ing and Ms motlier's kiss, and left liome for Magdeburg, where liis father had resolved to place him in the Franciscan school.
" In the month of May, 1497, two scholars wended their way along the high road from Mansfeldt to Bernburg, knapsacks on their backs, sticks in their hands, and great tears rolHng down their cheeks
: they were Martin Luther, aged fourteen, and his comrade Hans Keinicke, about the same.
Both had just quitted the paternal roof, and were proceeding on foot to Magdeburg, to avail themselves of the currend schulen, celebrated seminaries in the middle ages, which still exist.
Here each boy paid for his board and education by means of alms collected from the richer townsmen, under whose windows they used to sing twice a week, and of money earned as choristers."""
After the passage of a few months, Luther's parents, learning of the difficulty with which he supported himself at Magdeburg, transferred him to the free school at Eisenach, in which village he had a number of relatives.
But despite that fact, the young student at the outset fared but little better than at the Franciscan school.
As illustrating a singular phase of the social Hfe of those times, it is worthy of notice that, at Eisenach as at Magdeburg, Luther supported himself by singing before people's houses; and it was a custom then of the poor students of Germany.
Luther, after relating this circumstance, adds, " Let no one in my pres- * Audiu's "Histoire de M. Liither."
THE LIFE AND TIMES ence speak contemptiiouslj of the poor fellows wlio go from door to door singing and begging bread pi^ojjter Deum.
You know the psalm says, Princes and kings have sung.
I myself was once a j^oor mendicant, seeking my bread at people's houses, particularly at Eisenach, my own dear Eisenach."Eventually he obtained a more regular subsistence and an asylum in thehouse of Ursula
Cotta, a hospitable and kind-hearted woman, wdio has been made famous by her connection with Luther, The charitable lady had noticed
Luther at church, and had been especially pleased by his singing, Martin then being engaged every Sunday as chorister.
One evening, on opening her door, she noticed the boy standing dejectedly before her house and gazing wistfully at the board amply spread within.
Eecogniziug him, the lady asked what he desired.
Poor Luther, who was very hungry, and who while begging had already on that day been repulsed from three houses, won by the kind tones and benevolent asj)ect of dame Ursula, poured into her ear his whole story.
She supplied his wants ; and upon her husband Conrad's return, he also became so much interested in the bright and fascinating bo}', that he was fain to invite him to take up his permanent residence with them, which a few days afterwards he did.
" Luther passed in Cotta's house a very different kind of life from that which he had hitherto known.
His existence glided away calmly, exempt Miclielet's Life of Luther, pp.
; his mind became more serene, liis character more cheerful, and his heart more open.
All his faculties awoke at the mild rays of charity, and he began to exult with life, joy, and happiness.
His j^rayers were more fervent, his thirst for knowledge greater, and his progress in study more rapid.
" To literature and science he added the charms of the arts, for they also were advancing in Germany.
The men whom God destines to act upon their contemporaries, are themselves at first influenced and carried away by all the tendencies of the age in which they live.
Luther learned to play on the flute and on the lute.
With this latter instrument he used often to accompany his fine alto voice, and thus cheered his heart in the hours of sadness.
He took delight in testifying by his melody his lively gratitude towards his adopted mother, who was passionately fond of music.
He himself loved the art even to old age, and composed the words and airs of some of the finest hymns that Germany possesses.
Many of these have even passed into our language."""
Luther alwa^^s retained the liveliest gratitude for the protection and friendship lavished uj)on him by the Years afterwards, when his fame filled Christendom, one of his old friend's sons came to study at "Wittemberg, and the youth was received under Luther's own roof, and treated with the utmost consideration.
* D'Anbigne's History of the Reformation, Vol.
Ursula Cotta that lie uttered this beautiful thought " There is nothing sweeter on earth than the heart of a woman in which piety dwells."
By the assistance rendered him by the Cotta family, Martin was enabled to remain at the Eisenach school during four years.*
In that time he studied grammar, rhetoric, and poetry under a famous master, Trebonius, rector of the convent of the Barefooted Carmelites.
Trebonius to give his lessons with head uncovered, to honor, as he said, the consuls, chancellors, doctors, and masters who would one day proceed from his school.
