There was little of originality in Luria’s doctrines; the theory of emanations, the double belief in the process of the Divine Essence as it were self-concentrating (Zimzum) and on the other hand as expanding throughout creation; the philosophical “sceptism” which regards God as unknowable but capable of direct intuition by feeling—these were all common elements of mystical thought. Luria was an inspirer of saintly conduct rather than an innovator in theories. Not beliefs, he said, but believers need rebirth. As he rose in the morning he prayed: “O God, grant that throughout this coming day I may be able to love my neighbour as myself.” Never would he retire to rest until he had fulfilled his definite engagements to those who had served him. Luria and his school altered the very look of the Jewish Prayer Book. Prayer was his main prop. By it men became controllers of the earthly world and reached God. He or his school introduced innumerable ritual customs, some of them beautiful enough. On Sabbath he dressed in white, wearing a four-fold garment to typify the four letters of the Divine Name. The Sabbath was to him an actual cult. It was a day of the most holy joy. Resuming the Talmudic idea of an Over-soul present in every Israelite on the Sabbath, Luria and his school made play with this Over-soul, fed it with spiritual and material dainties and evolved an intricate maze of mystic ceremonial, still observed by countless masses. Another strong point with Luria was penance. The confessions of sin which he introduced descend to minute ritual details and rise to the most exalted aspects of social and spiritual life. He deprecated general confessions and demanded that the individual must lay bare the recesses of his heart. Hayim Vital reports that on his death-bed Luria said to his disciples: “Be at peace with one another: bear with one another: and so be worthy of my coming again to reveal to you what no mortal ear has heard before.” His mystic ceremonial became a guide to religious practice, and though with this there came in much meaningless and even bewildering formalism, yet the example of his life and character was a lasting inspiration to saintliness.See S. Schecher,Studies in Judaism, second series, pp. 251 seq.;Jewish Encyclopedia, viii. 210; E. Worman inRevue des Études Juives, lvii. 281.
There was little of originality in Luria’s doctrines; the theory of emanations, the double belief in the process of the Divine Essence as it were self-concentrating (Zimzum) and on the other hand as expanding throughout creation; the philosophical “sceptism” which regards God as unknowable but capable of direct intuition by feeling—these were all common elements of mystical thought. Luria was an inspirer of saintly conduct rather than an innovator in theories. Not beliefs, he said, but believers need rebirth. As he rose in the morning he prayed: “O God, grant that throughout this coming day I may be able to love my neighbour as myself.” Never would he retire to rest until he had fulfilled his definite engagements to those who had served him. Luria and his school altered the very look of the Jewish Prayer Book. Prayer was his main prop. By it men became controllers of the earthly world and reached God. He or his school introduced innumerable ritual customs, some of them beautiful enough. On Sabbath he dressed in white, wearing a four-fold garment to typify the four letters of the Divine Name. The Sabbath was to him an actual cult. It was a day of the most holy joy. Resuming the Talmudic idea of an Over-soul present in every Israelite on the Sabbath, Luria and his school made play with this Over-soul, fed it with spiritual and material dainties and evolved an intricate maze of mystic ceremonial, still observed by countless masses. Another strong point with Luria was penance. The confessions of sin which he introduced descend to minute ritual details and rise to the most exalted aspects of social and spiritual life. He deprecated general confessions and demanded that the individual must lay bare the recesses of his heart. Hayim Vital reports that on his death-bed Luria said to his disciples: “Be at peace with one another: bear with one another: and so be worthy of my coming again to reveal to you what no mortal ear has heard before.” His mystic ceremonial became a guide to religious practice, and though with this there came in much meaningless and even bewildering formalism, yet the example of his life and character was a lasting inspiration to saintliness.
See S. Schecher,Studies in Judaism, second series, pp. 251 seq.;Jewish Encyclopedia, viii. 210; E. Worman inRevue des Études Juives, lvii. 281.
(I. A.)
LURISTAN,in the wider sense (as its name implies) the “Land of the Lurs,” namely that part of western Persia which is bounded by Turkish territory on the west and extends for about 400 m. N.W.-S.E. from Kermanshah to Fars with a breadth of 100 to 140 m. It is chiefly mountainous, being intersected by numerous ranges running N.W.-S.E. The central range has many summits which are almost within the line of perpetual snow, rising to 13,000 ft. and more, and in it are the sources of Persia’s most important rivers, as the Zayendeh-rud, Jarahi, Karun, Diz, Abi, Kerkheh. Between the higher ranges are many fertile plains and low hilly districts, well watered but comparatively little cultivated in consequence of intertribal feuds. The Lurs are thought to be aboriginal Persians with a mixture of Semitic blood. Their language is a dialect of Persian and does not differ materially from Kurdish. Outwardly they are Mussulmans of the Shiah branch, but most of them show little veneration for either Prophet or Koran, and the religion of some of them seems to be a mixture of Ali-Illahism involving a belief in successive incarnations combined with mysterious, ancient, heathen rites. The northern part of Luristan, which was formerly known as Lurikuchik (little Luristan), is inhabited by the Feili Lurs and these are divided into the Pishkuh (cis-montane) Lurs in the east and Pushtkuh (ultra-montane) Lurs in the west adjoining Turkish territory. They number about 350,000. Little Luristan was governed by a race of independent princes of the Khurshidi dynasty, and called atabegs, from 1155 to the beginning of the 17th century when the last atabeg, Shah Verdi Khan, was removed by Shah Abbas I. and the government of the province given to Husain Khan, the chief of a rival tribe, with the title of vali in exchange for that of atabeg. The descendants of Husain Khan have retained the title but now govern only the Pushtkuh Lurs, to whom only the denomination of Feili is at present applied. The southern part of Luristan was formerly known as Lur i Buzurg (great Luristan) and is composed of the Bakhtiari division of the Arabistan province and the districts of the Mamasennis and Kuhgilus which belong to Fars. The Bakhtiaris number about 200,000, the others 40,000. Great Luristan was an independent state under the Fazlevieh atabegs from 1160 until 1424, and its capital was Idaj, now represented by mounds and ruins at Malamir 60 m. S.E. of Shushter.
LUSATIA(Ger.Lausitz), a name applied to two neighbouring districts in Germany, Upper and Lower Lusatia, belonging nowmainly to Prussia, but partly to Saxony. The name is taken from the Lusitzi, a Slav tribe, who inhabited Lower Lusatia in the 9th and 10th centuries.
In the earliest times Lower Lusatia reached from the Black Elster to the Spree; its inhabitants, the Lusitzi, were conquered by the German king, Henry the Fowler, and by the margrave Gero in the 10th century. Their land was formed into a separate march, which for about three centuries was sometimes attached to, and sometimes independent of, the margraviate of Meissen, its rulers being occasionally called margraves of Lusatia. In 1303 it was purchased by the margrave of Brandenburg, and after other changes it fell in 1368 into the hands of the king of Bohemia, the emperor Charles IV., who already possessed Upper Lusatia. During the Hussite wars its people remained loyal to the Roman Catholic Church. In 1469 they recognized Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, as their sovereign, but in 1490 they came again under the rule of the Bohemian king.
