old Landgrave [William II] used to say to his son Philip: ‘If you take after your mother, then you won’t come to much; if you take after me, you will have nothing about you that I can praise; if you take after both of us, then you will be a real demon.’” Luther had added: “I fear he is also mad, for it runs in the family.”[108] “And Philip [Melanchthon] said: ‘This [the bigamy] is the beginning of his insanity.’”[109]

When Luther re-entered, so the narrator continues, “he was as cheerful as could be, and he said to us: ‘It is grand having something to do, for then we get ideas; otherwise we do nothing but feed and swill. How our Papists will scream! But let them howl to their own destruction. Our cause is a good one and no fault is to be found with our way of life, or rather [he corrects himself] with the life of those who take it seriously. If the Hessian Landgrave has sinned, then that is sin and a scandal. That we have frequently discounselled by good and holy advice; they have seen our innocence and yet refuse to see it. Hence they [the Papists] are now forced to look the Hessian in anum[110] (i.e. are witnesses of his shame). But they will be brought to destruction by [our] scandals because they refuse to listen to the pure doctrine; for God will not on this account forsake us or His Word, or spare them, even though we have our share of sin, for He has resolved to overthrow the Papacy. That has been decreed by God, as we read in Daniel, where it is foretold of him [Antichrist] who is even now at the door: “And none shall help him” (Dan. xi. 45). In former times no power was able to root out the Pope; in our own day no one will be able to help him, because Antichrist is revealed.’”

Thus amidst the trouble looming he finds his chief consolation in his fanatical self-persuasion that the Papacy must fall and that he is the chosen instrument to bring this about, i.e. in his supposed mission to thwart Antichrist, a Divine mission which could not be contravened. Hence his pseudo-mysticism was once again made to serve his purpose.

“If scandals occur amongst us,” he continues, “let us not forget that they existed in Christ’s own circle. The Pharisees were doubtless in glee over our Lord Christ on account of the wickedness of Judas. In the same way the Landgrave has become a Judas to us. ‘Ah, the new prophet has such followers [as Judas, cried the foes of Christ!] What good can come of Christ?’—But because they refused to open their eyes to the miracles, they were forced to see ‘Christum Crucifixum’ and ... later to see and suffer under Titus. But our sins may obtain pardon and be easily remedied; it is only necessary that the Emperor should forbid [the bigamy], or that our Princes should intercede [for the Hessian], which they are at liberty to do, or that he should repudiate the step he took.”

“David also fell, and surely there were greater scandals under Moses in the wilderness. Moses caused his own masters to be slain.... But God had determined to drive out the heathen, hence the scandals amongst the Jews availed not to prevent it. Thus, too, our sins are pardonable, but not those of the Papists; for they are contemners of God, crucify Christ and, though they know better, defend their blasphemies.”

“What advantage do they expect of it,” he goes on to ask in an ironical vein; “they put men to death, but we work for life and take many wives.” This he said, according to the notes, “with a joyful countenance and amidst loud laughter.”[111] “God has resolved to vex the people, and, when my turn comes, I will give them hard words and tell them to look Marcolfus ‘in anum’ since they refuse to look him in the face.” He then went on: “I don’t see why I should trouble myself about the matter. I shall commend it to our God. Should the Macedonian [the Landgrave] desert us, Christ will stand by us, the blessed Schevlimini [כש ליםיבי : Sit at my right hand (Ps. cix. 1)]. He has surely brought us out of even tighter places. The restitution of Würtemberg puts this scandal into the shade, and the Sacramentarians and the revolt [of the Peasants]; and yet God delivered us out of all that.” What he means to say is: Even greater scandal was given by Philip of Hesse when he imposed on Würtemberg the Protestant Duke Ulrich, heedless of the rights of King Ferdinand and of the opposition of the Emperor and the Church;[112] in the same way the ever-recurring dissensions on the Sacrament were an even greater scandal, and so was the late Peasant War which threatened worse things to the Evangelical cause than the Hessian affair.

“Should the Landgrave fall away from us.”—This fear lest Philip should desert their party Luther had expressed in some rather earlier utterances in 1540, when he had described more particularly the Landgrave’s character and attitude. “A strange man!” he says of him. “He was born under a star. He is bent upon having his own way, and so fancies he will obtain the approval of Emperor and Pope. It may be that he will fall away from us on account of this affair.... He is a real Hessian; he cannot be still nor does he know how to yield. When once this business is over he will be hatching something else. But perhaps death will carry him, or her (Margaret), off before.” A Hessian Councillor who was present quite bore out what Luther had said: Nothing was of any avail with the Landgrave, “what he once undertakes he cannot be induced to give up.” In proof of this those present instanced the violence and utter injustice of the raid made on Würtemberg. “Because he is such a strange character,” Luther remarked, “I must let it pass. The Emperor, moreover, will certainly not let him have his way.”[113] “No sensible man would have undertaken that campaign, but he, carried away by fury, managed it quite well. Only wait a little! It [the new scandal] will pass!” Luther was also ready to acknowledge that the Landgrave, in spite of the promises and offers of the Emperor and Duke of Saxony, had remained so far “very faithful” to the Evangel.[114]

In the conversation on June 18, Luther adopts a forcedly light view of the matter: “It is only a three-months’ affair, then the whole thing will fizzle out. Would to God Philip would look at it in this light instead of grieving so over it! The Papists are now Demeas and I Mitio”; with these words commences a string of word-for-word quotations from Terence’s play “Adelphi,” all concerning the harsh and violent Demeas, whom Luther takes as a figure of the Catholic Church, and the mild and peaceable Mitio, in whom Luther sees himself. In the Notes the sentences are given almost unaltered: “The prostitute and the matron living in one house.” “A son is born.” “Margaret has no dowry.” “I, Mitio, say: ‘May the gods direct all for the best!’” “Man’s life is like a throw of the dice.”[115]

“I overlook much worse things than this,” he continues. “If anyone says to me: Are you pleased with what has taken place? I reply: No; oh, would that I could alter it. Since I cannot, I am resolved to bear it with equanimity. I commit it all to our dear God. Let Him preserve His Church as it now stands in order that it may remain in the unity of faith and doctrine and the pure confession of the Word; all I hope for is that it may never grow worse!”

“On rising from the table he said cheerfully: I will not give the devil and the Papists the satisfaction of thinking that I am troubled about the matter. God will see to it. To Him we commend the whole.”

In thus shifting the responsibility from his own shoulders and putting it on God—Whose chosen instrument, even at the most critical juncture, he would still persuade himself he was—he finds the most convenient escape from anxiety and difficulty. It has all been laid upon us by God: “We must put up with the devil and his filth as long as we live.” Therefore, forward against the Papists, who seek to conceal their “sodomitic vices” behind this bigamy! “We may not and shall not yield. Let them do their dirty work and let us lay odds on.”[116] With these words he is again quite himself. He is again the inspired prophet, oblivious of all save his mission to champion God’s cause; all his difficulties have vanished and even his worst moral faults have disappeared. But in this frame of mind Luther was not always able to persevere.

“All I hope for is that it may never grow worse.” The depressing thought implied in these words lingered in the depths of his soul in spite of all his forced merriment and bravado. “Alas, my God, what have we not to put up with from fanatics and scandals! One follows on the heels of the other; when this [the bigamy] has been adjusted, then it is certain that something else will spring up, and many new sects will also arise.... But God will preserve His Christendom.”[117]

Meanwhile the remarkably speedy recovery of his friend Melanchthon consoled him. Soon after the arrival of the letters mentioned above Luther set out for Weimar. His attentions to the sick man, and particularly his words of encouragement, succeeded, so to say, in recalling him to life. Luther speaks of it in his letters at that time as a “manifest miracle of God,” which puts our unbelief to shame.[118] The fanciful embellishment which he gave to the incident when narrating it, making it into a sort of miracle, has left its traces in his friend Ratzeberger’s account.[119]

Confident as Luther’s language here seems, when it is a question of infusing new courage into himself, still he admits plainly enough one point, concerning which he has not a word to say in his correspondence with strangers or in his public utterances: A sin, over and above all his previous crimes, now weighed upon the Hessian and his party owing to what had taken place. He repeatedly uses the words “sin,” “scandal,” “offence” when speaking of the bigamy; he feels the need of seeking consolation in the “unpardonable” sins of the Catholics for the moral failings of his own party, which, after all, would be remitted by God. Nor does the Landgrave’s sin consist in his carelessness about keeping the matter secret. Luther compares his sin to David’s, whose adultery had been forgiven by God, and reckons Philip’s new sin amongst the sins of his co-religionists, who, for all their failings, were destined, with God’s help, to overthrow the Papal Antichrist. “Would that I could alter it!” Such an admission he would not at any price make before the princely Courts concerned, or before the world. Still less would he have admitted publicly, that they were obliged “to put up with the devil’s filth.” It is therefore quite correct when Köstlin, in his Biography of Luther, points out, speaking of the Table-Talk: “That there had been sin and scandal, his words by no means deny.”[120] Concerning the whole affair Köstlin moreover remarks: “Philip’s bigamy is the greatest blot on the history of the Reformation, and remains a blot in Luther’s life in spite of everything that can be alleged in explanation or excuse.”[121]

F. W. Hassencamp, another Protestant, says in his “Hessische Kirchengeschichte”: “His statements at that time concerning his share in the Landgrave’s bigamy prove that, mentally, he was on the verge of despair. Low pleasantry and vulgarity are mixed up with threats and words of prayer.” “Nowhere does the great Reformer appear so small as here.”[122]—In the “Historisch-politische Blätter,” in 1846, K. E. Jarcke wrote of the Table-Talk concerning the bigamy: “Rarely has any man, however coarse-minded, however blinded by hate and hardened by years of combat against his own conscience, expressed himself more hideously or with greater vulgarity.”[123]

“After so repeatedly describing himself as the prophet of the Germans,” says A. Hausrath, “he ought not to have had the weakness to seek a compromise between morality and policy, but, like the preacher robed in camels’ hair, he should have boldly told the Hessian Princelet: It is not lawful for you to have her.” Hausrath, in 1904, is voicing the opinion of many earlier Protestant historians when he regrets “that, owing to weariness and pressure from without,” Luther “sanctioned an exception to God’s unconditional command.” “The band of Protestant leaders, once so valiant and upright,” so he says, “had for once been caught sleeping. Evening was approaching and the day was drawing in, and the Lord their God had left them.”[124]

Luther at the Conference of Eisenach.
The Landgrave’s Indignation.

An official conference of theologians and Councillors from Hesse and the Electorate of Saxony met at Eisenach at the instance of Philip on July 15, 1540, in order to deliberate on the best means of escaping the legal difficulty and of satisfying Philip’s demand, that the theologians should give him their open support. Luther, too, put in an appearance and lost no time in entering into the debate with his wonted bluster.

According to one account, on their first arrival, he bitterly reproached (“acerbissimis verbis”)[125] the Hessian theologians. The report of the Landgrave’s sister says, that his long talk with Philip’s Chancellor so affected the latter that the “tears streamed down his cheeks,” particularly when Luther rounded on the Hessian Court officials for their too great inclination towards polygamy.[126] Though these reports of the effect of his strictures and exhortations may be exaggerated, no less than the remark of Jonas, who says, that the “Hessians went home from Eisenach with long faces,”[127] still it is quite likely that Luther made a great impression on many by his behaviour, particularly by the energy with which he now stood up for the cause of monogamy and appealed to the New Testament on its behalf.

Without denying the possibility of an exception in certain rare cases, he now insisted very strongly on the general prohibition.

The instructions given to the Hessians showed him plainly that the Landgrave was determined not to conceal his bigamy any longer, or to have it branded as mere concubinage; the theologians, so the document declares, would surely never have advised him to have recourse to sinful concubinage. That he was not married to his second wife was a lie, which he would not consent to tell were he to be asked point-blank; his bigamy was really a dispensation “permitted by God, admitted by the learned, and consented to by his wife.” If “hard pressed” he must disclose it. To introduce polygamy generally was of course quite a different matter, and was not to be thought of.[128]—Needless to say, Luther was ready enough to back up this last stipulation, for his own sake as much as for the Landgrave’s.

During the first session of the conference, held in the Rathaus at Eisenach, Luther formally and publicly committed himself to the expedient at which he had faintly hinted even previously. He unreservedly proposed the telling of a lie. Should a situation arise where it was necessary to reply “yes” or “no,” then they must resign themselves to a downright “No.” “What harm would it do,” he said on July 15, according to quite trustworthy notes,[129] “if a man told a good, lusty lie in a worthy cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches?” Similarly he said on July 17: “To lie in case of necessity, or for convenience, or in excuse, such lying would not be against God; He was ready to take such lies on Himself.”[130]

The Protestant historian of the Hessian Bigamy says in excuse of this: “Luther was faced by the problem whether a lie told in case of necessity could be regarded as a sin at all”; he did not have recourse to the “expedient of a mental reservation [as he had done when recommending an ambiguous reply]”; he merely absolved “the ‘mendacium officiosum’ [the useful lie] of sinfulness. This done, Luther could with a good conscience advise the telling of such a lie.”[131]

Nevertheless Luther felt called upon again to return to the alleged Confession made. He is even anxious to make out that his memorandum had been an Absolution coming under the Seal of Confession, and that the Absolution might not be “revealed”: “If the Confession was to be regarded as secret, then the Absolution also must be secret.”[132] “He considered the reply given in Confession as an Absolution,” says Rockwell.[133] Moreover he gave it to be understood, that, should the Landgrave say he had committed bigamy as a right to which he was entitled, and not as a favour, then he, Luther, was quit of all responsibility; it was not the confessor’s business to give public testimony concerning what had taken place in Confession.[134]

Practically, however, according to the notes of the conference, his advice still was that the Landgrave should conceal the bigamy behind the ambiguous declaration that: “Margaret is a concubine.” Under the influence of the hostility to the bigamy shown by the Saxon Courts he urged so strongly the Bible arguments against polygamy, that the Hessians began to fear his withdrawal from his older standpoint.

The Old-Testament examples, he declared emphatically, could neither “exclude nor bind,” i.e. could not settle the matter either way; Paul’s words could not be overthrown; in the New Testament nothing could be found (in favour of bigamy), “on the contrary the New Testament confirmed the original institution [monogamy]”; therefore “since both the Divine and the secular law were at one, nothing could be done against it; he would not take it upon his conscience.” It is true, that, on the other side, must be put the statement, that he saw no reason why the Prince should not take the matter upon his own conscience, declare himself convinced, and thus “set their [the theologians’] consciences free.” That he still virtually stood by what had happened, is also seen from his plain statement: “Many things are right before God in the tribunal of conscience, which, to the world, must appear wrong.” “In support of this he brought forward the example,” so the report of the Conference proceeds, “of the seduction of a virgin and of an illegitimate birth.” He also lays stress on the principle that they, the theologians, had merely “to dispense according to God’s command in the tribunal of conscience,” but were unable to bear witness to it publicly; hence their advice to the Landgrave had in reality never been given at all, for it was no business of the “forum externum”; the Landgrave had acted in accordance with his own ideas, just as he had undertaken many things “against their advice,” for instance, “the raid on Wirtenbergk.” He was doing the same in “this instance too, and acting on his own advice.”

Again, for his own safety, he makes a request: “Beg him [the Prince] most diligently to draw in [to keep it secret],” otherwise, so he threatens, he will declare that “Luther acted like a fool, and will take the shame on himself”; he would “say: I made a mistake and I retract it; he would retract it even at the expense of his own honour; as for his honour he would pray God to restore it.”[135]

In a written memorandum which he presented during the Conference he makes a similar threat, which, however, as already shown in the case of Thann (above, p. 40 f.), it is wrong to take as meaning that he really declared he had acted wrongly in the advice given to the Landgrave.

He begs the Landgrave, “again to conceal the matter and keep it secret; for to defend it publicly as right was impossible”; should the Landgrave, however, be determined, by revealing it, to “cause annoyance and disgrace to our Confession, Churches and Estates,” then it was his duty beforehand to consult all these as to whether they were willing to take the responsibility, since without them the matter could not take place and Luther and Melanchthon alone “could do nothing without their authority. And rather than assist in publicly defending it, I would repudiate my advice and Master Philip’s [Melanchthon’s], were it made public, for it was not a public advice, and is annulled by publication. Or, if this is no use, and they insist on calling it a counsel and not a Confession,[136] which it really was, then I should rather admit that I made a mistake and acted foolishly and now crave for pardon; for the scandal is great and intolerable. And my gracious Lord the Landgrave ought not to forget that his Serene Highness was lucky enough in being able to take the girl secretly with a good conscience, by virtue of our advice in Confession; seeing that H.S.H. has no need or cause for making the matter public, and can easily keep it secret, which would obviate all this great trouble and misfortune. Beyond this I shall not go.”[137]

These attempts at explanation and subterfuge to which the sadly embarrassed authors of the “testimony” had recourse were keenly criticised by Feige, the Hessian Chancellor, in the sober, legal replies given by him at the Conference.[138] He pointed out, that: The Landgrave, his master, could not now “regard or admit his marriage to be a mere ‘liaison’”; he would indeed keep it secret so far as in him lay, but deny it he could not without prejudice to his own honour; “since it has become so widely known”; those to whom he had appealed, “as the chiefs of our Christian Churches, for a testimony,” viz. Luther and his theologians, must not now leave him in the lurch, “but bar witness, should necessity arise, that he had not acted unchristianly in this matter, or against God.” Philip, moreover, from the very first, had no intention of restricting the matter to the private tribunal of conscience; the request brought by Bucer plainly showed, that he “was publicly petitioning the tribunal of the Church.” The fact is that the instructions given to Bucer clearly conveyed the Prince’s intention of making public the bigamy and the advice by which it was justified.

Hence, proceeded Feige: Out with it plainly, out with the theological grounds which “moved the theologians to grant such a dispensation!” If these grounds were not against God, then the Landgrave could take his stand on them before the secular law, the Emperor, the Fiscal and the Courts of Justice. Should the theologians, however, really wish to “repudiate” their advice, nothing would be gained; the scandal would be just as great as if they had “admitted” it; and further, it would cause a split in their own confession, for the Prince would be obliged to “disclose the advice.” Luther wanted to get out of the hole by saying he had acted foolishly! Did he not see how “detrimental this would be to his reputation and teaching”? He should “consider what he had written in his Exposition of Genesis twelve years previously, and that this had never been called into question by any of his disciples or followers.” He should remember all that had been done against the Papacy through his work, for which the Bible gave far less sanction than for the dispensation, and which “nevertheless had been accepted and maintained, in opposition to the worldly powers, by an appeal to a Christian Council.”

Hence the Landgrave must urgently request, concludes Feige, that the theologians would, at least “until the Council,” take his part and “admit that what he had done had been agreeable to God.”

The Saxon representatives present at the Conference were, however, ready to follow the course indicated by Luther in case of necessity, viz. to tell a downright lie; rather than that the Prince should be forced to vindicate openly his position it was better to deny it flatly. They declared, without, however, convincing the Conference, “that a flat denial was less culpable before God and in conscience—as could be proved by many examples from Scripture—than to cause a great scandal and lamentable falling away of many good people by a plain and open admission and vindication.”[139]

Philip of Hesse was not particularly edified by the result of the Eisenach Conference. Of all the reports which gradually reached him, those which most aroused his resentment were, first, that Luther should expect him to tell a lie and deny the second marriage, and, secondly, his threat to withdraw the testimony, as issued in error.

Luther had, so far, avoided all direct correspondence with the Landgrave concerning the disastrous affair. Now, however, he was forced to make some statement in reply to a not very friendly letter addressed to him by the Prince.[140]

In this Philip, alluding to the invitation to tell a lie, says: “I will not lie, for lying has an evil sound and no Apostle or even Christian has ever taught it, nay, Christ has forbidden it and said we should keep to yea and nay. That I should declare the lady to be a whore, that I refuse to do, for your advice does not permit of it. I should surely have had no need of your advice to take a whore, neither does it do you credit.” Yet he declares himself ready to give an “obscure reply,” i.e. an ambiguous one; without need he would not disclose the marriage.

Nor does Luther’s threat of retracting the advice and of saying that he had “acted foolishly” affright him. The threat he unceremoniously calls a bit of foolery. “As to what you told my Councillors, viz. that, rather than reveal my reasons, you would say you had acted foolishly, please don’t commit such folly on my account, for then I will confess the reasons, and, in case of necessity, prove them now or later, unless the witnesses die in the meantime.” “Nothing more dreadful has ever come to my ears than that it should have occurred to a brave man to retract what he had granted by a written dispensation to a troubled conscience. If you can answer for it to God, why do you fear and shrink from the world? If the matter is right ‘in conscientia’ before the Almighty, the Eternal and Immortal God, what does the accursed, sodomitic, usurious and besotted world matter?” Here he is using the very words in which Luther was wont to speak of the world and of the contempt with which it should be met. He proceeds with a touch of sarcasm: “Would to God that you and your like would inveigh against and punish those in whom you see such things daily, i.e. adultery, usury and drunkenness—and who yet are supposed to be members of the Church—not merely in writings and sermons but with serious considerations and the ban which the Apostles employed, in order that the whole world may not be scandalised. You see these things, yet what do you and the others do?” In thus finding fault with the Wittenberg habits, he would appear to include the Elector of Saxony, who had a reputation for intemperance. He knew that Luther’s present attitude was in part determined by consideration for his sovereign. In his irritation he also has a sly hit at the Wittenberg theologians: At Eisenach his love for the “lady” (Margaret) had been looked upon askance; “I confess that I love her, but in all honour.... But that I should have taken her because she pleased me, that is only natural, for I see that you holy people also take those that please you. Therefore you may well bear with me, a poor sinner.”

Luther replied on July 24,[141] that he had not deserved that the Landgrave should write to him in so angry a tone. The latter was wrong in supposing, that he wanted to get his neck out of the noose and was not doing all that he could to “serve the Prince humbly and faithfully.” It was not no his own account that he wished to keep his advice secret; “for though all the devils wished the advice to be made public, I would give them by God’s Grace such an answer that they would not find any fault in it.”

It was, so Luther says in this letter, a secret counsel as “all the devils” knew, the keeping secret of which he had requested, “with all diligence,” and which, even at the worst, he would be the last to bring to light. That he, or the Prince himself, was bound to silence by the Seal of Confession, he does not say, though this would have been the place to emphasise it. He merely states that he knew what, in the case of a troubled conscience, “might be remitted out of mercy before God,” and what was not right apart from this necessity. “I should be sorry to see your Serene Highness starting a literary feud with me.” It was true he could not allow the Prince, who was “of the same faith” as himself, “to incur danger and disgrace”; but, should he disclose the counsel, the theologians would not be in a position to “get him out of the bother,” because, in the eyes of the world, “even a hundred Luthers, Philips and others” could not change the law; the secret marriage could never be publicly held as valid, though valid in the tribunal of conscience. He wished to press the matter before the worldly authorities; but here the Prince’s marriage would never be acknowledged; he would only be exposing himself to penalties, and withdrawing himself from the “protection and assistance of the Divine Judgment” under which he stood so long as he regarded it as a marriage merely in conscience.

In this letter Luther opposes the “making public of the advice,” which he dreaded, by the most powerful motive at his command: The result of the disclosure would be, that “at last your Serene Highness would be obliged to put away your sweetheart as a mere whore.” He would do better to allow her to be now regarded as a “whore, although to us three, i.e. in God’s sight, she is really a wedded concubine”; in all this the Prince would still have a good conscience, “for the whole affair was due to his distress of conscience, as we believe, and, hence, to your Serene Highness’s conscience, she is no mere prostitute.”

There were, however, three more bitter pills for the Landgrave to swallow. He had pleaded his distress of conscience. Luther hints, that, “one of our best friends” had said: “The Landgrave would not be able to persuade anyone” that the bigamy was due to distress of conscience; which was as much as to say, that “Dr. Martin believed what it was impossible to believe, had deceived himself and been willingly led astray.” He, Luther, however, still thought that the Prince had been serious in what he had said “secretly in Confession”; nevertheless the mere suspicion might suffice to “render the advice worthless,” and then Philip would stand alone.... The Landgrave, moreover, had unkindly hinted in his letter, that, “we theologians take those who please us.” “Why do not you [Princes] do differently?” he replies. “I, at least, trust that this will be your Serene Highness’s experience with your beloved sweetheart.” “Pretty women are to be wedded either for the sake of the children which spring from this merry union, or to prevent fornication. Apart from this I do not see of what use beauty is.” Marry in haste and repent at leisure was the result of following our passions, according to the proverb. Lastly, Luther does not hide from the Landgrave that his carelessness in keeping the secret had brought not only the Prince but “the whole confession” into disrepute, though “the good people” belonging to the faith were really in no way involved in what Philip had done. “If each were to do what pleased him and throw the responsibility on the pious” this would be neither just nor reasonable.

Such are the reasons by which he seeks to dissuade the warrior-Prince from his idea of publishing the fatal Wittenberg “advice,” to impel him to allow the marriage to “remain an ‘ambiguum,’” and “not openly to boast that he had lawfully wedded his sweetheart.”

He also gives Philip to understand that he will get a taste of the real Luther should he not obey him, or should he expose him by publishing the “advice,” or otherwise in writing. He says: “If it comes to writing I shall know how to extricate myself and leave your Serene Highness sticking in the mud, but this I shall not do unless I can’t help it.” The Prince’s allusion to the Emperor’s anger which must be avoided, did not affright Luther in the least. In his concluding words his conviction of his mission and the thought of the anti-Evangelical attitude of the Emperor carry him away. “Were this menace to become earnest, I should tweak the Emperor’s forelock, confront him with his practices and read him a good lecture on the texts: ‘Every man is a liar’ and ‘Put not your trust in Princes.’ Was he not indeed a liar and a false man, he who ‘rages against God’s own truth,’” i.e. opposes Luther’s Evangel?

Faced by such unbounded defiance Philip and his luckless bigamy, in spite of the assurance he saw fit to assume, seemed indeed in a bad way. One can feel how Luther despised the man. In spite of his painful embarrassment, he is aware of his advantage. He indeed stood in need of the Landgrave’s assistance in the matter of the new Church system, but the latter was entirely dependent on Luther’s help in his disastrous affair.

Hence Philip, in his reply, is more amiable, though he really demolishes Luther’s objections. This reply he sent the day after receiving Luther’s letter.[142]

Certain words which had been let fall at Eisenach had “enraged and maddened” him (Philip). He had, however, good “scriptural warrant for his action,” and Luther should not forget that, “what we did, we did with a good conscience.” There was thus no need for the Prince to bow before the Wittenbergers. “We are well aware that you and Philip [Melanchthon] cannot defend us against the secular powers, nor have we ever asked this of you.” “That Margaret should not be looked upon as a prostitute, this we demand and insist upon, and the presence of pious men [Melanchthon, etc.] at the wedding, your advice, and the marriage contract, will prove what she is.” “In fine, we will allow it to remain a secret marriage and dispensation, and will give a reply which shall conceal the matter, and be neither yea nor nay, as long as we can and may.” He insists, however, that, “if we cannot prevent it,” then we shall bring the Wittenberg advice “into the light of day.”

As to telling a downright lie, that was impossible, because the marriage contract was in the hands of his second wife’s friends, who would at once take him to task.

“It was not our intention to enter upon a wordy conflict, or to set your pen to work.” Luther had said, that he would know how to get out of a tight corner, but what business was that of Philip’s: “We care not whether you get out or in.” As to Luther’s malicious allusion to his love for the beautiful Margaret, he says: “Since she took a fancy to us, we were fonder of her than of another, but, had she not liked us, then we should have taken another.” Hence he would have committed bigamy in any case. He waxes sarcastic about Luther’s remark, that the world would never acknowledge her as his wife, hinting that Luther’s own wife, and the consorts of the other preachers who had formerly been monks or priests, were likewise not regarded by the imperial lawyers as lawful wedded wives. He looked upon Margaret as his “wife according to God’s Word and your advice; such is God’s will; the world may regard our wife, yours and the other preachers’ as it pleases.”

Philip, however, was diplomatic enough to temper all this with friendly assurances. “We esteem you,” he says, “as a very eminent theologian, nor shall we doubt you, so long as God continues to give you His Spirit, which Spirit we still recognise in you.... We find no fault with you personally and consider you a man who looks to God. As to our other thoughts, they are just thoughts, and come and go duty free.”

These “duty-free” thoughts, as we readily gather from the letter, concerned the Courts of Saxony, whose influence on Luther was a thorn in the Landgrave’s flesh. There was the “haughty old Vashti” at Dresden (Duchess Catherine), without whom the “matter would not have gone so far”; then, again, there was Luther’s “Lord, the Elector.” The “cunning of the children of the world,” which the Landgrave feared would infect Luther, had its head-quarters at these Courts. But if it came to the point, such things would be “disclosed and manifested” by him, the Landgrave, to the Elector and “many other princes and nobles,” that “you would have to excuse us, because what we did was not done merely from love, but for conscience’s sake and in order to escape eternal damnation; and your Lord, the Elector, will have to admit it too and be our witness.” And in still stronger language, he “cites” the Elector, or, rather, both the Elector and himself, to appear before Luther: “If this be not sufficient, then demand of us, and of your master, that we tell you in confession such things as will satisfy you concerning us. They would, however, sound ill, so help me God, and we hope to God that He will by all means preserve us from such in future. You wish to learn it, then learn it, and do not look for anything good but for the worst, and if we do not speak the truth, may God strike us”; “to prove it” we are quite ready. Other things (see below, xxiv., 2) make it probable, that the Elector is here accused as being Philip’s partner in some very serious sin. It looks as though Philip’s intention was to frighten him and prevent his proceeding further against him. Since Luther in all probability brought the letter to the cognisance of the Elector, the step was, politically, well thought out.

Melanchthon’s Complaints.

Melanchthon, as was usual with him, adopted a different tone from Luther’s in the matter. He was very sad, and wrote lengthy letters of advice.

As early as June 15, to ease his mind, he sent one to the Elector Johann Frederick, containing numerous arguments against polygamy, but leaving open the possibility of secret bigamy.[143] Friends informed the Landgrave that anxiety about the bigamy was the cause of Melanchthon’s serious illness. Philip, on the other hand, wrote, that it was the Saxon Courts which were worrying him.[144] Owing to his weakness he was unable to take part in the negotiations at Eisenach. On his return to Wittenberg he declared aloud that he and Luther had been outwitted by the malice of Philip of Hesse. The latter’s want of secrecy seemed to show the treasonable character of the intrigue. To Camerarius he wrote on Aug. 24: “We are disgraced by a horrid business concerning which I must say nothing. I will give you the details in due time.”[145] On Sep. 1, he admits in a letter to Veit Dietrich: “We have been deceived, under a semblance of piety, by another Jason, who protested conscientious motives in seeking our assistance, and who even swore that this expedient was essential for him.”[146] He thus gives his friend a peep into the Wittenberg advice, of which he was the draughtsman, and in which he, unlike Luther, could see nothing that came under the Seal of Confession. The name of the deceitful polygamist Jason he borrows from Terence, on whom he was then lecturing. Since Luther, about the same time, also quotes from Terence when speaking at table about Philip’s bigamy, we may infer that he and Melanchthon had exchanged ideas on the work in question (the “Adelphi”). Melanchthon was also fond of dubbing the Hessian “Alcibiades” on account of his dissembling and cunning.[147]

Most remarkable, however, is the assertion he makes in his annoyance, viz. that the Landgrave was on the point of losing his reason: “This is the beginning of his insanity.”[148] Luther, too, had said he feared he was going crazy, as it ran in the family.[149] Philip’s father, Landgrave William II, had succumbed to melancholia as the result of syphilis. The latter’s brother, William I, had also been insane. Philip’s son, William IV, sought to explain the family trouble by a spell cast over one of his ancestors by the “courtisans” at Venice.[150] In 1538, previous to the bigamy scandal, Henry of Brunswick had written, that the Landgrave, owing to the French disease, was able to sleep but little, and would soon go mad.[151]

Melanchthon became very sensitive to any mention of the Hessian bigamy. At table, on one occasion in Aug., 1540, Luther spoke of love; no one was quite devoid of love because all at least desired enjoyment; one loved his wife, another his children, others, like Carlstadt, loved honour. When Bugenhagen, with an allusion to the Landgrave, quoted the passage from Virgil’s “Bucolica”: “Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori,” Melanchthon jumped up and cried: “Pastor, leave out that passage.”[152]

Brooding over the permission given, the scholar sought earnestly for grounds of excuse for the bigamy. “I looked well into it beforehand,” he writes in 1543, “I also told the Doctor [Luther] to weigh well whether he could be mixed up in the affair. There are, however, circumstances of which the women [their Ducal opponents at Meissen] are not aware, and understand not. The man [the Landgrave] has many strange ideas on the Deity. He also confided to me things which I have told no one but Dr. Martin; on account of all this we have had no small trouble.”[153] We must not press the contradiction this presents to Melanchthon’s other statement concerning the Prince’s hypocrisy.

Melanchthon’s earlier letter dated Sep. 1, 1540, Camerarius ventured to publish in the collection of his friend’s letters only with omissions and additions which altered the meaning.

Until 1904 this letter, like Melanchthon’s other letter on Luther’s marriage (vol. ii., p. 176), was only known in the amended form. W. Rockwell has now published the following suppressed passages from the original in the Chigiana at Rome, according to the manuscript prepared by Nicholas Müller for the new edition of Melanchthon’s correspondence. Here Melanchthon speaks out plainly without being conscious of any “Secret of Confession,” and sees little objection to the complete publication by the Wittenbergers of their advice. “I blame no one in this matter except the man who deceived us with a simulated piety (‘simulatione pietatis fefellit’). Nor did he adhere to our trusty counsel [to keep the matter secret]. He swore that the remedy was necessary. Therefore, that the universal biblical precept [concerning the unity of marriage]: ‘They shall be two in one flesh’ might be preserved, we counselled him, secretly, and without giving scandal to others, to make use of the remedy in case of necessity. I will not be judge of his conscience, for he still sticks to his assertion; but the scandal he might well have avoided had he chosen. Either [what follows is in Greek] love got the upper hand, or here is the beginning and foretaste of that insanity which runs in the family. Luther blamed him severely and he thereupon promised to keep silence. But ... [Melanchthon has crossed out the next sentence: As time goes on he changes his views] whatever he may do in the matter, we are free to publish our decision (‘edere sententiam nostram’); for in it too we vindicated the law. He himself told me, that formerly he had thought otherwise, but certain people had convinced him that the thing was quite indifferent. He has unlearned men about him who have written him long dissertations, and who are not a little angry with me because I blamed them to their teeth. But in the beginning we were ignorant of their prejudices.” He goes on to speak of Philip as “depraved by an Alcibiadean nature (‘Alcibiadea natura perditus’),” an expression which also fell under the red pencil of the first editor, Camerarius.[154]

Literary Feud with Duke Henry of Brunswick.

Prominent amongst those who censured the bigamy was the Landgrave’s violent opponent Duke Henry of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. The Duke, a leader of the Catholic Alliance formed to resist the Schmalkalden Leaguers in North Germany, published in the early ‘forties several controversial works against Philip of Hesse. This brisk and active opponent, whose own character was, however, by no means unblemished, seems to have had a hand in the attacks of other penmen upon the Landgrave. Little by little he secured fairly accurate accounts of the proceedings in Hesse and at Wittenberg, and, as early as July 22, 1540, made a general and public reference to what had taken place.[155]

In a tract published on Nov. 3, he said quite openly that the Landgrave had “two wives at the same time, and had thus rendered himself liable to the penalties against double marriage.” The Elector of Saxony had, however, permitted “his biblical experts at the University of Wittenberg to assist in dealing with these nice affairs,” nay, had himself concurred in the bigamy.[156]

In consequence of these and other charges contained in the Duke’s screed, Luther wrote the violent libel entitled “Wider Hans Worst,” of which the still existing manuscript shows in what haste and frame of mind the work was dashed off. All his exasperation at the events connected with the bigamy now become public boils up in his attack on the “Bloodhound, and incendiary Harry” of Brunswick, and the “clerical devil’s whores in the Popish robbers’ cave.”[157] Of Henry’s charge he speaks in a way which is almost more than a mere concealing of the bigamy.[158] He adds: “The very name of Harry stinks like devil’s ordure freshly dropped in Germany. Did he perchance desire that not he alone should stink so horribly in the nostrils of others, but that he should make other honourable princes to stink also?” He was a renegade and a coward, who did everything like an assassin. “He ought to be set up like a eunuch, dressed in cap and bells, with a feather-brush in his hand to guard the women and that part on account of which they are called women, as the rude Germans say.” “Assassin-adultery, assassin-arson indeed became this ‘wild cat,’” etc.

Even before this work was finished, in February, 1541, a pseudonymous attack upon the Landgrave appeared which “horrified Cruciger,”[159] who was with Luther at Wittenberg. The Landgrave is here upbraided with the bigamy, the reproaches culminating in the following: “I cannot but believe that the devil resides in your Serene Highness, and that the Münster habit has infected your S.H., so that your S.H. thinks that you may take as many wives as you please, even as the King of Münster did.”

An anonymous reply to this screed penned by the pastor of Melsungen, Johann Lening, is the first attempt at a public justification of Philip’s bigamy. The author only disclaims the charge that the Landgrave had intended to “introduce a new ‘ius.’”[160]

Henry of Brunswick replied to “Hans Worst” and to this vindication of the bigamy in his “Quadruplicæ” of May 31, 1541. He said there of Luther’s “Hans Worst”: “That we should have roused Luther, the arch-knave, arch-heretic, desperate scoundrel and godless arch-miscreant, to put forth his impious, false, unchristian, lousy and rascally work is due to the scamp [on the throne] of Saxony.” “We have told the truth so plainly to his Münsterite brother, the Landgrave, concerning his bigamy, that he has been unable to deny it, but admits it, only that he considers that he did not act dishonourably, but rightly and in a Christian fashion, which, however, is a lie and utterly untrue.” In some of his allegations then and later, such as that the Landgrave was thinking of taking a third wife “in addition to his numerous concubines,” and that he had submitted to re-baptism, the princely knight-errant was going too far. A reply and defence of the Landgrave, published in 1544, asserts with unconscious humour that the Landgrave knew how to take seriously “to heart what God had commanded concerning marriage ... and also the demands of conjugal fidelity and love.”

Johann Lening, pastor of Melsungen, formerly a Carthusian in the monastery of Eppenberg, had been the most zealous promoter of the bigamy. He was also very active in rendering literary service in its defence. The string of Bible proofs alleged by Philip in his letter to Luther of July 18 (above, p. 55 f.) can undoubtedly be traced to his inspiration. In October, 1541, he was at Augsburg with Gereon Sailer,[161] the physician so skilled in the treatment of syphilis; a little later Veit Dietrich informed Melanchthon of his venereal trouble.[162] He was much disliked by the Saxons and the Wittenbergers on account of his defence of his master. Chancellor Brück speaks of him as a “violent, bitter man”; Luther calls him the “Melsingen nebulo” and the “monstrum Carthusianum”;[163] Frederick Myconius speaks of the “lenones Leningi” and fears he will catch the “Dionysiorum vesania.”

Such was the author of the “Dialogue of Huldericus Neobulus,” which has become famous in the history of the Hessian Bigamy; it appeared in 1541, towards the end of summer, being printed at Marburg at Philip’s expense.

The book was to answer in the affirmative the question contained in the sub-title: “Whether it be in accordance with or contrary to the Divine, natural, Imperial and ecclesiastical law, to have simultaneously more than one wife.” The author, however, clothed his affirmation in so pedantic and involved a form as to make it unintelligible to the uninitiate so that Philip could say that, “it would be a temptation to nobody to follow his example,” and that it tended rather to dissuade from bigamy than to induce people to commit it.[164]

This work was very distasteful to the Courts of Saxony, and Luther soon made up his mind to write against it.

He wrote on Jan. 10, 1542, to Justus Menius, who had sent him a reply of his own, intended for the press: “Your book will go to the printers, but mine is already waiting publication; your turn will come next.... How this man disgusts me with the insipid, foolish and worthless arguments he excretes.” To this Pandora all the Hessian gods must have contributed. “Bucer smells bad enough already on account of the Ratisbon dealings.... May Christ keep us well disposed towards Him and steadfast in His Holy Word. Amen.”[165] From what Luther says he was not incensed at the Dialogue of Neobulus so much on account of its favouring polygamy itself, but because, not content with allowing bigamy conditionally, and before the tribunal of conscience, it sought also to erect it into a public law. When, however, both Elector and Landgrave[166] begged him to refrain from publishing his reply, he agreed and stopped the printers, though only after a part of it had already left the press.[167]

His opinion concerning the permissibility of bigamy in certain cases he never changed in spite of the opposition it met with. But, in Luther’s life, hardly an instance can be cited of his having shrunk back when attacked. Rarely if ever did his defiance—which some admire—prove more momentous than on this occasion. An upright man is not unwilling to allow that he may have been mistaken in a given instance, and, when better informed, to retract. Luther, too, might well have appealed to the shortness of the time allowed him for the consideration of the counsel he had given at Wittenberg. Without a doubt his hand had been forced. Further, it might have been alleged in excuse for his act, that misapprehension of the Bible story of the patriarchs had dragged him to consequences which he had not foreseen. It would have been necessary for him to revise completely his Old-Testament exegesis on this point, and to free it from the influence of his disregard of ecclesiastical tradition and the existing limitations on matrimony. In place of this, consideration for the exalted rank of his petitioners induced him to yield to the plausible reasons brought forward by a smooth-tongued agent and to remain silent.

The tract of Menius, on the same political grounds, was likewise either not published at all or withdrawn later. The truth was, that it was desirable that the Hessian affair should come under discussion as little as possible, so that no grounds should be given “to increase the gossip,” as Luther put it in 1542; “I would rather it were left to settle as it began, than that the filth should be stirred up under the noses of the whole world.”[168]

The work of Neobulus caused much heart-burning among the Swiss reformers; of this we hear from Bullinger, who also, in his Commentary on Matthew, in 1542, expressed himself strongly against the tract.[169] His successor, Rudolf Gualther, Zwingli’s son-in-law, wrote that it was shocking that a Christian Prince should have been guilty of such a thing and that theologians should have been found to father, advocate and defend it.[170]

In time, however, less was heard of the matter and the rumours died down. A peace was even patched up between the Landgrave and the Emperor, chiefly because the Elector of Saxony was against the Schmalkalden League being involved in the Hessian affair. Without admitting the reality of the bigamy, and without even mentioning it, Philip concluded with Charles V a treaty which secured for him safety. Therein he made to the Emperor political concessions of such importance[171] as to arouse great discontent and grave suspicions in the ranks of the Evangelicals. At a time when the German Protestants were on the point of appealing to France for assistance against Charles V, he promised to do his best to hinder the French and to support the Imperial interests. In the matter of the Emperor’s feud with Jülich, he pledged himself to neutrality, thus ensuring the Emperor’s success. After receiving the Imperial pardon on Jan. 24, 1541, his complete reconciliation was guaranteed by the secret compact of Ratisbon on June 13 of the same year. He had every reason to be content, and as the editor of Philip’s correspondence with Bucer writes,[172] what better could even the Emperor desire? The great danger which threatened was a league of the German Protestants with France. And now the Prince, who alone was able to bring this about, withdrew from the opposition party, laid his cards on the table, left the road open to Guelders, offered his powerful support both within and outside of the Empire, and, in return, asked for nothing but the Emperor’s favour. The Landgrave’s princely allies in the faith were pained to see him forsake “the opposition [to the Emperor]. For their success the political situation was far more promising than in the preceding winter. An alliance with France offered [the Protestants] a much greater prospect of success than one with England, for François I was far more opposed to the Emperor than was Henry VIII.... Of the German Princes, William of Jülich had already pledged himself absolutely to the French King.”[173]

Philip was even secretly set on obtaining the Pope’s sanction to the bigamy. Through Georg von Carlowitz and Julius Pflug he sought to enter into negotiations with Rome; they were not to grudge an outlay of from 3000 to 4000 gulden as an “offering.”[174] As early as the end of 1541 Chancellor Feige received definite instructions in the matter.

The Hessian Court had, however, in the meantime been informed, that Cardinal Contarini had given it to be understood that “no advice or assistance need be looked for from the Pope.”[175]

Landgravine Christina died in 1549, and, after her death, the unfortunate marriage was gradually buried in oblivion.—But did Landgrave Philip, after the conclusion of the second marriage, cease from immoral intercourse with women as he had so solemnly promised Luther he would?

In the Protestant periodical, “Die christliche Welt,”[176] attention was drawn to a Repertory of the archives of Philip of Hesse, published in 1904,[177] in which a document is mentioned which would seem to show that Philip was unfaithful even subsequent to his marriage with Margaret. The all too brief description of the document is as follows: “Suit of Johann Meckbach against Landgrave Philip on behalf of Lady Margaret; the Landgrave’s infidelity; Margaret’s demand that her marriage be made public.” “This sounds suspicious,” remarks W. Köhler, “we have always taken it for granted that the bigamy was moral only in so far as the Landgrave Philip refrained from conjugal infidelity after its conclusion, and now we are confronted with this charge. Is it founded?” Concerning this new document N. Paulus remarks: “In order to be able properly to appreciate its importance, we should have to know more of the suit. At any rate Margaret would not have caused representations to be made to her ‘husband’ concerning his infidelity without very weighty reasons.”[178]

In the Landgrave’s family great dissatisfaction continued to be felt with Luther. When, in 1575, Philip’s son and successor, Landgrave William IV, was entertaining Palsgravine Elisabeth, a zealous friend of Lutheranism, he spoke to her about Luther, as she relates in a letter.[179] “He called Dr. Luther a rascal, because he had persuaded his father to take two wives, and generally made out Dr. Luther to be very wicked. Whereat I said that it could not be true that Luther had done such a thing.”—So completely had the fact become shrouded in obscurity. William, however, fetched her the original of the Wittenberg testimony. Although she was unwilling to look at it lest her reverence for Luther should suffer, yet she was forced to hear it. In her own words: “He locked me in the room and there I had to remain; he gave it me to read, and my husband [the Palsgrave Johann Casimir] who was also with me, and likewise a Zwinglian Doctor both abused Dr. Luther loudly and said we simply looked upon him as an idol and that he was our god. The Landgrave brought out the document and made the Doctor read it aloud so that I might hear it; but I refused to listen to it and thought of something else; seeing I refused to listen the Landgrave gave me a frightful scolding, but afterwards he was sorry and craved pardon.”

There is no doubt that William’s dislike for Luther, here displayed, played a part in his refusal to accept the formula of Concord in 1580.[180]

So meagre were the proofs made public of Luther’s share in the step which Philip of Hesse had taken, that, even in Hesse, the Giessen professor Michael Siricius was able to declare in a writing of 1679, entitled “Uxor una” that Luther’s supposed memorandum was an invention.[181]

Of the Wittenberg “advice” only one, fairly long, but quite apocryphal version, was put in circulation during Melanchthon’s lifetime; it appeared in the work of Erasmus Sarcerius, “On the holy married state,” of which the Preface is dated in 1553. It is so worded as to leave the reader under the impression that its authors had refused outright to give their consent. Out of caution, moreover, neither the authors nor the addressee are named.[182] In this version, supposed to be Luther’s actual text, it was embodied, in 1661, in the Altenburg edition of his works, then in the Leipzig reprint of the same (1729 ff.) and again in Walch’s edition (Halle, 1740 ff.).[183] Yet Lorenz Beger, in his work “Daphnæus Arcuarius” (1679), had supplied the real text, together with Bucer’s instructions and the marriage contract, from “a prominent Imperial Chancery.” The importance of these documents was first perceived in France. Bossuet used them in his “Histoire des variations des églises protestantes” (1688).[184] He was also aware that Landgrave Ernest, of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rotenburg, who returned to the Catholic Church in 1652, had supplied copies of the three documents (to Elector Carl Ludwig of the Palatine). In more recent times Max Lenz’s publication of the Hessian archives has verified these documents and supplied a wealth of other material which we have duly utilised in the above.

Opinions Old and New Regarding the Bigamy.

As more light began to be thrown on the history of the bigamy, Protestant historians, even apart from those already mentioned, were not slow in expressing their strong condemnation, as indeed was only to be expected.

