The Man and His Deeds

THE REFCKMATION IN PERIL not permit what nature wants and must do, what is he doing but preventing nature from being nature, fire from burning, water from being wet, and man from either drinking, eating, or sleeping?"

Not only Heinrich Denifle considered this self-incriminating: "If the Protestants had found a Catholic writer before Luther who had written this, they would surely have branded him as unclean to the highest extent and corrupted to the core. And justifiably so."

True, but not "justifiable"; the word cannot be left unchallenged! The lustful Luther deserved to be read and understood without the monkish priggishness of so-called cultivated citizens.

The tendency to make him "respectable'"—and not Denifle's appalled outcry—explains why one of Luther's most revealing and engaging letters has been all but suppressed. In December 1525 he wrote to his friend

Spalatin to say that he would unfortunately not be able to attend his friend's wedding. But Spalatin should not let himself be misled by the hidebound priests of the old faith in Altenburg because marriage was a gift of God. This was followed by an erotic passage, the second part of which was stricken from editions of Luther's letters very early on: "When you sleep with your

' Catherine and embrace her, you should think: "This child of man, this wonderful creature of God has been given to me by my Christ. May He be praised and glorified.' On the evening of the day on which, according to my calculations, you will receive this, I shall make' love to my Catherine while you make love to yours, and thus we will be united in love."

The Emancipation of Eve Instead of glorifying virginity and celibacy Luther discovered marriage and the household to be a worthwhile, fulfilling profession. From our presentday perspective his respect for the woman as housewife and mother does not do justice to her other gifts. The woman of today has long since proven herself outside the family.

The complaint that women are restricted to "children, church and, kitchen" does not, however, apply to the distribution of roles in Luther's marriage. Catherine's perceptible independence may have tempted him to sigh: "If I ever have to find myself a wife again, I will hew myself an obedient wife out of stone." '® But his patriarchal irony should not cause us to jump to conclusions. The oft-criticized traditional roles passed down to us date back

WEDDED BLISS AND WORLD PEACE Lucas Cranach the Elder, Women driving away monks and bishops, ca. 1526 to the Middle Ages and have persisted in large parts of Europe—with or without Luther's assistance. Luther did not consider it unmanly for fathers to wash diapers and make beds. People may sneer, but "God rejoices with all angels and creatures." '® Conversely, he had his reasons for leaving the family finances and the administration of their property to his wife. Even if men could bear children the world would go to rack and ruin without women, because they know all about "spending and saving"—and that is what politics and government are all about!"'

There were also limits to his reevaluation of woman: he thought her less "intelligent" than the man and felt she should not "rule the roost" in politics and ecclesiastical government.'* Nonetheless, Luther disposed of two gross prejudices that had shaped the clerical image of women. The first, which the Hammer against the Witches (Malleus Maleficarum; circa 1487) had once again drummed into the Inquisitors, was that women were sexually insatiable hyenas and thus a constant danger to men and their society. The second prejudice reduced women to "bearing children," the procreation of the human race and the reproduction of the male. Luther was familiar with and disgusted by both of these contemptuous theses. And though he advocated a distribution of roles because he believed women could not cope with pressure as well as men, he thought they were under the same burdens and of equal value as creatures.

Holy Matrimony: Love and Lust In the bloodiest phase of the Peasants' War, Luther, who had already recommended marriage to so many as the way of the Gospel, decided to risk it himself. The time was not a random choice. He was well aware of the injustice and oppression the "common man" in town and country had to sufTHE REFORMATION IN PERIL fer. But violent resistance against the authorities, particularly in the name of the Gospel, was the work of the Devil—and only possible in the chaos of the Last Days. So the end must be near: "Only a short time and the righteous judge will come." The enemy now devastating the country hated the joys of marriage as intensely as he did peace in the world. That is why, Luther wrote to a friend, I want to marry my Catherine "in defiance of him" before I die.

After all, I will not "be robbed of my heart and my happiness."

A monk marry a nun? To shatter this taboo was to openly court disaster.

The Luthers awaited the birth of their first child with growing suspense, for they were acquainted with the superstition that a two-headed monster would issue from a "sacrilegious" union of this kind. On June 7, 1526, Catherine

Luther bore a son. The very same day Pastor Bugenhagen, who had also blessed their marriage, christened the boy Johannes. Relieved and happy,

Luther reported to his relatives in Eisleben, a friend in Zwickau, and of course Spalatin that the child was healthy and without birth defects: "Little

Johannes is cheerful and strong." Then paternal pride broke through: he was a good eater and drinker, thank God—'"homo vorax ac bibax"!?° What would have become of the Reformation if Luther's first child had actually been handicapped!

Five more children were born, two sons and three daughters; Elisabeth (1527), Magdalena (1529), Martin (1531), Paul (1533), and finally, on December 17, 1534, Margaret. Two of the girls died very young; Elisabeth at only eight months and Magdalena at thirteen years. The Luthers grieved deeply for "Lenchen," who had helped them to overcome the painful loss of Luther expressed his joy over the children in his typical, vivid way: "I have legitimate children, which no papal theologian has—the three children are the three kingdoms which I acquired more honestly than [Archduke] Ferdinand did Hungary, Bohemia, and the Roman crown."?' What it must have meant for his sons and daughters to live up to the expectations of the surroundings in and outside Wittenberg can hardly be imagined.

Luther was not, however, trying to raise a generation of kings. If they were suited for it, he wanted one son to be a soldier, the second a scholar, and the third a peasant. Everything turned out differently, of course. Despite all his father's opposition, Hans became a lawyer and later royal chancellery councilor in Weimar. He achieved the career his father, Martin, had been intended for! Martin, the second son, studied theology but never took up a clerical post, living instead as a private citizen in Wittenberg until his early death in 1564. Paul achieved the greatest renown. He studied medicine and a ee Se eee

WEDDED BLISS AND WORLD PEACE Lucas Cranach the Elder (2), Portrait of Lenchen (Magdalena) Luther (1529-42) later became a sought-after doctor, first in Gotha and later with the elector of Brandenburg. The Reformer's only surviving daughter, Margaret, married a Brandenburg nobleman named von Kunheim.

Running the household in the roomy former Augustinian monastery required a firm hand and good planning. What Luther had at first reproved as arrogance in his wife proved to be a talent to think, act, and make decisions independently. She ruled an extended family judiciously. In addition to the parents and children there was Catherine's aunt "Muhme Lene," to whom

Luther allotted her own room. Then there were two of Catherine's nieces living in the house, plus an ever-changing circle of students who found lodgings there. Finally, there was a never-ending stream of visitors—friends, people curious to meet the great man, or people with theological queries or soliciting Luther's intercession with the elector in their behalf.

Luther's respect for the head women had for finances undoubtedly went back to his experiences with his wife. The family had very modest means, especially during the first ten years, and Catherine had to work hard to make ends meet. The elector had made them a wedding gift of one hundred gulden. But the necessary renovation of the Black Monastery, which continued to serve the couple as a home, immediately devoured the whole sum.

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL As preacher at the city church Luther had been receiving an annual salary of less than nine gulden since approximately 1514. In 1523 this sum was still the only cash at his disposal, since his Augustinian professorship gave him free lodgings and, together with brewing rights, a claim to payment in kind but not to a salary. It was only in 1524 that Elector Frederick granted him an annual salary of one hundred gulden. The new Elector John ultimately accorded him two hundred gulden so that Luther would earn as much as Philipp Melanchthon. This equality of salary was maintained from then on, even when Elector John Frederick raised the salary to three hundred and in 1540 to four hundred gulden."

Luther never earned anything from his writings; he refused to accept a penny from them. Even at a very low percentage the royalties from his countless and oft-reprinted works could have freed him from his constant financial problems. The sum of three hundred and later of four hundred gulden was a top salary for a Wittenberg professor at the time, but the big house, all the runaway nuns and monks the Luthers took in, and the continual guests made the household expensive to run. Luther calculated his annual expenses at about five hundred gulden. Catherine had to bridge the gap with the earnings from a farm, from gardening, pig-breeding, and beerbrewing, and by taking in lodgers. "Mr. Cathy," Luther mocked, but underneath the irony there was respect and recognition, because, as he ended his detailed statement of accounts for the year 15 35-36, "the economy is the mainstay of state and Church.""

"Defiance of the Devil" is probably the worst reason for marriage ever recorded in the long history of the institution. Luther's defiance did not originate in presumptuousness but in conviction: the excommunicated heretic understood his marriage to Catherine of Bora, the runaway nun, as a God-given answer to false diabolical holiness. The twenty-year marriage of convenience became a happy one: "I would not give my Katie for France and Venice together." In the intimacy of its patriarchalism their marriage could have been considered exemplary far into the twentieth century: "Katie, you have married an honest man who loves you; you are an empress.""5

The reason for their happiness lay as much in Catherine's character as in her husband's nature. But the decisive factor was that both of them regarded marriage as a profession and divine vocation without the romantic expectations of love that were later to increase so enormously the number of disappointments and marital breakups. It is true that the two had not been passionately in love when they started out, but what began as fondness and gratitude for a new form of companionship developed into a firm bond of WEDDED BLISS AND WORLD PEACE

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Portraits of Martin Luther at the age of forty-three and Katharina Luther, née von Bora, at the age of twenty-seven, 1526 love. The surviving letters are positive evidence of that. In his invitations to the wedding feast he was still circumspect, writing: "I do not love my wife, but I appreciate her." As the years passed his reticence disappeared and Catherine became "my beloved wife." His many imaginative forms of addressing her in his letters are a piece of "marital literature" of their own:

"The rich woman of Zulsdorff" (Catherine owned a farm there), "Frauen Doctorin Katharina Ludherin, living in body in Wittenberg and wandering in spirit in Zulsdorff, my darling to her own hand"''—and sometimes at her

"At table" fourteen years after his wedding he recounted the prosaic beginnings. Actually he had wanted to marry Ave von Schonfeld—he did not like Catherine because he thought her haughty. But God wanted otherwise and blessed me with "the happiest marriage." "®

The beginnings really were extraordinarily unromantic. Pastor Johannes Bugenhagen married Martin and Catherine at the Black Monastery on June

13, 1525. It was a quiet ceremony with only a few friends in attendance.

Before the wedding was celebrated on a larger scale and in the presence of parents two weeks later, they were already the talk of the town: the doctor had made the runaway nun Catherine his wife. Melanchthon, in keeping with his cautious temperament, expressed deep reservations, fearing that the cause of the Reformation would be harmed by such festivities in dark

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL times—in the midst of the Peasants' War. He was not invited to the nuptials on June 13.

Hieronymus Schurff, the Wittenberg lawyer who had been Luther's legal adviser at the Diet of Worms, shared Melanchthon's opinion: "If this monk takes a wife, the whole world and the Devil himself will laugh, and all the work he [Luther] has done up to now will have been for nought." Their misgivings were not unfounded. In the hands of Counter-Reformation opponents Luther's marriage became a convincing argument for the monk's depravity. "Luther was not content to simply play with his aristocratic Ketten

. breaking his own and the nun's vow to God—had her consent to become his alleged wife. Then .

. as soon as Luther's wedding bells rang, the lecherous monks and nuns put up plenty of ladders against the monastery walls and ran off together in masses.""

At that time the consummation of a marriage was attested to by a witness at the bridal bed. Luther's was Justus Jonas, his closest friend, who would also be found at Luther's deathbed. Jonas did not enjoy his task: "Yesterday I was present and saw the bridegroom on the bridal bed—I could not suppress my tears at the sight. .

. Now that it has happened and God has desired it, I implore God to grant the excellent honest man all the happiness. God is wonderful in his counsels and works." *°

"God is wonderful" does not mean that He is great but that He can astonish beyond belief, that He is unpredictable and acts counter to all expectations. Luther's wedding marked a radical break, as Melanchthon, Schurff,

Jonas, and many others rightly felt. The Reformation had to take leave of the centuries-old ideal of the charismatic leader who, as an ascetic man of God, forsakes all things "worldly." Even among Luther's intimates in his own Wittenberg, his "defiance of the Devil" meant that he had to go his own lonely way. Luther sharply criticized the breaking of images that constantly accompanied the Reformation in the cities. Theological objections to images were either untenable or uncertain; experience, on the other hand, demonstrated images to be "sermons for the eyes." Luther's marriage was the genuine and far more offensive form of iconoclasm. It directed itself against the fiction of false saintliness in the hearts of the living and not against the depiction of dead saints. For him "saintly" meant to be near his "dear housewife," as he wrote to her in none too veiled terms: "I would like to be your lover now.""!

Ten days before his death, in one of the last letters he wrote to his wife, Luther related that the negotiations that had taken him to Eisleben were grueling: "I suspect that Hell and the whole world are rid of all devils at the moment for they have probably all assembled here in Eisleben for my sake."

WEDDED BLISS AND WORLD PEACE After a few harsh lines about Jews and lawyers—for him, both a threat to justice in the name of the law—there was an important piece of information that would no longer have amazed his opponents: "We are living excellently. .

. The local wine is good, and the Naumburg beer is very good; the pitch in the local beer does not cause me any breathing problems. The Devil has spoiled beer in the whole world for us with pitch, and for you the wine with sulfur. But here the wine is pure."®

That Luther's Reformation found God-given space for love and good living already met with embarrassed disapproval in the Reformer's own time.

German intellectual history, continuing the monastic tradition Luther had worked so hard to escape, disdained the world once more, identifying it with the Devil—though too enlightened to use his name.

These taboos had such an enduring effect that Luther's statements about the senses and sensuality remain primly unmentioned. But the Reformation turning point can only be fully gauged as an event and a revolution when it is understood that Luther's discovery of the righteousness of God also revealed the Devil to be the enemy of woman, world, and well-being.

Conscience need no longer distinguish between Heaven and earth. In one of his final letters to Catherine, Luther reminds her of liberation in faith and life through Christ "in swaddling": "I have someone stronger to care for me than you and all the angels. .

. So be at peace, Amen." ** Though excommunicated and banned, Luther is at peace—with beer mug in hand.

Luther was fully aware of the offensive character of his marriage. "Getting married has brought me so much contempt that I may hope that the angels are laughing and all the devils weeping."** Whether Luther's marriage was truly detrimental to the drawing power of the Reformation is difficult to tell.

The hard line he took in his writings against the Peasants' War shortly before his marriage and his break with Erasmus at the end of the year presented much more of a problem to the "common. man" and the scholarly world.

The way people judged Luther's marriage depended primarily on how they imagined the future of the Reformation movement. For a long while

Melanchthon had continued to hope for a settlement with the Roman Catholics that would rescue the unity of the Western Church. He had invested all his energies in this cause—especially at the Diet of Augsburg in the summer of 1530. As a family man Luther could only constitute an obstacle on the THE REFORMATION IN PERIL ee road to unification. The fiercest attacks on Luther's marriage came from the juridical elite of the learned councilors, for they were still loyal to canon law.

Everyone concerned with achieving a settlement could accept the idea of married secular priests, but for a monk to marry was opprobrious. The vows being broken had after all been sworn voluntarily.

But assuming that a Reformation of the hole Church was no longer possible in 1525, in that year of crisis Luther's marriage could indeed lend support to the innumerable Evangelical preachers who were already married.

What Luther taught he now lived as well.

LUTHER'S COUNSEL as father confessor to Landgrave Philip of Hesse on December 10, 1539, could not so easily be condoned. Philip was one of the most forceful princely supporters of the Reformation. And it was he, of all people, who—with Luther's approval—made himself guilty of the crime of bigamy! The scandal arising from the landgrave's bigamous marriage had far-reaching political consequences. The strongman of the protective alliance of the Protestant estates of the empire, the Schmalkaldic League, was at the emperor's mercy. According to imperial law as promulgated by Charles V in the rules of the criminal court in Regensburg in 1532, bigamy could result in the death sentence. To avoid punishment Philip thus had to come to an arrangement with Charles V and conclude a separate peace in 1541: he was to halt all attempts to strengthen the Schmalkaldic League and desist from all activities against the emperor.

But Philip was not the only one compromised. Luther's epshation suffered lasting damage as well. Even today the fact that he advised Philip to enter into a bigamous union is—in good ecumenical harmony—interpreted by Protestants as "the greatest blot on the history of the Reformation" and by Catholics as the act of a devious scoundrel."

Before Philip was nineteen (1523), he had wed Christina, daughter of Duke George of Saxony (+1539). Relations between George, Luther's bitterest foe among the princes, and his cousins in Electoral Saxony had always been strained; through Philip's marriage to his daughter, he was allied with the militant Protestant prince. This was the political side of the marriage, but the decisive reasons for the couple's estrangement were personal.

Soon, after "not more than three weeks," Christina no longer appealed to the young landgrave. Later he complained about her unfriendliness, her

"smell," and her alcohol consumption. But she cannot have been quite as repulsive as Philip made her out to be since the couple did, after all, have ten children, the last three of them after March 4, 1540, the date Philip married his second wife, Margarethe von der Sale.

Hans Guldenmund, Landgrave Philip of Hesse THE REFORMATION IN PERIL He had already considered taking a second wife besides Christina in 1526. Had not the patriarchs of the Old Testament had more than one wife?

When he sought Luther's advice on the matter in the autumn of 1526 (perhaps he was already trying to gain support in Wittenberg), he received a disappointing reply: no one, and above all no Christian, should have more than one wife. The example of the patriarchs of the Old Testament proved nothing, for what God had permitted them as an emergency measure in a polygamous world did not automatically apply "to me." Not only would an additional marriage cause a scandal, it could not be vindicated by the Word of God either. Only "great need" could overrule the "no."*'

Luther did not deviate from this line. When Henry VIII, who had since 1509 been married to Catherine of Aragon, the emperor's aunt, procured expert opinions in Germany and Switzerland in 1531 in support of his plans to marry Anne Boleyn, Luther once again indicated that marriage was sacred: "Before I should approve of such a repudiation, I would rather let him marry a second queen." And to make sure there could be no misunderstanding, he concluded with the words: "Even if there should be a divorce,

Catherine will remain queen of England—and she will have been wronged before God and man."*® Luther recognized certain grounds for divorce. If faith had been broken and a partner deserted, the union for life had been destroyed. The "innocent partner" should not be kept from remarrying.*® But the one who had disrupted the marriage was pulled up short: "No, my friend: if you are bound to a woman, you are no longer a free man; God forces and commands you to stay with wife and child, to feed and rear them." "

Luther's "confessional counsel" of December 10, 1539, which will forever link his name with Philip's bigamy, ended with a remarkable statement, one that seems incomprehensible today: the public will regard Margarethe as one of the prince's "not unusual" concubines, so the scandal and talk will remain within limits.*' The remark, undoubtedly not bereft of irony, is elucidated by the frank advice Philip's sister Elisabeth, widow of Duke John the Younger of Saxony (+1537), gave him. When her brother revealed his predicament to her, she suggested that he "take one bedmate instead of the many whores." Elisabeth knew what she was talking about. The unmarried

Elector Frederick the Wise, her father-in-law George's cousin, had his "bedmate" Ann Weller and, though discreet, made no secret of their relationship. Shortly before his death he wrote his two sons by the union into his will, leaving them Castle Jessen and an annual pension of one thousand gulden.* The "great men" were discussed candidly at Luther's table: "The WEDDED BLISS AND WORLD PEACE secret marriage of princes and great men is a genuine marriage for God, although it is conducted without pomp and splendor."

Elisabeth was familiar with these circles when she tried to reason with her brother. But Philip did not follow her advice. Not surprisingly, the opinions as to his reasons diverge. He decided, it is said, "rather to marry for reasons of conscience." ** Or: it was pure sensuality that drove him, his moral dilemma was only feigned, for "he was not religious. He had now been following the new teaching for fifteen years."

The debate about Philip's morals diverts us from the decision Luther had to make. The Strasbourg reformer Martin Bucer had assured Luther that the landgrave had already been avoiding the Lord's Supper for years because of his moral dilemma, as Philip himself related, since "the peasants' feud,"

*' meaning for nearly fifteen years. It looked as if only an additional marriage could keep him from further excesses. The statement Luther had once made regarding the marriage of the English king now also became his counsel to Philip: divorce was out of the question; in case of emergency, the only alternative was a second marriage. Philip's first wife, Christina, agreed to the solution. She retained all her rights as a landgravine, and children from her husband's second marriage (seven sons were born) were to have no claims to power. Philip had to continue rendering her "friendliness," which he did:

Christina bore him three further children.

Not a concubine but a second wife: that could have put an end to the whole affair. From a modern vantage point the solution was not a milestone, but it was no scandal either. Luther's stubborn insistence on the inseparable nature of the first marriage is particularly striking in light of our—from the perspective of other cultures, hypocritical—acceptance of successive marriages while indignantly condemning simuitaneous "polygamy." Then should the pastoral counsel given to Philip be extended to others as well? Absolutely not, said Luther; that is precisely why he insisted that his ad hoc advice was to be confidential: that it not create a legal and moral precedent, "let it remain secret." * As history shows, Luther's insistence on silence was in vain.

A proper assessment of the matter cannot consist in a Protestant defense of Luther by putting the blame on the medieval tradition of dispensation for concubinage, or in a claim of deception by Bucer, or in a condemnation of the mendacity of the depraved, syphilitic Landgrave.

Wherever blame is placed, the fact remains that Luther came to a decision which, contrary to his own opinion, is genuinely exemplary. There is Christian counsel which bursts the seams of moral convention, whether unwritten or codified in law. Luther himself insists that the Gospel teaches of a higher

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL law, the Law of Love—however dangerous in practice—which is to be directed to the unique needs of the "neighbor," who may well encounter dilemmas which no law can foresee. Luther gave his advice unwillingly and hesitantly, but he did not shirk his pastoral responsibility, for example, by referring Philip to experts in civil law.

In this case as well, Luther had distinguished between the inflexible law and the Gospel of grace. Though public law is a precious gift, it is subject to the blind legal code of generalized regulations, which cannot differentiate between precedence and exceptions, between normal cases and emergencies. But the Gospel sees the individual and seeks his welfare in the maze of moral obligations. The law was not thereby abrogated, and that is why

Luther's ministerial advice was to remain secret. The Gospel risks unconditional love, and that is why such counsel could be given. Here Luther

So dire is the situation! By the standards of justice and law, the pope and cardinals deserve to swing from the gallows. From left: Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz, Bishop Otto of Augsburg (2), Cochlaeus (2), the Pope.

WEDDED BLISS AND WORLD PEACE is so different from the Reformation in the cities, and from Calvin's Reformation: biblical counsel is not to be confused with bourgeois morality. Not making this distinction means unmaking Luther's Reformation.

December 10, 1539, was the day Luther advised the landgrave to take a secret additional wife. This was the "black day" in the history of the German

Reformation, or at least that is what can still be read in a widely used Protestant handbook of Church history that has otherwise undergone numerous revisions and corrections over the past seventy-five years.*? "Dies ater" it says in its classical erudition, for middle-class sensibilities have been offended.

In comparison, Luther's writings against the Jews, which in turn cannot be isolated from his writings against the papists and peasants, evidently seemed far less offensive. But Luther assailed all three groups with deadly ferocity, urging the authorities to take decisive action. As early as the summer of 1520 his reply to the claims of the papacy as revealingly formulated by Silvester Prierias could hardly have been plainer: "If we punish thieves with the gallows, robbers with the sword, heretics with fire, why do we not defend ourselves all the more with all weapons against these perpetrators of destruction, these cardinals, these popes, this whole filth heap of the Roman Sodom, who are unceasingly destroying the Church of God, and wash our hands in their blood." °

The attacks he leveled against the rebelling peasants in May 1525 were equally virulent.*' His Ermahnung zum Frieden (Admonition to Peace) was a two-pronged assault denouncing alike the injustices of the princes and landed nobility and the inadmissable mixing of Gospel and violence by the peasants. Filled with the impressions of a ten-day journey through convulsed

Thuringia, Luther hastily added an appendix to the Admonition: Against the Robbing and Murderous Hordes of Peasants. Here we can find the sentence that was to style him "toady of princes": "Such strange times are these that a prince can be more deserving of Heaven by shedding blood than others by praying." *? Luther's language veritably trembles with rage and indignation:

So dear lords, free here, save here, help here. Have mercy on the poor, stab, slay, strangle here whoever can; if you die doing it, good for you: a more blessed .

. death you can never receive."