The district now known as Upper Lusatia was occupied by a Slav tribe, the Milzeni, who like the Lusitzi, were subdued by Henry the Fowler early in the 10th century. For about three centuries it was called Baudissin (Bautzen), from the name of its principal fortress. In the 11th and 12th centuries it was connected at different periods with Meissen, Poland and Bohemia. Towards 1160 the emperor Frederick I. granted it to Ladislas, king of Bohemia, and under this ruler and his immediate successors it was largely colonized by German immigrants. In 1253 it passed to the margrave of Brandenburg, and about the same time it was divided into an eastern and a western part, Baudissin proper and Görlitz. In 1319 the former was restored to Bohemia, which also recovered Görlitz in 1329. During the 14th century the nobles and the townsmen began to take part in the government, and about this time Upper Lusatia was known as the district of the six towns (Sechsstädtelandes), these being Bautzen, Görlitz, Zittau, Löbau, Lauban and Kamenz. From 1377 to 1396 Görlitz was a separate duchy ruled by John, a son of the emperor Charles IV., and, like Lower Lusatia, Upper Lusatia owned the authority of Matthias Corvinus from 1469 to 1490, both districts passing a little later with the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia to the German king, Ferdinand I. The “six towns” were severely punished for their share in the war of the league of Schmalkalden, and about this time the reformed teaching made very rapid progress in Lusatia, the majority of the inhabitants becoming Protestants. The name of Lusatia hitherto confined to Lower Lusatia, was soon applied to both districts, the adjectives Upper and Lower being used to distinguish them. In 1620, early in the Thirty Years’ War, the two Lusatias were conquered by the elector of Saxony, John George I., who was allowed to keep them as the price of his assistance to the emperor Ferdinand I. In 1635 by the treaty of Prague they were definitely transferred from Bohemia to Saxony, although the emperor as king of Bohemia retained a certain supremacy for the purpose of guarding the rights and privileges of the Roman Catholics. They suffered much during the wars of the 18th century. By the peace of Vienna (1815) the whole of Lower Lusatia and part of Upper Lusatia were transferred from Saxony to Prussia.
The area of the part of Upper Lusatia retained by Saxony was slightly increased in 1845; it is now about 960 sq. m. In 1900 Lower Lusatia contained 461,973 inhabitants, of whom 34,837 were Wends; the portion of Upper Lusatia belonging to Prussia had 305,080 inhabitants, of whom 24,361 were Wends. There were 405,173 inhabitants, including 28,234 Wends, in Saxon Upper Lusatia. Laws relating to this district, after passing through the Saxon parliament must be submitted to the Lusatian diet at Bautzen. The chief towns of Upper Lusatia are Bautzen, Zittau, Löbau, Kamenz, Görlitz, Rothenburg, Hoyerswerda and Lauban; in Lower Lusatia they are Guben, Kottbus, Forst, Lubben and Spremberg. The principal rivers are the Spree with its tributaries, the Black Elster and the Neisse. Upper Lusatia is generally mountainous and picturesque, Lower Lusatia is flat and sandy. The chief industries are linen weaving, cloth making and coal mining.
For the history of Lusatia see the collections,Scriptores rerum Lusaticarum antiqui et recentiores, edited by C. G. Hoffmann (4 vols., Leipzig and Bautzen, 1719); andScriptores rerum Lusaticarum(4 vols., Görlitz, 1839-1870). See also W. Lippert,Wettiner und Wittelsbacher sowie die Niederlausitz im 14 Jahrhundert(Dresden, 1894); T. Scheltz,Gesamtgeschichte der Ober- und Niederlausitz, Band i. (Halle, 1847), Band ii. (Görlitz, 1882); J. G. Worbs,Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte des Markgraftums Niederlausitz(Lübben 1897); and J. A. E. Kohler,Die Geschichte der Oberlausitz(Görlitz, 1867).
For the history of Lusatia see the collections,Scriptores rerum Lusaticarum antiqui et recentiores, edited by C. G. Hoffmann (4 vols., Leipzig and Bautzen, 1719); andScriptores rerum Lusaticarum(4 vols., Görlitz, 1839-1870). See also W. Lippert,Wettiner und Wittelsbacher sowie die Niederlausitz im 14 Jahrhundert(Dresden, 1894); T. Scheltz,Gesamtgeschichte der Ober- und Niederlausitz, Band i. (Halle, 1847), Band ii. (Görlitz, 1882); J. G. Worbs,Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte des Markgraftums Niederlausitz(Lübben 1897); and J. A. E. Kohler,Die Geschichte der Oberlausitz(Görlitz, 1867).
LUSHAI HILLS,a mountainous district of Eastern Bengal and Assam, south of Cachar, on the border between Assam and Burma. Area, 7227 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 82,434. The hills are for the most part covered with dense bamboo jungle and rank undergrowth; but in the eastern portion, owing probably to a smaller rainfall, open grass-covered slopes are found, with groves of oak and pine interspersed with rhododendrons. These hills are inhabited by the Lushais and cognate tribes, but the population is extremely scanty. From the earliest known times the original inhabitants were Kukis, and the Lushais were not heard of until 1840, when they invaded the district from the north. Their first attack upon British territory took place in November 1849, and after that date they proved one of the most troublesome tribes on the north-east frontier of India; but operations in 1890 resulted in the complete pacification of the northern Lushai villages, and in 1892 the eastern Lushais were reduced to order. The management of the South Lushai hill country was transferred from Bengal to Assam in 1898. To obtain more efficient control over the country the district has been divided into eighteen circles, each in charge of an interpreter, through whom all orders are transmitted to the chiefs. The Welsh Presbyterian Mission began work at Aijal in 1897, and the people have shown unexpected readiness to accept education. According to the census of 1901 the total number of Lushais in Assam was 63,452.
See Colonel T. H. Lewin,Wild Races of N.E. India(1870);Lushai Hills Gazetteer(Calcutta, 1906).
See Colonel T. H. Lewin,Wild Races of N.E. India(1870);Lushai Hills Gazetteer(Calcutta, 1906).
LUSIGNAN,the name of a family which sprang from Poitou1and distinguished itself by its connexion with the kingdom of Jerusalem, and still more by its long tenure of the kingdom of Cyprus (1192-1475). A Hugh de Lusignan appears in the ill-fated crusade of 1100-1101; another Hugh, the Brown, came as a pilgrim to the Holy Land in 1164, and was taken prisoner by Nureddin. In the last quarter of the 12th century the two brothers Amalric and Guy, sons of Hugh the Brown, played a considerable part in the history of the Latin East. About 1180 Amalric was constable of the kingdom of Jerusalem; and he is said to have brought his handsome brother Guy to the notice of Sibylla, the widowed heiress of the kingdom. Guy and Sibylla were married in 1180; and Guy thus became heir presumptive of the kingdom, if the young Baldwin V., Sibylla’s son by her first marriage to William of Montferrat, should die without issue. He acted as regent in 1183, but he showed some incapacity in the struggle with Saladin, and was deprived of all right of succession. In 1186, however, on the death of Baldwin V., he succeeded in obtaining the crown, in spite of the opposition of Raymund of Tripoli. Next year he suffered a crushing defeat at the battle of Hittin, and was taken prisoner by Saladin. Released on parole in 1188, he at once broke his parole, and began the siege of Acre. Difficulties, however, had arisen with Conrad of Montferrat; and when Guy lost his wife Sibylla in 1190, and Conrad married Isabella, her sister, now heiress of the kingdom, these difficulties culminated in Conrad’s laying claim to the crown. Guy found his cause espoused in 1191 by the overlord of his house, Richard I. of England; but Conrad’s superior ability, and the support of the French crusaders, ultimately carried the day, and in 1192 Richard himself abandoned the pretensions of Guy, and recognized Conrad as king. Though Conrad was almost immediately assassinated, the crown did notreturn to Guy, but went to Henry of Champagne, who married the widowed Isabella. Guy found some satisfaction for his loss in buying from the Templars the island of Cyprus, and there he reigned for the last two years of his life (1192-1194). He is judged harshly by contemporary writers, assimplexandinsufficiens; but Dodu (in hisHistoire des institutions du royaume de Jérusalem) suggests that Guy was depreciated because the kingdom had been lost in his reign, in much the same way as Godfrey of Bouillon was exalted because Jerusalem had just been won at his accession. Guy was a brave if not a particularly able knight; and his instant attack on Acre after his release by Saladin shows that he had thesentiment de ses devoirs.
