Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  “When we perceive the devil tempting us,” he says, “we can easily overcome him by putting his pride to shame and saying to him: ‘Leck mich im Arss,’ or ‘Scheiss in die Bruch und hengs an den Halss.’” This counsel he actually put in practice: “On May 7, 1532, the devil was tormenting me in the afternoon, and thoughts troubled me, such as that a thunderbolt might kill me, so I replied to him: ‘Leck mich im Arss, I am going to sleep, not to hold a disputation.’” When the devil would not cease urging his sins against him he had a drastic method of effectually disposing of his importunity.

  He relates in the Table-Talk, in 1536, the “artifice” by which the parish-priest of Wittenberg, his friend Johann Bugenhagen (Pomeranus), had put the devil to flight. It was a question of the milk which the devil had bewitched by means of sorceresses or witches. Luther says: “Dr. Pommer’s plan was the best, viz. to plague them [the witches] with filth and stir it into the milk so that everything stank. For when his [Pommer’s] cows also lost their milk, he promptly took a vessel filled with milk, relieved himself in it, poured out the contents and said: ‘There, devil, eat that.’ After that he was no longer deprived of the milk.” Before this his wife and the maids had worried themselves to death trying “to get the butter to come” — as we read in another account of this occurrence in a version of the Table-Talk which is more accurately dated — but all to no purpose. “Then Pommer came up, mocked at the devil and eased himself in the churn. Thereupon Satan ceased his tricks, for he is proud and cannot bear to be laughed at.”

  Less formal, according to him, was the action of another individual, who had put Satan to flight by a “crepitus ventris.”

  Still, all temptations of the devil are profitable to us, so Luther says, for, if we were always at peace, the devil himself “would treat us ignominiously,” for he is full of nothing but deception and filthiness. Luther, like many of his contemporaries and later writers, was well acquainted with the devil’s private life, and convinced that “devil’s prostitutes: ‘cum quibus Sathan coiret’” actually existed.

  As the filthy details of the expulsion of the devil from the churn are omitted in Lauterbach’s Diary, certain defenders of Luther think they are warranted in drawing from this particular passage the conclusion that the Table-Talk had been polluted by “unseemly” additions in Aurifaber’s and other later versions (above, f.) which “must not be laid to the charge of the Reformer.” “Not Luther in his domestic circle, but the compilers and collectors of the much-discussed Table-Talk, Aurifaber in particular, were rude, obscene and vulgar.” The publication of the original documents, for instance, by Kroker in 1903, has, however, shown the first version of the Table-Talk to be even more intolerably coarse, and confirmed the substantial accuracy of the text of the older German Table-Talk at present under discussion. Preger, the editor of Schlaginhaufen’s notes, rightly repudiated such evasions even in 1888, together with the alleged proofs urged by apologists. “We want to see Luther,” he says, “under the actual conditions in which he moved, and in all his own native rudeness.” Kroker also pointed out that even the first writers of the Table-Talk made use of certain signs in their notes (e.g. × or |) in lieu of certain words employed by Luther which they felt scrupulous about writing.

  “The entire lack of restraint with which Luther expresses himself,” a Protestant writer says of the Table-Talk edited by Kroker, “makes a remarkable impression on the reader of to-day, more particularly when we consider that his wife and children were among the audience.... In the Table-Talk we meet with numerous statements, some of them far-fetched, which are really coarse.... Although we can explain Luther’s love of obscenities, still, this does not hinder us from deploring his use of such and placing it to his discredit. It is true,” the same writer proceeds, “that Luther is never lascivious or merely frivolous.” As regards the latter assertion the texts to be adduced will afford a better opportunity of judging. That at any rate in the instances already mentioned Luther did not intentionally wish to excite his hearers’ passions is clear, and the fact has been admitted even by Catholic polemics who have really read his writings and Table-Talk.

  An alarming number of dirty expressions concerning the Pope and Catholicism occur in the Table-Talk.

  “Were the Pope to cite me to appear before him,” Luther says, “I should not go. I should s —— upon the summons because he is hostile to me; but were I summoned by a Council, then I should go.”

