Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Luther devotes no such prudent consideration to those exceptional cases. He was more inclined by nature harshly to vindicate the principles he had embraced than to seek how best to limit them in practice. “He did not take into account loans asked for, not from necessity, but for the purpose of making profit on the borrowed money”; yet, after all, this was the very point on which the question turned in the early days of economic development. He discusses the lawfulness of a voluntary premium and comes to the conclusion that it is wrong. He scoffs at the lender, as a mere hypocrite, who argues: “The borrower is very thankful for such a loan and freely and without compulsion offers me 5, 6 or even 10 florins on the hundred.” “But even an adulteress and an adulterer,” says Luther in his usual vein, “are thankful and pleased with each other; a robber, too, does an assassin a great service when he helps him to commit highway robbery.” The borrower does the lender a similar criminal service and spiritual injury, for which no premium can make compensation. As regards the case where the loan is not repaid at the specified time, Luther is, of course, of opinion that any real loss to the owner must be made good by the borrower. But now, he says, “they accept reimbursement for losses which they never suffered at all,” they simply calculate the interest on a loss which they may possibly suffer from not having back the money when the time comes for buying or paying. “In its efforts to make a certainty of what is uncertain, will not usury soon be the ruin of the world!”

  In the Table-Talk a friend, in 1542, raised an objection: If a man trades with the money lent him and makes 15 florins yearly, he must surely pay the lender something for this. Of this Luther, however, will not hear. “No, this is merely an accidental profit, and on accidentals no rule can be based.” That the profit was “accidental” was, however, simply his theory.

  In spite of all this Luther did make exceptions, though, in view of his rigid theory and reading of the Bible, it is difficult to see how he could justify them.

  Thus, he is willing to allow usury in those cases where the charging of interest is “in reality a sort of work of mercy to the needy, who would otherwise have nothing, and where no great injury is done to another.” Thus, when “old people, poor widows or orphans, or other necessitous folk, who have learned no other way of making a living,” were only able to support themselves by lending out their money, in such cases the “lawyers might well seek to mitigate somewhat the severity of the law.” “Should an appeal be made to the ruler,” then the proverb “Necessity knows no law” might be quoted. “It might here serve to call to mind that the Emperor Justinian had permitted such mitigated usury [he had sanctioned the taking of 4, 6 or 8 per cent], and in such a case I am ready to agree and to answer for it before God, particularly in the case of needy persons and where usury is practised out of necessity or from charity. If, however, it was wanton, avaricious, unnecessary usury, merely for the purpose of trade and profit, then I would not agree”; even the Emperor himself could not make this legitimate; for it is not the laws of the Emperor which lead us to heaven, but the observance of the laws of God.

  It follows from this that even the so-called “titulus legis” found no favour in his sight in the case of actual money loans, for it is of this, not of “purchasable interest,” that he speaks in the writing to the pastors. A real, honest purchase, so he there says quite truly, is no usury.

  A remarkable deflection from his strict principles is to be found not only in the words just quoted but also in his letter to the town council of Erfurt sent in 1525 at the time of the rising in that town and the neighbourhood. The mutineers refused among other things to continue paying interest on the sums borrowed. For this refusal Luther censures them as rebels, and also refuses to hear of their “deducting the interest from the sum total” (i.e. the capital). He here vindicates the lenders as follows: “Did I wish yearly to spend some of the total amount I should naturally keep it by me. Why should I hand it over to another as though I were a child, and allow another to trade with it? Who can dispose of his money even at Erfurt in such a way that it shall be paid out to him yearly and bit by bit? This would really be asking too much.”

  Luther also relaxed his principles in favour of candidates for the office of preacher. When, in 1532, the widow of Wolfgang Jörger, an Austrian Governor, offered him 500 florins for stipends for “poor youths prosecuting their studies in Holy Scripture” at Wittenberg, at the same time asking him how to place it, he unhesitatingly replied that it should be lent out at interest; “I, together with Master Philip and other good friends and Masters, have thought this best because it is to be expended on such a good, useful and necessary work.” He suggested that the money “should be handed in at the Rathaus” at Nuremberg to Lazarus Spengler, syndic of that town; if this could not be, then he would have it “invested elsewhere.” Such “good works in Christ” are, he says, unfortunately not common amongst us “but rather the contrary, so that they leave the poor ministers to starve; the nobles as well as the peasants and the burghers are all of them more inclined to plunder than to help.” Thus it was his desire to help the preachers that determined his action here.

  A writer, who, as a rule, is disposed to depict Luther’s social ethics in a very favourable light, remarks: “When his attention was riveted on the abuses arising from the lending of money [and the charging of interest] he could see nothing but evil in the whole thing; on the other hand, if some good purpose was to be served by the money, he regarded this as morally quite justifiable.” That Luther “was not always true to his theories,” and that he is far from displaying any “striking originality” in his economic views, cannot, according to this author, be called into question.

  Luther on Unearned Incomes and Annuities

  A great change took place in Luther’s views concerning the buying of the right to receive a yearly interest, nor was the change an unfortunate one. He was induced to abandon his earlier standpoint that such purchase was wrong and to recognise, that, within certain limits, it could be perfectly lawful.

