Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Luther also refers both to Tauler and to himself elsewhere in the “Operationes,” where he speaks of the fears of conscience regarding the judgment of God which no one can understand who had not himself experienced them; Job, David, King Ezechias and a few others had endured them; “and finally that German theologian, Johannes Tauler, often alludes to such a state of soul in his sermons.” Tauler, however, when speaking of such afflictions, is thinking of those souls who seek God and are indeed united to Him in love, but who are tried and purified by the withdrawal of sensible grace, and by being made to feel a sense of separation from Him and the burden of their nature.

  In his church-postils he again summons Tauler to his aid in order to depict the fears with which he was so familiar, seeking consolation, as it were, both for himself and for others. In his sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Advent (1522) he speaks of “those exalted temptations concerning death and hell, of which Tauler wrote.” Evidently speaking from experience he says: “This temptation destroys flesh and blood, nay, penetrates into the marrow of the bones and is death itself, so that no one can endure it unless marvellously borne up. Some of the patriarchs tasted this, for instance, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and Moses, but, towards the end of the world, it will become more common.” Finally, he assures his hearers, that, there were such as were “still daily tried” in this way, “of which but few people are aware; these are men who are in the agony of death, and who grapple with death”; still Christ holds out the hope that they are not destined to death and to hell; on the other hand, it is certain that the “world, which fears nothing, will have to endure, first death, and, after that, hell.”

  Other Ordeals

  Other temptations that assailed Luther must be taken into account. Unfortunately he does not say what “new” form of temptation it was of which he wrote to Johann Lang in 1519. He says: A temptation had now befallen him which showed him “what man was, though he had fondly believed that he was already well enough aware of this before”; he felt it even more severely than the trials he had to endure before the Leipzig Disputation; he would discuss it with him only by word of mouth when Lang came to see him. Is he here referring to temptations of the flesh of an unusual degree of intensity? We have already heard him bewail his temptations to ambition and hate. Moreover, in this very year he speaks of temptations against chastity in his Sermon on Marriage: It is a “shameful temptation,” he says; “I have known it well, and I imagine you too are acquainted with it; ah, I know well how it is when the devil comes and excites and inflames the flesh.… When one is on fire and the temptation comes I know well what it is; then the eye is already blind.” Already before this he had had to fight against “very many temptations” of the sort, which are “wont to attend the age of youth.” Later on they startled him by their waxing strength. Of the temptations of the senses (“titillatio”) to which he was exposed he had complained, for instance, in the same year (1519) in a letter to his superior Staupitz, and the worldly intercourse into which he was drawn, “the social gatherings, excessive indulgence in the pleasures of the table, and general lukewarmness,” of which he speaks on the same occasion, make such temptations all the more likely in the case of a young man of a temper so lively and impressionable, especially as his lukewarmness took the shape of neglect of prayer and the means of grace, and of the help he might have derived from the exercises of the Order.

  Such fleshly temptations he bewailed even more loudly when at the Wartburg. There, as we may recall, he became the plaything of evil lust (“libido”) and the “fire of his untamed flesh.” “Instead of glowing in spirit, I glow in the flesh.” Admitting that he himself “prayed and groaned too little for the Church of God,” he exclaims: “Pray for me, for in this solitude I am falling into the abyss of sin!” Though in bodily health and well cared for, he is “being well pounded by sins and temptations,” so he wrote to his old friend Johann Lang.

  To all this was still added great trouble of conscience concerning his undertaking as a whole. When he was passionately declaring that his misgivings were from the devil and resolving never to flinch in his antagonism to the hated vow of chastity he was himself falling into the state which he himself describes: “You see how I burn within (‘quantis urgear æstibus’).” This to Melanchthon, after having explained to him the struggle waging within between his feelings and his knowledge of the Bible in the matter of the vow of chastity. He is being carried away to take action, and yet is unable, as he here admits, to prove his object by means of the text of Scripture. He feels himself to be “the sport of a thousand devils” in the Wartburg on account of this and other temptations; he falls frequently, yet the right hand of God upholds him. The castle is full of devils, so he wrote from within its walls, and very cunning devils to boot, who never leave him at peace but behave in such a way that he “is never alone” even when he seems to be so. Hence he was writing “partly under the stress of temptation, partly in indignation.” What he was writing was his “De votis monasticis,” by means of which, as he here says, he is about “to free the young folk from the hell of celibacy.”