  Elsewhere, however, he says of the Council: “I should like, during my lifetime, to see a Council deal with the matter, for they would give one another a fine pummelling, and us a splendid reason for writing against them.”

  What was the origin of the Pope’s authority? “I see plainly whence the Pope came; he is the vomit of the lazy, idle Lords and Princes.”— “Then the Pope burst upon the world with his pestilential traditions and bound men by his carnal ordinances, his rules and Masses, to his filthy, rotten law.”

  Such unseemly expressions occur at times in conjunction with thoughts intended to be sublime. “I hold that God has just as much to do in bringing things back to nothingness as He has in creating them. This he [Luther] said, referring to human excrement. He also said: I am astounded that the dung-hill of the world has not reached the very sky.”— “He took his baby into his arms and perceived that it was soiling its diaper. His remark was that the small folk by messing themselves and by their howling and screaming earn their food and drink just as much as we deserve heaven by our good works.” He even brings the holy name of God into conjunction with one such customary vulgar expression. “I too have laid down rules and sought to be master, Aber der frum Gott hat mich in sein Arss fahren lassen und meyn Meystern ist nichts worden.”

  “There are many students here, but I do not believe there is one who would allow himself to be anointed [by the Papists], or open his mouth for the Pope to fill it with his filth; unless, perhaps, Mathesius or Master Plato.”

  In his strange explanation of how far God is or is not the author of evil, he says: Semei wished to curse and God merely directed his curse against David (2 Kings xvi. 10). “God says: ‘Curse him and no one else.’ Just as if a man wishes to relieve himself I cannot prevent him, but should he wish to do so on the table here, then I should object and tell him to betake himself to the corner.”

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

  It is not surprising that in Luther’s conversations on non-theological, i.e. on secular subjects, similar and even more offensive expressions occur.

  He thinks that we “feed on the bowels of the peasants,” for they “expel the stones” which produce the trees which produce the fruit on which we feed. — He has a joke at the expense of an unlearned man who had mistaken the Latin equivalent of the German word “Kunst” for a common German term: “Wenn man eynem auff die Kunst küsset so bescheist er sich.”

  Speaking of women who had the impertinence to wish for a share in the government, he says: “The ‘Furtzlecher’ want to rule and we suffer for it; they really should be making cheese and milking the cows.” Elsewhere he says to the preachers: “We never seek to please anybody nor to make our mouth the ‘Arschloch’ of another.”

  “Those who now grudge the preachers of the Word their bread will persecute us until we end by disgracing ourselves. Then ... ‘adorabunt nostra stercora.’” By a natural transition of ideas he goes on to say: “They will be glad to get rid of us, and we shall be glad to be out of them. We are as ready to part as ‘ein reiffer Dreck und ein weit Arssloch.’”— “Rather than let them have such a work [a conciliatory writing requested by the inhabitants of Augsburg] I would ‘in einen Becher scheissen und bissen,’ that they might have whereof to eat and drink.”

  “The lawyers scream [when we appropriate Church property]: ‘Sunt bona ecclesiae!’ ... Yes [I say], but where are we to get our bread? ‘We leave you to see to that,’ they say. Yes, the devil may thank them for that. We theologians have no wo
rse enemies than the lawyers.... We here condemn all jurists, even the pious ones, for they do not know what ‘ecclesia’ means.... If a jurist wishes to dispute with you about this, say to him: ‘Listen, my good fellow, on this subject no lawyer should speak till he hears a sow s —— , then he must say: ‘Thank you, Granny dear, it is long since I listened to a sermon.’”

  After the above there is no need of giving further instances of the kind of language with which opponents within his fold had to put up from Luther. It will suffice to mention the poem “De merda” with which he retaliated on the satirist Lemnius for some filthy verses, and the following prediction to his Zwickau opponents: “When trouble befalls them, whenever it may be, they will ‘in die Hosen scheissen und ein solchen Gestanck anrichten’ that nobody will be able to tarry in their neighbourhood.”

  It is also difficult for us to tarry any longer over these texts, especially as in what follows we shall meet with others of a similar character.