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL When the old Luther called for measures against the Jews twenty years later, he included cruelly exact instructions. In his pamphlet Of the Jems and Their Lies, he suggested how these "children of the Devil" should be treated.™

Firstly, that their synagogues or schools should be burned down and what will not burn should be razed and covered with earth, that no man will ever see a stone or cinder of it again. .

. Next, that their houses should be broken and destroyed in the same way. For they do the same things there as in their schools. For that they can be put under a roof or stable, like the gypsies. .

. Thirdly, that all their prayer books and Talmudists, in which such idolatrous lies, curses, and blasphemies are taught, should be taken from them. Fourthly, that their rabbis should be forbidden, at the risk of life and limb, to teach from now on. Because they have lost their office for good reason.

. Fifthly, that escort and road should be completely prohibited to the Jews. For they have no reason to be in the country, being neither landlords, nor officials, nor peddlers or the like. .

. Sixthly, that they should be prohibited from usury and that all their cash and fortunes in silver and gold should be taken from them and put in safekeeping.

. Seventhly, that young, strong Jewish men and women should be given flail, axe, hoe, spade, distaff, spindle, and be left to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows.

For, as all can see, God's wrath over them is so great that gentle mercy will only make them worse and worse, and harshness little better. So away with them at all costs.*

The very first sentence of this program, which can safely be termed a pogrom, is left out in modern translations:

We must exercise harsh mercy with fear and trembling, in the hope that we could save some from the flames and embers. We must not avenge ourselves. They are under God's wrath—a thousand times worse than we could wish it upon them.*°

What he actually does wish upon them is, however, bad enough.

It is not only Luther the o/d man, worn out by work, overtaxed by worries, at the end of his strength, who has spoken here. Nor is it all merely verbal acerbity characteristic of the times. The Reformer had made similar appeals for resistance to the "exploiting Romanists" in 1520 and the "plundering peasants" in 1525. Three times the limits of his view of the Devil, which brought liberation and progress in so many respects, were demonstrated. As WEDDED BLISS AND WORLD PEACE a result of his constant awareness of the Devil's might, Luther had learned to apply the distinction between law and the Gospel and discovered the boundary between passive belief in God and active participation in shaping the world.*"' Against the background of a world pervaded by the Devil, Luther had discovered the joy of life. And ultimately the moral pressure of the Devil had led him to do battle against that fatal human disease, the oppressive

"superego" of conscience. But where the battle against Satan's forces leads to collective judgments in the face of a rapidly approaching doomsday, the voice of the prophet becomes a shrilly fanatical battle cry. That, too, is

How can one and the same man insist on the Gospel of love as opposed to public morals and decency in the case of bigamy and at the same time arm the authorities with the sword, charging them, as guardians of the law, to employ even pogrom and massacre as a means of restoring order?

The natural condition of the world is chaos and upheaval. It is never left to itself, but is always the battleground between God and the Devil. Like a father sustaining and supporting his family, the temporal authorities protect the welfare of all men. It is a Christian duty to make a contribution in both family and society to the survival of the world in the struggle against chaos."*

A peasant army at the gates of a monastery ee THE REFORMATION IN PERIL There is a fatal connection between fighting the Devil in papists, peasants, and Jews and the subsequent use of the cry for reformation to rally "God's troops" against "God's enemies."

Darkness at Noon: Luther and the Jews The Third Reich and in its wake the whole Western world capitalized upon Luther, the fierce Jew-baiter. Any attempt to deal with the Reformer runs up against this obstacle. No description of Luther's campaign against the Jews, however objective and erudite it may be, escapes the horror: we live in the post-Holocaust era. Under the spell of nightmarish terror, it is difficult to peer through the shadows of history, making clear judgments, passing a just sentence, as we grope our way along the path between aggressive accusation and apologetic explanation. Guilt-ridden voices abound, but our era requires far more than verbal repudiation: it calls for detailed information and an unvarnished view of the past. It needs collective anamnesis in the painful encounter with an epoch in which the modern world emerged. For this is not a matter of a German past which, once overcome, will free civilization from future fear of the Darkness at Noon.

Luther's late writings on the Jews are crucial to this agonizing but necessary task of remembering. The time to begin is August 1536, when Elector

John Frederick of Saxony, Luther's magnanimous patron and staunch defender of the Reformation, decreed that the Jews were to be driven out of his electorate." The elector was employing a means that had long been religiously sanctioned in Christendom and was thus no bolt from the blue to the Jews. Homelessness had become their fate in medieval Europe. But there was no getting used to it. Whenever they were expelled, they suffered renewed, severe hardship.

The elector had to be persuaded to rescind his measures or at least to mitigate them and grant Jewish merchants the right to pass through the electorate. The man most suited for the task was Josel von Rosheim, acknowledged far beyond his Alsatian home as the spokesman of the Jews, "governor of all Jewishness in the empire." But who was to procure him access to the court of Electoral Saxony? There seemed to be a man at hand, a certain

Martin Luther of Wittenberg, who in 1523, as a friend of the Jews, so it seemed, had bravely exposed himself to his opponents' suspicions. After all, who at that time could stand to hear that as Luther put it, "Jesus Christ was

WEDDED BLISS AND WORLD PEACE born a Jew" and that these despicable Jews, whom God had disowned, were of the same lineage as Christ; we, who think so highly of ourselves as Christians, are heathens, only "in-laws and aliens"—so far had the reformer dared to go."

Contact with the supposed "friend of the Jews" in Wittenberg was established by Wolfgang Capito, a reformer from Strasbourg. Capito was a wellknown Hebraist and, though perhaps no "friend of the Jews" himself, had great respect for Jewish erudition. With Luther's help the elector was to be convinced to change his mind. When Luther refused, it was surely an unpleasant, inexplicable surprise for Josel von Rosheim and probably for Capito as well. Even today this refusal is often judged to be the decisive turning point in Luther's career from friendliness to hostility toward the Jews.

Luther himself would have denied any such turning point, for he emphasized that he was and had always been of the opinion that the Jews should be treated in a "friendly way"—-so as not to put any obstacles in the way to their conversion by God. He adhered firmly to this view to the end, though the "friendliness" turned into harsh "mercy," which was for him the only alternative to expulsion, the last means of keeping the Jews from being driven out.

Josel von Rosheim had mistakenly hoped he would receive help from Wittenberg and thus be able to pursue a policy protective of the Jews, but protecting the Jews was not part of Luther's task. He urged the temporal authorities to take steps to "rehabilitate" the Jews since the authorities were responsible for the welfare of the state and therefore for deciding on improvement and protection or expulsion. For the temporal authorities the relevant legal norm was one that, long before Luther, Swabian scholar

Johannes Reuchlin had formulated in defense of Jewish wisdom. As the Jews' knowledge was to be employed in the service of Christians, he demanded that the Jews be protected as "guest citizens"—as long as they bowed to the laws of the land. But if they brought harm to the common weal and would not allow themselves to be improved, they were to be driven out."

For Luther the Jews were doing anything but improving.

What was worse, encouraged by their misreading of his own words, they had become more daring, defaming and cursing Jesus of Nazareth and regarding Christians as their "worst enemies," so much so that "if you could, you would [now] rob [all Christians] of what they are and what they have."

However, the decision not to speak for the Jews in Saxony hinged on the analysis that they were appealing to religious tolerance while irreligiously reTHE REFORMATION IN PERIL jecting their own God . .

. the Father of Jesus Christ. Nothing would prevent the misery of exile unless "you accept your cousin and Lord, the beloved crucified Jesus, along with us heathens." That Luther spoke of the Jews as "cousins of Jesus" was not intended to convey unconditional acceptance to "opponents" of Christ: "Would you kindly accept my advice, .

. Because for the sake of the crucified Jew, whom no one shall take from me, I would gladly do my best for all you Jews, unless you should use my favor for your stubbornness. This is what you should know."

Three days before his death Luther added an "Admonition against the Jews" to his last sermon, held in Eisleben on February 15, 1546. It clearly illustrates the change Luther had undergone in old age. There had been no transformation of friendship into enmity; only the measures proposed for an effective policy of improvement and conversion had changed: The Jews are our public enemies; they do not cease to defame Christ our Lord, to call the Virgin Mary a whore and Christ a bastard, "and if they could kill us all, they would gladly do so. And they often do." Nonetheless, "we want to practice

Christian love toward them and pray that they convert."

In his letter to Josel von Rosheim Luther had still taken the opportunity to address the Jews directly, exhorting them to convert. But now he spoke to the Christian temporal authorities: the Last Judgment is fast approaching, so woe to those temporal rulers who have neglected their duty to protect Christendom! Now is the time for defense against the storm troopers of the Antichrist, whether they descend upon Christendom from the outside in the form of the Turks, subvert the preaching of the Gospel and order in the empire from inside the Church like the pope and clerics beholden to him, or, like the Jews, undermine the public welfare from the inside. Luther had discovered this concatenation of Jews, pope, and Turks as the unholy coalition of the enemies of God long before he began leveling his massive assaults on the Jews. Now that the terrors of the Last Days had been unleashed, the Church and temporal authorities were forced into their own defensive battle, one without the promise of victory but with the prospects of survival. Christian rulers, you should "not participate in the sins of others, you must pray humbly to God that he should be merciful to you and allow your rule to survive." °

The measures had changed from "friendliness" to "harsh mercy"; what had not changed was Luther's view of the Jews. It was as it had been since a young professor of the Psalms had discovered the Jews to be obdurate foes of God. They had to convert, there was no way around it. They had to become

WEDDED BLISS AND WORLD PEACE once again what they had once been: true children of Abraham, the true sons of Israel! But for the Jews as Jews there was no hope. They had to turn away from their devilish, Christ-defaming schools and synagogues, "but where they do not, we should not tolerate or suffer them among us."

This was not an appeal to the mob to rise up in a surge of riotous patriotism and attack the Jews in cruel revenge, for Luther had unequivocally prefaced his reeducation program with the statement: "We must not avenge ourselves." His demands were directed at the temporal rulers, the princes and nobility." They had, for the sake of money, tolerated accursed usury and thus watched the common man being robbed of all he had by the Jews; now they were to abandon their policies toward these enemies of God and Christ.

The subject of exploitation was not new; it can be traced back to preReformation social reform pamphlets. "Out with the Jews" was a common rallying cry in the streets and from the pulpits. Luther, on the other hand, did not advocate expulsion; he sought to preserve "tolerance," tolerance only, of course, for the purpose of conversion. That is the attitude that stayed with him to the end of his life. But the approach of the Last Days fixed temporal limits to the period in which tolerance could be exercised.

The authorities are warned not to become accessories to "the sins of others"; this undoubtedly referred to violations of the civic law alleged against the Jews. Not only were the Jews accused of blasphemy and denounced as usurers, they were also charged with infamous crimes constituting a public danger, with desecration of the Host and the Body of Christ and the ritual murder of children. Masses of them were condemned to the stake." The theme of "Jewish crimes" was already popular in the late Middle Ages and was invoked again later, in 1541, by Johannes Eck." In his most scathing tract against the Jews, Of the Jews and Their Lies (1543), Luther did not attempt to diminish this fear of the criminal offenses of the Jews. But the vehemence of the diatribe arises not from the warning against possible crimes of individuals but from his unrelenting attitude toward collective Judaism, which endangered Christians not only by deeds but also by words. That is why Luther advised the authorities to burn synagogues as schools of lies, to confiscate rabbinical books or—if no other means worked—to expel those

Jews who would not be converted.' Because Jewish "blasphemy" was beginning to have effects, measures to protect Christianity had become necessary.

BuT THE "sins of others" had a further dimension, surely the central one to Luther, namely the rejection of Christ. By no means unique to the Jews, it

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL was attributed above all to the pope and his curia: "But now I am not astonished at the Turks' or the Jews' blindness, obduracy, wickedness. For I must see the same in the holiest fathers of the Church, pope, cardinals, bishops. O thou terrible wrath and incomprehensible judgment of God's high majesty." Luther had long known of this intimate connection without calling for expulsion. But with the approach of the Antichrist, the only way out was a final separation—not only from the Jews, however! As Luther neared the end of his days on earth, the issue was not a Turkish crusade, or hatred of Rome or the Jews, it was upholding the Gospel against all enemies in the confusion of the Last Days.

The terrible tragedy of the relationship between Jews and Christians in world history can be studied in concentrated form in the history of this one man. As a Reformer he was "a product of the Jews," more precisely of his reflections on Israel as the people of God and repudiator of Christ. He saw in the Jews' resistance to the Reformation, to the rediscovered Gospel, an obstinately persistent estrangement from God" and thus a newly formed alliance of all the forces inimical to God." In his tract Of the Jews and Their

Lies, and summarized again in his final Admonition (part of an untitled sermon given in Wittenberg, 1546), the concept of a tolerance that leaves room for conversion is certainly retained. But his imminent expectation of the Last

Judgment lets him interpret and evaluate the "signs of the times" so as to keep this tolerance within very narrow bounds, as it is the very last chance to avert expulsion. Luther's Reformation unquestionably did nothing to improve the political and social lot of the Jews.

Though his attitude toward the Jews remained medieval, even in the last phase of his life he never took over that medieval hatred for the Jews as "murderers cf Christ" which subjected them "in a Christian spirit" to the rage of the mob. His views led beyond the Middle Ages in two ways. For one thing, the reception of his impulses in his own circle must be noted. We should not identify the Reformation movement with Luther to such an extent as to neglect the nuances of various views among a series of Luther's distinguished students. Justus Jonas, his close collaborator and the translator of his Jewish tracts, and the Nuremberg reformer Andreas Osiander did not implicate the Jews in the final struggle with the Antichrist and his armies. In their Evangelical faith they hoped for a common, liberated future for Jews and Christians in the Last Days. Secondly, the later Reformation hymns of a Paul Gerhard (+1676) or a Jakob Revius (+1658) were not the first to instill the idea that "It is not the Jews, Lord Jesus, who crucified You."" The Wittenberg Hymnal of 1544 already contained a verse which, though not exWEDDED BLISS AND WORLD PEACE pressly attributed to Luther, was so similar to what he wrote and preached over the years that it must be regarded as written by Luther's hand."

Our great sin and sore misdeed Jesus, the true Son of God, to the Cross has nailed.

Thus you poor Judas, as well as all the Jews we may not upbraid inimically, for the guilt is ours."

In the anguish of the Last Days the ever-existing alliance of God's enemies challenged Luther into radical opposition. But precisely this view of history has a converse side, pointing to the future. In the mirror of Jewish history Luther discovered "us wretched Christians,"® who are also links in the threatening chain of evil. Through the Jews he found out who we actually are: by nature always heathens and enemies of God, hypocrites like the Jews when, before God, we rely on good pedigree, law, and works.*' The revelations in the Jewish mirror were incredible: "Jews"—penetrating the Church, to make matters worse, having managed to get it firmly into their clutches.

Such sharp criticism of the Church was suited to attacking at the roots the Passion-oriented piety™ that instilled intense hatred and for centuries made

Holy Week in Christian Europe a particular time of terror for the Jews.* But solidarity in sin between "us wretched Christians" and the Jews loses its penitential and reformatory force if "Reformation" is understood as having already led true Christians out of the bondage of ecclesiastical despots, the final Babylonian captivity before the end. Such Protestant triumphalism permits heretics, papists, Jews, and "us wicked Christians" to be looked back upon as past history. Then the "Jewish probe," prophetic gauge in the service of the Reformation struggle for the Church at the beginning of the end, is no longer safe from exploitation as a racist final solution. Through the Jews Martin Luther unmasked the capability of Christians to ally themselves with the primeval enemy of Heaven and earth. Eliminating this shocking view of Christians results in a destructive view of the Jews. Once this fundamental theological structure has collapsed, the anti-Judaism found in Luther— as in the Christian faith as a whole—becomes a pawn of modern anti-Semitism.

The Man and His Deeds Conflict and Character hen Luther left Worms he was thirty-seven years old and at the height of his powers. But who this man was remained unclear. Unanticipated events had placed him in a political arena where often his voice was heard but his personality became blurred. Moreover, his behavior was molded so decisively by convictions that it is often difficult to differentiate accurately between personal traits and the duties of office. But anyone wishing to encounter Luther the man must risk the attempt. As a monk Luther was trained to read his own soul, and his critical self-analysis is an excellent guide for anyone trying to find access to him. His negative judgments were never exaggerated; the two unfavorable qualities he emphasized in himself were confirmed by his contemporaries: extreme irascibility and verbosity.

He found an "official" excuse for his excess verbiage in his Saxon lack of breeding and thick-headedness.

His short temper has been partially excused by the fact that he was continually doing battle and simply "exploded" when the pressure became too great. With that we have indeed touched upon the unpleasant aspects of Luther's personality. The steadfastness and religious conviction that distinguished him in Augsburg and Worms also limited the number of his friends and followers. His personal charisma could be a burden to his surroundings.

There is little sense in trying to look for excuses, however suggestive.

The facts speak plainly, but they must be understood historically, in the context of events. The Diet of Worms was an experience that left its mark on Luther; he could not shake it off. He was the only reformer whose freedom of movement was seriously inhibited. The only places he could move about freely were Electoral Saxony, later Hesse—and after Duke George's death,

Ducal Saxony. But it was not only Luther the traveler who was restricted.

Against his will he had become the symbol of the Reformation. He could not say a word that would not be heard and pondered everywhere. Worms had

THE MAN AND HIS DEEDS given a provincial theologian influence in the world. Thus a single sharp remark made in the privacy of his own home was spread far and wide—and often exaggerated.

Waging war on the Devil for the sake of God leaves little room for subtlety.

"If God is for us, who can be against us!" (Rom 8.31). The words of St. Paul determined the Reformer's encounters with Erasmus, Carlstadt, and Zwingli.

Many of Luther's diatribes resemble public exorcisms and are futile as attempts to persuade persons of different opinions of the rightness of his position. Thus it is probably no coincidence, and only seemingly a consequence of rhetoric, that Luther rarely used the commonly employed scholarly qualification "if I am not mistaken"—~xi fallor—but made generous use of his favorite expression, "certainly"— immo. Luther's certainty left its mark on German academic linguistic usage. Where Anglo-American scholars qualify their statements with an "I am inclined to believe," the Germans say "it is patently obvious." This, too, is part of the Luther heritage—its negative aspect, and a watered-down version at that.

Luther's impatient, caustic treatment of opponents was probably connected with his short temper and volcanic temperament. But the linguistic usage we have observed points beyond the man to the culture-shaping power of the protracted interconfessional conflict. Not only did the professor from Wittenberg set off the conflict, he also experienced its effects from the very start.

That makes it difficult to judge his disposition, because it is not easy to be even-tempered if few really will listen to one's arguments. Luther had already been on the defensive since 1518. Silvester Prierias, the Italian curial theologian, and Johannes Eck, the German professor, launched their attacks on him at approximately the same time. Their calculated insults, denunciations, and accusations of heresy were the antithesis of academic restraint.

Luther's irony and great dialectic skill succeeded for a surprisingly long time in objectifying a debate whose fires had been stoked in Ingolstadt and Rome.

He was extremely eloquent in expressing his concern about the Church, his integrity in questioning tradition, and his personal struggle for clarity.

The Leipzig disputation in the summer of 1519 revealed the enormous pressure Luther was under in the ostensibly equal contest with Eck. Never

Eck's match as a debater, Luther was soon maneuvered into the position of the accused. For one-and-a-half days Eck took every opportunity to defame his opponent directly or indirectly, unequivocally or with innocent ambiguity, as a "Hussite" and "Bohemian heretic." Luther's repeated protests went unheeded. On the afternoon of July 5 Luther could no longer contain himself.

Violating all the rules of disputation, he interrupted Eck twice. The next i joo THE REFORMATION IN PERIL Naa morning at seven, he could bear no more of Eck's barbs and spontaneously changed over to the German language to demonstrate to non-theologians that his rights had been infringed.' In subsequent years laymen would preside over Reformation disputations from the start: the search for truth was too important to leave to academic theologians.

In his exhortation of 1520 Luther sounded relieved; the burden seemed to have been lifted from his shoulders: "The time for silence is over, the time to speak has come."? The Reformer had never maintained silence, but now he abandoned the defensive and launched a counterattack—in a language everyone could understand: German, the national tongue. This was the perfect role for Luther. Only now did his keen, original mind and his fresh, vivid language develop their full scope.

At the Diet of Worms he was prepared to admit that he had occasionally been too hard on his adversaries.' If he was thinking of Prierias or Eck, psychohistorians will have to be cautious in drawing conclusions about his character. Even the meekest of his contemporaries would not have reacted differently to their attempts to denounce rather than debate.

But once he had discovered the Gospel and recognized the targets of the Devil's attacks, Luther became less and less capable of distinguishing between adversaries and people who simply did not agree with him, between diabolical temptations and divergent opinions. Certainly he did not seek an open clash with Erasmus and waited almost a year, until late 1525, to counter the humanist's attacks. But in letters to his friends Luther began speaking disparagingly of the "philologist" much earlier: like Moses in ancient times,

Erasmus could lead the people of God a certain distance, but ultimately he had to stay behind in the desert because he could not reach theology. Such barbs did not remain secret, nor were they intended to; Luther's assessment had been addressed to a mutual acquaintance. Erasmus was stung: I am

Moses? Well, who does Luther think he is, Jesus?* Following generations can only be grateful that Luther entered into a dispute with the humanist because it enabled the cause of Erasmian humanism to be clearly differentiated from that of the Reformation. "The truth," Luther wrote in May 1522, "is mightier than eloquence, the Spirit greater than genius, faith more than education."°

How gifted was the man who could express this antithesis in a single sentence! Centuries later, equating humanism with linguistic elegance and education still seems accurate. This letter, too, did not come to Erasmus' attention by coincidence, although Luther emphatically repudiated any idea of a conflict: "I will not challenge Erasmus, even if he provokes me now and THE MAN AND HIS DEEDS jJOI then."° But a clear provocation of his own followed hard upon his protestation of restraint: Erasmus can "conquer" others with his rhetoric, but if he decides to attack me, "he will see Christ, who fears neither Hell nor the powers of Heaven. . .

. | know what this man is like since I am well practiced in discerning devilish thoughts."' It was inevitable for Erasmus to feel he was being confronted by an insufferably arrogant contemporary.

In the stormy history of interconfessional conflict, criticism of Luther the man has so often been used as a weapon against the Reformer's convictions that experts in the field of Reformation history have felt compelled to defend the Reformer's character for fairness' sake. Luther's visceral identification with Christ in his dispute with Erasmus shows, however, that where the Reformer suspected the Devil's involvement, he could no longer distinguish between a man and his opinions, or between error and lie. That is probably why he ultimately sought conflict with Erasmus, as his constant gibes prove.

Even a last offer of truce, which Luther made Erasmus by letter, was formulated in such a way as to leave the humanist no choice but to begin a public dispute. Luther sensed the Devil in Erasmus and wanted him to come out and reveal himself.

Luther's conflict with his older colleague Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt was a similar case. As representatives of Wittenberg reform theology, both of them came out against scholasticism in 1517. In 1519 they debated with Eck in Leipzig, Carlstadt always preceding his younger colleague

(he had already been an established professor when Luther received his doctoral degree). In less turbulent times Carlstadt would have gone down in the annals of history as an important scholar. He did not cling fearfully to school traditions and found his way from scholarstic scholarship to patristic writings. From Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus he turned—at Luther's instigation—to Augustine. Ten years earlier, when Luther was not yet in Wittenberg, he had been the first university professor to learn Hebrew and, using Reuchlin's grammar, study the Old Testament.

Carlstadt was a man engaged in a continual search. A negative evaluation would have it that he was fickle, a positive one that he was always open to new impulses. All his life the obedience that issues from faith and the implementation of divine justice were more important to him than Christian freedom and justification by faith before God. His ideal of establishing a truly

Christian community, the "Christian city of Wittenberg," through ecclesiastical and social reforms met with particular enthusiasm in reformed

Switzerland. And it was there that he was to end his days, as a professor at the University of Basel.* THE REFORMATION IN PERIL

As in the case of Erasmus, Luther's conflict with Carlstadt was precipitated by the basic differences between them, which do not vanish even if we can demonstrate how badly Luther behaved toward him. Either the Reformation establishes God's kingdom on earth or it leads to a relative "improvement," helping Christians to unite and gather strength. In the first case the Old and New Testaments are God's blueprints; from them we can glean the instructions we need to construct a true community in and for God, however symbolic or geographically limited it may be. Then the city becomes a monastery under the abbot Jesus Christ, and the vows that responsible Christians take at baptism demand obedience to the rule of life which God has provided in the Scriptures.

