Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  According to one dictum of his, he had been a strict and right pious monk for fifteen years, i.e. from 1505-20, during which time he had never been able “to do enough” to make God gracious to him. Again, elsewhere, he assures us that the period of misery during which he sought justification through his works had lasted “almost fifteen years.” On another occasion, however, he makes it twenty years (i.e. up to 1525): “The twenty years I spent in the convent are lost and gone; I entered the cloister for the good and salvation of my soul and for the health of my body, and I fondly believed … that it was God’s Will that I should abide by the Rule.” What a contrast this alleged lengthy period of fifteen or even twenty years during which he kept the Rule presents to the reality must be sufficiently clear to anyone who remembers the dates of the events in his early history. To make matters worse, in one passage he actually goes so far as apparently to make the period even longer during which he had “been a pious monk,” and had almost brought about his death by fasting, thus bringing us down to 1526 or 1527 if the reading in the text be correct. It certainly makes a very curious impression on one who bears in mind the dates to see Luther, the excommunicate, after his furious attack on religious vows and the laws of the Church, and after his marriage, still depicted as an over-zealous and pious monk, whose fasting is even bringing his life into jeopardy. But if Luther was so careless about his dates does not this carelessness lead one to wonder whether the rest of the statements he makes in conjunction with them are one whit more trustworthy?

  “For over thirty years,” he says in a sermon of 1537, “I knew nothing but this confusion [between Law and Gospel] and was unable to believe that Christ was gracious to me, but rather sought to attain to justification before God by means of the merits of the Saints.” This statement is again as strange as his previous ones, always assuming that the account of the sermon in question, which Aurifaber bases on three separate reports, is reliable. In this passage he is speaking not of the years he spent in the convent but of the whole time during which he was a member of the Popish Church. If this be calculated from his birth it brings us down to about 1515, i.e. to about the date of his Commentary on Romans where the new doctrine of how to find a Gracious God is first mooted. But what then of the other account he gives of himself, according to which, for more than ten years subsequent to 1515, his soul remained immersed in the bitter struggle after holiness-by-works? If, on the other hand, we reckon the thirty years from the first awakening of the religious instinct in his boyhood and youth, i.e. from about 1490 or 1495, we should come down to 1520 or 1525 and find ourselves face to face with the still more perplexing question as to how the darkness concerning the Law could have subsisted together with the light of his new discovery.

  Luther’s versatile pen is fond of depicting the quiet, retiring monk of those days. As early as 1519 he wrote to Erasmus that it had always been his ardent wish “to live hidden away in some corner, ignored alike by the heavens and the sun, so conscious was he of his ignorance and inability to converse with learned men.” These words in their stricter sense cannot, however, be taken as applicable to the period when they were written but rather to the first years of his life as a monk.

  The historical features of his earlier life in the monastery deserve, however, to be examined more carefully in order better to understand the legend.

  2. The Reality. Luther’s Falsification of History

  The legend of Luther’s abiding misery during his life as a monk previous to his change of belief contradicts the monk’s own utterances during that period.

