Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Here Luther considerably oversteps the limits. In one passage, for instance, he thinks it his right to threaten the parents with the worst punishments of hell should they refuse to allow gifted children to study, in order to place them later at the service of the pure Word of God, or of the Christian rulers, as though forsooth parents and children had no right in the sight of God to choose their own profession. “Tell me what hell can be deep and hot enough for such shameful wickedness as yours?” “If you have a child who studies well, you are not free to bring him up as you please, nor to treat him as you will, but must bear in mind that you owe it to God to promote His two rules.” Should the father refuse to allow the boy to become a preacher, he says, then, so far as in him lies, he was really consigning to hell all those whom the budding preacher might have assisted; compared with such a crime against the common weal the “outbreaks of the rebellious peasants were mere child’s play.” This he says in a printed letter addressed in 1529 to the town commandant, Hans Metzsch of Wittenberg, which served as a prelude to his pamphlet “Das man Kinder zur Schulen halten solle.” The writing is solely dictated by Luther’s bitter annoyance at the dearth of pastors and the indifference displayed within his fold.

  In this letter, as in both his works on the schools, Luther, whilst dealing with the excuses of the parents, at the same time throws some interesting sidelights on the decline in learning and its causes.

  The Decline of the Schools Following in the Wake of the Innovations

  In the above letter to Metzsch Luther briefly gives as follows the principal reason for the decay of learning: People were in the habit of saying, “If my son has learnt enough to gain his living then he is quite learned enough.”

  The contempt for learned studies was “largely due to the strongly utilitarian temper of the age.” “Owing in the first place to the flourishing state of the towns in the 13th and 14th century, and further to the influence of the great political upheaval which resulted from the discoveries and inventions of the day, a sober, practical spirit, directed solely to material gain, had been aroused throughout a wide section of the German nation. Preference was shown for the German schools where writing and reckoning were taught and which prepared children for the calling of the handicraftsman or the merchant.” Against this tendency of the day Luther enters the lists particularly in his second work on the schools dedicated to the syndic of Nuremberg; at the same time he deals, not in the best of tempers, with the objections advanced by the merchant and industrial classes. He speaks so harshly as almost to place in the same category those who refused to bring up their children “to art and learning” and those who turned them “into mere gluttons and sucking pigs, intent on food alone” (to Metzsch). “The world would thus become nothing but a pig-sty”; these “gruesome, noxious, poisonous parents were bent on making simple belly servers of their children,” etc.

  It is a question, however, whether the development of the material trend, so surprisingly rapid, with its destructive influence on study was not furthered by the religious revolution with which it coincided. Luther had sapped the respect which had obtained for the clerical life and for those callings which aimed at perfection, while at the same time, by belittling good works he loosened the inclinations of the purely natural man; by his repudiation of authority he had produced an intellectual self-sufficiency or rather self-seeking, which, in the case of many, passed into mere material egotism, though, of course, Luther’s work cannot be directly charged with the utilitarianism of the day.

  What, however, made his revolt to contribute so greatly to the decline of learning was its destruction of the wealth of clergy and monks, and its confiscation of so many livings and foundations established for educational purposes. By far the greater number of students had always consisted of such as wished to obtain positions in the Church among her secular clergy, or to become priests in some monastery. The ranks of these students had been thinned of late years now that the Catholic posts no longer existed, that the foundations which formerly provided for the upkeep of students had disappeared and that an avalanche of calumny and abuse had descended on the monasteries, priests and monks. In addition to this there was the fear aroused in Catholic parents and pastors by the unhappy controversies on religion, lest the young should be infected in the higher schools these being so frequently hot-beds of the modern spirit, of hypercriticism and apostasy. Then, again, there was the distrust, springing from a similar motive, felt by the Catholic authorities for the centres of learning, and their niggardliness in making provision for them, an attitude which we meet with, for instance, in Duke George of Saxony. This was encouraged in the case of the rulers by the fear of social risings, such as they had experienced in the Peasant War, and which they laid to the charge of the new ideas on religion.