But if reformation is the preaching of the cross of Christ for the purpose of gathering the faithful, then it does not effect "progress." It offers defiance to the Devil in the turbulence of the Last Days through preaching and sacrament. "Improvement of the world" through political and social reforms is both necessary and possible. But it is carried out under the terms of Christian freedom, not according to the "prescriptions" of biblical law. Then moral preconceptions must be reviewed and those who are weak, hesitant, or think differently must be treated charitably; then it is time to take reasonable, if basically limited, survival measures. The steadfast believers will assemble and stand firm in their faith and trust in the coming of God's reformation.

This reformation does not reconstruct the monastery walls; it protects and effects practical reason in the world against old and new legalism. Thus there are worlds between the two colleagues from Wittenberg; their conflict is suprapersonal and cannot be reduced to differences in character.

Certainly these differences indeed existed. Carlstadt was probably embarrassed to find Johannes Eck so obviously much more interested in triumphing over Luther, although he himself had been the first to challenge the professor from Ingolstadt. But Luther, too, was always touchy when he was not regarded as having been the first "to start the matter." Still, rifts in the Wittenberg leadership only became visible when decisions about practical reform measures had to be made after the Edict of Worms (May 26, 1521).

The conflict was sparked off by the question of how the reform of religious life and society was to look in detail once canon law had lost its relevance.

Had it been up to Carlstadt, the divine law of the Scriptures would have determined the lives of secular community and church congregation.'

Luther was suspicious of a new rule of law guiding religious worship and public life. At first he shrank from a break-up of the Wittenberg coalition.

But once Carlstadt had given up his professorship and moved to Orlamiinde, the hostility came to the surface. When Carlstadt removed the images from THE MAN AND HIS DEEDS churches there and refused to baptize children, Luther smelled danger. He sensed that the new pastor in Orlamiinde was an instrument of the Devil, desirous of burdening and confusing the consciences of the faithful. In the future Luther would condemn anything resembling Carlstadt's ideals as fanaticism or diabolical strategy.

It is, in fact, true that neither Erasmus nor Carlstadt would have enabled all Christians to achieve freedom. The "enlightened" reforms of the one would have remained a privilege of the educated elite, and the reformation of the other would have been forced on all. If both of them had been successful in shunting Luther aside, Christendom would soon have been confronted with the alternative of "education or Bible." Luther's realization of these consequences could only reinforce his inclination to identify Christ so closely with his own interpretation of the Gospel that contradictions could hardly help being associated with untruth, denial, or the machinations of the Devil.

Historians will admit that only an "Evangelist" who firmly knew himself to be on Christ's side could have given the Reformation its thrust. But where resistance to the Papal State, fanaticism, and Judaism turns into the collective vilification of papists, Anabaptists, and Jews, the fatal point has been reached where the discovery of the Devil's power becomes a liability and a danger.

Luther saw himself as called to proclaim the Gospel, pushed and driven by God, against his skill and will. This concept of his "office" permits of no easy conclusions about his character. He performed his "duties" with a confidence of judgment and action that seemed to overcome all questioning, searching, hesitation, and doubt. If we judge Luther only by his "official" face, we shall never get to know the sensitive, sorely tried, frightened Luther, or the acrimonious one.

IT was not only Luther's opponents who found him obstinate and difficult.

He was often a burden to one of the most gifted of his contemporaries, his fellow-professor and Greek teacher Philipp Melanchthon. Several times the younger man wanted to leave Wittenberg. Because of his respect for Luther's personality and judgment, he feared Luther's ire and suffered under his occasional withdrawal of affection. Melanchthon was living proof of the charismatic aura Luther must have radiated. He never doubted that it was Luther's vocation to be "the charioteer of Israel," and thus a common basis always remained on which they could agree despite their differences.

How dependent the "Erasmus of Wittenberg" was on Luther's theological judgments could be seen whenever Melanchthon had to make decisions on THE REFORMATION IN PERIL his own. Whether Luther was in exile at Wartburg Castle (1521-22) or nine years later, when he was keeping the sparrows and ravens company at Coburg

Castle, far from the events of the Diet of Augsburg (1530), and finally after Luther's death, Melanchthon sorely missed the older man's reassuring presence. Luther's total awareness of the threatening power of the Devil always remained totally alien to Melanchton, however. The Devil was for him one among many dangerous forces and could be beaten, providing that sufficiently judicious measures were taken.

Melanchthon's ability to systematize was far superior to the impulsive Luther's; and Luther openly admitted that without Melanchthon's methodological talents, his own work would have choked on its verbosity and been lost. Melanchthon did more than simply represent the cause of the Reformation; he gave it a viable form and a lasting structure. That is why he has come down to us as "Praeceptor Germaniae," teacher of Germany. The contentious Reformer could bow in respect before Melanchthon's scholarly power; that is the difference between Luther and later admirers of Luther.

Luther and the Art of Language Luther and his friends could often be found at the table in Luther's home, the former Augustinian monastery, discussing the events of the day and exchanging reminiscences. Many of these conversations "at table" were recorded and later published. The Luther of these conversations likes to speak as an experienced elder statesman in the service of God, but always in such a way as to disclose his weaknesses and errors of judgment as well. His table talk is living proof that it was never his intention to make his public persona as an Evangelist into a monument for posterity.

On the contrary, the Evangelist was sure of himself when it came to the Word of God, but Professor Luther knew his limits—and thus his strengths

_as well, as we see from his ridicule of certain colleagues' clumsy attempts at biblical exegesis. During his sojourn at Wartburg Castle he devoted himself to a task that began by demonstrating his shortcomings to him but that was to guarantee his fame in centuries to come: the translation of the New Testament into German. When Luther returned to Wittenberg in March 1522, after almost ten months of solitude at Wartburg, he brought with him a draft of the translation." Before it was printed he went through the manuscript with Melanchthon, who was a fine scholar of Greek, and they consulted specialists to clarify problematic points. The New Testament appeared in GerTHE MAN AND HIS DEEDS man in September 1522—hence the common designation "September Testament." Though the translation was Luther's, he realized it could not have been completed without his colleagues' help. In January he had written to Wittenberg from Wartburg Castle: "In the meantime I have begun the Bible translation although the task by far exceeds my powers. Only now am I discovering what translating really means and why no one has thus far dared to associate his name with an undertaking of this kind. I would not be able to cope with the Old Testament at all without your proximity and help. .

. The task is so large and important that we should all work on it, as it is a public work and serves the common good.""

It took another twelve years for this goal to be reached and the last book of the Old Testament to be translated. In September 1534 the first complete

Wittenberg Bible appeared. The translation played a major role in shaping the modern German language, yet it became a genuine folk Bible, carrying the cause of the Reformation into every house, because Luther made use of living, colloquial German in his translation. He had truly listened to the common people—the language of the common man was not too lowly to be the language of God.

Luther's language in the mirror of tradition, Psalm 51.3,6—8:

O Got erbarm dich mein: nach deiner micheln erbermbd Dir allein hab ich gesiindet und tet das ubel vor dir: das du werdest gerechthaftigt in deinen worten und uberwindest so du urteylst.

Wann sich ich bin entphangen in den ungangkeyten: und in den siinden entphieng mich mein mutter.

Wann sich du hast liebgehabt die wahrheit: du hast mir eroffent die ungewissen und die verborgen ding deiner weisheit.

(Mentelin-Bibel, 1466; after the Vulgate) Erbarm dich iber mich, o got, nach deiner grossen barmhertzikayt . . .

Dir hab ich allein gesiindet / und vor deinem angesicht bel gethon / das du gerecht seyest in deinen worten / und iiberwindest, so man dich urtaylet.

Dann ich bin wie du sichst in siinde empfangen worden / und meyn mutter ward meyn in tibelthaten schwanger.

Jedoch hast du die warhayt liebgehebt / und ungewisse verborgne THE REFORMATION IN PERIL ding deiner weyBhayt mir geoffenbaret.

(Ottmar Nachtgal (Luscinius], 1524; after the Vulgate) Erbarm dich mein, o got, nach deiner barmhertzigkait . . .

Dir / allein dir hab ich gesiindet / und das b68 in deinen augen hab ich gethan / darumb wirst du gerecht sein so du réden wirst / und wirst rain scheinen so du richtten wirst.

Nym war in der siind bin ich zu der geburt berait / und in der siind hat mich empfangen mein muter.

Nym war die warhait hast du begert in der mauren / und in verborgenhait hast du mir zuwissen thon die weiShait.

(Caspar Amman, 1523; after the Hebrew original) Gott sey myr gnedig nach deyner guete /.. .

An dyr alleyne hab ich gesundigt / und ubel fur dyr gethan.

Darumb wirstu recht bleyben ynn deynen worten / und reyn erfunden wenn du gerichtet wirst.

Sihe ich byn ynn untugent gemacht / und meyne mutter hat mich ynn sunden empfangen.

Sihe du hast lust zur warheyt / Du lessest mich wissen die weysheyt heymlich verborgen.

(Martin Luther, 1524; after the Hebrew original) The King James version of the same passage reads:

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness .

Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

Luther's translation of the Bible is justly celebrated as a major achievement.

Its acclaim is merited because the German Bible did not remain a linguistic work of art; it became a book of the people."

His work on the Bible translation makes plain that Luther was more than an unshakably certain Reformer. His claim to being the first called to the THE MAN AND HIS DEEDS

Auffs Neto sugeriche. er §u Gachfen Freibeit.

Hedrincét su BSutremberg / Our) Hans Luft.

Title page of the Complete Bible, from the Wittenberg 1541 edition office of preacher of the Gospel was something he never allowed to be challenged; he saw his experience as the Christian experience, and his long search led him to a truth that inspired his contemporaries with new goals.

Luther lived at a time when truth was still indivisible, and the "Evangelist" was firmly convinced that he alone represented that truth. The claim brought

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL him the reputation of being a loner. He had championed the cause of the weak and the laymen, but among theologians he tolerated only listeners and disciples.

The history of the Luther Bible shows us a completely different Luther, one who knew his limits and was well aware that the translation could only be accomplished cooperatively. He never considered the task to have been mastered. Before dinner every Wednesday and Thursday from the summer of 1539 to the beginning of 1541, he assembled his council of experts, his

"Sanhedrin" as he called them, at his home so that a further, thorough revision of the translation could be made among competent colleagues. "We are beggars." The sentence Luther wrote on a scrap of paper shortly before his death mirrors worldly wisdom, not dying resignation, and stems from experience with his work on the Bible, its translation into common speech. His earliest biographer allows us a glimpse into the laboratory:

When the whole German Bible had gone out for the first time and one day of tribulation taught the next, the Doctor began work on the Bible from the beginning again with great seriousness, industry, and prayer; and because the Son of God himself had promised He would be present where people gathered in His name and prayed for His spirit,

Doctor Luther immediately organized a Sanhedrin of his own, made up of the best people available at the time. Each week they came to the Doctor's monastery for several hours before dinner. .

. After the Doctor had first looked through the earlier published Bibles and in addition consulted Jews and experts in foreign languages and asked old Germans for proper terms (once he had several sheep cut up so a German butcher could tell him what every [organ] of the sheep was called). He used to come to the consistory with his old Latin and new German

Bible, always bringing the Hebrew text as well. Master Philippus [Melanchthon] always brought the Greek text along. .

. Everyone had already prepared himself for the text that was to be discussed and had looked through Greek and Latin, as well as Jewish exegetes. Then, as president, he proposed a version and let everyone speak and listened to what everyone had to say with reference to the quality of the language or the exegesis of the old doctors."

The open-ended and thus necessarily common search for the right translation does not preclude certainty of faith, nor does trust in the Word of God make critical study of the text superfluous. The Scriptures do not reveal themselves to everyone in the same way, and many a man gets lost in them,

THE MAN AND HIS DEEDS as Luther explains in the vivid words of Pope Gregory: "An elephant drowns in this sea [of Scripture]; a lamb that is looking for Christ and perseveres, stands on firm ground and reaches the other side."

It is not he who knows everything but he who allows himself to be guided that finds solid footing in the Bible.

St. Augustine's distinction between knowledge and wisdom, cognition and faith, is central here. The fact that apart from schooling his intellect, man needs training as a human being between God and the world has been repressed again and again in Western tradition. The magic word scholarship has led to a reverent acceptance of scholarly systems or marginalized "great masters" from the Middle Ages to our day, in an often curious oscillation between over-confidence and tired skepticism.

The "elephant" Luther sees "drowning" in the Scriptures finds credulous successors until, swept away by the spirit of the age, it must yield to a new giant, which unmasks its predecessor as unsuited for swimming and exposes it to ridicule. The ever-new "masters" of philosophical innovation ride high for a time with their Plato or Aristotle, Hegel or Heidegger, each one promising to be a reliable guide to the safe shore. Luther does not deny the importance of his philosophical training. But, in contrast to scholastic tradition, he does not construct a scholarly system. Nor does he offer "dogmatics" that purport to provide security but for their credibility actually depend on the reliability of the philosophical underpinnings.

The confession "We are beggars" does not merely define a position before God, it is an admission of Luther's fallibility before his fellow man.

Luther's earliest biographer concludes the history of the Reformer's life with the statement: "God guard all theologians to keep them from becoming masters in or over Scripture.""

Wine, Women, and Song Luther was neither a self-contained loner nor a self-sufficient individualist.

At Wartburg Castle he experienced how detrimental isolation was to scholarship and how fatal the effect of sustained solitude was to one's spiritual life.

The Devil likes to have the Christian alone, for then he can heap him with worries and depression; I know Satan well, "know the tricks he likes to play on me; he is a sad, sour spirit, who does not like the heart to be glad." °

But God is the God of joy. Dark thoughts cannot be avoided, yet Luther comforts a depressed friend; it is the same as in nature: you cannot stop

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from nesting in your hair. So seek company, play cards, or do something else you enjoy—and do it with a good conscience, for depressions come not from God but the Devil.

Luther is speaking from experience."

Apart from theology, music is God's greatest gift. It has much in common with theology because it heals the soul and raises the spirits. Luther had already enjoyed singing and making music as a youth. Without music man is a stone, but with music he can drive away the Devil: "It has often revived me and relieved me from heavy burdens." '* Cards, music, and company—they are divine gifts.

We cannot find the apt saying "Who loves not women, wine, and song will stay a fool his whole life long"? in Luther's writings. The Reformer's admirers protested indignantly against such nonsense being imputed to their hero. And they were right! Luther would have been much more offensive by insisting with St. Paul that believers are fools for Christ: Who loves not women, wine, and song, will never be a "fool" his whole life long."°

The discovery of the world and earthly joys against the background of the adversary's threat to morality separates Luther from both monastic and puritan morality. German Lutheranism, with its cultural ideal of making music at home, has preserved a precious part of the Luther heritage. But when a cheerful round of cards is disdained as unrespectable or even disreputable,

Luther has lost the game.

PEOPLE IN the world need company, believers need their congregation.

Even where the individual stands before God in his unmistakable individuality, he needs intercession, the communal presence of others. Church communion means "that no believer ever lives alone or dies alone, but is protected and borne by the communion of saints."?!

Because of his genuine piety, Luther increasingly gains general recognition beyond confessional boundaries today. But it is recognition coupled with the suspicion that the Reformer indulged in misdirected individualism and thus had no sense of communion within the Church. It is true that prayer involves a highly personal, individual approach to God; the knowledge that Christ died and was raised from the dead "for me," not for institutions, nations, or denominations is one of the non-negotiable features of Reformation theology.

Luther was at Coburg Castle on May 29, 1530, when he learned of his father's death. This was clearly the time for solitary prayer, as Veit Dietrich, who was with him, reported to Catherine Luther in Wittenberg: after readTHE MAN AND HIS DEEDS gil ing the news of his father's death, "he immediately takes his Psalter, goes into the chamber and cries so much that he could not think clearly the next day.""" Luther wrote to Melanchthon: "My dear Philipp, I have just [on this

Pentecost] heard that my father has died." The son's bereavement for his father was right and proper—"through him God gave me life, through his sweat he fed and raised me—I am too beaten to write any more." He was so close to his father that two nights earlier he had dreamt that he had lost a large tooth, so large that his amazement would not cease. On the Sunday after that his father was dead." At the time a dream of this kind was popularly believed to be an omen of the imminent death of a relative."

The grieving Luther retired with his Psalter, a book that reflects the entire range of human feelings, from exultant joy to the deepest sorrow. Since his monastic years the Psalms had been his prayerbook for all situations. At the monastery he had learned to identify with the psalmist of times past, to let the words become his own and thus to fit himself into the totality of Christian experience. Here, in the solitary chamber, stood a mourning son; though alone before God, he was not a lonely individualist far-removed from the communal experience of the Church. The Psalter, brimming with life and Luther's daily companion, preserved him from becoming dejected.

Praying to God and trusting that his prayers of intercession for the Church in its battle against the Devil would be heard and answered were sources of strength in Luther's life. Many a letter of his ends with the words: "Remember to pray for me." This might at first be regarded as a pious convention, as if Luther were keeping up old monastic habits, which he actually did. He could write: "Vale, ora pro me" —farewell and pray for me." But as a rule his appeal for intercession sounded more urgent. He fell ill and knew exactly: you there in Nuremberg or Naumberg or wherever, you did not think earnestly of me, you were slack in your intercession. Since the Reformation was not the work of man but the task of God, the only thing left to the Evangelical movement was intercession, imploring help and inciting God on to intervention.

TALKING ABOUT Luther the son brings us to the question of Luther the father. As a parent he could display childlike imagination; for example, he penned a precious tale in Coburg and sent it to his eldest son, Hans, for his fourth birthday:

I know a beautiful lovely garden. There are many children in it with golden garments, picking up beautiful apples under the trees, and pears, ji2

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL cherries, prunes, and plums; they sing, hop about, and are happy; they also have pretty little horses with golden bridles and silver saddles. I asked a man whose garden it was whose children they were. He answered: they are the children that like to pray and learn and are pious.

Then I spoke: Dear man, I, too, have a son. His name is Hansichen Luther. Wouldn't he like to come into the garden, too, so he can eat

_ such lovely apples and pears, and ride such lovely little horses and play with these children? Then the man replied: "If he, too, likes to pray and learn and is pious, he should come into the garden too."

When his daughter Magdalena died on September 20, 1542, at the age of thirteen, the grieving father composed the epitaph for his beloved child, to console his wife:

Ich, Lena, Luthers liebes kindt, Schlaff hie mit allen heiligen glindt Und lieg in meiner rueh und rast.

Nu bin ich unsers Gottes gast.

Ein kindt des todts war ich zwar, Aus sterblichem samen mich mein mutter gebar, Itz leb ich und bin reich in Gott.

Des danck ich Christi blutt und todt.¥ [I, Lena, Luther's beloved child / Sleep gently here with all the saints / And lie at peace and rest / Now I am our God's own guest. / I was a child of death, it is true, / My mother bore me out of mortal seed, /

Now I live and am rich in God. / For this I thank Christ's death and blood.]} All in all, Luther the family man is not much different from Luther the public persona. Be it at home or on the pulpit, at the lectern or the desk, as an authority on politics or a pamphleteer, his personal experience is always present.

But that makes it difficult to judge him fairly. The personality of an Erasmus or a John Calvin retreats into the background even in personal correspondence. The humanist writes as if afraid disclosures about himself might get into the wrong hands, or as if, in the back of his mind he were already thinking about the future publication of his correspondence and adapting the contents to prospective readers. The Geneva Reformer Calvin is not worried about the future. He makes a more stoic impression, distinguishing clearly between himself and his office, rarely yielding to deep emotions. With Luther feelings force their way everywhere. He does not merely

THE MAN AND HIS DEEDS teach a theology that encompasses the whole human being, spirit and soul, body and emotions; he himself is passionately present, not only teaching life by faith but living faith himself.

Where would a man like Martin Luther fit in today? What kind of job would he be suited for?

Were there still a university in Wittenberg (it was merged with the University of Halle in 1815), he would not likely be offered a professorship there; nor would it be any different in Heidelberg or Marburg. It is the Erasmian type of ivory-tower academic that has gained international acceptance. If there were a chair somewhere, whether in Harvard or Holten, it would be futile to look for his name on the list of applicants—one must follow a call, be driven against one's will."? Should he nonetheless be shortlisted by a department of religion, the problem would arise of what subject Luther should teach today. The professor of biblical theology would probably be best suited for the present-day field of practical theology.

But for that he would be too conservative and far too pious, as well as being too Catholic in approach and too strongly committed to the Middle

Ages—in short, he would not be up-to-date. He would be an indisputably successful teacher, but as a colleague he would be irksome and unwilling to bow to majorities. The modern trend toward ecumenism would cause him particular problems because he would not be prepared to suppress those questions that divide Christians. He was driven by singular notions about the Devil and the Last Judgment. With respect to the Devil he had not yet experienced the Enlightenment and would seriously have to let himself be asked this question: "What would he have done without the Devil, without the possibility of attributing the grotesque and embarrassing contradictions in his personal history to Evil personified?" *° How strange his answer would sound, that he would be even worse off without the Devil, for God, too, would then have become remote! Whether the discoveries of modern psychology would have changed his mind cannot be determined; he distrusted solutions that were "self-evident" and learned to see contradictions as proof of the proximity of truth.

He would certainly be an unpredictable ally in faculty politics. He might take an interest in curricular reforms, as he had in the autumn of 1517, and even present comprehensive plans that would be popular among the students who filled his lecture halls to the point of overflowing. But if, as in the sumnn Enea

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL a nn nnn EEEnEeeee mer of 1520, a great many of these students started fighting, as they had with journeymen painters, and caused a riot, he would preach publicly against them and even leave the meeting angrily when the rector and senate of the university tried to defend the students."

He would be biting and sometimes overly rough toward colleagues with whom he disagreed. Where generalized judgments were concerned, he would outdo anyone, working himself up to furious tirades. He would rant against papists, Jews, lawyers, and high officials because he felt all of them strangled human life with suffocating laws that undermine the common good. He would hardly have bowed to anything like a minister of education—he was not "politically reliable."

A psychiatric analysis would rob Luther of whatever chances he had left of teaching at a present-day university. The diagnosis would be persuasive—

Paranoia reformatorica—but the grounds for it must remain irritatingly uncertain, ranging from neurosis to psychosis, from Oedipus complex to mother fixation. Fear of the Lord and abhorrence of the Devil are indicators of disturbed childhood development. And disturbing is what they really are.

Of course there is an objection to this conceptual experiment of attempting to hire the sixteenth-century Luther at a modern university: a "child of his time" cannot simply be transplanted to an era centuries later. The distance between the dawn of the modern age and the twentieth century is vast.

Historically we are separated by the Enlightenment, politically by the American (1776), French (1789), and Russian (1918) revolutions, and sociopolitically by the Industrial Revolution. Nevertheless, there is something to be learned from trying to imagine Luther as our contemporary because it is his personality and character that are at issue. Our anachronistic test is so illuminating because questions regarding his commitment cannot simply be shunted aside in an analysis of his person. The man and his cause are so intimately linked that any separation of the two will be at the expense of both.

Even this speaks against offering Luther a professorship in our time, which prefers objective scholarship to a personal commitment and vision.

The Reformation movement cannot be separated from Luther the man, but it would also be incorrect to see it as the consequence of his exposure to psychic pressures: Luther might be able to accept a diagnosis of Paranoia reformatorica, since "Reformation madness" includes the foolishness that is

THE MAN AND HIS DEEDS an intrinsic part of faith. And it can scarcely have been anything but this foolishness that enabled him to bear the burdens and pressures attendant on his role as a reformer—a role he did not want to play but which friend and foe alike forced upon the "Evangelist." One aspect of these burdens is particularly noteworthy. Luther's fear of God proved an overwhelming force before which human fears receded and lost their thrust. We can outline the range of this fear of God in five points:

Fear of the Lord is awe of the majesty of the Lord and fear of God's holy wrath: "If I could believe that God was not angry at me, I would stand on my head for joy."

Faith and fear of the Lord are not mutually exclusive, but faith lives on trust in God's mercy and not the knowledge of His majesty. The faithful creep under the cross of Christ like chicks under the wings of the mother hen.

God's wrath is not directed against man but against his lack of faith: faith is the obedience demanded by God.

The Reformation discovery did not leave the "wrath of God" and the "fear. of God" behind as outdated medieval concepts.