  Ten years later he still recalls the “despair and the temptation concerning God’s wrath” which had then been raging within him.

  His temptations at that time must have been rendered even worse by the morbid conditions then awakening in him, by the dismal, racking sense of fear that peopled his imagination with thousands of devils, and the mental confusion resulting from his state of nervous overstrain.

  It would carry us too far to pursue the diabolical temptations to despair (or what he held to be such) throughout the rest of his life, and to examine their connection with his maladies. We shall only remark, that, even at a later date, when we find him the butt of severe temptations of this sort, an under-current of other trouble is frequently to be detected. The “terrors” he endured in his youthful years indeed moderated but never altogether disappear. The “spiritual sickness” of 1537 of which he speaks, when for a whole fortnight he could scarcely eat, drink or sleep, shows the degree to which these thoughts of despair and struggles of conscience could reach.

  Summary

  To sum up what we have said of Luther’s temptations, a distinction must be made between the temptations of the Evil One, which Luther himself regarded as such, and certain other things the real nature of which he failed to grasp. Moreover, there are those “temptations” which bore on his work and doctrines and which he wrongly regarded as temptations of the devil, whereas they were no more than the prick of conscience. All three are at times reacted on by a morbid state which he likewise failed rightly to understand, but which was made up of that predisposition to anxiety to which his nature was so prone and a kind of nervous irritability due to his struggles and over-great labours. Only those of the first and second class have any title to be regarded as temptations.

  To the first class, i.e. to the temptations he felt and described as such, belongs first of all that despair which often disquieted him even in his later years; then again the temptations of the flesh of which we have also heard him speak. Though he ascribes both to the machinations of the Evil One, yet his method of fighting them was fatally mistaken. The temptations to despair he withstood by his erroneous doctrine of grace and faith alone, and, the more such thoughts torment him, the more defiantly does he stand by this doctrine. In the case of the temptations against chastity he failed to make sufficient use of the remedies of Christian penance and piety; on the contrary, under the stress of their allurements, he finally saw fit to demolish even the barrier raised by solemn vows made unto God.

  The second class of temptations, which to him, however, did not seem to be such, includes all the mental aberrations we have had occasion to note during the course of his life story, particularly at the beginning of his apostasy. Here we shall only indicate the more important. It may be allowed that many of them masqueraded under specious pretexts and the appearance of good (“sub specie boni”). Thus, e.g. there was something fine and i
nspiring in his plans of exalting the grace of Christ at the expense of the mere works of the faithful; of giving the religious freedom of the Christian full play, regardless of unwarranted human ordinances; of improving the cut-and-dry theology of the day by a deeper and more positive study of the Bible; and of stopping the widespread decline in ecclesiastical learning and ecclesiastical life by stronghanded reforms. He allowed himself, however, to be altogether led astray in both the conception and the carrying out of these plans.

  There was grave peril to himself in that sort of spiritualism, thanks to which he so frequently attributes all his doings to the direct inspiration and guidance of Almighty God; real and enlightened dependence on God is something very different; again, there was danger in his perverted interpretation of the teaching of the mystics of the past, in his exaggeration of the strength of man’s sinful concupiscence and neglect of the remedies prescribed in ages past, particularly of the practices of his own Order, also in his passionate struggles against the so-called holiness-by-works prevalent among the Augustinians, in his characteristic violence and tendency to pick a quarrel, and, above all, in the working of his inordinate self-esteem and unbounded appreciation of his own achievements as the leader of the new movement, which led him to exalt himself above all divinely appointed ecclesiastical authority.