Julius Boehmer, in outspoken language, points to “the unfortunate fact” that “Luther, in his old age, became weak, nay, flabby in his moral judgments and allowed himself to be guided by political and diplomatic considerations, and not by truth alone and an uncorruptible conscience.”[185]

Walter Köhler, in the “Historische Zeitschrift,” has thrown a strong light on the person and the motives of the Landgrave.[186] Whilst admitting that Philip may have suffered from remorse of conscience and depression, he shows how these were “in great part due to his physical deterioration, his unrestrained excesses having brought on him syphilis in its worst form; sores broke out on his hands and he suffered from trouble with the throat.” His resolution to commit bigamy also sprang from the same source, “not from a sudden realisation of the wickedness of his life, but simply from the sense of his physical bankruptcy.” Besides, as Köhler points out, the Landgrave’s intention was not at first to marry Margaret, but rather to maintain her as a kept woman and so render excesses unnecessary. Philip, however, was unable to get her as a concubine, owing to the opposition of her mother, who demanded for her daughter the rank of princess and wife. Hence the idea of a bigamy.

The following indignant reference of Onno Klopp’s must be included amongst the Protestant statements, since it was written some time before the eminent historian joined the Catholic Church: “The revolting story has left a blot on the memory of Luther and Melanchthon which oceans of sophisms will not avail to wash away. This, more than any other deed, brought to light both the waywardness of the new Church and its entire dependence on the favour of Princes.”[187]

As for the concealment, and the secrecy in which the sanction of the bigamy was shrouded, G. Ellinger considers, that the decision of Luther and his friends “became absolutely immoral only through the concealment enjoined by the reformers.” In consequence of the matter being made a secret of conscience, “the second wife would seem to the world a concubine”; hence not only the first wife, but also the second would suffer degradation. The second wife’s relatives had given their consent “only on the hypothesis of a real marriage”; this too was what Philip intended; yet Luther wished him to tell the Emperor that she was a mere concubine; the Landgrave, however, refused to break the word he had given, and “repudiated Luther’s suggestion that he should tell a lie.”[188]

Another Protestant, the historian Paul Tschackert, has recently characterised the Hessian affair as “a dirty story.” “It is, and must remain,” he says, “a shameful blot on the German Reformation and the life of our reformers. We do not wish to gloss it over, still less to excuse it.”[189]

Yet, notably in modern theological literature, some Protestants have seemed anxious to palliate the affair. An attempt is made to place the Wittenberg advice and Luther’s subsequent conduct in a more favourable light by emphasising more than heretofore the secrecy of the advice given, which Luther did not consider himself justified in revealing under any circumstances, and the publication of which the Landgrave was unjustly demanding. It is also urged, that the ecclesiastical influence of the Middle Ages played its part in Luther’s sanction of the bigamy. One author even writes: “the determining factor may have been,” that “at the critical moment the reformer made way for the priest and confessor”; elsewhere the same author says: “Thus the Reformation begins with a mediæval scene.” Another Protestant theologian thinks that “the tendency, taken over from the Catholic Church,” to treat the marriage prohibitions as aspects of the natural law was really responsible; in Luther’s evangelical morality “there was a good lump of Romish morality, worthless quartz mingled with good metal”; “Catholic scruples” had dimmed Luther’s judgment in the matter of polygamy; to us the idea of bigamy appears “simply monstrous,” “but this is a result of age-long habits”; in the 16th century people thought “very differently.”

In the face of the detailed quotations from actual sources already given in the present chapter, all such opinions—not merely Luther’s own appeal to a “secret of confession,” invented by himself—are seen to be utterly unhistorical. Particularly so is the reference to the Catholic Middle Ages. It was just the Middle Ages, and the ecclesiastical tradition of earlier times, which excited among Luther’s contemporaries, even those of his own party, such opposition to the bigamy wherever news of the same penetrated in any shape or form.[190]

In the following we shall quote a few opinions of 16th-century Protestants not yet mentioned. With the historian their unanimous verdict must weigh more heavily in the scale than modern theories, which, other considerations apart, labour under the disadvantage of having been brought forward long after the event and the expressions of opinion which accompanied it, to bolster up views commonly held to-day.[191]

The bigamy was so strongly opposed to public opinion and thus presumably to the tradition handed down from the Middle Ages, that Nicholas von Amsdorf, Luther’s friend, declared the step taken by Philip constituted “a mockery and insult to the Holy Gospel and a scandal to the whole of Christendom.”[192] He thought as did Justus Jonas, who exclaimed: “Oh, what a great scandal!” and, “Who is not aghast at so great and calamitous a scandal?”[193] Erasmus Alber, preacher at Marburg, speaks of the “awful scandal” (“immane scandalum”) which must result.[194] In a letter to the Landgrave in which the Hessian preacher, Anton Corvinus, fears a “great falling away” on account of the affair, he also says, that the world will not “in any way” hear of such a marriage being lawful; his only advice was: “Your Serene Highness must take the matter to heart and, on occasion, have recourse to lying.”[195] To tell a deliberate untruth, as already explained (pp. 29, 53), appeared to other preachers likewise the only possible expedient with which to meet the universal reprobation of contemporaries who judged of the matter from their “mediæval” standpoint.

Justus Menius, the Thuringian preacher, in his work against polygamy mentioned above, appealed to the universal, Divine “prohibition which forbids and restrains us,” a prohibition which applied equally to the “great ones” and allowed of no dispensation. He also pointed out the demoralising effect of a removal of the prohibition in individual cases and the cunning of the devil who wished thereby “to brand the beloved Evangel with infamy.”[196]

Philip had defiled the Church with filth (“fœdissime”), so wrote Johann Brenz, the leader of the innovations in Würtemberg. After such an example he scarcely dared to raise his eyes in the presence of honourable women, seeing what an insult this was to them.[197]

Not to show how reprehensible was the deed, but merely to demonstrate anew how little ground there was for throwing the responsibility on the earlier ages of the Church, we may recall that the Elector, Johann Frederick of Saxony, on first learning of the project through Bucer, expressed his “horror,” and two days later informed the Landgrave through Brück, that such a thing had been unheard of for ages and the law of the land and the tradition of the whole of Christendom were likewise against it. It is true that he allowed himself to be pacified and sent his representative to the wedding, but afterwards he again declared with disapproval, that the whole world, and all Christians without distinction, would declare the Emperor right should he interfere; he also instructed his minister at the Court of Dresden to deny that the Elector or the Wittenberg theologians had had any hand in the matter.[198] Other Princes and politicians belonging to the new faith left on record strong expressions of their disapproval; for instance: Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg, Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg, King Christian III of Denmark, the Strasburg statesman Jacob Sturm and the Augsburg ambassador David Dettigkofer.[199] To the latter the news “was frightful tidings from which would result great scandal, a hindrance to and a falling away from the Holy Evangel.”[200]

All there now remains to do is to illustrate, by statements made by Protestants in earlier and more recent times, two important points connected with the Hessian episode; viz. the unhappy part which politics played in Luther’s attitude, and what he said on lying. Here, again, during the last ten years there has been a movement in Luther’s favour amongst many Protestant theologians.

Concerning the part of politics W. Rockwell, the historian of the bigamy, openly admits, that: “By his threat of seeking protection from the Emperor for his bigamy, Philip overcame the unwillingness of the Wittenbergers to grant the requested dispensation.”[201] “It is clear,” he also says, “that political pressure was brought to bear on the Wittenbergers by the Landgrave, and that to this pressure they yielded.”[202]

That consideration for the effect his decision was likely to have on the attitude of the Landgrave weighed heavily in the balance with Luther in the matter of his “testimony,” it is scarcely possible to deny, after what we have seen. “The Hessian may fall away from us” (above, p. 46), such was one of the fears which undoubtedly had something to do with his compliance. To inspire such fear was plainly the object of Philip’s threat, that, should the Wittenbergers not prove amenable, he would make advances to the Emperor and the Pope, and the repeated allusions made by Luther and his friends to their dread of such a step, and of his falling away, show how his threat continued to ring in their ears.[203]

Bucer declared he had himself agreed to the bigamy from fear lest Philip should otherwise be lost to the Evangelical cause,[204] and his feelings were doubtless shared at Wittenberg. Melanchthon speaks not merely of a possible attempt on Philip’s part to obtain the Emperor’s sanction to his marriage, but of an actual threat to leave the party in the lurch.[205] Johann Brenz, as soon as news reached him in Würtemberg of the Landgrave’s hint of an appeal to the Emperor, saw in it a threat to turn his back on the protesting party.[206] All three probably believed that at heart the Landgrave would remain true to the new faith, but what Luther had chiefly in view was Philip’s position as head of the Schmalkalden League.

The result was all the more tragic. The compliance wrung from the Wittenbergers failed to protect the party from the evil they were so desirous of warding off. Philip’s reconciliation with the Emperor, as already pointed out, was very detrimental to the Schmalkalden League, however insincere his motives may have been.

On this point G. Kawerau says:[207] “In the Landgrave’s resolution to address himself to the Emperor and the Pope, of which they were informed, they [Luther and Melanchthon] saw a ‘public scandal,’ a ‘publica offensio,’ which they sought to obviate by demanding absolute secrecy.”[208] “But the disastrous political consequences did, in the event, make their appearance.... The zealously promoted alliance with François I, to which even the Saxon Elector was not averse, came to nothing and Denmark and Sweden’s overtures had to be repelled. The prime-mover in the Schmalkalden League was himself obliged to cripple the League. ‘The dreaded champion of the Evangel became the tool of the Imperial policy’ (v. Bezold). From that time forward his position lacked precision and his strong initiative was gone.”

G. Ellinger, in his study on Melanchthon, writes: “It can scarcely be gainsaid that Luther and Melanchthon allowed themselves in a moment of weakness to be influenced by the weight of these considerations.” The petition, he explains, had been warmly urged upon the Wittenbergers from a political point of view by Bucer, the intermediary. “If Bucer showed himself favourable to the Landgrave’s views this was due to his wish to preserve thereby the Evangelical cause from the loss of its most doughty champion; for Philip had told him in confidence, that, in the event of the Wittenbergers and the Saxon Electorate refusing their consent, he intended to address himself directly to the Emperor and the Pope in order to obtain sanction for his bigamy.” The Landgrave already, in the summer of 1534, had entertained the idea of approaching the Emperor, and in the spring of 1535 had made proposals to this end. “It can hardly be doubted that in Bucer’s case political reasons turned the scale.” Ellinger refers both to the admission made by Melanchthon and to the significant warning against the Emperor with which the letter of Dispensation closes.[209]

The strongest reprobation of the evil influence exerted over Luther by politics comes, however, from Adolf Hausrath.[210] He makes it clear, that, at Wittenberg, they were aware that Protestantism “would assume quite another aspect were the mighty Protestant leader to go over to the Pope or the Emperor”; never has “the demoralising character of all politics” been more shamefully revealed; “eternal principles were sacrificed to the needs of the moment”; “Philip had to be retained at any cost.” Hence came the “great moral defeat” and Luther’s “fall.”

This indignant language on the part of the Heidelberg historian of the Church has recently been described by a learned theologian on the Protestant side as both “offensive” and uncalled for. Considering Luther’s bold character it is surely very improbable, that an attempt to intimidate him would have had any effect except “to arouse his spirit of defiance”; not under the influence of mere “opportunism” did he act, but, rather, after having, as a confessor, heard “the cry of deep distress” he sought to come to “the aid of a suffering conscience.”—In answer to this we must refer the reader to what has gone before, where this view, which seems a favourite with some moderns, has already sufficiently been dealt with. It need only be added, that the learned author says of the bigamy, that “a fatal blunder” was made by Luther ... but only because the mediæval confessor intervened. “The reformer was not able in every season and situation to assert the new religious principle which we owe to him; hence we have merely one of many instances of failure, though one that may well be termed grotesque and is scarcely to be matched.” “Nothing did more to hinder the triumphal progress of the Reformation than the Landgrave’s ‘Turkish marriage.’” As to the argument drawn from Luther’s boldness and defiance, a Protestant has pointed out, that we are not compelled to regard any compliance from motives of policy as “absolutely precluded”; to say that “political expediency played no part whatever in Luther’s case” is “going a little too far.” “Did then Luther never allow any room to political considerations? Even, for instance, in the question of armed resistance to the Emperor?”[211]

Referring to Luther’s notorious utterance on lying, G. Ellinger, the Protestant biographer of Melanchthon, says: Luther’s readiness to deny what had taken place is “one of the most unpleasing episodes in his life and bears sad testimony to the frailty of human nature.” His statements at the Eisenach Conference “show how even a great man was driven from the path of rectitude by the blending of politics with religion. He advised a ‘good, downright lie’ that the world might be saved from a scandal.... It is sad to see a great man thus led astray, though at the same time we must remember, that, from the very start, the whole transaction had been falsified by the proposal to conceal it.”[212]

Th. Kolde says in a similar strain, in a work which is otherwise decidedly favourable to Luther, “Greater offence than that given by the ‘advice’ itself is given by the attitude which the reformers took up towards it at a later date.”[213]

“The most immoral part of the whole business,” so Frederick von Bezold says in his “Geschichte der deutschen Reformation,” “lay in the advice given by the theologians that the world should be imposed upon.... A man [Luther] who once had been determined to sacrifice himself and the whole world rather than the truth, is now satisfied with a petty justification for his falling away from his own principles.”[214] And, to conclude with the most recent biographer of Luther, Adolf Hausrath thus criticises the invitation to tell a “downright lie”: “It is indeed sad to see the position into which the ecclesiastical leaders had brought themselves, and how, with devilish logic, one false step induced them to take another which was yet worse.”[215]

This notwithstanding, the following opinion of a defender of Luther (1909) has not failed to find supporters in the Protestant world: “The number of those who in the reformation-period had already outgrown the lax mediæval view regarding the requirements of the love of truth was probably not very great. One man, however, towers in this respect above all his contemporaries, viz. Luther. He it was who first taught us what truthfulness really is. The Catholic Church, which repudiated his teaching, knows it not even to this day.” “A truthfulness which disregards all else,” nay, a “positive horror for all duplicity” is, according to this writer, the distinguishing mark of Luther’s life.

CHAPTER XXII

LUTHER AND LYING

[1. A Battery of Assertions.][216]

Luther’s frank admission of his readiness to make use of a “good big lie” in the complications consequent on Philip’s bigamy, and his invitation to the Landgrave to escape from the dilemma in this way, may serve as a plea for the present chapter. “What harm is there,” he asks, “if, in a good cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches, a man tells a good, downright lie?” “A lie of necessity, of convenience, or of excuse, all such lies are not against God and for such He will Himself answer”; “that the Landgrave was unable to lie strongly, didn’t matter in the least.”[217]

It is worth while ascertaining how Luther—who has so often been represented as the embodiment of German integrity and uprightness—behaved in general as regards the obligation of speaking with truth and honesty. Quite recently a Protestant author, writing with the sole object of exonerating his hero in this particular, bestowed on him the title of “Luther the Truthful.” “Only in one single instance,” so he has it, “did Luther advise the use of a lie of necessity at which exception might be taken.” In order not to run to the opposite extreme and make mountains out of mole-hills we shall do well to bear in mind how great was the temptation, during so titanic a struggle as his, for Luther to ignore at times the rigorous demands of truth and justice, particularly when he saw his opponents occasionally making light of them. We must likewise take into consideration the vividness of Luther’s imagination, the strength of the ideas which dominated him, his tendency to exaggeration and other mitigating circumstances.

There was a time when Luther’s foes were ready to describe as lies every false statement or erroneous quotation made by Luther, as though involuntary errors and mistakes due to forgetfulness were not liable to creep into his works, written as they were in great haste.

On the other hand, some of Luther’s admirers are ready enough to make admissions such as the following: “In point of fact we find Luther holding opinions concerning truthfulness which are not shared by every Christian, not even by every evangelical Christian.” “Luther unhesitatingly taught that there might be occasions when it was a Christian’s duty to depart from the truth.”[218]

To this we must, however, add that Luther, repeatedly and with the utmost decision, urged the claims of truthfulness, branded lying as “the devil’s own image,”[219] and extolled as one of the excellencies of the Germans—in which they differed from Italians and Greeks—their reputation for ever being “loyal, truthful and reliable people”; he also adds—and the words do him credit—“To my mind there is no more shameful vice on earth than lying.”[220]

This, however, does not dispense us from the duty of carefully examining the particular instances which seem to militate against the opinion here expressed.

We find Luther’s relations with truth very strained even at the beginning of his career, and that, too, in the most important and momentous explanations he gave of his attitude towards the Church and the Pope. Frequently enough, by simply placing his statements side by side, striking falsehoods and evasions become apparent.[221]

For instance, according to his own statements made in private, he is determined to assail the Pope as Antichrist, yet at the same time, in his official writings, he declares any thought of hostility towards the Pope to be alien to him. It is only necessary to note the dates: On March 13, 1519, he tells his friend Spalatin that he is wading through the Papal Decretals and, in confidence, must admit his uncertainty as to whether the Pope is Antichrist or merely his Apostle, so miserably had Christ, i.e. the truth, been crucified by him in the Decretals.[222] Indeed, even in the earlier half of Dec., 1518, he had been wondering whether the Pope was not Antichrist; on Dec. 11, writing to his friend Link, he said he had a suspicion, that the “real Antichrist” of whom Paul speaks ruled at the Court of Rome, and believed that he could prove that he was “even worse than the Turk.”[223] In a similar strain he wrote as early as Jan. 13, 1519, that he intended to fight the “Roman serpent” should the Elector and the University of Wittenberg allow him so to do;[224] on Feb. 3,[225] and again on Feb. 20, 1519,[226] he admits that it had already “long” been his intention to declare war on Rome and its falsifications of the truth.—In spite of all this, at the beginning of Jan., 1519, he informed the Papal agent Miltitz that he was quite ready to send a humble and submissive letter to the Pope, and, as a matter of fact, on Jan. 5 (or 6), 1519, he wrote that strange epistle to Leo X in which he speaks of himself as “the dregs of humanity” in the presence of the Pope’s “sublime majesty”; he approaches him like a “lambkin,” whose bleating he begs the Vicar of Christ graciously to give ear to. Nor was all this merely said in derision, but with a fixed purpose to deceive. He declares with the utmost solemnity “before God and every creature” that it had never entered his mind to assail in any way the authority of the Roman Church and the Pope; on the contrary, he “entirely admits that the power of the Church extends over all, and that nothing in heaven or on earth is to be preferred to her, except Jesus Christ alone, the Lord of all things.” The original letter still exists, but the letter itself was never despatched, probably because Miltitz raised some objection.[227] Only through mere chance did the Papal Curia fail to receive this letter, which, compared with Luther’s real thought as elsewhere expressed, can only be described as outrageous.[228]

In his dealings with his Bishop, Hieronymus Scultetus the chief pastor of Brandenburg, he had already displayed a like duplicity.

In May, 1518, he wrote assuring him in the most respectful terms, that he submitted unconditionally to the judgment of the Church whatever he was advancing concerning Indulgences and kindred subjects; that the Bishop was to burn all his scribbles (Theses and Resolutions) should they displease him, and that he would “not mind in the least.”[229]—And yet a confidential letter sent three months earlier to his friend Spalatin mentions, though for the benefit of him “alone and our friends,” that the whole system of Indulgences now seemed to Luther a “deluding of souls, good only to promote spiritual laziness.”[230]

To the Emperor too he also gives assurances couched in submissive and peaceful language, which are in marked contrast with other statements which emanated from him about the same time.

It is only necessary to recall his letter of Aug. 30, 1520, to Charles V.[231] Here Luther seeks to convince the Emperor that he is the quietest and most docile of theologians; who was “forced to write only owing to the snares laid for him by others”; who wished for nothing more than to be ignored and left in peace; and who was ready at any moment to welcome the instruction which so far had been refused him.—Very different was his language a few weeks earlier when writing to Spalatin, his tool at the Electoral Court of Saxony: “The die is cast; the despicable fury or favour of the Romans is nothing to me; I desire no reconciliation or communion with them.... I shall burn the whole of the Papal Laws and all humility and friendliness shall cease.”[232] He even hopes, with the help of Spalatin and the Elector, to send to Rome the ominous tidings of the offer made by the Knight Silvester von Schauenburg to protect him by armed force; they might then see at Rome “that their thunders are of no avail”; should they, however, obtain from the Elector his dismissal from his chair at Wittenberg, then, “with the support of the men-at-arms, he would make things still warmer for the Romans.”[233] And yet, on the other hand, Luther was just then most anxious that Spalatin, by means of the Elector, should represent his cause everywhere, and particularly at Rome, as not yet defined, as a point of controversy urgently calling for examination or, at the very least, for a biblical refutation before the Emperor and the Church; the Sovereign also was to tell the Romans that “violence and censures would only make the case of Germany worse even than that of Bohemia,” and would lead to “irrepressible tumults.” In such wise, by dint of dishonest diplomacy, did he seek to frighten, as he says, the “timid Romanists” and thus prevent their taking any steps against him.[234]

If we go back a little further we find a real and irreconcilable discrepancy between the actual events of the Indulgence controversy of 1517 and 1518 and the accounts which he himself gave of them later.

“I was forced to accept the degree of Doctor and to swear to preach and teach my cherished Scriptures truly and faithfully. But then the Papacy barred my way and sought to prevent me from teaching.”[235] “While I was looking for a blessing from Rome, there came instead a storm of thunder and lightning; I was made the lamb that fouled the water for the wolf; Tetzel escaped scot-free, but I was to be devoured.”[236]

His falsehoods about Tetzel are scarcely believable. The latter was, so he says, such a criminal that he had even been condemned to death.[237]

The Indulgence-preachers had declared (what they never thought of doing) “that it was not necessary to have remorse and sorrow in order to obtain the indulgence.”[238] In his old age Luther stated that Tetzel had even given Indulgences for future sins. It is true, however, that when he spoke “he had already become a myth to himself” (A. Hausrath). “Not only are the dates wrong but even the events themselves.... It is the same with the statement that Tetzel had sold Indulgences for sins not yet committed.... In Luther’s charges against Tetzel in the controversy on the Theses we hear nothing of this; only in the work ‘Wider Hans Worst’ (1541), written in his old age, does he make such an assertion.”[239] In this tract Luther does indeed make Tetzel teach that “there was no need of remorse, sorrow or repentance for sin, provided one bought an indulgence, or an indulgence-letter.” He adds: “And he [Tetzel] also sold for future sins.” (See vol. i., p. 342.)

This untruth, clearly confuted as it was by facts, passed from Luther’s lips to those of his disciples. Mathesius in his first sermon on Luther seems to be drawing on the passage in “Wider Hans Worst” when he says, Tetzel had preached that he was able to forgive the biggest past “as well as future sins.”[240] Luther’s friend, Frederick Myconius, helped to spread the same falsehood throughout Germany by embodying it in his “Historia Reformationis” (1542),[241] whilst in Switzerland, Henry Bullinger, who also promoted it, expressly refers to “Wider Hans Worst” as his authority.[242]

In this way Luther’s misrepresentations infected his whole circle, nor can we be surprised if in this, as in so many similar instances, the falsehood has held the field even to our own day.[243]

We may mention incidentally, that Luther declares concerning the fame which his printed “Propositions against Tetzel’s Articles” brought him: “It did not please me, for, as I said, I myself did not know what the Indulgence was,”[244] although his first sermons are a refutation, both of his own professed ignorance and of that which he also attributes “to all theologians generally.”—Finally, Luther was very fond of intentionally representing the Indulgence controversy as the one source of his opposition to the Church, and in this he was so successful that many still believe it in our own times. The fact that, long before 1517, his views on Grace and Justification had alienated him from the teaching of the Church, he keeps altogether in the background.

At length the Church intervened with the Ban and Luther was summoned before the Emperor at the Diet of Worms. Three years later, at the cost of truth, he had already contrived to cast a halo of glory around his public appearance there. For instance, we know how, contrary to the true state of the case, he wrote: “I went to Worms although I knew that the safe conduct given me by the Emperor would be broken”; for the German Princes, otherwise so staunch and true, had, he says, learned nothing better from the Roman idol than to disregard their plighted word; when he entered Worms he had “taken a jump into the gaping jaws of the monster Behemoth.”[245] Yet he knew well enough that the promise of a safe conduct was to be kept most conscientiously. Only on the return journey did he express the fear lest, by preaching in defiance of the prohibition, he might make people say that he had thereby forfeited his safe conduct.[246]

Yet again it was no tribute to truth and probity, when, after the arrival in Germany of the Bull of Excommunication, though perfectly aware that it was genuine, he nevertheless feigned in print to regard it as a forgery concocted by his enemies, to the detriment of the Evangel. In confidence he declared that he “believed the Bull to be real and authentic,”[247] and yet at that very time, in his “Von den newen Eckischenn Bullen und Lugen,” he brought forward four reasons for its being a forgery, and strove to make out that the document was, not the work of the Pope, but a “tissue of lies” woven by Eck.[248]

His tactics had been the same in the case of an edict directed against him by the Bishop of Meissen, the first of the German episcopate to take action. He knew very well that the enactment was genuine. Yet he wrote in reply the “Antwort auff die Tzedel sso unter des Officials tzu Stolpen Sigel ist aussgangen,” as though the writer were some unknown opponent, who ... “had lost his wits on the Gecksberg.”[249]

A similar artifice was made to serve his purpose in the matter of the Papal Brief of Aug. 23, 1518, in which Cardinal Cajetan received full powers to proceed against him. He insisted that this was a malicious fabrication of his foes in Germany; and yet he was well aware of the facts of the case; he cannot have doubted its authenticity, seeing that the Brief had been officially transmitted to him from the Saxon Court through Spalatin.[250]

While, however, accusing others of deception, even occasionally by name, as in Eck’s case, he saw no wrong in antedating his letter to Leo X; for this neither he nor his adviser Miltitz was to be called to account; it sufficed that by dating it earlier the letter appeared to have been written in ignorance of the Excommunication, and thereby served Luther’s interests better.[251]

In fact, right through the period previous to his open breach with Rome, we see him ever labouring to postpone the decision, though a great gulf already separated him from the Church of yore. Across the phantom bridge which still spanned the chasm, he saw with satisfaction thousands passing into his own camp. When on the very point of raising the standard of revolt he seemed at pains to prove it anything but an emblem of uprightness, probity and truth.

Passing now to the struggle of his later life, similar phenomena can scarcely escape the eyes of the unprejudiced observer.

He was proposing untruth and deception when, in 1520, he advised candidates to qualify for major Orders by a fictitious vow of celibacy. Whoever was to be ordained subdeacon was to urge the Bishop not to demand continency, but should the Bishop insist upon the law and call for such a promise, then the candidates were quietly to give it with the proviso: “quantum fragilitas humana permittit”; then, says Luther, “each one is free to take these words in a negative sense, i.e. I do not vow chastity because human frailty does not allow of a man living chastely.”[252]

To what lengths he was prepared to go, even where members of Reformed sects were concerned, may be seen in one of his many unjust outbursts against Zwingli and Œcolampadius. Although they were suffering injustice and violence, yet he denounced them mercilessly. They were to be proclaimed “damned,” even though this led to “violence being offered them”; this was the best way to make people shrink from their false doctrines.[253] His own doctrines, on the other hand, he says, are such that not even Catholics dared to condemn them. On his return to Wittenberg from the Coburg he preached, that the Papists had been forced to admit that his doctrine did not offend against a single article of the Faith.[254]—Of Carlstadt, his theological child of trouble, he asserted, that he wished to play the part of teacher of Holy Scripture though he had never in all his life even seen the Bible,[255] and yet all, Luther inclusive, knew that Carlstadt was not so ignorant of the Bible and that he could even boast of a considerable acquaintance with Hebrew. Concerning Luther’s persecution of Carlstadt, a Protestant researcher has pointed to the “ever-recurring flood of misrepresentations, suspicions, vituperation and abuse which the Reformer poured upon his opponent.”[256]

Such being his licence of speech, what treatment could Catholics expect at his hands? One instance is to be found in the use he makes against the Catholics of a well-known passage of St. Bernard’s.

St. Bernard, says Luther, had declared the religious life to be worthless and had said: “Perdite vixi” (“I have shamefully wasted my life”). The great Saint of the religious life, the noblest patron and representative of the virtues of the cloister, Luther depicts as condemning with these words the religious life in general as an abominable error; he would have him brand his own life and his attention to his vows, as an existence foreign to God which he had too late recognised as such! By this statement, says Luther, he “hung up his cowl on the nail,” and proceeds to explain his meaning: “Henceforward he cared not a bit for the cowl and its foolery and refused to hear any more about it.”[257] Thus, so Luther assures us, St. Bernard, at the solemn moment of quitting this world, “made nothing” (“nihili fecit”) of his vows.[258]

When quoting the words “Perdite vixi” Luther frequently seeks to convey an admission on the Saint’s part of his having come at last to see that the religious life was a mistake, and merely led people to forget Christ’s merits; that he had at last attained the perception during sickness and had laid hold on Christ’s merits as his only hope.[259] Even on internal grounds it is too much to assume Luther to have been in good faith, or merely guilty of a lapse of memory. That we have here to do with a distorted version of a perfectly harmless remark is proved to the historian by another passage, dating from the year 1518, where Luther himself refers quite simply and truly to the actual words employed by St. Bernard and sees in them merely an expression of humility and the admission of a pure heart, which detested the smallest of its faults.[260]

Denifle has followed up the “Perdite vixi” with great acumen, shown the frequent use Luther made of it and traced the words to their actual context in St. Bernard’s writings. The text does not contain the faintest condemnation of the religious life, so that Luther’s incessant misuse of it becomes only the more incomprehensible.[261]

St. Bernard is here speaking solely of his own faults and imperfections, not at all of the religious life or of the vows. Nor were the words uttered on his death-bed, when face to face with eternity, but occur in a sermon preached in the full vigour of manhood and when the Saint was eagerly pursuing his monastic ideal.

Again, what things were not circulated by Luther, in the stress of his warfare, concerning the history of the Popes and the Church? Here, again, some of his statements were not simply errors made in good faith, but, as has been pointed out by Protestant historians, malicious inventions going far beyond the matter contained in the sources which we know to have been at his command. The Popes “poisoned several Emperors, beheaded or otherwise betrayed others and put them to death, as became the diabolical spectre of the Papacy.”[262] The bloodthirsty Popes were desirous of “slaying the German Emperors, as Clement IV did with Conradin, the last Duke of Suabia and hereditary King of Naples, whom he caused to be publicly put to death by the sword.”[263] Of this E. Schäfer rightly says, that the historian Sabellicus, whom Luther was utilising, simply (and truly) records that: “Conradin was taken while attempting to escape and was put to death by order of Charles [of Anjou]”; Clement IV Sabellicus does not mention at all, although it is true that the Pope was a strong opponent of the Staufen house.[264]

The so-called letter of St. Ulrich of Augsburg against clerical celibacy, with the account of 3000 (6000) babies’ heads found in a pond belonging to St. Gregory’s nunnery in Rome, is admittedly one of the most impudent forgeries found in history and emanated from some foe of Gregory VII and opponent of the ancient law of celibacy. Luther brought it out as a weapon in his struggle against celibacy, and, according to Köstlin-Kawerau, most probably the Preface to the printed text published at Wittenberg in 1520 came from his pen.[265] The manuscript had been sent to Luther from Holland. Emser took him to task and proved the forgery, though on not very substantial grounds. Luther demurred to one of his arguments but declared that he did not build merely on a doubtful letter. In spite of this, however, the seditious and alluring fable was not only not withdrawn from circulation but actually reprinted. When Luther said later that celibacy had first been introduced in the time of St. Ulrich, he is again speaking on the authority of the supposititious letter. This letter was also worked for all it was worth by those who later took up the defence of Luther’s teaching.[266]

To take one single example of Luther’s waywardness in speaking of Popes who were almost contemporaries: He tells us with the utmost assurance that Alexander VI had been an “unbelieving Marane.” However much we may execrate the memory of the Borgia Pope, still so extraordinary an assertion has never been made by any sensible historian. Alexander VI, the pretended Jewish convert and “infidel” on the Papal throne! Who could read his heart so well as to detect an infidelity, which, needless to say, he never acknowledged? Who can credit the tale of his being a Marane?

When, in July 14, 1537, Pope Paul III issued a Bull granting an indulgence for the war against the Turks, Luther at once published it with misleading notes in which he sought to show that the Popes, instead of linking up the Christian powers against their foes, had ever done their best to promote dissensions amongst the great monarchs of Christendom.[267]

In 1538 he sent to the press his Schmalkalden “Artickel” against the Pope and the prospective Council, adding observations of a questionable character regarding their history and meaning. He certainly was exalting unduly the Articles when he declared in the Introduction, that “they have been unanimously accepted and approved by our people.” It is a matter of common knowledge, that, owing to Melanchthon’s machinations, they had never even been discussed. (See vol. iii., p. 434.) They were nevertheless published as though they had been the official scheme drafted for presentation to the Council. Luther also put into the printed Artickel words which are not to be found in the original.[268] The following excuse of his statement as to their having been accepted at Schmalkalden has been made: “It is evident, that, owing to his grave illness at Schmalkalden, he never learnt the exact fate of his Articles.” Yet who can believe, that, after his recovery, he did not make enquiries into what had become of the Articles on which he laid so much weight, or that he “never learnt” their fate, though the matter was one well known to both the Princes and the theologians? Only after his death were these Articles embodied in the official Confessions.[269]

Seeing that he was ready to misrepresent even the official proceedings of his own party, we cannot be surprised if, in his controversies, he was careless about the truth where the person of an opponent was concerned. Here it is not always possible to find even a shadow of excuse behind which he can take refuge. Of Erasmus’s end he had received accounts from two quarters, both friendly to his cause, but they did not strike him as sufficiently damning. Accordingly he at once set in currency reports concerning the scholar’s death utterly at variance with what he had learnt from the letters in question.[270] He accused the Catholics, particularly the Catholic Princes, of attempting to murder him, and frequently speaks of the hired braves sent out against him. Nor were his friends and pupils slow to take his words literally and to hurl such charges, more particularly against Duke George of Saxony.[271] Yet not a single attempt on his life can be proved, and even Protestants have admitted concerning the Duke that “nothing credible is known of any attempt on George’s part to assassinate Luther.”[272] Cochlæus merely relates that murderers had offered their services to Duke George;[273] beyond that nothing.

Far more serious than such misrepresenting of individuals was the injustice he did to the whole ecclesiastical life of the Middle Ages, which he would fain have made out to have entirely fallen away from the true standard of Christian faith and practice. Seen through his new glasses, mediæval life was distorted beyond all recognition. Walter Köhler gives a warning which is to the point: “Protestant historians must beware of looking at the Middle Ages from Luther’s standpoint.”[274] In particular was mediæval Scholasticism selected by Luther and his friends as a butt for attack and misrepresentation. Bucer admits in a letter to Bullinger how far they had gone in this respect: “We have treated all the Schoolmen in such a way as to shock many good and worthy men, who see that we have not read their works but are merely anxious to slander them out of prudence.”[275]

However desirous we may be of crediting the later Luther with good faith in his distorted views of Catholic practices and doctrines, still he frequently goes so far in this respect as to make it extremely difficult to believe that his misrepresentations were based on mere error or actual conviction. One would have thought that he would at least have noticed the blatant contrast between his insinuations and the text of the Breviary and Missal—books with which he was thoroughly conversant—and even of the rule of his Order. As a monk and priest he was perfectly familiar with them; only at the cost of a violent wrench could he have passed from this so different theological world to think as he ultimately did of the doctrines of Catholicism. Döllinger was quite right when he wrote: “As a controversialist Luther combined undeniably dialectic and rhetorical talent with a degree of unscrupulousness such as is rarely met with in this domain. One of his most ordinary methods was to distort a doctrine or institution into a mere caricature of itself, and then, forgetful of the fact that what he was fighting was a simple creation of his fancy, to launch out into righteous abuse of it.... So soon as he touches a theological question, he confuses it, often of set purpose, and as for the reasons of his opponents, they are mutilated and distorted out of all recognition.”[276] The untruthfulness of his polemics is peculiarly apparent in his attack on free-will. It is impossible, even with the best of intentions, to put it all, or practically all, to the account “of the method of disputation” then in use. That method, the syllogistic one, called for a clear and accurate statement of the opponent’s standpoint. The controversy round “De servo arbitrio” (fully dealt with in vol. ii., pp. 223-294) has recently been studied by two scholars, one a Protestant, the other a Catholic, and both authors on the whole agree at least on one point, viz. that Luther ascribed to his opponent a denial of the necessity of Grace, such as the latter never defended, and such as is quite unknown to Catholics.[277] Indeed, at a later juncture in that same controversy Luther even declared of the author of the “Hyperaspistes” that he denied the Trinity![278]

Instead of instancing anew all the many minor misrepresentations of the dogmas and practices of the older Church for which Luther was responsible, and which are found scattered throughout this work, we may confine ourselves to recalling his bold assertion, that all earlier expositors had taken the passage concerning “God’s justice,” in Rom. i. 17, as referring to punitive justice.[279] This was what he taught from his professor’s chair and what we find vouched for in the notes of a zealous pupil of whose fidelity there can be no question. And yet it has been proved, that, with the possible exception of Abelard, not one can be found who thus explained the passage of which Luther speaks (“hunc locum”), whilst Luther himself was acquainted with some at least of the more than sixty commentators who interpret it otherwise. Significant enough is the fact that he only reached this false interpretation gradually.

Luther also says that he and all the others had been told it was a mortal sin to leave their cell without their scapular, though he never attempts to prove that this was the general opinion, or was even held by anybody. The rule of his Order rejected such exaggeration. All theologians were agreed that such trifles did not constitute a grievous sin. Luther was perfectly aware that Gerson, who was much read in the monasteries, was one of these theologians; he praised him, because, though looked at askance at Rome, he set consciences free from over-great scrupulosity and refused to brand the non-wearing of the scapular as a crime.[280] Gerson was indeed not favourably regarded in Rome, but this was for other reasons, not, as Luther makes out, on account of such common-sense teaching as the above.

Then again we have the untruth he is never tired of reiterating, viz. that in the older Church people thought they could be saved only by means of works, and that, through want of faith in Christ, the “Church had become a whore.”[281] Yet ecclesiastical literature in Luther’s day no less than in ours, and likewise an abundance of documents bearing on the point teach quite the contrary and make faith in Christ the basis of all the good works enjoined.[282] All were aware, as Luther himself once had been, that outward works taken by themselves were worthless. And yet Luther, in one of the charges which he repeated again and again, though at the outset he cannot have believed it, says: “The question is, how we are to become pious. The Grey Friar says: Wear a grey hood, a rope and the tonsure. The Black Friar says: Put on a black frock. The Papist: Do this or that good work, hear Mass, pray, fast, give alms, etc., and each one whatever he fancies will help him to be saved. But the Christian says: Only by faith in Christ can you become pious, and righteous and secure salvation; only through Grace alone, without any work or merits of your own. Now look and see which is true righteousness.”[283]

Let us listen for a moment to the indignant voice of a learned Catholic contemporary, viz. the Saxon Dominican, Bartholomew Kleindienst, himself for a while not unfavourable to the new errors, who, in 1560, replied to Luther’s misrepresentations: “Some of the leaders of sects are such impudent liars as, contrary to their own conscience, to persuade the poor people to believe, that we Catholics of the present day, or as they term us Papists, do not believe what the old Papists believed; we no longer think anything of Christ, but worship the Saints, not merely as the friends of God but as gods themselves; nay, we look upon the Pope as our God; we wish to gain heaven by means of our works, without God’s Grace; we do not believe in Holy Writ; have no proper Bible and should be unable to read it if we had; trust more in holy water than in the blood of Christ.... Numberless such-like horrible, blasphemous and hitherto unheard-of lies they invent and use against us. The initiate are well aware that this is the chief trick of the sects, whereby they render the Papacy an abomination to simple and otherwise well-disposed folk.”[284]

But had not Luther, carried away by his zeal against the Papists, taken his stand on the assumption, that, against the deception and depravity of the Papal Antichrist, every weapon was good provided only that it helped to save souls? Such at any rate was his plea in justification of his work “An den christlichen Adel.”[285] Again, during the menacing Diet of Augsburg, when recommending the use of the questionable “Gospel-proviso,” he let fall the following in a letter: Even “tricks and failings” (“doli et lapsus”), should they occur amongst his followers in their resistance to the Papists, “can easily be atoned for once we have escaped the danger.”[286] He even adds: “For God’s Mercy watches over us.”

In the midst of the double-dealing then in progress Luther again appealed to Christ in his letter to Wenceslaus Link on Sep. 20, 1530, where he says: Christ “would be well pleased with such deceit and would scornfully cheat the [Papist] deceivers, as he hoped,” i.e. raise false hopes that the Lutherans would yield; later they would find out their mistake, and that they had been fooled. Here is my view of the matter, he continues, “I am secure, that without my consent, their consent [the concessions of Melanchthon and his friends at the Diet] is invalid. Even were I too to agree with these blasphemers, murderers and faithless monsters, yet the Church and [above all] the teaching of the Gospel would not consent.” This was his “Gospel-proviso,” thanks to which all the concessions, doctrinal or moral, however solemnly granted by him or by his followers, might be declared invalid—“once we have escaped the danger.” (See vol. iii., p. 337 ff.)

The underhandedness which he advocated in order that the people might not be made aware of the abrogation of the Mass, has been considered above (vol. ii., p. 321). Another strange trick on his part—likewise for the better furtherance of his cause—was his attempt to persuade the Bishop of Samland, George von Polenz, who had fallen away from the Church and joined him, “to proceed with caution”; “therefore that it would be useful for him [the Bishop] to appear to suspend his judgment (“ut velut suspendens sententiam appareret”); to wait until the people had consented, and then throw in his weight as though he had been conquered by their arguments.”[287] Couched in Luther’s ordinary language this would mean that the Bishop was to pretend to be wavering between Christ and Antichrist, between hell and the Evangel, though any such wavering, to say nothing of any actual yielding, would have been a capital crime against religion. At the best the Bishop could only hypocritically feign to be wavering in spite of the other public steps he had taken in Luther’s favour and of which the latter was well aware.

Later, in 1545, considering the “deception and depravity” of the Papacy Luther thought himself justified in insinuating in a writing against the Catholic Duke Henry of Brunswick,[288] then a prisoner, that the Pope had furnished him supplies for his unfortunate warlike enterprise against the allies of the evangelical confession.

Of this there was not the shadow of a proof. The contrary is clear from Protestant documents and protocols.[289] The Court of the Saxon Electorate, where an insult to the Emperor was apprehended, was aghast at Luther’s resolve to publish the charge concerning the “equipment from Italy,” and Chancellor Brück hastened to request him to alter the proofs for fear of evil consequences.[290] Luther, however, was in no mood to yield; the writing comprising this malicious insinuation and other falsehoods was even addressed in the form of a letter to the Saxon Elector and the allied Princes. At the same time the author, both in the text and in his correspondence, gave the impression that the writing had been composed without the Elector’s knowledge and only at the request of “many others, some of them great men,” though in reality, as Protestants admit, the “work had been written to order,” viz. at the instigation of the Electoral Court.[291]

“We all know,” Luther says, seemingly with the utmost gravity, in this work against the Duke, “that Pope and Papists desire our death, body and soul. We, on the other hand, desire to save them with us, soul and body.”[292] There is no need to waste words on the intentions here ascribed to the Papists. As to Luther’s own good intentions so far as the material welfare of the Papists goes, what he says does not tally with the wish he so loudly expressed at that very time for the bloody destruction of the Pope. Further, as regards the Papists’ souls, what he said of his great opponent, Archbishop Albert of Mayence, deserves to be mentioned: “He died impenitent in his sins and must be damned eternally, else the Christian faith is all wrong.”[293] Did Luther perhaps write this with a heavy heart? Yet he also condemns in advance the soul of the unhappy Duke of Brunswick, “seeing there is no hope of his amendment,” and “even though he should feign to repent and become more pious,” yet he would not be trusted since “he might pretend to repent and amend merely in order to climb back to honour, lands and people, which assuredly would be nothing but a false and foxy repentance.”[294] Hence he insists upon the Princes refusing to release the Duke. But even his own friends will not consider his religious motives for this very profound or genuine, for instance, when he says: Were he to be released, “many pious hearts would be saddened and their prayers for your Serene Highnesses become tepid and cold.”[295] His political reasons were no less founded on untruth. The only object of the League of the Catholic Princes was to seize upon the property of the evangelical Princes; “they were thinking, not of the Christian faith, but of the lands of the Elector and the Landgrave”; they have made “one league after the other” and now “call it a defensive one, as though forsooth they were in danger,” whereas “we for our part have without intermission prayed, implored, called and cried for peace.”[296]

While Luther was himself playing fast and loose with truth, he was not slow to accuse his opponents of lying even when they presented matters as they really were. When Eck published the Bull of Excommunication, which Luther himself knew to be authentic, he was roundly rated for saying that his “tissue of lies” was “the Pope’s work.”[297] In fact, in all and everything that Catholics undertake against his cause, they are seeking “to deceive us and the common people, though well aware of the contrary.... You see how they seek the truth.... They are rascals incarnate.”[298] In fighting against the lies of his opponents Luther, once,—curiously enough—in his writing “Widder die hymelischen Propheten” actually takes the Pope under his protection against the calumnies of his Wittenberg opponent Carlstadt; seeking to brand him as a liar, he declares that he “was notoriously telling lies of the Pope.”

We already know how much Carlstadt had to complain of Luther’s lying and fickleness.

This leads to a short review of the remarks made by Luther’s then opponents and friends concerning his want of truthfulness.

[2. Opinions of Contemporaries in either Camp]

Luther’s work against Duke Henry of Brunswick entitled “Wider Hans Worst” was so crammed with malice and falsehoods that even some of Luther’s followers were disposed to complain of its unseemliness. Simon Wilde, who was then studying medicine at Wittenberg, wrote on April 8, 1541, when forwarding to his uncle the Town Clerk, Stephen Roth of Zwickau, a copy of the booklet which had just appeared: “I am sending you a little work of Dr. Martin against the Duke of Brunswick which bristles with calumnies, but which also [so he says] contains much that is good, and may be productive of something amongst the virtuous.”[299]

Statements adverse to Luther’s truthfulness emanating from the Protestant side are not rare; particularly are they met with in the case of theologians who had had to suffer from his violence; nor can their complaints be entirely disallowed simply because they came from men who were in conflict with him, though the circumstance would call for caution in making use of them were the complaints not otherwise corroborated.

Œcolampadius in his letter to Zwingli of April 20, 1525, calls Luther a “master in calumny, and prince of sophists.”[300]

The Strasburg preachers Bucer and Capito, though reputed for their comparative moderation, wrote of one of Luther’s works on the Sacrament, that “never had anything more sophistical and calumnious seen the light.”[301]

Thomas Münzer repeatedly calls his enemy Luther “Dr. Liar” and “Dr. Lyinglips,”[302] on account of the unkindness of his polemics; more picturesquely he has it on one occasion, that “he lied from the bottom of his gullet.”[303]

Bucer complains in terms of strong disapprobation, that, when engaged with his foes, Luther was wont to misrepresent and distort their doctrines in order the more readily to gain the upper hand, at least in the estimation of the multitude. He finds that “in many places” he has “rendered the doctrines and arguments of the opposite side with manifest untruth,” for which the critic is sorry, since this “gave rise to grave doubts and temptations” amongst those who detected this practice, and diminished their respect for the Evangelical teaching.[304]

The Lutheran, Hieronymus Pappus, sending Luther’s work “Wider Hans Worst” to Joachim Vadian, declared: “In calumny he does not seem to me to have his equal.”[305]

Johann Agricola, once Luther’s friend, and then, on account of his Antinomianism, his adversary, brings against Luther various charges in his Notes (see above, vol. iii., p. 278); the worst refer to his “lying.” God will punish Luther, he writes, referring to his work “Against the Antinomians”; “he has heaped too many lies on me before all the world.” Luther had said that Agricola denied the necessity of prayer or good works; this the latter, appealing to his witnesses, brands as an “abominable lie.” He characterises the whole tract as “full of lies,”[306] and, in point of fact, there is no doubt it did contain the worst exaggerations.

