In the middle of the square at Wittemberg stood an ancient wooden chapel, thirty feet long and twenty wide, whose walls, propped up on all sides, were faUing into ruin.
An old pulpit, made of planks, and three feet high, received the preacher.
It was in this wretched place that the preaching of the Reformation began.
The foundations of the new Augustinian church had just been laid, and in the meanwhile this miserable place of worship was used.*
" This building," adds Myconius, M'ell be compared to the stable in which Christ was born.
It was in this wretched enclosure that God willed, so to speak, that his well-beloved Son should be born a second time.
Among those thousands of cathedrals and parish churches with which the world is filled, there was not one at that time which God chose for the glorious preaching of eternal life."t
" Every thing was striking in the neAv minister.
His expressive countenance, his noble air, his clear and sonorous voice, captivated all his hearers.
Before this time, the majority of preachers had sought rather what might amuse their congregations, than what would convert them.
The great seriousness that pervaded all Luther's sermons, and the joy with which the knowledge of the gospel had filled his heart, imparted to his eloquence an authority, a warmth,' and an unction that his predecessors had not possessed.":}:
* D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation, Vol.
Myconiiia' ]\IS. Hist, of the Eef.
Ere long the little wooden chapel of the Augustinians could not contain the crowds who flocked to listen to the young professor-monk.
Then the town council of Wittemberg appointed Luther their chaplain, and he henceforth preached in the large city church.
The energy of his genius, the animation of his style, and the excellence of his doctrine soon extended his reputation throughout Germany, and once the Elector himself travelled to Wittemberg on purpose to hear him.
The testimony which supports the oratory of Demosthenes is not more voluminous than that v\^hich relates to the fiery eloquence of Martin Luther.
The willing and admiring tongues of scores of his contemporaneous fi'iends and adherents proclaim it.
The hesitating lips of the most prejudiced and reluctant of the Jesuits avow it.
"He possessed," says the Jesuit historian Maimbourg, " a quick and penetrating genius ; he was indefatigable in his studies, and he was frequently so absorbed in them as to abstain from meat for whole days together.
He acquired great knowledge of languages and of the fathers.
He was remarkably strong and healthy, and of a sanguine, bilious temperament.
His eyes were piercing and full of fire ; his voice sweet and vehement, when fairly raised."* " Endowed," says another of his opponents,
"with a ready and Hvely genius, with a retentive memory, and employing his mother tongue with * Maiinbourg's Histoiy of Lutheranism.
THE LIFE AND TIMES wonderful facility, Luther was inferior to none of his contemporaries in eloquence.
Speaking from the pulpit as if he were agitated by some violent emotion, suiting the action to the words, ho affected his hearers' minds in a surprising manner, and carried them like a torrent, wherever he pleased."'""
" He had," savs Bossuet, himself the most eloquent of the French Romanists, " a lively and impetuous eloquence, that* charmed and led away the people."t
Varillas, a celebrated French Jesuit, paints this picture of the great reformer " To the robustness, health, and industry of a German, nature seems here to have added the spirit and vivacity of an Nobody excelled him in philosophy and scholastic theology
; nobody equalled him in the art of speaking.
He was a most perfect master of eloquence.
He had completely discovered where lay the strength and where the weakness of the human mind ; and accordingly he knew how to render his attacks successful.
However various or discordant might be the passions of his audience, he could manage them to his own purposes, for he presently saw the ground upon which he stood; and even if the subject were too difficult for argument, he carried his point by poj)ular illustration and the use of figures.
Even in ordinary conversation he displayed the same power over the affec- * Florimond Eaymond's Hist. Hasres., cap. t Bossu6t's "Hist, des Yixriations," p. tions which he had so often demonstrated in the professional chair and in the pulpit."^^
We remember nothing recorded of the oratory of Cicero or Pericles more highly eulogistic than this entire mass of testimony gleaned from the works of Martin Luther's bitterest haters and reyilers.
In the many days gone by there was a king who said unto his prophet, " Come, curse me Jacob, and come, defy Israel;" and the prophet "lifted up his eyes, and he saw Israel abiding in his tents," and he took up his parable, and said, " How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!
As the valleys are they spread forth, as the gardens by the river's side, as the trees of lign-aloes, which the Lord hath planted, and as cedar-trees beside the waters.
Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee!"
And the king's anger was kindled, and he said, "I called thee to curse mine enemies, and behold, thou hast altogether blessed them.
