Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  So anxious is he to see the future schools thoroughly “Christian,” i.e. Evangelical and all devoted to the service of his cause, that he expressly states that otherwise he “would rather that not a single boy learnt anything but remained quite dumb.” Hence the earlier “universities and monasteries” must be made an end of. Their way of teaching and living “is not the right one for the young.” “It is my earnest opinion, prayer and wish that these donkey-stables and devil-schools should either sink into the abyss or else be transformed into Christian schools. But now that God has bestowed His grace upon us so richly and provided us with so many well able to teach and bring up the young, we are actually in danger of flinging the grace of God to the winds.” “I am of opinion that Germany has never heard so much of God’s Word as now.… God’s Word is a streaming downpour, the like of which must not be expected again.”

  Hence the two writings differ but little from his usual polemical and hortatory works. They do not make of Luther the “father of the national schools,” as he has been erroneously termed, because, what he was after was not the real education of the masses but something rather different; still less do the booklets, with their every page reeking of the Word of God which he preached, make him the father of the modern undenominational schools.

  In fact, elementary schools as such have scarcely any place in these writings. What concerns him is rather the Latin grammar schools, and only as an afterthought does he passingly allude to the other schools in which children receive their first grounding.

  Luther’s standpoint as to the Church’s need of Grammar Schools is always the same, even when he speaks of them in the Table-Talk.

  “When we are dead,” he says for instance, “where will others be found to take our place unless there are schools? For the sake of the Churches we must have Christian schools and maintain them.”— “When the schools multiply, things are going well and the Church stands firm.”— “By means of such cuttings and saplings is the Church sown and propagated.”— “The schools are of great advantage in that they undoubtedly preserve the Churches.”

  “Hence a reformation of the schools and universities is also called for,” so he writes in a memorandum, immediately after having declared, that “it is necessary to have good and pious preachers; all will depend on men who must be educated in the schools and universities.”

  For this reason, viz. on account of the preparation they furnished, he even has a kind word for the schools of former days.

  He recalls to mind, that, even in Popery “the schools supplied parsons and preachers.” “In the schools the little boys learnt at least the Our Father and the Creed and the Church was wonderfully preserved by means of the tiny schools.” — Of a certain hymn he remarks, that it was “very likely written and kept by some good schoolmaster or parson. The schools were indeed the all-important factor in the Church and the ‘ecclesia’ of the parson.”

  Luther’s Educational Plans

  When, in his exhortations, Luther so warmly advocated the study of Latin and of languages generally, he was merely keeping to the approved traditional lines. Although he values ancient languages chiefly as a means for the better understanding of Scripture, he is so prepossessed in their favour in “worldly matters” that he even praises Latin at the expense of German. He is particularly anxious that Latin works should be read; among themselves the boys were to speak Latin. Recommending the study of tongues, he says: “If we make such a mistake, which God forbid, as to give up the study of languages, we shall not only lose the Gospel but come to such straits as to be unable to read or write aright either Latin or German.” The education of earlier days had not only led men away from the Gospel owing to the neglect of languages, but “the wretched people became mere brutes, unable to read or write either Latin or German correctly, nay, had almost lost the use of their reason.” It was statements such as these which drew from Friedrich Paulsen the exclamation: “Hence Christianity and education, nay, even sound common sense itself, all depend on the knowledge of languages!”

  Well founded as were Luther’s demands for a Latin education, yet we find in him a notable absence of discrimination between schools and schools.

  Even in the preparatory schools he was anxious to see the study of languages introduced, and that for the girls too. Boys and girls, he says, ought to be instructed “in tongues and other arts and subjects.” He was of opinion, that, in this way, it would be possible from the very first to pick out those best fitted to pursue the study of languages and to become later “schoolmasters, schoolmistresses or preachers.” He even appeals to the example of olden Saints such as Agnes, Agatha and Lucy when urging that the more talented girls should receive a grounding in languages. “It would undoubtedly have been quite enough had the less ambitious children been taught merely to reckon, and to read and write German.” “Luther’s action in having as many children of the people as possible taught languages … and his warfare against the use of German in the schools, whether in the towns, the villages, or the hamlets, was all very unpractical.… He had come to the conclusion that German schools, for one reason or another, were unsuited to be nurseries for the Church (‘seminaria ecclesiæ’), hence his effort to transplant into the Latin grammar schools every sapling on which he could lay hands.”

  The injunctions appended to Melanchthon’s Visitation rules (1538), which were sanctioned and approved of by Luther, lay such stress on the teaching of languages that the humbler schools were bound to suffer. When dealing with “the schools” their only object seems to be the “upbringing of persons fit to teach in the churches and to govern.” And this aim, moreover, is pursued onesidedly enough, for we read: “The schoolmasters are in the first place to be diligent to teach the children only Latin, not German, or Greek, or Hebrew, as some have hitherto done, thus overburdening the poor children’s minds.” The regulations then proceed to prescribe in detail the studies to be undertaken in the lowest form: “In order that the children may get hold of many Latin words, they are to be made to learn some words every evening, as was the way in the schools in former days.” After the children have learnt to spell out the handbook containing the “Alphabet, the Our Father, Creed and other prayers they are to be set to Donatus and Cato … so that they may thus learn a number of Latin words and gain a certain readiness of speech (‘copia dicendi’).” Apart from this the lowest form is to be taught only writing and “music.”