Among the writers of the opposite camp the first place is due to Erasmus. Of one of the many distortions of his meaning committed by Luther he says: “It is true I never look for moderation in Luther, but for so malicious a calumny I was certainly not prepared.”[307] Elsewhere he flings in his face the threat: “I shall show everybody what a master you are in the art of misrepresentation, defamation, calumny and exaggeration. But the world knows this already.... In your sly way you contrive to twist even what is absolutely true, whenever it is to your interest to do so. You know how to turn black into white and to make light out of darkness.”[308] Disgusted with Luther’s methods, he finally became quite resigned even to worse things. He writes: “I have received Luther’s letter; it is simply the work of a madman. He is not in the least ashamed of his infamous lies and promises to do even worse. What can those people be thinking of who confide their souls and their earthly destiny to a man who allows himself to be thus carried away by passion?”[309]

The polemic, Franz Arnoldi, tells Luther, that one of his works contains “as many lies as words.”[310]

Johann Dietenberger likewise says, referring to a newly published book of Luther’s which he had been studying: “He is the most mendacious man under the sky.”[311]

Paul Bachmann, shortly after the appearance of Luther’s booklet “Von der Winckelmesse,” in his comments on it emits the indignant remark: “Luther’s lies are taller even than Mount Olympus.”[312]

“This is no mere erring man,” Bachmann also writes of Luther, “but the wicked devil himself to whom no lie, deception or falsehood is too much.”[313]

Johann Eck sums up his opinion of Luther’s truthfulness in these words: “He is a man who simply bristles with lies (‘homo totus mendaciis scatens’)”.[314] The Ingolstadt theologian, like Bartholomew Kleindienst (above, p. 95), was particularly struck by Luther’s parody of Catholic doctrine.—Willibald Pirkheimer’s words in 1528 we already know.[315]

We pass over similar unkindly epithets hurled at him by indignant Catholic clerics, secular, or regular. The latter, particularly, speaking with full knowledge and therefore all the more indignantly, describe as it deserves what he says of vows, as a glaring lie, of the falsehood of which Luther, the quondam monk, must have been fully aware.

Of the Catholic Princes who were capable of forming an opinion, Duke George of Saxony with his downright language must be mentioned first. In connection with the Pack negotiations he says that Luther is the “most cold-blooded liar he had ever come across.” “We must say and write of him, that the apostate monk lies like a desperate, dishonourable and forsworn miscreant.” “We have yet to learn from Holy Scripture that Christ ever bestowed the mission of an Apostle on such an open and deliberate liar or sent him to proclaim the Gospel.”[316] Elsewhere he reminds Luther of our Lord’s words: “By their fruits you shall know them”: To judge of the spirit from the fruits, Luther’s spirit must be a “spirit of lying”; indeed, Luther proved himself “possessed of the spirit of lies.”[317]

[3. The Psychological Problem Self-suggestion and Scriptural Grounds of Excuse]

Not merely isolated statements, but whole series of regularly recurring assertions in Luther’s works, constitute a real problem, and, instead of challenging refutation make one ask how their author could possibly have come to utter and make such things his own.

A Curious Mania.

He never tires of telling the public, or friends and supporters within his own circle, that “not one Bishop amongst the Papists reads or studies Holy Scripture”; “never had he [Luther] whilst a Catholic heard anything of the Ten Commandments”; in Rome they say: “Let us be cheerful, the Judgment Day will never come”; they also call anyone who believes in revelation a “poor simpleton”; from the highest to the lowest they believe that “there is no God, no hell and no life after this life”; when taking the religious vows the Papists also vowed they “had no need of the Blood and Passion of Christ”; I, too, “was compelled to vow this”; all religious took their vows “with a blasphemous conscience.”

He says: In the Papacy “they did not preach Christ,” but only the Mass and good works; and further: “No Father [of the Church] ever preached Christ”; and again: “They knew nothing of the belief that Christ died for us”; or: “No one [in Popery] ever prayed”; and: Christ was looked upon only as a “Judge” and we “merely fled from the wrath of God,” knowing nothing of His mercy. “The Papists,” he declares, “condemned marriage as forbidden by God,” and “I myself, while still a monk, was of the same opinion, viz. that the married state was a reprobate state.”

In the Papacy, so Luther says in so many words, “people sought to be saved through Aristotle.”[318] “In the Papacy the parents did not provide for their children. They believed that only monks and priests could be saved.”[319] “In the Papacy you will hardly meet with an honest man who lives up to his calling” (i.e. who performs his duties as a married man).[320]

But enough of such extravagant assertions, which to Catholics stand self-condemned, but were intended by their author to be taken literally. He flung such wild sayings broadcast among the masses, until it became a second nature with him. For we must bear in mind that grotesque and virulent misstatements such as the above occur not merely now and again, but simply teem in his books, sermons and conversations. It would be an endless task to enumerate his deliberate falsehoods. He declares, for instance, that the Papists, in all their collects and prayers, extolled merely the merits of the Saints; yet this aspersion which he saw fit to cast upon the Church in the interests of his polemics, he well knew to be false, having been familiar from his monastic days with another and better aspect of the prayers he here reviles. He knew that the merits of the Saints were referred to only in some of the collects; he knew, moreover, why they were mentioned there, and that they were never alleged alone but always in subordination to the merits and the mediation of our Saviour (“Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum,” etc.).

A favourite allegation of Luther’s, viz. that the Church of the past had regarded Christ exclusively as a stern Judge, was crushingly confuted in Denifle’s work. The importance of this brilliant and scholarly refutation lies in the fact, that it is principally founded on texts and usages of the older Church with which Luther was perfectly familiar, which, for instance, he himself had recited in the liturgy and more especially in the Office of his Order year after year, and which thus bear striking testimony against his good faith in the matter of his monstrous charge.[321]

It is a matter of common knowledge that, also in other branches of the history of theology and ecclesiastical life, Denifle has refuted with rare learning, though with too sharp a pen, Luther’s paradoxical “lies” concerning mediæval Catholicism. It is to be hoped that this may be followed by other well-grounded and impartial comments from the pen of other writers, for, in spite of their monstrous character, some of Luther’s accusations still live, partly no doubt owing to the respect in which he is held. Some of them will be examined more closely below. The principal aim of these pages is, however, to seek the psychological explanation of the strange peculiarity which manifests itself in Luther’s intellectual life, viz. the abnormal tendency to level far-fetched charges, sometimes bordering on the insane.

An Attempt at a Psychological Explanation.

A key to some of these dishonest exaggerations is to be found in the need which Luther experienced of arming himself against the Papacy and the older Church by ever more extravagant assertions. Realising how unjust and untenable much of his position was, and oppressed by those doubts to which he often confessed, a man of his temper was sorely tempted to have recourse to the expedient of insisting yet more obstinately on his pet ideas. The defiance which was characteristic of him led him to pile up one assertion on the other which his rhetorical talent enabled him to clothe in his wonted language. Throughout he was acting on impulse rather than from reflection.

To this must be added—incredible as it may appear in connection with the gravest questions of life—his tendency to make fun. Jest, irony, sarcasm were so natural to him as to obtrude themselves almost unconsciously whenever he had to do with opponents whom he wished to crush and on whom he wished to impose by a show of merriment which should display the strength of his position and his comfortable sense of security, and at the same time duly impress his own followers. Those who looked beneath the surface, however, must often have rejoiced to see Luther so often blunting the point of his hyperboles by the drolleries by which he accompanies them, which made it evident that he was not speaking seriously. To-day, too, it would be wrong to take all he says as spoken in dead earnest; at the same time it is often impossible to determine where exactly the serious ends and the trivial, vulgar jest begins; probably even Luther himself did not always know. A few further examples may be given.

“In Popery we were compelled to listen to the devil and to worship things that some monk had spewed or excreted, until at last we lost the Gospel, Baptism, the Sacrament and everything else. After that we made tracks for Rome or for St. James of Compostella and did everything the Popish vermin told us to do, until we came to adore even their lice and fleas, nay, their very breeches. But now God has returned to us.”[322]

“Everywhere there prevailed the horrid, pestilential teaching of the Pope and the sophists, viz. that a man must be uncertain of God’s grace towards himself (‘incertum debere esse de gratia Dei erga se’).”[323] By this doctrine and by their holiness-by-works Pope and monks “had driven all the world headlong into hell” for “well-nigh four hundred years.”[324] Of course, “for a man to be pious, or to become so by God’s Grace, was heresy” to them; “their works were of greater value, did and wrought more than God’s Grace,”[325] and with all this “they do no single work which might profit their neighbour in body, goods, honour or soul.”[326]

A. Kalthoff[327] remarks of similar distortions of which Luther was guilty: “Hardly anyone in the whole of history was so little able to bear contradiction as Luther; it was out of the question to discuss with him any opinion from another point of view; he preferred to contradict himself or to assert what was absolutely monstrous, rather than allow his opponent even a semblance of being in the right.”—The misrepresentation of Catholic doctrine which became a tradition among Lutheran polemics was in great part due to Luther.—With equal skill and moderation Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick, in his “Fifty Reasons” for returning to the Catholic Church,[328] protests against this perversion of Catholic doctrine by Lutheran writers. He had observed that arguments were adduced by the Lutherans to prove truths which the Church does not deny at all, whilst the real points at issue were barely touched upon. “For instance, they bring forward a heap of texts to prove that God alone is to be adored, though Catholics never question it, and they teach that it is a sin of idolatry to pay divine worship to any creature.” “They extol the merits of Christ and the greatness of His satisfaction for our sins. But what for? Catholics teach the same, viz. that the merits of Christ are infinite and that His satisfaction suffices to blot out all the sins of the world, and thus they, too, hold the Bible doctrine of the appropriation of Christ’s merits by means of their own good works (1 Peter i. 10).”

Two things especially were made the butt of Luther’s extravagant and untrue charges and insinuations, viz. the Mass and the religious life. In his much read Table-Talk the chapter on the Mass is full of misrepresentations such as can be explained only by the animus of the speaker.[329] Of religious he can relate the most incredible tales. Thus: “On the approach of death most of them cried in utter despair: Wretched man that I am; I have not kept my Rule and whither shall I flee from the anger of the Judge? Alas, that I was not a sow-herd, or the meanest creature on earth!”[330] On account of the moral corruption of the Religious Orders, he declares it would be right, “were it only feasible, to destroy both Papacy and monasteries at one blow!”[331] He is fond of jesting at the expense of the nuns; thus he makes a vulgar allusion to their supposed practice of taking an image of the Crucified to bed with them, as though it were their bridegroom. He roundly charges them all with arrogance: “The nuns are particularly reprehensible on account of their pride; for they boast: Christ is our bridegroom and we are His brides and other women are nothing.”[332]

It is putting the matter rather too mildly when a Protestant historian, referring to the countless assertions of this nature, remarks, “that, in view of his habits and temper, some of Luther’s highly flavoured statements call for the use of the blue pencil if they are to be accorded historical value.”[333]

Lastly, we must point to another psychological, or, more accurately, pathological, element which may avail to explain falsehoods so glaring concerning the Church of former times. Experience teaches, that sometimes a man soaked in prejudice will calumniate or otherwise assail a foe, at first from an evil motive and with deliberate injustice, and then, become gradually persuaded, thanks to the habit thus formed, of the truth of his calumnies and of the justice of his proceedings. Instances of such a thing are not seldom met with in history, especially among those engaged in mighty conflicts in the arena of the world. Injustice and falsehood, not indeed entirely, but with regard to the matter in hand, are travestied, become matters of indifference, or are even transformed in their eyes into justice and truth.

In Luther’s case the phenomenon in question assumes a pathological guise. We cannot but perceive in him a kind of self-suggestion by which he imposed upon himself. Constituted as he was, such suggestion was possible, nay probable, and was furthermore abetted by his nervous excitement, the result of his never-ceasing struggle.[334]

It is in part to his power of suggestion that must also be attributed his success in making his disciples and followers accept even his most extravagant views and become in their turn missioners of the same.

The New Theology of Lying.

Another explanation, this time a theological one, of Luther’s disregard for the laws of truth is to be found in the theory he set up of the permissibility of lies.

Previously, even in 1517, he, like all theologians, had regarded every kind of lie as forbidden. Theologians of earlier times, when dealing with this subject, usually agreed with Augustine and Peter Lombard, the “Magister Sententiarum” and likewise with Gratian, that all lies, even lies of excuse, are forbidden. After the commencement of his public controversy, however, strange as it may appear, Luther gradually came to assert in so many words that lies of excuse, of convenience, or of necessity were not reprehensible, but often good and to be counselled. How far this view concerning the lawfulness of lying might be carried, remained, however, a question to be decided by each one individually.

Formerly he had rightly declared: A lie is “contrary to man’s nature and the greatest enemy of human society”; hence no greater insult could be offered than to call a man a liar. To this he always adhered. But besides, following St. Augustine, he had distinguished between lies of jest and of necessity and lies of detraction. Not merely the latter, so he declared, were unlawful, but, as Augustine taught, even lies of necessity or excuse—by which he understands lies told for our own or others’ advantage, but without injury to anyone. “Yet a lie of necessity,” he said at that time, “is not a mortal sin,” especially when told in sudden excitement “and without actual deliberation.” This is his language in January, 1517,[335] in his Sermons on the Ten Commandments, when explaining the eighth. Again, in his controversy with the Zwinglians on the Sacrament (1528), he incidentally shows his attitude by the remark, that, “when anyone has been publicly convicted of falsehood in one particular we are thereby sufficiently warned by God not to believe him at all.”[336] In 1538, he says of the Pope and the Papists, that, on account of their lies the words of Chrysippus applied to them: “If you are a liar you lie even in speaking the truth.”[337]

Meanwhile, however, his peculiar reading of the Old Testament, and possibly no less the urgent demands of his controversy, had exerted an unfortunate influence on his opinion concerning lies of convenience or necessity.

It seems to him that in certain Old-Testament instances of such lies those who employed them were not to blame. Abraham’s lie in denying that Sarah was his wife, the lie of the Egyptian midwives about the Jewish children, Michol’s lie told to save David, appear to Luther justifiable, useful and wholesome. On Oct. 2, 1524, in his Sermons on Exodus, as it would seem for the first time, he defended his new theory. Lies were only real lies “when told for the purpose of injuring our neighbour”; but, “if I tell a lie, not in order to injure anyone but for his profit and advantage and in order to promote his best interests, this is a lie of service”; such was the lie told by the Egyptian midwives and by Abraham; such lies fall “under the grace of Heaven, i.e. came under the forgiveness of sins”; such falsehoods “are not really lies.”[338]

In his lectures on Genesis (1536-45) the same system has been further elaborated: “As a matter of fact there is only one kind of lie, that which injures our neighbour in his soul, goods or reputation.” “The lie of service is wrongly termed a lie, for it rather denotes virtue, viz. prudence used for the purpose of defeating the devil’s malice and in order to serve our neighbour’s life and honour. Hence it may be called Christian and brotherly charity, or to use Paul’s words: Zeal for godliness.”[339] Thus Abraham “told no lie” in Egypt (Gen. xii. 11 ff.); what he told was “a lie of service, a praiseworthy act of prudence.”[340]

According to his Latin Table-Talk not only Abraham’s lie, but also Michol’s was a “good, useful lie and a work of charity.”[341] A lie for the advantage of another is, so he says, an act “by means of which we assist our neighbour.”

“The monks,” says Luther, “insist that the truth should be told under all circumstances.”[342]—Such certainly was the teaching of St. Thomas of Aquin, whose opinion on the subject then held universal sway, and who rightly insists that a lie is never under any circumstances lawful.[343] St. Augustine likewise shared this monkish opinion, as Luther himself had formerly pointed out. Long before Aquinas’s time this Doctor of the Church, whom Luther was later on deliberately to oppose,[344] had brought his view—the only reliable one, viz. that all untruth is wrong—into general recognition, thanks to his arguments and to the weight of his authority. Pope Alexander III, in a letter to the Archbishop of Palermo, declared that even a lie told to save another’s life was unlawful; this statement was incorporated in the official Decretals—a proof of the respect with which the mediæval Church clung to the truth.[345]

Some few writers of antiquity had, it is true, defended the lawfulness of lies of necessity or convenience. For instance, Origen, possibly under the influence of pagan philosophy, also Hilary and Cassian. Eventually their opinion disappeared almost completely.

It was reserved for Luther to revive the wrong view concerning the lawfulness of such lies, and to a certain extent to impose it on his followers. Theologically this spelt retrogression and a lowering of the standard of morality hitherto upheld. “Luther here forsook his beloved Augustine,” says Stäudlin, a Protestant, “and declared certain lies to be right and allowable. This opinion, though not universally accepted in the Evangelical Church, became nevertheless a dominant one.”[346]

It must be specially noted that Luther does not justify lies of convenience, merely when told in the interests of our neighbour, but also when made use of for our own advantage when such is well pleasing in God’s sight. This he states explicitly when speaking of Isaac, who denied his marriage with Rebecca so as to save his life: “This is no sin, but a serviceable lie by which he escaped being put to death by those with whom he was staying; for this would have happened had he said Rebecca was his wife.”[347] And not only the lawful motive of personal advantage justifies, according to him, such untruths as do not injure others, but much more the love of God or of our neighbour, i.e. regard for God’s honour; the latter motive it was, according to him, which influenced Abraham, when he gave out that Sarah was his sister. Abraham had to co-operate in accomplishing the great promise made by God to him and his progeny; hence he had to preserve his life, “in order that he might honour and glorify God thereby, and not give the lie to God’s promises.” Many Catholic interpreters of the Bible have sought to find expedients whereby, without justifying his lie, they might yet exonerate the great Patriarch of any fault. Luther, on the contrary, following his own arbitrary interpretation of the Bible, approves, nay, even glories in the fault. “If,” he says, “the text be taken thus [according to his interpretation] no one can be scandalised at it; for what is done for God’s honour, for the glory and furtherance of His Word, that is right and well done and deserving of all praise.”[348]

On such principles as these, what was there that Luther could not justify in his polemics with the older Church?

In his eyes everything he undertook was done for “God’s glory.” “For the sake of the Christian Church,” he was ready, to tell “a downright lie” (above, p. 51) in the Hessian affair. “Against the deception and depravity of the Papal Antichrist,” he regarded everything “as permissible” for the salvation of souls (above, p. 95); moreover, was not the war he was waging part of his divine mission? The public welfare and the exalted interests of his work might therefore at any time call for a violation of the truth. Was he to be deterred, perhaps, by the injury his opponents might thereby suffer? By no means. They suffered no real injury; on the contrary, it all redounded to their spiritual good, for by ending the reign of prejudice and error their souls would be saved from imminent peril and the way paved for the accomplishment of the ancient promises “to the glory and furtherance of the Word.”

We do not mean to say that Luther actually formed his conscience thus in any particular instance. Of this we cannot judge and it would be too much to expect from him any statement on the subject. But the danger of his doing so was sufficiently proximate.

The above may possibly throw a new light on his famous words: “We consider everything allowable against the deception and depravity of the Papal Antichrist.”[349]

Luther’s Influence on His Circle.

Our remarks on Luther and lying would be incomplete were we not to refer to the influence his example and theory exercised on his surroundings and on those who assisted him in establishing the new Church system.

Melanchthon not only incurred, and justly too, the reproach of frequently playing the dishonest diplomatist, particularly at the Diet of Augsburg,[350] but even advocated in his doctrinal works the Lutheran view that lying is in many cases lawful.

“The lie of convenience,” he says, “is praiseworthy, it is a good useful lie and proceeds from charity because one desires thereby to help one’s neighbour.” Hence, we may infer, where the object was to bring the Evangel home to a man, a lie was all the less reprehensible. Melanchthon appeals to Abraham’s statement that Sarah was his sister (Gen. xii. and xx.), and to the artifice of Eliseus (4 Kings vi. 19), but overlooks the fact that these instances prove nothing in his favour since there no “neighbour was helped,” but, on the contrary, untruth was dictated purely by self-love.[351]

During the negotiations carried on between England, Hesse and Saxony in view of an ecclesiastical understanding, Melanchthon, at the instance of the Elector of Saxony, drew up for him and the Landgrave, a document to be sent to Henry VIII of England, giving him information concerning the Anabaptist movement. His treatment of the matter has already been referred to (vol. iii., p. 374), but it now calls for more detailed consideration.

In this writing Melanchthon, to serve the interests of the new Evangel, had the courage to deny that the movement had made its appearance in those parts of Germany “where the pure Gospel is proclaimed,” but was only to be met with “where the people are not preserved from such errors by sound doctrine,” viz. “in Frisia and Westphalia.”[352] The fact is that the Anabaptists were so numerous in the Saxon Electorate that we constantly hear of prosecutions being instituted against them. P. Wappler, for instance, quotes an official minute from the Weimar archives, actually dated in 1536, which states, that the Elector “caused many Anabaptists to be punished and put to death by drowning and the sword, and to suffer long terms of imprisonment.”[353] Shortly before Melanchthon wrote the above, two Anabaptists had been executed in the Saxon Electorate. Beyond all doubt these facts were known to Melanchthon. The Landgrave of Hesse refused to allow the letter to be despatched. Feige, his Chancellor, pointed out the untruth of the statement, “that these errors only prevailed in places where the pure doctrine was lacking”; on the contrary, the Anabaptist error was unfortunately to be found throughout Germany, and even more under the Evangel than amongst the Papists.[354] An amended version of the letter, dated Sep. 23, 1536, was eventually sent to the King. Wappler, who relates all this fully, says: “Melanchthon was obviously influenced by his wish to warn the King of the ‘plague’ of the Anabaptist heresy and to predispose him for the ‘pure doctrine of the Evangel.’” “What he said was glaringly at variance with the actual facts.”[355]

Like Luther, Martin Bucer, too, urged the Landgrave to tell a deliberate lie and openly deny his bigamy. Though at first unwilling, he had undertaken to advocate the Landgrave’s bigamy with Luther and had defended it personally (above, p. 28). In spite of this, however, when complications arose on its becoming public, he declared in a letter of 1541 to the preachers of Memmingen, which so far has received little attention, that the Landgrave’s wrong step, some rumours of which had reached his ears, should it prove to be true, could not be laid to his charge or to that of the Wittenbergers. “I declare before God (‘coram Deo affirmo’) that no one has given the Prince such advice, neither I, nor Luther, nor Philip, nor, so far as I know, any Hessian preacher, nor has anyone taught that Christians may keep concubines as well as their wives, or declared himself ready to defend such a step.”[356] And, again calling God to witness (“hæc ego ut coram Deo scripta”), he declares that he had never written or signed anything in defence of the bigamy.[357] In the following year he appeared before the magistrates of Strasburg and, in the presence of two colleagues, “took God to witness concerning the suspicion of having advised the Landgrave the other marriage,” “that the latter had consulted neither him nor any preacher concerning the matter”; he and Capito had “throughout been opposed to it” (the bigamy), “although his help had been sought for in such matters by honourable and highly placed persons.”[358] The reference here is to Henry VIII of England, to whom, however, he had never expressed his disapproval of bigamy; in fact he, like Capito and the two Wittenbergers (above, p. 4), had declared his preference for Henry’s taking an extra wife rather than divorcing his first.

Bucer (who had so strongly inveighed against Luther’s lies, above, p. 99), where it was a question of a Catholic opponent like the Augustinian Johann Hoffmeister, had himself recourse to notorious calumnies concerning this man, whom even Protestant historians now allow to have been of blameless life and the “greatest enemy of immorality.”[359] He accused him of “dancing with nuns,” of “wallowing in vice,” and of being “an utterly abandoned, infamous and dissolute knave,” all of them groundless charges at very most based upon mere hearsay.[360]—This same Bucer, who accused the Catholic Princes of being double-tongued and pursuing dubious policies, was himself notorious amongst his own party for his wiliness, deceit and cunning.

Johann Bugenhagen, the Pastor of Wittenberg, when called upon to acknowledge his share in a certain questionable memorandum of a semi-political character also laid himself open to the charge of being wanting in truthfulness (vol. iii., p. 74 f.).

P. Kalkoff has recently made clear some of Wolfgang Capito’s double-dealings and his dishonest behaviour, though he hesitates to condemn him for them. Capito had worked in Luther’s interests at the Court of Archbishop Albert of Mayence, and there, with the Archbishop’s help, “rendered incalculable services to the Evangelical cause.” In extenuation of his behaviour Kalkoff says: “In no way was it more immoral than the intrigues” of the Elector Frederick. On the strength of the material he has collected J. Greving rightly describes Capito as a “thoroughbred hypocrite and schemer.”[361] The dealings of this “eminent diplomatist,” as Greving also terms him, remind us only too often of Luther’s own dealings with highly placed ecclesiastics and seculars during the first period of his apostasy. If, in those early days, Luther’s theory had already won many friends and imitators, in the thick of the fight it made even more converts amongst the new preachers, men ready to make full use of the alluring principle, that, against the depravity of the Papacy everything is licit.

From vituperation to the violation of truth there was but a step amidst the passion which prevailed. How Luther’s abuse—ostensibly all for the love of his neighbour—infected his pupils is plain from a letter in the newly published correspondence of the Brothers Blaurer. This letter, written from Wittenberg on Oct. 8, 1522, by Thomas Blaurer, to Ulrich Zasius, contains the following: “Not even from the most filthy and shameful vituperation [of the hateful Papacy] shall we shrink, until we see it everywhere despised and abhorred.” What had to be done was to vindicate the doctrine that, “Christ is our merit and our satisfaction.”[362] Luther, he says, poured forth abuse (“convicia”), but only to God’s glory, and for the “salvation and encouragement of the little ones.”[363]

[4. Some Leading Slanders on the Mediæval Church Historically Considered]

“In Luther’s view the Middle Ages, whose history was fashioned by the Popes, was a period of darkest night.... This view of the Middle Ages, particularly of the chief factor in mediæval life, viz. the Church in which it found its highest expression, is one-sided and distorted.” Such is the opinion of a modern Protestant historian. He is sorry that false ideas of the mediæval Church and theology “have been sheltered so long under the ægis of the reformer’s name.”[364]—“It will not do,” a lay Protestant historian, as early as 1874, had told the theologians of his faith, speaking of Köstlin’s work “Luthers Theologie,” “to ignore the contemporary Catholic literature when considering Luther and the writings of the reformers.... It is indispensable that the condition of theology from about 1490 to 1510 should be carefully examined. We must at all costs rid ourselves of the caricatures we meet with in the writings of the reformers, and of the misunderstandings to which they gave rise, and learn from their own writings what the theologians of that time actually thought and taught.” “Paradoxical as it may sound, it is just the theological side of the history of the Reformation which, at the present day, is least known.”[365]

During the last fifty years German scholars have devoted themselves with zeal and enthusiasm to the external and social aspect of the Middle Ages. That great undertaking, the “Monumenta Germaniæ historica,” its periodical the “Archiv,” and a number of others dealing largely with mediæval history brought Protestants to a juster and more objective appreciation of the past. Yet the theological, and even in some respects the ecclesiastical, side has been too much neglected, chiefly because so many Protestant theologians were scrupulous about submitting the subject to a new and unprejudiced study. Hence the astonishment of so many when Johannes Janssen, with his “History of the German People,” and, to pass over others, Heinrich Denifle with his work on Luther entered the field and demonstrated how incorrect had been the views prevalent since Luther’s time concerning the doctrine and the ecclesiastical life of his age. Astonishment in many soon made way for indignation; in Denifle’s case, particularly, annoyance was caused by a certain attitude adopted by this author which led some to reject in their entirety the theologico-historical consequences at which he arrived, whilst even Janssen was charged with being biassed. Other Protestants, however, have learned something from the Catholic works which have since made their appearance in greater numbers, have acknowledged that the ideas hitherto in vogue were behind the times and have invited scholars to undertake a more exact study of the materials.

“The later Middle Ages,” says W. Friedensburg, speaking of the prevailing Protestant view, “seemed only to serve as a foil for the history of the Reformation, of which the glowing colours stood out all the more clearly against the dark background.” “As late as a few years ago the history of the close of the Middle Ages was almost a ‘terra incognita.’” Only through Janssen, Friedensburg continues, “were we led to study more carefully the later Middle Ages” and to discover, amongst other things, that the “majority of the people [sic] had not really been so ignorant of the truth of Christianity,” that “the Church had not yet lost her power over people’s minds,” that “towards the end of the Middle Ages the people had already been growing familiar with the Bible,” and that “sermons in the vulgar tongue had not been neglected to the extent that has been frequently assumed.” This author, like H. Böhmer, characterises it as erroneous “to suppose that Luther was the first to revive regard for Paul and to restore Paulinism” or “to insist upon the reform of godliness on the model of the theology of Christ.” Coming to Denifle, he says, that the latter “on account of his learning was without a doubt qualified as scarcely any other scholar of our time for the task he undertook. When he published his ‘Luther’ he could look back on many years of solid and fruitful labour in the field of mediæval Scholasticism and Mysticism.” From Denifle’s work it is clear that Luther was “but little conversant with mediæval Scholasticism, particularly that of Thomas Aquinas.”[366]

“Denifle is right,” wrote Gustav Kawerau in an important Protestant theological periodical, “and touches a weak spot in Luther research when he reproaches us with not being sufficiently acquainted with mediæval theology.” An “examination of the Catholic surroundings in which Luther moved” is, so Kawerau insists, essential, and Protestants must therefore apply themselves to “the examination of that theology which influenced Luther.”[367]

What is, however, imperative is that this theology be, if possible, examined without Luther’s help, i.e. without, as usual, paying such exaggerated regard to his own statements as to what influenced him.

Luther, moreover, does not always speak against the Middle Ages; on occasion he can employ its language himself, particularly when he thinks he can quote, in his own interests, utterances from that time. What W. Köhler says of a number of such instances holds good here: “Luther fancied he recognised himself in the Middle Ages, that is why his historical judgment is so often false.” In point of fact, as the same writer remarks, “Luther’s idea of history came from his own interior experience; this occupies the first place throughout.”[368] If for “interior experience” we substitute “subjective bias” the statement will be even more correct.

In returning here to some of Luther’s legends mentioned above (p. 92 f.) concerning the Catholic past and the religious views then prevailing, our object is merely to show by a few striking examples how wrong Luther was in charging the Middle Ages with errors in theology and morals.

One of his most frequently repeated accusations was, that the Church before his day had merely taught a hollow “holiness by works”; all exhortations to piety uttered by preachers and writers insisted solely on outward good works; of the need of cultivating an inward religious spirit, interior virtues or true righteousness of heart no one had any conception.

Against this we may set a few Catholic statements made during the years shortly before Luther’s appearance.

Gabriel Biel, the “standard theologian” of his time, whose works Luther himself had studied during his theological course, in one of his sermons distinctly advocates the Church’s doctrine against any external holiness-by-works. Commenting on the Gospel account of the hypocrisy and externalism of the Pharisees and their semblance of holiness, he pauses at the passage: “Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt. v. 20). “Hence, if we desire to be saved,” he says, “our righteousness must not merely be shown in outward works but must reside in the heart; for without the inward spirit, outward works are neither virtuous nor praiseworthy, though the spirit may be so without outward works.” After proving this he again insists: “Thus true service of God does not consist in externals; on the contrary it is on the inward, pious acts of the will that everything depends, and this presupposes a right judgment and the recognition of the spirit. Hence in the practice of good works we must expend greater care on the interior direction of the will.” The learned preacher goes on fervently to exhort his hearers to amend their lives, to be humble, to trust in Christ and to lead lives of real, inward piety.[369]

Another preacher and theologian with whom Luther was well acquainted was Andreas Proles († 1503), the founder of the German Augustinian Congregation to which Luther had once belonged. In the sermons published by Petrus Sylvius, Proles insists upon the good intention and interior disposition by which works are sanctified. They are “smothered,” so he tells his hearers, “if done not out of love for God but with evil intent, for instance, for the sake of praise, or in order to deceive, or again, if done in sin or for any bad purpose.” “Hence ... in the practice of all his works a man must diligently strive after Divine justice, after a true faith with love of God and of his neighbour, after innocence and humility of heart, with a good purpose and intention, since every good work, however insignificant, even a drink of cold water given to the meanest creature for God’s sake, is deserving of reward in eternity.... Without charity neither faith nor good works are profitable unto salvation.”[370]

At about that same time the so-called “holiness-by-works” was also condemned by the learned Franciscan theologian, Stephen Brulefer. “Merit,” so he emphasises, “depends not on the number of external works but on the zeal and charity with which the work is done; everything depends on the interior act of the will.” Amongst his authorities he quotes the far-famed theologian of his Order, Duns Scotus, who had enunciated the principle with the concision of the scholastic: “Deus non pensat quantum sed ex quanto.”[371]

“God wants, not your work, but your heart.” So Marquard of Lindau writes in his “Buch der X Gepot,” printed in 1483. Before this, under the heading: “That we must love God above all things,” he declares, that, whoever does not turn to God with his whole heart cannot merely by his works gain Him, even though he should surrender “all his possessions to God and allow himself to be burnt.”[372]

Thus we find in the writings of that period, language by no means wanting in vigour used in denunciation of the so-called “holiness-by-works”; hence Luther was certainly not first in the field to raise a protest.

From their preachers, too, the people frequently heard this same teaching.

Johann Herolt, a Dominican preacher, very celebrated at the commencement of the 15th century, points out clearly and definitely in his sermons on the Sunday Epistles, that every work must be inspired by and permeated with charity if man’s actions are not to deteriorate into a mere “holiness-by-works”; a poor man who, with a pure conscience, performs the meanest good work, is, according to him, of “far greater worth in God’s sight than the richest Prince who erects churches and monasteries while in a state of mortal sin”; the outward work was of small account.[373] Herolt thus becomes a spokesman of “inwardness” in the matter of the fulfilment of the duties of the Christian life;[374] many others spoke as he did.

Sound instruction concerning “holiness-by-works” and the necessary “inwardness” was to be found in the most popular works of devotion at the close of the Middle Ages.

The “Evangelibuch,” for instance, a sermon-book with glosses on the Sunday Gospels, has the following for those who are too much devoted to outward works: “It matters not how good a man may be or how many good works he performs unless, at the same time, he loves God.” The author even goes too far in his requirements concerning the interior disposition, and, agreeably with a view then held by many, will not admit as a motive for love a wholesome fear of the loss of God; he says a man must love God, simply because “he is the most excellent, highest and most worthy Good; ... for a man filled with Divine love does not desire the good which God possesses, but merely God Himself”; thus, in his repudiation of all so-called “holiness-by-works,” he actually goes to the opposite extreme.[375]

Man becomes pleasing to God not by reason of the number or greatness of his works, but through the interior justice wrought in him by grace; such is the opinion of the Dominican, Johann Mensing. He protests against being accused of disparaging God’s grace because at the same time he emphasises the value of works; he declares that he exalts the importance of God’s sanctifying Grace even more than his opponents (the Lutherans) did, because, so he says, “we admit (what they deny, thereby disparaging the grace of God), viz. that we are not simply saved by God, but that He so raises and glorifies our nature by the bestowal of grace, that we are able ourselves to merit our salvation and attain to it of our own free will, which, without His Grace, would be impossible. Hence our belief is not that we are led and driven like cattle who know not whither they go. We say: God gives us His grace, faith and charity, at first without any merit on our part; then follow good works and merits, all flowing from the same Grace, and finally eternal happiness for such works as bring down Grace.”[376]

This was the usual language in use in olden time, particularly in the years just previous to Luther, and it was in accordance with this that most of the faithful obediently shaped their lives. If abuses occurred—and it is quite true that we often do meet with a certain degree of formalism in the customs of the people—they cannot be regarded as the rule and were reproved by zealous and clear-sighted churchmen.

A favourite work at that time was the “Imitation of Christ” by Thomas à Kempis. Thousands, more particularly amongst the clergy and religious, were edified by the fervent and touching expositions of the author to permeate all works with the spirit of interior piety.[377] We know how strongly he condemns formalism as exemplified in frequent pilgrimages devoid of virtue and the spirit of penance, and how he does not spare even the religious; “the habit and the tonsure make but little alteration, but the moral change and the entire mortification of the passions make a true religious.”[378]

The practice of works of charity, which at that time flourished exceedingly among both clergy and laity, offered a field for the realisation of these principles of the true spirit in which good works are to be performed. We have countless proofs of how the faithful in Germany despoiled themselves of their temporal goods from the most sincere religious motives—out of love for their neighbour, or to promote the public Divine worship—“for the love of God our Lord,” as a common phrase, used in the case of numerous foundations, expresses it.

G. Uhlhorn, the Protestant author of the “Geschichte der christlichen Liebestätigkeit,” also pays a tribute to the spirit which preserved charity from degenerating into mere “holiness-by-works.” “We should be doing injustice to that period,” he says of the Middle Ages generally, “were we to think that it considered as efficacious, i.e. as satisfactory, mere external works apart from the motive which inspired them, for instance, alms without love.” In support he quotes Thomas of Aquin and Pope Innocent III, remarking, however, that even such alms as were bestowed without this spirit of love were regarded, by the standard authorities, as predisposing a man for the reception of Grace, and as deserving of temporal reward from God, hence not as altogether “worthless and unproductive.”[379]

Another fable concerning the Middle Ages, sedulously fostered by Luther in his writings, was, that, in those days man had never come into direct relations with God, that the hierarchy had constituted a partition between him and Christ, and that, thanks only to the new Evangel, had the Lord been restored to each man, as his personal Saviour and the object of all his hopes; Luther was wont to say that the new preaching had at length brought each one into touch with Christ the Lamb, Who taketh away our sin; Melanchthon, in his funeral oration on Luther, also said of him, that he had pointed out to every sinner the Lamb in Whom he would find salvation.

To keep to the symbol of the Lamb: The whole Church of the past had never ceased to tell each individual that he must seek in the Lamb of God purgation from his guilt and confirmation of his personal love of God. The Lamb was to her the very symbol of that confidence in Christ’s Redemption which she sought to arouse in each one’s breast. On the front of Old St. Peter’s, for instance, the Lamb was shown in brilliant mosaic, with the gentle Mother of the Redeemer on its right and the Key-bearer on its left, and this figure, in yet older times, had been preceded by the ancient “Agnus Dei.”[380]

Every Litany recited by the faithful in Luther’s day, no less than in earlier ages and in our own, concluded with the trustful invocation of the “Lamb of God”; the waxen “Agnus Dei,” blessed by the Pope, and so highly prized by the people, was but its symbol.[381] The Lamb of God was, and still is, solemnly invoked by priest and people in the Canon of the Mass for the obtaining of mercy and peace.

The centre of daily worship in the Catholic Church, in Luther’s day as in the remoter past, was ever the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The Lamb of God, which, according to Catholic belief, is there offered to the Father under the mystic elements, and mysteriously renews the sacrifice of the Cross, was as a well, daily opened, in which souls athirst for God might find wherewith to unite themselves in love and confidence with their Redeemer.

It was Luther who, with cruel hand, tore this pledge of hope and consolation from the heart of Christendom. Inspiring indeed are the allusions to the wealth of consolation contained in the Eucharist, which we find in one of the books in most general use in the days before Luther. “Good Jesus, Eternal Shepherd, thanks be to Thee Who permittest me, poor and needy as I am, to partake of the mystery of Thy Divine Sacrifice, and feedest me with Thy precious Body and Blood; Thou commandest me to approach to Thee with confidence. Come, sayest Thou, to Me, all you that labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Confiding, O Lord, in Thy goodness and in Thy great mercy, I come sick to my Saviour, hungry and thirsty to the Fountain of life, needy to the King of Heaven, a servant to my Lord, a creature to my Creator, and one in desolation to my loving Comforter.”[382]

The doctrine that the Mass is a renewal of the Sacrifice of Christ “attained its fullest development in the Middle Ages”; thus Adolf Franz at the conclusion of his work “Die Messe im deutschen Mittelalter.” At the close of the Middle Ages it was the rule to “direct the eyes of the faithful, during the sacrifice on the altar, to the sufferings and death of the Redeemer in all its touching and thrilling reality. At the altar a mystery is enacted; Christ suffers and dies; the priest represents Him, and every act typifies Christ’s Passion; just as He expired on the cross in actual fact, so, mystically, He dies upon the altar.”[383] Though some writers of the period dwell perhaps a little too much on the allegorical sense then so popular in explaining the various acts of the Mass, yet, in their conviction that its character was sacrificial and that it truly re-enacted the death of Christ, they were in perfect agreement with the past. In the explanations of the Mass everyone was reminded of his union with Christ; and our Lord’s sufferings “were brought before the mind of both priest and people”; by this means the “outward ceremonial of the Mass was made a fruitful source of inward edification.” “The abundant mediæval literature on the Mass is a proof both of the needs of the clergy, and of the care displayed by the learned and those in authority, to instruct them. In this matter the 15th century excels the earlier Middle Ages.”[384] The very abuses and the formalism which Franz finds witnessed to in certain mediæval sermons on the Mass, chiefly in the matter of undue stress laid on the “fruits of the Mass,” reveal merely an over-estimation on the part of the individual of his union with Christ, or a too great assurance of obtaining help in bodily and spiritual necessities; of want of fervour or of hope there is not the least trace.

It is well worthy of note that Luther, if we may believe what he said in a sermon in 1532, even in his monastic days, did not prize or love the close bond of union established with Christ by the daily sacrifice of the Mass: “Ah, bah, Masses! Let what cannot stand fast fall. You never cared about saying Mass formerly; of that I am sure. I know it from my own case; for I too was a holy monk, and blasphemed my dear Lord miserably for the space of quite fifteen years with my saying of Masses, though I never liked doing so, in spite of being so holy and devout.”[385]

In spite of this Luther succeeded in bequeathing to posterity the opinion that it was he who delivered people from that “alienation from God” imposed on the world in the Middle Ages; “who broke down the prohibition of the mediæval Church against anyone concerning himself on his own account with matters of religion”; and who gave back “personal religion” to the Christian.

Were Protestants to bestow more attention on the religious literature of the Later Middle Ages, such statements would be simply impossible. One of those best acquainted with this literature writes: “During the last few months the present writer has gone carefully, pen in hand, through more than one hundred printed and manuscript religious works, written in German and belonging to the end of the Middle Ages: catechetical handbooks, general works of piety, confession manuals, postils, prayer-books, booklets on preparation for death and German sermonaries. In this way he has learnt from the most reliable sources not only how in those days people were guided to devout intercourse with God, but also with what fervent piety the faithful were accustomed to converse with their Saviour.” Let Protestants, he adds, at least attempt to vindicate their pet assertions “scientifically, i.e. from trustworthy sources.”[386]

The relations between the individual and God were by no means suppressed because the priesthood stood as an intermediary between the faithful and God, or because ecclesiastical superiors watched over and directed public worship and the lines along which the life of faith was to move. If the union of the individual with God was endangered by such interference on the part of the clergy, then it was endangered just as much by Luther, who insists so strongly on the preachers being listened to, and on the ministers taking the lead in things pertaining to God.

He teaches, for instance: “It is an unsufferable blasphemy to reject the public ministry or to say that people can become holy without sermons and Church. This involves a destruction of the Church and rebellion against ecclesiastical order; such upheavals must be warded off and punished like all other revolts.”[387]

The fact is, the ecclesiastical order of things to which Luther attached himself more and more strongly amounted to this, as he declares in various passages of his Table-Talk. Through the ministers and preachers, as through His servants, God speaks to man; through them God baptises, instructs and absolves; what the ministers of the Gospel say and do, that God Himself does through and in us as His instruments. Whoever does not believe this, Luther looks on as damned. In a sermon of 1528, speaking of the spiritual authority which intervenes between God and man, he exclaims: “God requires for His Kingdom pious Bishops and pastors, through them he governs His subjects [the Emperor, on the other hand, so he had said, had not even to be a Christian since the secular power was all outward and merely served to restrain evil-doers].[388] If you will not hearken to these Bishops and pastors, then you will have to listen to Master Hans [the hangman] and get no thanks either.”[389]

He uses similar language in his sermons on Matthew: “God, by means of Prophets and Apostles, ministers and preachers, baptises, gives the sacraments, preaches and consoles; without preachers and holy persons, He does nothing, just as He does not govern land and people without the secular power.”[390]

Hence Luther shows himself very anxious to establish a kind of hierarchy. If then he charges the priesthood of the past with putting itself between God and man, it is hard to see how he is to avoid a similar charge being brought forward against himself. Moreover, at the bottom of his efforts, memories of his Catholic days were at work, and the feeling that an organised ministry was called for if the religious sentiment was not to die out completely among the people. His practical judgment of the conditions even appears here in a favourable light, for instance, in those passages where he insists on the authority of rightly appointed persons to act as intermediaries between God and man, and as vicars and representatives of Christ. The word Christ spoke on earth and the word of the preacher, are, he says, one and the same “re et effectu,” because Christ said: “He that heareth you heareth me” (Luke x. 16); “God deals with us through these instruments, through them He works everything and offers us all His treasures.”[391] Indeed, “it is our greatest privilege that we have such a ministry and that God is so near to us; for he that hears Christ hears God Himself; and he that hears St. Peter or a preacher, hears Christ and God Himself speaking to us.”[392]

“We must always esteem the spoken Word very highly, for those who despise it become heretics at once. The Pope despises this ministry”[393] [!]. God, however, “has ordained that no one should have faith, except thanks to the preacher’s office,” and, “without the Word, He does no work whatever in the Church.”[394]

Thus we find Luther, on the one hand insisting upon an authority, and, on the other, demanding freedom for the interpretation of Scripture. How he sought to harmonise the two is reserved for later examination. At any rate, it is to misapprehend both the Catholic Church and Luther’s own theological attitude, to say that “independent study of religious questions” had been forbidden in the Middle Ages and was “reintroduced” only by Luther, that he removed the “blinkers” which the Church had placed over people’s eyes and that henceforward “the representatives of the Church had no more call to assume the place of the Living God in man’s regard.”

Luther also laid claim to having revived respect for the secular authorities, who, during the Middle Ages, had been despised owing to the one-sided regard shown to the monks and clergy. He declares that he had again brought people to esteem the earthly calling, family life and all worldly employments as being a true serving of God. Boldly he asserts, that, before my time, “the authorities did not know they were serving God”; “before my time nobody knew ... what the secular power, what matrimony, parents, children, master, servant, wife or maid really signified.” On the strength of his assertions it has been stated, that he revived the “ideal of life” by discovering the “true meaning of vocation,” which then became the “common property of the civilised world”; on this account he was “the creator of those theories which form the foundation upon which the modern State and modern civilisation rest.”

The fact is, however, the Church of past ages fully recognised the value of the secular state and spheres of activity, saw in them a Divine institution, and respected and cherished them accordingly.

A very high esteem for all secular callings is plainly expressed in the sermons of Johann Herolt, the famous and influential Nuremberg Dominican, whose much-read “Sermones de tempore et de Sanctis” (Latin outlines of sermons for the use of German preachers) had, prior to 1500, appeared in at least forty different editions.

“It has been asked,” he says in one sermon, “whether the labour of parents for their children is meritorious. I reply: Yes, if only they have the intention of bringing up their children for the glory of God and in order that they may become good servants of Christ. If the parents are in a state of grace, then all their trouble with their children, in suckling them, bathing them, carrying them about, dressing them, feeding them, watching by them, teaching and reproving them, redounds to their eternal reward. All this becomes meritorious. And in the same way when the father labours hard in order to earn bread for his wife and children, all this is meritorious for the life beyond.”[395]—A high regard for work is likewise expressed in his sermon “To workmen,” which begins with the words: “Man is born to labour as the bird is to fly.”[396] Another sermon praises the calling of the merchant, which he calls a “good and necessary profession.”[397]

Another witness to the Church’s esteem for worldly callings and employments is Marcus von Weida, a Saxon Dominican. In the discourses he delivered on the “Our Father” at Leipzig, in 1501, he says: “All those pray who do some good work and live virtuously.” For everything that a man does to the praise and glory of God is really prayer. A man must always do what his state of life and his calling demands. “Hence it follows that many a poor peasant, husbandman, artisan or other man who does his work, or whatever he undertakes, in such a way as to redound to God’s glory, is more pleasing to God, by reason of the work he daily performs, and gains more merit before God than any Carthusian or Friar, be he Black, Grey or White, who stands daily in choir singing and praying.”[398]

It is evident that Catholic statements, such as that just quoted from Herolt, concerning the care of children being well-pleasing to God, have been overlooked by those who extol Luther as having been the first to discover and teach, that even to rock children’s cradles and wash their swaddling clothes is a noble, Christian work. What is, however, most curious is the assurance with which Luther himself claimed the merit of this discovery, in connection with his teaching on marriage.

The Carthusian, Erhard Gross, speaks very finely of the different secular callings and states of life, and assigns to them an eminently honourable place: “What are the little precious stones in Christ’s crown but the various classes of the Christian people, who adorn the head of Christ? For He is our Head and all the Christian people are His Body for ever and ever. Hence, amongst the ornaments of the house of God some must be virgins, others widows, some married and others chaste, such as monks, priests and nuns. Nor are these all, for we have also Princes, Kings and Prelates who rule the commonwealth, those who provide for the needs of the body, as, for instance, husbandmen and fishermen, tailors and merchants, bakers and shoemakers, and, generally, all tradesmen.” If the general welfare is not to suffer, he says, each one must faithfully follow his calling. “Therefore whoever wishes to please God, let him stick to the order [state] in which God has placed him and live virtuously; he will then receive his reward from God here, and, after this life, in the world to come.”[399]

Although Luther must have been well aware of the views really held on this subject, some excuse for his wild charges may perhaps be found in his small practical experience, prior to his apostasy, of Christian life in the world. His poverty had forced him, even in childhood, into irregular ways; he had been deprived of the blessings of a truly Christian family-life. His solitary studies had left him a stranger to the active life of good Catholics engaged in secular callings; the fact of his being a monk banished him alike from the society of the bad and impious and from that of the good and virtuous. Thus in many respects he was out of touch with the stimulating influence of the world; the versatility which results from experience was still lacking, when, in his early years at Wittenberg, he began to think out his new theories on God and sin, Grace and the Fall.

