VOL. ILUTHER THE MONKLUTHERCHAPTER ICOURSE OF STUDIES AND FIRST YEARS IN THE MONASTERY1. Luther’s Novitiate and Early LifeOnJuly 16, 1505, Martin Luther, then a student at the University of Erfurt, invited his friends and acquaintances to a farewell supper. He wished to see them about him for the last time before his approaching retirement to the cloister. “The bright, cheerful young fellow,” as his later pupil, Mathesius,[2]calls him, was a favourite in his own circle. Those assembled to bid him farewell, amongst whom were also “honest, virtuous maidens and women,”[3]were doubtless somewhat taken aback at their friend’s sudden determination to leave the world; but Luther was outwardly “beyond measure cheerful” and showed himself so light of heart that he played the lute while the wine-cup circled round.[4]On the following morning—it was the feast of St. Alexius, as Luther remembered when an old man[5]—some of his fellow-students accompanied him to the gate of the Augustinian monastery and then, with tears in their eyes, saw the doors close upon him. The Prior, who was already apprised of the matter, greeted the timid new-comer, embraced him, and then, in accordance with the Rule, confided him to the Master of Novices to be initiated into the customs of the community.In the quiet monastic cell and amid the strange new surroundings the student was probably able little by littleto master the excitement which, though hidden from outsiders, raged within his breast; for the determination to become a monk had been arrived at under strange, soul-stirring circumstances. He was on his way back to Erfurt, after a visit to his parents’ house, when, near Stotternheim, he was overtaken by a thunderstorm, and as a flash of lightning close beside him threatened him “like a heavenly vision,” he made the sudden vow: “Save me, dear St. Anne, and I will become a monk.”[6]He appears also at that very time to have been reduced to a state of great grief and alarm by the sudden death of a dear comrade, also a student, who had been stabbed, either in a quarrel or in a duel. Thus the thoughts which had perhaps for long been attracting his serious temperament towards the cloister ripened with overwhelming rapidity. Could we but take a much later assertion of his as correct, the reason of his resolve was to be found in a certain vexation with himself: because he “despaired” of himself, he once says, therefore did he retire into the monastery.[7]It was his earnest resolution to renounce the freedom of his academic years and to seek peace of soul and reconciliation with God in the bosom of the pious community. He persisted in keeping the vow made in haste and terror in spite of dissuading voices which made themselves heard both within himself and around him, and the determined opposition of his father to his embracing the religious state. Some were full of admiration for the energetic transformation of the new postulant. Thus the respected Augustinian of Erfurt, Johann Nathin, compared the suddenness and decision of his step to the one-time conversion of Saul into the Apostle Paul.[8]Crotus Rubeanus, the Humanist, thenstopping at Erfurt, in a later letter to Luther, expressed himself no less forcibly with regard to the heavenly flash which had made him a monk.[9]The brothers of the “German Congregation of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine”—such was the full title of the Order—on their part rejoiced at the acquisition of the highly gifted and promising youth, who had already taken his degree as Master of Philosophy at the University of Erfurt.If the novice, after gradually regaining peace of mind within the silent walls, permitted his thoughts to recur to his former way of life, this must have presented itself to him as full of trouble and care and very deficient in the homely joys of family life. Luther’s early career differed hardly at all from that of the poorest students of that time. He was born on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben in Saxony; his parents were Hans Luther, a miner of peasant extraction (he signed himself Luder) and Margaret Luther. They had originally settled in the town of Mansfeld, but had gone first to Möhra and then to Eisleben. Their gifted son spent his childhood in Mansfeld and first attended school there. His father was a stern, harsh man. His mother, too, though she meant well by him, once beat him till the blood came, all on account of a nut.[10]The boy was also intimidated by the stupid brutality of his teachers, and it does not appear that the customary religious teaching he received, raised his spirits or led to a freer, more hopeful development of his spiritual life. He was one day, as he relates later, “beaten fifteen times in succession during one morning” at school, to the best of his knowledge without any fault of his own, though, probably, not without having brought the punishment upon himself by insubordination and obstinacy. After that, in his fourteenth year, he received instruction in Magdeburg from the “Pious Brethren of the Common Life,” and begged his bread by singing from door to door. A year later he went to Eisenach, where his mother had some poor relatives, to continue his Latin studies. In this town he still pursued the same hard mode of earning his living, until a charitable woman, Ursula, the wife of Kunz (Konrad) Cotta, received him into her well-to-do andcomfortable household, furnishing him with food and lodging. Luther, in his old age, recalled with great gratitude the memory of his noble benefactress.[11]As a boy he had experienced but little of life’s pleasures and received small kindness from the world; but now life’s horizon brightened somewhat for the growing youth.Full of enthusiasm for the career mapped out for him by his father, that, namely, of the Law, he went in the summer of 1501 to the University of Erfurt. His parents’ financial circumstances had meanwhile somewhat improved as the result of his father’s industry in the mines at Mansfeld. The assiduous student was therefore no longer dependent on the help of strangers. According to some writers he took up his abode in St. George’s Hostel.[12]He was entered in the Matriculation Register of the Erfurt High School as “Martinus Ludher ex Mansfelt,” and for some considerable time after he continued to spell his family name as Luder, a form which is also to be found up to the beginning of the seventeenth century in the case of others (Lüder, Luider, Leuder). From 1512 he began, however, to sign himself “Lutherus” or “Luther.”[13]The lectures on philosophy, understood in the widest sense of the term, which he first attended were delivered at the University of Erfurt by comparatively capable teachers, some of whom belonged to the Augustinian Order. The Catholic spirit of the Middle Ages still permeated the teaching and the whole life of the little republic of learning. As yet, learning was still cast in the mould of the traditional scholastic method, and the men, equally devoted to the Church and to their profession, who were Luther’s principal teachers, Jodocus Trutfetter of Eisenach and Bartholomew Arnoldi of Usingen,[14]later an Augustinian, were well versed in the scholastic spirit of the day.Alongside the traditional teaching of the schools there already existed in Erfurt and the neighbourhood another, viz. that of the Humanists, or so-called poets, which, though largely at variance with Scholasticism, was cultivated by many of the best minds of the day. Luther, with his vivacity of thought and feeling, could not long remain a stranger tothem. With their spiritual head Mutianus at Gotha, close by, they formed one of the more prominent groups of German Humanists, although, so far, they had not produced any work of great consequence. The contrast between Humanism and Scholasticism, which was to come out so strongly at a later period, was as yet hardly noticeable in the Erfurt schools. Crotus Rubeanus, at that time a University friend of Luther’s, became at a later date, however, the principal author of the “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,” a clever and biting libel on monks and Scholastics, written from a Humanist standpoint. Crotus boasted subsequently of his intimate intercourse (“summa familiaritas”) with Luther.[15]Another Humanist friend whose spiritual relationship with him dates from that time, was Johann Lang, afterwards an Augustinian monk, with whom Luther stood in active interchange of thought during the most critical time of his development, as may be seen from the letters quoted below, and who, caught up by the Lutheran movement, left his Order[16]to become the first preacher of the new faith in Erfurt. The third name which we find in connection with Luther is that of Kaspar Schalbe, a cousin, or possibly a brother of the lady already mentioned, Mistress Ursula Cotta of Eisenach. Schalbe did not turn out any better than the others. A few years later, on being charged before the Elector of Saxony with a crime against morality, he was glad to avail himself of Luther’s mediation with the Ruler of the land.[17]Finally, we also know that a later patron and supporter of Luther, the Humanist Spalatinus, was then carrying on his studies in Erfurt. George Burckhardt of Spalt—whence his name Spalatinus—was a student there from 1498 to 1502, and, from 1505 to 1508, was engaged asa clerical preceptor in the immediate vicinity of the town. Luther and Spalatinus always looked on themselves later as early friends whom fate had brought together.As a student, Luther devoted himself with great zest to the various branches of philosophy, and, carried away by the spirit of the Humanists, in his private time he studied the Latin classics, more particularly Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Ovid, also Terence, Juvenal, Horace and Plautus. At a later date he was able to make skilful use of quotations from these authors when occasion demanded. Amongst others, he attended the lectures of Hieronymus Emser, a subsequent opponent well worth his metal. Of his life during those years, which, owing to the laxity of morals prevailing in the town, must have been full of danger for him, we learn little, owing to the silence of our sources. Luther himself in his later years coarsely described the town as a “beer house” and a “nest of immorality.”Unlike his frivolous comrades, he was often beset with heavy thoughts, no doubt largely due to the after effects of his gloomy youth. Among his chums he was known as “Musicus,” on account of his learning to play the lute, and as the “Philosopher,” owing to his frequent fits of moodiness.In the monastery, where the reader left him, he no doubt remained subject to such fits of depression, especially at the beginning when dwelling on his change of life. It is difficult to say how far the feeling of self-despair, which he mentions, had mastered him before his entry into conventual life. In later years, apart from the vow and the mysterious “heavenly terror,” he also says that in leaving the world he was seeking to escape the severity of his parents. His statements, however, do not always agree. As for the precipitate vow to enter a monastery, he must have been well aware that, even if valid when originally made, it was no longer binding on him from the day when, after conscientious self-examination, he became aware that, owing to his natural disposition, he had no vocation for a religious life. Not every character is fitted for carrying out the evangelical counsels, and to force oneself into a mould, however good, for which one is manifestly unsuited is certainly not in accordance with the will of a wise and beneficent Providence.Luther, agreeably with the statutes of the Order, duringthe whole period of his novitiate and until the hour of his profession had arrived, was perfectly free to return to his fellow-students, the religious tie never having been intended to bring him misery in place of the happiness which it promises. Immediately after coming to the monastery, i.e. before his clothing, he was, according to the Rule, given considerable time in which to weigh earnestly, under the direction of an experienced brother of the Order, whether, as stated in the statutes of the Augustinians, “the spirit which was leading him was of God.” Only after this did he receive the habit of the Order, apparently, however, in the same year, 1505. The habit consisted of a white woollen tunic, a scapular, also white, falling over the breast and back, and a black mantle with a hood and wide sleeves to be worn over all.After the clothing began the novitiate, which lasted a whole year. During this period the candidate had not only to undertake a series of exercises consisting in prayer, manual labour and penitential works, but had also to discharge certain humiliating offices, which might help him to acquire the virtue of humility as practised in the Order. Out of consideration for the University and his academic dignity Luther was, however, speedily exempted from some of the latter duties. It appears that during his noviceship he was attentive to the rules, and that the superiors treated him with fatherly kindness. Although some members of the community may have observed the Rule from routine, while others, as is often the case in large communities, may not have been conspicuous for their charity—Luther refers to something of this kind in his Table-Talk—yet the spirit of the Erfurt monastery was, like that of most of the other houses of the Congregation, on the whole quite blameless. The novice himself, as yet full of goodwill, was not only satisfied with his calling, but even looked on the state he had chosen as a “heavenly life.”[18]From the very first, however, as he himself complains later, he was constantly “worried and depressed”[19]by thoughts connected with religion. He was sorely troubled by the fear of God’s judgment, by gloomy thoughts on predestination, and by the recollection of his own sins. Althoughhe made a general confession in the monastery and renewed it again later, his confessions never gave him any satisfaction, so that his director laid on him the obligation not to hark back to things which caused him sadness of spirit nor to dwell on the details of his sins. “You are a fool,” he once said to him; “God is not angry with you, but it is you who are angry with Him.”Those versed in the ways of the spiritual life are well aware that many a one aiming at perfection is exposed to the purifying fire of trials such as these. Traditional Catholic teaching and the experience of those skilled in the direction of conventual inmates had laid down the remedies most effectual for such a condition. What Luther himself relates later with regard to the encouragement he received from his superiors and brothers in the monastery, shows clearly that suitable direction, enlightenment and encouragement were not wanting to him either then or in the following years. He himself praises his “Præceptor” and “monastic pædagogue,” i.e. the Novice-Master, as “a dear old man,”[20]who “under the damned frock was without doubt a true Christian.”[21]It was probably he who said to him in an hour of trial that he should always recall the article of the Creed “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.”[22]“What are you doing, my son?” he said to him on another occasion; “do you not know that the Lord has Himself commanded us to hope?”[23]words which made a great and unforgettable impression on him. Later, in the year 1516, he pointed out another brother, Master Bartholomew (Usingen), as the “best paraclete and comforter”[24]in the Erfurt monastery, as he could testify from his own experience. The monks knew well and impressed it upon his troubled mind that,through the merits of the Redeemer, and after earnest preparation of the soul, true forgiveness may be obtained, and that through the cross of Christ, and through it alone, we can do all things necessary, even in the midst of the bitterest assaults.Luther, however, too often responded to such admonitions only by cherishing his own views the more. He continued morbidly to torment himself. This self-torture, at any rate during the first enthusiastic days of his religious life, may have assumed the form of pious scruples, but later it gradually took on another character under the influence of bodily affections. He did not, like other scrupulous persons, regain his peace of mind, because, led away by his distorted and excited fancy, he liked, as he himself admits, to dwell on the doubts as to whether the counsels he received were not illusion and deception. Sad experience taught him into what devious paths and to “what a state of inward unrest, self-will and self-sufficiency are capable of leading a man.”[25]The Superior or Vicar-General of the Saxon or German Augustinian Congregation to which Luther belonged was at that time Johann Staupitz, a man highly esteemed in the world of learning and culture.He frequently visited Erfurt and had thus the opportunity of talking to the new brother whom the University had given him, and who may well have attracted his attention by his careworn look, his restless manner and his peculiar, bright, deep-set eyes. Staupitz soon began to have a great esteem for him. He had great influence over Luther, though unable to free him from the strange spirit, already too deeply rooted. To the sad doubts concerning his own salvation which Brother Martin laid before him, Staupitz replied by exhorting him as follows in the spirit of the Catholic Church: “Why torment yourself with such thoughts and broodings? Look at the wounds of Christ and His Blood shed for you. There you will see your predestination to heaven shining forth to your comfort.”[26]Quite rightly he impressed upon him, in the matter of confession and penance, that the principal thing was to arouse in himself the will to love God and righteousness, and that he must not pause before unhealthy imaginations of sin. The lines of thought,however, which the imaginative and emotional young man laid bare to him, were probably at times somewhat strange, and it is Luther himself who relates that Staupitz once said to him: “Master Martin, I fail to understand that.”In spite of his inward fears Luther persevered, which goes to prove the strength of will which was always one of his characteristics. As the Order was satisfied with him, he was admitted at the end of the year of novitiate to profession by the taking of the three Vows of the Order. He received on this occasion the name of Augustine, but always preferred to it his baptismal name of Martin. The text of the Vows which he read aloud solemnly before the altar, according to custom, in the presence of the Prior Winand of Diedenhofen and all the brothers, was as follows: “I, Brother Augustine Luder, make profession and vow obedience to Almighty God, Blessed Mary ever Virgin and to thee Father Prior, in the name of, and as representing the Superior-General of the Hermits of St. Augustine, and his successors, likewise to live without property and in chastity until death, according to the Rule of our Holy Father Augustine.” The young monk, voluntarily and after due consideration, had thus taken upon himself the threefold yoke of Christ by the three Vows, i.e. by the most solemn and sacred promise which it is possible to make on earth. He had bound himself by a sacred oath to God to prepare himself for heaven by treading a path of life in which perfection is sought in the carrying out of the evangelical counsels of our Saviour, and throughout his life to combat the temptations of the world with the weapons of poverty, chastity and obedience.Such was the solemn Vow, which, later on, he declared to have been absolutely worthless.2. Fidelity to his new calling; his temptationsAfter making his profession the young religious was set by his Erfurt superiors to study theology, which was taught privately in the monastery.The theological fare served up by the teachers of the Order was not very inviting, consisting as it largely did of the mere verbalism of a Scholasticism in decay. With the exception of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the students at the Erfurt monastery did not study the theological works of thegreat masters of the thirteenth century; neither Thomas of Aquin, the prince of scholastic theology and philosophy, nor his true successors, not even Ægidius Romanus, himself a Hermit of St. Augustine, were well known to them. The whole of their time at Erfurt, as elsewhere also, was devoted to the study of the last of the schoolmen who, indeed, stood nearer in point of time, but who were far from teaching the true doctrine with the fulness and richness of the earlier doctors. They were too much given to speculation and logical word-play. The older schoolmen were no longer appreciated and nominalistic errors, such as were fostered in the school of William of Occam, held the field. One of the better schoolmen of the day was Gabriel Biel. His works, which have a certain value, together with some of the writings of the Fathers of the Church, formed the principal arsenal from which Luther drew his theological knowledge, and upon which he exercised his dialectics. In addition to this, he also studied the theological tractates of John Gerson and Cardinal Peter d’Ailly, works which, apart from other theological defects, contain various errors concerning the authority of the Church and her Head; that these particular errors had any deeper influence on the direction of Luther’s mind cannot, however, be proved. What we do find is that the one-sidedness of this school, with its tendency to hairsplitting, had a negative effect upon him. At an early date he was repelled by the scholastic subtleties, for which, according to him, Aristotle alone was responsible, and preferred to turn to the reading and study of the Bible. He nevertheless made the prevalent school methods so much his own as to apply them often, in a quite surprising fashion, in his earliest sermons and writings.The man who exercised the greatest influence on the theological study in the Erfurt monastery was the learned Augustinian, Johann Paltz, who was teaching there when Luther entered. He was a good Churchman and a fair scholar, and was also much esteemed as a preacher. By his side worked Johann Nathin, who has already been mentioned, likewise one of the respected theologians of the Order.