Therefore now flee thee to thy place."t The prophet's name was not Maimbourg, or Eaymond, or Bossu^t, or Varillas, but the moral will do for them.
So ripely learned, so rich in his experience, so varied in his accompHshments, was Martin Luther, when, at the age of twenty-sis, he began publicly to expound the Scriptures in the academic hall and in the church at Wittemberg.
See Milner's Church History, vol. t Numbers, chaps. 23 and 2i pcLv.sim.
Theough all the manifold and severe labors of Lutlier's initiatory period at Wittemberg, he continued to feel anxious and disturbed—got little consolation.
An aching void still yawned in his soul, which penances, vigils, and the incessant repetition of the credo did not bridge over.
In this state of mind it happened that seven convents of his order were at variance on certain points with the vicar-general;"''" and Luther, on account of his acuteness of mind, his powers of language, and his extraordinary talents for discussion, was selected to proceed to Home and lay the matter before the pope for his adjudication.
He was in an ecstasy.
" Here at length," he murmured, Filled with the prejudices of the cloister, he regarded the "Eternal City" as the shehinah—as the earthly tabernacle of the most high God.
His vivid imagination pictured it as the seat of austere piety, learned ecclesiasticism, and saintly virtue.
Vatican was there, and the archives of the church.
The memory of sixteen Christian centuries hallowed its churches, built of porphyry, amethyst, ivory, and alabaster, its ecclesiastical palaces, and its sacred
* Quod septem couventus a vicario in quibiisdam disseutireut. museums, crowded with the rarest curiosities culled from Saracenic spoils.
Taking with him a brother monk as a companion,* Luther set out for Rome in 1510,t and descended through the passes of the Alps into the rich and voluptuous plains of Italy.
The sober pen of history has never before or since painted such a picture of Eoman profligacy as it draws of Italy at this period of Luther's visit.
The pagan wickedness of Caligula and Nero was decent in comparison.
The rotten morals of the saturnalia were white when set against the blackness of pontifical infamy.
Even the homage of hypocrisy had ceased to be paid to discrowned virtue.
But the revelation of these things was still to be made to the unsuspecting mind of the young German priest.
The first thing which awakened his astonishment was the good cheer and sumptuous entertainment which he everywhere discovered, as he visited convent after convent on his road towards
Pausing one evening at the marble convent of the Benedictines, on the banks of the Po, in Lombardy, he was amazed at the tales told him of the princely revenues of the monastery,:}: at the splendor of the apartments, and at the richness of the conISIeurer's Life of Luther. t Some biographers say in 1511, others in 1512.
Luther's Eoman visit is still a disputed point.
Its regular income was 36,000 ducats : 12,000 were used in furnishing the table ; 12,000 in repairs, etc.
; the remainder in suppljong the wants of the monks.
THE LIFE AND TIMES ventual dress.
He knew not what to make of this magnificence of humility—this regal splendor of penitence.* In this j)alace of the Benedictines Luther tarried several days, one of which chanced to be Friday.
Wliat was his horror at beholding the luxurious table of the monastery groaning beneath a load of meat.
Yenturing to expostulate with his epicurean brethren on account of this gross dereliction of monastic austerity, the irritated monks threatened to depriv.e him of his life if he dared to complain to the pope of their irregularities.
Making his escape with considerable difficulty, and through the connivance of the porter,t from this den of epicures, the astounded young German pressed on towards Rome, where he aspired to lay aside all his growing burden of uneasy doubt at the tomb of the apostles.
His object in making all haste was to arrive in Rome by St. John's eve " you know the old Roman proverb : 'Happy the mother whose child shall celebrate mass in Rome on Oh, how I desired to give my mother this happiness
; but this was impossible, and it vexed me greatly to find it so.":}; On reaching Bologna, both he and his companion fell dangerously ill— sickness caused, undoubtedly, by the great change in their diet.
The traveller's poor head had also been too violently assailed by the sun of Italy, and even more than this, by the strange things, the uu- * Michelet's ^.ife of Lutlier. wonted sights, and the singular manners which he had seen and heard all along his route.
He was obliged to keep his bed for some time at Bologna, the throne of the Roman law and of the legists.
Here he fell a prey to the most terrible depression : a stranger in a foreign land, far from his loved Germany, this of itself was sufficient to sadden him.
But in addition to this, "the sense of his sinfulness troubled him ; the prospect of God's judgment filled him with dread.