He was succeeded in Cyprus by his brother Amalric, who acquired the title of king of Cyprus from the emperor Henry VI., and became king of Jerusalem in 1197 by his marriage to Isabella, after the death of Henry of Champagne (seeAmalric II.). Amalric was the founder of a dynasty of kings of Cyprus, which lasted till 1475, while after 1269 his descendants regularly enjoyed the title of kings of Jerusalem. The scions of the house of Lusignan proved themselves the most sincere of crusaders. They possessed in Cyprus a kingdom, in which they had vindicated for themselves a stronger hold over their feudatories than the kings of Jerusalem had ever enjoyed, and in which trading centres like Famagusta flourished vigorously; and they used the resources of their kingdom, in conjunction with the Hospitallers of Rhodes, to check the progress of the Mahommedans.
Among the most famous members of the house who ruled in Cyprus three may be mentioned. The first is Hugh III. (the Great), who was king from 1267 to 1285: to him, apparently, St Thomas dedicated hisDe Regimine Principum; and it is in his reign that the kingdom of Jerusalem becomes permanently connected with that of Cyprus. The second is Hugh IV. (1324-1359), to whom Boccaccio dedicated one of his works, and who set on foot an alliance with the pope, Venice and the Hospitallers, which resulted in the capture of Smyrna (1344). The last is Peter I., Hugh’s second son and successor, who reigned from 1359 to 1369, when he was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy of the barons. Peter and his chancellor de Mezières represent the last flicker of the crusading spirit (seeCrusades).
Before the extinction of the line in 1475, it had succeeded in putting a branch on the throne of Armenia. Five short-lived kings of the house ruled in Armenia after 1342, “Latin exiles,” as Stubbs says, “in the midst of several strange populations all alike hostile.” The kingdom of Armenia fell before the sultan of Egypt, who took prisoner its last king Leo V. in 1375, though the kings of Cyprus afterwards continued to bear the title; the kingdom of Cyprus itself continued to exist under the house of Lusignan for 100 years longer. The mother of the last king, James III. (who died when he was two years old), was a Venetian lady, Catarina Cornaro. She had been made a daughter of the republic at the time of her marriage to the king of Cyprus; and on the death of her child the republic first acted as guardian for its daughter, and then, in 1489, obtained from her the cession of the island.
See J. M. J. L. de Mas-Latrie,Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous les princes de la maison de Lusignan(Paris, 1852-1853); W. Stubbs,Lectures on Medieval and Modern History(3rd ed., Oxford, 1900).
See J. M. J. L. de Mas-Latrie,Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous les princes de la maison de Lusignan(Paris, 1852-1853); W. Stubbs,Lectures on Medieval and Modern History(3rd ed., Oxford, 1900).
1A branch of the line continued in Poitou during the 13th century, and ruled in LaMarche till 1303. Hugh de la Marche, whose betrothed wife, Isabella of Angoulême, King John of England seized (thus bringing upon himself the loss of the greater part of his French possessions), was a nephew of Guy of Lusignan. He ultimately married Isabella, after the death of John, and had by her a number of sons, half-brothers of Henry III. of England, who came over to England, amongst other foreign favourites, during his reign.
1A branch of the line continued in Poitou during the 13th century, and ruled in LaMarche till 1303. Hugh de la Marche, whose betrothed wife, Isabella of Angoulême, King John of England seized (thus bringing upon himself the loss of the greater part of his French possessions), was a nephew of Guy of Lusignan. He ultimately married Isabella, after the death of John, and had by her a number of sons, half-brothers of Henry III. of England, who came over to England, amongst other foreign favourites, during his reign.
LUSSIN,a small island in the Adriatic Sea, in the Gulf of Quarnero, forming together with the adjacent islands of Veglia and Cherso an administrative district in the Austrian crownland of Istria. Pop. (1900) 11,615. The island is 24 m. in length, is of an average breadth of 1.64 m., being little more than 300 yds. wide at its narrowest point, and has an area of 29 sq. m. The chief town and principal harbour is Lussinpiccolo (pop. 7207), which is the most important trading centre in the Quarnero group. The town has become a favourite winter resort, its climate resembling that of Nice. To the south-east of it is Lussingrande (pop. 2349), with an old Venetian palace and a shipbuilding wharf. The island was first peopled at the end of the 14th century. Its inhabitants are renowned seamen.
LUSTRATION,a term that includes all the methods of purification and expiation among the Greeks and Romans. Among the Greeks there are two ideas clearly distinguishable—that human nature must purify itself (κάθαρσις) from guilt before it is fit to enter into communion with God or even to associate with men, and that guilt must be expiated voluntarily (ἱλασμός) by certain processes which God has revealed, in order to avoid the punishment that must otherwise overtake it. It is not possible to make such a distinction among the Latin termslustratio,piacula,piamenta,caerimoniae, and even among the Greeks it is not consistently observed. Guilt and impurity arose in various ways; among the Greeks, besides the general idea that man is always in need of purification, the species of guilt most insisted on by religion are incurred by murder, by touching a dead body, by sexual intercourse, and by seeing a prodigy or sign of the divine will. The last three spring from the idea that man had been without preparation and improperly brought into communication with God, and was therefore guilty. The first, which involves a really moral idea of guilt, is far more important than the others in Hellenic religion. Among the Romans we hear more of the last species of impurity; in general the idea takes the form that after some great disaster the people become convinced that guilt has been incurred and must be expiated. The methods of purification consist in ceremonies performed with water, fire, air or earth, or with a branch of a sacred tree, especially of the laurel, and also in sacrifice and other ceremonial. Before entering a temple the worshipper dipped his hand in the vase of holy water (περιῤῥανήριον,aqua lustralis) which stood at the door; before a sacrifice bathing was common; salt-water was more efficacious than fresh, and the celebrants of the Eleusinian mysteries bathed in the sea (ἄλαδε, μύσται); the water was more efficacious if a firebrand from the altar were plunged in it. The torch, fire and sulphur (τὸ θεῖον) were also powerful purifying agents. Purification by air was most frequent in the Dionysiac mysteries; puppets suspended and swinging in the air (oscilla) formed one way of using the lustrative power of the air. Rubbing with sand and salt was another method. The sacrifice chiefly used for purification by the Greeks was a pig; among the Romans it was always, except in the Lupercalia, a pig, a sheep and a bull (suovetaurilia). In Athens a purificatory sacrifice and prayer was held before every meeting of the ecclesia; the Maimacteria,1in honour of Zeus Maimactes (the god of wrath), was an annual festival of purification, and at the Thargelia two men (or a woman and a man) were sacrificed on the seashore, their bodies burned and the ashes thrown into the sea, to avert the wrath of Apollo. On extraordinary occasions lustrations were performed for a whole city. So Athens was purified by Epimenides after the Cylonian massacre, and Delos in the Peloponnesian War (426B.C.) to stop the plague and appease the wrath of Apollo. In Rome, besides such annual ceremonies as theAmbarvalia,Lupercalia,Cerialia,Paganalia, &c., there was a lustration of the fleet before it sailed, and of the army before it marched. Part of the ceremonial always consisted in leading or carrying the victims round the impure persons or things. After any disaster thelustratio classiumorexercituswas often again performed, so as to make certain that the gods got all their due. TheAmburbium, a solemn procession of the people round the boundaries of Rome, was a similar ceremonial performed for the whole city on occasions of great danger or calamity; theAmbilustrium(so called from the sacrificial victims being carried round the people assembled on the Campus Martius) was the purificatory ceremony which took place after the regular quinquennial census (lustrum) of the Roman people.