[27]Luther’s teachers, full of veneration for the HolyScriptures as the revealed Word of God, were not at all displeased to see their pupil having frequent recourse to the Bible, in order to seek in the well of the Divine Word instruction and enlightenment, by which to supplement the teachings of the schoolmen and the Fathers.Luther had, moreover, already become acquainted with the Bible in the library of the Erfurt University, whilst still engaged in studying philosophy. He had, however, not prosecuted his reading of the Bible, though the same library would doubtless have supplied him with numerous well-thumbed commentaries on Holy Writ. In the monastery a copy of the Bible was given him at the beginning of his theological course. It was, as we learn from him incidentally, a Latin translation bound in red leather, and remained in his hands until he left Erfurt. The statutes of the Order enjoined on all its members “assiduous reading, devout hearing and industrious study of the Holy Scriptures.”The young monk immersed himself more and more in the study of his beloved Bible when Staupitz, the Vicar, advised him to select the same as his special subject in order to render himself a capable “localisandtextualis” in the Holy Scriptures.The Superior seems to have had even then the intention of making use later of Luther as a public professor of biblical lore. So ardently was the Vicar’s advice followed by Luther that, in his preference for reading the Bible and studying its interpretation, he neglected the rest of his theological education, and his teacher Usingen was obliged to protest against his one-sided study of the sacred text. So full was Luther of the most sacred of books, that he was able (at least this is what he says later) to show the wondering brothers the exact spot in his ponderous red volume where every subject, nay even every quotation, was to be found. It was with great regret that, on leaving this community, he found himself prohibited by the Rule from taking the copy away with him. Later, as an opponent of the religious life, he states that no one but himself read the Bible in the monastery at Erfurt, whilst of his foe Carlstadt, a former Augustinian, he bluntly says that he had never seen a Bible until he was promoted to the dignity of Doctor. Of course, neither assertion can be taken literally.When the day drew nigh for him to celebrate his first Massas newly ordained priest, he invited not only his father but several other guests to be present at a ceremony which meant so much both to him and to his friends. Thus, in a letter of invitation to Johann Braun, Vicar in Eisenach, who had shown him much kindness and help during his early years in that town, he says that: “God had chosen him, an unworthy sinner, for the unspeakable dignity of His service at the altar,” and begged his fatherly friend to come, and by his prayers to assist him “so that his sacrifice might be pleasing in the sight of God.” He also expressed to him his great indebtedness to Schalbe’s College at Eisenach, which he would also have gladly seen represented at the ceremony. This is the first letter of Luther’s which has been preserved and with which the critical edition of his “Correspondence,” now being published, commences.[28]The first Mass took place on Cantate Sunday, May 2, 1507. Luther relates later, with regard to his state of mind during the sacred ceremony, that he could hardly contain himself for excitement and fear. The words “Te igitur clementissime Pater,” at the commencement of the Canon of the Mass, and “Offero tibi Deo meo vivo et vero,” at the oblation, brought so vividly to his mind the Awful, Eternal Majesty, that he was hardly able to go on (“totus stupebam et cohorrescebam”); he would have rushed down from the altar had he not been held back; the fear of making some mistake in the ceremonies and so committing a mortal sin, so he says, quite bewildered him.[29]Yet he must have known, with regard to the ceremonies, that any unintentional infringement of them was no sin, and least of all a mortal sin, although he attributes the contrary opinion to the “Papists” after his apostasy.His father Hans assisted at the celebration. His presence in the church and in the refectory was the first sign of his acquiescence in his son’s vocation. But when the latter, during dinner, praised the religious calling and the monastic life as something high and great,[30]and went on to recall the vow he had made at the time of the thunderstorm,asserting that he had been called by “terrors from Heaven” (“de cœlo terrores”), this was too much for his level-headed father, who, to the astonishment of the guests, sharply interposed with the words: “Oh, that it may not have been a delusion and a diabolical vision.” He could not overcome his dislike for his son’s resolve. “I sit here and eat and drink,” he cried, “and would much rather be far away.” Luther retorted he had better be content, and that “to be a monk was a peaceful and heavenly life.”[31]The statement with regard to the elder Luther agrees with the character of the man and with the severity which he had displayed long before to Martin.Here an assertion must be mentioned made by George Wicel, a well-informed contemporary; once a Lutheran, he was, from 1533-8, Catholic priest at Eisleben. Two or three times he repeats in print, that Hans Luther had once slain a man in a fit of anger at his home at Möhra. Luther and his friends never denied this public statement. In recent years attempts have been made to support the same by local tradition, and the fact of the father changing his abode from Möhra to Mansfeld has thus been accounted for.[32]According to Karl Seidemann, an expert on Luther (1859), the testimony of Wicel may be taken as settling definitively the constantly recurring dispute on the subject.[33]The following facts which have been handed down throw some light on the inward state of the young man at this time and shortly after.At a procession of the Blessed Sacrament he had to accompany Staupitz, the Vicar, as his deacon. Such was the terror which suddenly seized him that he almost fled. On speaking afterwards of this to his superior, who was also his friend, he received the following instructive reply: “This fear is not from Christ; Christ does not affright, He comforts.”[34]One day that Luther was present at High Mass in the monks’ choir, he had a fit during the Gospel, which, as ithappened, told the story of the man possessed. He fell to the ground and in his paroxysms behaved like one mad. At the same time he cried out, as his brother monks affirmed: “It is not I, it is not I,” meaning that he was not the man possessed.[35]It might seem to have been an epileptic fit, but there is no other instance of Luther having such attacks, though he did suffer from ordinary fits of fainting. Strange to say, some of his companions in the monastery had an idea that he had dealings with the devil, while others, mainly on account of the above-mentioned attack, actually declared him an epileptic. We learn both these facts from his opponent and contemporary, Johann Cochlæus, who was on good terms with Luther’s former associates. He asserts positively that a “certain singularity of manner” had been remarked upon by his fellows in the monastery.[36]Later on his brother monk, Johann Nathin, went so far as to assert that “an apostate spirit had mastered him,” i.e. that he stood under the influence of the devil.[37]Melanchthon was afterwards to hear from Luther’s own lips something of the dark states of terror from which he had suffered since his youth. When he speaks of them at the commencement of his biographical eulogy on his late friend[38]he connects Luther’s strange excitement in the days before his entrance into religion with a certain event in his later history at a time when he was engaged in public controversy. “As he himself related, and as many are aware,” says Melanchthon, “when considering attentively examples of God’s anger, or any notable accounts of His punishments, such terror possessed him (‘tanti terrores concutiebant’) as almost to cause him to give up the ghost.” He describes how, as a full-grown man, when such fears overcame him, he would actually writhe on his bed. He suffered from these terrors (terrores) either for the first time, or most severely, in the year in which he lost his friend by death in an accident, i.e. before his admission to the monastery. “It was not poverty,” Melanchthon continues, “but his love of pietywhich led him to choose the religious life, and, while pursuing his theological and scholastic studies, he drank with glowing fervour from the springs of heavenly doctrine, namely, the writings of the prophets and apostles (i.e. the Old and New Testament) in order to instruct his spirit in the Divine Will and to nourish fear and love with strong testimony. Overwhelmed with these pains and terrors (‘dolores et pavores’), he plunged only the more zealously into the study of the Bible.”According to Melanchthon’s account, the same old Augustinian who once had directed Luther’s attention in an attack of faint-heartedness to the Christian’s duty of recalling the article of the forgiveness of sins, also quoted him a saying of St. Bernard: “Only believe that thy sins are forgiven thee through Christ. That is the testimony which the Holy Ghost gives in thy heart: ‘Thy sins are forgiven.’ Such is the teaching of the apostle, that man is justified by faith.”[39]Such words of Catholic faith and joyful trust in God might well have sufficed to reassure an obedient and humble spirit. Luther began to read more and more the mystic writings of the saint of Clairvaux, but as to how far they served to bring him peace of conscience no one can now say; certain it is that, at a later date, he placed a foreign interpretation upon the above-mentioned text and upon many other similar sayings of St. Bernard, which, taken in a Catholic sense, might have been of comfort to him, in order to render them favourable to the methods by which he proposed to make his new teaching a source of consolation. He accustomed himself more and more to follow “his own way,” as he calls it, in mind and sentiment. Though in later times he speaks often and at length of his spiritual trials in the monastery, we never hear of his humbling himself before God with childlike, trustful prayer in order to find a way out of his difficulties.If we consider the temptations of which he speaks, we might be tempted to think that he, with his promising disposition and proneness to extremes, had been singled out in a quite special manner by the tempter. During the term of novitiate, writes Luther when more advanced in years, the evil spirit of darkness, so he has learned, does notusually assail so bitterly the monk who is striving after perfection. Satan generally tempts him but slightly, and, more especially as regards temptations of the flesh, the novice is left in comparative peace, “indeed, nothing appears to him more agreeable than chastity.”[40]But, after that time, so he tells us, he himself had to bewail not only fears and doubts, but also numberless temptations which “his age brought along with it.”[41]He felt himself at the same time troubled with doubts as to his vocation and by “violent movements of hatred, envy, quarrelsomeness and pride.”[42]“I was unable to rid myself of the weight; horrible and terrifying thoughts (‘horrendæ et terrificæ cogitationes’), stormed in upon me.”[43]Temptations to despair of his salvation and to blaspheme God tormented him more especially.He had often wondered, he says on one occasion to his father Hans, whether he was the only man whom the devil thus attacked and persecuted,[44]and later he comforted one who was in great anxiety with the words: “When beset with the greatest temptations I could scarcely retain my bodily powers, hardly keep my breath, and no one was able to comfort me. All those to whom I complained answered ‘I know nothing about it,’ so that I used to sigh ‘Is it I alone who am plagued with the spirit of sorrow!’”[45]He thinks that he learned the nature of these temptations from the Psalms, and that he had by experience made close acquaintance with the verse of the Bible: “Every night I will wash my bed: I will water my couch with my tears” (Ps. vi. 7). Satan with his temptations was the murderer of mankind; but, notwithstanding, one must not despair. Luther here speaks of visions granted him, and of angels who after ten years brought him consolation in his solitude; these statements we shall examine later.Elsewhere he again recounts how Staupitz encouraged him and the manner in which he interpreted his advice reveals a singular self-esteem. Staupitz had pointed out to him the interior trials endured by holy men, who had been purified by temptation, and, after having been humbled,had risen to be powerful instruments in God’s hand. Perhaps, said Staupitz, God has great designs also for you, for the greater good of His Church. This well-meant encouragement remained vividly impressed upon Luther’s memory, not least because it seemed to predict a great future for him. “And so it has actually come to pass,” he himself says later, “I have become a great doctor though in the time of my temptations I could never have believed it.”[46]Speaking later of a reference made by Staupitz to the temptations which humbled St. Paul, he says: “I accepted the words which St. Paul uses: ‘A sting of my flesh was given me lest the greatness of the revelation should exalt me’ (2 Cor. xii. 7), wherefore I receive it as the word and voice of the Holy Spirit.” Such reflections as these, to which Luther gave himself up, certainly did not tend to help him to rid himself completely of the temptations, and to vanquish his melancholy thoughts of predestination. As a result of following “his own way” and cultivating his morbid fears, he never succeeded in shaking himself free from the thought of predestination. This will appear quite clearly in his recently published Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, written in 1515-16. In fact, the whole of the theology which he set up against that of the Catholic Church was in some sense dominated by his ideas on predestination.We must, however, pay him this tribute, that during the whole of his stay in the Erfurt monastery he strove to live as a true monk and to keep the Rule. Such was the testimony borne by an old brother monk, as Flacius Illyricus relates, who had lived with him at Erfurt and who always remained true to the Church.Though such may well have been the case, we cannot all the same accept as reliable the accounts, exaggerated and distorted as they clearly are, which, long after his falling away, he gives of his extraordinary holiness when in the monastery. He there attributes to himself, from controversial motives, a piety far above the ordinary, and speaks of the tremendous labours and penances which he imposed upon himself in his blindness. Led away by his imagination and by party animus, he exalts his one-time “holiness by works,” as he terms it, to be the better able to assure his hearers—ostensibly from his own experience and from the bitterdisappointment he says he underwent—that all works of the Papists, even those of the most pious, holy and mortified, were absolutely worthless for procuring true peace for the soul thirsting after salvation, and that the Catholic Church was quite unable by her teaching to reconcile a soul with God. History merely tells us that he was an observant monk who kept the Rule, and, for that reason, enjoyed the confidence of his superiors.[47]Relying upon his ability and his achievements, Staupitz, the Vicar, summoned him in the autumn of 1508, to Wittenberg, in order that he might there continue his studies and at the same time commence his work as a teacher on a humble scale.As Master of Philosophy Luther gave lectures on the Ethics of Aristotle and probably also on Dialectics, though, as he himself says, he would have preferred to mount the chair of Theology, for which he already esteemed himself fitted, and which, with its higher tasks, attracted him much more than philosophy. In March, 1509, he was already the recipient of a theological degree and entered the Faculty as a “Baccalaureus Biblicus.” This authorised him to deliver lectures on the Holy Scriptures at the University.In the same year, however, probably in the late autumn, Luther’s career at Wittenberg was interrupted for a time by his being sent back to Erfurt. With regard to the reasons for this nothing is known with certainty, but a movement which was going forward in the Congregation may have been the cause. In the question of the stricter observance which had recently been raised among the Augustinians, and which will be treated of below, Luther had not sided with the Wittenberg monastery but with his older friends at Erfurt. He was opposed to certain administrative regulations promoted by Staupitz, which, in the opinion of many, threatened the future discipline of the Order. At any rate, he had to return to Erfurt just as he was about to become “Sententiarius,” i.e. to be promoted to the office of lecturing on the “Magister Sententiarium.” For these lectures, too, he had already qualified himself. His second stay at Erfurt and the part—so important for the understanding of his later life—which he played in the disputes of the Order,are new data in his history which have as yet received little attention.He was made very welcome by his brothers at Erfurt, at once took up his work as “Sententiarius” and, for about a year and a half, held forth on that celebrated textbook of theology, the Book of Sentences.He was also employed in important business for the monastery and accompanied Dr. Nathin on a mission in connection with the question of the statutes of the Congregation and the above-mentioned dispute. Both went to Halle to Adolf of Anhalt, Provost of Magdeburg Cathedral, for the purpose of defending the “observance in the vicariate.” The monk made an excellent impression on the Provost of the Cathedral.[48]The esteem which Luther enjoyed while he was at Erfurt exposes the futility of those old fables, once widely circulated and generally believed, that whilst there he had entered into a liaison with a girl and had declared that he intended to go as far as he could until the times permitted of his marrying in due form.[49]Of Luther’s lectures at that time some traces are to be found in a book in the Ratsschul-Library at Zwickau, these being the oldest specimens of his handwriting which we possess. They were made public in 1893 in volume ix. of the “Kritische Gesamtausgabe” of Luther’s works now appearing, and consist of detailed marginal notes to the Sentences of the Lombard of which the book in question is a printed copy.[50]The notes consist chiefly of subtle dialectic explanations or corrections of Peter Lombard and are quite in the theological style of the day. The vanity and audacity of the language used is frequently surprising; for instance, when the young master takes upon himself to speak of the “buffoonery” of contemporary theologians and philosophers, or of an ostensibly “almost heretical opinion” which he discovers in Venerable Duns Scotus; still more is this the case when he expresses his dislike of the traditional scholastic speculation and logic, alluding to the “rancid rules of the logicians,” to “those grubs, the philosophers,” to the “dregs of philosophy” and to that “putrid philosopher Aristotle.”It is worthy of note in connection with his mental growth that, on the very cover of the book, he, most independently, declares war on the “Sophists,” though we do not mean to imply that such a war was not justifiable from many points of view. As a torch, however, for the illuminating of theological truth he is not unwilling to use philosophy. Very strong, nay emphatic, is his appeal to the Word of God on a trivial and purely speculative question relating to the inner life of the Trinity. He says: “Though many highly esteemed teachers assert this, yet the fact remains that on their side they have not Holy Scripture, but merely human reasons: but I say that on my side I have the Written Word that the soul is the image of God, and therefore I say with the Apostle ‘Though an angel from Heaven, i.e. a Doctor of the Church, preach to you otherwise, let him be anathema.’”In these glosses we may, however, seek in vain for any trace, even the faintest, of Luther’s future teaching. The young theologian still maintains the Church’s standpoint, particularly with regard to the doctrines which he was afterwards to call into question.He still speaks correctly of “faith which works through charity and by which we are justified.” Equally blameless are his statements regarding concupiscence in fallen man and the exercise of free will in the choice of good under the influence of Divine Grace. Once, it is true, he casually speaks of Christ as “our righteousness and sanctification,” but, in spite of the weight which has been laid on this expression, it is in no wise remarkable, and merely voices the Catholic view of St. Augustine, or better still, of St. Paul. To Romans i. 16 f., to which he was later to attach so much importance in his new system, he refers once, interpreting it correctly and agreeably with theGlossa ordinaria; clearly enough it had not yet begun to interest him and his harmless words afford no proof of the statement which has been made, that already at the time he wrote “the birth-hour of the reformation had rung.”That Luther also studied at that time some of the writings of St. Augustine we see from three old volumes of the works of this Father in the Zwickau Library, which contain notes made in Luther’s handwriting on theDe Trinitate, on theDe Civitate Dei, and other similar writings. These notes, made about the same time, are correct in their doctrine.According to Melanchthon, already at Erfurt he had begun a “very thorough study” of the African Father of the Church.In the latter notes, which were also published in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works,[51]he once flies into a violent fit of indignation with the celebrated Wimpfeling, who was mixed up in a literary dispute with the Augustinian Order. He calls the worthy man “a garrulous barker and an envious critic of the fame of the Augustinians, who had lost his reason through obstinacy and hate, and who requires a cut of the knife to open his mole’s eyes”; he, “with his brazen front, should be ashamed of himself.”[52]Glibness of tongue, combined with intelligence and fancy, and, in addition to unusual talents, great perseverance in study, these were the qualities which many admired in the new teacher. Whoever had to dispute with so sharp and fiery an opponent, was sure to get the worst of the encounter. The fame of the new teacher soon spread throughout the Augustinian province, but his originality and want of restraint naturally raised him up some enemies.Alongside of his readiness in controversy which some admired, many remarked in him quarrelsomeness and disputatiousness. He never learnt how to live “at peace” with his brothers,[53]as some of the old monks afterwards told the Humanist Cochlæus. His Catholic pupil Johann Oldecop, says of his leaving Erfurt for Wittenberg, that the separation was not altogether displeasing to the Augustinians of Erfurt, because Luther was always desirous of coming off victor in differences of opinion, and liked to stir up strife.[54]Hieronymus Dungersheim, a subsequent Catholic opponent who watched him very narrowly, writes that he “had always been a quarrelsome man in his ways and habits,” and that he had acquired that reputation even before ever he came to the monastery.[55]Dungersheim questioned those who had known him as a secular student at Erfurt. The above statements come, it is true, from thecamp of his adversaries, but they are not only uncontradicted by any further testimony, but entirely agree with other data regarding his character.Luther, in his own account of himself which he gave later, tells us that he was then and during the first part of his career as a monk, so full of zeal for the truth handed down by the Church that he would have given over to death any denier of the same, and have been ready to carry the wood for burning him at the stake. He also says in his queer, exaggerated fashion, that in those days he worshipped the Pope. At the same time he announces that his study of the Bible at Erfurt had already shown him many errors in the Papist Church, but that he had sought to soothe his conscience with the question: “Art thou the only wise man?” though by so doing he had retarded his understanding of the Holy Scriptures.[56]He also asserts later that his father’s words spoken at the banquet which followed his first Mass, viz. that his religious vocation was probably a delusion, had pierced ever deeper into his mind and appeared to him more and more true. Yet he likewise tells us elsewhere of his persevering zeal in his profession, and of his excessive fastings and disciplines.It is hard to find the real clue in this tangle of later statements, all of them influenced by polemical considerations.He says quite seriously, and this may very well be true, that what he was wont to hear at times outside the monastery from unbelieving “grammarians,” i.e. humanists, regarding the great difference between the teaching of Holy Scripture and that of the existing Church, made a deep impression on him.