  Monastic Days of Peace and Happiness. The Vows and their Breach

  The fact is, that, for all his sufferings and frequent temptations, Luther for a long while felt himself perfectly at ease in monasticism. In the fulness of his Catholic convictions he extolled the goodness of God, who, in His loving-kindness, had bestowed such spiritual blessings on him. In 1507 he wrote that he could never be thankful enough “for the goodness of God towards him, Who of His boundless mercy had raised him, an unworthy sinner, to the dignity of the priesthood.” The elderly friend to whom he thus opened his heart was the same Johannes Braun, Vicar of the Marienstift at Eisenach, to whom he again gave an account of his welfare in 1509. To him he then wrote: “God is God; man is often, in fact nearly always, wrong in his judgments. God is our God, and will guide us sweetly through everlasting ages.” — The inward joy which he found in the monastery gave him strength to bear his father’s displeasure. He not only pointed out to him that it was “a peaceful and heavenly life,” but he even tried so to paint the happy life he led in his cell as to induce his friend and teacher Usingen to become an Augustinian too. We may also recall his praise of his “preceptor” (i.e. novice master), whom he speaks of as a “dear old man” and “a true Christian under the damned frock.” He repeats some of his beautiful, witty sayings and was always grateful to him for his having lent him a copy, made by his own hand, of a work by St. Athanasius. The exhortations addressed to him by Staupitz when he was worried by doubts and fears, for instance his excellent allusion to the wounds of Christ, found an echo in Luther’s soul, and, in spite of his trouble of mind, brought him back to the true ideal of asceticism. We also know how he praised Usingen, his friend at Erfurt, as the “best paraclete and comforter,” and wrote to a despondent monk, that his words were helpful to troubled souls, provided always that they laid aside all self-will.

  Hence, for a considerable part of his life in the monastery, Luther was not entirely deprived of consolations; apart from the darker side of his life, on which his legend dwells too exclusively, there was also a brighter side, and this is true particularly of his earlier years.

  The effort to attain to perfection by the observance of poverty, chastity and obedience was at first so attractive to Luther, that, for a while, as we have already pointed out, he really allowed it to cost him something. Some years later, when he had already begun to paint in stronger hues his virtues as a monk, he said, perhaps not exaggerating: “It was no joke or child’s play with me in Popery.” His zealous observance was, however, confined to his first stay at Erfurt. A brother monk of his whom Flacius Illyricus chanced to meet in that town in 1543 also bore witness to Luther’s piety there as a monk. The “old Papist,” then still a faithful Augustinian, had told him, writes Flacius, how he had spent forty years in the Erfurt monastery where Luther had lived eight years, and that he could not but confess that Luther had led a holy life, had been most punctilious about the Rule and had studied diligently. To Flacius this was a new proof of the “mark of holiness” in the new Church.

  Nor are statements on the part of the young monk wanting which prove, in contradiction with the legend he invented later, that his theoretical grasp of the religious life was still correct even at a time when he had already ceased to pay any great attention to the Rule.

  Even as late as 1519, i.e. but two years before he wrote his book against monastic vows, he still saw in these vows a salutary institution. In a sermon he advised whoever desired “by much practice” to keep the grace of baptism and make ready for a happy death “to bind himself to chastity or join some religious Order,” the Evangelical Counsels still appeared to him, according to statements he made in that same year, “a means for the easier keeping of the commandments.”

  It was only after this that he began to think of tampering with the celibacy of the priesthood, and that only in the hope of winning many helpers in his work of apostasy. A little later he attacked with equal success the sacred obligations freely assumed by the monks. Yet we find nothing about the legend in his writings and letters of this time, though it would have been of great service to him. Everything, in fact, followed a much simpler and more normal course than the legend would have us imagine: The spirit of the world and inordinate self-love, no less than his newly unearthed doctrine, were what led to the breaking of his vows.

  Many of his brother monks had already begun to give an example of marrying when, in the Wartburg (
in Sep., 1521), while busy on his work against monastic vows he put to Melanchthon this curious question: “How is it with me? Am I already free and no more a monk? Do you imagine that you can foist a wife on me as I did on you? Is this to be your revenge on me? Do you want to play the Demea [the allusion is to Terence] and give me, Mitio, Sostrata to wife? I shall, however, keep my eyes open and you will not succeed.” Melanchthon was, of course, neither a priest nor a monk. Luther, who was both, was even then undoubtedly breaking away at heart from his vows. This he did on the pretext — untenable though it must have appeared even to him — that his profession had been vitiated by being contrary to the Gospel, because his intention had been to “save his soul and find justification through his vows instead of through faith.” “Such a vow,” he says, “could not possibly be taken in the spirit of the Gospel, or, if it was, it was sheer delusion.” Still, for the time being, he only sanctioned the marriage of other monks who were to be his future helpers; as for himself he was loath to give the Papists “who were jawing” him the pleasure of his marriage. He also denied in a public sermon that it was his intention to marry, though he felt how hard it was not to “end in the flesh.” All these are well-known statements into which we have already gone in detail, which militate against Luther’s later legend of the holy monk, who tormented himself so grievously solely for the highest aims.