  The next class was to learn grammar (needless to say Latin grammar) and to be exercised in Æsop’s Fables, the “Pedologia” of Mosellanus and the “Colloquia” of Erasmus, such of the latter being selected “as are useful for children and not improper.” “Once the children have learnt Æsop they are to be given Terence, which they must learn by heart.” There is no mention made here of any selection, this possibly being left to the teacher; in the case of Plautus, who was to follow Terence, this is expressly enjoined. — Of the religious instruction we read: Seeing it is necessary to teach the children the beginnings of a Godly, Christian life, “the schoolmaster is to catechise the whole class, making the children recite one after the other the Our Father, the Creed and the Ten Commandments.” The schoolmaster was to “explain” these and also to instil into the children such points as were essential for living a good life, such as the “fear of God, faith and good works.” The schoolmaster was not to get the children into the habit of “abusing monks or others, as many incompetent masters do.” Finally, it was also laid down that those Psalms which exhort to the “fear of God, faith and good works” were to be learnt by heart, especially Psalms cxii., xxxiv., cxxviii., cxxv., cxvii., cxxxiii. (cxi., xxxiii., cxxvii., cxxiv., cxxvi., cxxxii.), the Gospel of St. Matthew was also to be explained and perhaps likewise the Epistles of Paul to Timothy, the 1st Epistle of John and the Book of Proverbs.

  In the 3rd class, in addition to grammar, versification, dialectics and rhetoric had to be studied, the boys being exercised in Virgil and Cicero (the “Officia” and “Epistolæ familiares”)
. “The boys are also to be made to speak Latin and the schoolmasters themselves are as far as possible to speak nothing but Latin with them in order thus to accustom and encourage them in this practice.”

  In his two appeals for the schools in 1524 and 1530 Luther is less explicit in his requirements than the regulations for the Visitation. According to him, apart from the languages, it is the text of Scripture which must form the basis of all the instruction.

  Holy Scripture, especially the Gospel, was to be everywhere “the chief and main object of study.” “Would to God that every town had also a school for girls where little maids might hear the Gospel for an hour a day, either in German or in Latin.… Ought not every Christian at the age of nine or ten to be acquainted with the whole of the Gospel? Young folk throughout Christendom are pining away and being pitiably ruined for want of the Gospel, in which they ought always to be instructed and exercised.”

  “I would not advise anyone to send his child where Holy Scripture is not the rule. Where the Word of God is not constantly studied everything must needs be in a state of corruption.”

  In the event, the Bible, together with Luther’s Catechism which had to be committed to memory, and the hymn-book, became the chief manuals in the Lutheran schools. On these elements a large portion of the young generation of Germany was brought up.

  For the study of languages Luther, like Melanchthon, recommended the “Disticha” ascribed to Cato and Æsop’s Fables. “It is by the special mercy of God,” he says, “that Cato’s booklet and the Fables of Æsop have been preserved in the schools.” We shall describe elsewhere the efforts he himself made to expurgate the editions of Æsop which had become corrupted by additions offensive to good morals. Various Latin classics which Humanists were wont to put in the hands of the scholars he characterised in his Table-Talk as unsuitable for school use. “It would be well that the books of Juvenal, Martial, Catullus and also Virgil’s ‘Priapeia’ were weeded out of the land and the schools, banished and expelled, for they contain coarse and shameless things such as the young cannot study without grievous harm.” Of the Roman writers (with the Greeks he is much less at home) he extols Cicero, Terence and Virgil as useful and improving. As a whole, however, Luther always remained “at heart a stranger to true Humanism.… Though not altogether inappreciative of elegance of style, he is far from displaying the enthusiasm of the Humanists.” Although he shows himself fairly well acquainted with the writings of the three authors just mentioned, and though he owed this education to his early training, yet, in his efforts to belittle the olden schools, he complains, that “no one had taught him to read the poets and historians,” but, that, on the other hand, he had been obliged to study the “devil’s ordure and the philosophers.”

  It must not be overlooked that he, like the Instructions for the Visitors, recommends that Terence and other olden dramatists should be given to the young to be read, and even acted, though, as he admits, they “sometimes contain obscenities and love stories.” This advice he further emphasised in 1537 by declaring that a Protestant schoolmaster of Bautzen was in the right, when, regardless of the scandal of many, he had Terence’s “Andria” performed. Luther agreed with Melanchthon in thinking that the picture of morals given in this piece was improving for the young; also that the disclosure of the “cunning of women, particularly of light women,” was instructive; the boys would thus learn how marriages were arranged, and, after all, marriage was essential for the continuance of society: Even Holy Scripture contained some love stories. “Thus our people ought not to accuse these plays of immorality or declare that to read or act them was prohibited to a Christian.”