Faith is not individual self-protection. The Evangelical movement should build a wall of faith to protect the people.* Despite the imperial ban and against the clear instructions of his prince,

Luther left his exile at Wartburg Castle and returned to Wittenberg on March 1, 1522. Informing the elector of the grounds for his action, he cited this wall of faith providing protection from a wrathful God: "God has demanded that one should set oneself against Him as a wall before the people"—to change or stay His judgment. Luther cited the prophet Ezekiel:

"And I sought for a man among them, who would build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it" (Ezekiel

Luther returned to Wittenberg to erect the wall of faith that would protect the land from God's wrath over the oppression perpetrated by the mob and the papists. That is why he neither feared the emperor's ban nor needed the elector's protection: "I am coming to Wittenberg under far higher protection than that of the Elector. .

. Yes, I believe that I can protect Your Electoral Grace better than You me. ... In this matter the sword should not and cannot counsel or help—God must work alone here, without any human care and aid. Thus he who has the greatest faith will furnish the best protection." *

This trust is the other side of the "phobia"; courage and contempt for the Devil issue from faith. When the plague was ravaging the city—above all

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL between 1527 and 1529 and then again in the summer of 1542—Luther refused to leave Wittenberg with his colleagues. Some may flee the plague and find a healthier place to stay, but "public servants," preachers, mayors, judges, doctors, policemen, and neighbors of the sick who have no one to take care of them are "on duty" and must remain.* The letters from his last official trip are particularly impressive documents of his belief in public duty.

With' seeming heartlessness, he wrote to his wife: "Spare me your worrying, there is someone better to worry about me than you and all the angels; he lies in the manger and hangs from the Virgin's teats."*" Zest for life is healthy and God-given, but worrying stems from the Devil and is a sign of weakness of faith and thus of disobedience. The others may leave—"for to flee dying and death and to save one's life is a natural instinct implanted by God and is not forbidden" **—but Luther cannot.

The knowledge that God's care sustains him in "office" is probably one of the roots of Luther's discovery of vocation. The farmer plowing his field, the craftsman producing his goods, and the sovereign capably judging and governing are as much doing God's work as the clergyman on the pulpit or in the confessional. They have all had a divine call to render service to the world, and thus they will also be judged by God."

There is a clear professional hierarchy, with ruling princes at the very top.

As Luther's concept of society leaves little room for control "from below," this phenomenon of obedience to authority is striking and offends modern democratic sensibilities. It is then easy to forget that the clouds of God's wrath and justice hang low: control "from below" is exercised "from above," by God Himself, with lightning speed and, where necessary, in a terrible way.

It is more than conceivable that Luther's intense, ever-present fear of the Lord was aroused at home, drummed into him at school, experienced during divine worship, and provided with a rational basis in the dcademic lecture hall. Whether it is an individual or a collective-social "phobia," Luther repressed nothing in this regard; he brought it to the surface and called it by its name.

Luther's age saw its own cause at stake in the battle against the false and for the true fear of God. By preaching, Luther had succeeded in convincing others that when one takes up the cross of Christ, which is God's ultimate

Word, fear loses its destructive force. The underlying cause of the spiritual strain under which Luther had to live was the constant, radical questioning to which he subjected himself: are you alone wise, as opposed to so many throughout the centuries?—Look at what you have unleashed!

Since the summer of 1521 the number of problems arising from the break THE MAN AND HIS DEEDS nz with an awesome tradition had been growing. Ideals that had been held sacred for centuries and to which Luther had been committed with every fiber of his being lost their strength of conviction and their validity. Priests were renouncing celibacy and openly getting married; their right to do so needed biblical substantiation and guarantees. Monks and nuns were running away from their monasteries and convents, eager to live a life pleasing to God in the world. How was this unprecedented breach of vows to be justified, and how was the new freedom of conscience to be protected against the licentiousness of the flesh? Priests were marrying and monasteries everywhere emptying, and the next question was already waiting to be answered: what did the biblical Lord's Supper have in common with hundreds of thousands of masses for the dead that were instituted out of piety in the interest of the deceased, with the purpose of effecting God's grace by means of the sacrifice of the mass?

Since approximately 1522 Luther had also been confronted by Catholics of a new sort, who were no longer seeking to defend the claims and privileges of Rome primarily by means of canon law; they argued on the basis of Scripture and were honest and earnest when they advocated traditional forms of piety. It was from their ranks that the reproach stemmed: considering the testimony of so many generations, how can Luther purport to know better? Then there were the princes, knights, peasants, and officials who were abusing the Gospel for their own purposes. What had once been the monopoly of pope and curia was now being done by people everywhere under the guise of "Evangelical freedom." Finally there was the attack from his own ranks: the followers of the Reformation fell out over the question of baptism and the Eucharist. It was all too much: "As if it were not enough that the pope, emperor, princes, bishops, and whole world hated me: now my own brothers are turning against me." "

Though these tribulations for the sake of the Gospel never reached the depth and intensity of personal anguish, they, too, continued to the end of his life. They are partly the expression, partly the result of the way Luther saw his own place in the reformation movement: he was an instrument in the hands of God, whose overpowering wisdom is hidden in history. Having worked out no historical plan and prepared no program of his own, he was in a weaker position than many of his prominent contemporaries like Thomas

Miinzer, the peasant leader; Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order; or John Calvin, the Geneva reformer. The only thing left for Luther was to wait for God's great reformation.

Overwhelmed by God, at the mercy of His power. The German poet THE REFORMATION IN PERIL Rainer Maria Rilke expresses the experience in so unique, so timeless a way that it can help us to understand what Luther felt better than many a prosaic explanation could:

Was wir besiegen, ist das Kleine, und der Erfolg selbst macht uns klein.

Das Ewige und Ungemeine will nicht von uns gebogen sein.

Das ist der Engel, der den Ringern des Alten Testaments erschien: wenn seiner Widersacher Sehnen im Kampfe sich metallen dehnen, fiihlt er sie unter seinen Fingern wie Saiten tiefer Melodien.

Wen dieser Engel iiberwand, welcher so oft auf Kampf verzichtet, der geht gerecht und aufgerichtet und gross aus jener harten Hand, die sich, wie formend, an ihn schmiegte.

Die Siege laden ihn nicht ein.

Sein Wachstum ist: der Tiefbesiegte von immer Grdsserem zu sein.*'

{What we conquer are the small things, / and victory itself makes us small. / The Eternal and Un-common / does not want to be shaped by us. / This is the Angel who to the wrestlers / of the Old Testament appeared: / when the sinews of his adversaries / in the battle stretch metallically / he feels them under his fingers / like the strings of profound melodies. // Who was overcome by this Angel / who has oft from battle abstained, / he walks justified, upright / and proud out of that hard hand, / which as if molding, gently encloses him. / Victories are not inviting to him. / His gain is to be profoundly vanquished / by ever greater things.]

THE TENSION between the old and the new conscience was a further, and as we shall see, decisive aspect of the Reformation burden. Two verses of Luther's song "Nun freut euch lieben Christen gmein" ("Rejoice Together,

Beloved Christians") provide an eloquent but unmistakably autobiographical statement of this tension:

THE MAN AND HIS DEEDS Dem Teufel ich gefangen lag im Tod war ich verloren, mein Siind mich qualte Nacht und Tag, darin ich war geboren.

Ich fiel auch immer tiefer drein, es war kein Guts am Leben mein, die Siind hatt' mich besessen.

Mein guten Werk' die galten nicht, es war mit ihn' verdorben; der frei Will hasste Gotts Gericht, er war zum Gut'n erstorben; die Angst micht zu verzweifeln trieb, dass nichts denn Sterben bei mir blieb, zur Hollen musst ich sinken.*?

[I lay captured by the Devil / I was lost in death, / my sinfulness tormented me night and day, / in which I was born. / I also fell ever deeper into it, / there was nothing good about my life, / sin had taken possession of me. // My good works were good for nothing, / they were all worthless; / the free will hated God's Judgment, / it was dead to what was good; / fear drove me to despair, / so nothing was left to me but dying, / I had to sink to Hell.]

How impressive it is to watch Luther imbuing involved theological thoughts with experience, making them come alive and broadly understandable. The existential framework is, however, easily misunderstood, since it seems to imply that everything Luther experienced body and soul and described as sickness unto death was now past and overcome.

The conscience of man, of "old Adam," is geared to the standard of achievements before God and the world, and it is given to judging itself and others according to achievements. But the conscience of the man who has been justified by God builds on the achievements of Christ and is free of accursed self-analysis—"accursed" because the Devil abuses the conscience, establishes himself as the superego, and suffocates man with feelings of guilt.

In the Middle Ages captivity by the Devil, that fatal disease, was understood and branded as concupiscence, carnal lust. Luther liberated himself from this notion. For him "lust" was the diabolical drive to hold one's own before God and oneself through one's own achievements. Luther's hymns

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL invite the congregation to allow God, through His Word and sacrament, to release them from the prison of the Devil's drives.

Luther's key statement, that the Christian is "sinner and just" at the same time, is the most pointed formulation of the moral revolution being carried out here. Against the background of the Middle Ages—which were by no means past in any respect—Luther can even be said to have been carrying out an immoral revolution. This became manifest when he wrote to Philipp

Melanchthon from Wartburg Castle, appealing to the younger man's Christian conscience with the provocative words: sin bravely, but believe even more and rejoice in Christ—"pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide et gaude in Christo." *

"Sin bravely" is a challenge to fight the "old" conscience and cast it off as a suffocating yoke. "Believe even more and rejoice in Christ" is the call to the freedom of a Christian. Luther had accurately forecasted the obstacles that stood in the way of Evangelical freedom in the summer of 1519, during his second course of lectures on the Psalms. There would be "storms sweeping over the conscience" when faith clung to its hope in God without seeking refuge in good works. At that moment the idol of good conscience would demonstrate its power."

The Christian walks a "straight and narrow way."*° This is not a reference to the "straight gate" and the "narrow way" of those monks and puritans who forgo the joys of life on the "broad way" so as to maintain clear consciences.

No, it is a difficult, a painful path because it leads to the nearly mystical experience of being torn out of one's conscience, the conscience that seeks peace in its own holiness.** Centuries of Western formation of conscience must be overcome if saying yes to God means saying no to one's own conscience."

Psychology at the Deathbed From 1527 on Luther's health began deteriorating so quickly as to constitute a crisis." A year earlier he had already had a stone, of which he reportedly rid himself by eating a heavy meal—fried herrings and cold peas with mustard.

At the beginning of the following year he was suddenly stricken with tightness of the chest caused by "a rush of blood to the heart," a feeling of oppression in the heart area, accompanied by painful buzzing in his ears. He was to complain frequently of these symptoms till he died. This time a herbal drink still brought relief.

Seven months later, on the morning of Saturday, July 6, 1 527, Luther was seized by a serious depression followed by such violent circulatory disturbances that death seemed imminent. His father confessor, pastor Johannes

THE MAN AND HIS DEEDS Bugenhagen; and his close friend Justus Jonas recorded the events of these days and Luther's "last words."

A Danish psychiatrist has assessed the two friends' eyewitness report as material evidence of Luther's psychosis." In reality the document is a description of a moving deathbed scene and an impressive testament without pathological traits. Luther's real torments, which manifested themselves as melancholy, partly preceded and partly followed his illness, and they were intensified by a weakening of the body from which he was never completely to recover.

What had actually happened? At eight in the morning on July 6, 1527, Luther had pastor Bugenhagen summoned. He complained to him that he was suffering the most agonizing spiritual distress that he had ever experienced. Bugenhagen could not, however, find out what it was that was affecting

Doctor Martinus so, and Luther himself could not furnish a more detailed explanation. Luther then confessed and asked for absolution. He also uttered the wish to receive the Lord's Supper the following day. After his confession

Luther indicated what was troubling him: "Judged from the outside, on the basis of the life I have led, it may look as if I have been walking on a bed of roses. But God knows my life. .

. . | have often tried to serve the world with outward dignity and holy seriousness. But God has not allowed it. The world cannot truly charge me with public crimes; that angers it all the more. .

. I shall pray to God to allow me not to offend anyone through my sins." °° What Bugenhagen heard and reported still does not make clear just what lay so heavily on Luther's mind that morning. Nor do the following events produce greater clarity. The only thing that is evident is that Luther sensed death to be near.

On the evening of that Saturday Justus Jonas and his wife were invited to dinner, which was to be at five o'clock as usual. But when the two arrived

Luther had already gone to bed. He tried to get up but fainted, pale and icecold. "O, Doctor Jona, I feel sick, get me water or what you have, or I will die."*' Jonas managed to revive Luther by pouring water over him, but now the end seemed to be approaching; sapped of his strength, Luther prepared himself. When Bugenhagen returned around six o'clock, he found "the Doctor in bed" and heard "how, with clear words alternately in Latin and German, he called upon God the Father and Christ the Lord, and he commended all that he had done in the service of the Holy Gospel into the Lord's hands." *

His term of office was over.

That is why Bugenhagen and Justus Jonas wrote their account. They wanted the world to know that to his very last breath Doctor Martin, the Evangelist, had held fast to his faith, that "Evangelical faith" had stood the test

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL of the hour of death. That is why Jonas recorded Luther's last words: "My dearest God, You led me into the cause, You know that Yours is the truth and the Word." Because Luther's death was treated as an official, public event, posterity gained this illuminating insight into the Reformation distinction between the correctness of teachings and the unworthiness of man. Both are expressed in his last confession: "I am fully conscious and certain that I have taught correctly from the Word of God, according to the service to which God pressed me against my will; I have taught correctly about faith, love, the cross, and the sacraments. Many accused me of proceeding too severely. Severely, that is true, and often too severely; but it was a question of the salvation of all, even my opponents. I was still intending to give all I had to write about Holy

Baptism against Zwingli and the contemnors of the sacraments. But God has evidently decided differently."

There was no trace of despair despite the factors that made it difficult for him to take leave: he regretted that he had not been found deserving enough to shed his blood for Christ, "as so many brothers have testified to their beliefs with their lives. But that honor was also withheld from Jesus' favorite apostle,

John the Evangelist, although he wrote far more harshly against the pope than I was ever capable of doing." * Once again the crucial point was his conviction that the Church of Christ was the Church of the persecuted and the martyrs, who truly bore witness to their crucified Lord.

Luther's second concern, too, was connected with his concern for the Church: who will deal with the mobs and fanatics that are now spreading more and more at the expense of the faithful and the Gospel? "O, Thou dearest

God and Father, Thou hast given me many thousands of precious and noble gifts for others; were it Thy will, I would be happy to let myself still be used to glorify Thy name and be of use to Thy people. .

. O how the fanatics will cause havoc after my death!" ** Who will now cope with the sectarians who will settle in far and wide if Christ does not prove mightier than Satan?"'"

His last concern was for his pregnant wife—Elisabeth would be born five months later, on December 10, 1527—and his one-year-old son Johannes:

"Lord God, I thank Thee for having allowed me to be a poor beggar on earth.

I leave no house, property, or money. But you gave me a wife and children, I commend them unto Thee. Feed, instruct, and preserve them as Thou hast preserved me, O Thou Father of children and widows." 8

It is thanks to Justus Jonas that one of Catherine Luther's prayers has survived: "My dearest Doctor, if it is God's will, I would rather know you to be with our Lord than with me. It is not a question of me and my dear child alone but of the many pious Christian people that still need you. Do not THE MAN AND HIS DEEDS worry about me, I commend you to His divine will. God will take care of you."

Finally the doctor arrived; it was Augustine Schurff, a professor of medicine. He wrapped the ice-cold patient in hot towels, especially his head and feet. The measures were effective. Downstairs friends waited in fear and trembling until Schurff returned with the news that Doctor Martinus had perspired a great deal and was now out of danger. The patient was still very weak and had to stay in bed; he could not give his planned sermon the next day, Sunday. But in the evening he was already able to get up. "God has brought him back to us, Christo gratia" —Christ be thanked.

He was not terrified by his encounter with death. As Luther himself reported, his physical recovery was speedy. What he had experienced at the outbreak of his illness as an assault by the Devil would, however, only really gain momentum as his health improved. He continued to be troubled by doubts about the Evangelical truth. What frightened him was that he did not know whether he could live up to it: "For more than a week I have been thrown back and forth in death and Hell; my whole body feels beaten, my

— limbs are still trembling. I almost lost Christ completely, driven about on the waves and storms of despair and blasphemy against God. But because of the intercession of the faithful, God began to take mercy on me and tore my soul from the depths of Hell." Thus Luther wrote to Philipp Melanchthon on August 2, 1527, in words that provide immediate insight into his experiences. Luther was wrestling to find the merciful God!

This comes as a complete surprise and does not fit into the traditional picture of the Reformational discovery. It had, after all, looked as if, after much grumbling and cursing and desperate struggling, Luther had achieved the breakthrough in 1518 (possibly earlier, but not later) that had opened the gates of paradise to him—once and for all. Certainly Luther was no longer questioning the Reformation discovery that God bestows justification by faith without anterior or posterior conditions. He had only just attested to the fact that "I have taught correctly about faith, love, and cross." But certainty of faith does not exist once and for all, it is not a virtue one can possess, on which one can rely. Certainty of faith is a gift that "exceeds my powers.""

The plague that now swept through Wittenberg devastated the town, but Luther remained there with Bugenhagen and two other pastors—fear of the Black Death pales in comparison with the fear of the Devil's attack on one's soul. "Satan himself is raging against me with all his might. .

. He affects me with indescribable spiritual weakness. .

. My hope is that the fight will benefit many, although there is nothing in this misery that my sins have not deserved. .

. But I know that I have taught the Word of Christ purely and THE REFORMATION IN PERIL ee ee ee truly for the salvation of many. That is what the Devil is angry at, that is why he wants to crush me together with the Word." Shortly afterward he wrote to the same correspondent, Johannes Agricola, again: "World and reason have no idea how difficult it is to grasp that Christ is our justification, so deeply embedded in us—like a second nature—is the trust in works." The Gospel is not merely too complex to grasp; the Gospel is repugnant to everyone whose conscience seeks justification in works!

In October he was still haunted by anguish and urgently requested Melanchthon to remember him in his prayers of intercession since he himself was a "miserable worm," plagued by the spirit of sadness: "I hope that the God who began His work in me will ultimately have mercy on me, for I seek and thirst after nothing but the merciful God."®

This was a further unequivocal statement: Luther was looking for the gracious God whom he had already been preaching and teaching for so long.

The Devil had thrown him back to the monastery: "I have known these tribulations since my youth; but I never expected that they would so increase." On New Year's Day of 1528 the echo of his fears could still be heard: how "difhcult" it is that our justification is hidden in God!® The tension did not ease until the spring of 1528.

We can search for a psychological explanation for these dark days and months. At times he must have been overworked. The almost unimaginable rate at which he worked, the masses of letters and treatises, the lectures and negotiations make it very likely. He himself considered this explanation only to dismiss it. Overwork was not a decisive reason. It would certainly not be wrong for the emotional state he was in to be described as an illness, provided, however, that cognizance of the symptom is not taken for a diagnosis.

Here was a highly sensitive human being afflicted by living in two eras at once, a disorder that physicians or psychiatrists might be able to ameliorate but cannot cure. Luther suffered through the conflict—unavoidable for medieval and modern alike—between the conscience and Evangelical reliance on God. Here is where the man and his deeds converge.

This is the sickness unto death which Luther uncovered: we cling to our achievements and cannot shake the need to prove ourselves before God and man, in life and in death. Luther's "neurosis" proves to be part and parcel of the Reformation discovery: we are beggars—that is true!

Luther as He Was f Martin Luther walked down the street today, would anyone recognize him? Would at least Luther scholars slow down?

There are certainly enough pictures of him. Lucas Cranach (11553), who knew Luther well and thought very highly of him, executed at least five portraits of him; three oil paintings and two copperplates have survived. This impressive series, though shaped by the vision and conception of one and the same artist, seems to depict completely different figures. The ascetic face of the serious monk has nothing in common with the vigorous, bearded Luther as Junker

Jorg except the broad forehead and the luminous eyes. There seem to be worlds between the monk and the squire, and yet there was only a year between the portraits, which date from 1520 and 1521. The eyes also give the face of 1532, immortalized by apprentices from the Cranach workshop, its individual stamp.

The last portrait, painted by Lucas Cranach the Younger (+1586) at the beginning of 1546, seems to focus on the eyes as well. Though the painting of the deceased Luther and his death mask show the man in all his dignity, they reveal death in all its indifference. The sparkling eyes are missing—and thus Luther himself is, too. Eyewitnesses—in the literal sense of the word— recounted that whoever spoke to Luther was riveted by the intensity of his eyes. After his interview with Luther in August 1518 Cardinal Cajetan spoke of the monk with the strange eyes. A Swiss student in Wittenberg provided a glowing description, calling them "deep, black, blinking, and glittering like a star"!! They were all in agreement over the vivid play of his features clearly reflecting his volatile emotions. He was no stoic, nor did he look like one.

The oldest description of Luther's outward appearance dates back from the Leipzig disputation of 1519, which attracted many listeners who did not want to miss the theological contest between Carlstadt, Luther, and Johannes Eck. The surviving description is not specific enough to allow us to see his face, but it is an excellent sketch from a distance. It was written by the Leipzig humanist Petrus Mosellanus, of whom Luther thought very well,

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL who had been offered the chair of Greek at the University of Wittenberg a year earlier, even before Melanchthon was offered the post.

Mosellanus describes Luther as a man of medium height, "haggard from worrying and studying, so that one can almost count his bones through the skin." Nonetheless, he makes the healthy impression of a man in the prime of life. He speaks in a clear, articulate voice and is courteous, even cheerful—but he criticizes "a bit too caustically and aggressively."*

How worn out and emaciated Luther was at the time of his Reformation discovery can be gathered from a remark he himself made about his physical condition. Though still thin at the disputation in 1519, he had already begun gradually putting on weight the year before. When he returned to Wittenberg from his successful disputation in Heidelberg in May 1518, his friends teased him, saying the Neckar region must have agreed with him because he had "filled out considerably"

Being too thin was never mentioned again; he developed in the opposite direction, toward corpulence. Once he had been condemned to immobility at Wartburg Castle and was receiving regular meals, there were soon no traces left of his original gauntness. Visitors at Coburg Castle at the time of the 1530 Diet of Augsburg described him as stout, and shortly before his death he described himself as the "fat doctor." This was no exaggeration.

MOSELLAN'S REFERENCE to Luther as courteous is surprising—that is a virtue no one attributed to the later Reformer; and the records of the Leipzig disputation provide only partial confirmation. In direct comparison with Eck it was easy to be courteous. The aggressiveness for which the humanist faults him is more convincing. In his prolix introductory speech, Mosellan admittedly demanded a style of debate so dignified, so restrained that it would have been more suited to a Platonic symposium than to a bitter fight that was to separate doctrinal truth from error. But Mosellan's view was correct:

Luther never denied having an overly sharp tongue; his tendency to use such heavy ammunition genuinely damaged his reputation in cultured circles.

The good humor Mosellan mentions is particularly noteworthy. It prevails despite all the cares that mark Luther's face. Luther was an emotional man; his temperament was like a volcano, liable to erupt in any situation, especially when he felt exuberant. His opponents sensed this and rejected it as being unfitting for a monk. They relate disapprovingly that throughout the Leipzig disputation the professor from Wittenberg was wearing a silver ring—with an amulet against evil—and that he was holding a flower, occasionally even smelling it!*

EPILOGUE: LUTHER AS HE WAS Mosellan also mentions the flower, though not as criticism. Yet it seems an unusual way of appearing at a disputation. The fact is that Luther loved nature and observed and admired it with keen eyes. He liked to relax in his garden, and, in defiance of the Devil, delighted in flowers, especially roses, as God's gift.°

Joy of life is not something that simply exists, it must be worked at. Even in our century, with holidays and relaxation legally established as a human right, the joy of life is an art that cannot be bought. Space and time can be provided, but joy needs practice.

The oft-invoked piety flourishing on the eve of the Reformation had two different faces: one a tendency to laicize the Church, the other a tendency to clericalize the world. People feasted, celebrated, and drank at church consecration festivals and carnival. But everywhere, particularly north of the Alps, there was a growing inclination to criticize luxury and merriment as if even laymen had taken monastic vows.

In the foreword to the new edition of his best-known book, Enchiridion Militis Christiani, Erasmus of Rotterdam coined a slogan welcomed far and wide: the ideal city is a monastery writ large. With this he had put into words a long-existing tendency that would later lend credibility and thrust to the Reformation in the German cities. The time was crying out for a new breed of educated, responsible laymen. But the new layman was the old monk.