[57]He had, however, calmed himself, so he says, with the thought that this was other people’s business. In the monastic library he once came across some sermons of John Hus. Their contents appeared to him excellent, nevertheless, so he writes, from aversion for the author’s name, he laid aside the book without reading any further, though not without surprise that such a man should have written in many ways so well and so correctly. Johann Grefenstein, his master at Erfurt, had once let fall theremark in his presence that Hus had been put to death without any previous attempt being made to instruct or convert him.At that time, Hus failed to make any impression on him. Doubts, however, assaulted him in the shape of temptations. Those he repulsed, well aware of the danger. In June, 1521, writing at the Wartburg, he says that more than ten years before, much that was taught by Popes, Councils and Universities had appeared to him absurd and in contradiction with Christ, but that he had put a bridle on his thoughts in accordance with the Proverb of Solomon: “Lean not upon thy own prudence.”[58]Certain it is that his clear mind must early have perceived that the Church of that day fell far short of the ideal, and it is possible that even in those early years, such a perception may have awakened in him doubts and discontent and have led him to take a too gloomy view of the state of the Church.In any case, Luther’s own testimony as given above leads us to suspect the presence in his mind at an early date of a deep-seated dissatisfaction which foreboded ill to the monk’s future fidelity to the Church.[59]A strong moral foundation would have been necessary to save a mind so singularly constituted from wavering, and if we may believe the statement of his contemporary, Hieronymus Dungersheim of Leipzig, this was just what Luther had always lacked. Dungersheim, in a pamphlet against Luther the heretic, harks back to the years he spent at Erfurt as a secular student and accuses him of evil habits, probably contracted then, but the after effects of which made themselves felt when he had entered into religion and caused him to rebel against his profession. If Luther, so he says, was now persuaded that no religious could keep the vow of chastity, in his case the inability could only be due to a certain “former bad habit,” of which stories were told, and to his neglect of prayer.[60]In another writing the sameopponent accuses him openly of having indulged in the grossest vice during his academic years, and mentions as his informant one of the comrades who had, later on, accompanied Luther to the gates of the monastery.[61]He says nothing, perhaps, indeed, he knew nothing more definite, and with regard to Luther’s life in religion, he is unable to adduce anything to his discredit.But yet another of Luther’s later adversaries has strong words for our hero’s early life. His testimony, which has not so far been dealt with, must be treated of here because such charges, if well founded, doubtless contribute much to the psychological explanation of the processes going forward in Luther. This testimony is given by Hieronymus Emser of Dresden, who, it is true, was himself by no means spotless, and who, on that account, was roundly reprimanded by the man he had attacked. In his rejoinder to Luther, a pamphlet published in 1520, and the only one preserved, he says: “Was it necessary on account of my letter that you should hold up to public execration my former deviations which are indeed, for the most part, mere inventions? What do you think has come to my ears concerning your own criminal deeds (‘flagitia’)?” He will be silent about them, he says, because he does not wish to return evil for evil, but he continues: “That you also fell, I must attribute to the same cause which brought about my own fall, namely, the want of public discipline in our days, so that young men live as they please without fear of punishment and do just what they like.”[62]We must remember that at Erfurt Emser and Luther had stood in the relation of teacher and disciple. His words, like those of Dungersheim written from Leipzig, voice the opinion on Luther later on current in the hostile University circles of Erfurt.When Luther in his later years speaks of the “sins of his youth,” this, in his grotesquely anti-catholic vocabulary, means the good works of his monastic life, even the celebration of Holy Mass. Once, however, at the end of his tract on the Last Supper (1528),[63]speaking of the sins of his youth,he seems to distinguish between the Catholic works above referred to and other faults of which he accuses himself in the same general terms.In the young Augustinian’s Erfurt days he was prevented by the Rule from cultivating any intimate and distracting friendship with persons in the world. We only know that he, and likewise his brother monk Johann Lang, had some friendly intercourse with the Humanist Petreius (Peter Eberbach), who not long after, in a letter dated May 8, 1512, greets Lang—then already with Luther at Wittenberg—in these words: “Sancte Lange et Sancte Martine orate pro me.” Mutianus, the Gotha canon and chief of the Humanists, who was very unorthodox in his views, in a letter to Lang of the beginning of May, 1515, seems to remember Luther, for he sends greetings to the “pious Dr. Martin.”His intercourse with the Humanists led Luther to make use of philology in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. He thus entered upon a useful, we may even say indispensable, course, in which he might have done great service. At Erfurt he continued constantly to study his copy of the Bible, which had become an inseparable companion. “As no one in the monastery read the Bible” (at any rate not with his zeal) he was able to flatter himself with being first in the house in the matter of biblical knowledge; indeed in this field he was probably the greatest expert in the whole Congregation.In addition to this, he began to turn his busy mind to the study of Hebrew, and contrived to provide himself with a dictionary, which at that time was considered a treasure. Lang, with his humanistic culture, was able to assist him with the Greek.Meanwhile the dispute in the Order with regard to the observance had reached a point when it seemed right to the party to which Luther belonged to seek the intervention of Rome in their favour, or to anticipate an appeal on the part of their opponents. The choice of seven houses “of the observance” resulted in Luther being chosen as the delegate to represent them in Rome. So little opposed to the Church was Luther’s theology and Bible interpretation in his Erfurt days, and so considerable was the number of brethren, even in other Observantine houses who held himto be a faithful monk, that they deemed him best suited for so difficult a mission. What Cochlæus, according to information drawn from Augustinian sources, relates later sounds, however, quite reasonable, viz. that he was selected on account of his “cleverness and his forceful spirit of contradiction,” which promised a complete victory over the other faction.[64]Luther’s journey to Rome, according to Oldecop, was undertaken from Erfurt.3. The Journey to RomeThe Saxon, or more correctly German, Congregation of Augustinians, at the time of Luther’s journey to Rome, had reached a crisis in its history.Founded on the old Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, by the pious and zealous Andreas Proles (1503), and provided by him with excellent statutes intended to promote a reform of discipline, the Congregation had, since its foundation, been withdrawn from the control of the Provincial of the unreformed Augustinian Province of Saxony in order the better to preserve its stricter observance.[65]It stood directly under the General of the Order at Rome, whose German representative was a Vicar-General—in Luther’s time, Staupitz. He was simply styled Vicar, or sometimes Provincial. The monasteries under him numbered about thirty, and were distributed throughout several so-called districts, each headed by a Rural Vicar.Staupitz’s aim was to bring about a reunion of the German Congregation with the numerous non-observant monasteries in Germany, an amalgamation which would probably have led indirectly to his becoming the head of all these communities. He had already, September 30, 1510, after sounding the Pope, published a papal Bull approving such a union, and, by virtue of the same, begun to style himself Provincial of Thuringia and Saxony. His efforts were, however, met by decided opposition within the Congregation. Certain houses which were in favour of the old state of things and feared that union would lead to a relaxation of discipline, vehemently opposed Staupitz and his plans. Tothis party belonged also the Erfurt monastery, and Luther himself took an active part in the position assumed by his house. The object of his visit to Halle with Dr. Nathin to see Prince Adolf of Anhalt, the Cathedral Provost, had been to obtain a “petition” in favour of the “observance.” The opposition became acute when the Bull above referred to was published by Staupitz, and we may consider the protest of the seven Observantine monasteries against the Bull as the direct cause of Luther’s despatch to Rome.The monk, then seven-and-twenty years of age, with his written authority to act as procurator in the case (“litis procurator” is what Cochlæus, who was well informed on these matters, styles him), set out forthwith on his journey. It was in the autumn 1510,[66]and Luther was then lecturing on the third book of the Sentences. His absence lasted four or five months, i.e. until the spring 1511, when we again find him at Erfurt. Luther, and those who felt with him, found no difficulty in reconciling their efforts for the preservation of the observance against the will of Staupitz, with due submission to him as their Superior.Another monk of the Order accompanied Luther to the capital of Christendom as the Rule enjoined in the case of journeys. The joy at such an opportunity of seeing the Eternal City, of quenching his ardent thirst for knowledge by the acquisition of new experiences and of gaining the graces attached to so holy a pilgrimage, may well have hurried his steps during the wearisome journey, which in those days had to be undertaken on foot. He had even, according to a later statement, made the resolution to cleanse his conscience—so frequently tortured by fears—by a general confession, indeed he once says that this was his main object, passing over the real reason.With regard to the effect of the journey on the question concerning the Order, according to Cochlæus a certain compromise was reached, the details of which are, however, not told us. At any rate Staupitz was unable to carry out his plan and eventually gave it up. The dispute between“Observants” and “non-Observants” thus started, as we may gather from statements made by Luther to which we refer later, far from being at an end became more and more acute. It appears to have done untold harm to the Congregation and to have largely contributed to its fall.What effect had the visit to Italy and Rome upon the development of the young monk?Thousands have been cheered in spirit by the visit to the tombs of the Apostles; prayer at the holy places of Rome, the immediate proximity of the Vicar of Christ and of the world-embracing government of the Church made them feel what they had never felt before, the pulse-beat of the heart of Christendom, and they returned full of enthusiasm, strengthened and inspirited, and with the desire of working for souls in accordance with the mind of the Church.With Luther this was not the case.He was much less impressed by the Rome of the Saints than by the corruption then rampant in ecclesiastical circles.On first perceiving Rome from the heights of Monte Mario, he devoutly greeted the city, as all pilgrims were wont to do, overjoyed at having reached the goal of their long pilgrimage.[67]After that, he untiringly occupied himself, so far as his chief business permitted, in seeing all that Rome had to show. He assures us that he believed everything that was told him of the real or legendary reminiscences of the holy places both above and under ground. He does not, however, appear to have been very careful in his choice of guides and acquaintances, for the anecdotes concerning the condition of things at Rome which he brought back with him to his own country were, if not untrue, at least exceedingly spiteful. The Augustinians whom he there met had not the spirit of the reform inaugurated by Proles. Their southern freedom and lack of restraint found all too strong an echo in Luther’s character. The general confession he had projected was probably never made,[68]for, as he asserts later, he had not found among the clergy a single suitable, worthy man. During his distracting stay in the Eternal City he said Mass, so he tells us, perhaps once, perhaps ten times, i.e. occasionally, not regularly.[69]He was greatlyscandalised at much he heard and saw, partly owing to his looking at things with the critical eye of a northerner, partly owing to the really existing moral disorders.The Rome of that day was the Rome of Julius II, the then Pope, and of his predecessor Alexander VI; it was the Rome of the Popes of the height of the Renaissance, glorified by art, but inwardly deeply debased. The capital of Christendom, under the influence of the frivolity which had seized the occupants of the Papal throne and invaded the ranks of the higher clergy, had proved false to her dignity and forgetful of the fact that the eyes of the Faithful who visited Rome from every quarter of the globe were jealously fixed upon her in their anxiety lest the godless spirit of the world should poison the very heart of the Church.Instead of being edified by the good which he undoubtedly encountered and by the great ideal of the Church which no shadow can ever darken, Luther, with his critically disposed mind, proved all too receptive to the contrary impressions and allowed himself to be unduly influenced by the dark side of things, i.e. the corruption of morals. Subsequently, in his public controversies and private Table-Talk, he tells quite a number of disreputable tales,[70]which, whether based on fact or not, were all too favourable to his anti-Roman tendencies. He was in the habit of saying, in his usual tone, that whoever looked about him a little in Rome, would find abominations compared to which those of Sodom were mere child’s play. He declares that he heard from the mouth of Papal courtiers the statement: “It cannot go on much longer, it must break up.” In the company in which he mixed he heard these words let fall: “If there be a Hell, then Rome is built over it.” He says that he had heard it said of one, who expressed his grief at such a state of things, that he was a “buon cristiano” which meant much the same as a good-natured simpleton. In his proneness to accept evil tales he believed, at least so he asserts later, the statement made in his presence, that many priests were in the habit of repeating jokes at Mass in place of the words of consecration. He relates that he even questioned whether the bishops and priests at Rome, the prelates of the Curia, aye, the Pope himself, had any Christian beliefleft. It is not worth while to go into the details of the scandals he records, because, as Hausrath justly remarks, “it is questionable how much weight is due to statements which, in part, date from the later years of his life, when he had so completely altered.”[71]
VOL. ILUTHER THE MONKLUTHERCHAPTER ICOURSE OF STUDIES AND FIRST YEARS IN THE MONASTERY1. Luther’s Novitiate and Early LifeOnJuly 16, 1505, Martin Luther, then a student at the University of Erfurt, invited his friends and acquaintances to a farewell supper. He wished to see them about him for the last time before his approaching retirement to the cloister. “The bright, cheerful young fellow,” as his later pupil, Mathesius,[2]calls him, was a favourite in his own circle. Those assembled to bid him farewell, amongst whom were also “honest, virtuous maidens and women,”[3]were doubtless somewhat taken aback at their friend’s sudden determination to leave the world; but Luther was outwardly “beyond measure cheerful” and showed himself so light of heart that he played the lute while the wine-cup circled round.[4]On the following morning—it was the feast of St. Alexius, as Luther remembered when an old man[5]—some of his fellow-students accompanied him to the gate of the Augustinian monastery and then, with tears in their eyes, saw the doors close upon him. The Prior, who was already apprised of the matter, greeted the timid new-comer, embraced him, and then, in accordance with the Rule, confided him to the Master of Novices to be initiated into the customs of the community.In the quiet monastic cell and amid the strange new surroundings the student was probably able little by littleto master the excitement which, though hidden from outsiders, raged within his breast; for the determination to become a monk had been arrived at under strange, soul-stirring circumstances. He was on his way back to Erfurt, after a visit to his parents’ house, when, near Stotternheim, he was overtaken by a thunderstorm, and as a flash of lightning close beside him threatened him “like a heavenly vision,” he made the sudden vow: “Save me, dear St. Anne, and I will become a monk.”[6]He appears also at that very time to have been reduced to a state of great grief and alarm by the sudden death of a dear comrade, also a student, who had been stabbed, either in a quarrel or in a duel. Thus the thoughts which had perhaps for long been attracting his serious temperament towards the cloister ripened with overwhelming rapidity. Could we but take a much later assertion of his as correct, the reason of his resolve was to be found in a certain vexation with himself: because he “despaired” of himself, he once says, therefore did he retire into the monastery.[7]It was his earnest resolution to renounce the freedom of his academic years and to seek peace of soul and reconciliation with God in the bosom of the pious community. He persisted in keeping the vow made in haste and terror in spite of dissuading voices which made themselves heard both within himself and around him, and the determined opposition of his father to his embracing the religious state. Some were full of admiration for the energetic transformation of the new postulant. Thus the respected Augustinian of Erfurt, Johann Nathin, compared the suddenness and decision of his step to the one-time conversion of Saul into the Apostle Paul.[8]Crotus Rubeanus, the Humanist, thenstopping at Erfurt, in a later letter to Luther, expressed himself no less forcibly with regard to the heavenly flash which had made him a monk.[9]The brothers of the “German Congregation of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine”—such was the full title of the Order—on their part rejoiced at the acquisition of the highly gifted and promising youth, who had already taken his degree as Master of Philosophy at the University of Erfurt.If the novice, after gradually regaining peace of mind within the silent walls, permitted his thoughts to recur to his former way of life, this must have presented itself to him as full of trouble and care and very deficient in the homely joys of family life. Luther’s early career differed hardly at all from that of the poorest students of that time. He was born on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben in Saxony; his parents were Hans Luther, a miner of peasant extraction (he signed himself Luder) and Margaret Luther. They had originally settled in the town of Mansfeld, but had gone first to Möhra and then to Eisleben. Their gifted son spent his childhood in Mansfeld and first attended school there. His father was a stern, harsh man. His mother, too, though she meant well by him, once beat him till the blood came, all on account of a nut.[10]The boy was also intimidated by the stupid brutality of his teachers, and it does not appear that the customary religious teaching he received, raised his spirits or led to a freer, more hopeful development of his spiritual life. He was one day, as he relates later, “beaten fifteen times in succession during one morning” at school, to the best of his knowledge without any fault of his own, though, probably, not without having brought the punishment upon himself by insubordination and obstinacy. After that, in his fourteenth year, he received instruction in Magdeburg from the “Pious Brethren of the Common Life,” and begged his bread by singing from door to door. A year later he went to Eisenach, where his mother had some poor relatives, to continue his Latin studies. In this town he still pursued the same hard mode of earning his living, until a charitable woman, Ursula, the wife of Kunz (Konrad) Cotta, received him into her well-to-do andcomfortable household, furnishing him with food and lodging. Luther, in his old age, recalled with great gratitude the memory of his noble benefactress.[11]As a boy he had experienced but little of life’s pleasures and received small kindness from the world; but now life’s horizon brightened somewhat for the growing youth.Full of enthusiasm for the career mapped out for him by his father, that, namely, of the Law, he went in the summer of 1501 to the University of Erfurt. His parents’ financial circumstances had meanwhile somewhat improved as the result of his father’s industry in the mines at Mansfeld. The assiduous student was therefore no longer dependent on the help of strangers. According to some writers he took up his abode in St. George’s Hostel.[12]He was entered in the Matriculation Register of the Erfurt High School as “Martinus Ludher ex Mansfelt,” and for some considerable time after he continued to spell his family name as Luder, a form which is also to be found up to the beginning of the seventeenth century in the case of others (Lüder, Luider, Leuder). From 1512 he began, however, to sign himself “Lutherus” or “Luther.”[13]The lectures on philosophy, understood in the widest sense of the term, which he first attended were delivered at the University of Erfurt by comparatively capable teachers, some of whom belonged to the Augustinian Order. The Catholic spirit of the Middle Ages still permeated the teaching and the whole life of the little republic of learning. As yet, learning was still cast in the mould of the traditional scholastic method, and the men, equally devoted to the Church and to their profession, who were Luther’s principal teachers, Jodocus Trutfetter of Eisenach and Bartholomew Arnoldi of Usingen,[14]later an Augustinian, were well versed in the scholastic spirit of the day.Alongside the traditional teaching of the schools there already existed in Erfurt and the neighbourhood another, viz. that of the Humanists, or so-called poets, which, though largely at variance with Scholasticism, was cultivated by many of the best minds of the day. Luther, with his vivacity of thought and feeling, could not long remain a stranger tothem. With their spiritual head Mutianus at Gotha, close by, they formed one of the more prominent groups of German Humanists, although, so far, they had not produced any work of great consequence. The contrast between Humanism and Scholasticism, which was to come out so strongly at a later period, was as yet hardly noticeable in the Erfurt schools. Crotus Rubeanus, at that time a University friend of Luther’s, became at a later date, however, the principal author of the “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,” a clever and biting libel on monks and Scholastics, written from a Humanist standpoint. Crotus boasted subsequently of his intimate intercourse (“summa familiaritas”) with Luther.