See C. F. Hermann,Griechische Altertümer, ii.; G. F. Schömann,ib.ii.; P. Stengel,Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer(1898); Marquardt,Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. p. 200 (1885); P. E. von Lasaulx,Die Sühnopfer der Griechen und Römer(1841); J. Donaldson, “On the Expiatory and Substitutionary Sacrifices of the Greeks,” inTransactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, xxvii., 1876; and the articles by A. Bouché-Leclercq in Daremberg and Saglio,Dictionnaire des antiquités, and by W. Warde Fowler in Smith’sDictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities(3rd ed., 1891).
See C. F. Hermann,Griechische Altertümer, ii.; G. F. Schömann,ib.ii.; P. Stengel,Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer(1898); Marquardt,Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii. p. 200 (1885); P. E. von Lasaulx,Die Sühnopfer der Griechen und Römer(1841); J. Donaldson, “On the Expiatory and Substitutionary Sacrifices of the Greeks,” inTransactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, xxvii., 1876; and the articles by A. Bouché-Leclercq in Daremberg and Saglio,Dictionnaire des antiquités, and by W. Warde Fowler in Smith’sDictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities(3rd ed., 1891).
1Maimacteria does not actually occur in ancient authorities as the name of a festival.
1Maimacteria does not actually occur in ancient authorities as the name of a festival.
LUTE(Arabical‘ūd, “the wood”; Fr.luth; Ital.liuto; Span.laud; Ger.Laute; Dut.luit), an ancient stringed musical instrument, derived in form as well as name from the Arabs. The complete family consisted of the pandura, tanbur or mandoline as treble, the lute as alto or tenor, the barbiton or theorbo as bass, and the chitarrone as double bass. The Arab instrument, with convex sound-body, pointing to the resonance board or membrane having been originally placed upon a gourd, was strung with silk and played with a plectrum of shell or quill. It was adopted by the Arabs from Persia. Instruments with vaulted backs are all undoubtedly of Eastern origin; the distinct type, resembling the longitudinal section of a pear, is more specially traced in ancient India, Persia and the countries influenced by their civilization. This type of instrument includes many families which became known during the middle ages of western Europe, being introduced into southern Europe and Spain by the Moors, into southern Russia by the Persians of the Sassanian period, into Greece from the confines of the Byzantine Empire. As long as the strings were plucked by fingers or plectrum the large pear-shaped instrument may be identified as the archetype of the lute. When the bow, obtained from Persia, was applied to the instrument by the Arabs, a fresh family was formed, which was afterwards known in Europe as rebab and later rebec. The largest member of the ancient lute family—the bass lute or theorbo—has been identified with the barbiton.
Until recently the existence of these ancient stringed instruments was presumed on the evidence of the early medieval European instruments and of the meagre writings extant, such as those of Fārābī.1But a chain of plastic evidence can now be offered, beginning with the Greek post-Mycenaean age (c.1000B.C.). A statuette of a female musician playing upon a large lute with only an embryonic neck, on which nevertheless the left hand is stopping strings, was unearthed in Egypt in a tomb of the XXth Dynasty in the cemetery of Goshen by the members of the British School of Archaeology in Egypt,2under the direction of Professor Flinders Petrie, to whose courtesy we owe the photograph (fig. 1) here reproduced. It is difficult to form a conclusive opinion as to the number of strings the artist intended to represent, owing to the decorative figures following the direction of the strings, but, judging from the position of the right hand plucking a string, there may have been seven. Among a number of terra-cotta figures of musicians, brought to light during the excavations in a Tell at Suza and dating from the 8th centuryB.C.,3although there is no instrument that might be identified with the alto lute, the treble lute or tanbur is represented with a long, curved neck and a head bent back to increase the tension, and there is also an instrument having a smaller and more elongated body than the lute. On one of the friezes from Afghanistan presented to the British Museum by Major-General Cunningham, which formed the risers of steps leading to the tope at Jumal Garhi, dating from the 1st centuryA.D.are represented scenes of music and dancing. Here the archetype of the lute appears several times; it had four strings, and the head was bent back at right angles to the neck. In the 6th centuryA.D.illustrations of this early lute are no longer rare, more especially on Persian silver-work of the Sassanian period4and in the paintings of the Buddhist cave-temples of Ajanta.5Several representations of the barbiton are extant from the classical Roman period.The modern Egyptian ‘ūd is the direct descendant of the Arabic lute, and, according to Lane, is strung with seven pairs of catgut strings played by a plectrum. A specimen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, given by the khedive, has four pairs only, which appears to have been the old stringing of the instrument. When frets (cross-lines dividing the neck or finger-board to show the fingering) are employed they are of catgut disposed according to the Arabic scale of seventeen intervals in the octave, consisting of twelve limmas, an interval rather less than our equal semitone, and five commas, which are very small but quite recognizable differences of pitch.The lute family is separated from the guitars, also of Eastern origin, by the formation of the sound body, which is in all lutes pear-shaped, without the sides or ribs necessary to the structure of the flat-backed guitar and cither. Observing this distinction, we include with the lute the little Neapolitan mandoline of 2 ft. long and the large double-necked Roman chitarrone, not infrequently 6 ft. long. Mandolines are partly strung with wire, and are played with a plectrum, indispensable for metal or short strings. Perhaps the earliest lutes were so played, but the large lutes and theorbos strung with catgut have been invariably touched by the fingers only, the length permitting this more sympathetic means of producing the tone.Fig. 2.—Lute, by Venere of Padua.Praetorius,6writing when the lute was in universal favour, mentions seven varieties distinguished by size and tuning. The smallest would be larger than a mandoline, and the melody string, the “chanterelle,” often a single string, lower in pitch. Praetorius calls this an octave lute, with the chanterelle C or D. The two discant lutes have respectively B and A, the alto G, the tenor E, the bass D, and the great octave bass G, an octave below the alto lute which may be taken as the model lute cultivated by the amateurs of the time. The bass lutes were theorbos, that is, double-necked lutes, as described below. The accordance of an alto lute wasfounded upon that of the original eight-stringed European lute, to which the highest and lowest notes had, in course of time, been added. A later addition was thealso on the finger-board, and bass strings, double or single, known as diapasons, which, descending to the deep C of the violoncello, were not stopped with the fingers. The diapasons were tuned as the key of the piece of music required. Fig. 2 represents an Italian instrument made by one of the most celebrated lute makers, Venere of Padua, in 1600; it is 3 ft. 6 in. high, and has six pairs of unisons and eight single diapasons. The finger-board, divided into approximately equal half tones by the frets, as a rule eight in number, was often further divided on the higher notes, for ten, eleven, or, as in the woodcut, even twelve, semitones. The head, bearing the tuning pegs, was placed at an obtuse or a right angle to the neck, to increase the bearing of the strings upon the nut, and be convenient for sudden requirements of tuning during performance, the trouble of keeping a lute in tune being proverbial.The lute was in general use during the 16th and 17th centuries. In the 18th it declined; still J. S. Bach wrote a “partita” for it. The latest date we have met with of an engraved publication for the lute is 1760.The large double-necked lute, with two sets of tuning pegs, the lower for the finger-board, the higher for the diapason strings, was known as the theorbo; also, and especially in England, as the arch-lute; and, in a special form, the neck being then very long, as the chitarrone. Theorbo and chitarrone appear together at the close of the 16th century, and their introduction was synchronous with the rise of accompanied monody in music, that is, of the oratorio and the opera. Peri, Caccini and Monteverde used theorbos toaccompany their newly-devised recitative, the invention of which in Florence, from the impulse of the Renaissance, is well known. The height of a theorbo varied from 3 ft. 6 in. to 5 ft., the Paduan being always the largest, excepting the Roman 6-ft. long chitarrone. These large lutes had very deep notes, and doubtless great liberties were allowed in tuning, but the strings on the finger-board followed the lute accordance already given, or another quoted by Baron (Untersuchung des Instruments der Lauten, Nuremberg, 1727) as the old theorbo or “violway” (see Mace,Musick’s Monument, London, 1676):—We find again both these accordances varied and transposed a tone higher, perhaps with thinner strings, or to accommodate local differences of pitch. Praetorius recommends the chanterelles of theorbos being tuned an octave lower on account of the great strain. By such a change, another authority, the Englishman Thomas Mace, says, the life and spruceness of airy lessons were quite lost. The theorbo or arch-lute had at last to give way to the violoncello and double bass, which are still used to accompany the “recitativo secco” in oratorios and operas. Handel wrote a part for a theorbo inEsther(1720); after that date it appears no more in orchestral scores, but remained in private use until nearly the end of the century.The lute and the organ share the distinction of being the first instruments for which the oldest instrumental compositions we possess were written. For the lute, however, they were not written in our present notation, but in tablature, “lyrawise,” a system by which as many lines were drawn horizontally as there were pairs of strings on the finger-board, the frets, distributed at intervals of a semitone, being distinguished by the letters of the alphabet, repeated from A, representing the open string, for each line. This was the English and French manner; the Italian was by numbers instead of letters. The signs of time were placed over the stave, and were not repeated unless the mensural values changed.