  The nature of this sort of purchase, then very common, he himself explains in his clear and popular style: “If I have a hundred florins with which I might gain five, six or more florins a year by means of my labour, I can give them to another for investment in some fertile land in order that, not I, but he, may do business with them; hence I receive from him the five florins I might have made, and thus he sells me the interest, five florins per hundred, and I am the buyer and he the seller.” It was an essential point in the arrangement that the money should be employed in an undertaking in some way really fruitful or profitable to the receiver of the capital, i.e. in real estate, which he could farm, or in some other industry; the debtor gave up the usufruct to the creditor together with the interest agreed upon, but was able to regain possession of it by repayment of the debt. The creditor, according to the original arrangement, was also to take his share in the fluctuations in profit, and not arbitrarily to demand back his capital.

  At first Luther included such transactions among the “fig-leaves” behind which usury was wont to shelter itself; they were merely, so he declared in 1519 in his Larger Sermon on Usury, “a pretty sham and pretence by which a man can oppress others without sin and become rich without labour or trouble.” In the writing “An den Adel” he even exclaimed: “The greatest misfortune of the German nation is undoubtedly the traffic in interest.… The devil invented it and the Pope, by sanctioning it, has wrought havoc throughout the world.” It is quite true that the arrangement, being in no wise unjust, had received the conditional sanction of the Church and was widely prevalent in Christendom. Many abuses and acts of oppression had, indeed, crept into it, particularly with the general spread of the practice of charging interest on money loans, but they were not a necessary result of the transaction. Luther, in those earlier days, demanded that such “transactions should be utterly condemned and prevented for the future, regardless of the opposition of the Pope and all his infamous laws [to the condemnation], and though he mi
ght have erected his pious foundations on them.… In truth, the traffic in interest is a sign and a token that the world is sold into the devil’s slavery by grievous sins.” Yet Luther himself allows the practice under certain conditions in the Larger Sermon on Usury published shortly before, from which it is evident that here he is merely voicing his detestation of the abuses, and probably, too, of the “Pope and his infamous laws.”

  In fact his first pronouncements against the investing of money are all largely dictated by his hostility to the existing ecclesiastical government; “that churches, monasteries, altars, this and that,” should be founded and kept going by means of interest, is what chiefly arouses his ire. In 1519 he busies himself with the demolition of the objection brought forward by Catholics, who argued: “The churches and the clergy do this and have the right to do it because such money is devoted to the service of God.”

  In his Larger Sermon on Usury he gives an instance where he is ready to allow transactions at interest, viz. “where both parties require their money and therefore cannot afford to lend it for nothing but are obliged to help themselves by means of bills of exchange. Provided the ghostly law be not infringed, then a percentage of four, five or six florins may be taken.” Thus he here not only falls back on the “ghostly law,” but also deviates from the line he had formerly laid down. In fact we have throughout to deal more with stormy effusions than with a ripe, systematic discussion of the subject.

  Later on, his general condemnations of the buying of interest-rights become less frequent.

  He even wrote in 1524 to Duke Johann Frederick of Saxony: Since the Jewish tithes cannot be re-introduced, “it would be well to regulate everywhere the purchase of interest-rights, but to do away with them altogether would not be right since they might be legalised.” As a condition for justifying the transaction he requires above all that no interest should be charged without “a definitely named and stated pledge,” for to charge on a mere money pledge would be usury. “What is sterile cannot pay interest.” Further the right of cancelling the contract was to remain in the hands of the receiver of the capital. The interest once agreed upon was to be paid willingly. He himself relied on the practice and once asked: “If the interest applied to churches and schools were cut off, how would the ministers and schools be maintained?”

  With regard to the rate of interest allowable in his opinion, he says in his sermons on Matt. xviii. (about 1537): “We would readily agree to the paying of six or even of seven or eight on the hundred.” As a reason he assigns the fact that “the properties have now risen so greatly in value,” a remark to which he again comes back in 1542 in his Table-Talk in order to justify his not finding even seven per cent excessive. He thus arrives eventually at the conclusion of the canonists who, for certain good and just reasons, allowed a return of from seven to eight per cent.

  In his “An die Pfarherrn” he took no account of such purchases but merely declared that he would find some other occasion “of saying something about this kind of usury”; at the same time a “fair, honest purchase is no usury.”

  All the more strongly in this writing, the tone of which is only surpassed by the attacks on the usury of the Jews contained in his last polemics, does he storm against the evils of that usury which was stifling Germany. The pastors and preachers were to “stick to the text,” where the Gospel forbids the taking of anything in return for loans. That this will bring him into conflict with the existing custom he takes for granted. In his then mood of pessimistic defiance he was anxious that the preachers should boldly hurl at all the powers that be the words of that Bible which cannot lie: where evil is so rampant “God must intervene and make an end, as He did with Sodom, with the world at the Deluge, with Babylon, with Rome and such like cities, that were utterly destroyed. This is what we Germans are asking for, nor shall we cease to rage until people shall say: Germany was, just as we now say of Rome and of Babylon.”