[15]Another Humanist friend whose spiritual relationship with him dates from that time, was Johann Lang, afterwards an Augustinian monk, with whom Luther stood in active interchange of thought during the most critical time of his development, as may be seen from the letters quoted below, and who, caught up by the Lutheran movement, left his Order[16]to become the first preacher of the new faith in Erfurt. The third name which we find in connection with Luther is that of Kaspar Schalbe, a cousin, or possibly a brother of the lady already mentioned, Mistress Ursula Cotta of Eisenach. Schalbe did not turn out any better than the others. A few years later, on being charged before the Elector of Saxony with a crime against morality, he was glad to avail himself of Luther’s mediation with the Ruler of the land.[17]Finally, we also know that a later patron and supporter of Luther, the Humanist Spalatinus, was then carrying on his studies in Erfurt. George Burckhardt of Spalt—whence his name Spalatinus—was a student there from 1498 to 1502, and, from 1505 to 1508, was engaged asa clerical preceptor in the immediate vicinity of the town. Luther and Spalatinus always looked on themselves later as early friends whom fate had brought together.As a student, Luther devoted himself with great zest to the various branches of philosophy, and, carried away by the spirit of the Humanists, in his private time he studied the Latin classics, more particularly Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Ovid, also Terence, Juvenal, Horace and Plautus. At a later date he was able to make skilful use of quotations from these authors when occasion demanded. Amongst others, he attended the lectures of Hieronymus Emser, a subsequent opponent well worth his metal. Of his life during those years, which, owing to the laxity of morals prevailing in the town, must have been full of danger for him, we learn little, owing to the silence of our sources. Luther himself in his later years coarsely described the town as a “beer house” and a “nest of immorality.”Unlike his frivolous comrades, he was often beset with heavy thoughts, no doubt largely due to the after effects of his gloomy youth. Among his chums he was known as “Musicus,” on account of his learning to play the lute, and as the “Philosopher,” owing to his frequent fits of moodiness.In the monastery, where the reader left him, he no doubt remained subject to such fits of depression, especially at the beginning when dwelling on his change of life. It is difficult to say how far the feeling of self-despair, which he mentions, had mastered him before his entry into conventual life. In later years, apart from the vow and the mysterious “heavenly terror,” he also says that in leaving the world he was seeking to escape the severity of his parents. His statements, however, do not always agree. As for the precipitate vow to enter a monastery, he must have been well aware that, even if valid when originally made, it was no longer binding on him from the day when, after conscientious self-examination, he became aware that, owing to his natural disposition, he had no vocation for a religious life. Not every character is fitted for carrying out the evangelical counsels, and to force oneself into a mould, however good, for which one is manifestly unsuited is certainly not in accordance with the will of a wise and beneficent Providence.Luther, agreeably with the statutes of the Order, duringthe whole period of his novitiate and until the hour of his profession had arrived, was perfectly free to return to his fellow-students, the religious tie never having been intended to bring him misery in place of the happiness which it promises. Immediately after coming to the monastery, i.e. before his clothing, he was, according to the Rule, given considerable time in which to weigh earnestly, under the direction of an experienced brother of the Order, whether, as stated in the statutes of the Augustinians, “the spirit which was leading him was of God.” Only after this did he receive the habit of the Order, apparently, however, in the same year, 1505. The habit consisted of a white woollen tunic, a scapular, also white, falling over the breast and back, and a black mantle with a hood and wide sleeves to be worn over all.After the clothing began the novitiate, which lasted a whole year. During this period the candidate had not only to undertake a series of exercises consisting in prayer, manual labour and penitential works, but had also to discharge certain humiliating offices, which might help him to acquire the virtue of humility as practised in the Order. Out of consideration for the University and his academic dignity Luther was, however, speedily exempted from some of the latter duties. It appears that during his noviceship he was attentive to the rules, and that the superiors treated him with fatherly kindness. Although some members of the community may have observed the Rule from routine, while others, as is often the case in large communities, may not have been conspicuous for their charity—Luther refers to something of this kind in his Table-Talk—yet the spirit of the Erfurt monastery was, like that of most of the other houses of the Congregation, on the whole quite blameless. The novice himself, as yet full of goodwill, was not only satisfied with his calling, but even looked on the state he had chosen as a “heavenly life.”[18]From the very first, however, as he himself complains later, he was constantly “worried and depressed”[19]by thoughts connected with religion. He was sorely troubled by the fear of God’s judgment, by gloomy thoughts on predestination, and by the recollection of his own sins. Althoughhe made a general confession in the monastery and renewed it again later, his confessions never gave him any satisfaction, so that his director laid on him the obligation not to hark back to things which caused him sadness of spirit nor to dwell on the details of his sins. “You are a fool,” he once said to him; “God is not angry with you, but it is you who are angry with Him.”Those versed in the ways of the spiritual life are well aware that many a one aiming at perfection is exposed to the purifying fire of trials such as these. Traditional Catholic teaching and the experience of those skilled in the direction of conventual inmates had laid down the remedies most effectual for such a condition. What Luther himself relates later with regard to the encouragement he received from his superiors and brothers in the monastery, shows clearly that suitable direction, enlightenment and encouragement were not wanting to him either then or in the following years. He himself praises his “Præceptor” and “monastic pædagogue,” i.e. the Novice-Master, as “a dear old man,”[20]who “under the damned frock was without doubt a true Christian.”[21]It was probably he who said to him in an hour of trial that he should always recall the article of the Creed “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.”[22]“What are you doing, my son?” he said to him on another occasion; “do you not know that the Lord has Himself commanded us to hope?”[23]words which made a great and unforgettable impression on him. Later, in the year 1516, he pointed out another brother, Master Bartholomew (Usingen), as the “best paraclete and comforter”[24]in the Erfurt monastery, as he could testify from his own experience. The monks knew well and impressed it upon his troubled mind that,through the merits of the Redeemer, and after earnest preparation of the soul, true forgiveness may be obtained, and that through the cross of Christ, and through it alone, we can do all things necessary, even in the midst of the bitterest assaults.Luther, however, too often responded to such admonitions only by cherishing his own views the more. He continued morbidly to torment himself. This self-torture, at any rate during the first enthusiastic days of his religious life, may have assumed the form of pious scruples, but later it gradually took on another character under the influence of bodily affections. He did not, like other scrupulous persons, regain his peace of mind, because, led away by his distorted and excited fancy, he liked, as he himself admits, to dwell on the doubts as to whether the counsels he received were not illusion and deception. Sad experience taught him into what devious paths and to “what a state of inward unrest, self-will and self-sufficiency are capable of leading a man.”[25]The Superior or Vicar-General of the Saxon or German Augustinian Congregation to which Luther belonged was at that time Johann Staupitz, a man highly esteemed in the world of learning and culture.He frequently visited Erfurt and had thus the opportunity of talking to the new brother whom the University had given him, and who may well have attracted his attention by his careworn look, his restless manner and his peculiar, bright, deep-set eyes. Staupitz soon began to have a great esteem for him. He had great influence over Luther, though unable to free him from the strange spirit, already too deeply rooted. To the sad doubts concerning his own salvation which Brother Martin laid before him, Staupitz replied by exhorting him as follows in the spirit of the Catholic Church: “Why torment yourself with such thoughts and broodings? Look at the wounds of Christ and His Blood shed for you. There you will see your predestination to heaven shining forth to your comfort.”[26]Quite rightly he impressed upon him, in the matter of confession and penance, that the principal thing was to arouse in himself the will to love God and righteousness, and that he must not pause before unhealthy imaginations of sin. The lines of thought,however, which the imaginative and emotional young man laid bare to him, were probably at times somewhat strange, and it is Luther himself who relates that Staupitz once said to him: “Master Martin, I fail to understand that.”In spite of his inward fears Luther persevered, which goes to prove the strength of will which was always one of his characteristics. As the Order was satisfied with him, he was admitted at the end of the year of novitiate to profession by the taking of the three Vows of the Order. He received on this occasion the name of Augustine, but always preferred to it his baptismal name of Martin. The text of the Vows which he read aloud solemnly before the altar, according to custom, in the presence of the Prior Winand of Diedenhofen and all the brothers, was as follows: “I, Brother Augustine Luder, make profession and vow obedience to Almighty God, Blessed Mary ever Virgin and to thee Father Prior, in the name of, and as representing the Superior-General of the Hermits of St. Augustine, and his successors, likewise to live without property and in chastity until death, according to the Rule of our Holy Father Augustine.” The young monk, voluntarily and after due consideration, had thus taken upon himself the threefold yoke of Christ by the three Vows, i.e. by the most solemn and sacred promise which it is possible to make on earth. He had bound himself by a sacred oath to God to prepare himself for heaven by treading a path of life in which perfection is sought in the carrying out of the evangelical counsels of our Saviour, and throughout his life to combat the temptations of the world with the weapons of poverty, chastity and obedience.Such was the solemn Vow, which, later on, he declared to have been absolutely worthless.2. Fidelity to his new calling; his temptationsAfter making his profession the young religious was set by his Erfurt superiors to study theology, which was taught privately in the monastery.The theological fare served up by the teachers of the Order was not very inviting, consisting as it largely did of the mere verbalism of a Scholasticism in decay. With the exception of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the students at the Erfurt monastery did not study the theological works of thegreat masters of the thirteenth century; neither Thomas of Aquin, the prince of scholastic theology and philosophy, nor his true successors, not even Ægidius Romanus, himself a Hermit of St. Augustine, were well known to them. The whole of their time at Erfurt, as elsewhere also, was devoted to the study of the last of the schoolmen who, indeed, stood nearer in point of time, but who were far from teaching the true doctrine with the fulness and richness of the earlier doctors. They were too much given to speculation and logical word-play. The older schoolmen were no longer appreciated and nominalistic errors, such as were fostered in the school of William of Occam, held the field. One of the better schoolmen of the day was Gabriel Biel. His works, which have a certain value, together with some of the writings of the Fathers of the Church, formed the principal arsenal from which Luther drew his theological knowledge, and upon which he exercised his dialectics. In addition to this, he also studied the theological tractates of John Gerson and Cardinal Peter d’Ailly, works which, apart from other theological defects, contain various errors concerning the authority of the Church and her Head; that these particular errors had any deeper influence on the direction of Luther’s mind cannot, however, be proved. What we do find is that the one-sidedness of this school, with its tendency to hairsplitting, had a negative effect upon him. At an early date he was repelled by the scholastic subtleties, for which, according to him, Aristotle alone was responsible, and preferred to turn to the reading and study of the Bible. He nevertheless made the prevalent school methods so much his own as to apply them often, in a quite surprising fashion, in his earliest sermons and writings.The man who exercised the greatest influence on the theological study in the Erfurt monastery was the learned Augustinian, Johann Paltz, who was teaching there when Luther entered. He was a good Churchman and a fair scholar, and was also much esteemed as a preacher. By his side worked Johann Nathin, who has already been mentioned, likewise one of the respected theologians of the Order.[27]Luther’s teachers, full of veneration for the HolyScriptures as the revealed Word of God, were not at all displeased to see their pupil having frequent recourse to the Bible, in order to seek in the well of the Divine Word instruction and enlightenment, by which to supplement the teachings of the schoolmen and the Fathers.Luther had, moreover, already become acquainted with the Bible in the library of the Erfurt University, whilst still engaged in studying philosophy. He had, however, not prosecuted his reading of the Bible, though the same library would doubtless have supplied him with numerous well-thumbed commentaries on Holy Writ. In the monastery a copy of the Bible was given him at the beginning of his theological course. It was, as we learn from him incidentally, a Latin translation bound in red leather, and remained in his hands until he left Erfurt. The statutes of the Order enjoined on all its members “assiduous reading, devout hearing and industrious study of the Holy Scriptures.”The young monk immersed himself more and more in the study of his beloved Bible when Staupitz, the Vicar, advised him to select the same as his special subject in order to render himself a capable “localisandtextualis” in the Holy Scriptures.The Superior seems to have had even then the intention of making use later of Luther as a public professor of biblical lore. So ardently was the Vicar’s advice followed by Luther that, in his preference for reading the Bible and studying its interpretation, he neglected the rest of his theological education, and his teacher Usingen was obliged to protest against his one-sided study of the sacred text. So full was Luther of the most sacred of books, that he was able (at least this is what he says later) to show the wondering brothers the exact spot in his ponderous red volume where every subject, nay even every quotation, was to be found. It was with great regret that, on leaving this community, he found himself prohibited by the Rule from taking the copy away with him. Later, as an opponent of the religious life, he states that no one but himself read the Bible in the monastery at Erfurt, whilst of his foe Carlstadt, a former Augustinian, he bluntly says that he had never seen a Bible until he was promoted to the dignity of Doctor. Of course, neither assertion can be taken literally.When the day drew nigh for him to celebrate his first Massas newly ordained priest, he invited not only his father but several other guests to be present at a ceremony which meant so much both to him and to his friends. Thus, in a letter of invitation to Johann Braun, Vicar in Eisenach, who had shown him much kindness and help during his early years in that town, he says that: “God had chosen him, an unworthy sinner, for the unspeakable dignity of His service at the altar,” and begged his fatherly friend to come, and by his prayers to assist him “so that his sacrifice might be pleasing in the sight of God.” He also expressed to him his great indebtedness to Schalbe’s College at Eisenach, which he would also have gladly seen represented at the ceremony. This is the first letter of Luther’s which has been preserved and with which the critical edition of his “Correspondence,” now being published, commences.[28]The first Mass took place on Cantate Sunday, May 2, 1507. Luther relates later, with regard to his state of mind during the sacred ceremony, that he could hardly contain himself for excitement and fear. The words “Te igitur clementissime Pater,” at the commencement of the Canon of the Mass, and “Offero tibi Deo meo vivo et vero,” at the oblation, brought so vividly to his mind the Awful, Eternal Majesty, that he was hardly able to go on (“totus stupebam et cohorrescebam”); he would have rushed down from the altar had he not been held back; the fear of making some mistake in the ceremonies and so committing a mortal sin, so he says, quite bewildered him.[29]Yet he must have known, with regard to the ceremonies, that any unintentional infringement of them was no sin, and least of all a mortal sin, although he attributes the contrary opinion to the “Papists” after his apostasy.His father Hans assisted at the celebration. His presence in the church and in the refectory was the first sign of his acquiescence in his son’s vocation. But when the latter, during dinner, praised the religious calling and the monastic life as something high and great,[30]and went on to recall the vow he had made at the time of the thunderstorm,asserting that he had been called by “terrors from Heaven” (“de cœlo terrores”), this was too much for his level-headed father, who, to the astonishment of the guests, sharply interposed with the words: “Oh, that it may not have been a delusion and a diabolical vision.” He could not overcome his dislike for his son’s resolve. “I sit here and eat and drink,” he cried, “and would much rather be far away.” Luther retorted he had better be content, and that “to be a monk was a peaceful and heavenly life.”[31]The statement with regard to the elder Luther agrees with the character of the man and with the severity which he had displayed long before to Martin.Here an assertion must be mentioned made by George Wicel, a well-informed contemporary; once a Lutheran, he was, from 1533-8, Catholic priest at Eisleben. Two or three times he repeats in print, that Hans Luther had once slain a man in a fit of anger at his home at Möhra. Luther and his friends never denied this public statement. In recent years attempts have been made to support the same by local tradition, and the fact of the father changing his abode from Möhra to Mansfeld has thus been accounted for.[32]According to Karl Seidemann, an expert on Luther (1859), the testimony of Wicel may be taken as settling definitively the constantly recurring dispute on the subject.[33]The following facts which have been handed down throw some light on the inward state of the young man at this time and shortly after.At a procession of the Blessed Sacrament he had to accompany Staupitz, the Vicar, as his deacon. Such was the terror which suddenly seized him that he almost fled. On speaking afterwards of this to his superior, who was also his friend, he received the following instructive reply: “This fear is not from Christ; Christ does not affright, He comforts.”[34]One day that Luther was present at High Mass in the monks’ choir, he had a fit during the Gospel, which, as ithappened, told the story of the man possessed. He fell to the ground and in his paroxysms behaved like one mad. At the same time he cried out, as his brother monks affirmed: “It is not I, it is not I,” meaning that he was not the man possessed.[35]It might seem to have been an epileptic fit, but there is no other instance of Luther having such attacks, though he did suffer from ordinary fits of fainting. Strange to say, some of his companions in the monastery had an idea that he had dealings with the devil, while others, mainly on account of the above-mentioned attack, actually declared him an epileptic. We learn both these facts from his opponent and contemporary, Johann Cochlæus, who was on good terms with Luther’s former associates. He asserts positively that a “certain singularity of manner” had been remarked upon by his fellows in the monastery.[36]Later on his brother monk, Johann Nathin, went so far as to assert that “an apostate spirit had mastered him,” i.e. that he stood under the influence of the devil.[37]Melanchthon was afterwards to hear from Luther’s own lips something of the dark states of terror from which he had suffered since his youth. When he speaks of them at the commencement of his biographical eulogy on his late friend[38]he connects Luther’s strange excitement in the days before his entrance into religion with a certain event in his later history at a time when he was engaged in public controversy. “As he himself related, and as many are aware,” says Melanchthon, “when considering attentively examples of God’s anger, or any notable accounts of His punishments, such terror possessed him (‘tanti terrores concutiebant’) as almost to cause him to give up the ghost.” He describes how, as a full-grown man, when such fears overcame him, he would actually writhe on his bed. He suffered from these terrors (terrores) either for the first time, or most severely, in the year in which he lost his friend by death in an accident, i.e. before his admission to the monastery. “It was not poverty,” Melanchthon continues, “but his love of pietywhich led him to choose the religious life, and, while pursuing his theological and scholastic studies, he drank with glowing fervour from the springs of heavenly doctrine, namely, the writings of the prophets and apostles (i.e. the Old and New Testament) in order to instruct his spirit in the Divine Will and to nourish fear and love with strong testimony. Overwhelmed with these pains and terrors (‘dolores et pavores’), he plunged only the more zealously into the study of the Bible.”According to Melanchthon’s account, the same old Augustinian who once had directed Luther’s attention in an attack of faint-heartedness to the Christian’s duty of recalling the article of the forgiveness of sins, also quoted him a saying of St. Bernard: “Only believe that thy sins are forgiven thee through Christ. That is the testimony which the Holy Ghost gives in thy heart: ‘Thy sins are forgiven.’ Such is the teaching of the apostle, that man is justified by faith.”[39]Such words of Catholic faith and joyful trust in God might well have sufficed to reassure an obedient and humble spirit. Luther began to read more and more the mystic writings of the saint of Clairvaux, but as to how far they served to bring him peace of conscience no one can now say; certain it is that, at a later date, he placed a foreign interpretation upon the above-mentioned text and upon many other similar sayings of St. Bernard, which, taken in a Catholic sense, might have been of comfort to him, in order to render them favourable to the methods by which he proposed to make his new teaching a source of consolation. He accustomed himself more and more to follow “his own way,” as he calls it, in mind and sentiment. Though in later times he speaks often and at length of his spiritual trials in the monastery, we never hear of his humbling himself before God with childlike, trustful prayer in order to find a way out of his difficulties.If we consider the temptations of which he speaks, we might be tempted to think that he, with his promising disposition and proneness to extremes, had been singled out in a quite special manner by the tempter. During the term of novitiate, writes Luther when more advanced in years, the evil spirit of darkness, so he has learned, does notusually assail so bitterly the monk who is striving after perfection. Satan generally tempts him but slightly, and, more especially as regards temptations of the flesh, the novice is left in comparative peace, “indeed, nothing appears to him more agreeable than chastity.”[40]But, after that time, so he tells us, he himself had to bewail not only fears and doubts, but also numberless temptations which “his age brought along with it.”[41]He felt himself at the same time troubled with doubts as to his vocation and by “violent movements of hatred, envy, quarrelsomeness and pride.”[42]“I was unable to rid myself of the weight; horrible and terrifying thoughts (‘horrendæ et terrificæ cogitationes’), stormed in upon me.”[43]Temptations to despair of his salvation and to blaspheme God tormented him more especially.He had often wondered, he says on one occasion to his father Hans, whether he was the only man whom the devil thus attacked and persecuted,[44]and later he comforted one who was in great anxiety with the words: “When beset with the greatest temptations I could scarcely retain my bodily powers, hardly keep my breath, and no one was able to comfort me. All those to whom I complained answered ‘I know nothing about it,’ so that I used to sigh ‘Is it I alone who am plagued with the spirit of sorrow!’”[45]He thinks that he learned the nature of these temptations from the Psalms, and that he had by experience made close acquaintance with the verse of the Bible: “Every night I will wash my bed: I will water my couch with my tears” (Ps. vi. 7). Satan with his temptations was the murderer of mankind; but, notwithstanding, one must not despair. Luther here speaks of visions granted him, and of angels who after ten years brought him consolation in his solitude; these statements we shall examine later.Elsewhere he again recounts how Staupitz encouraged him and the manner in which he interpreted his advice reveals a singular self-esteem. Staupitz had pointed out to him the interior trials endured by holy men, who had been purified by temptation, and, after having been humbled,had risen to be powerful instruments in God’s hand. Perhaps, said Staupitz, God has great designs also for you, for the greater good of His Church. This well-meant encouragement remained vividly impressed upon Luther’s memory, not least because it seemed to predict a great future for him. “And so it has actually come to pass,” he himself says later, “I have become a great doctor though in the time of my temptations I could never have believed it.”[46]Speaking later of a reference made by Staupitz to the temptations which humbled St. Paul, he says: “I accepted the words which St. Paul uses: ‘A sting of my flesh was given me lest the greatness of the revelation should exalt me’ (2 Cor. xii. 7), wherefore I receive it as the word and voice of the Holy Spirit.” Such reflections as these, to which Luther gave himself up, certainly did not tend to help him to rid himself completely of the temptations, and to vanquish his melancholy thoughts of predestination. As a result of following “his own way” and cultivating his morbid fears, he never succeeded in shaking himself free from the thought of predestination. This will appear quite clearly in his recently published Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, written in 1515-16. In fact, the whole of the theology which he set up against that of the Catholic Church was in some sense dominated by his ideas on predestination.We must, however, pay him this tribute, that during the whole of his stay in the Erfurt monastery he strove to live as a true monk and to keep the Rule. Such was the testimony borne by an old brother monk, as Flacius Illyricus relates, who had lived with him at Erfurt and who always remained true to the Church.Though such may well have been the case, we cannot all the same accept as reliable the accounts, exaggerated and distorted as they clearly are, which, long after his falling away, he gives of his extraordinary holiness when in the monastery. He there attributes to himself, from controversial motives, a piety far above the ordinary, and speaks of the tremendous labours and penances which he imposed upon himself in his blindness. Led away by his imagination and by party animus, he exalts his one-time “holiness by works,” as he terms it, to be the better able to assure his hearers—ostensibly from his own experience and from the bitterdisappointment he says he underwent—that all works of the Papists, even those of the most pious, holy and mortified, were absolutely worthless for procuring true peace for the soul thirsting after salvation, and that the Catholic Church was quite unable by her teaching to reconcile a soul with God. History merely tells us that he was an observant monk who kept the Rule, and, for that reason, enjoyed the confidence of his superiors.[47]Relying upon his ability and his achievements, Staupitz, the Vicar, summoned him in the autumn of 1508, to Wittenberg, in order that he might there continue his studies and at the same time commence his work as a teacher on a humble scale.As Master of Philosophy Luther gave lectures on the Ethics of Aristotle and probably also on Dialectics, though, as he himself says, he would have preferred to mount the chair of Theology, for which he already esteemed himself fitted, and which, with its higher tasks, attracted him much more than philosophy. In March, 1509, he was already the recipient of a theological degree and entered the Faculty as a “Baccalaureus Biblicus.” This authorised him to deliver lectures on the Holy Scriptures at the University.In the same year, however, probably in the late autumn, Luther’s career at Wittenberg was interrupted for a time by his being sent back to Erfurt. With regard to the reasons for this nothing is known with certainty, but a movement which was going forward in the Congregation may have been the cause. In the question of the stricter observance which had recently been raised among the Augustinians, and which will be treated of below, Luther had not sided with the Wittenberg monastery but with his older friends at Erfurt. He was opposed to certain administrative regulations promoted by Staupitz, which, in the opinion of many, threatened the future discipline of the Order. At any rate, he had to return to Erfurt just as he was about to become “Sententiarius,” i.e. to be promoted to the office of lecturing on the “Magister Sententiarium.” For these lectures, too, he had already qualified himself. His second stay at Erfurt and the part—so important for the understanding of his later life—which he played in the disputes of the Order,are new data in his history which have as yet received little attention.He was made very welcome by his brothers at Erfurt, at once took up his work as “Sententiarius” and, for about a year and a half, held forth on that celebrated textbook of theology, the Book of Sentences.He was also employed in important business for the monastery and accompanied Dr. Nathin on a mission in connection with the question of the statutes of the Congregation and the above-mentioned dispute. Both went to Halle to Adolf of Anhalt, Provost of Magdeburg Cathedral, for the purpose of defending the “observance in the vicariate.” The monk made an excellent impression on the Provost of the Cathedral.[48]The esteem which Luther enjoyed while he was at Erfurt exposes the futility of those old fables, once widely circulated and generally believed, that whilst there he had entered into a liaison with a girl and had declared that he intended to go as far as he could until the times permitted of his marrying in due form.[49]Of Luther’s lectures at that time some traces are to be found in a book in the Ratsschul-Library at Zwickau, these being the oldest specimens of his handwriting which we possess. They were made public in 1893 in volume ix. of the “Kritische Gesamtausgabe” of Luther’s works now appearing, and consist of detailed marginal notes to the Sentences of the Lombard of which the book in question is a printed copy.[50]The notes consist chiefly of subtle dialectic explanations or corrections of Peter Lombard and are quite in the theological style of the day. The vanity and audacity of the language used is frequently surprising; for instance, when the young master takes upon himself to speak of the “buffoonery” of contemporary theologians and philosophers, or of an ostensibly “almost heretical opinion” which he discovers in Venerable Duns Scotus; still more is this the case when he expresses his dislike of the traditional scholastic speculation and logic, alluding to the “rancid rules of the logicians,” to “those grubs, the philosophers,” to the “dregs of philosophy” and to that “putrid philosopher Aristotle.”It is worthy of note in connection with his mental growth that, on the very cover of the book, he, most independently, declares war on the “Sophists,” though we do not mean to imply that such a war was not justifiable from many points of view. As a torch, however, for the illuminating of theological truth he is not unwilling to use philosophy. Very strong, nay emphatic, is his appeal to the Word of God on a trivial and purely speculative question relating to the inner life of the Trinity. He says: “Though many highly esteemed teachers assert this, yet the fact remains that on their side they have not Holy Scripture, but merely human reasons: but I say that on my side I have the Written Word that the soul is the image of God, and therefore I say with the Apostle ‘Though an angel from Heaven, i.e. a Doctor of the Church, preach to you otherwise, let him be anathema.’”In these glosses we may, however, seek in vain for any trace, even the faintest, of Luther’s future teaching. The young theologian still maintains the Church’s standpoint, particularly with regard to the doctrines which he was afterwards to call into question.He still speaks correctly of “faith which works through charity and by which we are justified.” Equally blameless are his statements regarding concupiscence in fallen man and the exercise of free will in the choice of good under the influence of Divine Grace. Once, it is true, he casually speaks of Christ as “our righteousness and sanctification,” but, in spite of the weight which has been laid on this expression, it is in no wise remarkable, and merely voices the Catholic view of St. Augustine, or better still, of St. Paul. To Romans i. 16 f., to which he was later to attach so much importance in his new system, he refers once, interpreting it correctly and agreeably with theGlossa ordinaria; clearly enough it had not yet begun to interest him and his harmless words afford no proof of the statement which has been made, that already at the time he wrote “the birth-hour of the reformation had rung.”That Luther also studied at that time some of the writings of St. Augustine we see from three old volumes of the works of this Father in the Zwickau Library, which contain notes made in Luther’s handwriting on theDe Trinitate, on theDe Civitate Dei, and other similar writings. These notes, made about the same time, are correct in their doctrine.According to Melanchthon, already at Erfurt he had begun a “very thorough study” of the African Father of the Church.In the latter notes, which were also published in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works,[51]he once flies into a violent fit of indignation with the celebrated Wimpfeling, who was mixed up in a literary dispute with the Augustinian Order. He calls the worthy man “a garrulous barker and an envious critic of the fame of the Augustinians, who had lost his reason through obstinacy and hate, and who requires a cut of the knife to open his mole’s eyes”; he, “with his brazen front, should be ashamed of himself.”[52]Glibness of tongue, combined with intelligence and fancy, and, in addition to unusual talents, great perseverance in study, these were the qualities which many admired in the new teacher. Whoever had to dispute with so sharp and fiery an opponent, was sure to get the worst of the encounter. The fame of the new teacher soon spread throughout the Augustinian province, but his originality and want of restraint naturally raised him up some enemies.Alongside of his readiness in controversy which some admired, many remarked in him quarrelsomeness and disputatiousness. He never learnt how to live “at peace” with his brothers,[53]as some of the old monks afterwards told the Humanist Cochlæus. His Catholic pupil Johann Oldecop, says of his leaving Erfurt for Wittenberg, that the separation was not altogether displeasing to the Augustinians of Erfurt, because Luther was always desirous of coming off victor in differences of opinion, and liked to stir up strife.[54]Hieronymus Dungersheim, a subsequent Catholic opponent who watched him very narrowly, writes that he “had always been a quarrelsome man in his ways and habits,” and that he had acquired that reputation even before ever he came to the monastery.[55]Dungersheim questioned those who had known him as a secular student at Erfurt. The above statements come, it is true, from thecamp of his adversaries, but they are not only uncontradicted by any further testimony, but entirely agree with other data regarding his character.Luther, in his own account of himself which he gave later, tells us that he was then and during the first part of his career as a monk, so full of zeal for the truth handed down by the Church that he would have given over to death any denier of the same, and have been ready to carry the wood for burning him at the stake. He also says in his queer, exaggerated fashion, that in those days he worshipped the Pope. At the same time he announces that his study of the Bible at Erfurt had already shown him many errors in the Papist Church, but that he had sought to soothe his conscience with the question: “Art thou the only wise man?” though by so doing he had retarded his understanding of the Holy Scriptures.[56]He also asserts later that his father’s words spoken at the banquet which followed his first Mass, viz. that his religious vocation was probably a delusion, had pierced ever deeper into his mind and appeared to him more and more true. Yet he likewise tells us elsewhere of his persevering zeal in his profession, and of his excessive fastings and disciplines.It is hard to find the real clue in this tangle of later statements, all of them influenced by polemical considerations.He says quite seriously, and this may very well be true, that what he was wont to hear at times outside the monastery from unbelieving “grammarians,” i.e. humanists, regarding the great difference between the teaching of Holy Scripture and that of the existing Church, made a deep impression on him.[57]He had, however, calmed himself, so he says, with the thought that this was other people’s business. In the monastic library he once came across some sermons of John Hus. Their contents appeared to him excellent, nevertheless, so he writes, from aversion for the author’s name, he laid aside the book without reading any further, though not without surprise that such a man should have written in many ways so well and so correctly. Johann Grefenstein, his master at Erfurt, had once let fall theremark in his presence that Hus had been put to death without any previous attempt being made to instruct or convert him.At that time, Hus failed to make any impression on him. Doubts, however, assaulted him in the shape of temptations. Those he repulsed, well aware of the danger. In June, 1521, writing at the Wartburg, he says that more than ten years before, much that was taught by Popes, Councils and Universities had appeared to him absurd and in contradiction with Christ, but that he had put a bridle on his thoughts in accordance with the Proverb of Solomon: “Lean not upon thy own prudence.”[58]Certain it is that his clear mind must early have perceived that the Church of that day fell far short of the ideal, and it is possible that even in those early years, such a perception may have awakened in him doubts and discontent and have led him to take a too gloomy view of the state of the Church.In any case, Luther’s own testimony as given above leads us to suspect the presence in his mind at an early date of a deep-seated dissatisfaction which foreboded ill to the monk’s future fidelity to the Church.[59]A strong moral foundation would have been necessary to save a mind so singularly constituted from wavering, and if we may believe the statement of his contemporary, Hieronymus Dungersheim of Leipzig, this was just what Luther had always lacked. Dungersheim, in a pamphlet against Luther the heretic, harks back to the years he spent at Erfurt as a secular student and accuses him of evil habits, probably contracted then, but the after effects of which made themselves felt when he had entered into religion and caused him to rebel against his profession. If Luther, so he says, was now persuaded that no religious could keep the vow of chastity, in his case the inability could only be due to a certain “former bad habit,” of which stories were told, and to his neglect of prayer.[60]In another writing the sameopponent accuses him openly of having indulged in the grossest vice during his academic years, and mentions as his informant one of the comrades who had, later on, accompanied Luther to the gates of the monastery.[61]He says nothing, perhaps, indeed, he knew nothing more definite, and with regard to Luther’s life in religion, he is unable to adduce anything to his discredit.But yet another of Luther’s later adversaries has strong words for our hero’s early life. His testimony, which has not so far been dealt with, must be treated of here because such charges, if well founded, doubtless contribute much to the psychological explanation of the processes going forward in Luther. This testimony is given by Hieronymus Emser of Dresden, who, it is true, was himself by no means spotless, and who, on that account, was roundly reprimanded by the man he had attacked. In his rejoinder to Luther, a pamphlet published in 1520, and the only one preserved, he says: “Was it necessary on account of my letter that you should hold up to public execration my former deviations which are indeed, for the most part, mere inventions? What do you think has come to my ears concerning your own criminal deeds (‘flagitia’)?” He will be silent about them, he says, because he does not wish to return evil for evil, but he continues: “That you also fell, I must attribute to the same cause which brought about my own fall, namely, the want of public discipline in our days, so that young men live as they please without fear of punishment and do just what they like.”[62]We must remember that at Erfurt Emser and Luther had stood in the relation of teacher and disciple. His words, like those of Dungersheim written from Leipzig, voice the opinion on Luther later on current in the hostile University circles of Erfurt.When Luther in his later years speaks of the “sins of his youth,” this, in his grotesquely anti-catholic vocabulary, means the good works of his monastic life, even the celebration of Holy Mass. Once, however, at the end of his tract on the Last Supper (1528),[63]speaking of the sins of his youth,he seems to distinguish between the Catholic works above referred to and other faults of which he accuses himself in the same general terms.In the young Augustinian’s Erfurt days he was prevented by the Rule from cultivating any intimate and distracting friendship with persons in the world. We only know that he, and likewise his brother monk Johann Lang, had some friendly intercourse with the Humanist Petreius (Peter Eberbach), who not long after, in a letter dated May 8, 1512, greets Lang—then already with Luther at Wittenberg—in these words: “Sancte Lange et Sancte Martine orate pro me.” Mutianus, the Gotha canon and chief of the Humanists, who was very unorthodox in his views, in a letter to Lang of the beginning of May, 1515, seems to remember Luther, for he sends greetings to the “pious Dr. Martin.”His intercourse with the Humanists led Luther to make use of philology in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. He thus entered upon a useful, we may even say indispensable, course, in which he might have done great service. At Erfurt he continued constantly to study his copy of the Bible, which had become an inseparable companion. “As no one in the monastery read the Bible” (at any rate not with his zeal) he was able to flatter himself with being first in the house in the matter of biblical knowledge; indeed in this field he was probably the greatest expert in the whole Congregation.In addition to this, he began to turn his busy mind to the study of Hebrew, and contrived to provide himself with a dictionary, which at that time was considered a treasure. Lang, with his humanistic culture, was able to assist him with the Greek.Meanwhile the dispute in the Order with regard to the observance had reached a point when it seemed right to the party to which Luther belonged to seek the intervention of Rome in their favour, or to anticipate an appeal on the part of their opponents. The choice of seven houses “of the observance” resulted in Luther being chosen as the delegate to represent them in Rome. So little opposed to the Church was Luther’s theology and Bible interpretation in his Erfurt days, and so considerable was the number of brethren, even in other Observantine houses who held himto be a faithful monk, that they deemed him best suited for so difficult a mission. What Cochlæus, according to information drawn from Augustinian sources, relates later sounds, however, quite reasonable, viz. that he was selected on account of his “cleverness and his forceful spirit of contradiction,” which promised a complete victory over the other faction.[64]Luther’s journey to Rome, according to Oldecop, was undertaken from Erfurt.3. The Journey to RomeThe Saxon, or more correctly German, Congregation of Augustinians, at the time of Luther’s journey to Rome, had reached a crisis in its history.Founded on the old Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, by the pious and zealous Andreas Proles (1503), and provided by him with excellent statutes intended to promote a reform of discipline, the Congregation had, since its foundation, been withdrawn from the control of the Provincial of the unreformed Augustinian Province of Saxony in order the better to preserve its stricter observance.