  Among those favourable to Lutheranism the Wittenberg professor himself awakened a distaste for the Universities by telling them they must not allow their sons to study where Holy Scripture “did not rule” and “where the Word of God was not unceasingly studied.” No one ever depreciated the Universities as much as Luther, who principally because their character was still Catholic, was never tired of calling them the “gates of hell,” and places worse than Sodom and Gomorrha. Nor did he stop short at the condemnation of their religious attitude. Luther’s antagonism to the whole system of philosophy, which the Universities, following the example of Aristotle and the schoolmen, had been so criminal as to admit, to the liberty they allowed to crazy human reason in spiritual matters, and to their championship of natural truth and natural morality as the basis of the life of faith, all this, when carried to its logical conclusion, necessarily brought Lutheranism into fatal conflict with the learned institutions.

  As Friedrich Paulsen points out: “Luther shared all the superstitions of the peasant in their most pronounced form; the methods of natural science were strange to him and any scattering of the prevalent delusions he would have looked upon as an abomination.” The latter part of the quotation certainly holds good in those cases where Luther fancied that Holy Scripture or his explanation of it was ever so slightly impugned. When, on June 4, 1539, the conversation at table turned on Copernicus and his new theory concerning the earth, of which the latter had been convinced since 1507, Luther appealed (just as later opponents of the theory were to do) to Holy Scripture, according to which “Josue bade the sun to stand still and not the earth.” The new astronomer wants to prove that the earth moves. “But that is the way nowadays: whoever wishes to seem clever, pays no attention to what others do, but must needs advance something of his own; and what he does must always be the best. The idiot is bent on upsetting the whole art of astronomy.”

  Luther’s condemnation of philosophy found a strong echo among the Pietists, who were an offshoot of Lutheranism, and even claimed to be its truest representatives. The loud denunciations of Aristotle were, for instance, taken up by the theologian Zierold. But even from the common people who looked up to him we hear such sayings as the following: “What is the use of our learning the Latin, Greek and Hebrew tongues and other fine arts seeing we might just as well read in German the Bible and the Word of God which suffices for our salvation?” Luther was not at a loss for an answer. He says first: “Yes, I know, alas, that we Germans must always remain beasts and senseless animals.” Then he falls back on his usual plea, viz. that languages “are profitable and advantageous” for a right understanding of Scripture; he forgets that he has here to do with the common people, and that a critical or philosophical interpretation of the Bible was of small use to them. Such a thing might be profitable to those who were being trained for the ministry, though many even of the preachers themselves declared that the illumination from above sufficed, together with the reading of the Bible.

  Carlstadt was even opposed to the Wittenberg graduations because they promoted pride of learning and the worldly spirit instead of humble Bible faith. Melanchthon, at a time when he was still full of Luther’s early ideas, i.e. in Feb., 1521, i
n a work written under the pseudonym of Didymus Faventinus, attempted to vindicate against Hieronymus Emser his condemnation of the whole philosophy of the universities; physics as taught there consisted merely of monstrous terms and contradicted the teaching of the Bible; metaphysics were but an impudent attempt to storm the heavens under the leadership of the atheist Aristotle. “My complaint is against that wisdom by which you have drawn away Christians from Scripture to reason. Go on, he-goat,” he says to Emser, “and deny that the philosophy of the schools is idolatry”; your ethics is diametrically opposed to Christ; at the Universities human reason had degraded the Church to Sodomitic vices. Nothing more wicked and godless than the Universities had ever been invented; no pope, but the devil himself was their author; this even Wiclif had declared, and he could not have said anything wiser or more pious. The Jews offered young men to Moloch, a prelude to our Universities where the young are sacrificed to heathen idols.

  To such an extent had the darksome pseudo-mysticism which seethed in Luther’s mind laid hold for a while upon his comrade — glaringly though it contradicted the humanistic tendency found in him both earlier and later.