Until recently the existence of these ancient stringed instruments was presumed on the evidence of the early medieval European instruments and of the meagre writings extant, such as those of Fārābī.1But a chain of plastic evidence can now be offered, beginning with the Greek post-Mycenaean age (c.1000B.C.). A statuette of a female musician playing upon a large lute with only an embryonic neck, on which nevertheless the left hand is stopping strings, was unearthed in Egypt in a tomb of the XXth Dynasty in the cemetery of Goshen by the members of the British School of Archaeology in Egypt,2under the direction of Professor Flinders Petrie, to whose courtesy we owe the photograph (fig. 1) here reproduced. It is difficult to form a conclusive opinion as to the number of strings the artist intended to represent, owing to the decorative figures following the direction of the strings, but, judging from the position of the right hand plucking a string, there may have been seven. Among a number of terra-cotta figures of musicians, brought to light during the excavations in a Tell at Suza and dating from the 8th centuryB.C.,3although there is no instrument that might be identified with the alto lute, the treble lute or tanbur is represented with a long, curved neck and a head bent back to increase the tension, and there is also an instrument having a smaller and more elongated body than the lute. On one of the friezes from Afghanistan presented to the British Museum by Major-General Cunningham, which formed the risers of steps leading to the tope at Jumal Garhi, dating from the 1st centuryA.D.are represented scenes of music and dancing. Here the archetype of the lute appears several times; it had four strings, and the head was bent back at right angles to the neck. In the 6th centuryA.D.illustrations of this early lute are no longer rare, more especially on Persian silver-work of the Sassanian period4and in the paintings of the Buddhist cave-temples of Ajanta.5Several representations of the barbiton are extant from the classical Roman period.
The modern Egyptian ‘ūd is the direct descendant of the Arabic lute, and, according to Lane, is strung with seven pairs of catgut strings played by a plectrum. A specimen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, given by the khedive, has four pairs only, which appears to have been the old stringing of the instrument. When frets (cross-lines dividing the neck or finger-board to show the fingering) are employed they are of catgut disposed according to the Arabic scale of seventeen intervals in the octave, consisting of twelve limmas, an interval rather less than our equal semitone, and five commas, which are very small but quite recognizable differences of pitch.
The lute family is separated from the guitars, also of Eastern origin, by the formation of the sound body, which is in all lutes pear-shaped, without the sides or ribs necessary to the structure of the flat-backed guitar and cither. Observing this distinction, we include with the lute the little Neapolitan mandoline of 2 ft. long and the large double-necked Roman chitarrone, not infrequently 6 ft. long. Mandolines are partly strung with wire, and are played with a plectrum, indispensable for metal or short strings. Perhaps the earliest lutes were so played, but the large lutes and theorbos strung with catgut have been invariably touched by the fingers only, the length permitting this more sympathetic means of producing the tone.
Praetorius,6writing when the lute was in universal favour, mentions seven varieties distinguished by size and tuning. The smallest would be larger than a mandoline, and the melody string, the “chanterelle,” often a single string, lower in pitch. Praetorius calls this an octave lute, with the chanterelle C or D. The two discant lutes have respectively B and A, the alto G, the tenor E, the bass D, and the great octave bass G, an octave below the alto lute which may be taken as the model lute cultivated by the amateurs of the time. The bass lutes were theorbos, that is, double-necked lutes, as described below. The accordance of an alto lute wasfounded upon that of the original eight-stringed European lute, to which the highest and lowest notes had, in course of time, been added. A later addition was thealso on the finger-board, and bass strings, double or single, known as diapasons, which, descending to the deep C of the violoncello, were not stopped with the fingers. The diapasons were tuned as the key of the piece of music required. Fig. 2 represents an Italian instrument made by one of the most celebrated lute makers, Venere of Padua, in 1600; it is 3 ft. 6 in. high, and has six pairs of unisons and eight single diapasons. The finger-board, divided into approximately equal half tones by the frets, as a rule eight in number, was often further divided on the higher notes, for ten, eleven, or, as in the woodcut, even twelve, semitones. The head, bearing the tuning pegs, was placed at an obtuse or a right angle to the neck, to increase the bearing of the strings upon the nut, and be convenient for sudden requirements of tuning during performance, the trouble of keeping a lute in tune being proverbial.
The lute was in general use during the 16th and 17th centuries. In the 18th it declined; still J. S. Bach wrote a “partita” for it. The latest date we have met with of an engraved publication for the lute is 1760.
The large double-necked lute, with two sets of tuning pegs, the lower for the finger-board, the higher for the diapason strings, was known as the theorbo; also, and especially in England, as the arch-lute; and, in a special form, the neck being then very long, as the chitarrone. Theorbo and chitarrone appear together at the close of the 16th century, and their introduction was synchronous with the rise of accompanied monody in music, that is, of the oratorio and the opera. Peri, Caccini and Monteverde used theorbos toaccompany their newly-devised recitative, the invention of which in Florence, from the impulse of the Renaissance, is well known. The height of a theorbo varied from 3 ft. 6 in. to 5 ft., the Paduan being always the largest, excepting the Roman 6-ft. long chitarrone. These large lutes had very deep notes, and doubtless great liberties were allowed in tuning, but the strings on the finger-board followed the lute accordance already given, or another quoted by Baron (Untersuchung des Instruments der Lauten, Nuremberg, 1727) as the old theorbo or “violway” (see Mace,Musick’s Monument, London, 1676):—
We find again both these accordances varied and transposed a tone higher, perhaps with thinner strings, or to accommodate local differences of pitch. Praetorius recommends the chanterelles of theorbos being tuned an octave lower on account of the great strain. By such a change, another authority, the Englishman Thomas Mace, says, the life and spruceness of airy lessons were quite lost. The theorbo or arch-lute had at last to give way to the violoncello and double bass, which are still used to accompany the “recitativo secco” in oratorios and operas. Handel wrote a part for a theorbo inEsther(1720); after that date it appears no more in orchestral scores, but remained in private use until nearly the end of the century.