  In the above we were obliged to hark back to Luther’s earlier days, and this we shall again have to do in the following pages. The truth is, that many of the secrets of his earlier years can be explained only in the light of his later life, whilst, conversely, his youth and years of ripening manhood assist us in solving some of the riddles of later years. Hence we cannot be justly charged with repeating needlessly incidents that have already been related.

  Just as the Wartburg witnessed the strongest temptations that Luther had ever to bear, so, too, it formed the stage of certain of those manifestations from the other world of which he fancied himself the recipient. Such manifestations, which lead one to wonder whether Luther suffered from hallucinations, are of frequent occurrence in his story. We shall now proceed to review them in their entirety.

  3. Ghosts, Delusions, Apparitions of the Devil

  In investigating the many ghostly apparitions with which Luther believed he had been favoured, our attention is perforce drawn to the Wartburg. We must, however, be careful to distinguish the authentic traditions from what has been unjustifiably added thereto. As to the explaining and interpreting of such testimonies as have a right to be regarded as historical, that will form the matter of a special study. In order that the reader may build up an opinion of his own we shall meanwhile only set on record what the sources say, the views of those concerned being given literally and unabridged. This method, essential though it be for the purposes of an unbiassed examination, has too often been set aside, recourse being had instead to mere assertions, denials and pathological explanations.

  The Statements Concerning Luther’s Intercourse with the Beyond

  On April 5, 1538, Luther, in the presence of his friends, spoke of the personal “annoyance” to which the devil had subjected him while at the Wartburg by means of visible manifestations. The pastor of Sublitz, then staying at Wittenberg, had complained of being pestered at his home by noisy spooks; they flung pots and pans at his head and created other disturbances. Referring to such outward manifestations of the spirit-world, Luther remarked: “I too was tormented in my time of captivity in Patmos, in the castle perched high up in the kingdom of the birds. But I withstood Satan and answered him in the words of the Bible: God is mine, Who created man and ‘set all things under his feet’ (Ps. viii. 7). If thou hast any power over them, try what thou canst do.”

  On another occasion he related before his friend Myconius and in the presence of Jonas and Bugenhagen, “how the devil had twice appeared at the Wartburg in the shape of a great dog and had tried to kill him.” It is Myconius who relates this, mentioning that it had been told him by Luther at Gotha in 1538, “in the house of Johann Löben, the Schosser.”

  Of one of these two apparitions, the physician Ratzeberger, Luther’s friend, had definite information. He, however, quotes it only as an instance of the many ghostly things which Luther had experienced there: “Because the neighbourhood was lonely many ghosts appeared to him and he was much troubled by disturbances due to noisy spooks. Among other incidents, one night, when he was going to bed, he found a huge black bull-dog lying on his bed that refused to let him get in. Luther thereupon commended himself to our Lord God, recited Ps. viii. [the same as that mentioned above], and when he came to the verse ‘Thou hast set all things under his feet’ the dog at once disappeared and Luther passed a peaceful night. Many other ghosts of a like nature visited him, all of whom he drove off by prayer, but of which he refused to speak, for he said he would never tell anyone how many spectres had tormented him.”

  According to the account of his pupil Mathesius, Luther often “called to mind how the devil had tormented him in mind and caused him a burning pain which sucked the very marrow out of his bones.” Of visible apparitions Mathesius has, however, very little to say: “The Evil Spirit,” so we read in his account of Luther’s sayings, “most likely wished to affright me palpably, for on many nights I heard him making a noise in my Patmos, and saw him at the Coburg under the form of a star, and in my garden in the shape of a black pig. But my Christ strengthened me by His Spirit and Word so that I paid no heed to the devil’s spectre.” Mathesius, in his enthusiasm, actually goes so far as to compare such things to Satan’s tempting of Christ in the wilderness.