  When, nevertheless, yielding to the force of circumstances, he took as his wife a nun who had herself been eighteen years in the convent, his action and the double sacrilege it involved plunged him into new inward commotion. His statements at that time throw a strange light on the step he had taken. By dint of every effort he seeks to justify the humiliating step both to himself and to others.

  In his excitement he depicts himself as in the very jaws of death and Satan. Fear of the rebellious peasants now so wroth with him, and self-reproach on account of the marriage blamed by so many even among his friends, inflamed his mind to such a degree that his statements, now pessimistic, now defiant, now humorous, now reeking with pseudo-mysticism, furnish a picture of chaos. The six grounds he alleges for his marriage only prove that none of them was really esteemed by him sufficient; for, that it was necessary for him to take pity on the forsaken nun, that the Will of God and of his own father was so plain, and that he was obliged to launch defiance at the devils, the priestlings and the peasants by his marriage, all this had in reality as little weight with him as his other pleas, such as, that the Catholics looked on married life as unevangelical, and that it was his duty to confirm the Evangel by his marriage even in the eyes of his Evangelical critics. To many of his friends his marriage seemed at least to have the advantage of shutting the mouths of those who calumniated him. He himself, however, preferred to say, that he had had recourse to matrimony “to honour God and shame the devil.”

  When once Luther had entered upon his new state of life all remaining scruples regarding his vows had necessarily to be driven away.

  As was his wont he tried to reassure himself by going to extremes. “The most successful combats with the devil,” so he tells us, are waged “at night at Katey’s side”; her “embraces” help him to quell the foe within. He declares even more strongly than before, that marriage is in fact a matter of downright necessity for man; he fails to think of the thousands who cannot marry but whose honour is nevertheless untarnished; he asserts that “whoever will not marry must needs be a fornicator or adulterer,” and that only by a “great miracle of God” is it possible for a man here and there to remain chaste outside the wedded state; more and more he insists, as he had already done even before, that “nothing rings more hatefully in his ear than the words monk and nun.” He seizes greedily on every tale that redounds to the discredit of the monasteries, even on the silly story of the devils dressed as spectral monks who had crossed the Rhine at Spires in order to thwart him at the Diet.

  In all this we can but discern a morbid reaction against the disquieting memory of his former state of life, not, as the legend asserts, peace of mind and assurance of having won a “Gracious God,” thanks to his change of religion. The reaction was throughout attended by remorse of conscience.

  These struggles of soul in order to find a Gracious God, which lasted, as he himself says (above, vol. v., p f.; 350 f.), even down to his later years, constitute a striking refutation from his own lips, of the legend of the wonderful change which came over him in the monastery.

  On the other hand, the story of his long-drawn devotion to the monastic practice of good works is no less at variance with the facts. On the contrary, no sooner did Luther begin his official career as a monk at Wittenberg, than he showed signs of his aversion to works; the trend of his teaching was never in favour of strictness and penance, which, as he declared, could only fill the heart with pride. (Above, vol. i., p ff., 117 ff.) At a later date, however, he sought to base this teaching on his own “inner experiences” and with these the legend supplied him (above, vol. iv., , n. 2).

  Some Doubtful Virtues

  It is worth while to examine here rather more narrowly than was possible when giving the history of his youth, the zeal for virtue and the self-sacrificing industry for which, according to the legend, the youthful monk was so conspicuous. What in our first volume was omitted for the sake of brevity may here find a place in order to throw a clearer light on his development. Two traits are of especial importance: first humility as the crown of all virtue, on account of the piety Luther ascribes to himself, and, secondly, the exact character of his restless, feverish industry.