[65]It stood directly under the General of the Order at Rome, whose German representative was a Vicar-General—in Luther’s time, Staupitz. He was simply styled Vicar, or sometimes Provincial. The monasteries under him numbered about thirty, and were distributed throughout several so-called districts, each headed by a Rural Vicar.Staupitz’s aim was to bring about a reunion of the German Congregation with the numerous non-observant monasteries in Germany, an amalgamation which would probably have led indirectly to his becoming the head of all these communities. He had already, September 30, 1510, after sounding the Pope, published a papal Bull approving such a union, and, by virtue of the same, begun to style himself Provincial of Thuringia and Saxony. His efforts were, however, met by decided opposition within the Congregation. Certain houses which were in favour of the old state of things and feared that union would lead to a relaxation of discipline, vehemently opposed Staupitz and his plans. Tothis party belonged also the Erfurt monastery, and Luther himself took an active part in the position assumed by his house. The object of his visit to Halle with Dr. Nathin to see Prince Adolf of Anhalt, the Cathedral Provost, had been to obtain a “petition” in favour of the “observance.” The opposition became acute when the Bull above referred to was published by Staupitz, and we may consider the protest of the seven Observantine monasteries against the Bull as the direct cause of Luther’s despatch to Rome.The monk, then seven-and-twenty years of age, with his written authority to act as procurator in the case (“litis procurator” is what Cochlæus, who was well informed on these matters, styles him), set out forthwith on his journey. It was in the autumn 1510,[66]and Luther was then lecturing on the third book of the Sentences. His absence lasted four or five months, i.e. until the spring 1511, when we again find him at Erfurt. Luther, and those who felt with him, found no difficulty in reconciling their efforts for the preservation of the observance against the will of Staupitz, with due submission to him as their Superior.Another monk of the Order accompanied Luther to the capital of Christendom as the Rule enjoined in the case of journeys. The joy at such an opportunity of seeing the Eternal City, of quenching his ardent thirst for knowledge by the acquisition of new experiences and of gaining the graces attached to so holy a pilgrimage, may well have hurried his steps during the wearisome journey, which in those days had to be undertaken on foot. He had even, according to a later statement, made the resolution to cleanse his conscience—so frequently tortured by fears—by a general confession, indeed he once says that this was his main object, passing over the real reason.With regard to the effect of the journey on the question concerning the Order, according to Cochlæus a certain compromise was reached, the details of which are, however, not told us. At any rate Staupitz was unable to carry out his plan and eventually gave it up. The dispute between“Observants” and “non-Observants” thus started, as we may gather from statements made by Luther to which we refer later, far from being at an end became more and more acute. It appears to have done untold harm to the Congregation and to have largely contributed to its fall.What effect had the visit to Italy and Rome upon the development of the young monk?Thousands have been cheered in spirit by the visit to the tombs of the Apostles; prayer at the holy places of Rome, the immediate proximity of the Vicar of Christ and of the world-embracing government of the Church made them feel what they had never felt before, the pulse-beat of the heart of Christendom, and they returned full of enthusiasm, strengthened and inspirited, and with the desire of working for souls in accordance with the mind of the Church.With Luther this was not the case.He was much less impressed by the Rome of the Saints than by the corruption then rampant in ecclesiastical circles.On first perceiving Rome from the heights of Monte Mario, he devoutly greeted the city, as all pilgrims were wont to do, overjoyed at having reached the goal of their long pilgrimage.[67]After that, he untiringly occupied himself, so far as his chief business permitted, in seeing all that Rome had to show. He assures us that he believed everything that was told him of the real or legendary reminiscences of the holy places both above and under ground. He does not, however, appear to have been very careful in his choice of guides and acquaintances, for the anecdotes concerning the condition of things at Rome which he brought back with him to his own country were, if not untrue, at least exceedingly spiteful. The Augustinians whom he there met had not the spirit of the reform inaugurated by Proles. Their southern freedom and lack of restraint found all too strong an echo in Luther’s character. The general confession he had projected was probably never made,[68]for, as he asserts later, he had not found among the clergy a single suitable, worthy man. During his distracting stay in the Eternal City he said Mass, so he tells us, perhaps once, perhaps ten times, i.e. occasionally, not regularly.[69]He was greatlyscandalised at much he heard and saw, partly owing to his looking at things with the critical eye of a northerner, partly owing to the really existing moral disorders.The Rome of that day was the Rome of Julius II, the then Pope, and of his predecessor Alexander VI; it was the Rome of the Popes of the height of the Renaissance, glorified by art, but inwardly deeply debased. The capital of Christendom, under the influence of the frivolity which had seized the occupants of the Papal throne and invaded the ranks of the higher clergy, had proved false to her dignity and forgetful of the fact that the eyes of the Faithful who visited Rome from every quarter of the globe were jealously fixed upon her in their anxiety lest the godless spirit of the world should poison the very heart of the Church.Instead of being edified by the good which he undoubtedly encountered and by the great ideal of the Church which no shadow can ever darken, Luther, with his critically disposed mind, proved all too receptive to the contrary impressions and allowed himself to be unduly influenced by the dark side of things, i.e. the corruption of morals. Subsequently, in his public controversies and private Table-Talk, he tells quite a number of disreputable tales,[70]which, whether based on fact or not, were all too favourable to his anti-Roman tendencies. He was in the habit of saying, in his usual tone, that whoever looked about him a little in Rome, would find abominations compared to which those of Sodom were mere child’s play. He declares that he heard from the mouth of Papal courtiers the statement: “It cannot go on much longer, it must break up.” In the company in which he mixed he heard these words let fall: “If there be a Hell, then Rome is built over it.” He says that he had heard it said of one, who expressed his grief at such a state of things, that he was a “buon cristiano” which meant much the same as a good-natured simpleton. In his proneness to accept evil tales he believed, at least so he asserts later, the statement made in his presence, that many priests were in the habit of repeating jokes at Mass in place of the words of consecration. He relates that he even questioned whether the bishops and priests at Rome, the prelates of the Curia, aye, the Pope himself, had any Christian beliefleft. It is not worth while to go into the details of the scandals he records, because, as Hausrath justly remarks, “it is questionable how much weight is due to statements which, in part, date from the later years of his life, when he had so completely altered.”[71]
VOL. I
LUTHER THE MONK
LUTHER
COURSE OF STUDIES AND FIRST YEARS IN THE MONASTERY
OnJuly 16, 1505, Martin Luther, then a student at the University of Erfurt, invited his friends and acquaintances to a farewell supper. He wished to see them about him for the last time before his approaching retirement to the cloister. “The bright, cheerful young fellow,” as his later pupil, Mathesius,[2]calls him, was a favourite in his own circle. Those assembled to bid him farewell, amongst whom were also “honest, virtuous maidens and women,”[3]were doubtless somewhat taken aback at their friend’s sudden determination to leave the world; but Luther was outwardly “beyond measure cheerful” and showed himself so light of heart that he played the lute while the wine-cup circled round.[4]
On the following morning—it was the feast of St. Alexius, as Luther remembered when an old man[5]—some of his fellow-students accompanied him to the gate of the Augustinian monastery and then, with tears in their eyes, saw the doors close upon him. The Prior, who was already apprised of the matter, greeted the timid new-comer, embraced him, and then, in accordance with the Rule, confided him to the Master of Novices to be initiated into the customs of the community.
In the quiet monastic cell and amid the strange new surroundings the student was probably able little by littleto master the excitement which, though hidden from outsiders, raged within his breast; for the determination to become a monk had been arrived at under strange, soul-stirring circumstances. He was on his way back to Erfurt, after a visit to his parents’ house, when, near Stotternheim, he was overtaken by a thunderstorm, and as a flash of lightning close beside him threatened him “like a heavenly vision,” he made the sudden vow: “Save me, dear St. Anne, and I will become a monk.”[6]He appears also at that very time to have been reduced to a state of great grief and alarm by the sudden death of a dear comrade, also a student, who had been stabbed, either in a quarrel or in a duel. Thus the thoughts which had perhaps for long been attracting his serious temperament towards the cloister ripened with overwhelming rapidity. Could we but take a much later assertion of his as correct, the reason of his resolve was to be found in a certain vexation with himself: because he “despaired” of himself, he once says, therefore did he retire into the monastery.[7]
It was his earnest resolution to renounce the freedom of his academic years and to seek peace of soul and reconciliation with God in the bosom of the pious community. He persisted in keeping the vow made in haste and terror in spite of dissuading voices which made themselves heard both within himself and around him, and the determined opposition of his father to his embracing the religious state. Some were full of admiration for the energetic transformation of the new postulant. Thus the respected Augustinian of Erfurt, Johann Nathin, compared the suddenness and decision of his step to the one-time conversion of Saul into the Apostle Paul.[8]Crotus Rubeanus, the Humanist, thenstopping at Erfurt, in a later letter to Luther, expressed himself no less forcibly with regard to the heavenly flash which had made him a monk.[9]The brothers of the “German Congregation of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine”—such was the full title of the Order—on their part rejoiced at the acquisition of the highly gifted and promising youth, who had already taken his degree as Master of Philosophy at the University of Erfurt.
If the novice, after gradually regaining peace of mind within the silent walls, permitted his thoughts to recur to his former way of life, this must have presented itself to him as full of trouble and care and very deficient in the homely joys of family life. Luther’s early career differed hardly at all from that of the poorest students of that time. He was born on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben in Saxony; his parents were Hans Luther, a miner of peasant extraction (he signed himself Luder) and Margaret Luther. They had originally settled in the town of Mansfeld, but had gone first to Möhra and then to Eisleben. Their gifted son spent his childhood in Mansfeld and first attended school there. His father was a stern, harsh man. His mother, too, though she meant well by him, once beat him till the blood came, all on account of a nut.[10]The boy was also intimidated by the stupid brutality of his teachers, and it does not appear that the customary religious teaching he received, raised his spirits or led to a freer, more hopeful development of his spiritual life. He was one day, as he relates later, “beaten fifteen times in succession during one morning” at school, to the best of his knowledge without any fault of his own, though, probably, not without having brought the punishment upon himself by insubordination and obstinacy. After that, in his fourteenth year, he received instruction in Magdeburg from the “Pious Brethren of the Common Life,” and begged his bread by singing from door to door. A year later he went to Eisenach, where his mother had some poor relatives, to continue his Latin studies. In this town he still pursued the same hard mode of earning his living, until a charitable woman, Ursula, the wife of Kunz (Konrad) Cotta, received him into her well-to-do andcomfortable household, furnishing him with food and lodging. Luther, in his old age, recalled with great gratitude the memory of his noble benefactress.[11]
As a boy he had experienced but little of life’s pleasures and received small kindness from the world; but now life’s horizon brightened somewhat for the growing youth.
Full of enthusiasm for the career mapped out for him by his father, that, namely, of the Law, he went in the summer of 1501 to the University of Erfurt. His parents’ financial circumstances had meanwhile somewhat improved as the result of his father’s industry in the mines at Mansfeld. The assiduous student was therefore no longer dependent on the help of strangers. According to some writers he took up his abode in St. George’s Hostel.[12]He was entered in the Matriculation Register of the Erfurt High School as “Martinus Ludher ex Mansfelt,” and for some considerable time after he continued to spell his family name as Luder, a form which is also to be found up to the beginning of the seventeenth century in the case of others (Lüder, Luider, Leuder). From 1512 he began, however, to sign himself “Lutherus” or “Luther.”[13]The lectures on philosophy, understood in the widest sense of the term, which he first attended were delivered at the University of Erfurt by comparatively capable teachers, some of whom belonged to the Augustinian Order. The Catholic spirit of the Middle Ages still permeated the teaching and the whole life of the little republic of learning. As yet, learning was still cast in the mould of the traditional scholastic method, and the men, equally devoted to the Church and to their profession, who were Luther’s principal teachers, Jodocus Trutfetter of Eisenach and Bartholomew Arnoldi of Usingen,[14]later an Augustinian, were well versed in the scholastic spirit of the day.
Alongside the traditional teaching of the schools there already existed in Erfurt and the neighbourhood another, viz. that of the Humanists, or so-called poets, which, though largely at variance with Scholasticism, was cultivated by many of the best minds of the day. Luther, with his vivacity of thought and feeling, could not long remain a stranger tothem. With their spiritual head Mutianus at Gotha, close by, they formed one of the more prominent groups of German Humanists, although, so far, they had not produced any work of great consequence. The contrast between Humanism and Scholasticism, which was to come out so strongly at a later period, was as yet hardly noticeable in the Erfurt schools. Crotus Rubeanus, at that time a University friend of Luther’s, became at a later date, however, the principal author of the “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,” a clever and biting libel on monks and Scholastics, written from a Humanist standpoint. Crotus boasted subsequently of his intimate intercourse (“summa familiaritas”) with Luther.[15]
Another Humanist friend whose spiritual relationship with him dates from that time, was Johann Lang, afterwards an Augustinian monk, with whom Luther stood in active interchange of thought during the most critical time of his development, as may be seen from the letters quoted below, and who, caught up by the Lutheran movement, left his Order[16]to become the first preacher of the new faith in Erfurt. The third name which we find in connection with Luther is that of Kaspar Schalbe, a cousin, or possibly a brother of the lady already mentioned, Mistress Ursula Cotta of Eisenach. Schalbe did not turn out any better than the others. A few years later, on being charged before the Elector of Saxony with a crime against morality, he was glad to avail himself of Luther’s mediation with the Ruler of the land.[17]Finally, we also know that a later patron and supporter of Luther, the Humanist Spalatinus, was then carrying on his studies in Erfurt. George Burckhardt of Spalt—whence his name Spalatinus—was a student there from 1498 to 1502, and, from 1505 to 1508, was engaged asa clerical preceptor in the immediate vicinity of the town. Luther and Spalatinus always looked on themselves later as early friends whom fate had brought together.
As a student, Luther devoted himself with great zest to the various branches of philosophy, and, carried away by the spirit of the Humanists, in his private time he studied the Latin classics, more particularly Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Ovid, also Terence, Juvenal, Horace and Plautus. At a later date he was able to make skilful use of quotations from these authors when occasion demanded. Amongst others, he attended the lectures of Hieronymus Emser, a subsequent opponent well worth his metal. Of his life during those years, which, owing to the laxity of morals prevailing in the town, must have been full of danger for him, we learn little, owing to the silence of our sources. Luther himself in his later years coarsely described the town as a “beer house” and a “nest of immorality.”
Unlike his frivolous comrades, he was often beset with heavy thoughts, no doubt largely due to the after effects of his gloomy youth. Among his chums he was known as “Musicus,” on account of his learning to play the lute, and as the “Philosopher,” owing to his frequent fits of moodiness.
In the monastery, where the reader left him, he no doubt remained subject to such fits of depression, especially at the beginning when dwelling on his change of life. It is difficult to say how far the feeling of self-despair, which he mentions, had mastered him before his entry into conventual life. In later years, apart from the vow and the mysterious “heavenly terror,” he also says that in leaving the world he was seeking to escape the severity of his parents. His statements, however, do not always agree. As for the precipitate vow to enter a monastery, he must have been well aware that, even if valid when originally made, it was no longer binding on him from the day when, after conscientious self-examination, he became aware that, owing to his natural disposition, he had no vocation for a religious life. Not every character is fitted for carrying out the evangelical counsels, and to force oneself into a mould, however good, for which one is manifestly unsuited is certainly not in accordance with the will of a wise and beneficent Providence.
Luther, agreeably with the statutes of the Order, duringthe whole period of his novitiate and until the hour of his profession had arrived, was perfectly free to return to his fellow-students, the religious tie never having been intended to bring him misery in place of the happiness which it promises. Immediately after coming to the monastery, i.e. before his clothing, he was, according to the Rule, given considerable time in which to weigh earnestly, under the direction of an experienced brother of the Order, whether, as stated in the statutes of the Augustinians, “the spirit which was leading him was of God.” Only after this did he receive the habit of the Order, apparently, however, in the same year, 1505. The habit consisted of a white woollen tunic, a scapular, also white, falling over the breast and back, and a black mantle with a hood and wide sleeves to be worn over all.
After the clothing began the novitiate, which lasted a whole year. During this period the candidate had not only to undertake a series of exercises consisting in prayer, manual labour and penitential works, but had also to discharge certain humiliating offices, which might help him to acquire the virtue of humility as practised in the Order. Out of consideration for the University and his academic dignity Luther was, however, speedily exempted from some of the latter duties. It appears that during his noviceship he was attentive to the rules, and that the superiors treated him with fatherly kindness. Although some members of the community may have observed the Rule from routine, while others, as is often the case in large communities, may not have been conspicuous for their charity—Luther refers to something of this kind in his Table-Talk—yet the spirit of the Erfurt monastery was, like that of most of the other houses of the Congregation, on the whole quite blameless. The novice himself, as yet full of goodwill, was not only satisfied with his calling, but even looked on the state he had chosen as a “heavenly life.”[18]
From the very first, however, as he himself complains later, he was constantly “worried and depressed”[19]by thoughts connected with religion. He was sorely troubled by the fear of God’s judgment, by gloomy thoughts on predestination, and by the recollection of his own sins. Althoughhe made a general confession in the monastery and renewed it again later, his confessions never gave him any satisfaction, so that his director laid on him the obligation not to hark back to things which caused him sadness of spirit nor to dwell on the details of his sins. “You are a fool,” he once said to him; “God is not angry with you, but it is you who are angry with Him.”
Those versed in the ways of the spiritual life are well aware that many a one aiming at perfection is exposed to the purifying fire of trials such as these. Traditional Catholic teaching and the experience of those skilled in the direction of conventual inmates had laid down the remedies most effectual for such a condition. What Luther himself relates later with regard to the encouragement he received from his superiors and brothers in the monastery, shows clearly that suitable direction, enlightenment and encouragement were not wanting to him either then or in the following years. He himself praises his “Præceptor” and “monastic pædagogue,” i.e. the Novice-Master, as “a dear old man,”[20]who “under the damned frock was without doubt a true Christian.”[21]It was probably he who said to him in an hour of trial that he should always recall the article of the Creed “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.”[22]“What are you doing, my son?” he said to him on another occasion; “do you not know that the Lord has Himself commanded us to hope?”[23]words which made a great and unforgettable impression on him. Later, in the year 1516, he pointed out another brother, Master Bartholomew (Usingen), as the “best paraclete and comforter”[24]in the Erfurt monastery, as he could testify from his own experience. The monks knew well and impressed it upon his troubled mind that,through the merits of the Redeemer, and after earnest preparation of the soul, true forgiveness may be obtained, and that through the cross of Christ, and through it alone, we can do all things necessary, even in the midst of the bitterest assaults.