  Not to do injustice to the general character of Luther’s Table-Talk, we must again lay stress on the fact, that very many of his evening conversations are of irreproachable propriety. We may peruse many pages of the notes without meeting anything in the least offensive, but much that is both fine and attractive. Events of the day, history, nature, politics or the Bible, form in turn the subject-matter of the Table-Talk, and much of what was said was true, witty and not seldom quite edifying.

  Still, the fact remains that filthy talking and vulgarity came so natural to Luther as to constitute a questionable side to his character.

  Even when writing seriously, and in works intended for the general public, he seems unable to bridle his pen.

  In the book “Wider das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teuffel gestifft,” he introduces, for instance, the following dialogue: “We have enacted in our Decretals [say the Papists] that only the Pope shall summon Councils and appoint to benefices. [Luther]: My friend, is that really true? Who commanded you to decree this? [Answer]: Be silent, you heretic, what proceeds from our mouth must be hearkened to. [Luther]: So you say; but which mouth do you mean? Da die Förze ausfahren? To such an opinion you are welcome. Or that into which good Corso [wine] is poured? Da scheiss ein Hund ein! [Answer]: Out upon you, you shameless Luther, is it thus you talk to the Pope? [Luther]: Out upon you rather, you rude asses and blasphemous desperadoes, to address the Emperor and the Empire in such a manner! How can you venture to insult and slight four such great Councils and the four greatest Christian Emperors ‘umb euer Förze und Drecketal [sic] willen?’ What reason have you to think yourselves anything but big, rude, senseless fools and donkeys?”

  Before this he says in the same work, in personal abuse of Pope Paul III.: “Dear donkey, don’t lick! Oh, dear little Pope-ass, were you to fall and some filth escape you, how all the world would mock at you and say: Lo, how the Pope-ass has disgraced itself!... Oh, fiendish Father, do not be unmindful of your great danger.”

  “Dr. Luther is a rough sort of fellow; were he to hear that, he would rush in booted and spurred like a countryman and say: The Pope had been thrust into the Church by all the devils from hell.” “‘As much as the sun is greater than the moon, so does the Pope excel the Emperor.’ ... Hearken, reader; if you forget yourself and your nether garments have to be fumigated with incense and juniper, from such a reeking sin the Most Holy Father would never absolve you.”

  “‘Whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.’ ‘Whatsoever’ means [according to the Catholics] all that there is on earth, churches, bishops, emperors, kings and possibly ‘alle Förze aller Esel und sein eigen Förze auch.’ Ah, dear brother in Christ, put it down to my credit when I speak here and elsewhere so rudely of the cursed, noxious, ungainly monster at Rome. Whoever knows my mind must admit that I am far, far too lenient, and that no words or thoughts of mine could repay his shameful and desperate abuse of the Word and Name of Christ, our beloved Lord and Saviour.”

  “I must cease,” Luther says elsewhere in his “Wider das Bapstum,” after speaking of a Decretal, “I cannot bear to wallow any longer in this blasphemous, hellish, devils’ filth and stench; let someone else read it. Whoever wants to listen to God’s Word, let him read Holy Writ; whoever prefers to listen to the devil’s word, let him read the Pope’s Drecket [sic] and Bulls,” etc.

  We must here consider more closely the statement, already alluded to, made by some of Luther’s apologists. To remove the unfavourable impression left on the mind of present-day readers by his unbridled language an attempt has been made to represent it as having been quite the usual thing in Luther’s day.

  It is true that, saving some expressions peculiar to the Saxon peasant, such obscenity is to be met with among the neo-Humanist writers of that age, both in Germany and abroad. Even Catholic preachers in Germany, following the manners of the time, show but scant consideration for the delicacy of their hearers when speaking of sexual matters or of the inferior functions of the human body. It is quite impossible to set up a definite standard of what is becoming, which shall apply equally to every age and every state of civilisation. But if Luther’s defenders desire to exonerate him by comparing him with others, it is clear that they are not justified in adducing examples taken from burlesque, popular writers, light literature, or even from certain writings of the Humanists. The filth contained in these works had been denounced by many a better author even in that age. Luther, as already explained (vol. ii., f.), must not be judged by a profane standard, but by that which befits a writer on religion and the spiritual life, a reformer and founder of a new religion. The fact remains that it is impossible to instance any popular religious writer who ever went so far as, or even approached, Luther in his lack of restraint in this particular. Luther, in the matter of licentiousness of language, stands out as a giant apart. The passages to be quoted later on marriage and the sexual question will make this still more apparent.