  The encounter with the great black dog in the Wartburg is related in an old edition of Luther’s Table-Talk with a curious addition, which tells how Luther, on one occasion, calmly lifted from the bed the dog, which had frequently tormented him, carried him to the window, and threw him out without the animal even barking. Luther had not been able to learn anything about it afterwards from others, but no such dog was kept in the Castle.

  Of the strange din by which the devil annoyed him within those walls Luther speaks more in detail in the German Table-Talk. “When I was living in Patmos … I had a sack of hazel nuts shut up in a box. On going to bed at night I undressed in my study, put out the light, went to my bedchamber and got into bed. Then the nuts began to rattle over my head, to rap very hard against the rafters of the ceiling and bump against me in bed; but I paid no attention to them. After I had got to sleep there began such a din on the stairs as though a pile of barrels was being flung down them, though I knew the stairs were protected with chains and iron bars so that no one could come up; nevertheless, the barrels kept rolling down. I got up and went to the top of the stairs to see what it was, but found the stairs closed. Then I said: ‘If it is you, so be it,’ and commended myself to our Lord Christ of Whom it is written: ‘Thou shalt set all things under his feet,’ as Ps. viii. says, and got into bed again.” All this, so the account proceeds, had been related by Luther himself at Eisenach in 1546. Cordatus, however, must have heard the story of the nuts from his own lips even before this. He tells it in 1537 as one of the numerous instances of the persecution Luther had had to endure from the spooks of the Wartburg: “Then he [the devil] took the walnuts from the table and flung them up at the ceiling the whole night long.”

  It also happened (this supplements an incident touched upon above in vol. ii., ), so Luther related on the above occasion, in 1546, that the wife of Hans Berlips, who “would much have liked to see [Luther], which was, however, not allowed,” came to the Castle. His quarters were changed and the lady was put into his room. “That night there was such an ado in the room that she fancied a thousand devils were in it.” This story is not quite so well authenticated as the incidents which Luther relates as having happened to himself, for it is clear that he had it directly, or indirectly, only from this lady’s account. Her anxiety to see Luther would seem to stamp her as a somewhat eccentric person, and it may also be that she went into a room, already reputed to be haunted, quite
full of the thought of ghosts and that her imagination was responsible for the rest.

  Luther goes on to allude to another ghostly visitation, possibly a new one. He says: “On such occasions we must always say to the devil contemptuously: “If you are Christ’s Master, so be it!” For this is what I said at Eisenach.” Nothing further is known, however, of any such occurrence having taken place at Eisenach. He may quite well have taken Eisenach as synonymous with the Wartburg.

  To pass in review the other ghostly apparitions which occurred during his lifetime, we must begin with his early years.

  When still a young monk at Wittenberg Luther already fancied he heard the devil making a din. “When I began to lecture on the Psalter, and, after we had sung Matins, was seated in the refectory studying and writing up my lecture, the devil came and rattled in the chimney three times, just as though someone were heaving a sack of coal down the chimney. At last, as it did not cease, I gathered up my books and went to bed.” “Once, too, I heard him over my head in the monastery, but, when I noticed who it was, I paid no attention, turned over and went to sleep again.”

  Luther can tell some far more exciting stories of ghosts and “Poltergeists,” of which others, with whom he had come in contact in youth or manhood, had been the victims. Since, however, he seems to have had them merely on hearsay, they may be passed over. Of himself, however, he says: “I have learnt by experience that ghosts go about affrightening people, preventing them from sleeping and so making them ill.”

  We find also the following statement: “The devil has often had me by the hair of my head, yet was ever forced to let me go”; from the context this, however, may refer to mental temptations.

  He says, however, quite definitely of certain experiences he himself had gone through in the monastery: “Oh, I saw gruesome ghosts and visions.” This was probably at the time when “no one was able to comfort” him. He was referring to incidents to which no definite date can be assigned, when, anxious to refute their claim to illumination by the spirits, he told the fanatics: “Ah, bah, spirits … I too have seen spirits!”