Thus a second Reformation was engendered. Luther had made room for the joy of life, but it was crushed by puritanism before it could properly come into its own. Luther's often shocking battle for inner freedom included defending pleasure and merriment: the old monk was really a new layman.

Nort ONLY trials and tribulations, quarrels and cares left their mark; so did serious illness. Virtually the only health problem we know of up to the year

1520 is the accident that nearly cost him his life, when his sword pierced an artery. On the way to Worms Luther was seized by a bad fever, but only after he was at Wartburg Castle does he truly seem to have been plagued by physical complaints for the first time.

The legend has stubbornly persisted that Luther experienced his Refor_ mation breakthrough as the end of an agonizing bout of constipation. The unsavory story goes back to one of Luther's own statements: this cloaca is where I made my discovery. All the rest was freely but colorfully invented.

The fact is that he did not begin suffering from hemorrhoids and possibly anal fissures° that made bowel movements into a virtual torment until he was at Wartburg Castle, well after he had already been pronounced a heretic and THE REFORMATION IN PERIL put under imperial ban. He had had his first problems in Worms, but now he was plagued as never before: "My ass has become nasty," he complained in German in a Latin letter.' Once he described to his friend Spalatin, who belonged to the small circle of friends who knew where he was hiding, that after five days of constipation his bowel movement had caused him such pain

"that I nearly gave up the ghost—and now, bathed in blood, can find no peace. What took four days to heal immediately tears open again."* Illnesses were never so private to him that he would have wanted to suppress the details. The more extreme the situation, the more quickly he resorted to the German language, for Latin was too far removed from a scream of pain. The portrait of Luther showing us the Reformer only from the neck upward does not let us see the rest of his body racked with pain.

The passage that follows the frank description in his letter to Spalatin is typical of his attitude toward illness: "I am writing you this not to evoke your pity, but so that you can congratulate me. .

. By this misery I am incited to prayer, which is what we need most: to do battle with Satan by praying with all our might!"®

Only at the beginning of October 1521 did a remedy Spalatin obtained from the court physician of Electoral Saxony bring relief. Luther had been suffering from constipation for six months,"° and it continued to be a problem, one which would be joined by others—headaches with buzzing in his ears, tightness of the chest, stones, and gout.

In 1530 the forty-seven-year-old Luther was a middle-aged man—we would assume. He himself felt old: "The years are piling up.""' He needed glasses now, and at Coburg Castle complained that he could not see a thing with the badly made ones sent to him from Wittenberg. He attributed both his headaches and the ear infection from which he was never again to be completely free to the bad Coburg wine. He was exasperated by a shin infection kept open artificially for some time by a tube to drain the pus. Even on his last trip the tube was still in his leg.

In February 1537 the Protestants were faced with a decision that tested their consciences and their savvy alike. The pope had called for a council in Mantua, and the question under consideration was whether the Protestant imperial estates should participate, whether they were even allowed to participate in an "unfree," meaning papal, council. In Schmalkalden, which already belonged to Hesse, representatives of the princes and cities concerned assembled for extensive consultations. Wittenberg, too, took part. Luther fell so seriously ill during the negotiations that friends thought his death imminent, as they had ten years earlier and would again ten years later. He was probably suffering from several kidney stones so unfortunately placed that,

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSs EPILOGUE: LUTHER AS HE WAS SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS Probably the last portrait of Luther, drawn by his valet, Reifenstein, in a book belonging to Melanchthon. Melanchthon added the following words:

Alive I was your plague, o pope, Dead I shall destroy you.

He died in the year 1546 He lived for 63 years The 64th year was the year of his death It was the 18th of February when he encountered death, at night between two and three o'clock.

On the 22nd of the month he was buried in the Castle Church of He is dead, yet he lives.

THE REFORMATION IN PERIL as Matthaus Ratzberger, the physician treating him, reported, he "could pass no water." His whole body became so bloated "that one could do nothing for him but expect the end."

A year later Luther still vividly recollected all the remedies that had been tried on him: "Had I died of my stones in Schmalkalden, I would already have been in Heaven for a year now, free of all ills. At that time I was so terribly tormented by the doctors: they gave me as much to drink as if I were a huge ox and treated all my limbs, even sucking at my private parts."

Nothing helped, so Luther asked to be allowed to die in his "fatherland,"

Electoral Saxony. The departure to Gotha was planned but put off for a day:

"Philipp Melanchthon detained me for a day with his incurable belief in astrology, for it was new moon." * On the way back, the bumpy road may have given the fatally ill Luther the decisive push back to life. In the early hours of February 27 the stone was dislodged and "he almost drowned in his own water."'> Luther had escaped with his life once again;'* the "stargazer" ©

His physician Ratzeberg closes this part of Luther's biography with the remark that Luther never recovered from his kidney stones. Judging from the work he did, Luther was not an "old man" even in his final years. But occasionally he yearned for the end or dreamt of retiring from "office":

"Then I could dedicate myself completely to my garden." But these were passing thoughts. Illnesses were so plainly a plague of the Devil that he put up desperate resistance to them. Patient acceptance of suffering as divinely ordained destiny was anything but pious unless there was nothing left to be done. But diet and medical cures were there to be made use of in the fight for health against the Devil.

Luther must have had a very strong constitution, or he would never have been able to bear strain, overwork, and constant physical ailments for so long. But there is a deeper source for his exceptional vitality. Health is God's domain; death the Devil's intent. Luther learned to draw life from the struggle against the Devil. For the just shall Jive by faith, and "life" does not begin in Heaven. According to the medieval memenio mori, in the midst of life we are surrounded by death. Luther's faith enabled him to vigorously turn this on its head: "In the midst of death we are surrounded by life."

Following is a list of abbreviations used in these notes:

AugustinerCongregation [Proceedings of the Imperial D. Martini Lutheri Opera latina varii argumenti, vols. 1-7 (Frankfurt, Erlangen, 1865-73).

D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Abteilung Werke, vols. 1— (Weimar, 1883-).

D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Briefwechsel [Correspondence], vols. 1-18 (Weimar, 1930-85).

D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Tischreden [Table Talk], vols. 1-6 (Weimar, 1912-21).

D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Die Deutsche Bibel [The German Bible], vols. 1-12 (Weimar, Archiv zur Weimarer Lutherausgabe, vol. 2: D. Martin Luther

Operationes in psalmos 1519-1521, part II: Psalm 1-10 (Cologne, Vienna, 1981).

Heinrich Bornkamm, Martin Luther in der Mitte seines Lebens: Das Jahrzehnt zwischen dem Wormser und dem Augsburger Reichstag, ed. K. Bornkamm (Gottingen, 1979).

Martin Brecht, Martin Luther. Sein Weg zur Reformation 1483-1521, 2d ed. (Stuttgart, 1983).

Theodor Kolde, Die deutsche Augustiner-Congregation und Johann von Staupitz: Ein Beitrag zur Ordensund Reformationsgeschichte nach meistens ungedruckten Quellen

Julius Késtlin, Martin Luther: Sein Leben und seine Schriften, 5th ed., ed. G. Kawerau, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1903).

Deutsche Reichstagsakten, Jungere Reihe. Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Karl V., vols. 1-, ed.

Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Gotha, 1893-; 2d ed. [reprint] Heiko A. Oberman, Werden und Wertung der Reformation:

Vom Wegestreit zum Glaubenskampf, 34 ed. (Tubingen, der Reformation English edition: Masters of the Reformation: The Emergence of a New Intellectual Climate, trans. D. Martin (Cambridge,

New York, Melbourne, 1981).

1. WABr 1.235, 88; ca. 25 Oct. 1518.

2. Akten und Briefe zur Kirchenpolitik Herzog Georgs von Sachsen, ed. ¥. Gess, vol 1 (Leipzig, 1905), introduction, Ixvii.

3. Neues Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der evangelischen Kirchen-Reformation Reformation, ed. C. E. Forstemann, vol. 1 (Hamburg, 1842), 259.

WABr 1.82f. This document should be dated 31 Dec. 1517 instead of 1518.

WABr 1.261, note 1; cf. WAT 5, no. 5375c; summer 1540.

EA lat. var. arg. 2.426-28.

WABr 1.234, 70-733 25 Oct. 1518.

"Ea autem sunt partim contra doctrinam Apostolicae Sedis, partim vero damnabilia." WABr 1.234, 73f.; Nov. 1518. Cajetan explicitly noted that he had judged Luther's conformity with the true faith on the basis of the Holy

Scriptures alone—and of canon law. Ibid. 233, 14f.

10. WABr 1.250, 22. The cautious Frederick explained his standpoint on the Luther question only once, in this very letter to Cajetan, dated 7 Dec. 1518.

11. WABr 1.281, 31-34; 20 Dec. 1518.

12. Reichstagsakten 4.604, 18-22.

13. Reichstagsakten 1.867, 7; 870, 19-871, 1; 876, 16f.

14. Reichstagsakten 2.581, 28-582, 2.

15. Reichstagsakten 2.595, 23-25, 34f.

16. Cf. W. A. Reynolds, "Martin Luther and Hernan Cortés: Their Confrontation in Spanish Literature," Hispania 42 (1959): 66-70; 45 (1962): 402-04. See above all Hernan Cortés' three highly interesting reports to Emperor Charles V from 1520 to 1524: Die Eroberung Mexikos, ed. C. Litterscheid (Frankfurt,

17. Karl Brandi, Kaiser Karl V: Werden und Schicksal einer Persénlichkeit, vol. 1, 7th ed. (Munich, 1964), 93.

18. Reichstagsakten 1.853, 5—10.

19. Reichstagsakten 1.671f.; 676f.; 690-93; 703f.; 860.

20. Georg Mentz, Johann Friedrich der Grossmiitige 1503-1554, part 1 (Jena, 21. Reichstagsakten 2.526, 24-32.

22. Reichstagsakten 1.873, 9-14.

Reichstagsakten 2.496, 3-8.

WABr 2.305, 11f.; 28 Apr. 1521.

Reichstagsakten 2.579, 3-5.

Reichstagsakten 2.581, 23-582, 2.

WABr 2.305, 13-15; 28 Apr. 1521.

Reichstagsakten 2.555, 37, note 1.

"Warnung an seine lieben Deutschen," probably written in October 1530, shortly after the Diet of Augsburg, and published in April 1531. WA 30 III.

290, 28-291, 9g. For National Socialist exploitation, cf. H. Werdermann, "Martin Luther und Adolf Hitler: Ein geschichtlicher Vergleich," lecture held on Reformation Day (October 31, the date the posting of the 95 theses), 1935

(= Der Ruf! Eine volksmissionarische Schriftenreihe 4), 2d ed. (Gnadenfrei i.

Dedicated to his loyal, stalwart Wittenberg student, Nikolaus von Amsdorff, on 23 June 1520. WA 6.404, r1f.

WABr 2.120, 13-15; to Spalatin, 7 June 1520.

WABr 2.167, 6, note 1.

WABr 2.48, 22-27; to Spalatin, 24 Feb. 1520.

WA 6.336, 9-10; Decretum Gratiani I, Dist. XL, cap. 6; Corpus iuris canonici, ed E. Friedberg, vol. 1 (Graz, 1959), col. 146.

WABr 2.120, 6-8; to Spalatin, ca. 7 June.

The text of the Donation of Constantine can be found in Das Constitutum Constantini (The Donation of Constantine), ed. H. Fuhrmann, Fontes Iuris

Germanici Antiqui 10 (Hannover, 1968).

WA 6.463, 35f.; 464, 26-30.

WA 6.405, 27-406, 18.

Ulrichs von Hutten Schrifien, ed. E. Bocking, vol. 5 (Leipzig, 1861), 302.

WA 6.469, 8-11, 16f.; cf. beginning of the Address to the Christian Nobility (WA WABr 2.232, 72f.; Ebernburg, 9 Dec. 1520.

. WA 30 III. 387, 6-10; letter from Jan Hus to the congregation in Prague.

2. WA 50.34, 16f.; 1536.

3. WAT 1. no. 624; 294, 19-23; autumn 1533.

WAT 3. no. 3403b; 306; of.

Die Schrifien des Heiligen Franziskus von Assist, ed. K. Esser and L. Hardick See Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150-1350: A Study on the Concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignty and Tradition in the Middle Ages (Leiden,

. Only a "semi-official" text was available to me: "Our Father-in-Heaven, Rock and Redeemer of Israel, bless the State of Israel, the beginning of the sprouting of our redemption .

. ." Cf. E. L. Fackenheim, The Jewish Return into History:

Reflections in the Age of Auschwitz and a New Jerusalem (New York, 1982).

WA 50.323, 36-324, 8; 1538.

WA 50.362, 7; cf. Deutsches Sprichworter-Lexikon, ed. K. F. W. Wander, vol. 1

(Darmstadt, 1964), col. 415, no. 27.

Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica Canticorum, 1-35, Sermon 33. S.

Bernardi Opera, vol. 1 (Rome, 1957), 245.

WA 3.417, 1-425, 11; Ps. 69, 1-5.

AWA 2.606, 2-4; 1519-21.

AWA 2. 615, 1-3; Ps. 10.16.

WA 6.465, 25-467, 26.

WA 6.227, 29-32; Sermon von den guten Werken, March 1 520.

III. AN ELEMENTAL EVENT . Heinrich Heine, Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland in:

Samitliche Schriften, ed. K. Briegleb, vol. 3 (Munich, 1971), 539.

. For the debate since E. H. Erikson, Der junge Mann Luther (Hamburg, 1970); see also Psychohistory and Religion: The Case of Young Man Luther, ed. R. A.

Johnson (Philadelphia, 1977); U. Becke, "Eine hinterlassene psychiatrische Studie Paul Johann Reiters iiber Luther," Zeitschrifi fiir Kirchengeschichte

. WA 18.299, 25-29; "Ermahnung zum Frieden auf die zwélf Artikel der Bauerschaft in Schwaben," 1525. Cf. Johannes Wallmann, "Ein F riedensappell:

Luthers letztes Wort im Bauernkrieg," in Der Wirklichkeitsanspruch von Theologie und Religion: Ernst Steinbach zum 70. Geburtstag (Tubingen, 1976), 57-75.

NOTES TO PAGES 87-105 4. WAT 3. no. 3566 B; 416, 24; 1537.

5. WA 38.338, 6; in WAT 4, no. 4640; 414, 6f., with special emphasis on the contrast between world and God.

6. WA 53.511, 28-34; 1543.

7. Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland 1533-1559 nebst ergdnzenden Actenstiicken, ed.

W. Friedensburg, vol. 1 (Gotha, 1892), 541, 14-18.

8. Indicated by O. Clemen in 1934; WABr 5.287f., note 14. Presented in its full scope by Ian D. K. Siggins, "Luther's Mother Margarethe," Harvard Theological

Review 71(1978): 125-50; with comprehensive bibliography. Heinrich Bornkamm already noted that Luther's grandmother, a Ziegler, had been confused with his mother. Cf. H. Bornkamm, "Heinrich Boehmer's 'Junger

Luther' und die neuere Lutherforschung," in H. Boehmer, Der junge Luther, ed. H. Bornkamm, 5th ed. (Stuttgart, 1962) [Leipzig, 1939], 358f.

9. WABr 1.610, 20-22; to Spalatin, 14 Jan. 1520.

10. WAT 2. no. 1559; 134, 5-12; May 1532.

11. WAT 3. no. 3566b; 416, 24-26; 1537.

12. WAT 4. no. 4707; 330, of.; 1539. WAT 5. no. 5373; 99, 10f.; 1540.

13. WA 17 Il. 475, 11-15; 1527.

14. WA 15.45, 1-47, 14; 1524.

15. WABr 2.563, 7; 15 June 1522. Cf., however, O. Scheel, Martin Luther: Vom Katholizismus zur Reformation, vol. 1, 3rd ed. (Tiibingen, 1921), 70-97.

16. We owe this demythologization to R. R. Post, The Modern Devotion:

Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism (Leiden, 1968).

17. WA 56.313, 14.; cf. WA 3.648, 26.

18. WAT 5. no. 5362; 95, 1-7; WA 30 III. 491, 37.

19. WABr 1.11, 39; Erfurt, 22 April 1507.

20. Cf. O. Clemen, WABr 1.13f.

21. WABr 1.15, 2; 28 April 1507.

22. WABr 1.16, 1-21; 17 March 1509. Johannes Braun is mentioned once more in the letters when Luther requests the Erfurt Augustinian prior Johannes Lang to pass on Luther's Gotha chapter sermon to Braun. WABr 1.52, 8; 30 Aug. 1516.

23. WABr 1.257, 2; 25 Nov. 1518.

24. WABr 1.515, 75-78; 3 Oct. 1519.

25. WA 1.48, 21; 1515; similarly in one of his last table talks, Eisleben 1546. WAT 6. no. 6809; 206, 21. Cf. Deutsches Sprichworter-Lexikon, ed. K. F. W. Wander, vol. 4 (Darmstadt, 1964), col. 1113, no. 1251.

26. WAT 3. no. 2982b; 131, 20-26; 1533.

27. WAT 6. no. 6830; 217, 26f.

28. WAT 6. no. 6832; 219, 30-40. Cf. M. Osborn, Die Teufelsliteratur des XV.

Jahrhunderts (Bertin, 1893) [Hildesheim, 1965]; H. Preuss, Die Vorstellungen vom Antichrist im spaten Mittelalter, bei Luther und in der konfessionellen Polemik

(Leipzig, 1906); H. Obendiek, Der Teufel bei Martin Luther: Eine theologische Untersuchung (Berlin, 1931); H.R. Gerstenkorn, Weltlich Regiment zwischen

NOTES TO PAGES 106-20 . WA 1.50, 25; 4.681, 20-30; cf. 4.612, 8-17.

Gottesreich und Teufelsmacht: Die staatstheoretischen Auffassungen Martin Luthers und ihre politische Bedeutung (Bonn, 1956); K. L. Roos, The Devil in 16th Century

German Literature: The Teufelsbiicher (Bern, Frankfurt a.M., 1972).

. WAT 6. no. 6827; 215, 40-216, 9.

. WAT 5. no. 5284; 44, 8f.; 1540.

. WAT 6. no. 6827; 216, 9-11.

. WAT 4. no. 4035; 92, 39; 1538.

. WAT 5. no. 6250; 558, 136.

. WA 1. 44-52; 50, 12-20.

. WA 1.50, 24f.; WA 4.681, 20f.

. WABr 2.421, 11-133 Dec. 1521.

. WABr 1.52, 2; 30 Aug. 1516.

_ Cf. caricature of the pope, no. 10 in WA 54, appendix. Cf. WAT 6. no.

Cf. especially R. W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), 81f.; with bibliography.

WA 30 II. 646, 1; 1530.

Catalogue, Stefan Zweig Exposition, Jewish National and University Library (Jerusalem, 1981), no. 52.

IV. THE ROAD TO WITTENBERG WAT 2. no. 2788; 660, 24-26, 28f.; 1532.

. WAT 1.143, 10f.5 1532.

. Cf. E. Kleineidam, Universitas Studii Erffordensis: Uberblick iiber die Geschichte der Universitat Erfurt im Mittelalter 1392-1521, part 2 (Leipzig, 1969), 146.

. W. Urban, "Die 'via moderna' an der Universitat Erfurt am Vorabend der Reformation," in Gregor von Rimini: Werk und Wirkung bis zur Reformation, ed.

H. A. Oberman (Berlin, 1981), 311-30; 315-29; including further bibliography.

. Kleineidam, Untversitas, part 2, 147.

. Bartholomaeus Arnoldi de Usingen, Parvulus philosophiae naturalis (Leipzig, 1499), fol. 138°; cited by E. Kleineidam, "Die Bedeutung der

Augustinereremiten fiir die Universitat Erfurt," in Scientia Augustiniana:

Festschrift Adolar Zumkeller, ed. C. P. Mayer and W. Eckermann (Wiirzburg, 1975), 395-422, 405; cf. W. Urban, Die 'via moderna' an der Universitat Erfurt,

"Sum Occanicae factionis .

. ." WA 6.600, 11; Oct. 1520.

WAT 2. no. 25444; 516, 6f.; March 1532.

NOTES TO PAGES 121-41 WABr 1.171, 71-76; May 1518.

WABr 1.88, 22—89, 29; 8 Feb. 1517.

Cf. Werden und Wertung der Reformation, 131f.; M. Schulze, "'Via Gregorii' in Forschung und Quellen," in Gregor von Rimini (Berlin, 1981), 1-126; 97f.

Kleineidam, Universitas, part 2, 227k Cf. H. Junghans, "Der Einfluss des Humanismus auf Luthers Entwicklung bis 1518," Luther-Jahrbuch 37(1970): 37-101.

. WAT 1. no. 116; 44, 21-23; 1531.

WAT 1. no. 116; 44, arf.

WAT 1. no. 119; 46, 24f.; 1531.

WAT 4. no. 4707; 440, of.; 1539.

Constitutiones OESA ad apostolicorum privilegiorum formam pro reformatione Alemanie (Nuremberg, 1504), chap. 15.

Constitutiones, chap. 15.

"Misericordiam Dei et vestram." Constitutions, chap. 15.

Constitutiones, chap. 18.

WAT 4.303, 13f.5 1539.

WABr 6.439, 9-21; 28 March 1533.

A. Kunzelmann, Geschichte der deutschen Augustiner-Eremiten, part 5 (Wirzburg, Cf. B. Hamm, Frommigkeitstheologie am Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts: Studien zu

Johannes von Paltz und seinem Umkreis (Tiibingen, 1982), 271f.

A. Kunzelmann, Geschichte der deutschen Augustiner-Eremiten, part 5, 420f.

30 Dec. 1475; Th. Kolde, Augustiner-Congregation, 421; document 5.

Th. Kolde, Augustiner-Congregation, 110f.

Dokumente zu Luthers Entwicklung (bis 1519), ed. O. Scheel, 2d ed. (Tiibingen, WA 43.378, 37.5 381, 40-382, 8.

WABr 1.11, 28; 22 April 1507.

R. Weijenborg, "Luther et les cinquante et un Augustins d'Erfurt: D'aprés une lettre d'indulgences inédite du 18 avril 1508," Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 55

B. Hamm, Frommigkeitstheologie, 58-84; 291-99; 328f.

Cf. R. Weijenborg, "Neuentdeckte Dokumente in Zusammenhang mit Luthers Romreise," Antonianum 32(1957): 147-202; cf. W. Eckermann, "Neue

Dokumente zur Auseinandersetzung zwischen Johann von Staupitz und der sachsischen Reformkongregation," Analecta Augustiniana 40(1977): 279-96.

G. Kawerau, "Aus den Actis generalatus Aegidii Viterbiensis," Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte 32(1911): 603-06; 604.

NOTES TO PAGES 143-55 Johann von Staupitz, Sadmtliche Schriften, Abhandlungen, Predigten und Zeugnisse, vol. 2 (Lateinische Schriften 2), ed. L. Graf zu Dohna and R. Wetzel (Berlin,

Cochlaeus alleged he had learned from Augustinians that Luther "ad Staupitium suum defecisse." Ad semper victricem Germaniam paraclesis (Cologne,

1524), fol. C2; cited by H. Bohmer, Luthers Romfahrt (Leipzig, 1914), 8f.

Cf. B. Lohse, Monchtum und Reformation: Luthers Auseinandersetzung mit dem Monchsideal des Mittelalters (Gottingen, 1963), 267-72.

Letter to Braun on 17 March 1509; WABr 1.17, 43f.

K6stlin-Kawerau I. 101f. Concerning the city of Wittenberg cf. H. Junghans, Wittenberg als Lutherstadt (Berlin, 1979).

WAT 2. no. 2255a; 379, 15-17, 1531.

WA 31 1.226, 11-17; 1530.

WA 51.89, 20-23; 1545.

WAT 4. no. 5010; 612, 11; 1540; WAT 6. no. 6777; 183, 3f.

3. no. 3428; 313, 5f.

WA 38.212, 4f.; WAT 3. no. 3428; 313, 6f.

Cited by H. Bohmer, Luthers Romfahrt, 111.

Reichstagsakten 3.397f.

WAT 3. no. 3403b; 306, of.

O. Scheel, Dokumente, no. 539.

V. THE REFORMATION BREAKTHROUGH WABr 11.67, 7£.; to Elector John Frederick, 25 March 1 545.

WAT 6. no. 6647; 95, 14-18.