Luther, however, too often responded to such admonitions only by cherishing his own views the more. He continued morbidly to torment himself. This self-torture, at any rate during the first enthusiastic days of his religious life, may have assumed the form of pious scruples, but later it gradually took on another character under the influence of bodily affections. He did not, like other scrupulous persons, regain his peace of mind, because, led away by his distorted and excited fancy, he liked, as he himself admits, to dwell on the doubts as to whether the counsels he received were not illusion and deception. Sad experience taught him into what devious paths and to “what a state of inward unrest, self-will and self-sufficiency are capable of leading a man.”[25]
The Superior or Vicar-General of the Saxon or German Augustinian Congregation to which Luther belonged was at that time Johann Staupitz, a man highly esteemed in the world of learning and culture.
He frequently visited Erfurt and had thus the opportunity of talking to the new brother whom the University had given him, and who may well have attracted his attention by his careworn look, his restless manner and his peculiar, bright, deep-set eyes. Staupitz soon began to have a great esteem for him. He had great influence over Luther, though unable to free him from the strange spirit, already too deeply rooted. To the sad doubts concerning his own salvation which Brother Martin laid before him, Staupitz replied by exhorting him as follows in the spirit of the Catholic Church: “Why torment yourself with such thoughts and broodings? Look at the wounds of Christ and His Blood shed for you. There you will see your predestination to heaven shining forth to your comfort.”[26]Quite rightly he impressed upon him, in the matter of confession and penance, that the principal thing was to arouse in himself the will to love God and righteousness, and that he must not pause before unhealthy imaginations of sin. The lines of thought,however, which the imaginative and emotional young man laid bare to him, were probably at times somewhat strange, and it is Luther himself who relates that Staupitz once said to him: “Master Martin, I fail to understand that.”
In spite of his inward fears Luther persevered, which goes to prove the strength of will which was always one of his characteristics. As the Order was satisfied with him, he was admitted at the end of the year of novitiate to profession by the taking of the three Vows of the Order. He received on this occasion the name of Augustine, but always preferred to it his baptismal name of Martin. The text of the Vows which he read aloud solemnly before the altar, according to custom, in the presence of the Prior Winand of Diedenhofen and all the brothers, was as follows: “I, Brother Augustine Luder, make profession and vow obedience to Almighty God, Blessed Mary ever Virgin and to thee Father Prior, in the name of, and as representing the Superior-General of the Hermits of St. Augustine, and his successors, likewise to live without property and in chastity until death, according to the Rule of our Holy Father Augustine.” The young monk, voluntarily and after due consideration, had thus taken upon himself the threefold yoke of Christ by the three Vows, i.e. by the most solemn and sacred promise which it is possible to make on earth. He had bound himself by a sacred oath to God to prepare himself for heaven by treading a path of life in which perfection is sought in the carrying out of the evangelical counsels of our Saviour, and throughout his life to combat the temptations of the world with the weapons of poverty, chastity and obedience.
Such was the solemn Vow, which, later on, he declared to have been absolutely worthless.
After making his profession the young religious was set by his Erfurt superiors to study theology, which was taught privately in the monastery.
The theological fare served up by the teachers of the Order was not very inviting, consisting as it largely did of the mere verbalism of a Scholasticism in decay. With the exception of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the students at the Erfurt monastery did not study the theological works of thegreat masters of the thirteenth century; neither Thomas of Aquin, the prince of scholastic theology and philosophy, nor his true successors, not even Ægidius Romanus, himself a Hermit of St. Augustine, were well known to them. The whole of their time at Erfurt, as elsewhere also, was devoted to the study of the last of the schoolmen who, indeed, stood nearer in point of time, but who were far from teaching the true doctrine with the fulness and richness of the earlier doctors. They were too much given to speculation and logical word-play. The older schoolmen were no longer appreciated and nominalistic errors, such as were fostered in the school of William of Occam, held the field. One of the better schoolmen of the day was Gabriel Biel. His works, which have a certain value, together with some of the writings of the Fathers of the Church, formed the principal arsenal from which Luther drew his theological knowledge, and upon which he exercised his dialectics. In addition to this, he also studied the theological tractates of John Gerson and Cardinal Peter d’Ailly, works which, apart from other theological defects, contain various errors concerning the authority of the Church and her Head; that these particular errors had any deeper influence on the direction of Luther’s mind cannot, however, be proved. What we do find is that the one-sidedness of this school, with its tendency to hairsplitting, had a negative effect upon him. At an early date he was repelled by the scholastic subtleties, for which, according to him, Aristotle alone was responsible, and preferred to turn to the reading and study of the Bible. He nevertheless made the prevalent school methods so much his own as to apply them often, in a quite surprising fashion, in his earliest sermons and writings.
The man who exercised the greatest influence on the theological study in the Erfurt monastery was the learned Augustinian, Johann Paltz, who was teaching there when Luther entered. He was a good Churchman and a fair scholar, and was also much esteemed as a preacher. By his side worked Johann Nathin, who has already been mentioned, likewise one of the respected theologians of the Order.[27]Luther’s teachers, full of veneration for the HolyScriptures as the revealed Word of God, were not at all displeased to see their pupil having frequent recourse to the Bible, in order to seek in the well of the Divine Word instruction and enlightenment, by which to supplement the teachings of the schoolmen and the Fathers.
Luther had, moreover, already become acquainted with the Bible in the library of the Erfurt University, whilst still engaged in studying philosophy. He had, however, not prosecuted his reading of the Bible, though the same library would doubtless have supplied him with numerous well-thumbed commentaries on Holy Writ. In the monastery a copy of the Bible was given him at the beginning of his theological course. It was, as we learn from him incidentally, a Latin translation bound in red leather, and remained in his hands until he left Erfurt. The statutes of the Order enjoined on all its members “assiduous reading, devout hearing and industrious study of the Holy Scriptures.”
The young monk immersed himself more and more in the study of his beloved Bible when Staupitz, the Vicar, advised him to select the same as his special subject in order to render himself a capable “localisandtextualis” in the Holy Scriptures.
The Superior seems to have had even then the intention of making use later of Luther as a public professor of biblical lore. So ardently was the Vicar’s advice followed by Luther that, in his preference for reading the Bible and studying its interpretation, he neglected the rest of his theological education, and his teacher Usingen was obliged to protest against his one-sided study of the sacred text. So full was Luther of the most sacred of books, that he was able (at least this is what he says later) to show the wondering brothers the exact spot in his ponderous red volume where every subject, nay even every quotation, was to be found. It was with great regret that, on leaving this community, he found himself prohibited by the Rule from taking the copy away with him. Later, as an opponent of the religious life, he states that no one but himself read the Bible in the monastery at Erfurt, whilst of his foe Carlstadt, a former Augustinian, he bluntly says that he had never seen a Bible until he was promoted to the dignity of Doctor. Of course, neither assertion can be taken literally.
When the day drew nigh for him to celebrate his first Massas newly ordained priest, he invited not only his father but several other guests to be present at a ceremony which meant so much both to him and to his friends. Thus, in a letter of invitation to Johann Braun, Vicar in Eisenach, who had shown him much kindness and help during his early years in that town, he says that: “God had chosen him, an unworthy sinner, for the unspeakable dignity of His service at the altar,” and begged his fatherly friend to come, and by his prayers to assist him “so that his sacrifice might be pleasing in the sight of God.” He also expressed to him his great indebtedness to Schalbe’s College at Eisenach, which he would also have gladly seen represented at the ceremony. This is the first letter of Luther’s which has been preserved and with which the critical edition of his “Correspondence,” now being published, commences.[28]The first Mass took place on Cantate Sunday, May 2, 1507. Luther relates later, with regard to his state of mind during the sacred ceremony, that he could hardly contain himself for excitement and fear. The words “Te igitur clementissime Pater,” at the commencement of the Canon of the Mass, and “Offero tibi Deo meo vivo et vero,” at the oblation, brought so vividly to his mind the Awful, Eternal Majesty, that he was hardly able to go on (“totus stupebam et cohorrescebam”); he would have rushed down from the altar had he not been held back; the fear of making some mistake in the ceremonies and so committing a mortal sin, so he says, quite bewildered him.[29]Yet he must have known, with regard to the ceremonies, that any unintentional infringement of them was no sin, and least of all a mortal sin, although he attributes the contrary opinion to the “Papists” after his apostasy.
His father Hans assisted at the celebration. His presence in the church and in the refectory was the first sign of his acquiescence in his son’s vocation. But when the latter, during dinner, praised the religious calling and the monastic life as something high and great,[30]and went on to recall the vow he had made at the time of the thunderstorm,asserting that he had been called by “terrors from Heaven” (“de cœlo terrores”), this was too much for his level-headed father, who, to the astonishment of the guests, sharply interposed with the words: “Oh, that it may not have been a delusion and a diabolical vision.” He could not overcome his dislike for his son’s resolve. “I sit here and eat and drink,” he cried, “and would much rather be far away.” Luther retorted he had better be content, and that “to be a monk was a peaceful and heavenly life.”[31]The statement with regard to the elder Luther agrees with the character of the man and with the severity which he had displayed long before to Martin.
Here an assertion must be mentioned made by George Wicel, a well-informed contemporary; once a Lutheran, he was, from 1533-8, Catholic priest at Eisleben. Two or three times he repeats in print, that Hans Luther had once slain a man in a fit of anger at his home at Möhra. Luther and his friends never denied this public statement. In recent years attempts have been made to support the same by local tradition, and the fact of the father changing his abode from Möhra to Mansfeld has thus been accounted for.[32]According to Karl Seidemann, an expert on Luther (1859), the testimony of Wicel may be taken as settling definitively the constantly recurring dispute on the subject.[33]
The following facts which have been handed down throw some light on the inward state of the young man at this time and shortly after.
At a procession of the Blessed Sacrament he had to accompany Staupitz, the Vicar, as his deacon. Such was the terror which suddenly seized him that he almost fled. On speaking afterwards of this to his superior, who was also his friend, he received the following instructive reply: “This fear is not from Christ; Christ does not affright, He comforts.”[34]
One day that Luther was present at High Mass in the monks’ choir, he had a fit during the Gospel, which, as ithappened, told the story of the man possessed. He fell to the ground and in his paroxysms behaved like one mad. At the same time he cried out, as his brother monks affirmed: “It is not I, it is not I,” meaning that he was not the man possessed.[35]It might seem to have been an epileptic fit, but there is no other instance of Luther having such attacks, though he did suffer from ordinary fits of fainting. Strange to say, some of his companions in the monastery had an idea that he had dealings with the devil, while others, mainly on account of the above-mentioned attack, actually declared him an epileptic. We learn both these facts from his opponent and contemporary, Johann Cochlæus, who was on good terms with Luther’s former associates. He asserts positively that a “certain singularity of manner” had been remarked upon by his fellows in the monastery.[36]Later on his brother monk, Johann Nathin, went so far as to assert that “an apostate spirit had mastered him,” i.e. that he stood under the influence of the devil.[37]
Melanchthon was afterwards to hear from Luther’s own lips something of the dark states of terror from which he had suffered since his youth. When he speaks of them at the commencement of his biographical eulogy on his late friend[38]he connects Luther’s strange excitement in the days before his entrance into religion with a certain event in his later history at a time when he was engaged in public controversy. “As he himself related, and as many are aware,” says Melanchthon, “when considering attentively examples of God’s anger, or any notable accounts of His punishments, such terror possessed him (‘tanti terrores concutiebant’) as almost to cause him to give up the ghost.” He describes how, as a full-grown man, when such fears overcame him, he would actually writhe on his bed. He suffered from these terrors (terrores) either for the first time, or most severely, in the year in which he lost his friend by death in an accident, i.e. before his admission to the monastery. “It was not poverty,” Melanchthon continues, “but his love of pietywhich led him to choose the religious life, and, while pursuing his theological and scholastic studies, he drank with glowing fervour from the springs of heavenly doctrine, namely, the writings of the prophets and apostles (i.e. the Old and New Testament) in order to instruct his spirit in the Divine Will and to nourish fear and love with strong testimony. Overwhelmed with these pains and terrors (‘dolores et pavores’), he plunged only the more zealously into the study of the Bible.”
According to Melanchthon’s account, the same old Augustinian who once had directed Luther’s attention in an attack of faint-heartedness to the Christian’s duty of recalling the article of the forgiveness of sins, also quoted him a saying of St. Bernard: “Only believe that thy sins are forgiven thee through Christ. That is the testimony which the Holy Ghost gives in thy heart: ‘Thy sins are forgiven.’ Such is the teaching of the apostle, that man is justified by faith.”[39]
Such words of Catholic faith and joyful trust in God might well have sufficed to reassure an obedient and humble spirit. Luther began to read more and more the mystic writings of the saint of Clairvaux, but as to how far they served to bring him peace of conscience no one can now say; certain it is that, at a later date, he placed a foreign interpretation upon the above-mentioned text and upon many other similar sayings of St. Bernard, which, taken in a Catholic sense, might have been of comfort to him, in order to render them favourable to the methods by which he proposed to make his new teaching a source of consolation. He accustomed himself more and more to follow “his own way,” as he calls it, in mind and sentiment. Though in later times he speaks often and at length of his spiritual trials in the monastery, we never hear of his humbling himself before God with childlike, trustful prayer in order to find a way out of his difficulties.
If we consider the temptations of which he speaks, we might be tempted to think that he, with his promising disposition and proneness to extremes, had been singled out in a quite special manner by the tempter. During the term of novitiate, writes Luther when more advanced in years, the evil spirit of darkness, so he has learned, does notusually assail so bitterly the monk who is striving after perfection. Satan generally tempts him but slightly, and, more especially as regards temptations of the flesh, the novice is left in comparative peace, “indeed, nothing appears to him more agreeable than chastity.”[40]But, after that time, so he tells us, he himself had to bewail not only fears and doubts, but also numberless temptations which “his age brought along with it.”[41]He felt himself at the same time troubled with doubts as to his vocation and by “violent movements of hatred, envy, quarrelsomeness and pride.”[42]
“I was unable to rid myself of the weight; horrible and terrifying thoughts (‘horrendæ et terrificæ cogitationes’), stormed in upon me.”[43]Temptations to despair of his salvation and to blaspheme God tormented him more especially.
He had often wondered, he says on one occasion to his father Hans, whether he was the only man whom the devil thus attacked and persecuted,[44]and later he comforted one who was in great anxiety with the words: “When beset with the greatest temptations I could scarcely retain my bodily powers, hardly keep my breath, and no one was able to comfort me. All those to whom I complained answered ‘I know nothing about it,’ so that I used to sigh ‘Is it I alone who am plagued with the spirit of sorrow!’”[45]
He thinks that he learned the nature of these temptations from the Psalms, and that he had by experience made close acquaintance with the verse of the Bible: “Every night I will wash my bed: I will water my couch with my tears” (Ps. vi. 7). Satan with his temptations was the murderer of mankind; but, notwithstanding, one must not despair. Luther here speaks of visions granted him, and of angels who after ten years brought him consolation in his solitude; these statements we shall examine later.
Elsewhere he again recounts how Staupitz encouraged him and the manner in which he interpreted his advice reveals a singular self-esteem. Staupitz had pointed out to him the interior trials endured by holy men, who had been purified by temptation, and, after having been humbled,had risen to be powerful instruments in God’s hand. Perhaps, said Staupitz, God has great designs also for you, for the greater good of His Church. This well-meant encouragement remained vividly impressed upon Luther’s memory, not least because it seemed to predict a great future for him. “And so it has actually come to pass,” he himself says later, “I have become a great doctor though in the time of my temptations I could never have believed it.”[46]Speaking later of a reference made by Staupitz to the temptations which humbled St. Paul, he says: “I accepted the words which St. Paul uses: ‘A sting of my flesh was given me lest the greatness of the revelation should exalt me’ (2 Cor. xii. 7), wherefore I receive it as the word and voice of the Holy Spirit.” Such reflections as these, to which Luther gave himself up, certainly did not tend to help him to rid himself completely of the temptations, and to vanquish his melancholy thoughts of predestination. As a result of following “his own way” and cultivating his morbid fears, he never succeeded in shaking himself free from the thought of predestination. This will appear quite clearly in his recently published Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, written in 1515-16. In fact, the whole of the theology which he set up against that of the Catholic Church was in some sense dominated by his ideas on predestination.
We must, however, pay him this tribute, that during the whole of his stay in the Erfurt monastery he strove to live as a true monk and to keep the Rule. Such was the testimony borne by an old brother monk, as Flacius Illyricus relates, who had lived with him at Erfurt and who always remained true to the Church.
Though such may well have been the case, we cannot all the same accept as reliable the accounts, exaggerated and distorted as they clearly are, which, long after his falling away, he gives of his extraordinary holiness when in the monastery. He there attributes to himself, from controversial motives, a piety far above the ordinary, and speaks of the tremendous labours and penances which he imposed upon himself in his blindness. Led away by his imagination and by party animus, he exalts his one-time “holiness by works,” as he terms it, to be the better able to assure his hearers—ostensibly from his own experience and from the bitterdisappointment he says he underwent—that all works of the Papists, even those of the most pious, holy and mortified, were absolutely worthless for procuring true peace for the soul thirsting after salvation, and that the Catholic Church was quite unable by her teaching to reconcile a soul with God. History merely tells us that he was an observant monk who kept the Rule, and, for that reason, enjoyed the confidence of his superiors.[47]
Relying upon his ability and his achievements, Staupitz, the Vicar, summoned him in the autumn of 1508, to Wittenberg, in order that he might there continue his studies and at the same time commence his work as a teacher on a humble scale.
As Master of Philosophy Luther gave lectures on the Ethics of Aristotle and probably also on Dialectics, though, as he himself says, he would have preferred to mount the chair of Theology, for which he already esteemed himself fitted, and which, with its higher tasks, attracted him much more than philosophy. In March, 1509, he was already the recipient of a theological degree and entered the Faculty as a “Baccalaureus Biblicus.” This authorised him to deliver lectures on the Holy Scriptures at the University.
In the same year, however, probably in the late autumn, Luther’s career at Wittenberg was interrupted for a time by his being sent back to Erfurt. With regard to the reasons for this nothing is known with certainty, but a movement which was going forward in the Congregation may have been the cause. In the question of the stricter observance which had recently been raised among the Augustinians, and which will be treated of below, Luther had not sided with the Wittenberg monastery but with his older friends at Erfurt. He was opposed to certain administrative regulations promoted by Staupitz, which, in the opinion of many, threatened the future discipline of the Order. At any rate, he had to return to Erfurt just as he was about to become “Sententiarius,” i.e. to be promoted to the office of lecturing on the “Magister Sententiarium.” For these lectures, too, he had already qualified himself. His second stay at Erfurt and the part—so important for the understanding of his later life—which he played in the disputes of the Order,are new data in his history which have as yet received little attention.