The lute and the organ share the distinction of being the first instruments for which the oldest instrumental compositions we possess were written. For the lute, however, they were not written in our present notation, but in tablature, “lyrawise,” a system by which as many lines were drawn horizontally as there were pairs of strings on the finger-board, the frets, distributed at intervals of a semitone, being distinguished by the letters of the alphabet, repeated from A, representing the open string, for each line. This was the English and French manner; the Italian was by numbers instead of letters. The signs of time were placed over the stave, and were not repeated unless the mensural values changed.
(A. J. H.; K. S.)
1See Latin translation by J. G. L. Kosegarten,Alii Ispahenensis Liber ... Arabice editur adjectaque translatione adnotationibusque illustratus(Greifswald, 1840).2SeeHyksos and Israelite Cities, by W. M. Flinders Petrie and J. Garrow Duncan, 1906 (double volume), Brit. Sch. of Arch.3J. de Morgan,Délégation en Perse(Paris, 1900), vol. i. pl. viii. Nos. 8, 7 and 9.4See “The Treasures of the Oxus,” catalogue of the Franks Bequest to the British Museum by Ormonde M. Dalton (London, 1905), pl; xxvi. No. 190; see also J. R. Aspelin, “Les antiquités du nord,” No. 608; also for further references, Kathleen Schlesinger, “Precursors of the Violin Family,” pt. ii. ofThe Instruments of the Orchestra, pp. 407-408, and appendix B, pp. 492-493; andGazette archéologique(Paris, 1886), vol. xi. pl. x. and p. 70.5By John Griffiths (London, 1896), vol. ii. pl. 105, cave I. 10, e.6Syntagm. Music.pt. ii., “Organographie” (Wolfenbüttel, 1618), pp. 30 and 58-61.
1See Latin translation by J. G. L. Kosegarten,Alii Ispahenensis Liber ... Arabice editur adjectaque translatione adnotationibusque illustratus(Greifswald, 1840).
2SeeHyksos and Israelite Cities, by W. M. Flinders Petrie and J. Garrow Duncan, 1906 (double volume), Brit. Sch. of Arch.
3J. de Morgan,Délégation en Perse(Paris, 1900), vol. i. pl. viii. Nos. 8, 7 and 9.
4See “The Treasures of the Oxus,” catalogue of the Franks Bequest to the British Museum by Ormonde M. Dalton (London, 1905), pl; xxvi. No. 190; see also J. R. Aspelin, “Les antiquités du nord,” No. 608; also for further references, Kathleen Schlesinger, “Precursors of the Violin Family,” pt. ii. ofThe Instruments of the Orchestra, pp. 407-408, and appendix B, pp. 492-493; andGazette archéologique(Paris, 1886), vol. xi. pl. x. and p. 70.
5By John Griffiths (London, 1896), vol. ii. pl. 105, cave I. 10, e.
6Syntagm. Music.pt. ii., “Organographie” (Wolfenbüttel, 1618), pp. 30 and 58-61.
LUTHARDT, CHRISTOPH ERNST(1823-1902), German Lutheran theologian, was born at Maroldsweisach, Bavaria, on the 22nd of March 1823. He studied theology at Erlangen and Berlin, and in 1856 became professor ordinarius of systematic theology and New Testament exegesis at Leipzig. In 1865 he was made a counsellor to the consistory, in 1871 canon of Meissen cathedral, and in 1887 a privy councillor to the church. He died at Leipzig on the 21st of September 1902. A strictly orthodox theologian, and a clear writer, though not a very profound scholar, Luthardt became widely appreciated as the author of apologetic lectures. These were collected under the titleApologie des Christentums(vol. i., 1864, 14th ed. 1896; vol. ii. 7th ed., 1901; vol. iii. 7th ed., 1898; vol. iv. 2nd ed., 1880), a work of which the first three volumes have been translated into English. In 1868 he founded and edited theAllgemeine evang.-lutherische Kirchenzeitung, with its supplement theTheologisches Litteraturblatt, and in 1880 became editor of theZeitschrift für kirchl. Wissenschaft und kirchl. Leben.
His other works includeDas Johanneische Evangelium ... erklärt(1852-1853; 2nd ed. in 2 vols., 1875-1876),Offenbarung Johannis erklärt(1861),Lehre von den letzten Dingen(1861; 3rd ed. 1885);Kompendium der Dogmatik(1865; 9th ed., 1893),Geschichte der christlichen Ethik(2 vols., 1888-1893),Gnade und Wahrheit(1874),Das Wort des Lebens(1877) andGnade und Frieden(1880). His autobiography was published with the titleErinnerungen aus vergangenen Tagen(1889; 2nd ed., 1891).
His other works includeDas Johanneische Evangelium ... erklärt(1852-1853; 2nd ed. in 2 vols., 1875-1876),Offenbarung Johannis erklärt(1861),Lehre von den letzten Dingen(1861; 3rd ed. 1885);Kompendium der Dogmatik(1865; 9th ed., 1893),Geschichte der christlichen Ethik(2 vols., 1888-1893),Gnade und Wahrheit(1874),Das Wort des Lebens(1877) andGnade und Frieden(1880). His autobiography was published with the titleErinnerungen aus vergangenen Tagen(1889; 2nd ed., 1891).
LUTHER, MARTIN(1483-1546), the great German religious reformer, was born at Eisleben on the 10th of November 1483. His father, Hans Luther (Lyder, Luder, Ludher), a peasant from the township of Möhra in Thuringia, after his marriage with Margarethe Ziegler, had settled in Mansfeld, attracted by the prospects of work in the mines there. The counts of Mansfeld, who, many years before, had started the mining industry, made a practice of building and letting out for hire small furnaces for smelting the ore. Hans Luther soon leased one, then three. In 1491 he became one of the four elected members of the village council (vier Herren von der Gemeinde); and we are told that the counts of Mansfeld held him in esteem. The boy grew up amid the poor, coarse surroundings of the German peasant life, imbibing its simple beliefs. He was taught that the Emperor protected the poor people against the Turk, that the Church was the “Pope’s House,” wherein the Bishop of Rome had all the rights of the house-father. He shared the common superstitions of the time and some of them never left him.
Young Martin went to the village school at Mansfeld; to a school at Magdeburg kept by the Brethren of the Common Lot; then to the well-known St George’s school at Eisenach. At Magdeburg and Eisenach Luther was “a poor student,”i.e.a boy who was received into a hospice where he lived rent-free, attended school without paying fees, and had the privilege of begging for his bread at the house-doors of the town; in return for which he sang as a chorister in the church to which the school was attached. Luther was never a “wandering student”; his parents were too careful of their child to permit him to lead the life of wandering licence which marked these pests of medieval German scholastic life. At Eisenach he attracted the notice of the wife of a wealthy merchant of Eisenach, whom his biographers usually identify as Frau Cotta.
After three happy years at Eisenach, Luther entered the university of Erfurt (1501), then the most famous in Germany. Hans Luther had been prospering, and was more than ever resolved to make his son a lawyer. Young Luther entered his name on the matriculation book in letters which can still be read “Martinus Ludher ex Mansfelt,” a free student, no longer embarrassed by great poverty. In Luther’s time Erfurt was the intellectual centre of Germany and its students were exposed to a variety of influences which could not fail to stimulate young men of mental ability.
