Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  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.” “And Philip [Melanchthon] said: ‘This [the bigamy] is the beginning of his insanity.’”

  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 (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.” “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; 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.” “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.

  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.”

  “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.” With these words he is a
gain 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.”

  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. 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.

  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.” 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.”

  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.” — 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.”

  “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.”

  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”) 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. 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,” 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. — 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, “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.”

  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.”

  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.” “He considered the reply given in Confession as an Absolution,” says Rockwell. 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.

  Practically, however, according to the notes of the conference, his advice still was that the Landgrave should con
ceal 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.”