But at the very moment that these terrors had reached their highest pitch, the words of St. Paul recurred forcibly to his mind,
The just shall live hy faith, enlightening his soul like a ray from heaven."* Restored and comforted by these words, the Wittemberg monk soon regained sufficient strength to enable him to pursue his journey; merely passing through Florence without pause, he at length reached Rome—Rome, so long the object of his holy love, and of his enthusiastic dreams.
He proceeded at once to the convent of his order, near the " Upon arriving," he says, " I fell on my knees, raised my hands to heaven, and exclaimed. Hail, holy Rome; made holy by the holy martyrs, and by the blood whicli has been spilt here."
It was with a different salutation that he afterwards greeted In his fervor he adds, "I hastened to visit the * D'Aubigne's Hist, of the Kefcrmation, Vol.
THE LIFE AND TIMES sacred places; saw all, believed all."
He soon perceived, liowever, that lie was the only person who did believe ; Christianity seemed totally forgotten in the very capital of Christendom.
The pope was no longer the infamous Alexander Borgia, but the choleric and warlike Julius " that his great artist Michael Angelo represented him overwhelming Bologna with his benediction.
The pope had just at this time commanded the sculptor to chisel for him a funereal monument as large as a church : of this projected monument, the Moses, with some other statues which have come down to us, were to have formed a part.
" The sole thought which occujDied the pope and Home at this juncture, was the war against the Luther had manifestly slight chance of a favorable opportunity for discoursing of grace and the inefficacy of works to this singular priest, who beseiged towns in person, and who only just before had refused to enter Mirandola otherwise than by the breach he had made in its walls.
His cardinals, apprentice-officers under him, were politicians, diplomatists, or more generally upstai't savans, who read nothing but Cicero, and who would have feared to hurt their Latinity by opening the Bible.
When they spoke of the pope, it was of the Pontifex Maximus ; a canonized saint was, in their language, a man rclatus inter Divos ; and if they at any time referred to grace, they phrased it thus: Deorum immortalium henejiciisy"
In one of liis conversations Luther giyes us naively an idea of how terrible Italy was to the imagination of the simple-hearted Germans:
Italians only require you to look in a mirror to be able to kill you.
They can deprive you of all your senses by secret poisons.
. In Italy the air itself is pestilential ; at night they close hermetically every window, and stop up every chink and cranny."*
Luther was speedily attracted by the ruins of pagan Home.
Treading everywhere on the ashes of the past, he recalled Scipio's sad presentiment, when he stood gazing upon the tottering walls and burning palaces of that Carthage which his miUtary genius had brought to ruin
: "Thus will it one day be with Rome."
"And in truth," exclaimed Luther, " the Rome of the Scipios and Csesars has become a corpse.
There are such heaps of rubbish that the foundations of the houses are now where once stood the roofs.
It is tliere that once the riches and treasures of the earth were heaped together."
"But with these profane ashes were mingled other and holier ones: he recalled them to mind.
The burial-place of the martyrs was not far from that of the generals of Rome, and of her conquerors.
Christian Rome with its sufferings had more power over the heart of the Saxon monk than pagan Rome with all its glory.
Here that letter arrived in which Paul wrote. The just shall live hy faith.
He might gaze upon the Apj)ii Forum and the Three Taverns.
Near by was the house of Narcissus * Tischredeu, p. 440.
THE LIFE AND TIMES palace of Caesar, where the Lord delivered the apostle from the jaws of the Hon."* But Luther was destined to enjoy at Eome nothing but the consolation of these memories. He could have no sympathy with the revelations of the babbling pedants and worldlj'' priests of the pontifical court.
And if the bewildered ambassador turned for comfort to the churches, he did not even hear a decent mass.
The blasphemous haste with which the Boman priests celebrated the sacrament of the altar, and the profane mechanism to which they had reduced the entire ceremony, astounded the Saxon monk, while they stood laughing at his simplicity.
On one occasion when himself officiating, he discovered that the priests at an adjoining altar had repeated seven masses ere he had completed one.
" Quick, quick," cried one, "send our Lady back her Son ;" making an impious allusion to the transubstantiation of the bread into the body of At another time Luther himself relates that he had not got through the gosj)el, ere the priest who was officiating vdih him had dispatched with imjiious celerity the whole service, and stood whispering to him, " Passa, jMssa ; ife, missa est''—Haste, haste; make an end of it.^:
Being one day at table with several prelates, open buflfooner}' of manner and impious conversation were indulged in.
The indecent churchmen did not hesitate to give utterance to the most ribald jests * D'Aubigne's Hist, of the Ref., Vol. t Tischreden, p. 411.