Its theology was, of course, scholastic, but of what was then called the modern type, the Scotist; its philosophy was the nominalist system of William of Occam, whose great disciple, Gabriel Biel (d. 1495), had been one of its most famous professors; Nicholas de Lyra’s (d. 1340) system of biblical interpretation had been long taught there by a succession of able teachers; Humanism had won an early entrance to the university; the anti-clerical teaching of John of Wessel, who had himself taught at Erfurt for fifteen years (1445-1460), had left its mark on the place and was not forgotten. Hussite propagandists, even in Luther’s time, secretly visited the town and whispered among the students their anti-clerical Christian socialism. Papal legates to Germany seldom failed to visit the university and by their magnificence bore witness to the majesty of the Roman church.
A study of the scholastic philosophy was then the preliminary training for a course of law, and Luther worked so hard at the prescribed studies that he had little leisure, he said, for classical learning. He attended none of the Humanist lectures, but he read a good many of the Latin authors and also learned a little Greek. He never was a member of the Humanist circle; he was too much in earnest about religious questions and of too practical a turn of mind. The young Humanists would have gladly welcomed him into their select band. They dubbed him the “philosopher,” the “musician,” recalled in after days his fine social disposition, his skill in playing the lute, and his ready power in debate. He took the various degrees in an unusually brief time. He was bachelor in 1502 and master in 1505. His father, proud of his son’s steady application and success, sent him the costly present of aCorpus Juris. He may have begun to study law. Suddenly he plunged into the Erfurt Convent of the Augustinian Eremites and after due noviciate became a monk.
The action was so unexpected that his contemporaries felt bound to give all manner of explanations which have been woven into accounts which are legendary. Nothing is known about the cause of the sudden plunge but what Luther has himself revealed. He has told us that he entered the monastery because he doubted of himself, and that his action was sudden because he knew that his father would have disapproved of his intention.
The word “doubt” has made historians think of intellectual difficulties—of the “theological scepticism” taught by Occam and Biel, of the disintegrating criticism of Humanism. But there is no trace of any theological difficulties in Luther’s mind in the struggles which sent him into the convent and distracted him there. He was driven to do what he did by the pressure of a practical religious need, the desire to save his soul. The fires of hell and the shades of purgatory, which are the constantbackground of Dante’s “Paradiso,” were present to Luther from childhood.
Luther was the greatest religious genius which the 16th century produced, and the roots of the movement in which he was the central figure must be sought for in the popular religious life of the last decades of the 15th and opening decades of the 16th centuries—a field which has been neglected by almost all his biographers. When it is explored traces of at least five different types of religious sentiment can be discovered. Pious parents, whether among the burghers or peasants, seem to have taught their children a simple evangelical faith. Martin Luther and thousands of children like him were trained at home to know the creed, the ten commandments, the Lord’s prayer, and such simple hymns asEin Kindelein so lobelich,Nun bitten wir den Heiligen GeistandCrist ist erstanden; and they were taught to believe that God for Christ’s sake freely pardons sin. They learned that simple faith which Luther afterwards expounded in hisSmall Catechismand called theKinderlehre. When lads trained like himself entered school and college they came in contact with that religious revival which characterized the last half of the 15th century. Fear seemed to brood over the peoples of Western Europe. The plague devastated the badly drained towns, new diseases spread death, the fear of the Turks was permanent. All this went to feed revival, which, founded on fear, refused to see in Jesus Christ anything but a stern judge, and made the Virgin Mother and Anna the “grandmother” the intercessors; which found consolation in pilgrimages from shrine to shrine; which believed in crude miracles, and in the thought that God could be best served within convent walls. Luther’s mind was caught in this current of feeling. He records how it was burnt into him by pictures which filled his boyish imagination. Jesus in the painted window of Mansfeld church, stern of face, sword in hand, sitting on a rainbow, coming to judge; an altar-piece at Magdeburg, in which a ship with its crew was sailing on to heaven, carrying no layman on board; the deeds of St Elizabeth emblazoned on the window of St George’s parish church at Eisenach; the living pictures of a young nobleman who had turned monk to save his soul, of a monk, the holiest man Luther had ever known, who was aged far beyond his years by his maceration; and many others of the same kind.
Alongside this we can trace the growth of another religious movement of a different kind. We can see a sturdy common-sense religion taking possession of multitudes in Germany, which insisted that laymen might rule in many departments supposed to belong exclusively to the clergy. Thejus episcopalewhich Luther afterwards claimed for the secular authorities had been practically exercised in Saxony and Brandenburg; cities and districts had framed police regulations which set aside ecclesiastical decrees about holidays and begging; the supervision of charity was passing from the hands of the church into those of laymen; and religious confraternities which did not take their guidance from the clergy were increasing. Lastly, the medieval Brethren were engaged in printing and distributing tracts, mystical, anti-clerical, sometimes socialist. All these influences abounded as Luther was growing to manhood and laid their marks upon him. It was the momentary power of the second which drove him into the convent, and he selected the monastic order which represented all that was best in the revival of the latter half of the 15th century—the Augustinian Eremites.
In the convent Luther set himself to find salvation. The last word of that Scotist theology which ruled at the close of the middle ages was that man must work out his own salvation, and Luther tried to do so in the most approved later medieval fashion by the strictest asceticism. He fasted and scourged himself; he practised all the ordinary forms of maceration and invented new ones, all to no purpose. His theological studies, part of the convent education, told him that pardon could be had through the Sacrament of Penance, and that the first part of the sacrament was sorrow for sin. The older theology declared that such sorrow must be based on love to God. Had he this love? God always appeared to him as an implacable judge, threatening punishment for breaking a law which it was impossible to keep. He confessed to himself that he often hated this arbitrary Will which Scotist theology called God. The later theology, taught in the convent by John of Palz and John Nathin, said that sorrow might be based on a meaner motive provided the Sacrament of Penance was continually resorted to. Luther wearied his superiors with his attendance at the confessional. He was looked upon as a young saint, and his reputation extended throughout the convents of his order. The young saint felt himself to be no nearer the pardon of God; he thought that he was “gallows-ripe.” At last his superiors seemed to discover his real difficulties. Partly by their help, partly by study of the scriptures, he came to understand that God’s pardon was to be won by trusting to His promises. Thus after two years of indescribable mental conflicts Luther found peace. The struggle marked him for life. His victory gave him a sense of freedom, and the feeling that life was given by God to be enjoyed. In all external things he remained unchanged. He was a faithful son of the medieval church, with its doctrines, ceremonies and usages.
Soon after he had attained inward peace, Luther was ordained. He continued his studies in theology, devoting himself to the more “experimental” portions of Augustine, Bernard and Gerson. He showed himself a good man of business and was advanced in his order. In 1508 he was sent with some other monks to Wittenberg to assist the small university which had been opened there in 1502 by Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony. It was there that Luther began to preach, first in a small chapel to the monks of his order; later taking the place of one of the town’s clergy who was in ill-health. From Wittenberg he was sent by the chiefs of the German Augustinian Eremites to Rome on a mission concerning the organization of the order. He went up with the feelings of the medieval pilgrim rather than with the intoxication of the ardent Humanist. On his return (1512) he was sent by Staupitz, his vicar-general, to Erfurt to take the necessary steps for higher graduation in theology, in order to succeed Staupitz himself as professor of theology in Wittenberg. He graduated as Doctor of the Holy Scripture, took the Wittenberg doctor’s oath to defend the evangelical truth vigorously (viriliter), became a member of the Wittenberg Senate, and three weeks later succeeded Staupitz as professor of theology.