Martin's ready comprehension, his natural eloquence, his rare power of elocution, his skill in composition, both prose and poetical, soon made him the object of his master's special favor
; at the same time, his open, cheerful, and obliging disposition made him exceedingly popular with his school-mates, and soon pushed him into the leadership in their fi'olics, as he had always been in their studies.f
From this pleasant and improving scene Luther was, in His father, now in easier circumstances, wished his son to repair to tlie university of Martin quitted, not without mau}^ sighs and tears, the dear
Eisenach streets, and in his eighteenth year he was matriculated at Erfurth.
• Miclielet's Life of Luther. f AucUu's "Hist, de Luther.'
In the registers of tlie university, still open to the inspection of the curious, in the quaint old town of Erfurth, the name of Luther may still be deciphered, written there by the rector Jodocus Truttvetter, " 3Iart{nus Ludher, ex 3Ians/ield."
This entry is made under the year 1501.
A year later, in 1502, the name once more appears:
" 3Iartimis Luder, Baccalaurius pMlosopldce.'"
"At Erfurth," says Melancthon, "Martin read most of the writings that remain to us of the ancient Latins, Cicero, Yirgil, and the rest.
At the age of twenty he was honored with the title of Master of Arts ; and then, by the advice of his relations, he began to apply himself to jurisprudence.
In the monastery, he excited general admiration in the public exercises by the facilitj^ with which he extricated himself from the labyrinths of dialectics.
He read assiduously the prophets and the apostles, then the books of St. Augustine, his explanation of the Psalms, and his book on the "
Spirit and the Letter."
He almost got by heart the treatises of Gabriel Biel and Pierre d'Audilly, bishop of Cambray ; he studied with earnestness the writings of Occam,.whose logic he preferred to that of Scotus and Thomas Aquinas.
He also read a great deal of the writings of Gerson, and above all, those of St. Augustine.""* * Melaucthoirs " Vita Lutlieri."
While at the university, Luther mastered the subtle intricacies of the scholastic theology and of Aristotle's dialectics, both of which God destined him in after years to wound so fatally.
His instructors at Erfurth were Jodocus Truttvetter, whose death he afterwards accused himself of hastening by his rebellion against and discomfiture of the curriculum of the schools ;* Jerome Emser, who explained the poetics of Eeuchhn
Hecker, an Augustin monk, who afterwards became a convert to the tenets of the Reformation, introducing it into his convent ;t Bartholomew Usinger, surnamed Arnoldi, who vigorously opposed the new doctrine
; John Grovenstein, who loudly protested against the execution of John Huss, and regarded the curate of Bethleem as a martyr
John Bigaud, who remained throughout life zealoush' attached to his pupil.:]; Under the tuition of these able professors, young
Luther made rapid progress in his studies.
Here also, as at the schools of Magdeburg and Eisenach, his frank and generous temper melted all hearts into the warmest attachment
; while his retentive memory, his teeming imagination, his brilliant scholarship, his acute and soaring intellect, and his moral deportment, made
" the whole imiversity," as Melancthon assures us, " admire his genius."§ Although, in obedience to his father's wish, * Audin's "Histoire ile LntluT."
§ "Sic igitur in jnventute eminebat, ut toti academite Lutlioi-i iDgenium udmirationi essct."
Martin devoted himself assiduously to the study of the civil law, his heart was never in it.
He infinitely preferred the belles-lettres and music.
Of music he did not hesitate to say, that to him it a])peared the first of the arts after theology.
"Miisic," he afl&rmed, " is the art of the prophets ; it is the only other art which, like theology, can calm the agitations of the soul and put the devil to flight."
" Not less remarkable, not less significant than his prose works, are the poems of Luther, those stirring songs which escaped from him in the very midst of his combats and his necessities, as a flower makes its way from between rough stones, or as a moonbeam ghtters amid dark clouds.
; he wrote indeed a treatise on the art.
His versification accordingly is in a very high degree harmonious, so that under this head too he mav be called the Swan of Eisleben
: not that he was by any means gentle or swanlike in the songs which he composed for the purpose of exciting the courage of his people
; in these he is fervent, fierce.
The hymn which he composed on his way to Worms is a regular war song.
The old cathedral trembled when it heard these novel sounds ; the very crows flew from their nests on its towers.
That hymn, the Marseillaise of the Keformation, has preserved to the present day its potent spell over German hearts, and we may yet hear it thundered foiiih."*
This inclination to music and literature, the * Heine, in the " Revue de Deux Mondes" for Marcli 1, 1834.