  Luther’s humility presents some rather remarkable features. In the documents we still possess of his we indeed find terms of self-depreciation of the most extravagant kind. But his humility and forced self-annihilation contrast strangely with his intense belief in his own spiritual powers and the way in which he exalts himself above all authorities, even the highest.

  This comes out most strongly at the time when, as a young professor at Wittenberg, Luther first dipped into the writings of the mystics. The latter, so one would have thought, ought rather to have led him to a deeper appreciation and realisation of the life of perfection and humility.

  He extols the books of certain mystics as a remedy for all the maladies of the soul and as the well-spring of all knowledge. To the Provost of Leitzkau, who had asked for his prayers, he expressed his humility in the language of the mystics: “I confess to you that daily my life draws nigh to hell (Ps. lxxxvii. 4) because daily I become more wicked and wretched.” At the same time he exhorts another friend in words already quoted, taken from the obscure and suspicious “Theologia Deutsch,” “to taste and see how bitter is everything that is ourselves” in comparison with the possession of Christ. “I am not worthy that anyone should remember me,” so he writes to the same, “and I am most thankful to those who think worst of me.”

  Yet mystical effusions are intermingled with charges against the opponents of his new philosophy and theology which are by no means remarkable for humility. “For nothing do my fingers itch so much,” he wrote about this time, “as to tear off the mask from that clown Aristotle.” The words here uttered by the monk, as yet scarcely more than a pupil himself, refer to a scholar to whom even the greatest have ever looked up, and, who, up till then, had worthily represented at the Universities the wisdom of the ancients. The young man declares, that “he would willingly call him a devil, did he not know that he had had a body.” Luther also has a low opinion of all the Universities of his day: “They condemn and burn the good books,” he exclaims, “while fabricating and framing bad ones.”

  Self-confidence had been kindled in the monk’s breast by a conviction of future greatness. He speaks several times of this inkling he had whilst yet a secular student at the Erfurt University; when ailing from some illness of which we have no detailed account, the father of one of his friends cheered him with certain words which sank deeply into his memory: “My dear Bachelor, don’t lose heart, you will live to be a great man yet.” I
n 1532 Luther related to his pupil Veit Dietrich this utterance which he still treasured in his memory. How strong an impression such lightly spoken words could make on his too susceptible mind is evident from a letter of 1530 where he speaks of his vivid recollection of another man, who, when Luther was consoling him on the death of his son, had said to him: “Martin, you may be sure that some day you will be a great man.” Since, on the same occasion, he goes on to refer to the remark made by Staupitz, viz. that he was called to do great things, and declares that this prediction had been verified, it becomes even clearer that this idea had taken root and thriven in his mind even from early years. But how does all this harmonise with the humility of the true religious, and with the pious self-forgetfulness of the mystic? There can be no doubt that it is more in accordance with the quarrelsomeness and exclusiveness, the hot temper and lack of consideration for others to which the testimonies already recorded have repeatedly borne witness. (Above, vol. i., passim.)

  There is a document in existence, on which so far but little attention has been bestowed, which is characteristic of his language at one time. Its tone of exaggeration makes it worthy to rank side by side with the mystical passage quoted above, in which Luther professes to have himself experienced the pangs of hell which were the earthly lot of chosen souls. Owing to its psychological value this witness to his humility must not be passed over.

  Luther had received from Christopher Scheurl of Nuremberg, a learned lawyer and humanist, a letter dated Jan. 2, 1517, in which this warm partisan and admirer of the Augustinians, who was also a personal friend of Staupitz after a few words in praise of his virtue and learning, of which Staupitz had told him, expressed the wish to enter into friendly correspondence with him. The greater part of Scheurl’s letter is devoted to praising Staupitz, rather than Luther. Yet the young man was utterly dumbfounded even by the meagre praise the letter contained. His answer to it was in an extravagant vein, the writer seemingly striving to express his overwhelming sense of humility in the face of such all-too-great praise.