He was made very welcome by his brothers at Erfurt, at once took up his work as “Sententiarius” and, for about a year and a half, held forth on that celebrated textbook of theology, the Book of Sentences.
He was also employed in important business for the monastery and accompanied Dr. Nathin on a mission in connection with the question of the statutes of the Congregation and the above-mentioned dispute. Both went to Halle to Adolf of Anhalt, Provost of Magdeburg Cathedral, for the purpose of defending the “observance in the vicariate.” The monk made an excellent impression on the Provost of the Cathedral.[48]The esteem which Luther enjoyed while he was at Erfurt exposes the futility of those old fables, once widely circulated and generally believed, that whilst there he had entered into a liaison with a girl and had declared that he intended to go as far as he could until the times permitted of his marrying in due form.[49]
Of Luther’s lectures at that time some traces are to be found in a book in the Ratsschul-Library at Zwickau, these being the oldest specimens of his handwriting which we possess. They were made public in 1893 in volume ix. of the “Kritische Gesamtausgabe” of Luther’s works now appearing, and consist of detailed marginal notes to the Sentences of the Lombard of which the book in question is a printed copy.[50]The notes consist chiefly of subtle dialectic explanations or corrections of Peter Lombard and are quite in the theological style of the day. The vanity and audacity of the language used is frequently surprising; for instance, when the young master takes upon himself to speak of the “buffoonery” of contemporary theologians and philosophers, or of an ostensibly “almost heretical opinion” which he discovers in Venerable Duns Scotus; still more is this the case when he expresses his dislike of the traditional scholastic speculation and logic, alluding to the “rancid rules of the logicians,” to “those grubs, the philosophers,” to the “dregs of philosophy” and to that “putrid philosopher Aristotle.”
It is worthy of note in connection with his mental growth that, on the very cover of the book, he, most independently, declares war on the “Sophists,” though we do not mean to imply that such a war was not justifiable from many points of view. As a torch, however, for the illuminating of theological truth he is not unwilling to use philosophy. Very strong, nay emphatic, is his appeal to the Word of God on a trivial and purely speculative question relating to the inner life of the Trinity. He says: “Though many highly esteemed teachers assert this, yet the fact remains that on their side they have not Holy Scripture, but merely human reasons: but I say that on my side I have the Written Word that the soul is the image of God, and therefore I say with the Apostle ‘Though an angel from Heaven, i.e. a Doctor of the Church, preach to you otherwise, let him be anathema.’”
In these glosses we may, however, seek in vain for any trace, even the faintest, of Luther’s future teaching. The young theologian still maintains the Church’s standpoint, particularly with regard to the doctrines which he was afterwards to call into question.
He still speaks correctly of “faith which works through charity and by which we are justified.” Equally blameless are his statements regarding concupiscence in fallen man and the exercise of free will in the choice of good under the influence of Divine Grace. Once, it is true, he casually speaks of Christ as “our righteousness and sanctification,” but, in spite of the weight which has been laid on this expression, it is in no wise remarkable, and merely voices the Catholic view of St. Augustine, or better still, of St. Paul. To Romans i. 16 f., to which he was later to attach so much importance in his new system, he refers once, interpreting it correctly and agreeably with theGlossa ordinaria; clearly enough it had not yet begun to interest him and his harmless words afford no proof of the statement which has been made, that already at the time he wrote “the birth-hour of the reformation had rung.”
That Luther also studied at that time some of the writings of St. Augustine we see from three old volumes of the works of this Father in the Zwickau Library, which contain notes made in Luther’s handwriting on theDe Trinitate, on theDe Civitate Dei, and other similar writings. These notes, made about the same time, are correct in their doctrine.According to Melanchthon, already at Erfurt he had begun a “very thorough study” of the African Father of the Church.
In the latter notes, which were also published in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works,[51]he once flies into a violent fit of indignation with the celebrated Wimpfeling, who was mixed up in a literary dispute with the Augustinian Order. He calls the worthy man “a garrulous barker and an envious critic of the fame of the Augustinians, who had lost his reason through obstinacy and hate, and who requires a cut of the knife to open his mole’s eyes”; he, “with his brazen front, should be ashamed of himself.”[52]Glibness of tongue, combined with intelligence and fancy, and, in addition to unusual talents, great perseverance in study, these were the qualities which many admired in the new teacher. Whoever had to dispute with so sharp and fiery an opponent, was sure to get the worst of the encounter. The fame of the new teacher soon spread throughout the Augustinian province, but his originality and want of restraint naturally raised him up some enemies.
Alongside of his readiness in controversy which some admired, many remarked in him quarrelsomeness and disputatiousness. He never learnt how to live “at peace” with his brothers,[53]as some of the old monks afterwards told the Humanist Cochlæus. His Catholic pupil Johann Oldecop, says of his leaving Erfurt for Wittenberg, that the separation was not altogether displeasing to the Augustinians of Erfurt, because Luther was always desirous of coming off victor in differences of opinion, and liked to stir up strife.[54]Hieronymus Dungersheim, a subsequent Catholic opponent who watched him very narrowly, writes that he “had always been a quarrelsome man in his ways and habits,” and that he had acquired that reputation even before ever he came to the monastery.[55]Dungersheim questioned those who had known him as a secular student at Erfurt. The above statements come, it is true, from thecamp of his adversaries, but they are not only uncontradicted by any further testimony, but entirely agree with other data regarding his character.
Luther, in his own account of himself which he gave later, tells us that he was then and during the first part of his career as a monk, so full of zeal for the truth handed down by the Church that he would have given over to death any denier of the same, and have been ready to carry the wood for burning him at the stake. He also says in his queer, exaggerated fashion, that in those days he worshipped the Pope. At the same time he announces that his study of the Bible at Erfurt had already shown him many errors in the Papist Church, but that he had sought to soothe his conscience with the question: “Art thou the only wise man?” though by so doing he had retarded his understanding of the Holy Scriptures.[56]He also asserts later that his father’s words spoken at the banquet which followed his first Mass, viz. that his religious vocation was probably a delusion, had pierced ever deeper into his mind and appeared to him more and more true. Yet he likewise tells us elsewhere of his persevering zeal in his profession, and of his excessive fastings and disciplines.
It is hard to find the real clue in this tangle of later statements, all of them influenced by polemical considerations.
He says quite seriously, and this may very well be true, that what he was wont to hear at times outside the monastery from unbelieving “grammarians,” i.e. humanists, regarding the great difference between the teaching of Holy Scripture and that of the existing Church, made a deep impression on him.[57]He had, however, calmed himself, so he says, with the thought that this was other people’s business. In the monastic library he once came across some sermons of John Hus. Their contents appeared to him excellent, nevertheless, so he writes, from aversion for the author’s name, he laid aside the book without reading any further, though not without surprise that such a man should have written in many ways so well and so correctly. Johann Grefenstein, his master at Erfurt, had once let fall theremark in his presence that Hus had been put to death without any previous attempt being made to instruct or convert him.
At that time, Hus failed to make any impression on him. Doubts, however, assaulted him in the shape of temptations. Those he repulsed, well aware of the danger. In June, 1521, writing at the Wartburg, he says that more than ten years before, much that was taught by Popes, Councils and Universities had appeared to him absurd and in contradiction with Christ, but that he had put a bridle on his thoughts in accordance with the Proverb of Solomon: “Lean not upon thy own prudence.”[58]Certain it is that his clear mind must early have perceived that the Church of that day fell far short of the ideal, and it is possible that even in those early years, such a perception may have awakened in him doubts and discontent and have led him to take a too gloomy view of the state of the Church.
In any case, Luther’s own testimony as given above leads us to suspect the presence in his mind at an early date of a deep-seated dissatisfaction which foreboded ill to the monk’s future fidelity to the Church.[59]
A strong moral foundation would have been necessary to save a mind so singularly constituted from wavering, and if we may believe the statement of his contemporary, Hieronymus Dungersheim of Leipzig, this was just what Luther had always lacked. Dungersheim, in a pamphlet against Luther the heretic, harks back to the years he spent at Erfurt as a secular student and accuses him of evil habits, probably contracted then, but the after effects of which made themselves felt when he had entered into religion and caused him to rebel against his profession. If Luther, so he says, was now persuaded that no religious could keep the vow of chastity, in his case the inability could only be due to a certain “former bad habit,” of which stories were told, and to his neglect of prayer.[60]In another writing the sameopponent accuses him openly of having indulged in the grossest vice during his academic years, and mentions as his informant one of the comrades who had, later on, accompanied Luther to the gates of the monastery.[61]He says nothing, perhaps, indeed, he knew nothing more definite, and with regard to Luther’s life in religion, he is unable to adduce anything to his discredit.
But yet another of Luther’s later adversaries has strong words for our hero’s early life. His testimony, which has not so far been dealt with, must be treated of here because such charges, if well founded, doubtless contribute much to the psychological explanation of the processes going forward in Luther. This testimony is given by Hieronymus Emser of Dresden, who, it is true, was himself by no means spotless, and who, on that account, was roundly reprimanded by the man he had attacked. In his rejoinder to Luther, a pamphlet published in 1520, and the only one preserved, he says: “Was it necessary on account of my letter that you should hold up to public execration my former deviations which are indeed, for the most part, mere inventions? What do you think has come to my ears concerning your own criminal deeds (‘flagitia’)?” He will be silent about them, he says, because he does not wish to return evil for evil, but he continues: “That you also fell, I must attribute to the same cause which brought about my own fall, namely, the want of public discipline in our days, so that young men live as they please without fear of punishment and do just what they like.”[62]We must remember that at Erfurt Emser and Luther had stood in the relation of teacher and disciple. His words, like those of Dungersheim written from Leipzig, voice the opinion on Luther later on current in the hostile University circles of Erfurt.
When Luther in his later years speaks of the “sins of his youth,” this, in his grotesquely anti-catholic vocabulary, means the good works of his monastic life, even the celebration of Holy Mass. Once, however, at the end of his tract on the Last Supper (1528),[63]speaking of the sins of his youth,he seems to distinguish between the Catholic works above referred to and other faults of which he accuses himself in the same general terms.
In the young Augustinian’s Erfurt days he was prevented by the Rule from cultivating any intimate and distracting friendship with persons in the world. We only know that he, and likewise his brother monk Johann Lang, had some friendly intercourse with the Humanist Petreius (Peter Eberbach), who not long after, in a letter dated May 8, 1512, greets Lang—then already with Luther at Wittenberg—in these words: “Sancte Lange et Sancte Martine orate pro me.” Mutianus, the Gotha canon and chief of the Humanists, who was very unorthodox in his views, in a letter to Lang of the beginning of May, 1515, seems to remember Luther, for he sends greetings to the “pious Dr. Martin.”
His intercourse with the Humanists led Luther to make use of philology in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. He thus entered upon a useful, we may even say indispensable, course, in which he might have done great service. At Erfurt he continued constantly to study his copy of the Bible, which had become an inseparable companion. “As no one in the monastery read the Bible” (at any rate not with his zeal) he was able to flatter himself with being first in the house in the matter of biblical knowledge; indeed in this field he was probably the greatest expert in the whole Congregation.
In addition to this, he began to turn his busy mind to the study of Hebrew, and contrived to provide himself with a dictionary, which at that time was considered a treasure. Lang, with his humanistic culture, was able to assist him with the Greek.
Meanwhile the dispute in the Order with regard to the observance had reached a point when it seemed right to the party to which Luther belonged to seek the intervention of Rome in their favour, or to anticipate an appeal on the part of their opponents. The choice of seven houses “of the observance” resulted in Luther being chosen as the delegate to represent them in Rome. So little opposed to the Church was Luther’s theology and Bible interpretation in his Erfurt days, and so considerable was the number of brethren, even in other Observantine houses who held himto be a faithful monk, that they deemed him best suited for so difficult a mission. What Cochlæus, according to information drawn from Augustinian sources, relates later sounds, however, quite reasonable, viz. that he was selected on account of his “cleverness and his forceful spirit of contradiction,” which promised a complete victory over the other faction.[64]
Luther’s journey to Rome, according to Oldecop, was undertaken from Erfurt.
The Saxon, or more correctly German, Congregation of Augustinians, at the time of Luther’s journey to Rome, had reached a crisis in its history.
Founded on the old Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, by the pious and zealous Andreas Proles (1503), and provided by him with excellent statutes intended to promote a reform of discipline, the Congregation had, since its foundation, been withdrawn from the control of the Provincial of the unreformed Augustinian Province of Saxony in order the better to preserve its stricter observance.[65]It stood directly under the General of the Order at Rome, whose German representative was a Vicar-General—in Luther’s time, Staupitz. He was simply styled Vicar, or sometimes Provincial. The monasteries under him numbered about thirty, and were distributed throughout several so-called districts, each headed by a Rural Vicar.
Staupitz’s aim was to bring about a reunion of the German Congregation with the numerous non-observant monasteries in Germany, an amalgamation which would probably have led indirectly to his becoming the head of all these communities. He had already, September 30, 1510, after sounding the Pope, published a papal Bull approving such a union, and, by virtue of the same, begun to style himself Provincial of Thuringia and Saxony. His efforts were, however, met by decided opposition within the Congregation. Certain houses which were in favour of the old state of things and feared that union would lead to a relaxation of discipline, vehemently opposed Staupitz and his plans. Tothis party belonged also the Erfurt monastery, and Luther himself took an active part in the position assumed by his house. The object of his visit to Halle with Dr. Nathin to see Prince Adolf of Anhalt, the Cathedral Provost, had been to obtain a “petition” in favour of the “observance.” The opposition became acute when the Bull above referred to was published by Staupitz, and we may consider the protest of the seven Observantine monasteries against the Bull as the direct cause of Luther’s despatch to Rome.
The monk, then seven-and-twenty years of age, with his written authority to act as procurator in the case (“litis procurator” is what Cochlæus, who was well informed on these matters, styles him), set out forthwith on his journey. It was in the autumn 1510,[66]and Luther was then lecturing on the third book of the Sentences. His absence lasted four or five months, i.e. until the spring 1511, when we again find him at Erfurt. Luther, and those who felt with him, found no difficulty in reconciling their efforts for the preservation of the observance against the will of Staupitz, with due submission to him as their Superior.
Another monk of the Order accompanied Luther to the capital of Christendom as the Rule enjoined in the case of journeys. The joy at such an opportunity of seeing the Eternal City, of quenching his ardent thirst for knowledge by the acquisition of new experiences and of gaining the graces attached to so holy a pilgrimage, may well have hurried his steps during the wearisome journey, which in those days had to be undertaken on foot. He had even, according to a later statement, made the resolution to cleanse his conscience—so frequently tortured by fears—by a general confession, indeed he once says that this was his main object, passing over the real reason.
With regard to the effect of the journey on the question concerning the Order, according to Cochlæus a certain compromise was reached, the details of which are, however, not told us. At any rate Staupitz was unable to carry out his plan and eventually gave it up. The dispute between“Observants” and “non-Observants” thus started, as we may gather from statements made by Luther to which we refer later, far from being at an end became more and more acute. It appears to have done untold harm to the Congregation and to have largely contributed to its fall.
What effect had the visit to Italy and Rome upon the development of the young monk?
Thousands have been cheered in spirit by the visit to the tombs of the Apostles; prayer at the holy places of Rome, the immediate proximity of the Vicar of Christ and of the world-embracing government of the Church made them feel what they had never felt before, the pulse-beat of the heart of Christendom, and they returned full of enthusiasm, strengthened and inspirited, and with the desire of working for souls in accordance with the mind of the Church.
With Luther this was not the case.
He was much less impressed by the Rome of the Saints than by the corruption then rampant in ecclesiastical circles.
On first perceiving Rome from the heights of Monte Mario, he devoutly greeted the city, as all pilgrims were wont to do, overjoyed at having reached the goal of their long pilgrimage.[67]After that, he untiringly occupied himself, so far as his chief business permitted, in seeing all that Rome had to show. He assures us that he believed everything that was told him of the real or legendary reminiscences of the holy places both above and under ground. He does not, however, appear to have been very careful in his choice of guides and acquaintances, for the anecdotes concerning the condition of things at Rome which he brought back with him to his own country were, if not untrue, at least exceedingly spiteful. The Augustinians whom he there met had not the spirit of the reform inaugurated by Proles. Their southern freedom and lack of restraint found all too strong an echo in Luther’s character. The general confession he had projected was probably never made,[68]for, as he asserts later, he had not found among the clergy a single suitable, worthy man. During his distracting stay in the Eternal City he said Mass, so he tells us, perhaps once, perhaps ten times, i.e. occasionally, not regularly.[69]He was greatlyscandalised at much he heard and saw, partly owing to his looking at things with the critical eye of a northerner, partly owing to the really existing moral disorders.
The Rome of that day was the Rome of Julius II, the then Pope, and of his predecessor Alexander VI; it was the Rome of the Popes of the height of the Renaissance, glorified by art, but inwardly deeply debased. The capital of Christendom, under the influence of the frivolity which had seized the occupants of the Papal throne and invaded the ranks of the higher clergy, had proved false to her dignity and forgetful of the fact that the eyes of the Faithful who visited Rome from every quarter of the globe were jealously fixed upon her in their anxiety lest the godless spirit of the world should poison the very heart of the Church.
Instead of being edified by the good which he undoubtedly encountered and by the great ideal of the Church which no shadow can ever darken, Luther, with his critically disposed mind, proved all too receptive to the contrary impressions and allowed himself to be unduly influenced by the dark side of things, i.e. the corruption of morals. Subsequently, in his public controversies and private Table-Talk, he tells quite a number of disreputable tales,[70]which, whether based on fact or not, were all too favourable to his anti-Roman tendencies. He was in the habit of saying, in his usual tone, that whoever looked about him a little in Rome, would find abominations compared to which those of Sodom were mere child’s play. He declares that he heard from the mouth of Papal courtiers the statement: “It cannot go on much longer, it must break up.” In the company in which he mixed he heard these words let fall: “If there be a Hell, then Rome is built over it.” He says that he had heard it said of one, who expressed his grief at such a state of things, that he was a “buon cristiano” which meant much the same as a good-natured simpleton. In his proneness to accept evil tales he believed, at least so he asserts later, the statement made in his presence, that many priests were in the habit of repeating jokes at Mass in place of the words of consecration. He relates that he even questioned whether the bishops and priests at Rome, the prelates of the Curia, aye, the Pope himself, had any Christian beliefleft. It is not worth while to go into the details of the scandals he records, because, as Hausrath justly remarks, “it is questionable how much weight is due to statements which, in part, date from the later years of his life, when he had so completely altered.”[71]