WAT 2. no. 1351; 66, 1-7; 1532.

WAT 4. no. 4007; 73, 15-24; 12 Sept. 1538.

WA 54.186, 14-21; 1545.

WAT 2. no. 1681; 177, 8f.; 1532; cf. WAT 4. no. 4192; 191, 31f.; Dec. 1538.

Cf. U. Becke's remarks in "Die Welt voll Teufel: Martin Luther als Gegenstand psychohistorischer Betrachtung," diss., Marburg, 1981, 180-88.

Luther mentions later (ca. Christmas 1531) the rhyme about the devil who catches a monk reading the first breviary prayer of the day while sitting on the toilet:

Monachus super latrinam non debes legere primam!

Monachus: Purgo meum ventrem Et colo Deum omnipotentem; NOTES TO PAGES 156-64 Deo omnipotenti, quod supra!

You monk on the latrine, you may not read the matins here!

I am cleansing my bowels and worshipping God Almighty; You deserve what descends and God what ascends.] NO. 2307; 413, 14-19; 1531.)

. WAT 1. no. 833 31, 22; autumn 1531.

. WA 54.186, 25-29; cf. 179, 27f.

. D. C. Steinmetz justifiably criticizes the tendency to present Luther as a WAT 1. no. 724, 726; first half of the 1530s.

"Jogical product" of medieval influences. See Luther and Staupitz:

An Essay in the Intellectual Origins of the Protestant Reformation (Durham, N.C., 1980), 142.

WA 2.489, 17-20; 1519; on Gal. 2.16.

WA 9.7, 325 14, 37WA 9.13, 21f.

This remained a basic theme in Luther's thinking and was worked out programmatically in the disputation on man, De homine, from the year 1536. Cf.

G. Ebeling, Lutherstudien, vol. 2: Disputatio de Homine, 2 parts (Tubingen, 1977, WA 1.226, 26; Thesis 50; Sept. 1517.

WA 9.62, 19-24; cf. 84, 6-8.

WAT 4. no. 5009; 611, 7f.; 1540.

WABr 1.70, 19-21; to Spalatin, 19 Oct. 1516.

WAT 1. no. 347; 140, 5; 1532.

Cf. G. Ebeling, Lutherstudien vol. 1 (Tiibingen, 1971), esp. 148-95.

"Non enim dabitur gratia sine ista agricultura sui ipsius." WA 56.257, 30f.

As in May 1518; WA 1.540, 41-541, 15; Resolutiones. In Martin Brecht's view, the new concept first appeared in the sermon of 28 March 1518 (WA 2.

145-52; 145f.): "That was the Reformational discovery" (Martin Luther, 223).

There are already preliminary formulations concerning Rom. 3.21 in the course cy aA oe Se ee ee NOTES TO PAGES 165-77 of lectures on the Epistle to the Romans (WA 56.256, 25-257, 333 cf. 172.

16-173. 18), but the main contrast here is still between righteousness of God and righteousness of man.

WA 2.504, 25-273 490, 34-491, 5.

That is also the reason for the terse formulation "simultaneously sinner and just," WA 56.272, 17; cf. 269, 30.

WA 54.179—87; after the translation by K. Aland, Luther Deutsch (Gottingen, 1962), vol. 2, 19f. For the question of the dating of the Reformational discovery described in this text, cf. E. Bizer, Fides ex auditu: Eine Untersuchung tiber die

Entdeckung der Gerechtigkeit Gottes durch Martin Luther. 3rd ed. (Neukirchen, 1966) [1958]; H. Bornkamm, "Zur Frage der Iustitia Dei beim jungen

Luther," Archiv fiir Reformationsgeschichte 52(1961): 16-29; 53(1962): 1-60; K.

Aland, Der Weg zur Reformation: Zeitpunkt und Charakter des reformatorischen Erlebnisses Martin Luthers (Munich, 1965).

WA 4.318, 35-39; Ps. 118.24.

WAT 5. no. 5677; 317, 11-318, 3; 1546.

WAT 1. no. 674, 320 of.; first half of the 1530s.

Thus K. A. Meissinger, Luthers Exegese in der Frihzeit (Leipzig, 1911), 36f. The same reproach, formulated more cautiously, is repeated forty years later:

Meissinger, Der katholische Luther (Munich, 1952), 83.

. WAT 5. no. 5511; 204, 24f.; winter 1542.

WA 30 II. 637, 19-22; 1530.

WAT 5. no. 6419; 653, 1-18.

WAT 1. no. 116; 44, 16-20; Nov. 1531.

WA 50.198, 25-29; Schmalkaldic Articles, 1538.

WA 18.689, 24f.; 1525.

WA 30 II. 535, 37-536, 2; 1530.

WA 5.537, 16-22; Ps. 17.45.

VI. THE REFORMER ATTACKED . WA 30 I. 209, 22-210, 8.

- For the power of fear in the Middle Ages cf. S. E. Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities (New Haven, 1975), 22-46; T.N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, 1977). Interpreted as part of a larger

NOTES TO PAGES 179-86 > phenomenon by B. Hamm, Frommigkeitstheologie am Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts (Tiibingen, 1982), 218f.

. WA 301. 210, 33f.; 1529.

. WA 1.525, 4-6; 1518. Cf. D. C. Steinmetz, Luther and Staupitz (Durham, N.C., 1980); with further bibliography.

5. Johannes Manlius, Locorum communium collectanea (Basel, 1563), vol. 3, 14; cited by O. Scheel, Martin Luther: Vom Katholizismus zur Reformation, vol. 2,

> BFC and 4th ed. (Tiibingen, 1930), 367, note 1.

. Cf. the critical edition of Johann von Staupitz, Lateinische Schriften II: Libellus de exsecutione aeternae praedestinationis, ed. L. Graf zu Dohna and R. Wetzel

WAT 5. no. 5374; 1540.

Johann von Staupitz, 7iibinger Predigten, ed. G. Buchwald, E. Wolf (Leipzig, 1927), Sermo 20.168, 40; cf. 3.14, 11f.; 5.27, 11; 9.66, 38-41; 11.86, 11f,;

18.148, 4off. Cf. "Teufel, Welt, Fleisch," in Staupitz, Lateinische Schriften II, . Staupitz, Tiibinger Predigten, 26.205, 40f.

. WAT 2. no. 1490; 112, 10-14. In the course of his Psalm lectures, Luther mentioned Bernard of Clairvaux around Christmas of 1514 as a witness to the accentuation of Christ's wounds as the only refuge from the Devil, world, and flesh (WA 3.640, 4of).

. WA 43.457, 32-463, 17.

12. First published in Leipzig in 1490-91. See the series Spatmittelalter und Reformation (de Gruyter, Berlin), the critical edition of Joh. V. Paltz, Werke, vol.

3 (Berlin, 1989), 155-284. For a comprehensive survey of the theology of Johannes von Paltz, see B. Hamm, Frommigkeitstheologie.

WABr 2.264, 42-48; 9 Feb. 1521.

Staupitz, Lateinische Schriften II, § 71, p. 156; §77, p. 158.

Staupitz, Lateinische Schriften IT, §106, p. 184; §113, p. 190.

Concerning the externality of grace, see above all K-H. zur Miihlen, Nos extra nos: Luthers Theologie zwischen Mystik und Scholastik (Tubingen, 1972), 93-147.

Cf. my article: "Simul gemitus et raptus: Luther und die Mystik" in Kirche, Mystik, Heiligung und das Natiirliche bei Luther, ed. 1. Asheim (Gottingen, 1967).

WAT 1. no. 352; 147, 3-14; autumn 1532.

WAT 5. no. 5348; 77, 6; Aug. 1540.

WA 51.543, 13f.; 1541.

WABr 1.188, 23; 8 Aug. 1518 to Spalatin, who was present at the Diet of WA 2.609, 12-14; 1519.

WAT 1. no. 884; 442, 1-5; first half of the 1530s.

NOTES TO PAGES 188-95 EA lat. var. arg. 1.2736.

Werden und Wertung der Reformation, 190-92, with note 89.

WA 1.525, 10-12; 1518. In early 1518 Luther had developed these thoughts— probably in a Lenten sermon—in the language of mysticism: WA 1.319,

J. Benzing, Lutherbibliographie: Verzeichnis der gedruckten Schriften Martin Luthers 35: bis zu dessen Tod (Baden-Baden, 1966), nos. 87-89.

WA 3.416, 27f.; 424, 22f.; gloss Ps. 68; approx. autumn 1514. For a circumspect reconstruction of the chronology of this course of lectures, see

Luthers Werke in Auswahl, ed. E. Vogelsang (Bonn edition, vol. 5), 3rd ed.

Akten und Briefe zur Kirchenpolitik Herzog Georgs von Sachsen, ed. F. Gess, vol. 1

J. Benzing, Lutherbibliographie, nos. go—114.

WA 1.245, 21-23; 246, 27f.

See the letter to his councilors in Magdeburg, cited by W. Borth, Die Luthersache (causa Lutheri) 1517-1524: Die Anfange der Reformation als Frage von

Politik und Recht (Liibeck, Hamburg, 1970), 2of..

. Cf. B. Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150-1350: A Study on the Concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignty and Tradition in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 1972),

.R. P. fratris Silvestri Prieriatis .

. in presumptuosas Martini Lutheri conclusiones de potestate papae dialogus (Rome, 1518); EA lat. var. arg.

EA lat. var. arg. 1.347.

For the following, cf. G. Hennig, Cajetan und Luther: Ein historischer Beitrag zur Begegnung von Thomismus und Reformation (Stuttgart, 1966); G. Miller, "Die romische Kurie und die Anfange der Reformation," Zeitschrift fiir Religionsund Geistesgeschichte 19(1967): 1-32; O. H. Pesch, "'Das heisst eine neue

Kirche bauen': Luther und Cajetan in Augsburg," in Begegnung: Beitrage zu einer Hermeneutik des theologischen Gesprachs, Festschrift H. Fries, ed. M. Seckler,

O. H. Pesch, et al. (Graz, Vienna, Cologne, 1972), 645-61; Lutherprozess und Lutherbann: Vorgeschichte, Ergebnis, Nachwirkung, ed. R. Baumer (Miinster i.W.,

NOTES TO PAGES 195-205 Th. Kolde, Augustiner-Congregation, Exkurs 3; pp. 411f.

Cf. G. Miiller, Die rémische Kurie und die Reformation 1 523-1534: Kirche und Politik wahrend des Pontifikates Clemens' VII (Gitersloh, 1969), 113-88; 212f.

Cf. H. Wiesflecker, Kaiser Maximilian I: Das Reich, Osterreich und Europa an der Wende zur Neuzeit, vol. 4 (Munich, 1981), 389-403; 395.

Acta Augustana, WA 2.23, 36-25, 3.

WABr 1.208, 4f.; 3 or 4 Oct. 1518; cf. the original discovered in an attic in Boston: WABr 12. 14, 15f.; 4 Oct. 1518.

WAT 2. no. 2668a; 595, 30-32 and b; 596, 27-29; Sept. 1532.

WABr 1.214, 13; cf. 217, 60; both 14 Oct. 1518; 243, 307; and Nov. 1518.

Cf. Th. Kolde, Augustiner-Congregation, 321. Cf. Staupitz's letter to Elector Frederick on 15 Oct. 1518; supplement 16, pp. 443f.

WABr 2.298, 8-13; 14 April 1521.

Der Andere und Letzte Theil zu Wilh. Ernst Tentzels. .

. Historischen Bericht.

(Leipzig, 1718), 38; cited by I. Hiss, Georg Spalatin 1484-1545: Ein Leben in der Zeit des Humanismus und der Reformation (Weimar, 1956), 195, note 33.

Die Depeschen des Nuntius Aleander vom Wormser Reichstage 1521, ed. P. Kalkoff, 2d ed. (Halle, 1897), letter 18, 166f. (1st ed. Halle, 1886, Schriften des Vereins

Sir Reformationsgeschichte 17, 133).

Die Depeschen des Nuntius Aleander, 171 (1st ed., 138).

Die Depeschen des Nuntius Aleander, 176 (1st ed., 143); cf. 1521-1971: Luther in Worms: Ein Quellenbuch, ed. J. Rogge (Witten, 1971), 101, note 17.

WA 51, 543, 3-10; 1541.

Die Depeschen des Nuntius Aleander, 204 (1st ed., 162).

WA 7.834-38; Luther in Worms, 97-101.

This is the concluding sentence in German as presented in the later Wittenberg printing. The short form "God help me. Amen" is better substantiated. Cf.

Reichstagsakten 2.555. Concerning the interpretation, cf. K. V. Selge, "Capta conscientia in verbis Dei, Luthers Widerrufsverweigerung in Worms," in Der

Reichstag zu Worms von 1521: Reichspolitik und Luthersache, ed. F. Reuter (Worms, 1971), 180-207; esp. pp. 200f., note 46; B. Lohse, "Luthers Antwort in Worms," Luther 29 (1958): 124-34; M. G. Baylor, Action and Person:

Conscience in Late Scholasticism and the Young Luther (Leiden, 1977), 264-67.

Reichstagsakten 2.654, 16-20.

Leopold von Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation, vol. 1, book 2, chap 4, 6th ed. (Leipzig, 1881) [Berlin 1839], 332 (ed. Munich, Leipzig,

Leopold von Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte, 333 (ed. 1924, 350).

For Luther's influence and view of himself as a political counselor, cf. E.

Wolgast, Die Wittenberger Theologie und die Politik der evangelischen Stande:

Studien zu Luthers Gutachten in politischen Fragen (Gitersloh, 1977), 285-99.

NOTES TO PAGES 205-31 Cf. W. Borth, Die Luthersache, Exkurs 1, 168-71; H.-Chr. Rublack, "Gravamina und Reformation," in Stadtische Gesellschaft und Reformation: Kleine

Schriften 2, ed. 1. Batori (Stuttgart, 1980), 292-313.

First rejection of Hutten as early as Jan. 1521; WABr 2.249, 12-15.

WA xo lll. 400, 16-24; sermon on All Saints' Day 1522.

VII. LIFE BETWEEN GOD AND THE DEVIL . For a balanced characterization, one can still consult (Haarlem, 1924). For an excellent account with more recent literature, cf.

D. Tracy, Erasmus: The Growth of a Mind (New York, 1978).

. "Duae res sunt Deus et Scriptura Dei, non minus quam duae res sunt, Creator et creatura Dei" (De servo arbitrio; WA 18.606, 11f).

. WABr 1.171, 71-74; 9 May 1518. For Augustine cf. letter 82, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 34, 2.1898, 354; furthermore, 1 John 4.1;

Gal. 1.6; 1 Thess. 5.21, Cf. also the second course of lectures on the Psalms; VIII. DISCORD IN THE REFORMATION WABr 4.282, 6-9; 17 Nov. 1527; cf. 325, note 8.

WABr 4.319, 9f.; 1 Jan. 1528.

WA io IL. 243, 333 1522; for Thomas Miinzer, whom Luther considered the prototype of a diabolically dangerous fanatic, cf. W. Elliger, Thomas Miintzer:

_ Leben und Werk (Gottingen, 1975); E. Wolgast, Thomas Miintzer: Ein Verstorer der Unglaubigen (Gottingen, 1981).

WABr 2.427, 117-20; Jan. 1522.

Grosser Katechismus, part 4; WA 30 I. 212,-26-30.

. Cf. the parallel unmasking of magic in the "Nominalistic hammer of excessive belief in witches" (Werden und Wertung der Reformation, 221f).

. Cf. B. Lohse, Ménchtum und Reformation (Gottingen, 1963), 167-69; B. Hamm, Frommigkeitstheologie am Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts (Tubingen,

NOTES TO PAGES 231-44 13. Cf. the arguments in the debate between Kurt Aland and Joachim Jeremias:

J. Jeremias, Die Kindertaufe in den ersten vier Jahrhunderten (Gottingen, 1958); K. Aland, Die Sduglingstaufe im Neuen Testament und in der alten Kirche (Munich,

1961); J. Jeremias, Nochmals: Die Anfange der Kindertaufe (Munich, 1962).

14. WA 26.462, 4f.; Vom Abendmahl Christi, Bekenntnis; 1528.

15. WA 6.511, 26-38; 1520.

16. WABr 3.361, 16f.; 27 Oct. 1524.

17. Thus B. Moeller, Reichsstadt und Reformation (Giitersloh, 1962; revised ed., Berlin, 1987); cf. T. A. Brady, Jr., Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520-1555 (Leiden, 1978).

18. Cf. G. W. Locher, Streit unter Gasten: Die Lehre aus der Abendmahlsdebatte der Reformatoren fir das Verstandnis und die Feier des Abendmahles heute (Zurich,

19. WA 6.513, 34-514, 16.

20.'Cf. my criticism of the thesis of "Luther's relapse into the Middle Ages" in Werden und Wertung der Reformation, 368f.

21. Reichstagsakten 7/2. 1277, 29-31.

22. Hedio's report in Das Marburger Religionsgesprach 1529, ed. G. May (Giitersloh, 1970), 23; cf. the account by Zurich professor Collins, ibid. 36.

23. WABr 5.154, 16; 4 Oct. 1529.

24. Cf. E. Wolgast, Die Wittenberger Theologie und die Politik der evangelischen Stande:.

Studien zu Luthers Gutachten in politischen Fragen (Gitersloh, 1977).

25. Matt. 11.28; WA 1.331, 6-14; cf. G. Ebeling, Luther: Einftihrung in sein Denken, 4th ed. (Tubingen, 1981), 178-97.

26. Huldreich Zwinglis Samtliche Werke, vol. 1 (CR 88) (Berlin, 1905), 82, 4f.

28. WA 31 I. 416, 36-417, 1; 1530.

29. WA 12.215, 18-30; Formulae Missae. For the development of Luther's Eucharistic doctrine in the years 1523-27, cf. H. Grass, Die Abendmahlslehre bei Luther und Calvin, 2d ed. (Giitersloh, 1954); A. Peters, Realprasenz: Luthers

Zeugnis von Christi Gegenwart im Abendmahl (Berlin, 1960).

30. WA 23.151, 153; 1527.

33. G. May, Marburger Religionsgesprach, 56f.

36. Cf. the clear outline of the basic differences by G. W. Locher, Die Zwinglische Reformation im Rahmen der europdischen Kirchengeschichte (Gottingen, 1979),

37. G. May, Marburger Religionsgesprach, 19.

NOTES TO PAGES 246-65 IX. CHRISTIANITY BETWEEN GOD AND THE DEVIL AWA 2.422, 8-13; exegesis of Ps. 7.7—10; after the translation by Stephan

Roth: Das Erste Teyl der Lateinischen auslegung des Psalters Doctor Martin Luthers:

Verdeudschet durch Stephanum Rodt (Wittenberg, 1527), 266.

WABr 1.475, 352f.; August 1519.

WABr 1.471, 213-19; Aug. 1519.

T. Harnack, Luthers Theologie mit besonderer Beziehung auf seine Versohnungsund Erlosungslehre, 2 vols. (Erlangen, 1862), 1886.

AWA 2.389, 15f.; exegesis of Ps. 6.11.

7.J. Lortz, Die Reformation in Deutschland, 6th ed. (Freiburg, 1982) [1939/ 40], WA 3.13,25f.; WA 55 I/1.10, 7f.

WAT 4. no. 4149; 170, 21-23; 1538.

WA 50.250, 1-4; 1537.

WA 50.641, 35-642, 7. 16f.

WAT 3.349, 29f; no. 3479a; 1536.

Cf. I. Héss, Georg Spalatin 1484-1545: Ein Leben in der Zeit des Humanismus und der Reformation (Weimar, 1956), 80, 89.

WA 50. 5, 26-28; 1536.

WABr 2.48, 22-49, 28; 24 Feb. 1520.

WABr 1.353, 24f.; Feb. 1519.

WA 3.433, 18-20; autumn 1514, perhaps shortly before All Saints' Day.

WA 1.238, 14f. Not even given further attention by Luther in his 1 518 commentary (WA 1.628, 18f).

WA 1.238, 16-21; 628, 21-28.

WA 1.631, 23-32; 1518.

"by creating new martyrs, for that region probably the very first." WABr 3-115, 14-16; 22/23 July 1523. It would not have eluded Spalatin that Luther speaks of "creating" martyrs the way the pope "creates" bishops and saints according to canon law.

WA 35.411—15; modernized version in Kaiser, Gott und Bauer: Die Zeit des eee NOTES TO PAGES 267-75 Deutschen Bauernkrieges im Spiegel der Literatur, ed. G. Jackel (Berlin, 1975),

32. AWA 2.605, 6-14; ca. March 1520. Cf. as early as WA 1.627, 27-34; WABr 6.179, 23-29; 3 Sept. 1531 to the Augustinian prior in Cambridge and Oxford doctor of theology Robert Barnes, who became a Protestant martyr nine years later by order of the king. Cf. WA 51.445. Cf. A. G. Dickens, The English

Reformation, 2d ed. (London, 1964), 58f., 102-04.

WA 51.569, 13-16; Wider Hans Worst, 1541.

X. WEDDED BLISS AND WORLD PEACE . Ludwig Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums (1841), ed. K. Quenzel (Leipzig, 1904), chap. 18, 253-62.

. WA 10 Il. 279, 19-21; 1522. A year later Luther increased the number: there is not one Christian in a hundred thousand (WA 12.115, 20f.; 1523).

. WA 12.94, 28f.; 1523.

. WA 18.277, 26-36; 27 March 1525.

. In 1523 Luther had translated Gen. 2.18 differently: "Ich will yhm eyn gehulffen gegen[!] yhm machen." WADB 8.42f.

. WA 18.275, 19-28; 1525. For the comparison with Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Thomas Aquinas, cf. C. T. Wood, "The Doctor's Dilemma: Sin,

Salvation, and the Menstrual Cycle in Medieval Thought," Speculum 56(1981):

710-27; with further bibliography.

WA 37.446, 1-447, 4; sermon 5, June 1534.

Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche. Hrsg. im Gedenkjahr der Augsburgischen Konfession 1930, 5th ed. (Gottingen, 1963), 648, 9—16 (Grosser

Katechismus); cf. Kleiner Katechismus, 510, 33-36.

. WA 18.277, 26-35; March 1525.

. In a significant and frank tribute from his own ranks, Denifle's style of treating Luther is characterized as follows: "The reader is almost overwhelmed by the force of the one-sided, destructive and mordant criticism that is aimed at annihilating the opponent" (H. Grauert, P. Heinrich Denifle O. P.: Ein Wort zum

Gedachtnis und zum Frieden: Ein Beitrag auch zum Luther-Streit (Freiburg i. Br., 1906), 7f. First published in Historisches Jahrbuch 26(1905): 959-1018; 966).

For the totally different style and open-minded approach of modern Catholic Luther research, cf. B. Lohse, Martin Luther: Eine Einfiihrung in sein Leben sein und Werk (Munich, 1981), 240-43.

.H. Denifle, Luther und Luthertum in der ersten Entwicklung, vol. 1/1 (Mainz, NOTES TO PAGES 276-86 H. Denifle, Luther und Luthertum, 1/1, 113.

WABr 3.635, 22-28; 6 Dec. 1525.

WAT 2. no. 2034; summer 1531.

WA 10 II. 296, 31; 1522.

WAT 1. no. 1006; 505, 22—25; first half of the 1530s.

WA 50.633, 20-24; 1539; WAT 1. no. 1229; 611, 19-27; cf. WAT 6. no. 6567; WABr 3.482, 81-83; 4(5?) May 1525.

WAT 2. no. 2590b; 534, 12-14; April 1532. Thus the three children are Hans, Magdalena, and Martin.

Cf. the receipts for Luther's salary in the years 1534-42. WABr 12.423-27.

WABr 9.583, 1473 1536.

WAT 1. no. 49; 17, 10-12; summer/ autumn 1531.

WAT i. no. 11103 554, 25f.; first half of the 1530s.

WABr 3.541, 8; 21 June 1525.

WABr 9.205, 1-3; 26 July 1540.

WAT 4. no. 4786; 503, 22. Cf. WABr 3, 474, 13-475, 14; to Spalatin, 16 April 1525. Concerning Ave, or Eva, von Schonfeld, cf. E. Kroker, Katharina von

Bora: Martin Luthers Frau, 2d ed. (Zwickau, 1925), 45. 63.