  His own contemporaries declared aloud that he stood quite alone in the matter of coarseness and in his incessant use of vituperation; Catholics, such as Dungersheim, and opponents of the Catholic Church like Bullinger, testify alike in the strongest terms to the impression made upon them. Some of their numerous statements will be quoted below. We may, however, remark that the severest strictures of all came from Sir Thomas More, who, for all his kindliness of disposition, condemned most indignantly the filthy language of the assailant of King Henry VIII. of England. The untranslatable passage may be read in its Latin original in the note below. Caspar Schatzgeyer, another learned opponent of Luther’s, and likewise a man of mild temper, also rebuked Luther with great vehemence for the ignoble and coarse tone he was wont to employ against theological adversaries; he plainly hints that no one within living memory had brought into the literary arena such an arsenal of obscene language. Luther behaved “like a conqueror, assured by the spirit that he was able to walk upon the sea.” Spirits must, however, be tried. “The triumphal car of the victor can only be awarded to Luther and his followers if it be admitted that to triumph is synonymous with befouling the face and garments of all foes with vituperative filth (‘conviciorum stercora’), so that they are forced to save themselves by flight from the intolerable stench and dirt. Never in any literary struggle has such an array of weapons of that sort been seen.” One could well understand how such a man inspired fear amongst all who valued the cleanliness of their garments. Well might he be left to triumph with his assertion, which his adversaries would be the last to gainsay, “that everything which is not Gospel, must make room for the Gospel.”

  Some have gone so far as to say, that the tone of the popular religious writers of the period, from 1450-1550, was frequently so vulgar that there is little to choose between them and Luther. This is an unfair and unhistorical aspersion on a sort of literature then much read and which, though now little known, is slowly coming to its due owing to research. We may call to mind the long list of those in whose writings Luther could have found not merely models of decency and good taste
— which might well have shamed him — but also much else worthy of imitation; for instance, Thomas à Kempis, Jacob Wimpfeling, Johann Mensing, Johann Hoffmeister, Michael Vehe, Johann Wild, Matthias Sittard, Caspar Schatzgeyer, Hieronymus Dungersheim, Ulrich Krafft, Johannes Fabri, Marcus de Weida, Johann Staupitz, and lastly Peter Canisius, who also belonged practically to this period. Many other popular religious authors might be enumerated, but it is impossible to instance a single one among them who would have descended to the level of the language employed by Luther.

  Moreover, those secular writers of that day whose offensive crudities have been cited in excuse of Luther, all differed from him in one particular, viz. they did not employ these as he did, or at least not to the same extent, as controversial weapons. It is one thing to collect dirty stories and to dwell on them at inordinate length in order to pander to the depraved taste of the mob; it is quite another to pelt an enemy with filthy abuse. Hate and fury only make a vulgar tone more repulsive. There are phrases used by Luther against theological adversaries which no benevolent interpretation avails to excuse. Such was his rude answer to the request of the Augsburgers (above, ), or, again, “I would rather advise you to drink Malvasian wine and to believe in Christ alone, and leave the monk (who through being a monk has denied Christ) to swill water or ‘seinen eigenen Urin.’”

  It may occur to one to plead in justification the language of the peasants of that day, and it must be conceded, that, even now, in certain districts the countryman’s talk is such as can only be appreciated in the country. The author of a book, “Wie das Volk spricht” (1855), who made a study of the people in certain regions not particularly remarkable for culture or refinement, says quite rightly in his Preface, that his examples are often quite unsuited “for the ears of ladies, and those of a timorous disposition”; “the common people don’t wear kid gloves.” This writer was dealing with the present day, yet one might ask what indulgence an author would find were he to draw his language from such a source, particularly did he happen to be a theologian, a spiritual writer or a reformer? Luther undoubtedly savours of his time, but his expressions are too often reminiscent of Saxon familiarity; for instance, when he vents his displeasure in the words: “The devil has given his mother ‘eine Fliege in den Hintern.’”