“Whoever wishes to please God let him stick to the order [state] in which God has placed him.” These words of Gross, the Carthusian, quoted above, remind us of a comparison instituted by Herolt the Dominican between religious Orders and the “Order” of matrimony. Commending the secular calling of matrimony, he says here, that it was instituted by God Himself, whereas the religious Orders had been founded by men: “We must know that God first honoured matrimony by Himself instituting it. In this wise the Order of matrimony excels all other Orders (‘ordo matrimonialis præcellit olios ordines’); for just as St. Benedict founded the Black Monks, St. Francis the Order of Friars Minor and St. Dominic the Order of Friars Preacher, so God founded matrimony.”[400]

True Christian perfection, according to the ancient teaching of the Church, is not bound up with any particular state, but may be attained by all, no matter their profession, even by the married.

Luther, and many after him, even down to the present day, have represented, that, according to the Catholic view, perfection was incapable of attainment save in the religious life, this alone being termed the “state of perfection.” In his work “On Monkish Vows” he declares: “The monks have divided Christian life into a state of perfection and one of imperfection. To the great majority they have assigned the state of imperfection, to themselves, that of perfection.”[401]

As a matter of fact the “state of perfection” only means, that, religious, by taking upon themselves, publicly and before the Church, the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, bind themselves to strive after perfection along this path as one leading most surely to the goal; it doesn’t imply that they are already in possession of perfection, still less that they alone possess it. By undertaking to follow all their life a Rule approved by the Church, under the guidance of Superiors appointed by the Church, they form a “state” or corporation of which perfection is the aim, and, in this sense alone, are said to belong to the “state of perfection.” In addition, it was always believed that equal, in fact the highest, perfection might be attained to in any state of life. Though the difficulties to be encountered in the worldly state were regarded as greater, yet the conquest they involved was looked upon as the fruit of an even greater love of God, the victory as more splendid, and the degree of perfection attained as so much the more exalted.

It is the love of God which, according to the constant teaching of the Church, constitutes the essence of perfection.

The most perfect Christian is he who fulfils the law of charity most perfectly, and this—notwithstanding whatever Luther may say—according to what has ever been the teaching of the Church, the ordinary Christian may quite well do in his everyday calling, and in the married as much as in the religious state. Even should the religious follow the severest of Rules, yet if he does not make use of the more abundant means of perfection at his command but lives in tepidity, then the ordinary Christian approaches more closely than he to the ideal standard of life if only he fulfils his duties in the home with greater love of God.

The Bavarian Franciscan, Caspar Schatzgeyer, Luther’s contemporary, is right when he says in his work “Scrutinium divinæ scripturæ”: “We do not set up a twofold standard of perfection, one for people in the world and another for the religious. For all Christians there is but one order, one mode of worshipping God, one evangelical perfection.... But we do say this, that in cloistral life the attainment of perfection is easier, though a Christian living in the world may excel all religious in perfection.”[402] For—such is the ground he gives in a German work—“it may well happen that in the ordinary Christian state a man runs so hotly and eagerly towards God as to outstrip all religious in all the essentials of Christian perfection, just as a sculptor may with a blunt chisel produce a masterpiece far superior to that carved by an unskilful apprentice even with the best and sharpest of tools.”[403]

This may suffice to elucidate the question of the Catholic ideal of life in respect of Luther’s statements, a question much debated in recent controversies but not always set in as clear a light as it deserved.

The preceding remarks on Luther’s misrepresentations of the Church’s teaching concerning worldly callings lead us to consider his utterances on the Church’s depreciation of the female sex and of matrimony.

[5. Was Luther the Liberator of Womankind from “Mediæval Degradation”?]

Luther maintained that he had raised the dignity of woman from the depths to which it had fallen in previous ages and had revived due respect for married life. What the Church had defined on this subject in the past he regarded as all rubbish. Indeed, “not one of the Fathers,” he says, “ever wrote anything notable or particularly good concerning the married state.”[404] But, as in the case of the secular authority and the preaching office, so God, before the coming of the Judgment Day, by His special Grace and through His Word, i.e. through the new Evangel, had restored married life to its rightful dignity, “as He had at first instituted and ordained it.” Marriage, so Luther asserts, had been regarded as “a usage and practice rather than as a thing ordained by God. In the same way the secular authorities did not know that they were serving God, but were all tied up in ceremonies. The preaching office, too, was nothing but a sham consisting of cowls, tonsures, oilings,” etc.[405]

In short, by his teaching on marriage he had ennobled woman, whereas the Catholics had represented matrimony as an “unchristian” state, only permitted out of necessity, even though they called it a Sacrament.[406]

Conspectus of Luther’s Distortion of the Catholic View of Marriage.

Luther based his charges chiefly on the canonical enforcement of clerical celibacy and on the favour shown by the Church to the vow of chastity and the monastic life. How this proved his contention it is not easy to see. Further, he will have it, that the Church taught that true service of God was to be found only in the monastic state, and that vows were a sure warrant of salvation—though, as a matter of fact, neither Church nor theologians had ever said anything of the sort.[407]

In his remarks on this subject in 1527 he openly accused the Papists of saying that “whoever is desirous of having to do with God and spiritual matters must, whether man or woman, remain unmarried,” and “thus,” so he says, “they have scared the young from matrimony, so that now they are sunk in fornication.”[408]

At first Luther only ventured on the charge, that matrimony had been “de facto” forbidden, though it had not actually been declared sinful, by the Pope;[409] by forbidding the monks to marry he had fulfilled the prophecy in 1 Timothy iv. 1 ff., concerning the latter times, when many would fall away from the faith and forbid people to marry. “The Pope forbids marriage under the semblance of spirituality.”[410] “Squire Pope has forbidden marriage, because one had to come who would prohibit marriage. The Pope has made man to be no longer man, and woman to be no longer woman.”[411]

As years passed Luther went further; forgetful of his admission that the Pope had not made matrimony sinful, he exclaimed: To him and to his followers marriage is a sin. The Church had hitherto treated marriage as something “non-Christian”;[412] the married state she had “handed over to the devil”;[413] her theologians look down on it as a “low, immoral sort of life,”[414] and her religious can only renounce it on the ground that it is a kind of legalised “incontinence.”[415]

In reality, however, religious, when taking their vow, merely acted on the Christian principle which St. Augustine expresses as follows: Although “all chastity, conjugal as well as virginal, has its merit in God’s sight,” yet, “the latter is higher, the former less exalted.”[416] They merely renounced a less perfect state for one more perfect; they could, moreover, appeal not only to 1 Cor. vii. 33, where the Apostle speaks in praise of the greater freedom for serving God which the celibate state affords, but even to Luther himself who, in 1523, had interpreted this very passage in the same sense, and that with no little warmth.[417]

His later and still more extravagant statements concerning the Catholic view of marriage can hardly be taken seriously; his perversion of the truth is altogether too great.

He says, that married people had not been aware that God “had ordained” that state, until at last God, by His special Grace, and before the Judgment Day, had restored the dignity of matrimony no less than that of the secular authority and the preaching office, “through His Word [i.e. through Luther’s preaching].” The blame for this state of things went back very far, for the Fathers, like Jerome, “had seen in matrimony mere sensuality,” and for this reason had disparaged it.[418]

The Prophet Daniel had foreseen the degradation of marriage under the Papacy: It is of the Papal Antichrist “that Daniel says [xi. 37], that he will wallow in the unnatural vice which is the recompense due to contemners of God (Rom. i.[27]), in what we call Italian weddings and silent sin. For matrimony and a right love and use of women he shall not know. Such are the horrible abominations prevailing under Pope and Turk.”[419] “The same prophet,” he writes elsewhere, “says that Antichrist shall stand on two pillars, viz.: idolatry and celibacy. The idol he calls Mausim, thus using the very letters which form the word Mass.” The Pope had deluded people, on the one hand by the Mass, and, on the other, “by celibacy, or the unmarried state, fooling the whole world with a semblance of sanctity. These are the two pillars on which the Papacy rests, like the house of the Philistines in Samson’s time. If God chose to make Luther play the part of Samson, lay hold on the pillars and shake them, so that the house fall on the whole multitude, who could take it ill? He is God and wonderful are His ways.”[420]

Luther appeals expressly to the Pope’s “books” in which marriage is spoken of as a “sinful state.”[421] The Papists, when they termed marriage a sacrament, were only speaking “out of a false heart,” and trying to conceal the fact that they really looked on it as “fornication.”[422] “They have turned all the words and acts of married people into mortal sins, and I myself, when I was a monk, shared the same opinion, viz. that the married state was a damnable state.”[423]

This alone was wanting to fill up the measure of his falsehoods. One wonders whether Luther, when putting forward statements so incredible, never foresaw that his own earlier writings might be examined and his later statements challenged in their light? Certainly the contradiction between the two is patent. We have only to glance at his explanation of the fourth and sixth Commandments in his work on the Ten Commandments, published in 1518, to learn from Luther himself what Catholics really thought of marriage, and to be convinced that it was anything but despised; there, as in other of his early writings, Luther indeed esteems virginity above marriage, but to term the latter sinful and damnable never occurred to him.

The olden Church had painted an ideal picture of the virgin. By this, though not alone by this, she voiced her respect for woman, from that Christian standpoint which differs so much from that of the world. From the earliest times she, like the Gospel and the Apostle of the Gentiles, set up voluntary virginity as a praiseworthy state of life. Hereby she awakened in the female sex a noble emulation for virtue, in particular for seclusion, purity and morality—woman’s finest ornaments—and amongst men a high respect for woman, upon whom, even in the wedded state, the ideal of chastity cast a radiance which subdued the impulse of passion. Virgin and mother alike were recommended by the Church to see their model and their guide in the Virgin Mother of our Saviour. Where true devotion to Mary flourished the female sex possessed a guarantee of its dignity, from both the religious and the human point of view, a pledge of enduring respect and honour.

How the Church of olden days continued to prize matrimony and to view it in the light of a true Sacrament is evident from the whole literature of the Middle Ages. Such being its teaching it is incomprehensible how a well-known Protestant encyclopædia, as late as 1898, could still venture to say: “As against the contempt for marriage displayed in both religious and secular circles, and to counteract the immorality to which this had given rise, Luther vindicated the honour of matrimony and placed it in an entirely new light.”

In those days Postils enjoyed a wider circulation than any other popular works. The Postils, however, do not teach “contempt of marriage,” but quite the contrary. “The Mirror of Human Conduct,” published at Augsburg in 1476, indeed gives the first place to virginity, but declares: “Marriage is good and holy,” and must not be either despised or rejected; those who “are mated in matrimony” must not imagine that the maids (virgins) alone are God’s elect; “Christ praises marriage, for it is a holy state of life in which many a man becomes holy, for marriage was instituted by our Lord in Paradise”; from Christ’s presence at the marriage at Cana we may infer that “the married life is a holy life.”

Other works containing the same teaching are the “Evangelibuch,” e.g. in the Augsburg edition of 1487, the “Postils on the Four Gospels throughout the year,” by Geiler of Kaysersberg († 1510), issued by Heinrich Wessmer at Strasburg in 1522, and the important Basle “Plenarium” of 1514, in which the author, a monk, writes: “The conjugal state is to be held in high respect on account of the honour done to it by God”; he also appends some excellent instructions on the duties of married people, concluding with a reference to the story of Tobias “which you will find in the Bible” (which, accordingly, he assumed was open to his readers).

The “Marriage-booklets” of the close of the Middle Ages form a literary group apart. One of the best is “Ein nützlich Lehre und Predigt, wie sich zwei Menschen in dem Sacrament der Ehe halten sollen,” which was in existence in MS. as early as 1456. “God Himself instituted marriage,” it tells us, “when He said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply!’ The Orders, however, were founded by Bernard, Augustine, Benedict and Dominic; thus the command of God is greater than that of the teacher,” i.e. the Sacrament excels all Rules made by men, even by Saints. It also gives a touching account of how marriage is founded on love and sustained by it.[424]

Another matrimonial handbook, composed by Albert von Eyb, a Franconian cleric, and printed at Augsburg in 1472, lavishes praise on “holy, divine matrimony” without, however, neglecting to award still higher encomium to the state of virginity. Erhard Gross, the Nuremberg Carthusian, about the middle of the 15th century, wrote a “Novel” containing good advice for married people.[425] The hero, who was at first desirous of remaining unmarried, declares: “You must not think that I condemn matrimony, for it is holy and was established by God.”[426]

Among the unprinted matrimonial handbooks dating from the period before Luther’s time, and containing a like favourable teaching on marriage, are the “Booklet on the Rule of Holy Matrimony,”[427] “On the Sacrament of Matrimony,”[428] and the excellent “Mirror of the Matrimonial Order,” by the Dominican Marcus von Weida.[429] Fr. A. Ebert, the Protestant bibliographer, remarks of the latter’s writings: “They effectually traverse the charges with which self-complacent ignorance loves to overwhelm the ages previous to the Saxon Reformation,” and what he says applies particularly to the teaching on marriage.[430]

To come now to the preachers. We must first mention Johann Herolt, concerning whose influence a recent Protestant writer aptly remarks, that his “wisdom had been listened to by thousands.”[431] The passage already given, in which he describes marriage as an Order instituted by Christ (p. 129 f.), is but one instance of his many apt and beautiful sayings. In the very next sermon Herolt treats of the preparation which so great a Sacrament demands. In the same way that people prepare themselves for their Easter Communion, so they, bride and bridegroom, must prepare themselves for matrimony by contrition and confession; for “marriage is as much a Sacrament as the Eucharist.”

A similar view prevailed throughout Christendom.

One of the most popular of Italian preachers was Gabriel Barletta, who died shortly after 1480. Amongst his writings there is a Lenten sermon entitled: “De amore conjugali vel de laudibus mulierum.” In this he speaks of the “cordial love” which unites the married couple. He points out that marriage was instituted in Paradise and confirmed anew by Christ. Explaining the meaning of the ring, he finds that it signifies four things, all of which tend to render Christian marriage praiseworthy. He declares that a good wife may prove an inestimable treasure. If he dwells rather too much on woman’s physical and mental inferiority, this does not prevent him from extolling the strength of the woman who is upheld by Christian virtue, and who often succeeds in procuring the amendment of a godless husband.[432]

Barletta, in his sermons, frequently follows the example of his brother friar, the English Dominican preacher, Robert Holkot († 1349), whose works were much in request at the close of the Middle Ages.[433] Holkot had such respect for Christian matrimony, that he applies to it the words of the Bible: “O how beautiful is the chaste generation with glory; for the memory thereof is immortal.” Since the “actus matrimonialis” was willed by God, it must be assumed, he says, that it can be accomplished virtuously and with merit.[434] If the intention of the married couple is the begetting of children for the glory of God, they perform an act of the virtue of religion; they also exercise the virtue of justice if they have the intention of mutually fulfilling the conjugal duties to which they have pledged themselves. According to him, mutual love is the principal duty of the married couple.[435] Franz Falk has dwelt in detail on the testimony borne by the Late Middle Ages to the dignity of marriage.[436]

Commencing with the prayers of the marriage-service and the blessing of the ring, the prayers for those with child and in child-bed, and for the churching of women, he goes on to deal with the civil rights pertaining to the married state and with the Church’s opinion as witnessed to in the matrimonial handbooks and books of instruction and edification. With the respect for the Sacrament and the dignity of the married woman there found expressed, Falk compares the sentiments likewise found in the prose “novels” and so-called “Volksbücher,” and, still more practically expressed, in the numerous endowments and donations for the provision of bridal outfits. “It is quite incomprehensible,” such is the author’s conclusion, “how non-Catholic writers even to the present time can have ventured to reproach the Church with want of regard for the married state.”[437] Of the information concerning bridal outfits, he says, for instance: “The above collection of facts, a real ‘nubes testium,’ will sufficiently demonstrate what a task the Church of the Middle Ages here fulfilled towards her servants and children.... Many other such foundations may, moreover, have escaped our notice owing to absence of the deeds which have either not been printed or have perished. From the 16th century onwards records of such foundations become scarce.”[438]

In the “Internationale Wochenschrift” Heinrich Finke pointed out that he had examined hundreds of Late-mediæval sermons on the position of women, with the result, that “it is impossible to discover in them any contempt for woman.”[439] The fact is, that “there exist countless statements of the sanctity of marriage and its sacramental character ... statements drawn from theologians of the highest standing, Fathers, Saints and Doctors of the Church. Indeed, towards the close of the Middle Ages, they grow still more numerous. The most popular of the monks, whether Franciscans or Dominicans, have left us matrimonial handbooks which imply the existence of that simple, happy family life they depict and encourage.”[440] Finke recalls the 15th-century theologian, Raymond of Sabunde, who points out how union with God in love may be reproduced in marriage. Countless theologians are at one with him here, and follow Scripture in representing the union of Christ with the Church as an exalted figure of the marriage-bond between man and wife (Eph. v. 25, 32). Of the respect which the ancient Church exhibited towards women Finke declares: “Never has the praise of women been sung more loudly than in the sermons of the Fathers and in the theological tractates of the Schoolmen.” Here “one picture follows another, each more dazzling than the last.”[441] Certainly we must admit, as he does, that it is for the most part the ideal of virginity which inspires them, and that it is the good, chaste, virtuous wife and widow whom they extol, rather than woman qua woman, as a noble part of God’s creation. Their vocation as spiritual teachers naturally explains this; and if, for the same cause, they seem to be very severe in their strictures on feminine faults, or to strike harsh notes in their warnings on the spiritual dangers of too free intercourse with the female sex, this must not be looked upon as “hatred of women,” as has been done erroneously on the strength of some such passages in the case of St. Antoninus of Florence and Cardinal Dominici.[442]

“Just as Church and Councils energetically took the side of marriage” when it was decried in certain circles,[443] so the accusation of recent times that, in the Middle Ages, woman was universally looked upon with contempt, cannot stand; according to Finke this was not the case, even in “ascetical circles,” and “still less elsewhere.”[444] The author adduces facts which “utterly disprove any such general disdain for woman.”[445]

The splendid Scriptural eulogy with which the Church so frequently honours women in her liturgy, might, one would think, be in itself sufficient. To the married woman who fulfils her duties in the home out of true love for God, and with zeal and assiduity, the Church, in the Mass appointed for the Feasts of Holy Women, applies the words of Proverbs:[446] “The price of the valiant woman is as of things brought from afar and from the uttermost coasts. The heart of her husband trusteth in her ... she will render him good and not evil all the days of her life. She hath sought wool and flax and hath wrought by the counsel of her hands.... Her husband is honourable in the gates when he sitteth among the senators of the land.... Strength and beauty are her clothing, and she shall laugh in the latter day. She hath opened her mouth to wisdom.... Her children rose up and called her blessed, her husband, and he praised her.... The woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.”—Elsewhere the liturgy quotes the Psalmist:[447] “Grace is poured abroad from thy lips,” “With thy comeliness and thy beauty set out, proceed prosperously and reign.... Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.”

It cannot be objected that the ordinary woman, in the exercise of her household duties and of a humbler type of virtue, had no part in this praise. On the contrary, in honouring these Saints the Church was at the same time honouring all women who had not, by their misconduct, rendered themselves unworthy of the name. To all, whatever their rank or station, the high standard of the Saints was displayed, and all were invited to follow their example and promised their intercession. At the foot of the altar all were united, for their mother, the Church, showed to all the same consideration and helpful love. The honours bestowed upon the heroines of the married state had its influence on their living sisters, just as the Church’s “undying respect for virginity was calculated to exercise a wholesome effect on those bound by the marriage tie, or about to be so bound.”[448]

In Luther’s own case we have an instance in the devotion he showed in his youth to St. Anne, who was greatly venerated by both men and women in late mediæval times. The vow he had made to enter the cloister he placed in the hands of this Saint. The liturgical praise to which we have just listened, and which is bestowed on her in common with other holy spouses, he repeated frequently enough as a monk, when saying Mass, and the words of the Holy Ghost in praise of the true love of the faithful helpmate he ever treasured in his memory.[449]

How well Luther succeeded in establishing the fable of the scorn in which the married state was held in the Middle Ages is evident from several recent utterances of learned Protestants.

One Church historian goes so far, in his vindication of the Reformer’s statements concerning the mediæval “contempt felt for womankind,” as actually to lay the blame for Luther’s sanction of polygamy on the low, “mediæval view of the nature of matrimony.” Another theologian, a conservative, fancies that he can, even to-day, detect among “Romanists” the results of the mediæval undervaluing of marriage. According to Catholics “marriage is not indeed forbidden to everyone—for otherwise where would the Church find new children?—but nevertheless is looked at askance as a necessary evil.” Perfection in Catholic theory consists in absolute ignorance of all that concerns marriage. One scholar declares the Church before Luther’s day had taught, that “marriage had nothing to do with love”; “of the ethical task [of marriage] and of love not a trace is to be found” in the teaching of the Middle Ages. An eminent worker in the field of the history of dogma also declares, in a recent edition of his work, that, before Luther’s day, marriage had been “a sort of concession to the weak”; thanks only to Luther, was it “freed from all ecclesiastical tutelage to become the union of the sexes, as instituted by God [his italics], and the school of highest morality.” Such assertions, only too commonly met with, are merely the outcome of the false ideas disseminated by Luther himself concerning the Church of olden days. The author of the fable that woman and marriage were disdained in the Middle Ages scored a success, of which, could he have foreseen it, he would doubtless have been proud.

Two publications by Professors of the University of Wittenberg have been taken as clear proof of how low an opinion the Catholic Middle Ages had of woman and marriage. Of these publications one, however, a skit on the devil in Andr. Meinhardi’s Latin Dialogues of 1508—which, of the two, would, in this respect, be the most incriminating—has absolutely nothing to do with the mediæval Church’s views on marriage, but simply reproduces those of the Italian Humanists, though revealing that their influence extended even as far as Germany. It tells how even the devil himself was unable to put up with matrimony; since the difficulties of this state are so great, one of the speakers makes up his mind “never to marry, so as to be the better able to devote himself to study.” Despite this the author of the Dialogue entered the married state. The other publication is a discourse, in 1508, by Christopher Scheurl, containing a frivolous witticism at the expense of women, likewise due to Italian influence. This, however, did not prevent Scheurl, too, from marrying.[450] The truth is that the Italian Humanists’ “favourite subjects are the relations between the sexes, treated with the crudest realism, and, in connection with this, attacks on marriage and the family.”[451] At the same time it cannot be denied that individual writers, men influenced by anti-clerical Humanism, or ascetical theologians knowing nothing of the world, did sometimes speak of marriage in a manner scarcely fair to woman and did occasionally unduly exalt the state of celibacy.

Against such assertions some of Luther’s finest sayings on woman’s dignity deserve to be pitted.

Luther’s Discordant Utterances on the Value of Marriage in his Sermons and Writings.

Any objective examination of Luther’s attitude towards woman and marriage must reveal the fact, that he frequently seeks to invest Christian marriage, as he conceived it, with a religious character and a spiritual dignity. This he does in language witty and sympathetic, representing it as a close bond of love, though devoid of any sacramental character. Nor does he hesitate to use the noble imagery of the Church when describing his substitute for the Christian marriage of the past.

“It is no small honour for the married state,” he says in a sermon of 1536, “that God should represent it under the type and figure of the unspeakable grace and love which He manifests and bestows on us in Christ, and as the surest and most gracious sign of the intimate union between Himself and Christendom and all its members, a union than which nothing more intimate can be imagined.”[452]

In another sermon he praises the edification provided in the married state, when “man and wife are united in love and serve each other faithfully”; Luther invites them to thank God “that the married state is profitable alike to body, property, honour and salvation.” “What, however, is best of all in married life,” so he insists, “for the sake of which everything must be suffered and endured, is that God may give offspring and command us to train it in His service. This is earth’s noblest and most priceless work, because God loves nothing so well as to save souls.”[453]

Such exhortations of Luther’s, apart from peculiarities of expression, differ from those of earlier writers only in that those authors, relying on the traditional, sacramental conception of the matrimonial union, had an even greater right to eulogise marriage and the blessing of children.

Catholic preachers might quite profitably have made use of the greater part of a wedding discourse delivered by Luther in 1531,[454] though they might have failed to emulate the force and emphasis with which it was uttered. His theme there is “that marriage is to be held in honour”; he quotes Hebr. xiii. 4, “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled”; he continues: “It is true that our flesh is full of evil lusts which entice us to sin, but to these we must not consent; if, however, you hold fast to the Word of God and see to it, that this state is blessed and adorned, this will preserve and comfort you, and make of it a holy state for you.”[455] It was necessary, he continues, not merely to fight against any sensual lusts outside of the marriage bond, but also to cultivate virtue. Conjugal fidelity must be preserved all the more carefully since “Satan is your enemy and your flesh wanton.” “Fornication and adultery are the real stains which defile the marriage bed.” “Married persons are embraced in the Word of God.” This they must take as their guide, otherwise (here Luther’s language ceases to be a pattern) “the bed is soiled, and, practically, they might as well have passed their motions in it.”[456]

Such an emphasising of the religious side of matrimony almost gives the impression, that Luther was following an interior impulse which urged him to counteract the effects of certain other statements of his on marriage. Doubtless he felt the contrast between his worldly view of matrimony and the higher standard of antiquity, though he would certainly have refused to admit that he was behindhand in the struggle against sensuality. In view of the sad moral consequences which were bearing witness against him, he was disposed to welcome an opportunity to give expression to such sentiments as those just described, which tended to justify him both to his listeners and to himself. Nor were such sentiments mere hypocrisy; on the contrary, they have their psychological place as a true component part of his picture. On one occasion Luther bewails the want of attention paid to his excellent doctrines: “The teachers are there, but the doers are nowhere to be found; as with the other points of our doctrine, there are but few who obey or heed us.”[457]

Not infrequently, however, instead of praising the dignity of woman and the purity of married life, Luther speaks in a far from respectful, nay, offensive manner of woman, though without perhaps meaning all that his words would seem to convey. He thereby exposes woman, in her relations with man, to the danger of contempt, and thus forfeits the right of posing as the defender of feminine dignity and of the married state against alleged detractors among the Catholics. His false aspersions on former days thus stand out in a still more unpleasant light.

In a sermon of 1524, where it is true he has some fine words on the indulgent treatment to be meted out to the wife, he says: St. Peter calls woman the “weaker vessel” (1 Peter iii. 7); he “had given faint praise to woman,” for “woman’s body is not strong and her spirit, as a general rule, is even weaker; whether she is wild or mild depends on God’s choice of man’s helpmate. Woman is half a child; whoever takes a wife must look upon himself as the guardian of a child.... She is also a crazy beast. Recognise her weakness. If she does not always follow the straight path, bear with her frailty. A woman will ever remain a woman.... But the married state is nevertheless the best, because God is there with His Word and Work and Cross.”[458]

With those who complain of the sufferings of the mother in pregnancy and childbirth he is very angry, and, in one sermon, goes so far as to say: “Even though they grow weary and wear themselves out with child-bearing, that is of no consequence; let them go on bearing children till they die, that is what they are there for.”[459]

His description of marriage “as an outward, material thing, like any other worldly business,[460] was certainly not calculated to raise its repute;” and in the same passage he proceeds: “Just as I may eat and drink, sleep and walk, ride, talk and do business with a heathen or a Jew, a Turk or a heretic, so also I may contract marriage with him.”[461]

Matrimonial cases had formerly belonged to the ecclesiastical courts, but Luther now drives the parties concerned to the secular judge, telling them that he will give them “a good hog,” i.e. a sound trouncing, for having sought to “involve and entangle him in such matters” which “really concerned the secular authority.”[462] “Marriage questions,” he says, “do not touch the conscience, but come within the province of the secular judge.”[463] Previously, parties whose rights had been infringed were able to seek redress from the ecclesiastical tribunals, the sentences of which were enforced by Canon Law under spiritual penalties, to the advantage of the injured party. Luther, on the other hand, after having secularised marriage, finds himself unable to cope with the flood of people clamouring for justice: “I am tired of them [the matrimonial squabbles] and I have thrown them overboard; let them do as they like in the name of all the devils.”[464] He is also determined to rid the preachers of this business; the injured parties are, he says, to seek for justice and protection “in the latrines of the lawyers”; his own conduct, he hopes, will serve as a model to the preachers, who will now repel all who solicit their help.[465]

The increase in the number of matrimonial misunderstandings and quarrels, the haste with which marriage was entered upon and then dissolved, particularly in the Saxon Electorate and at Wittenberg, was not merely the result of the new Evangelical freedom, as Luther and his friends sadly admitted, but was due above all to the altered views on marriage. In the new preaching on marriage the gratification of the sensual impulse was, as will be shown below, placed too much in the foreground, owing partly to the fanatical reaction against clerical celibacy and religious vows. “To marry is a remedy for fornication”; these words of Luther’s were again and again repeated by himself and others in one form or another, as though they characterised the main object of marriage. Nature was persistently painted as excessively weak in the matter of chastity, and as quite captive under the yoke of passion. People were indeed admonished to curb their passions with the help of Grace, but such means of acquiring God’s Grace as mortification and self-conquest were only too frequently scoffed at as mere holiness-by-works, while as for the means of grace sought by Catholics in the Sacraments, they had simply been “abolished.”

By his patronage of polygamy, forced on him by his wrong interpretation of the Bible, Luther put the crowning touch on his contempt for Christian marriage.[466] This was to relinquish the position of privilege in which Christianity had established marriage, when, following the Creator’s intention, it insisted on monogamy.

Birth of the New Views on Marriage during the Controversy on the Vow of Chastity.

How did Luther reach his opinion and succeed in endowing it with credibility and life? A glance at its birth and growth will give us an instructive insight into Luther’s manner of proceeding.

He had already long been engaged in his struggle with “Popish abuses” and had already set up all the essential points of his new theology, before becoming in the least conscious of the supposed contempt in which marriage was held by the Roman Church. In his exposition of the Ten Commandments, in 1518, he still speaks of it in the respectful language of his earlier years; in his sermon on the Married State, in 1519, he still terms it a Sacrament, without hinting in any way that it had hitherto been considered disreputable. Whether he uses the term Sacrament in its traditional meaning we do not, of course, know. At any rate, he says: “Matrimony is a Sacrament, an outward, holy sign of the greatest, most sacred, worthy and exalted thing that ever has been, or ever will be, viz. of the union of the Divine and human nature in Christ.”[467] Enumerating the spiritual advantages of marriage, which counteract the “sinful lusts therewith intermingled,” he expressly appeals to the “Doctors” of the Church, and the three benefits they perceived in matrimony; “first, marriage is a Sacrament,” “secondly, it is a bond of fidelity,” “thirdly, it brings offspring, which is the end and principal office of marriage”; a further benefit must be added, viz. the “training of the offspring in the service of God.”[468]

In his book “On the Babylonish Captivity” (1520) he has already arrived at the explicit denial to marriage of the name and character of a sacrament.

But it was only in the war he waged against his own vow of chastity that the idea arose in his mind, and even then only gradually, that the true value and excellence of marriage had never hitherto been recognised. The more he sought for theological grounds on which to prove the worthlessness of religious celibacy and the nullity of the vow of chastity, the more deeply he persuaded himself that proofs existed in abundance of the utter perversity of the prevailing opinions on matrimony. He began to impute to the Church extravagant views on virginity, of which neither he nor anyone else had ever thought. He now accused her of teaching the following: That virginity was the only state in which God could be served perfectly; that marriage was forbidden to the clergy because it was disreputable and a thing soiled with sin; finally, that family life with its petty tasks must be regarded as something degrading, while woman herself, to whom the chief share in these tasks belongs and who, moreover, so often tempts man to sins of incontinence, is a contemptible creature.

All these untruths concerning the ancient Church were purely the outcome of Luther’s personal polemics.

His system of attack exhibits no trace of any dispassionate examination of the testimonies of antiquity. But his false and revolting charges seemed some sort of justification for his attack on religious vows and clerical celibacy. From such theoretical charges there was but a step to charges of a more practical character and to his boundless exaggerations concerning the hideous vices supposed to have been engendered by the perversion of the divinely appointed order, and to have devastated the Church as a chastisement for her contempt for marriage.

In the second edition of the sermon of 1519 on the Married State he places virginity on at least an equal footing with matrimony. Towards the end of the sermon he (like the earlier writers) calls matrimony “a noble, exalted and blessed state” if rightly observed, but otherwise “a wretched, fearful and dangerous” one; he proceeds: Whoever bears this in mind “will know what to think of the sting of the flesh, and, possibly, will be as ready to accept the virginal state as the conjugal.”[469] Even during his Wartburg days, when under the influence of the burning spirit of revolt, and already straining at the vows which bound him, he still declared in the theses he sent Melanchthon, that “Marriage is good, but virginity better” (“Bonum coniugium, melior virginitas”),[470] a thesis, which, like St. Paul, he bases mainly on the immunity from worldly cares. This idea impressed Melanchthon so deeply, that he re-echoes it in his praise of virginity in the “Apology for the Confession of Augsburg”: “We do not make virginity and marriage equal. For, as one gift is better than another, prophecy better than eloquence, strategy better than agriculture, eloquence better than architecture, so virginity is a gift excelling marriage.”[471]

But this great gift, to Luther’s mind, was a moral impossibility, the rarest of God’s Graces, nay, a “miracle” of the Almighty. Hence he teaches that such a privilege must not be laid claim to, that the monastic vow of chastity was therefore utterly immoral, and clerical celibacy too, to say nothing of private vows of virginity; in all such there lurked a presumptuous demand for the rarest and most marvellous of Divine Graces; even to pray for this was not allowed.

At the conclusion of his theses for Melanchthon, Luther enforces what he had said by the vilest calumnies against all who, in the name of the Church, had pledged themselves to remain unmarried. Were it known what manner of persons those who profess such great chastity really are, their “greatly extolled chastity” would not be considered fit “for a prostitute to wipe her boots on.”

Then follow his further unhappy outbursts at the Wartburg on religious vows (vol. ii., p. 83 ff.) consummating his perversion of the Church’s teaching and practice regarding celibacy and marriage. In marriage he sees from that time forward nothing by the gratification of the natural impulse; to it every man must have recourse unless he enjoys the extraordinary grace of God; the ancient Church, with her hatred of marriage, her professed religious and celibate clergy, assumes in his imagination the most execrable shape. He fancies that, thanks to his new notions, he has risen far above the Christianity of the past, albeit the Church had ever striven to guard the sanctity of marriage as the very apple of her eye, by enacting many laws and establishing marriage-courts of her own under special judges. He becomes ever more reckless in casting marriage matters on the shoulders of the State. In the Preface to his “Trawbüchlin,” in 1529, he says, for instance, “Since wedlock and marriage are a worldly business, we clergy and ministers of the Church have nothing to order or decree about it, but must leave each town and country to follow its own usage and custom.”[472]

From that time forward, particularly when the Diet of Augsburg had embittered the controversy, Luther pours out all the vials of his terrible eloquence on the bondage in which marriage had been held formerly, and on the contempt displayed by Rome for it. He peremptorily demands its complete secularisation.

And yet he ostentatiously extols marriage as “holy and Divine,” and even says that wedlock is most pleasing to God, a mystery and Sacrament in the highest sense of the word. Of one of these passages Emil Friedberg, the Protestant canonist, remarks in his “Recht der Eheschliessung”: “Luther’s views as here expressed completely contradict other passages, and this same discrepancy is apparent throughout the later literature, and, even now, prevents [Protestants] from appreciating truly the nature of marriage.”[473]

Every impartial observer could have seen that the preference given to virginity by the Catholic Church, her defence of the manner of life of those whom God had called to the cloister, and her guardianship of the celibacy of the priesthood, handed down from the earliest ages, did not in the least imply any undervaluing of marriage on her part—unless indeed, as Joseph Mausbach remarks, he was prepared to admit that, “because one thing is better, its opposite must needs be bad.”

“Who thinks,” continues the same writer, that “preference for gold involves contempt for silver, or preference for the rose a depreciation of all other flowers? But these very comparisons are to be met with even amongst the ancient Fathers.... Why should the Church’s praise of virginity be always misconstrued as a reproach against matrimony? All this is mere thoughtlessness, when it is not blind prejudice, for the Church did everything to prevent any misunderstanding of her praise of virginity, and certainly taught and defended the sanctity of marriage with all her power.”[474]

Luther’s judgment was not due so much to mere thoughtlessness as to his burning hatred of the Papacy; this we see from the vulgar abuse which, whenever he comes to speak of marriage and celibacy, he showers on the Pope, the supreme champion of the Evangelical Counsels and of the priestly ideal of life; on the other hand, it was also to some extent due to his deeply rooted and instinctive aversion for everything whereby zealous Christians do violence to nature out of love for God, from the motive of penance and from a desire to obtain merit.

The Natural Impulse and the Honour of Marriage.

Ecclesiastical writers before Luther’s day speak frequently and plainly enough of the impulse of nature, but, as a rule, only in order to recommend its control, to point out the means of combating excesses, and to insist on the Sacrament which sanctifies conjugal intercourse and brings down the blessings we require if the earthly and eternal purpose of marriage is to be fulfilled.

Luther, however, if we may trust one of his most zealous defenders, rendered a great service with regard to sexual intercourse in that “he shook off the pseudo-ascetic spirit of the past.” He demonstrated, so we are told, particularly in what he wrote to Spalatin about the “actus matrimonialis”[475]—words which some have regarded as offensive—“that even that act, though represented by his opponents as obscene, to the faithful Christian who ‘receives it with thanksgiving’ (1 Tim. iv. 4), contained nothing to raise a blush or to forbid its mention.” According to the “Roman view” it is perfectly true that “the ‘actus matrimonialis’ is sinless only when performed with the object of begetting children, or in order to fulfil the conjugal due.”[476] This, he exclaims, “was forsooth to be the sole motive of conjugal intercourse! And, coupled with this motive, the act even becomes meritorious! Is there any need of confuting so repulsive a notion?... Luther’s view is very different. The natural sexual passion was, according to him, the will and the work of God.” “The effect of the Roman exaltation of celibacy was to make people believe, that the motive [of conjugal intercourse] implanted by God, viz. sexual attraction, must not be yielded to.” This attraction Luther declared to be the one motive on account of which we should “thankfully avail ourselves” of matrimony. “This Luther conveys most clearly in his letter to Spalatin, his intimate friend, shortly after both had wedded.... We know no higher conception of conjugal intercourse.”

This description does not do justice to the mediæval Catholic teaching on matrimony, its duties and privileges. This teaching never demanded the suppression of sensual attraction or love. It fully recognised that this had been implanted in human nature by God’s wise and beneficent hand as a stimulus to preserve and multiply the human race, according to His command: “Be fruitful and multiply.” But the Church urged all to see that this impulse was kept pure and worthy by attention to its higher purpose, viz. to the object appointed from above. Instead of becoming its slave the Christian was to ennoble it by allowing the motives of faith to play their part in conjugal intercourse. The Church’s teaching would indeed have been “repulsive” had it demanded the general repression of the sexual instinct and not merely the taming of that unruliness which is the result of original sin, and is really unworthy of man. Had she imposed the obligation to wage an impossible struggle against it as a thing essentially sinful, then her teaching might indeed have been described as “repulsive.”

Still it is sufficiently tragic, that, in spite of the gratification of the sensual impulse of nature playing the principal part in his new and supposedly more exalted view of conjugal intercourse, Luther should, on account of the concupiscence involved, characterise the “actus matrimonialis” as a mortal sin. In “De votis monasticis,” his work written at the Wartburg, he says: “According to Ps. 1. 7, it is a sin differing in nothing from adultery and fornication so far as the sensual passion and hateful lust are concerned; God, however, does not impute it to the married, though simply because of His compassion, since it is impossible for us to avoid it, although our duty would really be to do without it.”[477] We are already familiar with his curious and impossible theory of imputation, according to which God is able to close His eyes to a sin, which nevertheless is really there.

That there is actual sin in the act Luther also insists elsewhere, at the same time pleading, however, that the sin is not imputed by God, who, as it were, deliberately winks at it: “In spite of all the good I say of married life, I will not grant so much to nature as to admit that there is no sin in it; what I say is that we have here flesh and blood, depraved in Adam, conceived and born in sin (Ps. 1. 7), and that no conjugal due is ever rendered without sin.”[478]—The blessing which God bestowed on marriage, he says elsewhere, fallen human nature was “not able to accomplish without sin”; “without sin no married persons could do their duty.”[479]

Hence the following inference would seem justified: Matrimony is really a state of sin. Such was the opinion, not of the Church before Luther’s day, but of her assailant, whose opponents soon pointed out to him how unfounded was his supposition.[480] The ancient Church, by the voice of her theologians, declared the “actus matrimonialis,” when performed in the right way and to a right end, to be no sin; they admitted the inevitable satisfaction of concupiscence, but allowed it so long as its gratification was not all that was sought. According to Luther—whom the author above referred to has quite rightly understood—it is different: Sin is undoubtedly committed, but we may, nay, are bound, to commit it.

With the above, all Luther’s statements on the inevitable strength of the impulse of nature agree. Though the union of husband and wife is a rule of the natural law applying to the majority rather than to the individual, Luther practically makes it binding upon all. In this connection he seems to be unable to view the moral relation of the sexes in any other light than as existing for the gratification of mutual lust, since without marriage they must inevitably fall into every sort of carnal sin. “It is a necessary and natural thing, that every man should have a wife,” he says in the lengthy passage already quoted, where he concludes, “it is more necessary than eating and drinking, sleeping and waking, or passing the natural motions of the body.”[481] Elsewhere, in a characteristic comparison, he says: “Were a man compelled to close his bowels and bladder—surely an utter impossibility—what would become of him?”[482] According to him, “man must be fruitful, and multiply, and breed,” “like all other animals, since God has created him thereto, so that, of necessity, a man must seek a wife, and a woman a husband, unless God works a miracle.”[483]

Many were they who, during the controversies which accompanied the schism, listened to such teaching and believed it and were ready to forgo the miracle in order to follow the impulse of nature; were ready to indulge their weakness did their state of life prohibit marriage, or to dissolve the marriage already contracted when it did not turn out to their taste, or when they fancied they could advance one of the numerous reasons proclaimed by Luther for its annulment. The evil effects of such morality in the 16th century (see below, p. 164 ff. and xxiv. 1 and 2), witnessed to on all sides by Lutherans as well as Catholics, prove conclusively that the originator of the new matrimonial theories was the last man qualified to reproach the ancient Church with a want of appreciation for marriage or for woman.

Nor must we look merely at the results. The man’s very character, his mode of thought and his speech, suffice to banish him from the society of the olden, earnest moralists. Albeit unwillingly, we must add here some further statements to those already adduced.[484]

“If a man feels his manhood,” Luther says, “let him take a wife and not tempt God. ‘Puella propterea habet pudenda,’ to provide him a remedy that he may escape pollution and adultery.”[485]

“The sting of the flesh may easily be helped, so long as girls and women are to be found.”[486]

Our readers will not have forgotten the reason he gives why women have so little intellect;[487] or the reproof addressed to him by Staupitz.[488]

Luther urges early marriage in the words of an old proverb: “To rise early and to marry young will cause regret to no one.” “It will fare with you,” he says to the same addressee, “as with the nuns to whom they gave carved Jesuses. They cast about for others, who at least were living and pleased them better, and sought how best to escape from their convent.”[489]—“What greater service can one do a girl than to get her a baby? This rids her of many fancies.”[490] Here, and elsewhere too, he is anxious that people should marry, even though there should not be enough to live upon; God would not allow the couple to starve if they did their duty.[491]—“A young fellow should be simply given a wife, otherwise he has no peace. Then the troubles of matrimony will soon tame him.”[492]

On another occasion (1540) Luther expresses himself with greater caution about too early matches: “It is not good for young people to marry too soon. They are ruined in their prime, exhaust their strength and neglect their studies.” “But the young men are consumed with passion,” one of those present objected, “and the theologians work upon their conscience and tell them that ‘To marry young will cause regret to no one.’” Luther’s reply was: “The young men are unwilling to resist any temptations.... They should console themselves with the hope of future marriage. We used to be forbidden to marry in almost all the Faculties, hence the youths indulged in all kinds of excesses, knowing that, later on, they would no longer be able to do so. Thus they sunk into every kind of disorder. But now everybody is allowed to marry, even the theologian and the bishop. Hence, in their own interests, they ought to learn to wait.”[493]

At other times he was inclined to promote hasty marriages from motives of policy, and, without a thought of the dignity of the conjugal union and the respect due to woman, to use it as a means to increase the number of his followers.

This happened in the case of many of his converts from the ranks of the clergy and religious.[494]

In the case of the Bishop of Samland, George von Polenz, and his adviser, Johann Briesmann, the ex-Franciscan, who both were desirous of marrying, Luther judged that delay would be disastrous. He urged them to make haste and be publicly wedded, both having already contracted a so-called marriage in conscience; in their case there was “danger in delay,” and, as the saying goes, “If you wait a night, you wait a year”; even Paul had said we must not receive the grace of God in vain (2 Cor. vi. 1), and the bride in the Canticle complained that the bridegroom “was gone,” because she had been tardy in opening the door (v. 6). A German proverb said, “Wenn das Ferkel beut soll man den Sack herhalten.” Esau’s lost birthright, and the solemn words of Christ concerning separation from Him (John xii. 35 f.) were also made to serve his purpose. “Take it when, where and how you can, or you won’t get another chance.” A man could not be sure of his own mind on account of the snares of the devil; a marriage not yet publicly ratified remained somewhat uncertain.[495]

Before these exhortations reached them both the parties in question had, however, already taken the public step.

It was in those very days that Luther celebrated his own wedding and sent his pressing invitation to marry to the Cardinal and Elector of Mayence, telling him that, short of a miracle, or without some peculiar grace, it was a “terrible thing” for a man “to be found without a wife at the hour of death.”[496] It was then, too, that he sent to Albert of Prussia, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, who was contemplating marriage, his congratulations on the secularisation of the lands of the Order and the founding of the Duchy, which he had even previously strongly urged him to do. In this letter he tells the Grand Master that it was “God Almighty,” “Who had graciously and mercifully helped him to such a position [that of a secular Prince].”[497] The Grand Master’s marriage and consequent breach of his vow of chastity followed in 1526. He invited Luther to the wedding and wrote to him, that God had given him “the grace to enter the Order [of marriage] instituted by Himself” after he had “laid aside the cross [the sign of the Order] and entered the secular estate.”

It cannot be denied, that in all these marriages which Luther promoted, or at least favoured, what he had his eye on was the advantage of the new Church system. Of any raising of the moral position of women, of any deepening of the significance of marriage, there is here no trace; these marriages served quite another purpose. The circumstances attending them were, moreover, frequently far from dignified. “The Bishop of Samland,” so Philip von Creutz, a Knight of the Teutonic Order, relates, “gave up his bishopric to the Duke [Albert] in the presence of the whole assembly.... He caused his mitre to be broken up and, out of its precious stones and jewels, he had ornaments made for his wife.”[498]

Practical Consequences of the New View of Woman:
Matrimonial Impediments, Divorce.

The readiness shown by Luther to annul valid marriages, and the wayward manner in which he disposed of the impediments fixed by the Church, were not calculated to enhance respect either for marriage or for woman.

As regards the impediments to marriage we shall here merely refer to the practical and not uncommon case where a person wished to marry a niece. Whereas Canon Law, at one with Roman Law, regarded this relationship as constituting an impediment, which might, however, be dispensed from by the Pope, Luther at first saw fit to declare it no impediment at all; he even issued memoranda to this effect, one of which was printed in 1526 and circulated widely.[499] “If the Pope was able to dispense,” he said later on concerning this, “why can’t I too?”[500] In favour of the lawfulness of such marriages he appealed to the example of Abraham, and in reply to objections declared: “If they blame the work and example of the holy Patriarch Abraham, then let them be scandalised.”[501] At a later date, nevertheless, he changed his mind and held such marriages to be unlawful. His previous statements he explained by saying that once he had indeed given a different decision, not in order to lead others into excesses but in order “to assist consciences at the hour of death against the Pope”; he had merely given advice in Confession to troubled consciences, and had not laid down any law; to make laws was not within his province, either in the State or in the Church. His former memoranda were not to be alleged now; a certain man of the name of Borner, who, on the strength of them, had married his niece, had acted very ill and done injustice to his (Luther’s) decision. The Pope alone, so Luther says, was to blame for his previous advice—because many, owing to his laws, were reduced to despair and had come to Luther for help. “It is true that in Confession and in order to pacify consciences I have advised differently, but I made a mistake in allowing such counsels to be made public. Now, however, it is done. This is a matter for Confession only.”[502]

When speaking in this way, in 1544, he probably had in mind his so-called advice in Confession to Philip of Hesse. He was still acting on the principle, that advice given in Confession might afterwards be publicly repudiated as quite wrong; he failed somehow to see that the case of marriage of uncle and niece was of its very nature something public.