  If we look more closely into the decline of the schools, we shall find that it came about with extraordinary rapidity, a fact which proves it to have been the result of a movement both sudden and far-reaching.

  “The immediate effect of the Wittenberg preaching,” wrote in 1908 the Protestant theologian F. M. Schiele in the “Preussische Jahrbücher” of Berlin, in a strongly worded but perfectly true account of the situation, “was the collapse of the educational system which had flourished throughout Germany; the new zeal for Church reform, the growth of prosperity, the ambition in the burghers, the pride and fatherly solicitude of the sovereigns who were ever gaining strength, had resulted in the foundation on all sides of school after school, university after university. Students flocked to them in multitudes, for the prospects of future gain were good. Scholasticism provided a capable teaching staff, Humanism a brilliant one. Humanism also set up as the new ideal of education a return to the fountain-head and the reproduction of ancient civilisation by means of original effort on similar lines. Wide tracts of Germany lay like a freshly sown field, and many a harvest seemed to be ripening. Then, suddenly, before it was possible to determine whether the new crops consisted of wheat or of tares, a storm burst and destroyed all prospects of a harvest. The upheaval that followed in the wake of the Reformation, and other external causes which coincided with it, above all the reaction among the utilitarian-minded laity against the unpopular scholarship of the Humanists emptied the class rooms and lecture halls.… Now all is over with the priestlings; why then should we bind our future to a lost and despised cause?… Nor was this merely the passing result of a misapprehension of Luther’s preaching, for it endured for scores of years.”

  As to the common opinion among Protestants, viz. that “Luther’s reformation gave a general stimulus to the schools and to education generally,” Schiele dismisses it in a sentence: “The alleged ‘stimulus’ is seen to melt away into nothing.”

  Eobanus Hessus, a Humanist friendly to Luther, who lectured at Erfurt University, was so overcome with grief at sight of the decline that was making itself felt there that, in 1523, he composed an Elegy on the decay of learning entitled “Captiva” and sent it to Luther. The melancholy poem of 428 verses was printed in the same year under the title “Circular letter from the sorrowful Church to Luther.” Luther replied, praising the poem and assuring the sender that he was favourably disposed towards the humanistic studies and practices. He even speaks as though still full of the expectation of a great revival; his depression is, however, apparent from the very reasons he gives for his hopes: “I see that no important revelation of the Word of God has ever taken place without a preliminary revival and expansion of languages and erudition.” The present decline might, however, he thought, be traced to the former state of things when they did not as yet possess the “pure theology.”

  But Hessus had complained, and with good reason, of the evil doings of the new believers, instances of which had come under his notice at Erfurt, and which had caused many to declare sadly: “We Germans are becoming even worse barbarians than before, seeing that, in consequence of our theology, learning is now going to the wall.” At Erfurt the Lutheran theology had won its way to the front amidst tumults and revolts since the day when Crotus had greeted Luther on his way to Worms with his revolutionary discourse. Since then there had been endless conflicts of the preachers with the Church of Rome and amongst themselves. Some were to be met with who inveighed openly against the profane studies at the Universities, and could see no educative value in anything save in their own theology and the Word of God. Attendance at the University had declined with giant strides since the spread of Lutheranism. Whereas from May 1520 to 1521 the names of 311 students had been entered, their number fell in the following year to 120 and in 1522 to 72; five years later there were only 14.

  Hessus wrote quite openly in 1523: “On the plea of the Evangel the runaway monks here in Erfurt have entirely suppressed the fine arts … our University is despised and so are we.”

  His colleague, Euricius Cordus, a learned partisan of Luther, expresses himself with no less disgust concerning the state of learning and decline of morals among the students. “All those who have any talent,” we read in the Academic Year-Book in 1529, “are now forsaking barren scholarship in order to betake themselves to more remunerative professions, or to trade.”