  The regulations for the Protestant schools, in following Luther in this matter, merely trod in the footsteps of the older German Humanists, who had likewise placed Terence and Plautus in the hands of their pupils. On the contrary Jakob Wimpfeling, the “Teacher of Germany,” was opposed to them and wished to see Terence banished from the schools in the interests of morality. At a later date in the Catholic Grammar schools this author was on moral grounds forbidden to the more youthful pupils, and only read in excerpts.

  In his suggestions on the instruction to be given in the Latin schools (for in reality it was only of these that he was thinking) Luther classes with languages and other arts and sciences “singing, music and mathematics as a whole.” Greek and Hebrew no less than Latin would also be indispensable for future scholars. He further wished the authorities to establish “libraries” to further the studies; not, however, such libraries as the olden ones, containing “mad, useless, harmful, monkish books”— “donkey’s dung introduced by the devil”— “but Holy Scripture in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and German, and any other languages in which it might have been published; besides these the best and oldest commentaries in Greek, Hebrew and Latin, and furthermore such books as served for the study of languages, for instance, the poets and orators,” etc. “The most important of all were, however, the chronicles and histories … for these are of wonderful utility in enabling us to understand the course of events, for the art of governing, as also for perceiving the wonderful works of God. Oh, how many fine stories we ought to have about what has been done and enacted in the German lands, of which we, sad to say, know nothing.” In his appreciation of the study of history and of the proverbial philosophy of the people Luther was in advance of his day.

  Owing to his polemics the judgment he passed on the olden libraries was very unjust; the remaining traces of them and the catalogues which have been published of those that have been dispersed show that, particularly from the early days of Humanism, the better mediæval collections of books had reached and even passed the standard Luther sets up in the matter of history and literature.

  Very modest, not to say entirely inadequate, is the amount of time Luther proposes that the children should daily spend in the schools. Of the lower schools, in which Latin was already to be taught, he says, it would be enough for “the boys to go to such a school every day for an hour or two and work the rest of their time at learning a trade, or doing whatever was required of them.… A little girl, too, could easily find time to attend school for an hour daily and yet thoroughly perform her duties in the house.” Only the “pick” of the children, those, namely, who gave good promise, were to spend “more time and longer hours” in study.

  From all the above it is plain that there is good reason for not accepting the extravagant statement that Luther’s writings on education constitute the “charter of our national schools.” Others have extolled him as the founder of the “Gymnasium” on account of his reference in these works to the Latin schools. But even this is scarcely true, for, in them, the author either goes beyond the field covered by the Gymnasium or else fails to reach it. The Protestant pastor, Julius Boehmer, says in the popular edition of Luther’s works: “It will not do to regard the work (“An die Radherrn”) as the ‘Charter of the Gymnasium,’ as has often been done, seeing that, as stated above, it is concerned with both the Universities and the lower-grade schools.”

  As to attendance at the Universities, of which Luther also speaks, he asks the authorities to forbid the matriculation of any but the “clever ones,” though among the masses “every fellow wanted a doctorate.”

  What he says of the various Faculties at the Universities is also noteworthy. With the object of reforming philosophy and the Arts course he wishes that of all the writings of Aristotle, that blind heathen master, who had hitherto led astray the Universities, only the “Logica,” “Rhetorica” and “Poetica” should be retained; “the books: ‘Physicorum,’ ‘Metaphysicæ,’ ‘De anima’ and ‘Ethicorum’ must be dropped”; curiously enough these are the very works on which Melanchthon was later on to bestow so much attention. We know how hateful Aristotle was to Luther, because, in his heathen way, he teaches nothing of grace and faith, but, on the other hand, extols the natural virtues. Luther’s impulsive and unmethodical mode of thought was also, it must be said, quite at variance with the lo
gical mind of the Stagirite.

  According to Luther “artistic education must be wholly rooted out as a work of the devil; the very most that can be tolerated is the use of those works which deal with form, but even these must not be commented on or explained.”

  “The physicians,” he says, “I leave to reform their own Faculty; I shall see myself to the lawyers and theologians; and, first of all, I say that it would be a good thing if the whole of Canon Law from the first syllable to the last were expunged, more particularly the Decretals. We are told sufficiently in the Bible how to conduct ourselves in all matters.” Secular law, so he goes on, has also become a “wilderness,” and accordingly he is in favour of drastic reforms. “Of sensible rulers in addition to Holy Scripture there are plenty”; national law and national usage ought certainly not to be subordinated to the Imperial common law, or the land “governed according to the whim of the individual.… Justice fetched from far afield was nothing but an oppression of the people.” Theology, according to him, must above all be Biblical, though now everything is made to consist in the study of the Book of Sentences of the schoolman, Peter Lombard, and of his commentators, the Gospel in both schools and courts of justice being left “forlorn” in the dust under the bench.

  He rightly commends the Disputations, sometimes termed “circulares,” held at the Universities by the students under the direction of their professor; it pleased him well that the students should bring forward their own arguments, even though they were sometimes not sound; for “stairs can only be ascended step by step.” The Disputations, in his view, also accustomed young men to “reflect more diligently on the subjects discussed.”

  To conclude, we may say a few words concerning the incentives he uses when urging parents to entrust their children to the schools.