The multitude of divorces caused him great anxiety. Even the preachers of the new faith were setting a bad example by putting away their spouses and contracting fresh marriages. Melander, for instance, who blessed Philip’s second marriage, after deserting “two wives in succession without even seeking legal aid, married a third.”[503] At Gotha, as Luther himself relates, a woman deserted her husband and her three children, and sent him a message to tell him he might take another wife. When, however, he had done so the woman again asserted her claims. “Our lawyers,” Luther complains, “at once took her part, but the Elector decided she should quit the country. My own decision would have been to have her done to death by drowning.”[504]

In a still existing letter of 1525, Luther permitted Michael Kramer, preacher at Domitsch, near Torgau, to contract a third marriage, two previous ones having turned out unfortunate. Kramer, as a Catholic priest, had first married a servant maid and, for this, had been sent to jail by Duke George his sovereign. When the maid proved unfaithful and married another, Luther, to whom Kramer had attached himself, declared her to be really “deceased” and told the preacher he might use his “Christian freedom.” Kramer thereupon married a girl from Domitsch, where he had been in the meantime appointed Lutheran pastor. This new wife likewise ran away from him three weeks later. He now addressed himself to the local board of magistrates, who, conjointly with him, wrote to Luther, pointing out how the poor man “could not do without a wife.” Luther thereupon sent a memorandum, addressed to the “magistrates and the preacher of Domitsch,” in which he allowed a divorce from the second wife and gave permission for a third marriage, which, apparently, was more of a success. During the Visitations in 1528 this preacher, who had since been transferred to Lucka, got into trouble on account of his three marriages, but saved his skin by appealing to Luther’s letter.[505]

The reader already knows that, according to Luther, a woman who has no children by her husband, may, with the latter’s consent, quietly dissolve the marriage and cohabit with another, for instance, with her brother-in-law; this, however, was to be secret, because the children were to be regarded as her first husband’s. Should he refuse his consent, says Luther, “rather than suffer her to burn or have recourse to adultery, I would advise her to marry another and flee to some place where she is unknown. What other advice can be given to one who is in constant danger from carnal lusts?”[506] Duke George of Saxony, referring to a similar passage in Luther’s work “On Conjugal Life” (1522),[507] said in a letter to Luther which was immediately printed: “When was it ever heard of that wives should be taken from their husbands and given to other men, as we now find it stated in your Evangel? Has adultery ever been more common than since you wrote: If a woman has no children by her husband, then let her go to another and bear children whom her husband must provide for as though he were the father? This is the fruit of the precious Evangel which you dragged forth out of the gutter. You were quite right when you said you found it in the gutter; what we want to know is, why you didn’t leave it there.”[508]

What Luther had said concerning the refusal to render the conjugal due: “If the wife refuse, then let the maid come,” attracted more attention than he probably anticipated, both among his own adherents and among his foes. It is true, as already pointed out, that the context does not justify illicit relations outside marriage (see vol. iii., p. 252 f.), but the words as they stand, to say nothing of the unlikelihood of any real marriage with the maid, and, finally, the significance which may have clung to a coarse saying of the populace possibly alluded to by Luther, all favoured those who chose to make the tempting phrase a pretext for such extra-matrimonial relations.

When the sermon on marriage in which the passage occurs was published, Duke George’s representative at the Diet of Nuremberg in 1522 sent his master at Dresden a copy of the booklet, “which the devilish monk,” so he writes, “has unblushingly published, though it has cost him the loss of many followers about here; it would not go well with us poor husbands, should our naughty wives read it. I shall certainly not give my wife one.”[509] Duke George replied with a grim jest which doubtless went the rounds at Nuremberg among those whom the booklet had offended: “As to what you write,” George says, “viz. that you won’t let your wife read the little book on marriage, me thinks you are acting unwisely; in our opinion it contains something which might serve even a jealous husband like you very well; for it says, that if your wife refuses to do your will you have only to turn to the maid. Hence keep a look out for pretty maids. These and similar utterances you may very well hold over your wife.”[510]

In 1542 Wicel, in his Postils, speaking of the preachers, says: “The words of St. Paul, ‘Art thou loosed from a wife, seek not a wife,’ 1 Cor. vii. 27, have a very unevangelical sound on the lips of these Evangelists. How then must it be? Quick, take a wife or a husband; whether you be young or old, make haste; should one die, don’t delay to take another. Celebrate the wedding, if it turns out ill, then let the maid come! Divorce this one and take in marriage that one, whether the first be living or dead! For chambering and wantonness shall not be neglected,”—“Since the coming of Christ,” says the same writer elsewhere, “there have never been so many divorces as under Luther’s rule.”[511]

Of the unlooked-for effects produced among Luther’s preachers by the above saying, Sebastian Flasch, an ex-Lutheran preacher and native of Mansfeld, complained in 1576: “Although the preachers are married, yet they are so ill-content with their better halves, that, appealing to Luther’s advice, they frequently, in order to gratify their insatiable concupiscence, seduce their maids, and, what is even more shameful, do not blush to misconduct themselves with other men’s wives or to exchange wives among themselves.” He appeals to his long experience of Lutheranism and relates that such a “commutatio uxorum” had been proposed to him by a preacher of high standing.[512]—Much earlier than this, in 1532, Johann Mensing, the Dominican, wrote sadly, that the state of matrimony was dreadfully disgraced by the new preachers; “for they give a man two wives, a woman two husbands, allow the man to use the maid should the wife not prove compliant, and the wife to take another husband should her own prove impotent.” “When they feel disposed or moved to what is sin and shameful, they say the Holy Spirit urges them. Is not that a fine tale that all the world is telling about Melchior Myritsch of Magdeburg, of Jacob Probst of Bremen and of others in the Saxon land. What certain mothers have discovered concerning their daughters and maids, who listened to such preaching, it is useless to relate.”[513]—The name of the ex-Augustinian, Melchior Myritsch, or Meirisch, recalls the coarseness of the advice given by Luther, on Feb. 10, 1525, to the latter’s new spouse. (See vol. ii., p. 144.)

Respect for the Female Sex in Luther’s Conversations.

Had Luther, as the legend he set on foot would make us believe, really raised the dignity of woman and the married state to a higher level, we might naturally expect, that, when he has to speak of matters sexual or otherwise repugnant to modesty, he would at least be reticent and dignified in his language. We should expect to find him surrounded at Wittenberg by a certain nobility of thought, a higher, purer atmosphere, a nobler general tone, in some degree of harmony with his extraordinary claims. Instead we are confronted with something very different. Luther’s whole mode of speech, his conversations and ethical trend, are characterised by traits which even the most indulgent of later writers found it difficult to excuse, and which, particularly his want of delicacy towards women, must necessarily prove offensive to all.[514]

Luther was possibly not aware that the word “nun” comes from the Low Latin “nonna,” i.e. woman, and was originally the name given to those who dwelt in the numerous convents of Upper Egypt; he knew, however, well enough that the word “monk” was but a variant of “monachus.” He jestingly gives to both the former and the latter an odious derivation. “The word nun,” he says, “comes from the German, and cloistered women are thus called, because that is the term for unsexed sows; in the same way the word monk is derived from the horses [viz. the gelded horses]. But the operation was not altogether successful, for they are obliged to wear breeches just like other people.”[515] It may be that Catherine, the ex-nun, was present when this was said; at any rate she is frequently mentioned in the Table-Talk as assisting.[516]

He could not let slip the opportunity of having a dig at the ladies who were sometimes present at his post-prandial entertainments. In 1542 conversation turned on Solomon’s many wives and concubines. Luther pointed out,[517] that the figures given in the Bible must be taken as referring to all the women dwelling in the palace, even to such as had no personal intercourse with Solomon. “One might as well say,” he continues, “Dr. Martin has three wives; one is Katey, another Magdalene, the third the pastoress; also a concubine, viz. the virgin Els.[518] This made him laugh [writes the narrator, Caspar Heydenreich]; and besides these he has many girls. In the same way Solomon had three hundred queens; if he took only one every night, the year would be over, and he would not have had a day’s rest. That cannot be, for he had also to govern.”[519]

He advised that those who were troubled with doubts concerning their salvation should speak of improper subjects (“loquaris de venereis”), that was an infallible remedy.[520] In one such case he invited a pupil to jest freely with his own wife, Catherine. “Talk about other things,” Luther urges him, “which entirely distract your thoughts.”[521]

As we know, Luther himself made liberal use of such talk to cheer up himself and others. Thus, in the presence of his guests, in 1537, he joked about Ferdinand, the German King, his extreme thinness and his very stout wife who was suspected of misconduct: “Though he is of such an insignificant bodily frame,” he says, “others will be found to assist him in the nuptial bed. But it is a nuisance to have the world filled with alien heirs.”[522]—This leads him to speak of adulteresses in other districts.[523]

A coarser tale is the one he related about the same time. A minister came to him complaining of giddiness and asking for a remedy. His answer was: “Lass das Loch daheime,” which, so the narrators explain, meant, “that he should not go to such excess in chambering.”[524]—A similar piece of advice is given by Luther in the doggerel verses which occur in his Table-Talk: “Keep your neck warm and cosy,—Do not overload your belly.—Don’t be too sweet on Gertie;—Then your locks will whiten slowly.”[525]—On one occasion he showed his friends a turquoise (“turchesia”), which had been given him, and said, following the superstition of the day, that when immersed in water it would make movements “sicut isti qui eveniunt juveni cum a virgine in chorea circumfertur,” but, that, in doing so, it broke.[526] On account of the many children he had caused to be begotten from priests and religious, he, as we already know, compared himself to Abraham, the father of a great race: He, like Abraham, was the grandfather of all the descendants of the monks, priests and nuns and the father of a mighty people.[527]

We may not pass over here Luther’s frequent use of filthy expressions, which, though they agree well with his natural coarseness, harmonise but ill with the high ideals we should expect in one whose vocation it was to rescue marriage and feminine dignity from the slough of the Papacy. He is fond of using such words in his abuse of the Popish teaching on marriage: At one time, he writes, the Papists make out marriage to be a Sacrament, “at another to be impure, i.e. a sort of merdiferous Sacrament.”[528] The Pope, who waywardly teaches this and other doctrines, “has overthrown the Word of God”; “if the Pope’s reputation had not been destroyed by the Word of God, the devil himself would have ejected him” (‘a posteriori’).[529] Elsewhere he voices his conviction as to the most fitting epithet to apply to the Pope’s “human ordinances.” One thing in man, he explains, viz. “the ‘anus,’ cannot be bound; it is determined to be master and to have the upper hand. Hence this is the only thing in man’s body or soul upon which the Pope has not laid his commands.”[530]

“The greatest blessing of marriage,” he tells his friends, “lies in the children; this D.G. [Duke George] was not fated to see in his sons, ‘quos spectatissima principissa cacatos in lucem ederat.’”[531]

The Pope and his people, he says in a sermon, had “condemned and rejected matrimony as a dirty, stinking state.” “Had the creation of human beings been in the Pope’s power he would never have created woman, or allowed any such to exist in the world.”[532] “The Pope, the devil and his Church,” he says in 1539, “are hostile to the married state.... Matrimony [in their opinion] is mere fornication.”[533]

The Pope, he says, had forbidden the married state; he and his followers, “the monks and Papists,” “burn with evil lust and love of fornication, though they refuse to take upon themselves the trouble and labour of matrimony.”[534] “With the help of the Papacy Satan has horribly soiled matrimony, God’s own ordinance”; the fact was, the clergy had been too much afraid of woman; “and so it goes on: If a man fears fornication he falls into secret sin, as seems to have been the case with St. Jerome.”[535]

He saw sexual excesses increasing to an alarming extent among the youth of his own party. At table a friend of the “young fellows” sought to excuse their “wild, immoral life and fornication” on the ground of their youth; Luther sighed, at the state of things revealed, and said: “Alas, that is how they learn contempt for the female sex.” Contempt will simply lead to abuse; the true remedy for immorality was prayerfully to hold conjugal love in honour.[536]

Luther, however, preferred to dwell upon the deep-seated vice of an anti-matrimonial Papacy rather than on the results of his teaching upon the young.

“Every false religion,” he once exclaimed in 1542 in his Table-Talk,[537] “has been defiled by sensuality! Just look at the |!”—[He must here have used, says Kroker, “a term for phallus, or something similar,” which Caspar Heydenreich the reporter has suppressed.][538] “What else were the pilgrimages,” Luther goes on, “but opportunities for coming together? What does the Pope do but wallow unceasingly in his lusts?... The heathen held marriage in far higher honour than do the Pope and the Turk. The Pope hates marriage, and the Turk despises it. But it is the devil’s nature to hate God’s Word. What God loves, e.g. the Church, marriage, civic order, that he hates. He desires fornication and impurity; for if he has these, he knows well that people will no longer trouble themselves about God.”

The New Matrimonial Conditions and the Slandered Opponents.

It is a fact witnessed to by contemporaries, particularly by Catholics, that Luther’s unrestraint when writing on sexual subjects, his open allusions to organs and functions, not usually referred to, and, especially, the stress he laid on the irresistibility of the natural impulse, were not without notable effect on the minds of the people, already excited as they were.

In 1522, after having explained his new views on divorce, he puts himself the question, whether this “would not make it easy for wicked men and women to desert each other, and betake themselves to foreign parts”? His reply is: “How can I help it? It is the fault of the authorities. Why do they not strangle adulterers?”[539]

Certain preachers of Lutheranism made matters worse by the fanaticism with which they preached the freedom of the Evangel. So compromising was their support, that other of Luther’s followers found fault with it, for instance, the preacher Urbanus Rhegius[540] It was, however, impossible for these more cautious preachers to prevent Luther’s principles being carried to their consequences, in spite of all the care they took to emphasise his reserves and his stricter admonitions.

The Protestant Rector, J. Rivius, complained in 1547: “If you are an adulterer or lewdster, preachers say ... only believe and you will be saved. There is no need for you to fear the law, for Christ has fulfilled it and made satisfaction for all men.” “Such words seduce people into a godless life.”[541]

E. Sarcerius, the Superintendent of the county of Mansfeld, also bewailed, in a writing of 1555, the growing desecration of the married state: Men took more than one wife; this they did by “fleeing to foreign parts and seeking other wives. Some women do the same. Thus there is no end to the desertions on the part of both husbands and wives.” “In many places horrible adultery and fornication prevail, and these vices have become so common, that people no longer regard them as sinful.” “Thus there is everywhere confusion and scandal both in match-making and in celebrating the marriages, so that holy matrimony is completely dishonoured and trodden under foot.” “Of adultery, lewdness and incest there is no end.”[542]—These complaints were called forth by the state of things in the very county where Luther was born and died.

The convert George Wicel, who resided for a considerable time at Mansfeld, had an opportunity of observing the effects of Luther’s matrimonial teaching and of his preaching generally on a population almost entirely Protestant. He writes, in 1536: “It is enough to break a Christian’s heart to see so many false prophets and heretics flourishing in Germany, whose comforting and frivolous teaching fills the land not merely with adulterers but with regular heathen.”[543] In an earlier work he had said: “Oh, you people, what a fine manner of life according to the Gospel have you introduced by your preaching on Grace! Yes, they cry, you would make of Christ a Moses and a taskmaster; they, however, make of Him a procurer and an Epicurean by their sensual life and knavish example.”[544]

Luther, it is true, had an excuse ready. He pleaded that the freedom of the Gospel was not yet rightly understood. “The masses,” he wrote to Margrave George of Brandenburg, on Sep. 14, 1531, “have now fallen under the freedom of the flesh, and there we must leave them for a while until they have satisfied their lust. Things will be different when the Visitation is in working order [the first Visitation in the Margrave’s lands had taken place as early as 1528]. It is quick work pulling down an old house, but building a new one takes longer.... Jerusalem, too, was built very slowly and with difficulty.... Under the Pope we could not endure the constraint, and the lack of the Word; now we cannot endure the freedom and the superabundant treasure of the Gospel.”[545]

Amidst all these disorders Luther found great consolation in contemplating the anti-Christian character of the Popish Church and Daniel’s supposed prophecy of Antichrist’s enmity for woman.[546] His preachers only too eagerly followed in his footsteps.

George Wicel speaks of the preachers, who, while themselves leading loose lives, used Daniel’s prophecy against the Catholic view of marriage.[547] “They mock at those who wish to remain single or who content themselves with one wife, and quote the words of Daniel: ‘He shall not follow the lust of women nor regard any gods,’ so that anyone belonging to this sect who is not addicted to the pursuit of women, is hardly safe from being taken for Antichrist. The words of St. Paul in Cor. vii., of Our Lord in Mat. xix., concerning the third sex of the eunuchs, and of St. John in Apoc. xiv., on those who have not defiled themselves with women, and, again, of St. Paul when speaking of the ‘vidua digama’ in 1 Tim. v., don’t count a farthing in this Jovinian school[548].... It is an Epicurean school and an Epicurean life and nothing else.” With biting satire, in part the result of the controversy thrust upon him, in part the outcome of his temper, he had declared shortly before, that Lutheranism was all “love of women,” was “full of senseless lust for women”; he uses “gynecophiles” as an adjective to qualify it, and speaks of its “gynecomania”; by this means men were to become better Christians, and be more secure of salvation than all the Saints of God ever were in the ancient apostolic Church. “See there what Satan is seeking by means of this exalted respect for the love of women, and by his glib, feminist preachers in Saxony. Hence his and his followers’ concern for women, to whom they cling so closely that they can hardly get into their pulpits without them, and, rather than live a celibate life, the Evangelist would prefer to be the husband, not of one wife, but of three or four.”[549]

An intimate friend of Luther’s, Johann Brenz, wrote, in 1532, in a book to which Luther supplied the Preface: “The youngsters are barely out of the cradle before they want wives, and girls, not yet marriageable, already dream of husbands.”[550]—After the immoral atmosphere has brought about their fall, writes Fr. Staphylus, “they grow so impudent as to assert that a chaste and continent life is impossible and the gratification of the sexual appetite as essential as eating and drinking.”[551]—The same author, who returned to the Catholic Church, also wrote, in 1562: “So long as matrimony was looked upon as a Sacrament, modesty and an honourable married life was loved and prized, but since the people have read in Luther’s books that matrimony is a human invention ... his advice has been put in practice in such a way, that marriage is observed more chastely and honourably in Turkey than amongst our German Evangelicals.”[552]

The list of testimonies such as these might be considerably lengthened.[553]

It would, however, be unfair, in view of the large number of such statements, to shut our eyes to the remarkable increase, at that time, in the immorality already prevalent even in Catholic circles, though this was due in great measure to the malignant influence of the unhappy new idea of freedom, and to that contempt for ecclesiastical regulations as mere human inventions, which had penetrated even into regions still faithful to the Church.[554] Owing to the general confusion, ecclesiastical discipline was at a standstill, evil-doers went unpunished, nor could moral obligations be so regularly and zealously enforced. It is true that favourable testimonies arc not lacking on both sides, but they chiefly refer to remote Catholic and Protestant localities. As is usual, such reports are less noticeable than the unfavourable ones, the good being ever less likely to attract attention than the evil. Staphylus complains bitterly of both parties, as the very title of his book proves.[555] Finally, all the unfavourable accounts of the state of married life under Lutheranism are not quite so bad as those given above, in which moreover, maybe, the sad personal experience of the writers made them see things with a jaundiced eye.

That, in the matter of clerical morals, there was a great difference between the end of the 15th and the middle of the 16th centuries can be proved by such ecclesiastical archives as still survive; the condemnations pronounced in the 16th century are considerably more numerous than in earlier times.

On the grounds of such data Joseph Löhr has quite recently made a very successful attempt to estimate accurately the moral status of the clergy in the Lower Rhine provinces, particularly Westphalia.[556] He has based his examination more particularly on the records of the Archdeaconry of Xanten concerning the fines levied on the clergy for all sorts of offences. The accounts “cover a period of about one hundred years.”[557] In the 16th century we find a quite disproportionate increase in the number of offenders. There are, however, traces, over a long term of years, of a distinct weakening of ecclesiastical discipline which made impossible any effective repression of the growing evil.

A glance at the conditions prevailing in the 15th century in the regions on which Löhr’s researches bear is very instructive.

It enables us to see how extravagant and untrue were—at least with regard to these localities—the frequent, and in themselves quite incredible, statements made by Luther regarding the utter degradation of both clergy and religious owing to the law of celibacy. “Of a total of from 450 to 600 clergy in the Archdeaconry of the Lower Rhine (probably the number was considerably higher) we find, up to the end of the 15th century, on an average, only five persons a year being prosecuted by the Archdeacon for [various] offences.”[558] “Assuming a like density of clergy in Westphalia, the number prosecuted by the ecclesiastical commissioner in 1495 and in 1499 would amount roughly to 2 per cent., but, in 1515, already to 6 per cent.”[559]

The results furnished by such painstaking research are more reliable than the vague accounts and complaints of contemporaries.[560] Should the examination be continued in other dioceses it will undoubtedly do as much to clear up the question as the Visitation reports did for the condition of affairs in the 16th century under Lutheranism, though probably the final result will be different. The Lutheran Visitation reports mostly corroborate the unfavourable testimony of olden writers, whereas the fewness of the culprits shown in the Catholic lists of fines would seem to bear out, at least with regard to certain localities, those contemporaries who report favourably of the clergy at the close of the Middle Ages. One such favourable contemporary testimony comes from the Humanist, Jacob Wimpfeling, and concerns the clergy of the Rhine Lands. The statement of this writer, usually a very severe critic of the clergy, runs quite counter to Luther’s general and greatly exaggerated charges.[561] “God knows, I am acquainted with many, yea, countless pastors amongst the secular clergy in the six dioceses of the Rhine, who are richly equipped with all the knowledge requisite for the cure of souls and whose lives are blameless. I know excellent prelates, canons and vicars both at the Cathedrals and the Collegiate Churches, not a few in number but many, men of unblemished reputation, full of piety and generous and humble-minded towards the poor.”

Luther himself made statements which deprive his accusations of their point. Even what he says of the respect paid to the clerical state militates against him. Of the first Mass said by the newly ordained priest he relates, that “it was thought much of”; that the people on such occasions brought offerings and gifts; that the “bridegroom’s” “Hours” were celebrated by torchlight, and that he, together with his mother, if still living, was led through the streets with music and dancing, “the people looking on and weeping for joy.”[562] It is true that he is loud in his blame of the avarice displayed at such first Masses, but the respect shown by the people, and here described by him, would never have been exhibited towards the clergy had they rendered themselves so utterly contemptible by their immorality as he makes out.

In a sermon of 1521, speaking of the “majority of the clergy,” he admits that most of them “work, pray and fast a great deal”; that they “sing, speak and preach of the law and lead men to many works”; that they fancy they will gain heaven by means of “pretty works,” though all in vain, so he thinks, owing to their lack of knowledge of the Evangel.[563] During the earlier period of his change of opinions he was quite convinced, that a pernicious self-righteousness (that of the “iustitiarii”) was rampant amongst both clergy and religious; not only in the houses of his own Congregation, but throughout the Church, a painstaking observance of the law and a scrupulous fulfilment of their duty by the clergy and monks constituted a danger to the true spirit of the Gospel, as he understood it. It was his polemics which then caused him to be obsessed with the idea, that the whole world had been seized upon by the self-righteous. It was his polemics again, which, later, made him regard the whole world as full of immoral clerics.

The extravagance of Luther’s utterances in his fight against clerical celibacy might perhaps be regarded as due to the secluded life he had led at Wittenberg during the years he was a monk, which prevented him from knowing the true state of things. Experience gained by more extensive travel and intercourse with others might indeed have corrected his views. But, as a matter of fact, he was not altogether untravelled; besides visiting Rome and Southern Germany he had been to Heidelberg, Worms and Cologne. His stay at the latter city is particularly noteworthy, for there he was in the heart of the very region of which Wimpfeling had given so favourable an account. Can he, during the long journey on foot and in his conversations with his brother monks there, not have convinced himself, that the clergy residing in that city were by no means sunk in immorality and viciousness? His visit to Cologne coincided in all probability with the general Chapter which Staupitz had summoned there at the commencement of May, 1512. Luther only recalls incidentally having seen there the bodies of the Three Kings; having swallowed all the legends told him concerning them; and having drunk such wine as he had never drunk before.[564]

Two Concluding Pictures towards the History of Woman.

We may, in conclusion, give two pictures which cast a new and lurid light on what has gone before.

Luther’s standpoint, and, no less, the confusion which had arisen in married life and the humiliations to which many women were exposed, come out clearly in the story of his relations with the preacher Jodocus Kern and his spouse. Kern, an apostate monk, had wedded at Nuremberg Ursula Tagler, an ex-nun from the convent of Engelthal. On Dec. 24, 1524, Luther joyously commended him as “a monk, metamorphosed into a married man,” to the care of Spalatin.[565] When Kern went to Saxony in search of a post the girl refused to accompany him until he had found employment. During his absence she began to regret the step she had taken, and the letters she received from her former Prioress determined her to return no more to her husband. The persuasion of her Lutheran relatives indeed induced her to go to Allstedt after Kern had been appointed successor to Thomas Münzer in that town, but there her horror only grew for the sacrilegious union she had contracted. Coercion was quite fruitless. The minister, at the advice of her own relatives, treated her very roughly, forced her to eat meat on Good Friday and refused to listen when she urged him to return to the Catholic Church. Having made an attempt to escape to Mansfeld, her case was brought before the secular Courts; she was examined by the commissioner of Allstedt on January 11, 1526, when she declared, that it was against her conscience to look upon Kern as her husband, that her soul was dearer to her than her body and that she would rather die than continue to endure any longer the bonds of sin. This the commissioner reported to the Elector Johann, and the latter, on Jan. 17, forwarded her statement to Luther, together with Kern’s account, for the purpose of hearing from one so “learned in Scripture” “how the matter ought to be treated and disposed of in accordance with God’s Holy Writ.”[566]

Luther took a week to reply: The Allstedt woman was suffering such “temptations from the devil and men, that it would verily be a wonder if she could resist them.” The only means of keeping her true to the Evangel and to her duty would be to send her to her people at Nuremberg. Should, even there, “the devil refuse to yield to God’s good exhortation” then she would have to “be allowed to go,” and “be reckoned as dead,” and then the pastor might marry another. Out of the scandal that the wanton spirit had given through her God might yet work some good. “The Evangel neither will nor can be exempt from scandals.”[567]

The unhappy nun was, as a matter of fact, forcibly brought to Nuremberg and placed amongst Lutheran surroundings instead of being conveyed to her convent at Engelthal, as the laws of the Empire demanded. From thence she never returned to Allstedt. Kern, during the proceedings, had declared that he did not want her against her conscience, and was ready to submit to the Word of God and to comply exactly with whatever this imposed. In accordance therewith he soon found a fresh bride. During the Visitations, in 1533, he was charged with bigamy and was reprimanded for being a “drinker and gambler,” although his industry and talents were at the same time recognised. Nothing is known of his later doings.[568]

Two open letters addressed to Luther by Catholics in 1528 form a companion picture to the above. They portray the view taken by many faithful Catholics of Luther’s own marriage.

In that year two Professors at the Leipzig University, Johann Hasenberg and Joachim von der Heyden, published printed circulars addressed to Luther and Catherine von Bora, admonishing them—now that ten years had elapsed since Luther first attacked the Church—on their breaking of their vows, their desecration of the Sacrament of Matrimony and their falling away from the Catholic faith.[569] It is probable that Duke George of Saxony had something to do with this joint attack.[570] It is also likely that hopes of sterner measures on the part of the Imperial authorities also helped to induce the writers to put pen to paper.[571] In any case it was their plan, vigorously and before all the world, to attack the author of the schism in his most vulnerable spot, where it would not be easy for him to defend himself publicly. Master Hasenberg, a Bohemian, was one of George’s favourites, who had made him three years previously Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He addressed his open letter to “Martinus Luderus,” the “destroyer of the public peace and piety.” Von der Heyden, known in Latin as Myricianus or Phrisomynensis (a Frisian by birth), was likewise a Master, and Papal and academic Notary at Leipzig. Of the two he was the younger. His letter was addressed to “Khete von Bhore, Luther’s pretended wife,” and served as preface to a printed translation he had made of the work: “De lapsu virginis consecratæ,” then attributed to St. Ambrose.[572] Both epistles, according to one of the answers, must have been despatched by special messenger and delivered at Luther’s house. They drew forth printed replies, some of which can be traced to Luther himself, while Euricius Cordus ridiculed the writers in a screed full of biting epigram.

The Leipzig letters, the first of which was also published in German, made a great sensation in German circles and constituted an urgent exhortation to thousands of apostates estranged from the Church by Luther’s new doctrine on Christian freedom and on the nullity of vows.

Relentlessly Hasenberg put to Luther the questions: “Who has blasphemously slandered the pious promise of celibacy which priests, religious and nuns made to God, and which, throughout the ages, had been held sacred? Luderus. Who has shrouded in darkness free-will, good works, the ancient and unshaken faith, and that jewel of virginity which shines more brightly than the sun in the Church? Luderus.... Do you not yet see, you God-forsaken man, what all Christians think of your impudent behaviour, your temerity and voluptuousness?”

Referring to the sacrilegious union with Bora, he proceeds: “The enormity of your sin is patent. You have covered yourself with guilt in both your private and public life, particularly by your intercourse with the woman who is not your wife.” In his indignation he does not shrink from comparing the ex-nun to a lustful Venus. He thunders against Luther: “You, a monk, fornicate by day and by night with a nun! And, by your writings and sermons, you drag down into the abyss with you ignorant monks and unlearned priests, questionable folk, many of whom were already deserving of the gallows. Oh, you murderer of the people!” “Yes, indeed, this is the way to get to heaven—or rather to Lucifer’s kingdom! Why not say like Epicurus: There is no God and no higher power troubles about us poor mortals? Call upon your new gods, Bacchus, Venus, Mars, Priapus, Futina, Potina, Subigus and Hymenæus.” His wish for Luther’s spouse is, that she may take to heart the touching words of St. Ambrose to the fallen nun, so as not to fall from the abyss of a vicious life into the abyss of everlasting perdition prepared “for the devil and his Lutheran angels.” And again, turning to Luther: “Have pity,” he says, “on the nun, have compassion on the concubine and the children, your own flesh and blood. Send the nun back to the cloistral peace and penance which she forsook; free the unhappy creature from the embraces of sin and restore her to her mother the Church and to her most worthy and loving bridegroom Christ, so that she may again sing in unison with the faithful the Ambrosian hymn: ‘Iesu, corona virginum.’[573]... This much at least, viz. the dismissal of the nun, you cannot refuse us, however blindly you yourself may hurry along the sad path you have chosen. All the faithful, linked together throughout the world by the golden chain of charity, implore you with tears of blood; so likewise does your kind Mother, the Church, and the holy choirs of Angels, who rejoice over the sinner who returns penitent.”

The writer, who seasons his counsel with so much bitterness, had plainly little hope of the conversion of the man he was addressing; his attack was centred on Catharine Bora. This was even more so the case with von der Heyden, a man of lively character who delighted in controversy; even from his first words it is clear that he had no intention of working on her kindlier feelings: “Woe to you, poor deluded woman.” He upbraids her with her fall from light into darkness, from the vocation of the cloister into an “abominable and shameful life”; by her example she has brought “many poor, innocent children into a like misery”; formerly they had, as nuns, “lived in discipline and purity,” now they are “not merely in spiritual but in actual bodily want, nay, the poorest of the poor and have become the most despicable of creatures.” Many of them now earned a living in “houses of ill-fame,” they were frequently forced to pawn or sell their poor clothing, and sometimes themselves; they had hoped for the true freedom of the spirit that had been promised them, and, instead, they had been cast into a “horrible bondage of soul and body.” Luther “in his pestilential writings had mistaken the freedom of the flesh for the true liberty of the spirit, in opposition to St. Paul, who had based this freedom solely on the Spirit of the Lord, as in 2 Cor. iii. 17: ‘Where the Spirit of God is, there is liberty’” Luther’s preaching on liberty was one big lie, and another was his opinion that the “vow of virginity, where it was observed, was wicked and sinful, which statement was contrary to God and the whole of Scripture,” and more particularly opposed to St. Paul, who strongly condemned those who broke their plighted faith to Christ; St. Paul had quite plainly recommended clerical celibacy when he wrote, that he who is without a wife is solicitous for the things that are the Lord’s, but that the husband is solicitous for the things of the world, how best he may please his wife (1 Cor. vii. 32 f.).

Your “Squire Luther,” he says to Bora, “behaves himself very impudently and proudly”; “he fancies he can fly, that he is treading on roses and is ‘lux mundi’”; he forgets that God has commanded us to keep what we have vowed; people gladly obeyed the Emperor, yet God was “an Emperor above all Emperors,” and had still more right to fealty and obedience. Was she ignorant of Christ’s saying: “No man having put his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the Kingdom of God” (Luke ix. 62)? He reminds her of the severe penalties imposed by the laws of the Empire on those religious who were openly unfaithful to their vow, and, particularly, of the eternal punishment which should move her to leave the “horrid, black monk” (the Augustinians wore a black habit), to bewail like “St. Magdalene the evil she had done” and, by returning to the convent, to make “reparation for her infidelity to God.” St. Ambrose’s booklet on the fallen nun might lead her, and her companions in misfortune, to a “humble recognition” (of their sin), “and enable her to flee from the swift wrath of God and return to the fold of Christ, attain to salvation together with us all and praise the Lord for all eternity.”

We catch a glimpse of the gulf which divided people’s minds at that time in the very title of the reply by Euricius Cordus: “The Marburg literary society’s peal of laughter over the screed against Luther of two Leipzig poets.”[574]

Two satirical and anonymous replies immediately appeared in print at Wittenberg, the one entitled: “New-Zeittung von Leyptzig,” of which Luther “was not entirely innocent,” and the other quite certainly his work, viz. “Ein newe Fabel Esopi newlich verdeudscht gefunden.”[575] In the first reply spurious epistles are made to relate how the two Leipzig letters had been brought by a messenger to Luther’s house, and had then been carried by the servants unread to the “back-chamber where it stinketh.” “The paper having duly been submitted to the most ignominious of uses it was again packed into a bundle and despatched back to the original senders by the same messenger.”[576]

In his “Newe Fabel” (of the Lion and the Ass) Luther implicitly includes von der Heyden, all the defenders of the Pope, and the Pope himself under the figure of the Ass (with the cross on its back); “there is nothing about the Ass that is not worthy of royal and papal honours.”[577] The author of the letter he calls an ass’s head and sniveller; the very stones of Leipzig would spit upon him; he was the “horse-droppings in which the apples were packed”; his art had brought on him “such an attack of diarrhœa that all of us have been bespattered with his filth”; “If you wish to devour us, you might begin downstairs at the commode,” etc.[578]

We find nothing in either writing in the nature of a reply—of which indeed he considered the Leipzig authors unworthy—except the two following statements: firstly, Luther had sufficiently instructed his faithful wife, and the world in general, “that the religious life was wrong”;[579] secondly, Ambrose, Jerome, or whoever wrote the booklet, “had stormed and raved like a demon” in that work, which was “more heretical than Catholic, against the nun who had yielded to her sexual instincts; he had not spoken like a Doctor, ... but as one who wished to drive the poor prostitute into the abyss of hell; a murderer of souls pitted against a poor, feeble, female vessel.”[580] Hence Luther’s views are fairly apparent in the replies.

The Church, yea, even the Church of the earliest times, was made to bear the curse of having degraded woman and of having, by the religious life, declared war on marriage.

A contemporary, Petrus Silvius, who read Luther’s writings with indignation and disgust, wrote, in 1530: “Luther, with his usual lies and blasphemy, calumniates the Christian Church and now says, that she entirely rejected and condemned matrimony.”[581]

In what has gone before these falsehoods concerning the earlier degradation and his own exaltation of woman have been refuted at some length; the detailed manner in which this was done may find its vindication in the words of yet another opponent of Luther’s, H. Sedulius, who says: “It must be repeated again and again, that it is an impudent lie to say we condemn marriage.”[582]

CHAPTER XXIII

FRESH CONTROVERSIES WITH ERASMUS (1534, 1536) AND DUKE GEORGE († 1539)

[1. Luther and Erasmus Again]

In reply to Luther’s “De servo arbitrio” against Erasmus the latter had published, in 1526, a sharp retort entitled “Hyperaspistes,” which, in the following year, he enlarged by adding to it a second part.[583] In this work the author’s able pen brings into the light of day the weakness of Luther’s objections, his distortion of the Church’s teaching, his frequent misrepresentations of Erasmus and his own self-contradictions.

Luther did not then reply to the work of the chief of the Humanists. In the ensuing years, however, he became painfully aware that the hostility of Erasmus had lost him many adherents belonging to the Erasmian school. A great cleavage had become apparent in the scholar’s circle of friends till then so closely united, the greater number taking their master’s side against the smaller group which remained true to Luther. It was in vain that several of Erasmus’s admirers intervened and besought Luther to spare the feelings of the elder man. The Wittenberg professor made many cutting allusions to his opponent and assumed more and more an attitude which foreboded another open outburst of furious controversy.

With the art peculiar to him, he came to persuade himself, that the champion of free-will was hostile to the idea of any Divine supremacy over the human will, scoffed at all religion, denied the Godhead and was worse than any persecutor of the Church; he was confirmed in this belief by the sarcastic sayings about his Evangel, to which Erasmus gave vent in his correspondence and conversations, and which occasionally came to Luther’s knowledge. It is true that if we look at the matter through Luther’s spectacles we can understand how certain darker sides of Erasmus and his Humanist school repelled him. Luther fixed on these, and, as was his wont, harshly exaggerated and misrepresented them. The too-great attention bestowed on the outward form, seemingly to the detriment of the Christian contents, displeased him greatly; still more so did the undeniable frivolity with which sacred things, still dear to him, were treated. At the same time it was strange to him, and rightly so, how little heed the Humanists who remained faithful to the Church paid to the principle of authority and of ecclesiastical obedience, preferring to follow the lax example set by Erasmus himself, more particularly during the first period of his career; they appeared to submit to the yoke of the Church merely formally and from force of habit, and showed none of that heart-felt conviction and respect for her visible supremacy which alone could win the respect of those without.[584]

Schlaginhaufen has noted down the following remark made by Luther in 1532 when a picture of Erasmus was shown him. “The cunning of his mode of writing is perfectly expressed in his face. He does nothing but mock at God and religion. When he speaks of our Holy Christ, of the Holy Word of God and the Holy Sacraments, these are mere fine, big words, a sham and no reality.... Formerly he annoyed and confuted the Papacy, now he draws his head out of the noose.”[585] In the same year, and according to the same reporter, he declared: “Erasmus is a knave incarnate.... Were I in good health, I should inveigh against him. To him the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are something ludicrous.... Erasmus is as sure there is no God as I am that I can see. Lucian himself was not so bold and impudent as Erasmus.”[586]

At Easter of the following year Veit Dietrich, who lived in Luther’s house, announced in a letter to Nuremberg, that the storm was about to break: Luther was arming himself against Erasmus, reading his books carefully and gathering together his blasphemies. The same writer in a collection of Luther’s conversations not yet published quotes the following outbursts: “Erasmus makes use of ambiguities, intentionally and with malice, this I shall prove against him.... Were I to cut open Erasmus’s heart, I should find nothing but mockeries of the Trinity, the Sacraments, etc. To him the whole thing is a joke.”[587]

And yet, at that very time, Erasmus, who, as years passed, had come to regret his earlier faults of the pen,[588] was engaged in composing serious and useful works, in which, though not unfaithful to his older style, he sought to defend the dogmas of religion and the authority of the Church. In March his “Explanatio symboli, decalogi et dominicæ precationis” was issued at Basle by Froben; another important work of the same year, appearing in the guise of an exposition of Psalm lxxxiv., contained counsels how best to restore the unity of the Church and to root out abuses. Therein he does not deny the duty of submitting to the Church, but recommends both sides to be ready to give and take.

When Luther’s little son Hans had, in his Latin lessons, to study some works composed by Erasmus for the young, his father wrote out for him the following warning: “Erasmus is a foe to all religion and an arch-enemy of Christ; he is the very type of an Epicurus and Lucian. This I, Martin Luther, declare in my own handwriting to you, my very dear son Johann, and, through you, to all my children and the holy Church of Christ.”[589]

Luther’s pent-up wrath at length vented itself in print. He had received a letter sent him from Magdeburg, on Jan. 28, 1534, by Nicholas Amsdorf, the old friend who knew so well how to fan the flames of enthusiasm for the new teaching, and who now pointed out Erasmus as the source whence George Wicel had drawn all his material for his latest attack on Lutheranism.[590] It was high time, he wrote, that Luther should paint Erasmus “in his true colours and show that he was full of ignorance and malice.” This he would best do in a tract “On the Church,” for this was the Erasmians’ weak point: They stick to the Church, because “bishops and cardinals make them presents of golden vessels,” and then “they cry out: Luther’s teaching is heresy, having been condemned by Emperor and Pope.” “I, on the other hand, see all about me the intervention and the wonders of God; I see that faith is a gift of God Who works when and where He wills, just as he raised His Son Christ from the dead. Oh, that you could see the country folk here and admire in them the glory of Christ!”

The letter pleased Luther so well that he determined to print it, appending to it a lengthy answer to Amsdorf, both being published together.[591]

In this answer, before launching out into invective against Erasmus he joins in his friend’s enthusiastic praise of the Evangel which has dawned: “Our cause was heard at Augsburg before the Emperor and the whole world, and has been found blameless; they could not but recognise the purity of our teaching.... We have confessed Christ before the evil generation of our day, and He too will confess us before God the Father and His angels.” “Wicel, I shall vanquish by silence and contempt, as my custom is. How many books I have disposed of and utterly annihilated merely by my silence, Eck, Faber, Emser, Cochlæus and many others could tell. Had I to fight with filth, I should, even if victorious, get dirty in the process. Hence I leave them to revel in their blasphemy, their lying and their calumny.”

He might, he proceeds, leave Erasmus too to dissolve into smoke like those others. For a long time past he had looked on him as one crazy (“delirus”); since he had given birth to the “viperaspides” (i.e. “brood of vipers,” a play on the title of the “Hyperaspistes”) he had given up all hopes of his theology, but would follow Amsdorf’s advice and expose his malice and ignorance to the world.

In contradiction to the facts he goes on to declare, that, in his “Explanatio symboli,” of 1533, Erasmus had “slyly planned” to undermine all respect for the Christian doctrines, and for this purpose ingratiated himself with his readers and sought to befool them, as the serpent did in Paradise. The Creed was nothing to him but a “fable,”—in support of which Luther adduces what purports to be a verbal quotation—nothing but the “mouthpiece and organ of Satan”; his method was but “a mockery of Christ”; according to him, the Redeemer had come into the world simply to give an example of holiness; His taking flesh of a virgin Erasmus described in obscene and blasphemous language; naturally the Apostles fared no better at his hands, and he even said of John the Evangelist, “meros crepat mundos” (because he mentions the “world” too often): there were endless examples of this sort to be met with in the writings of Erasmus. He was another Democrites or Epicurus; even what was doubtful in his statements had to be taken in the worst sense, and he himself (Luther) would be unable to believe this serpent even should he come to him with the most outspoken confession of Christianity.

All this he wrote seemingly with the utmost conviction, as though it were absolutely certain. At about that same time he sent a warning to his friend Amsdorf not to allege anything against Erasmus, which was not certain, should he be tempted to write against him.[592] Yet Luther’s fresh charges were undoubtedly unjust to his opponent, although his letter really does forcibly portray much that was blame-worthy in Erasmus, particularly in his earlier work, for instance, his ambiguous style of writing, so often intentionally vague and calculated to engender scepticism.[593]

Not even in Luther’s immediate circle did this letter meet with general approval. Melanchthon wrote, on March 11, 1534, to Camerarius: “Our Arcesilaus [Luther] is starting again his campaign against Erasmus; this I regret; the senile excitement of the pair disquiets me.”[594] On May 12, 1535, he even expressed himself as follows to Erasmus, referring to the fresh outbreak of hostilities: “The writings published here against you displease me, not merely on account of my private relations with you, but also because they do no public good.”[595]

Boniface Amerbach, a friend of Erasmus’s, sent Luther’s letter to his brother, calling it a “parum sana epistola,” and adding, “Hervagius [the Basle printer] told me recently that Luther, for more than a year, had been suffering from softening of the brain (‘cephalæa’), I think the letter proves this, and also that he has not yet recovered, for in it there is no trace of a sound mind.”[596]

Recent Protestant historians speak of the letter as “on the whole hasty and dictated by jealousy,”[597] and as based “in part on inaccurate knowledge and a misapprehension of Erasmus’s writings.”[598]

Shortly after this Luther expressed himself with rather more moderation in a Preface which he composed for Anton Corvinus’s reply to Erasmus’s proposals for restoring the Church to unity. In this writing he sought to make his own the more moderate tone which dominated Corvinus’s works. He represented as the chief obstacle to reunion the opinion prevalent amongst his opponents of the consideration due to the Church. Their one cry was “the Church, the Church, the Church”; this has confirmed Erasmus in his unfounded opposition to the true Evangel, in spite of his having himself thrown doubt on all the doctrines of the Church.[599] He could not as yet well undertake a work on the subject of the Church, such as Amsdorf wished, as he was fully occupied with his translation of the Bible. In the Preface referred to above he announced, however, his intention of doing so later. The result was his “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen,” of 1539, which will be treated of below.[600]

Erasmus was unwilling to go down to the grave bearing the calumnies against his faith which Luther had heaped upon him. He owed it to his reputation to free himself from these unjust charges. This he did in a writing which must be accounted one of the most forcible and sharpest which ever left his pen. The displeasure and annoyance which he naturally felt did not, however, interfere with his argument or prevent him from indulging in sparkling outbursts of wit. Amerbach had judged Luther’s attack “insane”; Erasmus, for his part, addressed his biting reply to “one not sober.” The title of the writing, published at Basle in 1534, runs: “Purgatio adversus epistolam non sobriam M. Lutheri.”[601]

It was an easy matter for Erasmus to convict the author of manifest misrepresentation and falsehood.

He repeatedly accuses the writer of downright lying. What he charges me with concerning my treatment of the Apostle John, “is a palpable falsehood. Never, even in my dreams, did the words which he quotes as mine enter my mind.” Such a lie he can have “welded together” only by joining two expressions used in other contexts.[602]

As for his alleged blasphemy concerning Christ’s birth from the Virgin Mary, Erasmus protests: “I can swear I never said anything of the kind either in a letter, as Luther makes out, though he fails to say which, or in any of my writings.” Moreover he was a little surprised to find Luther, whose own language was not remarkable for modesty, suddenly transformed into a champion of cleanliness of speech: “Everything, bridegroom, bride and even best man, seems of a sudden to have become obscene to this Christian Luther,” etc.

Erasmus also points out that the passage concerning the Creed being a mere fable had been invented by Luther himself by means of deliberate “distortion” and shameful misinterpretation: “No text,” he exclaims, “is safe from his calumny and misrepresentation.” As for what Luther had said, viz. that “whoever tells untruths lies even when he speaks the truth,” and that he would refuse to believe Erasmus even were he to make an orthodox profession of faith, Erasmus’s retort is: “Whoever spoke this bit of wisdom was assuredly out of his senses and stood in need of hellebore” (the remedy for madness). As to the charge of deliberately leading others into infidelity he does not shrink from telling Luther, that “he will find it easier to persuade all that he has gone mad out of hatred, is suffering from some other form of mental malady, or is led by some evil genius.”[603]

Luther took good care to say nothing in public about the rebuff he had received from Erasmus; nor did he ever make any attempt to refute the charge of having “lied.”

In the circle of his intimate friends, however, he inveighed all the more against the leader of the Humanists as a sceptic and seducer to infidelity.