  He nevertheless gives the preachers a valuable hint as to how they were to proceed in order to retain their peace of mind and get over difficulties. Here “it seems to me better … for the sake of your own peace and tranquillity, that you should send them to the lawyers whose duty and office it is to teach and to decide on such wretched, temporal, transitory, worldly matters, particularly when they [your questioners] are disposed to haggle about the Gospel text.” “For this reason, according to our preaching, usury with all its sins should be left to the lawyers, for, unless they whose duty it is to guard the dam help in defending it, the petty obstacles we can set up will not keep back the flood.” But, after all, “the world cannot go on without usury, without avarice, without pride … otherwise the world would cease to be the world nor would the devil be the devil.”

  The difficulties which beset Luther’s attitude on the question of interest were in part of his own creation.

  “In the question of commerce and the charging of interest,” says Julius Köstlin in his “Theologie Luthers,” “he displays, for all his acumen, an unmistakable lack of insight into the true value for social life of trade — particularly of that trade on a large scale with which we are here specially concerned — in spite of all the sins and vexations which it brings with it, or into the importance of loans at interest — something very different from loans to the poor — for the furthering of work and the development of the land.”

  With reference to what Köstlin here says it must, however, be again pointed out that Luther’s lack of insight may be explained to some extent “by the great change which was just then coming over the economic life of Germany.” It must also be added, that, in Luther’s case, the struggle against usury was in itself a courageous and deserving work, and, that, hand in hand with it, went those warm exhortations to charity which he knew so well how to combine with Christ’s Evangelical Counsels.

  In his attack on the abuses connected with usury his indignation at the mischief, and his ardent longing to help the oppressed, frequently called forth impressive and heart-stirring words. Though, in what Luther said about usury and on the economic conditions of his day, we meet much that is vague, incorrect and passionate, yet, on the other hand, we also find some excellent hints and suggestions.

  It is notorious that the controversy regarding the lawfulness of interest, even of 5 per cent, on money loans, went on for a long time among theologians both Catholic and Protestant. The subject was also keenly debated among the 16th-century Jesuits. No theologian, however, succeeded in proving the sinfulness of the charging of a five per cent interest under the circumstances which then obtained in Germany. Attempts to have this generally prohibited under severe penalties were rejected by eminent Catholic theologians, for instance, in a memorandum of the Law and Divinity Faculties at Ingolstadt, dated August 2, 1580, which bore the signatures of all the professors. On the Protestant side the contest led to disagreeable proceedings at Ratisbon, where, in 1588, five preachers, true to Luther’s injunctions, insisted firmly on the prohibition on theological grounds. They were expelled from the town by the magistrates, though this did not end the controversy.

  There was naturally no question at any time of enforcing the severe measures which Luther had advocated against those who charged interest; on the contrary the social disorders of the day promoted not merely the lending at moderate interest, but even actual usury of the worst character. When even Martin Bucer showed himself disposed to admit the lawfulness of taking twelve per cent interest George Lauterbecken, the Mansfeld councillor, wrote of him in his “Regentenbuch”: “What has become of the book Dr. Luther of blessed memory addressed to the ministers on the subject of usury, exhorting them most earnestly,” etc., etc.? Nobody now dreamt, so he complains, of putting in force the penalties decreed by Luther. “Where do we see in any of our countries which claim to be Evangelical anyone refused the Sacrament of the altar or Holy Baptism on account of usury? Where, agreeably to the Canons, are they forbidden to make a will? Where do we see one of them buried on the dungheap?”

  CH
APTER XXXVI. THE DARKER SIDE OF LUTHER’S INNER LIFE. HIS AILMENTS

  The struggles of conscience which we already had occasion to consider (vol. v., ff.) were not the only gloomy elements in Luther’s interior life. Other things, too, must be taken into our purview if we wish to appreciate justly the more sombre side of his existence, viz. his bodily ailments and the mental sufferings to which they gave rise (e.g. paroxysms of terror and apprehension), his temptations, likewise his delusions concerning his intercourse with the other world (ghosts, diabolical apparitions, etc.), and, lastly, the revelations of which he fancied himself the recipient.

  1. Early Sufferings, Bodily and Mental

  It is no easy task to understand the nature of the morbid phenomena which we notice in Luther. His own statements on the subject are not only very scanty but also prove that he was himself unable to determine exactly their cause. Nevertheless, it is our duty to endeavour, with the help of what he says, to glean some notion of what was going on within him. His gloomy mental experiences are so inextricably bound up with his state of health, that, even more than his “agonies of conscience” already dealt with, they deserve to take their place on the darker background of his psychic life. Here again, duly to appreciate the state of the case, we shall have to review anew the whole of Luther’s personal history.

  Fits of Fear; Palpitations; Swoons

  What first claims our attention, even in the early days of Luther’s life as a monk, are the attacks of what he himself calls fears and trepidations (“terrores, pavores”). It seems fairly clear that these were largely neurotic, — physical breakdowns due to nervous worry.