  As at Erfurt, so also at other Universities, a rapid diminution in the number of students took place during those years. “It has been generally remarked,” a writer who has made a special study of this subject says, “that in the German Universities in the ‘twenties of the 16th century a sudden decrease in the number of matriculations becomes apparent.” He proves from statistics that at the University of Leipzig from 1521 to 1530 the number of those studying dropped from 340 to 100, at the University of Rostock from 123 to 33, at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder from 73 to 32 and, finally, at Wittenberg from 245 to 174. The attendance at Heidelberg reached its lowest figure between 1521 and 1565, “this being due to the religious and social movements of the Reformation which proved an obstacle to study.” Of the German Universities generally the following holds good: “The religious and social disturbances of the Reformation brought about a complete interruption in the studies. Some of the Universities were closed down, at others the hearers dwindled down to a few.”

  “The Universities, Erfurt, Leipzig and the others stand deserted,” Luther himself says as early as 1530, gazing from the Coburg at the ruins, “and likewise here and there even the boys’ schools, so that it is piteous to see them, and poor Wittenberg is now doing better than any of them. The foundations and the monasteries, in my opinion, are probably also feeling the pinch.” He speaks at the same time of the decline of the Grammar schools and the lower-grade schools which also to some extent shared the fate of the Universities.

  In the Catholic parts of Germany the clergy schools and monastic schools suffered severely under the general calamity, as Luther had shrewdly guessed. Nor was the set-back confined to the Universities, but even the elementary schools suffered.

  It was practically the universal complaint of the monasteries, so Wolfgang Mayer, the learned Cistercian Abbot of Alderspach in Bavaria, wrote in 1529, that they were unable to continue for lack of postulants; “in consequence of the Lutheran controversy the schools everywhere are standing empty and no one is willing any longer to devote himself to study. The clerical and likewise the religious state is despised by all and no one is inclined to offer himself for this life.” “Oh, God who could ever have anticipated the coming of such a time! Everything is ruined, everything is in confusion, and there is nothing but sunderings, splits and heresies everywhere!” Yet these words come from the same author, who, in 1518, in the introduction to his Annals of Alderspach, had been so enthusiastic about the state of learning in Germany and
had said: “Germany is richly blessed with the gifts of Minerva and disputes the palm in the literary arena with the Italians and the Greeks.” Whereas, between the years 1460-1514 no less than eighty brethren had entered Alderspach, Mayer, in his thirty years of office as Abbot, clothed only seventeen novices with the habit of St. Bernard, and, of these, five broke their vows and left the monastery. He expresses his fear that soon his religious house will be empty and ascribes the lack of novices largely to the fate which had overtaken the schools owing to the innovations.

  “Throughout the whole of the German lands,” as Luther himself admits: “No one will any longer allow his children to learn or to study.” At the same time contemporaries bitterly bewailed the wildness of the students who still remained at the Universities. With regard to Wittenberg itself we have grievous complaints on this score from both Luther and Melanchthon.

  The disorder in the teaching institutions naturally had a bad effect on the education of the people, so that Luther’s efforts on behalf of the schools may readily be understood. The ecclesiastical Visitors of the Saxon Electorate had been forced to adopt stern measures in favour of the country schools. The Elector called to mind Luther’s admonitions, that he, as the “principal guardian of the young,” had authority to compel such towns and villages as possessed the means, to maintain schools, pulpits and parsonages, just as he might compel them to furnish bridges, high roads and footpaths.… “If, moreover, they have not the means,” so Luther had said, “there are the monastic lands which most of them were bestowed for this very purpose.” But in spite of the measures taken by the Elector and the urgent demands of the theologians for State aid, even in towns like Wittenberg the condition of the intermediate educational institutions was anything but satisfactory. In the case of his own sons Luther had grudgingly to acknowledge that he was “at a loss to find a suitable school.” He accordingly had recourse to young theologians as tutors.