After Erasmus’s death he declared that, till his end (1536), he lived “without God.” He refused to give any credence to the report that he had displayed faith and piety at the hour of death. Erasmus’s last words were: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. I will extol the mercies of the Lord and His judgments.”[604] Luther, on the other hand, in his Latin Table-Talk says: “He died just as he lived, viz. like an Epicurean, without a clergyman and without comfort.... ‘Securissime vixit, sicut etiam morixit,’” he adds jestingly. “Those pious words attributed to him are, sure enough, an invention.”[605]

Erasmus, he says,—revealing for once the real ground of all his hatred—“might have been of great service to the cause of the Evangel; often was he exhorted to this end.... But he considered it better that the Gospel should perish and not be preached than that all Germany should be convulsed and all the Princes be troubled with risings.” “He refuses to teach Christ,” he said of him during his lifetime; “he does not take it seriously, that is the way with all Italians and with them he has had much intercourse. One page of Terence is better than his whole ‘Dialogus’ or his ‘Colloquium’; he mocks not only at religion but even at politics and at public life. He has no other belief than the Roman; he believes what Clement VII believes; this he does at his command, and yet at the same time sneers at it.... I fear he will die the death of the wicked.”[606] After the scholar’s decease, Luther naturally desired to find his prophecy fulfilled.

An obvious weapon, one constantly employed against Luther by his foes, was to twit him with his lies; a reply addressed to him in 1531 by a friend of George of Saxony, Franz Arnoldi of Cöllen, near Meissen, was no exception to the rule. In this little work entitled “Antwort auf das Büchlein,” etc., it is not merely stated that Luther, in his “Auff das vermeint Keiserlich Edict,” had put forward “as many lies as there were words,”[607] but it is also pointed out that the Augsburg Edict, “which is truly Christian and requires no glosses,” had been explained by him most abominably and shamefully, and given a meaning such as His Imperial Majesty and those who promulgated or executed it had never even dreamt of.[608] “He promises us white and gives us black. This has come down to him from his ancestor, the raging devil, who is the father of lies.... With such lies does Martin Luther seek to deck out his former vices.”[609]

[2. Luther on George of Saxony and George on Luther]

The hostile relations between Luther and Duke George of Saxony found expression at the end of 1525 in a correspondence, which throws some light on the origin and extent of the tension and on the character of both men. The letters exchanged were at once printed and spread rapidly through the German lands, one serving to enlist recruits to Luther’s standard, the other constituting a furious attack on the innovations.[610]

Luther’s letter of Dec. 21, 1525, to the Duke, “his gracious master,” was “an exhortation to join the Word of God,” as the printed title runs. Sent at a time when the peasants, after their defeat, had deserted Luther, and when the latter was attaching himself all the more closely to those Royal Courts which were well disposed towards him, the purpose of the letter was to admonish the chief opponent of the cause, “not so barbarously to attack Christ, the corner-stone,” but to accept the Evangel “brought to light by me.” He bases his “exhortation” on nothing less than the absolute certainty of his mission and teaching. “Because I know it, and am sure of it, therefore I must, under pain of the loss of my own soul, care, beg and implore for your Serene Highness’s soul.” He had already diligently prayed to God to “turn his heart,” and he was loath now “to pray against him for the needs of the cause”; his prayers and those of his followers were invincibly powerful, yea, “stronger than the devil himself,” as the failure of all George’s and his friends’ previous persecutions proved, “though men do not see or mark God’s great wonders in me.”

It is hard to believe that the author, in spite of all he says, really expected his letter to effect the conversion of so energetic and resolute an opponent; nevertheless, his assurances of his peaceable disposition were calculated to promote the Lutheran cause in the public eye, whatever the answer might be. He will, he says in this letter, once again “beseech the Prince in a humble and friendly manner, perhaps for the last time”; George and Luther might soon be called away by God; “I have now no more to lose in this world but my carcase, which each day draws closer to the grave.” Formerly he had, it is true, spoken “harshly and crossly” to him, as God also does “to those whom He afterwards blesses and consoles”; he had, however, also published “many kindlier sermons and booklets in which everyone might discern that I mean ill to no one but desire to serve every man to the best of my ability.”

The letter partook of the nature of a manifesto, intended to place the Catholic-minded Prince publicly in the wrong, if it did not, as was hardly to be expected, draw him over to the side of the innovators.

The Duke replied, on Dec. 28, in a manner worthy of his status in the Empire and of the firm attitude he had maintained so far. “As a layman” he refused to enter upon a “Scriptural disputation” with Luther; it was not untrue that Luther had attacked him “harshly and contrary to the ordinance of God and the command of the Gospel”; Luther might, if he chose, compare his former severity with that of God, but he certainly would not find, “in the Gospels or anywhere in Scripture,” abusive epithets such as he employed; for him, as a sovereign, to have had to put up with such treatment from a man under the ban of the Empire, had cost him much; he had been compelled to put pressure on himself to accept “persecution for justice’ sake.” Luther’s “utterly shameful abuse of our most gracious Lord, the Roman Emperor,” made it impossible for him to be Luther’s “gracious master.”

Formerly, so George admits, when Luther’s writings “first appeared, some of them had pleased him. Nor were we displeased to hear of the Disputation at Leipzig, for we hoped from it some amendment of the abuses amongst Christians.” Luther, however, in his very hearing at Leipzig, had advanced Hussite errors, though he had afterwards promised him privately to “write against them” in order to allay any suspicion; in spite of this he had written in favour of Hus and against the Council of Constance and against “all our forefathers.”

He, for his part, held fast to the principle, “that all who acted in defiance of obedience and separated themselves from the Christian Churches were heretics and should be regarded as such, for so they had been declared by the Holy Councils, all of which you deny, though it does not beseem you nor any Christian.” Hence he would “trouble little” about Luther’s Evangel, but would continue to do his best to exclude it from his lands.

“One cause for so doing is given us in the evil fruit which springs from it; for neither you nor any man can say that aught but blasphemy of God, of the Blessed and Holy Sacrament, of the most Holy Mother of God and all the Saints has resulted from your teaching; for in your preaching all the heresies condemned of old are revived, and all honourable worship of God destroyed to an extent never witnessed since the days of Sergius [the monk supposed to have taught Mohammed]. When have more acts of sacrilege been committed by persons dedicated to God than since you introduced the Evangel? Whence has more revolt against authority come than from your Evangel? When has there been such plundering of poor religious houses? When more robbery and thieving? When were there so many escaped monks and nuns at Wittenberg as now?”[611] etc.

“Had Christ wanted such an Evangel, He would not have said so often: Peace be with you! St. Peter and St. Paul would not have said that the authorities must be obeyed. Thus the fruits of your teaching and Evangel fill us with horror and disgust. We are, however, ready to stake body, soul, goods and honour in defence of the true Gospel, in which may God’s Grace assist us!”

After urgent admonitions offered to Luther “as New-Year wishes,” more particularly to sever his connection with the nun, he promises him his assistance should he obey him: “We shall spare no pains to obtain the clemency of our most gracious Lord the Emperor, so far as is possible to us here, and you need have no fear of any ill on account of what you have done against us, but may expect all that is good. That you may see your way to this is our hope. Amen.”

Few Princes were to suffer worse treatment at Luther’s hands than Duke George. The Duke frequently retaliated by charging Luther with being a liar.

He wrote, for instance, in 1531, that Luther simply bore witness to the fact that the “spirit of lying” dwelt in him, “who speaks nothing but his own fabrications and falsehood.” “You forsworn Luther,” he says to him, “you who treacherously and falsely calumniate His Imperial Majesty.”[612]

Luther’s anger against the most influential Prince in the Catholic League was not diminished by the fact, that the Duke severely censured the real evils on the Catholic side, was himself inclined to introduce reforms on his own, and even, at times, to go too far. Such action on George’s part annoyed Luther all the more, because in all this the Duke would not hear of any relinquishing of ancient dogma. Hence we find Luther, quite contrary to the real state of the case, abusing George as follows: The Duke was secretly in favour of the new teaching and his resistance was merely assumed; he was opposed to the reception of the Sacrament under both kinds, only because he wished to tread under foot the whole teaching of Christ, to forbid Holy Scripture altogether and particularly to condemn St. Paul;[613] if he, Luther, were not allowed to abuse the Duke, then neither might he call the devil a murderer and a liar.[614] “He is my sworn, personal enemy,” he says, and proceeds in the same vein: “Had I written in favour of the Pope, he would now be against the Pope, but because I write against the Pope, he fights for him and defends him.”[615]

Luther, as his manner was, announced as early as 1522 that “the Judgment of God would inevitably overtake him.”[616] When the Duke, in 1539, had died the death of a Christian, Luther said: “It is a judgment on those who despise the one true God.” “It is an example when a father and two fine grown-up sons sink into the grave in so short a time, but I, Dr. Luther, prophesied that Duke George and his race would perish.”[617] There was, according to Luther, only one ray of hope for the eternal happiness of the Duke, viz. that, when his son Hans lay dying in 1537, not so long before his own death, it was reported he had consoled him in the Lutheran fashion. According to Luther he had encouraged him with the article on Justification by Faith in Christ and reminded him, “that he must look only to Christ, the Saviour of the world, and forget his own works and merits.”[618] Needless to say the pious thoughts suggested to the dying man were simply those usually placed before the mind of faithful Catholics at the hour of death.

Luther’s imagination and his polemics combine to trace a picture of Duke George which is as characteristic of himself as it is at variance with the figure of the Duke, as recorded in history. He accused the Duke of misgovernment and tyranny and incited his subjects against him; and, in his worst fit of indignation, launched against the Duke the booklet “Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen” (1531).[619] Yet the Saxons generally did not regard the Duke’s government as tyrannical or look upon him as an “assassin,” not even the Lutherans who formed the majority. On the contrary, they were later on to acknowledge, that, under the Duke’s reign, they had enjoyed “prosperity and peace” with the Emperor, amongst themselves and with their neighbours. His firmness and honour were no secret to all who knew him. The King of France admired his disinterestedness, when, in 1532, he rejected the proffered yearly pension of at least 5000 Gulden which was to detach him from the Empire. At the Diet of Worms this Catholic Duke had been the most outspoken in condemning the proposal made, that Luther should be refused a safe conduct for his return journey; he pointed out how much at variance this was with German ways and what a lasting shame it would bring on the German Princes. As for the rest he favoured the use of strong measures to safeguard Germany from religious and political revolution. He also befriended, more than any other German Prince or Bishop, those scholars who attacked Luther in print.

After the appearance of the libel “Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen,” he wrote a reply entitled “About the insulting booklet which Martin Luther has published against the Dresden murderer,” though it was issued in 1531, not under his own name, but under that of Franz Arnoldi.[620]

The work is more a vindication of the Empire’s Catholic standpoint and of the honour of the Catholics against Luther’s foul suspicions and calumnies, than a personal defence of his own cause. It is couched in the language we might expect from a fighter and a sovereign pelted with filth before the eyes of his own subjects. It hails expressions of the roughest against Luther, the convicted “rebel against the Emperor and all authority,” the inventor of “slimy fabrications and palpable lies” not worth an answer, amongst which was the “downright false” assertion, that “the Papists are up in arms” against the Protestant Estates.[621] In order to understand its tone we must bear in mind Luther’s own method of belabouring all his foes with the coarsest language at his command.

At the beginning of his writing the Duke says of Luther’s abuse: “If both Lutherans and Papists could be reformed by vituperation and abuse, cursing and swearing, then His Imperial Roman Majesty, Christian kings, princes and lords would have had no need of a scholar; plenty other people, for instance, worn-out whores, tipsy boors and loose knaves, might have done it just as well without any assistance or help of yours.”[622]

The following, taken from the Duke’s writing, carries us back into the very thick of the excitement of those years:

“Who is the man who, contrary to God, law, justice and all Scripture and knowledge, has sacrilegiously robbed, stolen and taken from Christ all the possessions bestowed upon Him hundreds of years ago by emperors, kings, princes, lords, counts, knights, nobles, burghers and peasants, all of whom, out of fervent love and appreciation for His sacred Passion, His rosy blood and guiltless death, gave their gifts for the establishment of monasteries, parish-churches, altars, cells, hospitals, mortuaries, guilds, roods, etc., etc.? Why, Squire Martin, Dr. Luther!—Who has plundered and despoiled the poor village clergy—who were true pastors of the Church, ministers of the Sacraments, preachers and guides of souls—of their blood and sweat, their hardly earned yearly stipend, nay, their sacred gifts such as tithes, rents, offerings and Church dues, and that without any permission of the Ordinaries and contrary to God, to honour and to justice? Why, Dr. Pig-trough Luther!—Who has robbed, plundered and deprived God during the last twelve years of so many thousand souls and sent them down with bloody heads to Lucifer in the abyss of hell? Who, but the arch-murderer of souls, Dr. Donkey-ear Mertein Luther!—Who has robbed Christ of His wedded spouses—many of whom (though perhaps not all) had served Him diligently day and night for so many years in a lovely, spiritual life—and has brought them down to a miserable, pitiable and wicked mode of life? Shame upon you, you blasphemous, sacrilegious man, you public bordeller for all escaped monks and nuns, apostate priests and renegades generally!—Who has filched, robbed and stolen from his Imperial Roman Majesty, our beloved, innocent, Christian Prince Charles V., and from kings, princes and lords, the honour, respect, service, obedience and the plighted oath of their subjects (not of all, thank God) by false, seditious and damnable writings and doctrines? Why, sure, Dr. Luther!—Who has made so many thieves and scoundrels as are now to be found in every corner, amongst them so many runaway monks, so that in many places, as I hear, one is not safe from them either in the streets or at home? Why, Dr. Luther! That nothing might be left undone, he has also destroyed the religious houses of nuns.—‘Summa summarum,’ there would be so much to tell, that, for the sake of brevity, it must stick in the pen.... But I will show you from Scripture who was the first, the second and the third sacrilegious robber. The first was Lucifer, who, out of pride, tried to rob the Almighty of His glory, power, praise and service (Is. xiv. 12). He received his reward. The second was Aman, who stole from God the highest honour, viz. worship, for, in his malice, he caused himself to be worshipped as God. He was hanged on a gallows 50 ells high. Judas Scariothis stole from Christ and His Apostles the tenth penny of their daily living; he hanged himself. Luther, the fourth sacrilegious robber, has surpassed all men in iniquity; what his end and reward will be God alone knows.”[623]

It has been said, that, among the defenders of Catholicism, no voice was raised which could compare in any way in emphasis and power with that of Luther. Döllinger in later life considered that, in comparison with Luther, his opponents could only “stammer”; what they advanced sounded “feeble, weak and colourless.”[624] Yet, what we have just quoted from Duke George cannot in fairness be charged with weakness. Their indignation and fiery zeal inspired other Catholics too to express with eloquence and rudeness their conviction of the evil consequences of Luther’s action.

CHAPTER XXIV

MORAL CONDITIONS ACCOMPANYING THE REFORMATION PRINCELY PATRONS

[1. Reports from various Lutheran Districts]

After Duke George of Saxony had been carried off by death on April 17, 1539, a sudden revulsion in favour of Lutheranism took place in his land. Duke Henry, his brother, who succeeded him, introduced the new teaching to which he had long been favourable. Luther came at once to Leipzig with Melanchthon, Jonas and Cruciger to render at least temporary assistance, by preaching and private counsel. In July of that same year an Evangelical Visitation was already arranged by Duke Henry on the lines of that in the Saxon Electorate; this was carried out by Luther’s preachers.

Many abuses dating from Catholic times were prevalent amongst both people and parochial clergy. Concubinage in particular had increased greatly in the clerical ranks under the influence of the new ideas. Luther himself boasted of having advised “several parish-priests under Duke George to marry their cook secretly.”[625] But much greater disorders than had previously existed crept in everywhere at the commencement of the change.

Luther himself was soon at a loss to discover any religious spirit or zeal for ecclesiastical affairs, either in the ruler or in his councillors. The Duke seemed to him “old, feeble and incapable.” He complained, on March 3, 1540, to his friend Anton Lauterbach, then minister at Pirna: “I see well enough, that, at the Dresden Court there is an extraordinary unwillingness to advance the cause of God or man; there pride and greed of gain reign supreme. The old Prince can’t do anything, the younger Princes dare not, and would not even had they the courage. May God keep the guidance of His Church in His own Hands until He finds suitable tools.”[626] On the moral conditions at the Ducal Court he passes a startling and hasty judgment when he says, writing to his Elector in 1540, that there the “scandals were ten times worse” than those caused by the Hessian bigamy. He was annoyed to find that, even after the introduction of the new teaching, the courtiers and nobles thought only of replenishing their purses. He speaks of them as the “aristocratic harpies of the land,” and exclaims: “These courtiers will end by eating themselves up by their own avarice.”[627] They refused to support the ministers of the Word and disputed amongst themselves as to whose duty it was to do so; they did not hide their old contempt for Wittenberg, i.e. for its theologians and theology, and yet they expected Wittenberg to carry out the Visitations free of cost. “Even should you get nothing for the Visitation,” he nevertheless instructs one of the preachers, “still you must hold it as well as you can, comfort souls to the best of your power and, in any case, expel the poisonous Papists.”[628]

The unexpected and apparently so favourable change in the Duchy really did little to dispel his gloom, though he occasionally intones a hymn of gratitude and admiration for the working of Providence displayed in the change of rulers.

About this time (1539), in Brandenburg, the Elector Joachim II. also ushered in the innovations. The rights and possessions of the ancient Church fell a prey to the spoilers. Luther praised the ruler for going forward so bravely “to the welfare and salvation of many souls.” He was, however, apprehensive lest the “roaring of the lion in high places” might influence the Elector; with the Divine assistance, however, he would not fear even this.[629] He showed himself strangely lenient in regard to the Elector’s prudent retention of much more of the Catholic ceremonial than had been preserved in any other German land. Even the Elevation of the Sacrament at Mass (or rather at the sham Mass still in use) was tolerated by Luther; he writes: “We had good reasons for doing away with the elevation [of the Sacrament] here at Wittenberg, but perhaps at Berlin you have not.”[630]

In the Duchy of Prussia, formerly ecclesiastical property of the Teutonic Knights, the way had been paved for the apostasy of these Knights, all bound by the vow of chastity, by Luther’s alluring tract “An die Herrn Deutschs Ordens, das sic falsche Keuscheyt meyden und zur rechten ehlichen Keuscheyt greyffen.”[631] Albert, the Grand Master, who had visited Luther twice, as already narrated, seized upon the lands of the Order belonging to the Church and caused himself to be solemnly invested and proclaimed hereditary Duke of Prussia on April 10, 1525; thereupon Luther sent him his congratulations that God should have so graciously called him to this new Estate. The Grand Master, himself a married man, with the assistance of the two apostate Bishops of Samland and Pomerania, then established Lutheranism. As chief Bishop he assumed the position of head of the territorial Church, agreeably with the Protestant practice in the other German lands. The episcopal jurisdiction was transferred to the civil Consistorial Courts.

Violent appropriation of alien property, as well as illegal assumption of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, also characterised the advent of the new faith in Würtemberg. Duke Ulrich, who had been raised to the throne in 1534 by a breach of the peace of the Empire and contrary to all law and justice, thanks to the successful raid of Philip of Hesse (above, p. 47; vol. iii., p. 67 f.), continued to labour under the stigma attaching to the manner in which he had obtained the Duchy, in spite of the peace he had patched up with the Emperor. The religious transformation of the country was however, soon accomplished, thanks to his pressure.

The chief part in this, so far as Upper Würtemberg was concerned, devolved on the preacher, Ambrosius Blaurer (Blarer), who favoured the Zwinglian leanings of Bucer.

Blaurer was openly accused of deception and hypocrisy in the matter of his profession of faith. Though he had formerly sided with Zwingli in the denial of the Sacrament, he vindicated his Lutheran orthodoxy to his patron, the Duke, by means of a formulary[632] tallying with Luther’s doctrine on the Supper. Subsequently, however, he issued an “Apology,” in which he declared he had not in the least altered his views. “Who does not see the deception?” wrote Luther’s friend, Veit Dietrich; “formerly he made a profession of faith in our own words, and now he attacks everybody who says he has retracted his previous opinion.”[633] Luther had been a prey to the greatest anxiety on learning that Blaurer had become the Duke’s favourite. “If this be true,” he wrote, “what hope is left for the whole of Upper Germany?”[634] Much as he had rejoiced at Blaurer’s apparent retractation in the matter of the Sacrament, he was very mistrustful of his bewildering “Apology.” “I only hope it be meant seriously,” he declared; “it scandalises many that Blaurer should be so anxious to make out that he never thought differently. People find this hard to believe.” “For the sake of unity I shall, however, put a favourable interpretation on everything. I am ready to forgive anyone who in his heart thinks aright, even though he may have been in error or hostile to me.”[635] Thus he practically pledged himself to silence regarding the work.

Of “Blaurer’s” doings in Würtemberg, now won over to the new Evangel, the Bavarian agent, Hans Werner, a violent opponent of Duke Ulrich’s, wrote: “He preaches every day; yet none save the low classes and common people, etc., attend his sermons, for these readily accept the Evangel of mine being thine and thine mine. Item, Blaurer has full powers, writes hither and thither in the land, turns out here a provost, there a canon, vicar, rector or priest and banishes them from the country by order of Duke Ulrich; he appoints foreigners, Zwinglians or Lutheran scamps, of whom no one knows anything; all must have wife and child, and if there be still a priest found in the land, he is forced to take a wife.”[636]

In the Würtemberg lowlands, north of Stuttgart, a zealous Lutheran, Erhard Schnepf, laboured for the destruction of the old Church system; Duke Ulrich also summoned Johann Brenz, the Schwäbisch-Hall preacher, to his land for two years.

At Christmas, 1535, Ulrich gave orders to all the prelates in his realm to dismiss the Catholic clergy in their districts and appoint men of the new faith, as the former “did nothing but blaspheme and abuse the Divine truth.”[637] Even the assisting at Mass in neighbouring districts was prohibited by the regulation issued in the summer of 1536, which at the same time prescribed the attendance of Catholics at least once every Sunday and Holiday at the preaching of the new ministers of the Word; under this intolerable system of compulsion Catholics were reduced to performing all their religious exercises in their own homes.[638] The violent suppression of the monasteries and the sequestration of monastic property went hand in hand with the above. In the convents of women, which still existed, the nuns were forced against their will to listen to the sermons of the preachers. Church property was everywhere confiscated so far as the ancient Austrian law did not prevent it. The public needs and the scarcity of money were alleged as pretexts for this robbery. The Mass vestments and church vessels were allotted to the so-called poor-boxes. At Stuttgart, for instance, the costly church vestments were sold for the benefit of the poor. In the troubles many noble works of art perished, for “all precious metal was melted down and minted, nor were cases of embezzlement altogether unknown.” “The Prince, with the approach of old age, manifested pitiable miserliness and cupidity.”[639] Unfortunately he was left a free hand in the use of the great wealth that poured into his coffers. But, not even in the interests of the new worship, would he expend what was necessary, so that the vicarages fell into a deplorable state. In other matters, too, the new Church of the country suffered in consequence of the way in which Church property was handled. The inevitable consequence was the rise of many quarrels, complaints were heard on all sides and even the Schmalkalden League was moved to remonstrate with Ulrich.[640]

Terrible details concerning the alienation of church and monastic property are reported from Würtemberg by contemporaries. The preacher Erhard Schnepf, the Duke’s chief tool, was also his right hand in the seizure of property. Loud complaints concerning Schnepf’s doings, and demands that he should be made to render an account, were raised even by such Protestants as Bucer and Myconius, and by the speakers at the religious conference at Worms. He found means, however, to evade this duty. One of those voices of the past bewails the treatment meted out to the unfortunate religious: “Even were the Würtemberg monks and nuns all devils incarnate and no men, still Duke Ulrich ought not to proceed against them in so un-Christian, inhuman and tyrannical a fashion.”[641]

The relentless work of religious subversion bore everywhere a political stamp. The leaders were simply tools of the Court. Frequently they were at variance amongst themselves in matters of theology, and their people, too, were dragged into the controversy. To the magistrates it was left to decide such differences unless indeed some dictatorial official forestalled them, as was the case when the Vogt of Herrenberg took it into his own hands to settle a matter of faith. In the struggles between Lutherans and Zwinglians, the highest court of appeal above the town-Councillors and the officials was the Ducal Chancery.

Ulrich himself did not explicitly side either with the Confession of Augsburg or with the “Confessio Tetrapolitana,” viz. with the more Zwinglian form of faith agreed upon at the Diet of Augsburg by the four South-German townships of Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen and Lindau.

The preachers who assembled in 1537 at the so-called Idols-meeting of Urach, to discuss the question of the veneration of images which had given rise to serious dissensions amongst them, appealed to Ulrich. Blaurer inveighed against the use of images as idolatrous. Brenz declared that their removal in Würtemberg would be tantamount to a condemnation of the Lutheran Church in Saxony and elsewhere where they were permitted. The Court, to which the majority of the theologians appealed, ordered the removal of all images on Jan. 20, 1540. Distressing scenes were witnessed in many places when the images and pictures in the churches, which were not only prized by the people, but were also, many of them, of great artistic value,[642] were broken and torn to pieces in spite of the warning issued by the authorities against their violent destruction. The “Tetrapolitana” had already forcibly denounced the use of images.

At Ulm, which so far had refused to accept the “Tetrapolitana,” the magistrates in 1544 decided to adhere to the Confession of Augsburg and the “Apologia.” Blaurer, some years before (1541), had justifiably complained of the arbitrary action of the civic authorities and said that every town acted according to its own ideas. But the preachers were frequently so exorbitant in the material demands they made on behalf of themselves and their families that the Town Council of Ulm declared, they behaved as though “each one had the right to receive a full saucepan every day.”[643]

In place of any amendment of the many moral disorders already prevailing, still greater moral corruption became the rule among the people of Würtemberg, as is attested by Myconius the Zwinglian in 1539, and thirty years later by the Chancellor of the University of Tübingen, Jacob Andreæ.

The former declared that the “people are full of impudence and godlessness; of blasphemy, drunkenness, sins of the flesh and wild licentiousness there is no end.”[644] Andreæ directly connects with the new faith this growing demoralisation: “A dissolute, Epicurean, bestial life, feeding, swilling, avarice, pride and blasphemy.” “We have learnt,” so the people said, according to him, “that only through faith in Jesus Christ are we saved, Who by His death has atoned for all our sins; ... that all the world may see they are not Papists and rely not at all on good works, they perform none. Instead of fasting they gorge and swill day and night, instead of giving alms, they flay the poor.” “Everyone admits this cannot go on longer, for things have come to a crisis. Amongst the people there is little fear of God and little or no veracity or faith; all forms of injustice have increased and we have reached the limit.”[645]

A General Rescript had to be issued on May 22, 1542, for the whole of Würtemberg, to check “the drunkenness, blasphemy, swearing, gluttony, coarseness and quarrelsomeness rampant in the parishes.”[646]

Few bright spots are to be seen in the accounts of the early days of the Reformation in Würtemberg, if we except the lives of one or two blameless ministers. It is no fault of the historian’s that there is nothing better to chronicle. Even the Protestant historians of Würtemberg, albeit predisposed to paint the change of religion in bright colours, have to admit this. They seek to explain the facts on the score that the period was one of restless and seething transition, and to throw the blame on earlier times and on the questionable elements among the Catholic clergy from whose ranks most of the preachers were recruited.[647] But though grave responsibility may rest on earlier times, not only here but in the other districts which fell away from the Church, and though those of the clergy who forgot their duty and the honour of their calling may have contributed even more than usual to damage the fair reputation of Protestantism, yet the increase of immorality which has been proved to have endured for a long course of years, brings the historian face to face with a question not lightly to be dismissed: Why did the preaching of the new Evangel, with its supposedly higher standard of religion and morality, especially at the springtide of its existence and in its full vigour, not bring about an improvement, but rather the reverse?

This question applies, however, equally to other countries which were then torn from the Church, and to the persons principally instrumental in the work.

In Hesse the religious upheaval, as even Protestant contemporaries conceded, also promoted a great decline of morals.

The bad example given by Landgrave Philip tended to increase the evil.[648] A harmful influence was exercised not only by the Landgrave’s Court but also by certain preachers, such as Johann Lening,[649] who enjoyed Philip’s favour. Elisabeth, Duchess of Rochlitz, the Landgrave’s sister, and a zealous patron of the Evangel, like the Prince himself, cherished rather lax views on morality. At first she was indignant at the bigamy, though not on purely moral grounds. The sovereign met her anger with a threat of telling the world what she herself had done during her widowhood. The result was that the Duchess said no more.[650] The Landgrave’s Court-preacher, Dionysius Melander, who performed the marriage ceremony with the second wife, had, five years before, laid down his office as preacher and leader of the innovations at Frankfort on the Maine, “having fallen out with his fellows and personally compromised himself by carrying on with his housekeeper.” He was a “violent, despotic and, at times, coarse and obscene, popular orator whose personal record was not unblemished.”[651]

A Hessian church ordinance of 1539 complains of the moral retrogression: Satan has estranged men from the communion of Christ “not only by means of factions and sects, but also by carnal wantonness and dissolute living.”[652] The old Hessian historian Wigand Lauze writes, in his “Life and deeds of Philip the Magnanimous, Landgrave of Hesse,” that, the people have become very savage and uncouth, “as though God had given us His precious Word, and thereby delivered us from the innumerable abominations of Popery and its palpable idolatry, simply that each one might be free to do or leave undone whatever he pleased”; “many evil deeds were beginning to be looked upon by many as no longer sinful or vicious.” He accuses “the magistrates, ministers and governors” of corrupting the people by themselves transgressing the “good, Christian regulations” which had been set up, and charges both preachers and hearers with serving Mammon, and with “barefaced extortion,” “not to mention other sins and vices.”[653]

The Hessian theologians and preachers transferred the responsibility for the abolition of “law and order,” for the increase of the “freedom of the flesh within the Evangel” and for the falling away into a “state like that of Sodom and Gomorrha” to the shoulders of the “magistrates and officials.”[654] The latter, on the other hand, boldly asserted that the preachers themselves were the cause of the evil, since they led a “wicked, scandalous life, drinking, gambling, practising usury and so forth, and were, some of them, guilty of still worse things, brawling, fighting and wrangling with the people in the taverns and behaving improperly with the women.”[655] Bucer himself, Philip’s adviser in ecclesiastical matters, wrote sadly to the Landgrave, in 1539, from Marburg: “The people are becoming demoralised and immorality is gaining the upper hand.” “Where such contempt prevails for God and the authorities there the devil is omnipotent.”[656]

[2. At the Centre of the New Faith]

If we glance at the Saxon Electorate we shall find the deep despondency frequently displayed by Luther concerning the deplorable moral decadence prevailing there only too well justified.

The downward trend appeared to have set in in earnest and all hope of remedying affairs seemed lost.[657]

The Court and those in authority not only did little to check the evil but, by their example, even tended to promote many disorders. The Elector, Johann Frederick “the Magnanimous” (1532-1547), was addicted to drink. The banquets which he gave to his friends—in which wine was indulged in to an extent unusual even in those days when men were accustomed to heavy drinking—became a byword. Luther himself came to speak strongly on his excessive drinking. “His only faults,” he laments in the Table-Talk, “are his drinking and routing too much with his companions.”[658] “He has all the virtues—but just fancy him swilling like that!”[659] Yet Luther has an excuse ready: “He is a stout man and can stand a deep draught; what he must needs drink would make another man dead drunk.”[660] “Unfortunately not only our Court here but the whole of Germany is plagued with this vice of drunkenness. It is a bad old custom in the German lands which has gone on growing and will continue to grow. Henry, Duke of [Brunswick] Wolfenbüttel calls our Elector a drunkard and very Nabal with whom Abigail could not speak until he had slept off his carouse.”[661] We have the Elector’s own comment on this in a letter to Chancellor Brück: “If the Brunswick fellow writes that we are a drunken Nabal and Benadad, we cannot entirely deny that we sometimes follow the German custom”; at any rate the Brunswicker was not the man to find fault, for he was an even harder drinker.[662]

Johann Frederick was accused by Philip of Hesse of the grossest immorality. This happened when the former refused to defend Philip’s bigamy and when his Superintendent, Justus Menius, who was given to lauding the Elector’s virtues, showed an inclination to protest publicly against the Landgrave’s bigamy. This led Philip to write this warning to his theologian Bucer: “If those saintly folk, Justus Menius and his crew, amuse themselves by writing against us, they shall have their answer. And we shall not leave hidden under a bushel how this most august and quite sinless Elector, once, under our roof at Cassel, and again, at the time of the first Diet of Spires, committed the crime of sodomy.”[663]

A. Hausrath remarks concerning this in his “Luthers Leben”: That Philip was lying “can hardly be taken for granted”;[664] G. Mentz, likewise, in his recent work, “Joh. Friedrich der Grossmütige,”[665] says: “It is difficult simply to ignore the Landgrave’s statement, but we do not know whether the allusion may not be to some sin committed in youth.” Here belongs also the passage in Philip of Hesse’s letter to Luther of July 27, 1540 (above, p. 60), where he calls the Elector to bear witness that he (the Landgrave) had done “the worst.” The Biblical expression “peccatum pessimum” stood for sodomy. Further charges of a similar nature were even more explicitly laid at the door of Johann Frederick. A Catholic, relating the proceedings in Brunswick at the close of the conquest of that country by the Protestant troops in 1542, speaks of “vices and outrages against nature then indulged in by the Elector at the Castle as is commonly reported and concerning which there is much talk among the Court people.”[666] Duke Henry of Brunswick in a tract of 1544 referred not only to the Elector’s sanction of the Landgrave’s bigamy, in return for which he was spared by the latter, but also to the “many other pranks which might be circumstantially proved against them and which deserved more severe punishment” than that of the sword.[667] The “more severe punishment” means burning at the stake, which was the penalty decreed by the laws of the Empire for sodomy, whereas polygamy and adultery were simply punished by decapitation. Both sovereigns in their reply flatly denied the charge, but, evidently, they clearly understood its nature; they had never been guilty, they said, of “shameful, dishonourable pranks deserving of death by fire.”[668]

Whatever the truth may be concerning this particular charge which involves them both,[669] both Landgrave and Elector certainly left behind them so bad a record that Adolf Hausrath could say: The pair (but the Landgrave even more than the Elector) did their best “to make mockery of the claim of the Evangelicals that their Evangel would revive the morality of the German nation.” He instances in particular the bigamy, “which put any belief in the reality of their piety to a severe test and prepared the way for a great moral defeat of Luther’s cause.”[670]

In the matter of the bigamy attempts were made to exculpate the Elector Johann Frederick by alleging, that he regarded the Landgrave’s step not as a real new marriage but as mere concubinage. The fact is, however, he was sufficiently well informed by Bucer in Dec. 1539, i.e. from the very beginning, learnt further details two months later from the Landgrave’s own lips, and declared himself “satisfied with everything.” When, later, the Elector began to take an unfavourable view of the business, Philip wrote to Bucer (July 24, 1540), pointing out that he had nevertheless sent his representative to the wedding. It is, however, true that the Elector had all along been against any making public of so compromising an affair and had backed up his theologians when they urged the Landgrave to deny it.[671]

There is no more ground for crediting Johann Frederick with “strictness of morals” than for saying that the Elector Frederick the Wise (1486-1525), under whose reign Lutheranism took root in the land, was upright and truthful in his dealings with the Pope and the Empire.

The diplomatic artifices by which the latter protected Luther whilst pretending not to do so, the dissembling and double-dealing of his policy throws a slur on the memory of one who was a powerful patron of Lutheranism. Even in Köstlin-Kawerau[672] we find his behaviour characterised as “one long subterfuge, seeing, that, whilst giving Luther a free hand, he persisted in making out that Luther’s cause was not his”; his declaration, that “it did not become him as a layman to decide in such a controversy,” is rightly branded as misleading.

The Protestant Pietists were loudest in their complaints. In his “Kirchenhistorie,” Gottfried Arnold, who was one of them, blamed, in 1699, this Elector for the “cunning and the political intrigues” of which he was suspected; he is angry that this so undevout promoter of Lutheranism should have written to Duke George, his cousin, “that he never undertook nor ever would undertake to defend Luther’s sermons or his controversial writings,” and that he should have sent to his minister at Rome the following instructions, simply to pacify the Pope: “It did not become him as a secular Prince to judge of these matters, and he left Luther to answer for everything at his own risk.”[673] The same historian also points out with dissatisfaction that the Elector Frederick, “though always unmarried, had, by a certain female, two sons called Frederick and Sebastian. How he explained this to his spiritual directors is nowhere recorded.”[674] The “female” in question was Anna Weller, by whom he had, besides these two sons, also a daughter.[675]

Against his brother and successor, Johann, surnamed the Constant (1525-1532), Luther’s friends brought forward no such complaints, but merely reproached him with letting things take their course. Arnold instances a statement of Melanchthon’s according to which this good Lutheran Prince “had been very negligent in examining this thing and that,” so that grave disorders now called for a remedy. Luther, too, whilst praising the Elector’s good qualities, declares, that “he was far too indulgent.”[676] “I interfere with no one,” was his favourite saying, “but merely trust more in God’s Word than in man.” The protests of the Emperor and the representations of the Catholics, politics and threats of war left him quite unmoved, whence his title of “the Constant”; “he was just the right man for Luther,” says Hausrath,[677] “for the latter did not like to see the gentlemen of the Saxon Chancery, Brück, Beyer, Planitz and the rest, interfering and urging considerations of European politics. ‘Our dear old father, the Elector,’ Luther said of him in 1530, ‘has broad shoulders, and must now bear everything.’”

The favour of these Princes caused Luther frequently to overstep the bounds of courtesy in his behaviour towards them. Julius Boehmer, who is sorry for this, in the Introduction to his selection of Luther’s works remarks, that he was guilty of “want of respect, nay, of rudeness, towards the Elector Frederick and his successor Johann.”[678] Of Luther’s relations with Johann Frederick, Hausrath says: “It is by no means certain that the Duke’s [Henry of Brunswick’s] opinion [viz. that Luther used to speak of his own Elector as Hans Wurst (i.e. Jack Pudding)] was without foundation; in any case, it was not far from the mark. With his eternal plans and his narrow-minded obstinacy, Luther’s corpulent master was a thorn in the side of the aged Reformer.... ‘He works like a donkey,’ Luther once said of him, and, unfortunately, this was perfectly true.”[679]

In his will, dated 1537, Luther addressed the following words of consolation to the princely patrons and promoters of his work, the Landgrave and the Elector Johann Frederick: It was true they were not quite stainless, but the Papists were even worse; they had indeed trespassed on the rights and possessions of others, but this was of no great consequence; they must continue to work for the Evangel, though in what way he would not presume to dictate to them.[680]—Melanchthon, who was so often distressed at the way the Princes behaved on the pretext of defending the Evangel, complains that “the sophistry and wickedness of our Princes are bringing the Empire to ruin,” in which “bitter cry,” writes a Protestant historian, “he sums up the result of his own unhappy experiences.”[681]

From the accounts of the Visitations in the Electorate we learn more details of the condition of morality, law and order in this the focus of the new Evangel. The proximity and influence of Luther and of his best and most faithful preachers did not constitute any bulwark against the growing corruption of morals, which clear-sighted men indeed attributed mainly to the new doctrines on good works, on faith alone and on Evangelical freedom.

In the protocols of the first Visitation (1527-1529) we read: The greater number of those entrusted with a cure of souls, are “in an evil case”; reckless marriages are frequent amongst the preachers; complaints were lodged with the Electoral Visitors concerning the preacher at Lucka who “had three wives living.”[682] At a later Visitation a preacher was discovered to have had six children by two sisters. Many of the preachers had wives whom they had stolen from husbands still living. The account of the people whether in town or country was not much more reassuring; many localities had earned themselves a bad repute for blasphemy and general adultery. In many places the people were declared to be so wicked that only “the hangman and the jailer would be of any avail.” Besides this, the parsonages were in a wretched state. The foundations had fallen in, or, in many instances, had been seized by the nobles, the lands and meadows belonging to the parsonages had been sold by the parish-councils, and the money from the sale of chalices and monstrances spent on drink. The educational system was so completely ruined that in the Wittenberg district, for instance, in which there were 145 town and country livings with hundreds of chapels of ease, only 21 schools remained.

As early as 1527 Melanchthon had viewed with profound dismay the “serious ruin and decay that menaces everything good,” which, he says, was clearly perceived at Wittenberg. “You see,” he writes, “how greatly men hate one another, how great is the contempt for all uprightness, how great the ignorance of those who stand at the head of the churches, and above all how forgetful the rulers are of God.” And again, in 1528: “No one hates the Evangel more bitterly than those who like to be considered ours.” “We see,” he laments in the same year, “how greatly the people hate us.”[683]

His friend Justus Jonas, who was acquainted with the conditions in the Saxon Electorate from long personal experience, wrote in 1530: “Those who call themselves Evangelical are becoming utterly depraved, and not only is there no longer any fear of God among them but there is no respect for outward appearances either; they are weary of and disgusted with sermons, they despise their pastors and preachers and treat them like the dirt and dust of the streets.” “And, besides all this, the common people are becoming utterly shameless, insolent and ruffianly, as if the Evangel had only been sent to give lewd fellows liberty and scope for the practice of all their vices.”[684]

The next Visitation, held seven years later, only confirmed the growth of the evil. In the Wittenberg district in particular complaints were raised concerning “the increase in godless living, the prevailing contempt and blasphemy of the Word of God, the complete neglect of the Supper and the general flippant and irreverent behaviour during Divine service.”[685]

Of a later period, when the fruits of the change of religion had still further ripened, Melanchthon’s friend Camerarius says: “Mankind have now attained the goal of their desires—boundless liberty to think and act exactly as they please. Reason, moderation, law, morality and duty have lost all value, there is no reverence for contemporaries and no respect for posterity.”[686]

The Elector Augustus of Saxony goes more into particulars when he writes: “A disgraceful custom has become established in our villages. The peasants at the high festivals, such as Christmas and Whitsuntide, begin their drinking-bouts on the eve of the festival and prolong them throughout the night, and the next day they either sleep through the morning or else come drunk to church and snore and grunt like pigs during the whole service.” He reproves the custom of making use of the churches as wine-cellars, the contempt displayed for the preachers, the scoffing at sacred rites and the “frequent blasphemy and cursing.” “Murder and abominable lasciviousness” were the consequences of such contempt for religion. But any improvement was not to be looked for seeing that there were hardly any schools remaining, and the cure of souls was left principally in the charge of ministers such as the Elector proceeds to describe. The nobles and the other feudal lords, he says, “appoint everywhere to the ministry ignorant, destitute artisans, or else rig out their scribes, outriders or grooms as priests and set them in the livings so as to have them all the more under their thumb.”[687]

The state of things in Saxony provided the Landgrave with a serviceable weapon against Luther when the latter showed an inclination to repudiate the bigamy, or to say he had merely “acted the fool” in sanctioning it. The passage has been quoted above (p. 56), where the Landgrave exhorted him to pay less attention to the world’s opinion, but rather to set himself and all the preachers in the Saxon Electorate to the task of checking the “vices of adultery, usury and drunkenness which were no longer regarded as sins, and that, not merely by writings and sermons, but by earnest admonition and by means of the ban.”

It is true that the conditions which accompanied the introduction of his new system were a trial to Luther, which he sought to remedy. The Landgrave could not reproach him with actual indifference. Not merely by “writings and sermons,” but also by “earnest admonition” and even by re-introducing the “ban of the Church” he strove to check the rising tide of moral evil. But the evil was the stronger of the two, and the causes, for which he himself was responsible, lay too deep. We have an example of the way in which he frequently sought to curb the mischief, in his quarrel with Hans Metzsch, the depraved Commandant of Wittenberg, whom he excluded from the Supper.[688]

He sums up his grievances against the state of things in the Electorate and at Wittenberg in a letter to Johann Mantel, in which he calls Wittenberg a new Sodom. He writes to this preacher (Nov. 10, 1539): “Together with Lot (2 Peter ii. 8), you and other pious Christians, I, too, am tormented, plagued and martyred in this awful Sodom by shameful ingratitude and horrible contempt of the Divine Word of our beloved Saviour, when I see how Satan seizes upon and takes possession of the hearts of those who think themselves the first and most important in the kingdom of Christ and of God; beyond this I am tempted and plagued with interior anxiety and distress.” He then goes on to console his friend, who was also troubled with melancholy and the fear of death, by a sympathetic reference to the death of Christ. He then admits again of himself that he was “distressed and greatly plagued” and “compassed by more than one kind of death in this miserable, lamentable age, where there is nothing but ingratitude, and where every kind of wickedness gains the upper hand.... Wait for the Lord with patience, for He is now at hand and will not delay to come. Amen.”[689]

[3. Luther’s Attempts to Explain the Decline in Morals]

Luther quite candidly admitted the distressing state of things described above without in the least glossing it over, which indeed he could not well have done; in fact, his own statements give us an even clearer insight into the seamy side of life in his day. He speaks of the growing disorders with pain and vexation; the more so since he could not but see that they were being fomented by his doctrine of justification by faith alone.

“This preaching,” he says, “ought by rights to be accepted and listened to with great joy, and everyone ought to improve himself thereby and become more pious. But, unfortunately, the reverse is now the case and the longer it endures the worse the world becomes; this is [the work of] the devil himself, for now we see the people becoming more infamous, more avaricious, more unmerciful, more unchaste and in every way worse than they were under Popery.”[690]

The Evangelicals now are not merely worse, but “seven times worse than before,” so he complains as early as 1529. “For after having heard the Evangel we still continue to steal, lie, cheat, feed and swill and to practise every vice. Now that one devil [that of Popery] has been driven out seven others worse than it have entered into us, as may be seen from the way the Princes, lords, nobles, burghers and peasants behave, who have lost all sense of fear, and regard not God and His menaces.”[691]

From his writings a long, dreary list of sins might be compiled, of which each of the classes here mentioned had been guilty. In the last ten years of his life such lamentations give the tone to most of what he wrote.

“The nobles scrape money together, rob and plunder”; “like so many devils they grind the poor churches, the pastors and the preachers.” “The burghers and peasants do nothing but hoard, are usurers and cheats and behave defiantly and wantonly without any fear of punishment, so that it cries to heaven for vengeance and the earth can endure it no longer.” “On all hands and wherever we turn we see nothing in all classes but a deluge of dreadful ingratitude for the beloved Evangel.”[692]

“Nowadays the Gospel is preached, and whoever chooses can hear it ... but burghers, peasants and nobles all scorn their ministers and preachers.”[693]

“I have often said that a plague must fall upon Germany; the Princes and gentry deserve that our Lord God should play them a trick; there will be such bloodshed that no one will know his own home.”[694] “Now that all this [the Evangel] is preached rightly and plainly, people cannot despise it enough. In old days monasteries and churches were built with no regard for cost, now people won’t even repair a hole in the roof that the minister may lie dry; of their contempt I say nothing, it is enough to move one to tears to witness such scorn. Hence I say: Take care, you are young; it may be you will live to see and experience the coming misfortune that will break over Germany. For a storm will burst over Germany, and that without fail.... I do not mind so much the peasants’ avarice and the fornication and immorality now on the increase everywhere, as the contempt for the Evangel.... That peasants, burghers and nobles thus contemn the Word of God will be their undoing.”[695]

To the question whence the moral decline amongst the adherents of the new teaching came, Luther was wont to give various answers. Their difference and his occasional self-contradictions show how his consciousness of the disorders and the complaints they drew from every side drive him into a corner.

The most correct explanation was, of course, that the mischief was due to the nature of his teaching on faith and good works; to this, involuntarily, he comes back often enough.

“That we are now so lazy and cold in the performance of good works,” he says, in a recently published sermon of 1528, “is due to our no longer regarding them as a means of justification. For when we still hoped to be justified by our works our zeal for doing good was a marvel. One sought to excel the other in uprightness and piety. Were the old teaching to be revived to-day and our works made contributory to righteousness, we should be readier and more willing to do what is good. Of this there is, however, no prospect and thus, when it is a question of serving our neighbour and praising God by means of good works, we are sluggish and not disposed to do anything.”[696] “The surer we are of the righteousness which Christ has won for us, the colder and idler we are in teaching the Word, in prayer, in good works and in enduring misfortune.”[697]

“We teach,” he continues, “that we attain to God’s grace without any work on our part. Hence it comes that we are so listless in doing good. When, once upon a time, we believed that God rewarded our works, I ran to the monastery, and you gave ten gulden towards building a church. Men then were glad to do something through their works and to be their own ‘Justus et Salvator’ (Zach. ix., 9).” Now, when asked to give, everybody protests he is poor and a beggar, and says there is no obligation of giving or of performing good works. “We have become worse than formerly and are losing our old righteousness. Moreover, avarice is increasing everywhere.”[698]

Though here Luther finds the reason of the neglect of good works so clearly in his own teaching, yet on other occasions, for instance, in a sermon of 1532, he grows angry when his doctrine is made responsible for the mischief.