From the first Luther’s lectures in theology differed from those ordinarily given at the time. He had no opinions on theological subjects at variance with the theology taught at Erfurt and elsewhere. No one attributed any heretical views to the young Wittenberg professor. He differed from others because he looked at theology in a more practical way. He thought it ought to be made useful to guide men to the grace of God and to tell them how to persevere in a life of joyous obedience to God and His commandments. His teaching was “experimental” from the beginning. Besides he believed that he had been specially set apart to lecture on the Holy Scriptures, and he began by commenting on the Psalms and on the Epistles of St Paul. He never knew much Hebrew and was not specially strong in Greek; so he used the Vulgate in his prelections. He had a huge widely printed volume on his desk, and wrote the notes for his lectures on the margins and between the lines. Some of the pages survive. They contain in the germ the leading thoughts of what became Lutheran theology. At first he expressed himself in the phrases common to scholastic theology, when these were found to be inadequate in words borrowed from the mystical writers of the 14th and 15th centuries, and then in new phrases more appropriate to the circle of fresh thoughts. Those new thoughts at first simply pushed aside the ordinary theology taught in the schools without staying to criticize it. Gradually, however, Luther began to find that there was some real opposition between what he was teaching and the theology he had been taught in the Erfurt convent. It appeared characteristically enough on the practical and not on the speculative side of theology in a sermon onIndulgencespreached in July 1516.Once begun the breach widened, until Luther could contrast “our theology” with what was taught at Erfurt, and by September he began to write against the scholastic theology, to declare that it was Pelagian at heart, that it repudiated the Augustinian doctrines of grace, and neglected to teach the supreme value of that faith “which throws itself upon God.”
These lectures and the teaching they contained soon made a great impression. Students began to flock to the small obscure university of Wittenberg, and the elector grew proud of the teacher who was making his university famous. It was at this interesting stage of his own religious career that he felt himself compelled to stand forth in opposition to what he believed to be a great religious scandal, and almost unconsciously to become a Reformer.
Luther began his work as a Reformer by proposing to discuss the true meaning of Indulgences. The occasion was an Indulgence proclaimed by Pope Leo X., farmed by the archbishop of Mainz, and preached by John Tetzel, a Dominican monk and a famed seller of Indulgences. Many of the German princes had no great love for Indulgence sellers, and Frederick of Saxony had prohibited Tetzel from entering his territories. But it was easy to reach most parts of Electoral Saxony without actually crossing the frontiers. The Red Cross of the Indulgence seller had been set up at Zerbst and at Jüterbogk, and people had gone from Wittenberg to buy thePapal Tickets. Luther believed that the sales were injurious to the morals of the townsmen; he had heard reports of Tetzel’s sermons; he had become wrathful on reading the letter of recommendation of the archbishop; and friends had urged him to interfere. He protested with a characteristic combination of caution and courage. The church of All Saints (the castle church) was closely connected with the university of Wittenberg. Its doors were commonly used for university proclamations. The Elector Frederick was a great collector of relics and had stored them in his church. He had procured an Indulgence for all who attended its services on All Saints’ Day, and crowds commonly gathered. Luther nailed ninety-fivetheseson the church door on that day, the 1st of November 1517, when the crowd could see and read them.
The proceeding was strictly academic. The matter discussed, to judge by the writings of theologians, was somewhat obscure; and Luther offered histhesesas an attempt to make it clearer. No one was supposed to be committed to every opinion he advanced in such a way. But thethesesposted somehow touched heart and conscience in a way unusual in the common subjects of academic disputation. Every one wanted to read them. The University Press could not supply copies fast enough. They were translated into German, and were known throughout Germany in less than a fortnight. Within a month they had been heard of all over western and southern Europe. Luther himself was staggered at the way they were received. He said he had never meant to determine, but to debate.
Thetheseswere singularly unlike what might have been expected from a professor of theology. They made no attempt at theological definition, no pretence at logical arrangement; they were anything but a brief programme of reformation. They were simply ninety-five sledge-hammer blows directed against the most flagrant ecclesiastical abuse of the age. They were addressed to the “common” man and appealed to his common sense of spiritual things.
The practice of offering, selling and buying Indulgences (seeIndulgence) was everywhere common in the beginning of the 16th century. The beginnings go back more than a thousand years before the time of Luther. In the earliest church life, when Christians fell into sin, they were required to make public confession before the congregation, to declare their sorrow, and to vow to perform certain acts which were regarded as evidence of the sincerity of their repentance. When the custom of public confession before the congregation had changed to private confession to the clergy, it became the confessor’s duty to impose these satisfactions. It was thought only right that there should be some uniformity in dealing with repentant sinners, and books appeared giving lists of sins and what were supposed to be suitable satisfactions. When the sins confessed were very heinous the satisfactions were correspondingly severe and sometimes lasted over many years. About the 7th century arose a custom of commuting or relaxing these imposed satisfactions. A penance of several years fasting might be commuted into saying so many prayers, or giving an arranged amount in alms, or even into a money-fine. In the last case the analogy of the Wergeld of the German tribal codes was commonly followed. The usage generally took the form that any one who visited a church, to which the Indulgence had been attached, on a day named, and gave a contribution to its funds, had his penance shortened by one-seventh, one-third or one-half, as might be arranged. This was the origin of Indulgences properly so-called. They were always mitigations of satisfactions or penances which had been imposed by the church as outward signs of inward sorrow, tests of fitness for pardon, and the needful precedents of absolution. Luther uttered no protest against Indulgences of this kind. He held that what the church had imposed the church could remit.
This old and simple conception of Indulgences had been greatly altered since the beginning of the 13th century. The institution of penance had been raised to the dignity of a sacrament, and this had changed both the place and the character of satisfactions. Under the older conception the order had been Sorrow (Contritio), Confession, Satisfaction (or due manifestation of sorrow in ways prescribed) and Absolution. Under the newer theory the order was Sorrow, Confession, Absolution, Satisfaction, and both satisfaction and sorrow took new meanings. It was held that Absolution removed guilt and freed from eternal punishment, but that something had to be done to free the penitent from temporal punishment whether in this life or in purgatory. Satisfactions took the new meaning of the temporal punishments due in this life and the substitute for the pains of purgatory. The new thought of a treasury of merits (thesaurus meritorum) introduced further changes. It was held that the good deeds over and above what were needed for their own salvation by the living or by the saints in heaven, together with the inexhaustible merits of Christ, were all deposited in a treasury out of which they could be taken by the pope and given by him to the faithful. They could be added to the satisfactions actually done by penitents. Thus Satisfactions became not merely signs of sorrow but actual merits, which freed men from the need to undergo the temporal pains here and in purgatory which their sins had rendered them liable to. By an Indulgence merits could be transferred from the storehouse to those who required them. The change made in the character of Sorrow made Indulgences all the more necessary for the indifferent penitent. On the older theory Sorrow (Contritio) had for its one basis love to God; but on the newer theory the starting-point might be a less worthy king of sorrow (Attritio) which it was held would be changed into the more worthy kind in the Sacrament of Penance. The conclusion was naturally drawn that a process of penitence which began with sorrow of the more unworthy kind needed a larger amount of Satisfactions or penance than what began with Contrition. Hence for the indifferent Christian,Attrition,ConfessionandIndulgencebecame the three heads in the scheme of the church of the later middle ages for his salvation. The one thing which satisfied his conscience was the burdensome thing he had to do, and that was to procure an Indulgence—a matter made increasingly easy for him as time went on.