Only “clamourers,” so he says, could press such a charge. Yet, at the same time, he fully admits the decline: “I own, and others doubtless do the same, that there is not now such earnestness in the Gospel as formerly under the monks and priests when so many foundations were made, when there was so much building and no one was so poor as not to be able to give. But now there is not a town willing to support a preacher, there is nothing but plundering and thieving among the people and no one can prevent it. Whence comes this shameful plague? The clamourers answer, ‘from the teaching that we must not build upon or trust in works.’ But it is the devil himself who sets down such an effect to pure and wholesome doctrine, whereas it is in reality due to his own and the people’s malice who ill-use such doctrines, and to our old Adam.... We are, all unawares, becoming lazy, careless and remiss.”[699]

“The devil’s malice!” This is another explanation to which Luther and others not unfrequently had recourse. The devil could do such extraordinary and apparently contradictory things! He could even teach men to “pray fervently.” In the Table-Talk, for instance, when asked by his wife why it was, that, whereas in Popery “we prayed so diligently and frequently, we are now so cold and pray so seldom,” Luther put it down to the devil. “The devil made us fervent,” he says; “he ever urges on his servants, but the Holy Ghost teaches and exhorts us how to pray aright; yet we are so tepid and slothful in prayer that nothing comes of it.”[700] Thus it might well be the devil who was answerable for the misuse of the Evangel.

On another occasion, in order to counteract the bad impression made on his contemporaries by the fruits of his preaching, he says: “Our morals only look so bad on account of the sanctity of the Evangel; in Catholic times they stood very low and many vices prevailed, but all this was unperceived amidst the general darkness which shrouded doctrine and the moral standards which then held; now, on the other hand, our eyes have been opened by a purer faith and even small abuses are seen in their true colours.” His words on this subject will be given below.

It even seemed to Luther that the decay of almsgiving and the parsimony displayed towards the churches and the preachers proved the truth of the Evangel (“signum est, verum esse evangelium nostrum”), for, so he teaches in a sermon preached at Wittenberg in 1527, “the devil is the Prince of this world and all its riches, as we learn from the story of Christ’s Temptation. He is now defending his kingdom from the Evangel which has risen up against him. He does not now allow us so many possessions and gifts as he formerly did to those who served him (i.e. the Papists), for their Masses, Vigils, etc.; nay, he robs us of everything and spends it on himself. Formerly we supported many hundred monks and now we cannot raise the needful for one Evangelical preacher, a sign that our Evangel is the true one and that the Pope’s empire was the devil’s own, where he bestowed gifts on his followers with open hands and incited them to luxury, avarice, fornication and gluttony. And their teaching was in conformity therewith, for they urged those works which pleased them.”[701]

The observer may well marvel at such strange trains of thought. Luther’s doctrine has become to him like a pole-star around which the whole firmament must revolve. Experience and logic alike must perforce be moulded at his pleasure to suit the idea which dominates him.

It was impossible to suppress the inexorable question put by his opponents, and the faint-hearted doubts of many of his own followers: Since our Saviour taught: “By their fruits shall you know them,” how can you be a Divinely sent teacher if these are the moral effects of your new Evangel? And yet Luther, to the very close of his career, in tones ever more confident, insists on his higher, nay, Divine, calling, and on his election to “reveal” hidden doctrines of faith, strange to say, those very doctrines to which he, like others too, attributed the decline.

Concerning his Divine mission he had not hesitated to say in so many words: Unless God calls a man to do a work no one who does not wish to be a fool may venture to undertake it; “for a certain Divine call and not a mere whim” is essential to every good work.[702] Hence he frequently sees in success the best test of a good work. In his own case, however, he could point only to one great result, and that a negative one, viz. the harm done to Popery; the Papacy had been no match for him and had failed to check the apostasy. The Papists’ undertaking, such is his proof, is not a success; it goes sideways “after the fashion of the crab.” “Even for those who had a sure Divine vocation it was difficult to undertake and carry through anything good, though God was with them and assisted them; what then could those silly fools, who wished to undertake it without being called, expect to do?” “But I, Dr. Martin, was called and compelled to become a Doctor.... Thus I was obliged to accept the office of a Doctor. Hence, owing to my work, this which you see has befallen the Papacy, and worse things are yet in store for it.” To those who still refused to acknowledge Luther’s call to teach he addresses a sort of command: St. Paul, 1 Cor. xiv., 30, commanded all, even superiors, to be silent and obey “when some other than the chief teacher receives a revelation.” “The work that Luther undertakes,” “the great work of the Reformation,” he assures all, was given not to the other side, but to him alone.[703]—It is no wonder that his gainsayers and the doubters on his own side refused to be convinced by such arguments and appeals to the work of destruction accomplished, but continued to harp on the words: “By their fruits you shall know them,” which text they took literally, viz. as referring to actual fruits of moral improvement.

The “great work of the Reformation,” i.e. of real reform, to which Luther appeals—unless he was prepared to regard it as consisting solely in the damage done to the Roman Church—surely demanded that, at least at Wittenberg and in Luther’s immediate sphere, some definite fruits in the shape of real moral amelioration should be apparent. Yet it was precisely of Wittenberg and his own surroundings that Luther complained so loudly. The increase of every kind of disorder caused him to write to George of Anhalt: “We live in Sodom and Babylon, or rather must die there; the good men, our Lots and Daniels, whom we so urgently need now that things are daily becoming worse, are snatched from us by death.”[704] So bad were matters that Luther was at last driven to flee from Wittenberg. The sight of the immorality, the vexation and the complaints to which he was exposed became too much for him; perhaps Wittenberg would catch the “Beggars’ dance, or Beelzebub’s dance,” he wrote; “at any rate get us gone from this Sodom.”[705]

According to his letters, the Wittenberg authorities did not interfere even in the case of the gravest disorders, but allowed themselves to be “playthings of the devils”; they looked on whilst the students “were ruined by bad women,” and “though half the town is guilty of adultery, usury, theft and cheating, no one tries to put the law in force. They all simply smile, wink at it and do the same themselves. The world is a troublesome thing.”[706] “The hoiden-folk have grown bold,” he writes to the Elector, “they pursue the young fellows into their very rooms and chambers, freely offering them their love; and I hear that many parents are recalling their children home because, they say, when they send their children to us to study we hang women about their necks.”[707] He is aghast at the thought that the “town and the school” should have heard God’s Word so often and so long and yet, “instead of growing better, become worse as time goes on.” He fears that at his end he may hear, “that things were never worse than now,” and sees Wittenberg threatened with the curse of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capharnaum.[708]

In point of fact he did preach a sermon to the Wittenbergers in which, like a prophet, he predicts the judgments of heaven.[709]

In another sermon he angrily acquaints them with his determination: “What am I to do with you Wittenbergers? I am not going to preach to you any longer of Christ’s Kingdom, seeing that you will not accept it. You are thieves, robbers and men of no mercy. I shall have to preach you the ‘Sachsenspiegel.’” They refuse, he says, to give anything to clergy, church or schools. “Are you still ignorant, you unthankful beasts (‘ingratæ bestiæ’) of what they do for you?” He concludes: They must make up their minds to provide the needful, “otherwise I shall abandon the pulpit.”[710]

“Later you will find my prophecy fulfilled,” he cried on one occasion after having foretold “woes”; “then you will long for one of those exhortations of Martin Luther.”[711]

His Table-Talk bears, if possible, even stronger witness than his letters and sermons to the conditions at Wittenberg, for there he freely lets himself go. Some of the things he says of the town and neighbourhood, found in the authentic notes of docile pupils, such as Mathesius, Lauterbach and Schlaginhaufen, are worth consideration.

We hear from Lauterbach not only that Hans Metzsch, the town Commandant whom Luther had “excommunicated,” continued to persecute the good at Wittenberg “with satanic malice” and to “boast of his wickedness,”[712] but that in the same year Luther had to complain of other men of influence and standing in the town who injured the Evangel by their example. “So great is the godlessness of those of rank that one was not ashamed to boast of having begotten forty-three children in a single year; another asked whether he might not take 40 per cent interest per annum.” In the same year Luther was obliged to exclude from the Sacrament another notorious, highly-placed usurer.[713]

“The soil of Wittenberg is bad,” he declared, speaking from sad experience; “even were good, honest people sown here the crop would be one of coarse Saxons.”[714]

“The Gospel at Wittenberg,” he once said poetically, if we may trust Mathesius, “is like rain that falls on water, i.e. it has no effect. The good catch the law and the wicked the Gospel.”[715]

“I have often wondered,” he said in 1532, according to Schlaginhaufen, “why Our Lord God sent His Word to this unfaithful world of Wittenberg: I believe that He sent it to Jerusalem, Wittenberg and such-like places that He might, at the Last Day, be able to reprove their ingratitude.” And again, “My opinion is that God will punish severely the ingratitude shown to His Word; for there is not a man of position or a peasant who does not stamp on the ministers; but the service of the Word must remain; even the Turk has his ministers, otherwise he could not maintain his rule.”[716]

Luther’s Evangel had made “law and command” to retreat into the background as compared with the liberty of the children of God; the penalties he devised, e.g. his exclusion of persons from the reception of the Sacrament, proved ineffectual. He would willingly have made use of excommunication if only “there had been people who would let themselves be excommunicated.” “The Pope’s ban which kept the people in check,” he says, “has been abolished, and it would be a difficult task to re-establish law and command.”[717]

“No, I should not like to endure this life for another forty years,” so he told his friends on June 11, 1539, “even were God to turn it into a Paradise for me. I would rather hire an executioner to chop off my head; the world is so bad that all are turning into devils, so that they could wish one nothing better than a happy death-bed, and then away!”[718] “The dear, holy Evangel of Christ, that great and precious treasure, we account as insignificant, as if it were a verse from Terence or Virgil.”[719]

He found such disdain of his teaching even in his own household and family. This it was which caused him, in 1532, to preach a course of sermons to his family circle on Sundays. No head of a family, least of all here, could connive at any “contempt of the Word.” To the question of Dr. Jonas as to the wherefore of these private addresses, he replied: “I see and know that the Word of God is as much neglected in my house as in the Church.”[720]

There was no more hope for the world; nothing remains “unspoiled and incorrupt” although, “now, God’s Word is revealed,” yet “it is despised, spurned, corrupted, mocked at and persecuted,” even by the adherents of his teaching.[721]

Luther made Mathesius the recipient of some of his confidences, as the latter relates in his sermons; on account of the scandals among the preachers of the neighbourhood he was forced and urged by his own people to appeal to the Elector to erect a jail “into which such wild and turbulent folk might be clapped.” “Satan causes great scandals amongst the patrons and hearers of the new doctrine,” says Mathesius. The common people have become rough and self-confident and have begun to regard the ministers as worthless. “Verily,” he exclaims, “the soul of this pious old gentleman was sadly tormented day by day by the unrighteous deeds he was obliged to witness, like pious Lot in Sodom.”[722]

With a deep sigh, as we read in Lauterbach’s Notes, Luther pointed to the calamities which were about to overtake the world; it was so perverse and incorrigible that discipline or admonition would be of no avail. Already there was the greatest consternation throughout the world on account of the revelation of the Word. “It is cracking and I hope it will soon burst,” and the Last Day arrive for which we are waiting. For all vices have now become habitual and people will not bear reproof. His only comfort was the progress made by studies at Wittenberg, and in some other places now thrown open to the Evangel.[723]

But how were the future preachers now growing up there to improve matters? This he must well have asked himself when declaring, “with sobs,” as Lauterbach relates, that “preachers were treated in most godless and ungrateful fashion. The churches will soon be left without preachers and ministers; we shall shortly experience this misfortune in the churches; there will be a dearth not only of learned men but even of men of the commonest sort. Oh, that our young men would study more diligently and devote themselves to theology.”[724]

In view of the above it cannot surprise us that Luther gradually became a victim to habitual discouragement and melancholy, particularly towards the end of his life. Proofs of the depression from which he suffered during the latter years of his life will be brought forward in a later volume.

Such fits of depression were, however, in those days more than usually common everywhere.

[4. A Malady of the Age: Doubts and Melancholy]

One of the phenomena which accompanied the religious revulsion and which it is impossible to pass over, was, as contemporary writers relate, the sadness, discontent and depression, in a word “melancholy,” so widespread under the new Evangel even amongst its zealous promoters.

Melanchthon, one of Luther’s most intimate friends, furnished on many occasions of his life a sad spectacle of interior dejection. Of a weaker and more timid mental build than Luther, he appeared at times ready to succumb under the weight of faint-heartedness and scruples, doubts and self-reproaches. (Cp. vol. iii., p. 363 ff.) We may recall how his anxieties, caused by the scandal subsequent on his sanctioning of Philip’s bigamy, almost cost him his life. So many are the records he left behind of discouragement and despondency that his death must appear in the light of a welcome deliverance. Luther sought again and again to revive in him the waning consciousness of the Divine character of their work. It is just in these letters of Luther to Melanchthon that we find him most emphatic in his assertion that their common mission is from God. It was to Melanchthon, that, next to himself, Luther applied the words already quoted, spoken to comfort a dejected pupil: “There must be some in the Church as ready to slap Satan as we three; but not all are able or willing to endure this.”[725]

Spalatin, who has so frequently been referred to as Luther’s go-between at the Electoral Court, and who afterwards became pastor of Altenburg, towards the end of his life fell into incurable despondency.[726] Justus Jonas, likewise, was for a considerable time a prey to melancholy.[727] Hieronymus Weller, one of Luther’s best friends, confessed to having suffered at times such violent doubts and fears as would have driven a heathen to commit suicide.[728] The preachers George Mohr[729] and Nicholas Hausmann (a very intimate friend of Luther’s[730]) had to endure dreadful pangs of soul; the same was the case with Johann Beltzius, Pastor at Allerstedt in Thuringia,[731] and with Simon Musæus, who died at Mansfeld in 1576 as Superintendent and who composed two works against the devil of melancholy.[732] Nicholas Selnecker, who died Superintendent at Leipzig, was responsible for the rearranged edition of Luther’s Table-Talk; according to the title his hope was to produce a work “which it might console all Christians to read, especially in these wretched last days.” Elsewhere he confirms the need of such consolation when he says: “We experience in our own selves” that sadness is of frequent occurrence.[733]

Wolfgang Capito, the Strasburg preacher, wrote in 1536 to Luther that his experience of the want of agreement in doctrine had caused him such distress of mind that he was on the verge of the “malady of melancholia”; he trusted he would succeed in reaching a better frame of mind; the burden of gloom, so he comforts himself, was, after all, not without its purpose in God’s plan in the case of many under the Evangel. With Capito, too, melancholy was a “frequent guest.”[734] Bucer wrote in 1532 to A. Blaurer that Capito had often bemoaned “his rejection by God.”[735]

Joachim Camerarius, the celebrated Humanist and writer, confessed in a letter to Luther, that he was oppressed and reduced to despair by the sight of the decline in morals “in people of every age and sex, in every condition and grade of life”; everything, in both public and private life, was so corrupt that he felt all piety and virtue was done for. Of the Schools in particular he woefully exclaimed that it would perhaps be better to have none than to have “such haunts of godlessness and vice.” At the same time, however, he makes admissions concerning faults of his own which may have served to increase his dejection: He himself, in his young days, had, like others, disgraced himself by a very vicious life (“turpissime in adolescentia deformatum”).[736]

The Nuremberg preacher, George Besler, fell into a state of melancholia, declared “in his ravings that things were not going right in the Church,” began to see hidden enemies everywhere and finally committed suicide with a “hogspear” in 1536.[737] William Bidembach, preacher at Stuttgart, and his brother Balthasar, Abbot of Bebenhausen, both became a prey to melancholia towards the end of their life.[738]

It would, of course, be foolish to think that many good souls, in the simplicity of their heart, found no consolation in the new teaching and in working for its furtherance. Of the preachers, for instance, Beltzius, who has just been mentioned, declares, that, amidst his sadness Luther’s consolations had “saved him from the abyss of hell.”[739] Amongst those who adhered in good faith to the innovations there were some who highly lauded the solace of the Evangel. But, notwithstanding all that may be alleged to the contrary, we cannot get over such testimonies as the following.

Felix, son of the above-mentioned William Bidembach, and Court preacher in Würtemberg, declared in a “Handbook for young church ministers”: “It happens more and more frequently that many pious people fall into distressing sadness and real melancholia, to such an extent that they constantly experience in their hearts fear, apprehension, dread and despair”; in the course of his ministry he had met with both persons of position and common folk who were oppressed with such melancholia.[740] Nicholas Selnecker (above, p. 220) assures us that not only were theologians perplexed with many “melancholy and anxious souls and consciences whom nothing could console,” but physicians, too, “never remembered such prevalence of evil melancholia, depression and sadness, even in the young, and of other maladies arising therefrom, as during these few years, and such misfortune continues still to grow and increase.”[741]

The Leipzig Pastor, Erasmus Sarcerius, speaks in a similar strain of the “general faint-heartedness prevalent in every class,” who are acquainted with nothing but “fear and apprehension”;[742] Victorinus Strigel, Professor at the University of Leipzig, of the “many persons who in our day have died simply and solely of grief”;[743] Michael Sachse, preacher at Wechmar, of people generally as being “timid and anxious, trembling and despairing from fear.”[744]

When the preacher Leonard Beyer related to Luther how in his great “temptations” the devil had tried to induce him to stab himself, Luther consoled him by telling him that the same had happened in his own case.[745]

We are told that in latter life Luther’s pupil Mathesius was a prey to a “hellish fear” which lasted almost three months; “he could not even look at a knife because the sight tempted him to suicide.”[746] Later, his condition improved. The same Mathesius relates how Pastor Musa found consolation in his gloomy doubts on faith in Luther’s account of his own similar storms of doubt.[747]

In the 16th century we hear many lamentations in Protestant circles concerning the unheard-of increase in the number of suicides.

“There is such an outcry amongst the people,” wrote the Lausitz Superintendent, Zacharias Rivander, “that it deafens one’s ears and makes one’s hair stand on end. The people are so heavy-hearted and yet know not why. Amidst such lowness of spirit many are unable to find consolation, and, so, cut their throats and slay themselves.”[748]—In 1554 the Nuremberg Councillor, Hieronymus Baumgärtner, lamented at a meeting attended by the clergy of the town: “We hear, alas, how daily and more than ever before, people, whether in good health or not, fall into mortal fear and despair, lose their minds and kill themselves.”[749] In 1569, within three weeks, fourteen suicides occurred at Nuremberg.[750]—“You will readily recall,” Lucas Osiander said in a sermon about the end of the century, “how in the years gone by many otherwise good people became so timorous, faint-hearted and full of despair that they could not be consoled; and how of these not a few put an end to their own lives; this is a sign of the Last Day.”[751]

Luther himself confirms the increase in the number of suicides which took place owing to troubles of conscience.

In a sermon of 1532 he bemoans, that “so many people are so disquieted and distressed that they give way to despair”; this was chiefly induced by the “spirits,” for there “have been, and still are, many who are driven by the devil and plagued with temptations and despair till they hang themselves, or destroy themselves in some other way out of very fear.”[752] He is quite convinced that the devil “drives” all suicides and makes them helpless tools of his plans against human life.—It was to this idea that the Lutheran preacher Hamelmann clung when he wrote, in 1568, that many trusted “that those who had been overtaken and destroyed by the devil would not be lost irretrievably.”[753]

Andreas Celichius, Superintendent in the Mark of Brandenburg, was of opinion that such suicides, such “very sudden and heartrending murders,” “gave a bad name to the Evangel in the world”; one sees and hears “that some in our very midst are quite unable to find comfort in the Evangelical sanctuary.... This makes men distrustful of the preaching of Jesus Christ and even causes it to be hated.”[754]

Michael Helding, Bishop-auxiliary of Mayence, found a special reason for the increase in the number of suicides amongst those who had broken with the Church, in their rejection of the Catholic means of grace. In a sermon which he delivered towards the end of 1547 at the Diet of Augsburg he pointed out that, ever since the use of the Sacraments had been scorned, people were more exposed to the strength of the evil one and to discouragement. “When has the devil ever driven so many to desperation, so that they lose all hope and kill themselves? Whose fault is it? Ah, we deprive ourselves of God’s grace and refuse to accept the Divine strength which is offered us in the Holy Sacraments.”[755]

Among the Lutheran preachers the expected end of the world was made to play a part and to explain the increase of faint-heartedness and despair.

Mathesius says in his Postils: “Many pine away and lose hope; there is no more joy or courage left among the people; therefore let us look for the end of the world, and prepare, and be ready at any moment for our departure home!” “For the end is approaching; heaven and earth and all government now begin to crack and break.”[756]

Luther’s example proved catching, and the end of the world became a favourite topic both in the pulpit and in books, one on which the preachers’ own gloom could aptly find vent. The end of all was thought to be imminent. Such forebodings are voiced, for instance, in the following: “No consolation is of any help to consciences”;[757] “many pine away in dejection and die of grief”;[758] “in these latter days the wicked one by his tyranny drives men into fear and fright”;[759] “many despair for very dejection and sadness”;[760] “many pious hearts wax cowardly, seeing their sins and the wickedness of the world”;[761] “the people hang their heads as though they were walking corpses and live in a constant dread”;[762] “all joy is dead and all consolation from God’s Word has become as weak as water”;[763] the number of those “possessed of the devil body and soul” is growing beyond all measure.[764]

Though the special advantage claimed for the new Evangel lay in the sure comfort it afforded troubled consciences, many found themselves unable to arouse within them the necessary faith in the forgiveness of their sins. Luther’s own experience, viz. that “faith won’t come,”[765] was also that of many of the preachers in the case of their own uneasy and tortured parishioners; their complaints of the fruitlessness of their labours sound almost like an echo of some of Luther’s own utterances.

“There are many pious souls in our churches,” says Simon Pauli, of Rostock, “who are much troubled because they cannot really believe what they say they do, viz. that God will be gracious to them and will justify and save them.”[766]

The widespread melancholy existing among the parishioners quite as much and sometimes more so than among the pastors, explains the quantity of consolatory booklets which appeared on the market during the second half of the 16th century, many of which were expressly designed to check the progress of this morbid melancholy.[767] Selnecker’s work, mentioned above, is a specimen of this sort of literature. The Hamburg preacher, J. Magdeburgius, wrote: “Never has there been such need of encouragement as at this time.”[768] The Superintendent, Andreas Celichius, laments that people “are quite unable to find comfort in the sanctuary of the Evangel, but, like the heathen who knew not God, are becoming melancholy and desperate,” and this too at a time when “God, by means of the evangelical preaching, is daily dispensing abundantly all manner of right excellent and efficacious consolation, by the shovelful and not merely by the spoonful.”[769]—It was, however, a vastly more difficult matter to find comfort in the bare “Sola Fides” than it had been for the ancestors of these Evangelicals to find it in the Church’s way. Thanks to their co-operation, it was given to them to experience the vivifying and saving strength of the Sacraments and of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, to find example and encouragement in the veneration of the Saints and in the ritual, to be led to display their faith by the performance of good works in the hope of an eternal reward, and to enjoy in all the guidance and help of pastors duly called and ordained. In spite of all the abuses which existed, their Catholic forebears had never been deprived of these helps.

Many Protestants were driven by such considerations to return to the Church. Of this Nicholas Amsdorf complained. Many, he says, “have fallen away from Christ to Antichrist in consequence of such despair and doubts,” and the uncertainty in matters of faith is nourished by the want of any unity in teaching, so that the people “do not know whom or what to believe”;[770] this was also one of the reasons alleged by Simon Pauli why “many in the Netherlands and in Austria are now relapsing into Popery.”[771]

“We find numerous instances in our day,” Laurence Albertus said in 1574, “of how, in many places where Catholics and sectarians live together, no one was able to help a poor, deluded sectarian in spiritual or temporal distress, save the Catholic Christians, and especially their priests; such persons who have been helped admit that they first found real comfort among the Catholics, and now refuse to be disobedient to the Church any longer.” Albertus wrote a “Defence” of such converts.[772]

Johann Schlaginhaufen, Luther’s pupil, with the statements he makes concerning his own sad interior experiences, brings us back to his master.[773] Schlaginhaufen himself, even more than the rest, fell a prey to sadness, fear and thoughts of despair on account of his sins. Luther, to whom he freely confided this, told him it was “false that God hated sinners, otherwise He would not have sent His Son”; God hated only the self-righteous “who didn’t want to be sinners.” If Satan had not tried and persecuted me so much, “I should not now be so hostile to him.” Schlaginhaufen, however, was unable to convince himself so readily that all his trouble came from the devil and not from his conscience. He said to Luther: “Doctor, I can’t believe that it is only the devil who causes sadness, for the Law [the consciousness of having infringed it] makes the conscience sad; but the Law is good, for it comes from God, consequently neither is the sadness from Satan.” Luther was only able to give an evasive answer and fell back on the proximity of the Last Day as a source of consolation: “In short, why we are so plagued, vexed and troubled is due to the Last Day.... The devil feels his kingdom is coming to an end, hence the fuss he makes. Therefore, my dear Turbicida [i.e. Schlaginhaufen], be comforted, hold fast to the Word of God, let us pray.” Such words, however, did not suffice to calm the troubled man, who only became ever more dejected; his inference appeared to him only too well founded: “The Law with its obligations and its terrifying menaces is just as much God’s as the Gospel.”

“How doleful you look,” Luther said to him some weeks later. “I replied,” so Schlaginhaufen relates: “‘Ah, dear Doctor, I was brooding; my thoughts worry me and yet I can do nothing. I am unable to distinguish between the Law and the Gospel.’ The Doctor replied: ‘Yes, dear Master Hans, if you could do that then you would be indeed a Doctor yourself,’ saying which he stood up and doffed his cap.... ‘Paul and I have never been able to get so far ... the best thing to do is to hold fast to the man Who is called Christ.’” In answer to a new objection Luther referred the young man to the secret counsels of God, for, according to him, there was a hidden God Who had not revealed Himself and of Whom men “were unable to know what He secretly planned,”[774] and a revealed God Who indeed speaks of a Divine Will that all should be saved; how, however, this was to afford any consolation it is not easy to see.[775] On other occasions Luther simply ordered Schlaginhaufen to rely on his authority; God Himself was speaking through him words of command and consolation. “You are to believe without doubting what God Himself has spoken to you, for I have God’s authority and commission to speak to and to comfort you.”[776]

CHAPTER XXV

IN THE NARROWER CIRCLE OF THE PROFESSION AND FAMILY LUTHER’S BETTER FEATURES

[1. The University Professor, the Preacher, the Pastor]

Relations with the Wittenberg Students.

Among the pleasing traits in Luther’s picture a prominent one is the care he evinced for the students at Wittenberg.

The disagreeable impression caused by the decline of the University town is to some extent mitigated by the efforts Luther made to check the corruption amongst the scholars of the University. He saw that they were supervised, so far as academic freedom permitted, and never hesitated to blame their excesses from the pulpit. At the same time, in spite of the growing multiplicity of his labours and cares, he showed himself a helpful father to them even in temporal matters, for instance, when he inveighed in a sermon against their exploitation at the hands of burghers and peasants: They were being sucked dry and could scarcely be treated worse; this he had heard from all he knew.[777]

The respect he enjoyed and the example of his own simple life lent emphasis to his moral exhortations. His eloquent lectures were eagerly listened to; his delivery was vivid and impressive. People knew that he did not lecture for the sake of money and, even at the height of his fame, they gladly pointed to the unassuming life he led at home. He did not expect any marks of respect from the students, greatly as they, and not only those of the theological Faculty, esteemed him. Melanchthon had introduced the custom of making the students stand when Luther entered the class-room; Luther, however, was not at all pleased with this innovation and said petulently: “Doxa, doxa est magna noxa; who runs after glory never gets it.”[778]

Oldecop, the Catholic chronicler and Luther’s former pupil, who, as a youth and before the apostasy, had listened to him at Wittenberg, remembered in his old age how Luther, without setting himself in opposition to their youthful jollifications had known how to restrain them; just as he “reproved sin fearlessly from the pulpit,”[779] so he earnestly sought to banish temptation from the pleasures of the students.

We may here recall, that, as early as 1520, Luther had urged that all bordels should be done away with, those “public, heathenish haunts of sin,” as he termed them, at the same time using their existence as a weapon against the Catholic past.[780] The fact that many such houses were closed down at that time was, however, to some extent due to fear of the prevalent “French disease.”

When, in his old age, in 1543, the arrival of certain light women threatened new danger to the morals of the Wittenberg students, already exposed to the ordinary temptations of the town, Luther decided to interfere and make a public onslaught at the University. This attack supplies us with a striking example of his forcefulness, whilst also showing us what curious ideas and expressions he was wont to intermingle with his well-meant admonitions.

“The devil,” so he begins, “has, by means of the gainsayers of our faith and our chief foes [presumably the Catholics], sent here certain prostitutes to seduce and ruin our young men. Hence I, as an old and tried preacher, would paternally implore you, my dear children, to believe that the Wicked One has sent these prostitutes hither, who are itchy, shabby, stinking and infected with the French disease as, alas, experience daily proves. Let one good comrade warn the other, for one such infected strumpet can ruin 10, 20, 30, or even 100 sons of good parents and is therefore to be reckoned a murderess and much worse than a poisoner. Let one help the other in this poisonous mess, with faithful advice and warning, as each one would himself wish to be done by!”

He then threatens them with the penalties of the Ruler, which dissolute students had to fear, “in order that they may take themselves off, and the sooner the better”; “here [at Wittenberg] there is a Christian Church and University to which people resort to learn the Word of God, virtue and discipline. Whoever wants to drab had better go elsewhere.”

Were he able, he would have such women “bled and broken on the wheel.” Young people ought, however, to resist concupiscence and fight against “their heat”; it was not to no purpose that the Holy Ghost had said: “Go not after thy lusts” (Eccl. xviii. 30). He concludes: “Pray God He may send you a pious child [in marriage], there will in any case be trouble enough.”[781]

Some polemics have characterised such exhortations of Luther’s as mere “hypocrisy.” Whoever knows his Luther, knows, however, how unfounded is this charge. Nor was there any hypocrisy about the other very urgent exhortation which Luther caused to be read from the pulpit at Wittenberg in 1542, when himself unable to preach, and which is addressed to both burghers and students. He there implores “the town and the University for God’s sake not to allow it to be said of them, that, after having heard God’s Word so abundantly and for so long, they had grown worse instead of better.” “Ah, brother Studium,” he says, “spare me and let it not come to this that I be obliged like Polycarp to exclaim, ‘O my God, why hast Thou let me live to see this?’” He points to his “grizzly head” which at least should inspire respect.[782]

The Preacher and Catechist.

As a preacher Luther was hard-working, nay, indefatigable; in this department his readiness of speech, his familiarity with Holy Scripture and above all his popular ways stood him in good stead. At first he preached in the church attached to the monastery; later on his sermons were frequently preached in the parish church, and, so long as his health stood the strain, he sometimes even delivered several sermons a day.[783] Even when not feeling well he took advantage of every opportunity to mount the pulpit. In 1528 he took over the parochial sermons during Bugenhagen’s absence from Wittenberg,[784] in spite of being already overworked and ill in body.

All were loud in their praise of the power and vigour of his style. Mathesius in his “Historien” records a remark to this effect of Melanchthon’s.[785] Luther frequently laid down, after his own fashion, the rules which should guide those who preach to the little ones and the poor in spirit: “Cursed and anathema be all preachers who treat of high, difficult and subtle matters in the churches, put them to the people and preach on them, seeking their own glory or to please one or two ambitious members of the congregation. When I preach here I make myself as small as possible, nor do I look at the Doctors and Masters, of whom perhaps forty may be present, but at the throng of young people, children and common folk, from a hundred to a thousand strong; it is to them that I preach, of them that I think, for it is they who stand in need.”[786] And elsewhere: “Like a mother who quiets her babe, dandles it and plays with it, but who must give it milk from her breast, and on no account wine or Malmsey, so preachers must do the same; they ought so to preach in all simplicity that even the simple-minded may hear, grasp and retain their words. But when they come to me, to Master Philip, to Dr. Pommer, etc., then they may show off their learning—and get a good drubbing and be put to shame.” But when they parade their learning in the pulpit this is merely done “to impose on and earn the praise of the poor, simple lay-folk. Ah, they say, that is a great scholar and a fine speaker, though, probably, they neither understood nor learnt anything.”[787]

“Nor should a preacher consider individual members of his congregation and speak to them words of comfort or reproof; what he must seek to benefit is the whole congregation. St. Paul teaches this important doctrine [2 Cor. ii. 17]: ‘We speak with sincerity in Christ as from God and before God.’ God, Christ and the angels are our hearers, and if we please them that is enough. Let us not trouble ourselves about the world and about private persons! We will not speak in order to please any man nor allow our mouth to be made the ‘Arschloch’ of another. But when we have certain persons up before us, then we may reprove them privately and without any rancour.”[788]

As a preacher he was able often enough to tell the various classes quite frankly what he found to censure in them. At the Court, for instance, he could, when occasion arose, reprove the nobles for their drunkenness, and that in language not of the choicest.[789] He was not the man to wear kid gloves, or, as an old German proverb he himself quoted said, to let a spider spin its web over his mouth. A saying attributed to him characterises him very well, save perhaps in its latter end: Come up bravely, speak out boldly, leave off speedily.[790] “I have warned you often enough,” so we read in the notes of a Wittenberg sermon of Sep. 24, 1531,[791] “to flee fornication, and yet I see that it is again on the increase. It is getting so bad that I shall be obliged to say: Bistu do zurissen, sso lop dich der Teuffl.”[792] The preacher then turns to the older hearers, begging them to use their influence with the younger generation, to prevail on them to abstain from this vice.

As to his subject-matter, he was fond of urging Biblical texts and quotations, wherein he displayed great skill and dexterity. In general, however, his attacks on Popery are always much the same; he dwells with tiresome monotony on the holiness-by-works and the moral depravity of the Papists. Though his theory of Justification may have proved to him a never-failing source of delight, yet his hearers were inclined to grow weary of it. He himself says once: “When we preach the ‘articulum justificationis’ the people sleep or cough”; and before this: “No one in the people’s opinion is eloquent if he speaks on justification; then they simply close their ears.” Had it been a question of retailing stories, examples and allegories he could have been as proficient as any man.[793]

Mathesius has incorporated in his work some of Luther’s directions on preaching which might prove a good guide to any pulpit orator desirous of being of practical service to his hearers.[794] Some of these directions and hints have recently appeared in their vigorous original in the Table-Talk edited by Kroker.

It was his wish that religious addresses in the shape of simple, hearty instructions on the Epistles and Gospels should be given weekly by every father to his family.[795] He himself, in his private capacity, set the example as early as 1532 by holding forth in his own home on Sundays, when unable to preach in the church, before his assembled household and other guests. This he did, so he said, from a sense of duty towards his family, because it was as necessary to check neglect of the Divine Word in the home as in the Church at large.[796]

He also himself catechised the children at home, in order, as he declared, to fulfil the duties of a Christian father; on rising in the morning he was also in the habit of reciting the “Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Our Father and some Psalm as well” with the children.

He even expressed the opinion that catechetical instruction in church was of little use to children, but that in the home it was more successful and was therefore not to be omitted, however much trouble it might give. When, however, he adds, that the Papists had neglected such home teaching and had sacrificed the flock of Christ,[797] he is quite wrong. The fact is, that, before his day, it was left far too much to the family to give religious instruction to the children, there being as yet no properly organised Catechism in schools and churches. It was only the opposition aroused among Catholics by the religious changes that led to religious teaching becoming more widespread in the Catholic schools, and to a catechetical system being organised; a fuller religious education then served to check the falling away.[798] How highly, in spite of such apparent depreciation, he valued the ministerial teaching of the Catechism we learn from some words recorded by Mathesius: “If I had to establish order, I should see that no preacher was nominated who had not previously taught the ‘bonæ artes’ and the Catechism in the schools for from one to three years. Schools are also temples of God, hence the olden prophets were at once pastors and schoolmasters.”[799] “There is no better way,” he writes, “of keeping people devout and faithful to the Church than by the Catechism.”[800]

At Wittenberg an arrangement existed, at any rate as early as 1528,[801] by which, every quarter, certain days were set apart for special sermons on the articles of the Catechism.[802] The Larger and the Smaller Catechism published by Luther (see vol. v., xxxiv., 2) were intended to form the basis of the verbal teaching everywhere. The three courses of sermons preached by Luther at Wittenberg in May, Sep. and Nov., 1528, and since edited by George Buchwald, were arranged to suit the contents of the Greater Catechism and to some extent served Luther as a preparation for this publication. Luther, in the first instance, brought out the Smaller Catechism, as we see from certain letters given by Buchwald, not in book form, but, agreeably with an earlier ecclesiastical practice, on separate sheets in the shape of tablets to hang upon the walls; hence what he said on Dec. 18, 1537, of his being the author of the Catechism, the “tabulæ” and the Confession of Augsburg.[803]

He displayed great talent and dexterity in choosing the language best suited to his subject. We hear him denouncing with fire and power the vice of usury which was on the increase.[804] He knows how to portray the past and future judgments of God in such colours as to arouse the luke-warm. When treating of the different professions and ways of ordinary life he is in his own element and exhibits a rare gift of observation. On the virtues of the home, the education of children, obedience towards superiors, patience in bearing crosses and any similar ethical topics which presented themselves to him, his language is as a rule sympathetic, touching and impressive; in three wedding sermons which we have of him he speaks in fine and moving words on love and fidelity in the married state.[805]

In addition to his printed sermons, which were polished and amended for the press and from which we have already given many quotations on all sorts of subjects, the hasty, abbreviated notes of his sermons, made by zealous pupils, give us an insight into a series of addresses full of originality, outspokenness and striking thoughts. Indeed these notes, which are becoming better known at the present day, frequently render the sermons in all their primitive simplicity far better than do the more carefully arranged printed editions.

Luther, in 1524, according to one of these sets of notes, spoke on Good Works in the following style: “The Word is given in order that you may awaken! It is meant to spur you on to do what is good, not that you should lull yourself in security. When fire and wood [come together there ensues a fire; so you in like manner, must be inflamed]. If, however, the effect of the sermon is, that you do not act towards your brother as Christ does towards you, that is a bad sign, not, indeed, that you must become a castaway, but that you may go so far as one day to deny the Word.” “The devil knows that sin does not harm you, but his aim is to tear Christ out of your heart, to make you self-confident and to rob you of the Word. Hence beware of being idle under the influence of Grace. Christ is seen with you when you take refuge in Him, whether you be in sin or at the hour of death,” etc. “This is preached to you daily, but we produce no effect. Christ has bones and flesh, strength and weakness. Let each one see to it that above all he possess the faith ... the Gospel is preached everywhere, but few indeed understand it. Christ bore with His followers. In the same way must we behave towards the weak. And the day will come when at last they will understand, like the disciples. But that will never be unless persecution comes.”[806]

Excerpts from Luther’s Sermons on Our Lady.

In a sermon of 1524 on the Feast of the Visitation, taken down in Latin by the same reporter and recently published, Luther not only voices the olden view concerning the virtues and privileges of the Blessed Virgin but also, incidentally, supplies us with a sample of his candour in speaking of the faults of his hearers: “You are surprised that now I preach here so seldom, I, on the other hand, am surprised that you do not amend. There may possibly be a few to whom the preaching is of some avail; but the more I preach, the more ungodliness increases. It is not my fault, for I know that I have told you all what God gave me [to speak]. I am not responsible and my conscience is at peace. I have forced you to nothing. We have introduced two collections. If they are not to your taste, do away with them again. We shall not force you to give even a single penny.”[807]—He then deals with the Gospel of the Feast which records Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, and the canticle of praise with which she greeted her cousin. He draws apt lessons from it and praises the virtues and the dignity of the Blessed Virgin in a way that does him honour: “First of all you see how Mary’s faith finds expression in a work of charity. Her faith was not idle but was proved real by her acting as a mere maid, seeking out Elizabeth and serving her. Her faith was immense, as we also learn from other Gospel-readings. That is why Elizabeth said to her: ‘Blessed art thou that hast believed.’... This is a true work of faith when impelled thereby we abase ourselves and serve others. We, too, hear all this, but the works are not forthcoming.... Yet where there is real faith, works are never absent.”

“When Mary was magnified by Elizabeth with words of praise, it was as though she did not hear them, for she paid no heed to them. Every other woman would have succumbed to the temptation of vainglory, but she gives praise to Him to Whom alone praise is due. From this example all Christians, but particularly all preachers, ought to learn. You know that God preserves some preachers in a state of grace, but others He permits to fall.... God must preserve them like Mary so that they do not grow proud. When God bestows His gifts upon us it is hard not to become presumptuous and self-confident. If, for instance, I am well acquainted with Scripture, people will praise me on this account, and when I am praised, I, as a carnal man, am exposed to the fire; when on the contrary I am despised, etc. [i.e. this is helpful for my salvation].... Mary acted as though she did not hear it, and never even thanked Elizabeth for her praise.”

Mary said, so he continues, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, not myself; I am a mere creature of God; He might have set another in my place; I magnify Him Who has made me a Mother.” In this way Mary teaches us the right use of the gifts bestowed by God, for she rejoiced only in God. On the other hand, any woman who is even passably pretty becomes vain of herself, and any man who has riches, boasts of his possessions. Mary is merely proud that God, as she says, has regarded her humility. This is the praise which we too must pay her. We ought to extol her because she was chosen by the Divine Majesty to be the Mother of His Son. That, she says, will be proclaimed to the end of the world (“all generations shall call me blessed”), not on her own account, but because God has done this. Concerning her own good works and her virginity she was silent and simply said: “He has done great things in me.” In the same way we ought to be nothing in our own eyes and before the world, but to rejoice simply because God has looked down on us, confessing that all we have comes from Him. In this spirit Mary counted up great gifts; though she could have said: All that you have just told me is true. “Ah, hers was a fine spirit; and her example will assuredly endure.” “The whole world will never attain to it, for the soul that is not exalted by God’s gifts and depressed by poverty is indeed hard to find.” By her words, so the speaker continues, Mary condemned the world, raised herself above it and cast it aside; her language was not human, but came to her from God.

Though such praise of Mary—from which at a later date Luther desisted—may be placed to his credit, yet it must be pointed out, that even the above discourse is disfigured by bitter and unwarrantable attacks on Catholic doctrine and practice. He even speaks as though the veneration of Mary did not rest on the principles we have just heard him expound, viz. on the dignity bestowed by God on Mary as the Mother of God, and on the virtues with which she was endowed from on high, such as faith and humility. The Catholic Church, so Luther complains quite unjustly and falsely, had made of Mary a goddess (“fecimus eam Deam”) and had given her honour and praise without referring it to God.[808]

The supreme distinction which the Church acknowledges in Mary—viz. her immaculate conception and exemption from original sin from the first moment of her soul’s existence—Luther himself accepted at first and adhered to for a considerable time, following in this the tradition of his Order.[809]

All honour was to be given to Christ as God; this right and praiseworthy view, which Luther was indefatigable in expressing, misled him in the matter of the veneration and invocation of Mary and the Saints. Of this he would not hear, though such had ever been the practice of the Church, and though it is hard to see how God’s glory can suffer any derogation through the honour paid to His servants. In this Luther went astray; the dogma of the adorable Divinity of Jesus Christ was, however, always to remain to him something sacred and sublime.

Statements to Luther’s advantage from various Instructions. His Language.

In his sermons Luther was so firm in upholding the Divinity of Christ, in opposition to the scepticism he thought he detected in other circles, that one cannot but be favourably impressed. He was filled with the liveliest sense of man’s duty of submitting his reason to this mystery; he even goes too far, in recommending abdication of the intellect and in his disparagement of human reason; what he is anxious to do is to make all his religious feeling culminate in a trusting faith in the words: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son for us.”

In his sermons and instructions he demands a similar yielding of reason to faith with regard to the mystery of Christ’s Presence in the Sacrament, though in this case he had not shrunk from twisting the doctrine to suit his own ideas. It would hardly be possible to maintain more victoriously against all gainsayers the need of standing by the literal sense, or at least of excluding any figurative interpretation of, the words of institution “This is My Body,” than Luther did in many of his pronouncements against the Sacramentarians.[810]

With advancing years, and in view of the dissensions and confusion prevailing in the Reformed camp, he came to insist more and more on those positive elements, which, for all his aversion for the ancient Church, he had never ceased to defend. Of this we have a monument in one of his last works, viz. the “Kurtz Bekentnis,” to which we shall return later. Embittered by the scepticism apparent in Zwinglianism and elsewhere, which, as he thought, threatened to sap all religion, he there obeys his heart’s instincts and gives the fullest expression to his faith in general and not merely to his belief in Christ’s presence in the Sacrament.[811]

Concerning the Sacrament of the Altar he gave the following noteworthy answer to a question put to him jointly, in 1544, by the three princely brothers of Anhalt, viz. whether they should do away with the Elevation of the Sacrament in the liturgy. “By no means,” he replied, “for such abrogation would tend to diminish respect for the Sacrament and cause it to be undervalued. When Dr. Pommer abolished the Elevation [at Wittenberg, in 1542] during my absence, I did not approve of it, and now I am even thinking of re-introducing it. For the Elevation is one thing, the carrying about of the Sacrament in procession quite another [at Wittenberg Luther would not allow such processions of the Sacrament]. If Christ is truly present in the Bread (‘in pane’), why should He not be treated with the utmost respect and even be adored?”—Joachim, Prince of Anhalt, added, when relating this: “We saw how Luther bowed low at the Elevation with great devotion and reverently worshipped Christ.”[812]

Certain controversialists have undoubtedly been in the wrong in making out Luther to have been sceptical about, or even opposed at heart to, many of the ancient dogmas which he never attacked, for instance, the Trinity, or the Divinity of Christ. A few vague and incautious statements occasionally let slip by him are more than counterbalanced by a wealth of others which tell in favour of his faith, and he himself would have been the last to admit the unfortunate inferences drawn more or less rightly from certain propositions emitted by him. It is a lucky thing, that, in actual life, error almost always claims the right of not being bound down too tightly in the chains of logic. When Luther, for instance, made every man judge of the meaning of the Bible, he was setting up a principle which must have dissolved all cohesion between Christians, and thus, of necessity, he was compelled to limit, somewhat illogically, the application of the principle.

In a passage frequently cited against him, where he shows himself vexed with the ancient term employed by the Church to express the Son’s being of the same substance with the Father (“homoousios”), it was not his intention to rail against the doctrine therein expressed, but merely to take exception to the word. He explicitly distinguishes between the word and the thing (“vocabulum et res”). He says that, so long as one holds fast to the doctrine (“modo rem teneam”) scripturally defined by the Nicene Council, it was no heresy to dislike the word or to refuse to employ it.[813] Hence the passage affords no ground for saying, that “Luther was rash enough to tamper with the doctrine of the Person of Christ.” On the other hand, the new doctrine of the omnipresence of the Body of Christ evolved by him during the controversy on the Sacrament, can scarcely be considered creditable.[814] His views on the “communicatio idiomatum”[815] in Christ, and particularly on the Redemption,[816] also contain contradictions not to be explained away.

Contrariwise we must dismiss the charge based on his repugnance for the word “Threefoldhood,” by which Germans designate the Trinity, as if this involved antagonism on his part to the mystery itself. He was referring merely to the term when he said: “It is not particularly good German and does not sound well, but since it cannot be improved upon, we must speak as best we can.”[817] An undeniable confession of faith in the Trinity is contained in this very passage, and in countless others too.—When abbreviating the Litany he indeed omitted the invocation “Sancta Trinitas unus Deus,” but this was not from any hostility to the doctrine but from a wish not to have “too many words.” He left in their old places the separate invocations of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and deemed this quite sufficient.

By his retention of the belief in the three Divine Persons and in the Divinity of the Redeemer, Luther was instrumental in preserving among his future followers a treasure inherited from past ages, in which not a few have found their consolation. We must not be unmindful of how he strove to defend it from the assaults of unbelief, in his time still personified in Judaism. He did not sin by debasing the Second Person of the Trinity, but rather by foisting on God Incarnate attributes which are not really His; for instance, by arguing that, owing to the intimacy of the two Natures, Divine and Human, in Christ, His Human Nature must be as omnipresent as His Divine; or, again, by teaching that mere belief in one’s redemption and sanctification suffices to destroy sin; or, again, when his too lively eschatological fancy led him to see Christ, the Almighty conqueror of the devil and his world, already on the point of coming to the Judgment. And just as Christ’s Godhead was the very fulcrum of all his teaching, so he defended likewise the other Articles of the Apostles’ Creed with such courage, force and eloquence, as, since his death, few of his followers have found themselves capable of. About the Person of the Redeemer he wove all the usual Christological doctrines, His Virgin Birth, His truly miraculous Resurrection, His descent into Hell, His Ascension and Second Advent; finally, also, the resurrection of the dead, the future Judgment, and the everlasting Heaven and everlasting Hell. From the well-spring of the ancient creed, under God’s Grace, Lutherans without number have drawn and still continue to draw motives for doing what is good, consolation amidst affliction and strength to lead pious lives.

“What holiness, devotion and heroic virtue do we not find among non-Catholics. God’s Grace is not confined within the four walls of the Catholic Church, but breathes even in the hearts of outsiders, working in them, when opportunity affords, the miracle of justification and adoption, and thus ensuring the eternal salvation of countless multitudes who are either entirely ignorant of the true Church, as are the upright heathen, or mistake her true form and nature as do countless Protestants, brought up amidst the crassest prejudice. To all such as these the Church does not close the gates of Heaven” (J. Pohle).

It would be superfluous to enumerate amongst Luther’s favourable traits the respect he always paid to Holy Scripture as the Word of God, demanding for its infallible revelations a willing faith and the sacrifice of one’s own whims.

Greatly as he erred in wilfully applying his new, subjective principle of interpretation and in excluding certain of the Sacred Books, still the Bible itself he always declared to be an object of the highest reverence. Thanks to a retentive memory he made his own the words of Scripture, and even adopted its style. His “enthusiasm for the inexhaustible riches and Divine character of Holy Scripture,” of which the earlier Döllinger speaks,[818] has, and with some reason, been held up by Luther’s followers as the model, nay, the palladium of Lutheranism as a whole; on the other hand, however, Döllinger’s accompanying censure on Luther’s “arbitrary misuse” of the Bible-text must also commend itself not only to Catholics but to every serious student of the Bible. High praise for Luther’s acquaintance with Scripture combined with severe blame for his deviation from tradition are forthcoming from a contemporary of the early years of Luther’s public career. In a short, unprinted and anonymous work entitled “Urteil über Luther,” now in the Munich State Library, we read: “In the fine art of the written Word of God, i.e. the Bible, I hold Martin Luther to be the most learned of men, whether of those now living on earth or of those who have departed long since; he is, moreover, well versed in the two languages, both Latin and German. I do not, however, regard him as a Christian—for to be learned and eloquent is not to be a Christian—but as a heretic and schismatic”; he was, it adds, “the scourge of an angry God.”[819]

In the field of scriptural activity his German translation of the whole Bible has procured for him enduring fame. Since the birth of Humanism not a few scholars had drawn attention to the languages in which the Bible was originally written; Luther, however, was the first who ventured to make a serious attempt to produce a complete translation of all the Sacred Books on the basis of the original text.

Thanks to his German version, from the linguistic point of view so excellent, Protestants down to our own day have been familiar with the Bible. His rendering of the Bible stories and doctrines, at once so able and so natural, was a gain not only to the language of religion but even to profane literature, just as his writings generally have without question largely contributed to the furtherance of the German tongue.

The scholarly Caspar Ulenberg, writing on this subject from the Catholic side in the 16th century, expresses himself most favourably. “What Luther,” he says, “after consulting the recognised opinion of Hebrew and Greek experts, took to be the true meaning of the text under discussion, that he clothed in pure and elegant German, on the cultivation of which he had all his life bestowed great care. He had made such progress in the art of writing, teaching and expounding, that, if we take into consideration the beauty and the brilliance of his language, so free from artifice, as well as the originality of his expression, we must allow that he excelled all in the use of the German tongue so that none can compare with him. Thus it was that he gained so uncanny an influence over the hearts of his Germans, that, by caressing and flattering and using the allurements of the Divine Word, he could make them believe whatever he pleased. In this translation of the Bible he was, above all, at pains, by means of a certain elegance and charm of speech, to entice all to become his readers, and thus to win men’s hearts.”[820]

Luther cannot indeed be called the creator of New-High-German, either by reason of his translation of the Bible or of his other German writings. Yet, using as he did the already existing treasure of the language with such ability, his influence on the German language was necessarily very great, especially as, owing to the great spread of his writings in those early days of printing, his works were practically the first in the literary field, and, indeed, in many places excluded all others. “Luther’s importance as regards the language,” declares one of the most recent students of this matter, “is less apparent in the details of grammar, in which he is sometimes rather backward, than in the general effect of his exertions on behalf of New-High-German.” It is of small importance, the same writer remarks, “if in the mere wealth of common idioms one or other of the towns even within the confines of his native Saxon land—Grimma, Leipzig, Dresden—were in advance of the language employed by Luther.”[821]

Luther’s translation of the Bible will be treated of more in detail elsewhere (vol. v., xxxiv., 3). Here, however, mention may be made of the fine quality of the German used in his sermons, his theological and polemical writings, as well as in his popular works of devotion.

The figures and comparisons in which his sparkling fancy delights, particularly in the devotional booklets intended for the common people, his popular, sympathetic and often thoughtful adaptation of his language to the subject and to the personality of the reader, the truly German stamp of his phraseology, lending to the most difficult as well as to the most ordinary subjects just the clothing they require—all this no one can observe and enjoy without paying tribute to his gift of description and language.

“His vocabulary was strong and incisive,” Johannes Janssen truly remarks, “his style full of life and movement, his similes, in their naked plainness, were instinct with vigour and went straight to the mark. He drew from the rich mines of the vernacular tongue, and in popular eloquence and oratory few equalled him. Where he still spoke in the spirit of the Catholic past his language was often truly sublime. In his works of instruction and edification he more than once reveals a depth of religious grasp which reminds one of the days of German mysticism.”[822]

His first pupils could not sufficiently extol his gift of language. Justus Jonas in his panegyric on Luther declares, though his words are far-fetched: “Even the Chanceries have learnt from him, at least in part, to speak and write correct German; for he revived the use of the German language so that now we are again able to speak and write it accurately, as many a person of degree must testify and witness.”[823] And of the influence of his spoken words on people’s minds Hieronymus Weller declares, that it had been said of him, his words “made each one fancy he could see into the very hearts of those troubled or tempted, and that he could heal wounded and broken spirits.”[824]

The Spiritual Guide.

Not merely as professor, preacher and writer, but also as spiritual leader, did Luther exhibit many qualities which add to the attraction of his picture. Whatever may be the habits of polemical writers, the historian who wishes to acquit himself properly of his task must not in so momentous a matter evade the duty of depicting the favourable as well as the unfavourable sides of Luther’s character.

Though Luther did not regard himself as the pastor of Wittenberg, yet as much depended on him there as if he had actually been the regular minister; moreover, as was only to be expected, throughout the Saxon Electorate as well as in other districts won over to him, he exercised a certain sway. As can be proved from his letters and other documents, he freely offered his best services, if only for the good repute of the Evangel, to abolish scandals, to punish preachers who led bad lives, to promote attendance at public worship and the reception of communion, to help on the cause of the schools and the education of the young, and in every other way to amend the Christian life.

In order to revive discipline at Wittenberg, he tried the effect of excommunication, though with no very conspicuous success. He took the brave step of placing the Town Commandant, Hans Metzsch, under a sort of ban for his notorious disregard of the Church.[825] What he then told the congregation was calculated to inspire a wholesome dread, and to recall them to their duties towards God and their neighbour. The incident was likely to prove all the more effectual seeing that Luther had on his side both Town Council and congregation, Metzsch having previously fallen out with them, a fact which undoubtedly emboldened Luther.[826]

When Antinomianism, with its perilous teaching against the binding character of the Divine Law, strove to strike root in the Saxon Electorate, he set himself with unusual vigour to combat the evil, and in his writings, sermons and letters set forth principles worthy of being taken to heart concerning the importance of the Commandments and the perils of self-will. Similar edifying traits are apparent in his struggle with other “Rotters.” In the elimination of the sectarian element from the heart of the new faith and in instancing its dangers, he shows himself very emphatic, and, at times, the force of his reasoning is inimitable. Neither was he slow to find practical measures to ensure its extirpation, especially when it threatened the good name and stability of his work.[827]

He exercised many of the other labours of his ministry by means of his writings; with the help of his pen and the press, he, in his quality of spiritual guide, attacked all the many-sided questions of life, seeking to impart instruction to his followers wherever they might chance to be. No one so far had made such use of the newly invented art of printing for the purpose of exerting religious influence and for spiritual government.

He despatched a vast number of circular-letters to the congregations, some with detailed and fervent exhortations; his Postils on the scriptural Lessons for the Sundays and Feast Days he scattered far and wide amongst the masses; he was also interested in good books on profane subjects, and exhorted all to assist in the suppression of obscene romances and tales;[828] he also set to work to purify Æsop’s Fables—which, under Humanist influence, had become a source of corruption—from filthy accretions so that they might be of use in the education of the young.[829] The collection of German Proverbs which he commenced was also intended to serve for the instruction of youth.[830]

He justly regretted that amongst the Legends of the Saints current amongst the people there were many historical untruths and impossibilities. Many of his remarks on these stories do credit to his critical sense, particularly as in his time very few had as yet concerned themselves with the revision of these legends. It was far from advantageous to ecclesiastical literature, that, in spite of the well-grounded objections raised by Luther and by some Catholic scholars, deference to old-standing tradition allowed such fictions to be retained and even further enhanced. “It is the devil’s own plague,” Luther groans, “that we have no reliable legends of the Saints.... To correct them is an onerous task.” “The legend of St. Catherine,” he says on the same occasion to his friends, “is quite at variance with Roman history. Whoever concocted such a tale must now assuredly be sitting in the depths of hell.”[831] He goes, however, too far when he says that the inaccuracies were intentional, “infamous” lies devised by Popery, and adds: “We never dared to protest against them.”—As though such literary and often poetic outgrowths of a more childlike age were not to be regarded as merely harmless, and as though criticism had been prohibited by the Church. It is true, nevertheless, that criticism had not been sufficiently exercised, and if Luther’s undertaking and the controversies of the 16th century helped to arouse it, or, rather, to quicken the efforts already made in this direction, first in the field of Bible-study and Church-history and then, more gradually, in that of popular legendary and devotional literature, no wise man can see therein any cause for grief.

“An die Radherrn aller Stedte deutsches Lands, das sie christliche Schulen auffrichten und halten sollen” is the title of one of Luther’s writings of 1524, in which he urges the erection of schools with such vigour that the circular in question must be assigned a high place among his hortatory works: “With this writing Luther will recapture the affection of many of his opponents,” wrote a Zwickau schoolmaster after reading it.[832] “Ob Kriegsleutte auch ynn seligem Stande seyn künden” (1526) is the heading of another broadsheet of his, dealing with the secular sword, the divinely established “office of war” and the rights of the authorities. For this Luther made use of Augustine’s work “Contra Faustum manichæum.”[833] It is said that part of the proofs, without any author’s name, was put into the hands of Duke George of Saxony; thereupon he remarked to Lucas Cranach: “See, I have here a booklet which is better than anything Luther could do.”[834] At a later date Luther urged the people in eloquent words to take up arms against the Turk, though he had at first been opposed to resistance; nevertheless, he ever maintained his unfavourable attitude towards the Empire, already described in vol. iii., even on this question of such vital importance to Germany. He was relentless in his criticism of German unpreparedness for war, of the fatal habit of disregarding danger and of other possible sources of disaster; he also advanced religious motives for joining in the war, and exhorted all the faithful bravely to assist by their prayers.

Whilst these and other writings deal with practical questions affecting public life in which his position and religious ideas entitled him to interfere, a large number of works and pamphlets are devoted to domestic and private needs. In his “Trost fur die Weibern welchen es ungerat gegangen ist mit Kinder Geberen” (1542) he even has a kind word for such wives as had had a miscarriage, and consoles those who were troubled about the fate of their unbaptised infants. From the theological point of view this subject had, however, been treated better and more correctly by others before his day. He was also at his post with words of direction and sympathy when pestilence threatened, as his writing “Ob man fur dem Sterben fliehen muge” (1527) bears witness. He frequently composed Prefaces to books written by others, in order to encourage the authors and to help on what he considered useful works; thus, for instance, he wrote a commendatory Introduction to Justus Menius’s “Œconomia Christiana” (1529).

The New Form of Confession.

Luther’s pastoral experience convinced him that Confession was conducive to the maintenance and furtherance of religious life. He accordingly determined to re-introduce it in a new shape, i.e. without invalidating the doctrines he had preached concerning faith and freedom. Hence, at times we find him speaking almost like an apologist of the Church concerning this practice of earlier ages and its wholesome effects. He insists, however, that no confession of all mortal sins must be required, nor ought Confession to be made a duty, but merely counselled.

In his work “Von der Beicht, ob der Bapst Macht habe zu gepieten” (1521) he begins one section with the words: “Two reasons ought to make us ready and willing to confess,” which he then proceeds to expound quite in the manner of the olden Catholic works of instruction.[835] Elsewhere he expresses his joy that Confession had been bestowed on the Church of Christ, especially for the relief of troubled consciences; Confession and Absolution must not be allowed to fall into disuse; to despise so costly a treasure would be criminal.

Of Luther himself it is related again and again, that, after having confessed, he received “Absolution,” either from Pastor Bugenhagen of Wittenberg or from someone else.

The words Absolution and Confession must not, however, as already hinted, be allowed to mislead those accustomed to their Catholic sense. Sometimes in Catholic works we read quotations from Luther which convey the wrong impression, that he had either retained the older doctrine practically entire, or at least wished to do so. So little is this the case, that, on the contrary, when he mentions Confession it is usually only to rail at the “slavery” of conscience and the spiritual tyranny of the past.[836] Absolution, according to him, could be received “from the lips of the pastor, or of some other brother.”[837] Even the ordinary preaching of the Gospel to the faithful he considers as “fundamentally and at bottom an ‘absolutio’ wherein forgiveness of sins is proclaimed.”[838] In Confession there was no “Sacrament” in the sense that Baptism and the Supper were Sacraments, but merely “an exercise of the virtue of Baptism,” an act in which the simple Word became a means of grace. The Word was to arouse and awaken in the heart of the Christian the assurance of forgiveness. The faith of the penitent is the sole condition for the appropriation of the Divine promises.[839] Of the way in which Luther in the Smaller Catechism nevertheless emphasises the significance of the Absolution given by the confessor,[840] Julius Köstlin says: “These statements of Luther’s are in several ways lacking in clearness.”[841]

I must, in my trouble, Luther says elsewhere of Confession, seek for comfort from my brother or neighbour, and “whatever consolation he gives me is ratified by God in heaven [’erunt soluta in cœlo’ (Mat. xviii. 18)]”; “He consoles me in God’s stead and God Himself speaks to me through him.” “When I receive absolution or seek for comfort from my brother,” then “what I hear is the voice of the Holy Ghost Himself.” “It is a wonderful thing, that a minister of the Church or any brother should be ‘minister regni Dei et vitæ æternæ, remissionis peccatorum....’”[842]

But all such private exercise of the power of the keys notwithstanding, the public exercise by the ordinary ministers of the Church was also to be held in honour; it was to take place “when the whole body of the Church was assembled.”[843] In spite of the opposition of some he was always in favour of the general absolution being given during the service.[844] In this he followed the older practice which still exists, according to which, out of devotion and not with any idea of imparting a sacrament, the “Misereatur” and “Indulgentiam” were said over the assembled faithful after they had said the “Confiteor.” He also drew up a special form for this general confession and absolution.[845]

But even such public Confession was not, however, to be made obligatory; the very nature of Luther’s system forbade his setting up rules and obligations. In the present matter Luther could not sufficiently emphasise the Christian’s freedom, although this freedom, as man is constituted, could not but render impossible any really practical results. Hence Confession, private as well as public, was not to be prescribed, so much so that “those who prefer to confess to God alone and thereafter receive the Sacrament” are “quite at liberty to do so.”[846] For Confession was after all merely a general or particular confession of trouble of conscience or sinfulness, made in order to obtain an assurance that the sins were all forgiven.

It was, however, of the utmost importance that the penitents should declare whether they knew all that was necessary about Christ and His saving Word, and that otherwise they should be instructed. “If Christians are able to give an account of their faith,” Luther says in 1540 of the practice prevailing at Wittenberg, “and display an earnest desire to receive the Sacrament, then we do not compel them to make a private Confession or to enumerate their sins.” For instance, nobody thinks of compelling Master Philip (Melanchthon). “Our main reason for retaining Confession is for the private rehearsal of the Catechism.”[847]

In 1532, amidst the disturbance caused by Dionysius Melander, the Zwinglian faction gained the upper hand at Frankfort on the Maine, and the preachers, supported by the so-called fanatics, condemned and mocked at the Confession, which, according to the Smaller Catechism, was to be made to a confessor, to be duly addressed as “Your Reverence.” Luther, in his “Brieff an die zu Franckfort am Meyn” (Dec. 1532), accordingly set forth his ideas on Confession, in what manner it was to be retained and rendered useful.[848] “We do not force anyone to go to Confession,” he there writes, “as all our writings prove, just as we do not enquire who rejects our Catechism and our teaching.” He had no wish to drive proud spirits “into Christ’s Kingdom by force.” As against the self-accusation of all mortal sins required in Popery he had introduced a “great and sublime freedom” for the quieting of “agonised consciences”; the penitent need only confess “some few sins which oppress him most,” even this is not required of “those who know what sin really is,” “like our Pastor [Bugenhagen] and our Vicar, Master Philip.” “But because of the dear young people who are daily growing up and of the common folk who understand but little, we retain the usage in order that they may be trained in Christian discipline and understanding. For the object of such Confession is not merely that we may hear the sins, but that we may learn whether they are acquainted with the Our Father, the Creed, the Ten Commandments and all that is comprised in the Catechism.... Where can this be better done, and when is it more necessary than when they are about to approach the Sacrament?”[849]

“Thus, previously [to the Supper], the common people are to be examined and made to say whether they know the articles of the Catechism and understand what it is to sin against them, and if they will for the future learn more and amend, and otherwise are not to be admitted to the Sacrament.” “But if a pastor who is unable at all times and places to preach God’s Word to the people, takes advantage of such time and place as offers when they come to Confession, isn’t there just the devil of a row! As if, forsooth, he were acting contrary to God’s command, and as if those fanatics were saints, who would prevent him from teaching God’s Word at such a time and place, when in reality we are bound to teach it in all places and at all times when or wheresoever we can.”[850]

This instruction, which is the “main reason” for retaining Confession, is to be followed, according to the same letter, by “the Absolutio” pronounced by the preacher in God’s stead, i.e. by the word of the confessor which may “comfort the heart and confirm it in the faith.” Of this same word Luther says: “Who is there who has climbed so high as to be able to dispense with or to despise God’s Word?”[851]

It is in the light of such explanations that we must appreciate the fine things in praise of Confession, so frequently quoted, which Luther says in his letter to Frankfurt.

Luther goes on to make an admission which certainly does him honour: “And for this [the consolation and strength it affords] I myself stand most in need of Confession, and neither will nor can do without it; for it has given me, and still gives me daily, great comfort when I am sad and in trouble. But the fanatics, because they trust in themselves and are unacquainted with sadness, are ready to despise this medicine and solace.”

He had already said: “If thousands and thousands of worlds were mine, I should still prefer to lose everything rather than that one little bit of this Confession should be lost to the churches. Nay, I would prefer the Popish tyranny, with its feasts, fasts, vestments, holy places, tonsures, cowls and whatever I might bear without damage to the faith, rather than that Christians should be deprived of Confession. For it is the Christian’s first, most necessary and useful school, where he learns to understand and to practise God’s Word and his faith, which cannot be so thoroughly done in public lectures and sermons.”[852]

“Christians are not to be deprived of Confession.” On this, and for the same reasons, Luther had already insisted in the booklet on Confession he had published in 1529. The booklet first appeared as an appendix to an edition of his Greater Catechism published in that year, and is little more than an amended version of Rörer’s notes of his Palm Sunday sermon in 1529.[853]

In this booklet on Confession, also entitled “A Short Exhortation to Confession,”[854] he says of the “secret Confession made to a brother alone”: “Where there is something special that oppresses or troubles us, worries us and will give us no rest, or if we find ourselves halting in our faith,” we should “complain of this to a brother and seek counsel, consolation and strength.” “Where a heart feels its sinfulness and is desirous of comfort, it has here a sure refuge where it may find and hear God’s Word.” “Whoever is a Christian, or wishes to become one, is hereby given the good advice to go and fetch the precious treasure.” “Thus we teach now what an excellent, costly and consoling thing Confession is, and admonish all not to despise so fine a possession.” As the “parched and hunted hart” panteth after the fountains, so ought our soul to pant after “God’s Word or Absolution.”—The zeal expected of the penitent is well described, but here, as is so often the case with Luther, we again find the mistake resulting from his false idealism, viz. that, after doing away with all obligation properly so called, personal fervour and the faith he preached would continue to supply the needful.

Before Luther’s day Confession had been extolled on higher grounds than merely on account of the comfort and instruction it afforded. It had been recognised as a true Sacrament instituted by Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and committed by Him with the words “Whose sins you shall forgive,” etc. (John xx. 22 f.), to the exercise of duly appointed ministers. Yet the earlier religious literature had not been behindhand in pointing out how great a boon it was for the human heart to be able to pour its troubles into the ears of a wise and kindly guide, who could impart a true absolution and pour the balm of consolation and the light of instruction into the soul kneeling humbly before him as God’s own representative.

As regards the instruction, on which Luther lays such stress as the “main reason” for retaining the practice, the Catholic Confession handbooks of that period, particularly some recently re-edited, show how careful the Church was about this matter.

Franz Falk has recently made public three such handbooks, of which very few copies were hitherto known.[855] One of these is the work of a priest of Frankfurt a. M., Magister Johann Wolff (Lupi), and was first published in 1478; the second is a block-book containing a preparation for Confession, probably printed at Nuremberg in 1475; the third an Augsburg manual of Confession printed in 1504. The last two were intended more for popular use and give the sins in the order of the Decalogue. The first, by Wolff, pastor of St. Peter’s at Frankfurt, consists of two parts, one for children, the other for “older people, learned or unlearned,” containing examinations of conscience, very detailed and explicit in some parts, into the sins against the Ten Commandments, the seven capital sins, and, finally, the sins committed with “the five outward senses.” The examination of conscience for children, for the sake of instruction also includes the Our Father, Hail Mary, Creed and Decalogue, also the list of capital sins, Sacraments and Eight Beatitudes. The copious Latin tags from Peter Lombard, Scotus, Gerson, etc., point to the manual having been meant primarily as a guide for the clergy, on whom an appendix also impresses the advantages of a frequent explanation of the Ten Commandments from the pulpit. Schoolmasters too, so the manual says, should also be urged to instruct on the Commandments those committed to their care. Luther’s manual on Confession contains so many echoes of Wolff’s work (or of other Catholic penitential handbooks) that one of Wolff’s Protestant editors remarks: “Such agreement is certainly more than a mere chance coincidence,” and, further: “It is difficult in view of the great resemblance of thought, and in places even of language, not to assume that the younger man is indebted to his predecessor.”[856] However this may be, Wolff’s work, though holding no very high place as regards either arrangement or style, clearly expresses the general trend of the Catholic teaching on morality at that time, and refutes anew the unfounded charge that religious instruction for the people was entirely absent.

“We see how mature and keen in many particulars was the moral sense in that much-abused period.... The author is not satisfied with merely an outward, pharisaical righteousness, but the spirit is what he everywhere insists on.... He also defines righteousness ... as absolute uprightness of spirit, thankful, devoted love of God and pure charity towards our neighbour, free from all ulterior motive.” These words, of the “Leipziger Zeitung” (“Wissenschaftliche Beilage,” No. 10, 1896), regarding the Leipzig “Beichtspiegel” of 1495, Falk applies equally to Wolff’s handbook for Confession.[857]

This latter instruction dwells particularly on the need of “contrition, sorrow and grief for sin” on the part of the penitent. N. Paulus, in several articles, has furnished superabundant proof, that in those years, which some would have us believe were addicted to the crassest externalism, the need of contrition in Confession was earnestly dwelt upon in German religious writings.[858]

Luther, however, even in the early days of his change, under the influence of a certain distaste and prejudice in favour of his own pet ideas, had conceived an aversion for Confession. Here again his opposition was based on purely personal, psychological grounds. The terrors he had endured in Confession owing to his curious mental constitution, his enmity to all so-called holiness-by-works—leading him to undervalue the Church’s ancient institution of Confession—and the steadily growing influence of his prejudices and polemics, alone explain how he descended so often to the most odious and untrue misrepresentations of Confession as practised by the Papists.

What in the depths of his heart he really desired, and what he openly called for, viz. a Confession which should heal the wounds of the soul and, by an enlightened faith, promote moral betterment—that, alas, he himself had destroyed with a violent hand.

In his letter to Frankfurt quoted above he abuses the Catholic system of Confession because it requires the admission of all mortal sins, and calls it “a great and everlasting martyrdom,” “trumped up as a good work whereby God may be placated.” He calumniates the Catholic past by declaring it did nothing but “count up sins” and that “the insufferable burden, and the impossibility of obeying the Papal law caused such fear and distress to timorous souls that they were driven to despair.” And, in order that the most odious charge may not be wanting, he concludes: “This brought in money and goods, so that it became an idol throughout the whole world, but it was no doctrine, examination or exercise leading to the confession and acknowledgment of Christ.”[859] The fables which he bolstered up on certain abuses, of which even the Papal penitentiary was guilty, were only too readily believed by the masses.[860]

Church Music.

In order to enliven the church services Luther greatly favoured congregational singing. Of his important and successful labours in this direction we shall merely say here, that he himself composed canticles instinct with melody and force, which were either set to music by others or sung to olden Catholic tunes, and became hugely popular among Protestants, chiefly because their wording expresses so well the feelings of the assembled congregation. One of Luther’s Hymnbooks, with twenty-four hymns composed by himself, appeared in 1524.[861]

Music, particularly religious music, he loved and cherished, yielding himself entirely to the enjoyment of its inspiring and ennobling influence. As a schoolboy he had earned his bread by singing; at the University he delighted his comrades by his playing on the lute; later he never willingly relinquished music, and took care that the hours of recreation should be gladdened by the singing of various motets.[862] Music, he said, dispelled sad thoughts and was a marvellous cure for melancholy. In his Table-Talk he describes the moral influence of music in language truly striking.[863] “My heart overflows and expands to music; it has so often refreshed and delivered me amidst the worst troubles,” thus to the musician Senfl at Munich when asking him to compose a motet.[864] He supplied an Introduction in the shape of a poem entitled “Dame Music” to Johann Walther’s “The Praise and Prize of the lovely art of Music” (1538). It commences:[865] There can be no ill-will here—Where all sing with voices clear—Hate or envy, wrath or rage,—When sweet strains our minds engage. Being himself conversant with musical composition, he took pleasure in Walther’s description of counterpoint and in his ingenious comparison of the sequence of melodies to a troop of boys at play.

Grauert admirably groups together “Luther’s poetic talent, the gift of language, which enabled him so to master German, his work for German hymnology, his enthusiastic love of music, of which he well knew the importance as a moral factor, and his familiarity with the higher forms of polyphonic composition.” He also remarks quite rightly that these favourable traits had been admitted unreservedly by Johannes Janssen.[866]

[2. Emotional Character and Intellectual Gifts]

The traits mentioned above could hardly be duly appreciated unless we also took into account certain natural qualities in Luther from which his depth of feeling sprang.

A Catholic has recently called him an “emotional man,” and, so far as thereby his great gifts of intellect and will are not called into question, the description may be allowed to stand.[867] Especially is this apparent in his peculiar humour, which cannot fail to charm by its freshness and spontaneity all who know his writings and his Table-Talk, even though his witticisms quite clearly often served to screen his bitter vexation, or to help him to react against depression, and were frequently disfigured by obscenity and malice.[868] It is a more grateful task to observe the deep feeling expressed in his popular treatment of religious topics. Johannes Janssen declares that he finds in him “more than once a depth of religious grasp which reminds one of the days of German mysticism,”[869] while George Evers, in a work otherwise hostile to Luther, admits: “We must acknowledge that a truly Christian credulity peeps out everywhere, and, particularly in the Table-Talk, is so simple and childlike as to appeal to every heart.” Evers even adds: “His religious life as pictured there gives the impression of a man of prayer.”[870]

The circumstantial and reliable account given by Johann Cochlæus of an interview which he had with Luther at Worms in 1521 gives us a certain glimpse into the latter’s feelings at that critical juncture. After holding a lengthy disputation together, the pair withdrew into another room where Cochlæus implored his opponent to admit his errors and to make an end of the scandal he was giving to souls. Both were so much moved that the tears came to their eyes. “I call God to witness,” writes Cochlæus, “that I spoke to him faithfully and with absolute conviction.” He pointed out to him as a friend how willing the Pope and all his opponents were to forgive him; he was perfectly ready to admit and condemn the abuses in connection with the indulgences against which Luther had protested; his religious apostasy and the revolt of the peasants whom he was leading astray were, however, a different matter. The matter was frankly discussed between the two, partly in German, partly in Latin. Luther finally mastered the storm obviously raging within and brought the conversation to an end by stating that it did not rest with him to undo what had been done, and that greater and more learned men than he were behind it. On bidding him farewell, Cochlæus assured him with honest regret that he would continue the literary feud; Luther, for his part, promised to answer him vigorously.[871]

Luther’s mental endowments were great and unique.

Nature had bestowed on him such mental gifts as must astonish all, the more they study his personality. His extraordinary success was due in great part to these rare qualities, which were certainly calculated to make of him a man truly illustrious had he not abused them. His lively reason, quick grasp and ready tongue, his mind, so well stocked with ideas, and, particularly, the inexhaustible fertility of his imagination, allowing him to express himself with such ease and originality, enchanted all who came into contact with him.

Pollich of Mellerstadt, one of the most highly respected Professors of the Wittenberg University, said of Luther, when as yet the latter was scarcely known: “Keep an eye on that young monk, Master Martin Luther, he has a reason so fine and keen as I have not come across in all my life; he will certainly become a man of eminence.”[872] Jonas, his friend, assures us that others too, amongst them Lang and Staupitz, admitted they had never known a man of such extraordinary talent.[873] Urban Rhegius, who visited him in 1534, in the report he gives shows himself quite overpowered by Luther’s mind and talent: “He is a theologian such as we rarely meet. I have always thought much of Luther, but now I think of him more highly than ever. For now I have seen and heard what cannot be explained in writing to anyone not present.... I will tell you how I feel. It is true we all of us write occasionally and expound the Scriptures, but, compared with Luther, we are children and mere schoolboys.”[874]

His friends generally stood in a certain awe of his greatness, though, in their case, we can account otherwise for their admiration. Later writers too, even amongst the Catholics, felt in the imposing language of his writings the working of a powerful mind, much as they regretted his abuse of his gifts. “His mind was both sharp and active,” such was the opinion of Sforza Pallavicini, the Jesuit author of a famous history of the Council of Trent; “he was made for learned studies and pursued them without fatigue to either mind or body. His learning seemed his greatest possession, and this he was wont to display in his discourse. In him felicity of expression was united with a stormy energy. Thereby he won the applause of those who trust more to appearance than to reality. His talents filled him with a self-reliance which the respect shown him by the masses only intensified.”[875] “Luther’s mind was a fertile one,” he writes elsewhere, “but its fruits were more often sour than ripe, more often abortions of a giant than viable offspring.”[876] His alert and too-prolific fancy even endangered his other gifts by putting in the shade his real intellectual endowments. “His imagination,” Albert Weiss truly says, “was, next to his will, the most strongly developed of his inner faculties, and as powerful as it was clear. Herein chiefly lies the secret of his power of language.”[877]

To his temperamental and intellectual qualities, which undoubtedly stamped his works with the impress of a “giant,” we must add his obstinate strength of will and his extraordinary tenacity of purpose.

Were it possible to separate his will from his aims and means, and to appreciate it apart, then one could scarcely rate it high enough. Thousands, even of the bravest, would have quailed before the difficulties he had to face both without and within his camp. The secret of his success lay simply in his ability to rise superior to every difficulty, thanks to his defiance and power of will. Humanly it is hard to understand how all attacks and defeats only served to embolden him. Protestants have spoken of the “demoniacal greatness” manifest in Luther, have called him a man of “huge proportions and power” in whose “breast two worlds wrestled,” and, on account of his “heroic character,” have even claimed that history should overlook “the vices proper to heroes.”[878]

Among Catholic writers the earlier Döllinger, for all his aversion for Luther’s purpose and the weapons he employed, nevertheless says of him: “If such a one is justly to be styled a great man, who, thanks to his mighty gifts and powers, accomplishes great things and brings millions of minds under his sway—then the son of the peasant of Möhra must be reckoned among the great, yea, among the greatest of men.”[879] Upon the disputed definition of “greatness” we cannot enter here. (See vol. vi., xl., 1.) Yet, in view of the intellectual gifts lavished on Luther, Döllinger’s words are undoubtedly not far away from the mark, particularly when we consider his gigantic capacity for work and the amazing extent of his literary labours, distracted though he was by other cares.

We have already had occasion to give the long list of the works he penned in 1529 and 1530,[880] and we may add some further examples. In 1521, in which year he lost over five weeks in travelling, not to speak of the correspondence and other business which claimed his attention in that exciting period of his life, he still found time to write more than twenty works of varying length which in the Weimar edition cover 985 large octavo pages; he also translated a book by Melanchthon into German, commenced his translation of the Bible and his church Postils. In 1523 he produced no less than twenty-four books and pamphlets, and, besides this, his lectures on Deuteronomy (247 pages in the Weimar edition) and a German translation of the whole Pentateuch. He also preached about 150 sermons, planned other works and wrote the usual flood of letters, of which only a few, viz. 112, have been preserved, amongst them being some practically treatises in themselves and which duly appeared in print. Even in 1545, when already quite broken down in health and when two months were spent in travelling, he managed with a last effort, inspired by his deadly hate, to compose even so considerable a book as his “Wider das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teuffel gestifft,” as well as other smaller writings and the usual number of private letters, circulars, and memoranda.[881] At the very end he told his friend, the preacher Jacob Probst, that he meant to work without intermission though old and weary, with a failing eyesight and a body racked with pain.

These labours, of which the simple enumeration of his books gives us an inkling, even the most fertile mind could have performed only by utilising every moment of his time and by renouncing all the allurements to distraction and repose. The early hours of the morning found Luther regularly in his study, and, in the evening, after his conversation with his friends, he was wont to betake himself early to bed so as to be able to enjoy that good sleep, without which, he declared, he could not meet the demands made upon him.

That, however, behind all his fiery zeal for work, certain moral influences not of the highest also had a share is obvious from what has been said previously.

[3. Intercourse with Friends. The Interior of the former Augustinian Monastery]

Hitherto we have been considering the favourable traits in Luther’s character as a public man; turning to his quieter life at Wittenberg, we shall find no lack of similar evidences.[882] We must begin by asking impartially whether the notorious Table-Talk does not reveal a better side of his character.

The question must be answered in the affirmative by every unprejudiced reader of those notes. Luther’s gifts of mind and temperament, his versatility, liveliness of imagination, easy use of Scripture and insight even into worldly matters; further his rare talent of simple narration, and not seldom the very subjects he chooses give a real worth to Luther’s Table-Talk, notwithstanding all that may be urged against it. It is accordingly the historian’s duty faithfully to portray its better side.

The more favourable side of the Table-Talk.

Any comprehensive judgment on the Table-Talk as a whole is out of the question; with its changing forms and colours and its treatment of the subjects it is altogether too kaleidoscopic. Again, in conjunction with what is good and attractive, frivolous, nay, even offensive and objectionable subjects are dealt with, for which the reader is in no wise prepared.[883]

It is necessary to emphasise the fact—which may be new to some—that to regard the Table-Talk as a hotch-potch of foul sayings is to do it an injustice. Catholics, as a matter of course, are used to finding in anti-Lutheran polemics plentiful quotations from it not at all to Luther’s credit; of its better contents, a knowledge of which is of even greater importance in forming an opinion of his character, no hint is contained in this sort of literature. Some are even ignorant that Protestant writers have more than compensated for this undue stress on the unfavourable side of the Table-Talk by the attractive selection they give from its finer parts.

In point of fact the subject of Luther’s conversations is, not infrequently, the attributes of God; for instance, His mercy and love; the duties of the faithful towards God and their moral obligations in whatever state of life they be placed; hints to the clergy on the best way to preach or to instruct the young; not to speak of other observations regarding neighbourly charity, the vices of the age and the virtues or faults of great personages of that day, or of the past. Luther was fond of discoursing on subjects which, in his opinion, would prove profitable to those present, though often his object was merely to enliven and amuse the company.

The tone and the choice of his more serious discourses frequently show us that he was not unmindful of the fact, that his words would be heard by others beyond the narrow circle of his private guests; he was aware that what he said was noted down, and not unfrequently requested the reporters to commit this or that to writing, knowing very well that such notes would circulate.[884] At times, however, he seemed to become forgetful of this, and allowed observations to escape him which caused many of his oldest admirers to regret the publication of the Table-Talk. A large number of statements made by him on the spur of the moment must, moreover, not be taken too seriously, for they are either in contradiction with other utterances or are practically explained away elsewhere.

Thus, for instance, in a conversation in the winter of 1542-1543, occur the following words which really do him honour: “God has preserved the Church by means of the schools; they it is that keep the Church standing. Schools are not very imposing as to their exterior, yet they are of the greatest use. It was to the schools that the little boys owed their knowledge of the Paternoster and the Creed, and the Church has been wonderfully preserved by means of the small schools.”[885]—Yet, at an earlier date, he had said just the contrary, viz. that before his day the young had been allowed to drift to wreck and ruin, owing to entire lack of instruction.

On certain religious subjects he could speak with deep feeling.[886] Compare, for instance, what he says of Christ’s intercourse with His disciples.

“In what a friendly way,” Luther remarks, “did He behave towards His disciples! How charming were all His dealings with them! I quite believe what is related of Peter, viz. that, after Christ’s Ascension, he was always weeping and wiping his eyes with a handkerchief till they grew quite red; when asked the cause of his grief, he replied, he could not help shedding tears when he remembered the friendly intercourse they had had with Christ the Lord. Christ indeed treats us just as He did His disciples, if only we would but believe it; but our eyes are not open to the fact. It was a real wonder how they [the Apostles] were so altered in mind at Pentecost. Ah, the disciples must have been fine fellows to have been witnesses of such things and to have had such fellowship with Christ the Lord!”[887]

Immediately after this, however, we hear him inveighing against the Pope with statements incredibly false,[888] whilst, just before, in another conversation, he had introduced his favourite error concerning Justification by Faith.[889]

It may suffice to keep to the dozen pages or so[890] from which the above kindlier samples were extracted, to become acquainted with the wealth of good interspersed amongst so much that is worthless, and at the same time to appreciate how lively his mind and his powers of observation still remained even when increasing years and persistent bad health were becoming a burden to him.

As to the way in which his then sayings were handed down, we may state, that, in the winter of 1542-1543, Caspar Heydenreich, who had already officiated as pastor of Joachimstal, was present at Luther’s table and wrote down these and other remarks as they dropped from the speaker’s lips; they were afterwards incorporated in Mathesius’ collection. In the original they are partly in Latin, partly in German, and betray not the slightest attempt at polish. The reason that we thus find Latin passages in reports of German conversations is that the reporter, in order to take down more rapidly what he heard, at times made use of shorthand, then only employed for Latin. Others who reported the Table-Talk had recourse to the same device. The consequence is, that, in the recent German editions of the Table-Talk, we find in one and the same conversation some sentences in the Old German Luther actually used, and others in present-day German, the latter being merely translations from the Latin.

After discoursing at length on the fact that schools ought to be carefully cherished for the sake of the coming generation of Church teachers, he says: “The work of the schools is not brilliant in the eyes of the world, but it is of the greatest utility.” (No. 609; then follows the praise of the old schools already recorded.)—“Wealth is the most insignificant thing in the world, the meanest gift in God’s power to bestow on man. What is it compared with the Word of God? Indeed, what is it compared with bodily endowments, or with beauty, or with the gifts of the soul? and yet people fret so much for it. Material, formal, efficient and final causes here fare badly. For this reason the Almighty usually gives riches to rude donkeys upon whom He bestows nothing else” (611).

Luther relates incidentally that his father Hans, who died at Mansfeld in 1530, when asked on his death-bed whether he believed in the Apostles’ Creed, replied: “He would indeed be a scoundrel who refused to believe that.” “That,” aptly remarked Luther, “is a voice from the old world”; whereupon Melanchthon chimed in: “Happy those who die in the knowledge of Christ as did your [daughter] Magdalene [† Sep. 20, 1542]; the older we grow the more foolish we become.... When we grow up we begin to dispute and want to be wise, and yet we are the biggest fools” (615).

According to Luther, God’s most grievous wrath then rested on the Jews. They are blinded, pray fanatically and yet are not heard. “Oh, dear God, rather than remain silent do Thou punish us with pestilence, the French disease and whatever other dreadful maladies the soldiers curse. God says: I have stretched out My hands; come, give ear, draw nigh to Me! [The Jews reply]: We won’t. [God says]: You have Isaias; hear him. [They scream]: Yah, we will kill him! [God says]: Here is My Son! [They reply]: Out on Him! Hence Our Lord God now treats them as we see. That is how abandoned children fare, who refuse to obey their parents and are therefore deserted by them. No one has ever written concerning this wrath of God, nor is anyone able to do so; no eloquence can plumb the depths of this wrath. O Heavenly Father—[this he said with clasped hands]—allow us to enjoy the sunshine and permit us not to fall away from the Word! Just fancy, for fifteen hundred years the Jews have groaned under His Wrath! And what will be the end of it all? Alas, there will be a dreadful scene in hell!” (608).

Against the Jews he was very bitter. It was related at table, that, in spite of the two books Luther had recently published, the Hebrews stood in favour with the Counts of Mansfeld, and, from their synagogue, had even dared to hurl at an Eisleben preacher the opprobrious epithet of Goim. Luther replied that if he were pastor and Court Chaplain there like Cœlius, or even a simple preacher, he would at once resign his post. When it was remarked that the Jews knew how to curry favour with the great, his comment was: “The devil can do much.” On being asked whether it would be right to box the ears of a Jew who uttered a blasphemy, he replied, “Certainly; I for one would smack him on the jaw. Were I able, I would knock him down and stab him in my anger. If it is lawful, according to both the human and the Divine law, to kill a robber, then it is surely even more permissible to slay a blasphemer.” To the observation of one of his guests that the Jews boasted, that, of the two, the Christians were the worse usurers, Luther said: “That is quite true. At Leipzigk there are greater usurers than the Jews. But a distinction must be drawn.” Among the Jews usury is made the rule, whereas amongst the Christians it is repressed. “We preach against it and are heartily opposed to it; with them this is not the case” (628).

In a similar strain, in the dozen pages under consideration, he touches on many other instructive subjects, whether connected with questions of the day, or with religion, or the Bible. He portrays with a clear hand the dominant idea of the Book of Job, in comparison with which all the dramatic force of the Greek plays was as nothing (616); he expounds the narratives of Christ’s Prayer in the Garden of Olives, where He suffered indescribable pains for our sins (626); in answer to a query he speaks of the anointing of Our Lord’s feet by Magdalene, and observes, referring to the censure drawn from Judas by his avarice: “That is the way of the world and the devil; what should be blamed is praised, and what should be praised is blamed” (627). What he says of the vast number of the slain, alluded to so frequently in the Old Testament, was probably also called forth by some questioner (612). Amidst this recur new invectives against the Jews and their magic; never ought we to eat or drink with them (619); also against the Turks and their bigotry and unbelief; the latter resembled the fanatics in that, like them, they refused to doubt their revelations; this he proved by certain instances (620). He speaks of the strong faith of simple Christians with feeling and not without envy (614). He extols the power of prayer for others, and proves it not merely from Biblical texts and examples, but also from his own experience; “we, too, prayed Philip back to life. Verily prayer can do much.... God does not reward it with a certain, fixed measure, but with a measure pressed and running over, as He says.... A powerful thing is prayer, if only I could believe it, for God has bound and pledged Himself by it” (617).

Dealing with astrology, he demonstrates its folly by a lengthy and very striking argument; when it was objected that the reformation he was carrying out had also been predicted by the stars at the time of his birth, he replied: “Oh no, that is another matter! That is purely the work of God. You will never persuade me otherwise!” (625).

As to practical questions, he speaks of the doings of the Electoral marriage courts in certain cases (621); of severity in the up-bringing of children (624); of the choice of godparents for Baptism (620); of the authority of guardians in the marriage of their wards (613); and of what was required of those who dispensed the Supper (618).

On one occasion, when the conversion of the Jews at the end of the world was being discussed, the “Doctoress” (Catherine) intervened in the conversation with a Biblical quotation, but her contribution (John x. 16) was rejected in a friendly way by Luther as mistaken.

In these pages of the Table-Talk unseemly speeches or expressions such as call for censure elsewhere do not occur, though the Pope and the Papacy are repeatedly made the butt of misrepresentation and abuse (610, 616, 619); as was only to be expected, we find here again Luther’s favourite assertion that the Roman doctrine of works is a gross error very harmful to souls (623); in support of his opinion Luther gives a long string of Bible texts.

Apart from the abuse just referred to and some other details these few leaves, taken at haphazard from the Table-Talk, are certainly not discreditable to Luther. Beside these might moreover be placed, as we have already admitted elsewhere, many other pages the contents of which are equally unexceptionable.

It is naturally not the task or duty of Catholic controversialists to fill their works with statements from the Table-Talk such as the above; they would nevertheless do well always to bear in mind that many such favourable utterances occur in Luther’s works with which moreover the Protestants are as a rule perfectly familiar. The latter, indeed, who often are acquainted only with these better excerpts from Luther’s books, sermons, letters or Table-Talk, are not unnaturally disposed to view with suspicion those writers who bestow undue prominence on unfavourable portions of his works, torn from their context.

Unless Catholic polemics contrive to look at things from their opponents’ point of view, their success must always be limited; short of this they run the risk of being accused of being ignorant of what tells in Luther’s favour, or of not giving it due weight. All controversy should in reality be conducted in a friendly spirit, and, in the discussion of Luther, such a spirit joined with a broad-minded appreciation of what is good in the opposite party cannot fail to be productive of happy results. How far Protestants have acted in this spirit is, alas, plain to all who have had dealings with them. There can be no question but that certain excesses perpetrated on the opposite side go far to explain, if not to excuse, the methods adopted by some of the champions of Catholicism.

Kindlier Traits Evinced by Luther.

The great veneration felt for Luther by most of his pupils, particularly by those who were intimate with him, enables us to see the impression his talents made on others. It is, of course, probable that their mental submission to him was in part due to the feeling, that it was an exceptional honour to be accounted friends of a man famous throughout the world and so distinguished by his extraordinary success; yet it is equally certain that it was his own peculiar charm which caused not merely young students, such as those who noted down the Table-Talk, but even mature and experienced men, to look up to him with respect and affection and voluntarily to subject themselves to his mind and his will. The fact is, in Luther a powerful and domineering talent existed side by side with great familiarity in consorting with others and a natural gift of making himself loved. The unshakable confidence in God on which he and his followers seemed to lean in every reverse they met, perhaps impressed people more than anything else.

“His earnestness,” wrote a devoted young follower of his, “is so tempered with gladness and friendliness that one longs to live with him; it seems as though God wished to demonstrate how blissful and joyous his Evangel is, not merely by his teaching, but even by his conduct.” Thus the Swiss student, Johann Kessler, who became acquainted with Luther after his return from the Wartburg.[891] Another voice from the same period enthusiastically extols his friendly ways and his winning speech in his dealings with his pupils, also the power of his words “which cast such a spell over the hearts of his hearers that anyone, who is not made of stone, having once heard him, yearns to hear him again.” Thus his disciple Albert Burrer.[892]

Mathesius, one of his busier pupils, declares: “The man was full of grace and the Holy Ghost. Hence all who sought counsel from him as a prophet of God, found what they desired.”[893] Often, he remarks, difficult questions from Scripture were submitted to him (in conversation at table) which he answered both plainly and concisely. And if anyone contradicted him he took no offence but skilfully put his gainsayer in the wrong. The Doctor knew so well how to bring in his stories and sayings and apply them at the proper juncture that it was a real pleasure and comfort to listen to him.[894] “Amongst his other great virtues he was very easily contented, and also extremely kind.”[895]