G. Weyer, Ephemerides, oder Kurtze Jahr und Tag-Geschichten vom Auffund Untergang dess Lutherischen ersten Evangelij und des Melanchthonis Augsburgischer

Confession, 1679, fol. 54-56.

Der Briefwechsel des Justus Jonas, ed. G. Kawerau, vol. 1 (Halle, 1884), no. 90; WABr 11.287, 36; 7 Feb. 1546.

WABr 3.533, 8f.; to Spalatin, 16 June 1525.

Kostlin-Kawerau, Martin Luther II, 478; J. Lortz, Die Reformation in Deutschland, vol. 2, 6th ed. (Freiburg i. Br., 1982), 247.

WABr 4.140, 14-17; 28 Nov. 1526.

WABr 6.179, 27f., 182, 150-53; to Robert Barnes (+1540), 3 Sept. 1531.

Very vivid in WA 30 III. 242, 9-243, 30; Von Ehesachen, 1530.

WA 30 III. 243, 23-25. For a balanced view with a bibliography of more recent literature see M. E. Schild, "Ehe, Eherecht, Ehescheidung, VII:

Reformationszeit," in Theologische Realenzyklopadie, vol. 9 (Berlin, 1982), . Philippi Melanchthonis Opera quae supersunt omnia, vol. 3 (CR3) (Halle, 1836)

[Reprint Frankfurt a. Main, New York, 1963], 862. Cf. W. W. Rockwell, Die NOTES TO PAGES 286-94 Doppelehe des Landgrafen Philipp von Hessen (Marburg, 1904), 29; draft in supplement I, 312-18.

Briefwechsel Landgraf Philipp's des Grossmiithigen von Hessen mit Bucer, ed.

M. Lenz, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1880), 160.

Rockwell, Doppelehe, 152, note 2.

WAT 4, no. 3976; 50, 33-35; Aug. 1538.

Rockwell, Doppelehe, 19.

Lortz, Die Reformation in Deutschland 2: 246.

Thus Philipp to Luther (WABr 9.83, 13f.; 5 Apr. 1540).

WABr 9.90, 9; 10 April 1540.

K. Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte, 16th ed. (Tubingen, 1981; 1907-09), 308, note 1. co. WA 6.347, 22-28. According to Brecht this passage should be attributed to Melanchthon. But cf. WA 6.347, 22-24.

. Cf. the excellent survey of modern literature in F. Winterhager, Bauernkriegsforschung (Darmstadt, 1981).

WA 18.361, 4-6. Cf. H. Bornkamm, Martin Luther, 330-36.

WA 18.361, 24-26. Very balanced with futher literature: J. Wallmann, "Ein Friedensappell: Luthers letztes Wort im Bauernkrieg," in Festschrift Ernst

Steinbach (Tubingen, 1976), 57-75.

WA 53.417-552; 420, 29; 1543. For the subject of Luther and the Jews plus further bibliography, see my account in Wurzeln des Antisemitismus: Christenangst und Judenplage im Zeitalter von Humanismus und Reformation, 2d ed. (Berlin,

WA 53.523, 1-526, 16.

Cf. B. Lohse, Martin Luther (Munich, 1981), 190-97.

On this subject cf. G. Ebeling, "Die Notwendigkeit der Lehre von den zwei Reichen," in Wort und Glaube, vol. 1, 3rd ed. (Tubingen, 1967), 407-28.

C. A. H. Burkhardt, "Die Judenverfolgung im Kurfiirstentum Sachsen,"

Theologische Studien und Kritiken 70 (1897): 593-98.

Cf. S. Stern, Josel von Rosheim: Befehlshaber der Judenschaft im Heiligen Romischen Reich Deutscher Nation (Stuttgart, 1959).

WABr 8.77-—78; Wolfgang Capito to Luther, 26 April 1537.

Doctor Johannsen Reuchlins .

. Augenspiegel (Tubingen, 1511). Reprint in Quellen zur Geschichte des Humanismus und der Reformation in Faksimile-Ausgaben, vol. 5

(Munich, 1961), fol. H2° WABr 8.90, 1; 46—50; 32f.; 91, 56-60; Luther to Josel von Rosheim, 11 June NOTES TO PAGES 294-97

69. WA 53.522, 36; Von den Juden und ihren Liigen, 1543.

71. Cf. the detailed explanation in WA 53.527, 15-31.

72. Johannes Eck, Ains Judenbiiechlins Verlegung: Wider die Verteidigung der Juden (Ingolstadt, 1541). Eck's diatribe is directed against the Nuremberg reformer

Andreas Osiander, who had dared to defend the Jews against the accusation of child-murder.

73. WA 53.526, 7-16; 528, 31-34. Cf. 520, 33-521, 7. In the same year, 1543, two further tracts concerning the Jews appeared: Vom Schem Hamphoras (WA

53-579—648) and the comparatively moderate Von den letzten Worten Davids (WA 54.28—100), in Luther seine Argumente gegen die rabbinische Schriftauslegung ausbaut, um die Messiaserwartung als Christusverktindigung auszuweisen.

74. WA 53.449, 26-29.

75. It is the religion of achievement, that "reasonable" principle of give and take, that wishes to gain the merciful God for itself by means of its own rites, laws, and works while bypassing the person and works of Christ: "Das ist religio

Papae, Iudaeorum, Turcarum 'si sic fecero, erit mihi deus clemens.'" WA 76. For the range of medieval concepts of the Antichrist cf. M. Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford,

1969), esp. 358—74; "Some Popular Prophecies from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries," in Studies in Church History, 8: Popular Belief and Practice (Cambridge, 1972), 107-34; esp. 122f; and B. McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York, 1979).

77. Jacobus Revius, Over-ijsselsche sangen en dichten, ed. W. A. P. Smit (Amsterdam, 1930), 222; Cf. Protestantse poézie der 16de en 17de eeuw, ed. K. Heeroma

(Amsterdam, 1940), 179; L. Strengholt, Bloemen in Gethsemané: Verzamelde studies over de dichter Revius (Amsterdam, 1976), 116-20.

78. The first appearance I have found is in Ein Sermon von der Betrachtung des heiligen Leidens Christi, 1519: "AlBo vill engster soll dir werden, wan du

Christus leyden bedenckst, Dan die ubeltether, die Juden, wie sie nu gott gerichtet und vortrieben hatt, seynd sie doch deyner sunde diener gewest, unnd du bist warhafftig, der durch seyn sunde gott seynen sun erwurget und gecreutziget hatt, wie gesagt ist" (WA 2.138, 29-32). Cf. WA 9.652, 16-24

(1521); WA 28.233, 1f. (1528).

79.WA 35.576. Cf. WAT 6.257; no. 6897.

80. Already in the first course of Psalm lectures, cf. WA 3.564, 31f.

81. In the eighteenth century Johann Georg Hamann (+1788) employed this view of the Jews, in accordance with Luther's ideas, autobiographically: "I recognized my own crimes in the history of the Jewish people, I read [in it] my own

NOTES TO PAGES 297-301 25:1 autobiography, and thanked God for His forbearance toward this His people, because nothing could be better justification of my own hopes of similar treatment" (Johann Georg Hamann, Sdamtliche Werke, ed. J. Nadler, 6 vols.

1949-57, vol. 2, 40, 25-29; cited by O. Bayer, "Wer bin ich? Gott als Autor meiner Lebensgeschichte," Theologische Beitrage 11(1980): 245-61; 254).

B. Blumenkranz has presented an interesting collection, making no claims to completeness, of quotations on the Jews' sole responsibility for Christ's death:

Les Auteurs chrétiens latins du moyen age sur les juifs et le judaisme (Paris, 1963).

Cf. also the results of his examination of the exegesis of the "Pro Iudaeis" prayer in the Maundy Thursday office: "Perfidia," Archtvum Latinitatis Medti

Aevi 22 (1952): 157-70; reprinted in Juifs et Chrétiens: Patristique et Moyen Age "Hic est locus, ex quo debemus facere canticum und frolich sein, ut non sic recordemur passionis Christi, quomodo zusingen 'der arm Judas,' und stechen den Iudaeis die augen aus. .

. Yhr habt wol uber euch [Christen] zu weinen, quod estis damnatae et peccatrices. Ideo ipse flet et patitur pro nobis." ("Here now we should sing and be joyful that we do not carry the suffering of Christ in our hearts as much as we mock poor Judas and put out the Jews' eyes. You

Christians have reason to cry over yourselves, you are the accursed sinners.

That is why the Lord cries and suffers for you.") WA 36.136, 29-32, 36-137, 2; sermon on 24 March 1532.

XI. THE MAN AND HIS DEEDS . WA 59.472 1237-39, 1248 f.; 494, 1903-, 495, 1909.

. Preface to his Address to the Christian Nobility; Eccles. 3.7; WA 6.404, 11f.

. Two years later, on 29 May 1523, Luther named Hieronymus Emser ($1527) and Johann Fabri (+1541). WABr 3.76, 72; 77, 84-94. For Fabri's work as a Counter-Reformer, cf. Werden und Wertung der Reformation, 281-93; for Emser, ibid., 325f.

WABr 3.96, 19-21; 20 June 1523 to Oecolampadius in Basel, where Erasmus lived until 1529. For Erasmus' reaction on 21 Nov., cf. ibid., 97, note 5.

WABr 2.544, 12f.; 28 May 1522.

J. Sider, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt: The Development of His Thought, 1517-1525 (Leiden, 1974); U. Bubenheimer, "Scandalum et ius divinum:

Theologische und rechtstheologische Probleme der ersten reformatorischen Innovationen in Wittenberg 1521/22," in Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fur

Rechtsgeschichte 90, Kan. Abt. 59 (1973): 263-3423 U. Bubenheimer, Consonantia Theologiae et Iurisprudentiae: Andreas Bodenstein wise

NOTES TO PAGES 302-14 . Die Luther-Bibel: Entstehung und Weg eines Volksbuches, ed. G. Hammer et al.

. WABr 5.379, 22-24; 19 June 1530. von Karlstadt als Theologe und Jurist zwischen Scholastik und Reformation (Tiibingen, 1977).

. Cf. U. Bubenheimer, "Andreas Rudolff Bodenstein von Karlstadt: Sein Leben, seine Herkunft und seine innere Entwicklung," in Andreas Bodenstein von

Karlstadt 1480-1541: Festschrift der Stadt Karlstadt zum Jubilaumsjahr 1980, 5—58; with further bibliography.

Cf. KTH. zur Mihlen, "Luthers deutsche Bibeliibersetzung als Gemeinschaftswerk," in Eine Bibel—viele Ubersetaungen: Not oder Notwendigkeit, ed. S. Meurer (Die Bibel in der Welt 18) (Stuttgart, 1978), 90-97; with further bibliography.

WABr 2.423, 48-56; to Amsdorf, 13 Jan. 1522.

(Stuttgart, 1980), 13.

Mathesius' Predigten tiber Luthers Leben, ed. G. Buchwald (Stuttgart, nee 186f.; and Johannes Mathesius, Ausgewahlte Werke, vol. 3: Luthers Leben in Predigten, ed. G. Loesche, 2d ed. (Prague, 1906), 315f.; cf. WADB 4. xxixf.

Mathesius' Predigten, 189; Ausgewahlte Werke, 319; WAT 5. no. 5468; 169, 6f.; Mathestus' Predigten, 189; Ausgewahlte Werke, 319.

WABr 5.327, 95-973; 20 May 1530.

WABr 5.374, 18-413; 19 June 1530.

WABr 5.639, 23f.; 1 Oct. 1530.

On this subject cf. Késtlin-Kawerau, Martin Luther II, 681f.

Cf. esp. H. O. Burger, "Luther im Spiegel der Tischreden," Germanischromanische Monatsschrift 54(1973): 385-403.

WABr 2.152, 23-153, 25; 20 July 1520.

WABr 5.379, 17-19; 19 June 1530.

WABr 5.351, 33-36; 5 June 1530.

Modern psychoanalysis interprets dreams of this sort differently, as a loss of strength, power, or potency. Freud himself mentions a popular belief that this dream is understood to indicate the death of a relative. See S. Freud,

Studienausgabe, vol. 2: Die Traumdeutung, 3rd ed. (Frankfurt, a.M., 1972; 1900), 380; for the first time in the 1911 edition.

WABr 2.631, 46, Dec. 1522.

WABr 5.377£.; 19 June 1530; Martin Luthers Briefe in Auswahl, ed.

R. Buchwald, vol. 2, 2d ed. (Leipzig, 1909), no. 191, pp. 86f.

WAT 5. no. 5490¢; 186, 19-26; Sept. 1542.

WABr 2.368, 7f.; 1521.

E. H. Erikson, Der junge Mann Luther: Eine psychoanalytische und historische Studie (Frankfurt a.M., 1975; Munich, 1958), 256.

- WABr 2.142, 8-143, 24; 147, 15-17} 151, 15; 163, 4-164, 10; 1520.

NOTES TO PAGES 315-23 WABr 2.476, 20f.; 479, 36f.; 1522.

WABr 2.461, 66-70; to Elector Frederick, March 1522. This idea is recurrent with Luther; cf. the letter to Melanchthon of 27 Oct. 1527. WABr 4.272, 4-8.

WABr 2.455, 76-456, 85; March 1522.

Ob man vor dem sterben flichen moge; WA 23.338-79; 1527.

WABr 11.286, 8-10; 7 Feb. 1546.

WA 23.347, 6f.; 1527; cited by H. Bornkamm, Martin Luther, 497.

Cf. G. Wingren, Luthers Lehre vom Beruf (Munich, 1952).

WABr 4.279, 8f.; ca. 10 Nov. 1527.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Samtliche Werke, ed. E. Zinn, vol. 1 (Wiesbaden, 1955), WA 35.423, 6-424, 3; Evang. Kirchengesangbuch, no. 239.

WABr 2.372, 84f.; 1 Aug. 1521.

AWA 2.303, 203 319, 3.

AWA 2.318, 11; cf. Matt. 7.14.

Cf. the detailed account of the events in Késtlin-Kawerau, Martin Luther II, 168—78; and the sensitive interpretation in H. Bornkamm, Martin Luther,

489-96. Luther's own account of the crisis can be followed from the letter to Spalatin of 10 July 1527 to the report to Linck on 25 February 1528; the tribulations had now become "more endurable? (WABr 4.221, 8f., 387, 8f).

P.J. Reiter, Martin Luthers Umwelt, Charakter und Psychose sowie die Bedeutung dieser Faktoren fiir seine Entwicklung und Lehre, vol. 2 (Copenhagen, 1941),

Dr. Johannes Bugenhagens Briefwechsel, ed. O. Vogt (Stettin 1888—99; Gotha, 1910) [reprint Hildesheim, 1966], 69, 19-70, 4. This prayer in Jonas's version is in F. Schulz, Die Gebete Luthers: Edition, Bibliographie und Wirkungsgeschichte

(Gitersloh, 1976), nos. 47 and 279.

Der Briefwechsel des Justus Jonas, ed. G. Kawerau, 1st half (Halle, 1884), 105, 4f.

Bugenhagen Briefwechsel, 66, 8-15.

Briefwechsel Justus Fonas, 1.105, 21f.

Bugenhagen Briefwechsel, 66, 27-67, 8; cf. Briefwechsel Justus Jonas, 1.106, 6f.

Bugenhagen Briefwechsel, 66, 13-19.

. Briefwechsel Justus Jonas, 1.106, 10-15.

Bugenhagen Briefwechsel, 67, 13-15.

Bugenhagen Briefwechsel, 67, 16-21; Briefwechsel Justus Jonas, 1.106, 31.

Briefwechsel Justus Jonas, 1.106, 34-40.

WABr 4.226, 9-13; 2 Aug. 1527.

WABr 4.228, 4; 12 Aug. 1527.

WABr 4.232, 24-26; 19 Aug. 1527.

NOTES TO PAGES 324-30 WABr 4.235, 9-16; 21 Aug. 1527.

WABr 4.241, 28-242, 30; 31 Aug. 1527. This statement, written to his student Johannes Agricola, had to take a position on the way inspections were to be carried out in Electoral Saxony. The issue was to cause the most serious

Reformation dispute apart from the question of the Eucharist. Luther writes about the dangers in such a way here as to allow Agricola to assume that Luther is on his side in the struggle against the promulgation of the law. Cf. the account by J. Rogge, Johann Agricolas Lutherverstandnis: Unter besonderer

Benicksichtigung des Antinomismus (Berlin, n.d.) [1960], esp. 1o9g—18. Luther can take Melanchthon's side by virtue of the same experience (WABr 4.272, 13-21).

WABr 4.272, 30-32; 27 Oct. 1527.

WABr 4.319, 6-16; 1 Jan. 1528.

EPILOGUE: LUTHER AS HE WAS . Johannes Kessler, Sabbata, book 2, ed. E. Egli and R. Schoch (St. Gall, 1902), . Dr. Martin Luthers Sémmtliche Schrifien, ed. J. G. Walch, vol. 15. 2d ed. (St.

. WABr 1.173, 11f.; 18 May 1518.

WABr 1.530, 56, with note 15.

WABr 4.148, 15f.; 1 Jan. 1527.

WABr 2.357, 18; 13 July 1521.

WABr 2.334, 6; 12 May 1521.

WABr 2.388, 29-33; 9 Sept. 1521; cf. the first account of 12 May, WABr . Cf. WABr 4.324, 81; Justus Jonas to Luther, 3 Jan. 1528; and Luther's precise information in order to help the town clerk of Nordhausen: WABr 4.342,

WABr 5.316, 16f.; 12 May 1530.

- Die handschrifiliche Geschichte Ratzeberger's tiber Luther und seine Zeit, ed. Chr. G.

Neudecker (Jena, 1850), 1osf.

WAT 3. no. 3733; Feb. 1538.

WAT 5. no. 5368; summer 1540.

WAT 3. no. 3746; Feb. 1538.

Cf. further information in WABr 8.46-48.

CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE English titles to Luther's works are given as they appear in Martin Luther, Works, 55 vols., ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehman (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing

House, and Philadelphia: Fortress Press [formerly Muhlenberg Press], 1955-86).

The Small Catechism, Large Catechism, and Schmalkaldic Articles are not included in this edition but are available in any of the editions of the Book of Concord (the Lutheran confessional writings).

Events in the Age of the Reformation Events in the Life of Martin Luther 1453-56 Johannes Gutenberg: printing of the Vulgate

1466 or 1469 * Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (+1536) ca. 1480 * Andreas Bodenstein von 1483 November ro: Born in Eisleben

1484 * Huldreich Zwingli (¢1531) 1484-96/97 Youth and early schooling in Mansfeld 1485 Division of Saxony into electorate and duchy

1485 *Johannes Bugenhagen (¢1558) 1486 *Johannes Eck (+1543) 1492 Discovery of America by 1493 *Justus Jonas (+1555) 1493-1519 Emperor Maximilian |

1496 Marital alliance between the house of Hapsburg and the royal house of Spain 1497 * Philipp Melanchthon (+1560) 1497 Attends school in Magdeburg

* Asterisk indicates a birth date.

+ Dagger precedes a death date.

CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE nn 1500 *King and Emperor Charles (I)V 1502 Foundation of the University of 1503 Johannes von Staupitz ($1524) becomes vicar general of the Augustinian Observant congregation

1507 Pope Julius II offers an indulgence for the rebuilding of St. Peter's in 1509 *John Calvin (+1564) 1509-47 *King Henry VIII of England

1512-17 Fifth Lateran Council 1513-45 Albrecht of Brandenburg, archbishop of Magdeburg and (from 1514) of Mainz, administrator of Halberstadt; deeply in debt as a result of cumulation of offices

1515-47 King Francis I of France 1516 Erasmus of Rotterdam: Novum instrumentum, the first Greek edition of the New Testament

1517 January: Johannes von Staupitz, Biichlein tiber die Pradestination (Little book concerning predestination) 1498-1501 Attends Latin School in 1501 Matriculates at the University of Erfurt; studies at the arts faculty

1505 Master of arts examination; begins studying law in Erfurt July 2: Surprised by a thunderstorm near Stotternheim, Luther vows to become a monk.

July 17: Enters the monastery of the Augustinian Eremites in Erfurt 1507 April 3: Ordained at the Cathedral Church of St. Mary in 1510/11 Luther sent to Rome because of the Observant controversy

1511 late summer: final transferral to 1512 October 18/19: Receives the degree of doctor of theology; becomes professor of biblical theology

1513-15 First course of lectures on the Psalms (Dictata super Psalterium) 1515/16 Lectures on the Epistle to the 1517 September: Luther's disputation against scholastic theology— fundamental repudiation of CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE

Johann Tetzel promotes indulgences in Brandenburg and Magdeburg regions; half of the proceeds going toward the debts of Albrecht of 1518 Dialogue Concerning the Authority of the Pope, treatise by the Dominican

Silvester Prierias, court theologian of Imperial diet in Augsburg 1519 January 3: Death of Emperor June 28: Election of Charles V as king of Germany

1519-21 Hernan Cortés conquers and destroys the Aztec empire in Mexico.

Ferdinand Magellan and his men make the first voyage around the world 1520 Johannes von Staupitz gives up his post as vicar general of the Augustinian congregation

October 23: Coronation of Charles V in Aachen as "elected Roman October 31: Posting of the ninetyfive theses at the Castle Church of Wittenberg and demand that Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz put an end to the abuse of indulgences

Luther is denounced in Rome by Albrecht; the curia takes the theses as an attack on the authority of the pope.

1518 April: disputation in Heidelberg in the milieu of the chapter of the German Augustinian congregation October 12-14: Questioning by Cardinal Cajetan after the Diet of Augsburg; Luther refuses to recant

December 8(?): Elector Frederick rejects Cajetan's petition to extradite 1519-21 Second course of lectures on the Psalms (Operationes in Psalmos)

June 27-July 16: Disputation in Leipzig, with Luther and Carlstadt against Eck Condemnation of Luther's theology by the Universities of Cologne and 1520 Hutten and Sickingen offer

June 15: Papal bull threatening excommunication, Exsurge Domine August: Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation

October 6: The Babylonian Captivity of the Church October 10: Luther receives the bull threatening excommunication November: The Freedom of a Christian

December 10: Burning of the bull Exsurge Domine and canon law before the Elster Gate in Wittenberg CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE

1521 January 27: Opening of the imperial diet in Worms April 17/18: Wounding and conversion of Ignatius of Loyola December: Philipp Melanchthon's

Loci communes, the first systematic survey of Reformational theology 1521/22 "Wittenberg troubles"

1522-23 Pope Hadrian VI Beginning of the Reformation in 1523 March 6: Edict of the Diet of Nuremberg: enforcement of the Edict of Worms postponed; Hadrian VI presents to the Diet of Nuremberg a renewal program (papacy's admission of guilt)

July 1: The first martyrs of the Reformation, Augustinians Johann von Essen and Heinrich Voss from Antwerp, burned at the stake in 1523-34 Pope Clement VII 1524 Landgrave Philip of Hesse joins the Reformation

August: Beginning of the peasants' revolts in southwestern Germany 1521 January 3: Excommunicated by March 6: Summons to the Diet of April 17/18: Questioning at the Diet of Worms before the emperor and empire; Luther refuses to recant

May 4: Taken into protective custody by his sovereign near Eisenach on his way home from the diet May 4—March 1, 1522: at Wartburg

Castle as Junker Jorg May 8: Edict of Worms, signed by the emperor on May 26; imperial ban imposed on Luther and his followers

December-end of February 1522:

Translation of the New Testament in eleven weeks 1522 March: Luther's return from Wartburg; Eight sermons (Jnvokavit sermons) against the reform measures introduced in Wittenberg (The Eight

September: The New Testament appears in print ("September 1523 Luther resumes his lectures December: Working out of an Evangelical liturgy (Formula missae)

Major writings: Dass Jesus ein geborner Jude sei (That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew); Von weltlicher Obrigkeit (Temporal Authority: To What

Extent It Should Be Obeyed) 1524 October 9: Luther abandons his religious habit Major writings: Brief an die Fiirsten zu

Sachsen von dem aufriihrerischen Geist CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE Erasmus of Rotterdam: De libero arbitrio (Concerning Free Will)

Thomas Miinzer's diatribe against Luther: Hoch verursachte Schutzrede wider das geistlose sanft lebende Fleisch zu Wittenberg (Speech against the Mindless Soft-living Flesh in 1525 Charles V defeated at Pavia

Francis I of France taken prisoner Peasants' War in Thuringia March: Twelve Articles of May 5: Death of Frederick the Wise

May 15: Annihilation of the Thuringian peasant army at 1525-32 Elector John the Steadfast 1526 June 25—August 27: First Diet of Speyer: crushing of the Reformation put off

August 29: Battle of Mohacz: Ludwig II of Hungary defeated by the Turks 1526-30 Visitations of churches and schools in Electoral Saxony

1527 May 6: "Sacco di Roma": imperial army's sack of Rome (Letter to the Princes of Saxony Concerning the Rebellious Spirit), against Thomas Miinzer; An die

Ratsherren aller Stadte deutsches Landes, dass sie christliche Schulen aufrichten .

Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They Establish and Maintain 1525 April: Ermahnung.zum Frieden auf die zwolf Artikel der Bauernschaft (An Admonition to Peace: A Reply to the Twelve Articles of the Peasants in Swabia); to which is added at the beginning of May: Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants

June 13: Marriage to Katharina von Bora ca. July: Ein Sendbriefvon dem harten Biichlein wider die Bauern (An Open Letter against the Hard Book against the November/ December: De servo arbitrio (Bondage of the Will); against From 1525 on: Eucharistic controversy

1526 June 7: Birth of his first son June: Signs of serious illness Writings: Ob Kriegsleute auch in seligem Stande sein konnen (Whether Soldiers,

1527 March/ April: Eucharistic treatise: Das diese Worte Christi, "Das ist mein Leib," etc. .

(That These Words of Christ, "This Is My Body," etc., Still Stand Firm against the Fanatics) Summer: Illness, severe depressions

November: Ob man vor dem Sterben CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE 1528-42 Bugenhagen reforms conditions in churches and schools in the sphere of influence of the Saxon

1529 February 26—April 12: Second April 19: Protest of the Evangelical estates September/ October: Vienna besieged by Sultan Suleiman

1530 June 20—November 19: Diet of June 25: Presentation of the Confessio Augustana; Huldreich Zwingli and four cities (Strasbourg, Constance,

Lindau, Memmingen) each have their own confessions delivered August 3: Refutatio by Roman Catholic theologians; Charles V declares the Protestants to be defeated.

1531 Foundation of the Schmalkaldic League: protective alliance of the Protestant estates under the leadership of Electoral Saxony and October 11: Zwingli killed at Kappel

1532 Religious Peace of Nuremberg:

Protestants granted free exercise of religion until a general council is convoked flichen moge (Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague)

December 10: Birth of daughter 1528 March: Vom Abendmahl Christi, Bekenntnis (Confession Concerning August 3: Death of daughter

1529 Vom Kriege wider die Tiirken (On War against the Turk) March: Kleiner Katechismus (Small May 4: Grosser Katechismus (Large

Birth of daughter Magdalena October 1-4: Religious colloquy of Marburg: No agreement in the eucharistic controversy 1530 April—October: Luther at Coburg

Castle during the Diet of Augsburg.

May: Death of father, Hans Luther Important tract: Vermahnung an die Geistlichen versammelt auf dem Reichstag zu Augsburg (Exhortation to All Clergy Assembled at Augsburg)

1531 Death of mother Margaret Warnung an seine lieben Deutschen (Warning addressed to his beloved CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE 1532-47 Elector John Frederick I, the Magnanimous, of Saxony ($1554)

1534 February 24—June 25, 1535: the Anabaptists' "Kingdom of Christ" in Introduction of the Reformation in Separation of the English church from Rome: Act of Supremacy of the Church of England under King

Foundation of the Jesuit order by 1534—49 Pope Paul III 1535 May 12: Protestant ordination 1536 Wittenberg Concord: agreement between the Wittenberg Reformation and the southern German

Reformation on the Eucharist Introduction of the Reformation in Denmark by King Christian II] 1537 February g—20: Bundestag at Schmalkalden; negotiations about attendance at the papal council in Mantua; Schmalkaldic League extended for ten years;

Melanchthon's treatise Uber die Gewalt des Papstes accepted 1533 Von der Winkelmesse und Pfaffenweihe (About private Mass and ordination)

1534 ca. September: First complete edition of Luther's translation of the Bible (the Complete Bible, or German 1535 November 7: Negotiations with nuncio Pietro Paolo Vergerio at Wittenberg Castle about Protestant participation in the papal council

1535-45 Lectures on Genesis 1535-46 Dean of the theological faculty 1536 January 14: Disputation Uber den Menschen (The Disputation Concerning

Disputation Uber die Rechtfertigung (The Disputation Concerning December: the Schmalkaldic Articles 1537 Serious illness during the Bundestag in Schmalkalden

1537-40 Dispute over the meaning of biblical law ee ee ee CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE 1538 Nuremberg League of the Catholic estates against the 1539 Religious Truce of Frankfurt; limited toleration of the Reformation

Introduction of the Reformation in Ducal Saxony and Brandenburg 1540/41 March 4: Bigamous marriage of Landgrave Phillip of Hesse

Religious colloquies in Hagenau, Worms, and Regensburg 1540 September 27: Jesuit order approved by Pope Paul III 1541 Nikolaus von Amsdorf: first

Evangelical bishop (in Naumburg) Introduction of the Ecclesiastical 1541-53 Duke (from 1547: Elector) 1542 War between the Schmalkaldic

League and Duke Henry of Introduction of the Reformation in Braunschweig (Brunswick) 1543-46 Archbishop Hermann von Wied's attempt to establish the Reformation in Cologne fails

1543 Nicolaus Copernicus ($1543), De revolutionibus orbium caelestium 1545-63 Council of Trent, opened on 1546 Introduction of the Reformation in the Electoral Palatinate

1539 Von den Counciliis und Kirchen (On the Councils and Churches) 1539-41 A further revision of the Bible translation 1541 March: Wider Hans Worst (Against 1542 January 6: Luther's will

September 20: Death of daughter 1543 January: Von den Juden und ihren Liigen (Of the Jews and Their Lies) 1544 Die Hauspostille (a book of sermons)

September: Kurzes Bekenntnis vom heiligen Sakrament (Short confession of the Holy Sacrament) 1545 March 5s: Preface to the first volume of the complete Wittenberg edition of the Latin writings

Wider das Papsttum zu Rom, vom Teufel gestiftet (Against the Roman Papacy, an Institution of the Devil) 1546 February 14: Last sermon in Eisleben—against the Jews

February 18: Death in Eisleben CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE February 22: Funeral at the Castle Church of Wittenberg; funeral 1546/47 Schmalkaldic War

April 24, 1547: Protestants defeated by the imperial troops at Mihlberg May 19: Capitulation of Wittenberg:

Elector John Frederick forced to cede electoral dignity and electoral lands to Duke Moritz 1555 Diet of Augsburg: imperial estates agree on a religious compromise ic

Pt AR eR cat a PE tee de Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, 16, 47, 78, 79, 262, 300; popular appeal of, 41; Donation of Constantine criticized in, 43; concept of temporal authority in,

43-44; critique of national heroes in, 44, 47; "three walls" of the papacy in, 45-46; Luther's national program in, 47; critique of wealth in, 78; contrast with medieval reform treatises, 79; role of Constantine in,

"Admonition against the Jews" (part of Luther's last sermon), 289, 294 Admonition to Peace, 289 Against the so-called spiritual estate,

Anabaptists, 227, 229-32. See also Antichrist: presence of, in the Church, 42, 60, 71; as the papacy, 43, 44; in the Christian tradition, 67-69; 109

Apostolic poverty: and reform movements, 50-51; as reformation, 51; and the mendicant orders, 51; condemned by Pope John XXII, 51; ideal of, defined, 51; as perfect imitation of Christ, 51; and criticism of the Constantinian Church, 51; and the radical Franciscans, 52; and Luther, 57; effect of, on views of the papacy, 57; and hope for the millennium, 57; and Joachim of Fiore, 57. See also Observant movement

Aristotle, philosophy of: criticized by Luther, 160; impact on Christian doctrine, 160-61; and the Eucharist, 232. See also Scholasticism;

Universities; Via antiqua Augustinian Hermits, 52; formation of the order of, 130 Augustinians, German, 52; and the poverty dispute, 53; critique on indulgences of, 74-77; 1504

Constitutions of, 126; admission liturgy of, 127-28; search for the merciful God among, 127-28; controversy between Observants and Conventuals, 130-42; role of the Erfurt monastery in Observant vs.

Conventual dispute, 132; ideal of true perfection among, 138 Baptism: taking monastic vows as a second baptism, 109, 147, 153, 226; as pledge of God's presence, 227; as a work of man, 227; as central theme in the Reformation, 227; and the "Joyful exchange," 227; conflict over infant baptism, 230-32; and alien righteousness, 230; relation of, to redemption, 231; and penance, 231; and the early Christian community,

231. See also Anabaptists Bondage of the Will, The, 211-13; and Luther's conflict with Erasmus, 212-13; as argument against humanists and fundamentalists, 225

Brethren of the Common Life, 96-99 Chiliasm. See Millennialism Christ, Jesus, 3, 43; Second Coming of, 12, 252, 266; ideal of apostolic poverty in imitation of, 51; incarnation of, 104, 156; takes on sin,

106; distinguished from the conscience, 129; righteousness of, in medieval theology, 152; in Luther's theology, 153, 184, 226; fights against the Devil, 156; as Jacob's ladder, 167; as the true Reformer, 177; "alien" righteousness of, 184; presence in the Eucharist of, 232, 233, 237, 242,

Church, 9; infiltrated by the Antichrist, 42, 71; and papal authority, 42-43; Luther's attack on Prierias's theology of, 45-46; relation of temporal authority to, 46, 50, 51, 132-333 criticism of the wealth of, 53, 59; views of Wycliff on, 54-57; views of Hus on, 54-57; in Luther's theology,

154, 247-58, 264, 270-71 "Common man," 18, 36, 60, 277-78, Confessio Augustana (Confession of Augsburg), 29-30, 237, 239; as theological charter of the Schmalkaldic League, 239

Conscience: as site of the Last Judgment, 155; and morality, 155; condemnation of, 165; Luther's appeal to, at Worms, 203-04; bound to service in the world, 204; untrustworthiness of, 226, 227, 319; presence of the Devil in, 227, 283,

318, 319, 320; seeks justification in works, 324 Copper mining industry, 84; and Hans Luder, 84, 91; and the cult of St.

Council of Constance, 23; and Hus, 55; and Wycliff; and the Brethren of the Councils, and papal authority, 42, 247 Cross, theology of the, as the only true theology, 248; and the unity of the Church, 249; and the Church, 255

Death: manner of, analyzed as sign of salvation or damnation, 3; in late medieval art, 5; Luther's perspective on, 330 Devil, 3, 5; fights against the rediscovery of the Gospel, 12, 72, 105, 154-55,

267; and Rome, 43, 147; and eschatological prophecy, 67; imputed to be Luther's father, 88, 102, 103, 104; Luther's conception of, 102-06;

Christian existence between God and, 104-05; sacraments as weapons against, 105; as poltergeist, 105, 155; and the conscience, 105, 184; use of Scripture by, 105, 226; and scatology,

107-09; and slander, 107-08, 129; and the Pope, 147 and above; and the cloaca, 154—56; struggle of, against God, 156, 219; and tribulation,

177-79; views of Staupitz on, 181, 182, 183; and good works, 184; Luther's perception of, at Worms, 197-98; suspected presence of, in Luther's opponents, 229, 244,

290-91, 300, 301, 302; as prince of the world, 244; in the Church, 253) 256, 267, 270; and marriage, 273, 274, 275, 278, 280; views of Melanchthon on, 304; and depression, 308-09; and illness,

Devotio Moderna, 96-98. See also Brethren of the Common Life — 1518, 13-16; report of the Venetian Ambassador on, 13; debate over "Turkish penny" at, 13; and grievances of the German nation,

14-15; interrogation of Luther at, 14-16, 196-97; role of Frederick III, 23-25; political machinations over imperial succession at, 24-27, 196; indulgence controversy, 195-96

— 1530: evangelical confessions at, 29-30, 237; Confutatio of Charles V at, 30; Melanchthon's attempts toward religious settlement with — 1555: and rights of the territorial princes, 10; effect on the —1524: and attempts to convene national council, 27; potential effects on Luther's cause of, 29

Diet of Speyer (1529): and the protest of the Evangelical estates, 236-37 Diet of Worms (1521), 22, 28, 34; Edict of, against Luther, 22, 28; declaration of Luther at, 29, 38-39, 178, 201,

203, 204; declaration of Charles V at, 29; the "Luther issue" at, 35-36, 38-40, 199-204; views of Aleander on Luther's appearance at, 36, 210;

Luther's recollections of, 39-40, 160, 197; eyewitness account of Aleander at, 198-99; reflections of von Ranke on, 204-05, 300

Disputation against Scholastic Theology (1517), 121, 159. See also Donation of Constantine, 42; Valla's treatise on, 42, 261; significance of Valla's treatise on, to Luther, 42-43,

Education: Luther's proposed reforms of, 94-95, 172; and monastic schools, 172; obligations of Christian regime toward, 217-18

English Peasants' Revolt, 54 Enlightenment, the, 107, 117, 147, Ethics, 79; Luther's horizontalization of, 80; Erasmus's views on, 216-17; and sexuality, 272-76, subsumed to the Law of Love, 287-88; and Luther's moral revolution, 320

Eucharist, sacrament of, 149, 153, 226; Luther's conflict with the Sacramentarians over, 227, 232-33, 235-45; as defined by Fourth Lateran

Council, 232; transubstantiation of, 232; as a help against the Devil, 235; Luther's 1518 sermon on, 240-42; and "alien faith," 242; and auricular confession, 242. See also Marburg

Excommunication, of Luther, 20, 22, 147, 149, 185-873 papal bulls of, Faith. See Justification, doctrine of; Reformation breakthrough, Luther's

Franciscans, 51; and radical Franciscans, 51; rule and will of St.

Francis, 57; and apostolic poverty, 57; view of the papacy of, 57; and Joachim of Fiore, 57-59; as "Spirituales," 58; and Olivi, 59; and doctrine of papal infallibility, 59; as harbingers of millennium, 59. See also

Freedom of a Christian, The: service to neighbor in, 78; "joyous exchange" in, 78, 173, 183-84 Fundamentalism, 220-21, 224-25;

Fundamentalism (continued) and post-Reformation Protestantism, 220-21; and biblical inerrancy, 220-21; and authority of Scripture,

God: hidden and revealed, 104; Luther's quest for the mercy of, 119, 323; righteousness of, 152-54, 165, 169, 182, 283; reduced to a philosophical concept, 156; presence of, in the sacraments, 227; fear of, 314

Golden Bull of 1356: and imperial electors, 24-25 Good works, 44, 231; and indulgences, 77; in Luther's early theology, 77,

191; and monasticism, 128-29; Luther's critique of, 129, 164; radical horizontalization of, 192. See also Gospel: turmoil following rediscovery of, 8; Luther's rejection of force in service of, 45; perverted by nationalism, 49; provokes attack by the Devil, 72, 201, 203; distinguished from the law, 94, 291; as the treasure of the Church, 191; as "alien Word,"

Gotha-Torgau Treaty (1526): and the Protestant defensive alliance, 236 Great Schism: and millennialism, 60 Grosser Katechismus (Large Cathecism),

274; on temptation, 175-76; on infant baptism, 230; Church as communion of saints in, 250 Hapsburgs: and imperial election of 1519, 26; growth of power of, 28; and Spain, 30

Heidelberg Disputation, 223, 258 Hell: descent into, medically diagnosed, 3; unity of body and soul in, 5 History, concepts of: and Joachim of Fiore, §7—59; and Olivi, 59-60; and Luther, 60-61, 66, 68, 70-72; and Augustine, 66-67, 68; and Bernard of Clairvaux, 68-69. See also Millennialism

Humility: Luther's theology of, 162; and justification, 162 Imperial Election of 15179: 24-29, 32; and the Fugger Bank, 32; Frederick

III as potential candidate, 33-34; marital alliance between Charles V and Frederick III, 34-36 Imperial princes: judicial sovereignty of,

22; "Electoral Covenant," 28; and the effects of factionalism, 29; and the territorial Church, 205 Indulgences: in pre-Reformation

Saxony, 16-18; indulgence controversy, 18, 187-93, 195-97; Luther's critique of, 68-71; Luther's early views on, 70, 190; as sign of the Last Days, 71; views of early

Augustinians on, 74-77; in official Church doctrine, 75, 188; plenary, 75-76, 129, 149; preaching of, 187-88; Luther's early position on,

190. See also Diet of Augsburg: 1518

Jews, 229, 283; Luther's treatises against, 289, 290, 292-97; expulsion from Saxony of, 292; young Luther perceived as friend of, 292, 293;

Christians as kin to, 293, 297; allegations of blasphemy against, 294, 295; in Reformation pamphlets, 295; allegations of crimes against, 295;

Luther's consistent policy toward, 295; attitudes of other reformers toward, 296-97; anti-Semitism, 297; SUBJECT INDEX consulted by Luther for Bible translation, 308

Justification, doctrine of: as "joyous exchange," 78, 184, 185; and philosophy of Aristotle, 160; Staupitz's concept of, 181, 182;

"simul peccator et iustus," 184, 320; and service to the world, 206; and the righteousness of Christ, 226; existential dimension of Reformation doctrine of, 227; as gift of God, 323

Kingdom of God, 62; and millennarian utopias, 64; Luther's perspective on, Knight's Revolt (1522), 45, 49, 64, 205 Last Days: and the increased power of the Devil, 12; Luther's views on, 12,

66, 79; in St. Matthew's Gospel, 70-71; indulgences as sign of, 71, 162, 183; and the Pope, 186, 229; Peasants' War as a sign of, 278; expectation of, and Luther's polemics, 297

Last Judgment, 10, 50, 61, 64, 156; as day of reformation, 177 Law of Love: taught in the Gospel, 287; and conventional morality, 287; and the bigamy of Philip of Hesse,

287-8g9; and the needs of the neighbor, 288; and public law, 288; differences between Luther and the city Reformers on, 289

Lawyers: Luther's disdain of, 5, 78, 116, 283; canon law and legal poverty, 52; and Luther's marriage, Leipzig Debate, 246; and papal supremacy, 246-47; and conciliar infallibility, 246, 247, 262; Luther portrayed as a Hussite at, 299-300; and Carlstadt, 301; report of Mosellanus on, 325-27

Luther, Martin: death of, 3-8, 166; excommunication of, 5, 20, 185-87, 249; reaction in Wittenberg to death of, 8—10; on the Last Days, 12, 66,

68—72; on the power of the Devil, 12, 104-06, 109, 229, 290-91, 303; and the 1578 Diet of Augsburg, 13, 14, 21-24; reaction to the Peasants'

War of, 18, 45, 49, 277-78, 283, 289; and the Diet of Worms, 29, 35-36, 38-40, 178; and German nationalism, 40-41, 44—49; views on the Antichrist of, 42, 67; influence of Observant movement on, 53; and millennialism, 60-61; and Miinzer,

61; and the Jews, 62, 64, 290-97; understanding of reformation of, 64, 66, 74, 79, 80, 302; influence of Augustine on, 66-67, 158-61; eschatological intepretation of history of, 66, 68-72; critique of indulgences of, 68-71, 74-75, 77-78; as "Evangelist," 79, 226; Christian ethics of, 79—80; and his parents,

82-94; first celebration of mass of, 86, 101, 137; education at Mansfield of, 94, 96; and the Brethren of the Common Life, 96-99; and the Devotio Moderna, 96-99; education at Eisenach of, g9—101; father figures to, 100-102; views on witches and witchcraft of, 102-03; and scatological language, 107-10; education at University of Erfurt of,

113-19, 120; impact of nominalism on, 120-23, 161, 169; critical view of scholasticism of, 121-22, 159-60; impact of humanism on, 123-24,

259, 261-62; as an Augustinian monk, 123-34; and Staupitz, a gee oe ere Luther, Martin (continued) IOI—02, 140, 143, 144-45; trip to Rome of, 141, 142, 146-47,

149-50, 161, 258-59; responsibilities in Wittenberg of, 145; stages in academic career of, 145, 151; early allegiance to the Pope of, 149, 157, 186; Reformation breakthrough of, 151-73; lectures on the Psalms of, 162-64, 250-54; lectures on Romans of, 164; as a biblical exegete, 168-74, 224; concept of tribulations of, 175-793 and mysticism, 179-85; and the Theologia Germanica, 180, 184; selfperception of role in the Reformation of, 210-11, 303, 306-08, 317, conflict with Erasmus of, 211-20,

300-301; views of, on authority of Scripture, 220, 223-25, 226; on baptism, 227, 229-32; on the Eucharist, 227; against the "Sacramentarians," 227, 229,

232-33, 235-45, 322; against the "Anabaptists," 227, 229-32; and the Marburg Colloquy, 237, 244; and the eucharistic controversy, 237, 239; doctrine of the Church of, 247-57; study of Church history by, 259,

261-63, 270; study of the Church Fathers by, 259; desire of, to be worthy of martyrdom, 265, 322; perspective of, on the "success" of the Reformation, 264-67, 269-71; reevaluation of marriage and sexuality by, 273-83; views on women of,

276-77; marriage of, 277-78, 280-81; family life in Wittenberg of, 278-83, 311-12; and the bigamy of Philip of Hesse, 284-89; on the Jews, 290-97; as translator of the Bible, 304-06, 308-09; as proponent of earthly joys, 309-10;

"Reformation madness" of, 314; fear of God of, 314, 315; discovery of vocation, 316; illness and depressions of, 320-24, 327-28, 330

Marburg Colloquy, 237, 240, 244; and imperial politics, 237-39; report of Osiander on, 244. See also Eucharist, sacrament of Marriage, 226, 272-83; of monks and nuns, 273, 278, 284; as divine vocation, 280; of Luther, as potential problem for the Reformation, 282,

283; secret marriage of princes, 287 Martyrs, 51; of the Reformation, 53, 265; and Rome, 147; as sign of the success of the Reformation, 265,

Mendicant orders: and Pope John XXII, 51; and contributions to education, 115-16; functions of, for the Church, 130-31; and conflict with secular clergy, 131. See also Apostolic poverty;

Augustinians, German; Franciscans; Millennialism: and Joachim of Fiore, 57-59; as chiliasm, 59; and Wycliff, 59-60; and Hus, 59—60; as messianic reign of peace, 61; and utopias,

61-62; and Judaism, 62 Monasticism: monastic vows, 51; and "evangelical counsels," 51; and reform, 53; late medieval criticism of,

53> 59, 125; ascetic ideals of, in medieval preaching, 77; as second baptism, 109, 231; and justification by works, 128; as a matrix for Luther's reformation, 129; Luther's criticism of, 185; and marriage, 273

Mysticism: and union with God, 50, 180; Luther's use of, 180, 184; and tribulation, 184; 211 Nationalism, German: and grievances of the German nation, 14, 15, 205; and humanists, 44, 45, 47; and pressure for a national Church, 49; potential effects on the Reformation of, 49

Ninety-Five Theses, 16, 22, 190; Roman Catholic reaction to, 193-95; influenced by the lectures on Psalms, 263 Nominalism. See Via moderna

Nuremberg, Peace of, 238 Observant movement, 52-53, 131; ideals of, 52; and secular authorities, 52—53; and the Augustinian order,

130; Luther's criticism of, 144. See also Apostolic poverty; Augustinians, Of the fews and Their Lies: as favoring a pogrom, 290, 295

On the Babylonian Captivity of the On the Councils and Churches, 255 Papacy: varied views on the authority of, 22, 42, 193-94; views of Prierias on, 42, 193-95; as Antichrist,

43, 262; medieval critique of, 58; infallibility of, 58-59, 74, 193-94; as the ally of the Devil, 147 Peasants' War, 18, 49, 66, 84, 205;

Luther's tracts on, 18, 283; Luther's rejection of, 45, 49; as early proletarian revolution, 64; and Munzer, 64; as external crisis of the Reformation, 218; as sign of the Last

Penance: sacrament of, 75, 164; as basic form of Christian life, 164; and confessional distress, 177; three elements of, 188, 226; as return to baptism, 231

Plague, 60, 315-17, 323 Predestination: views of Hus on, 55; views of Augustine on, 55; and anxiety, 178, 183 Psalms, Luther's lectures on the, 105,

162, 173, 246; concept of humility in, 162; concept of justification in, 162; central theme of, 162, 173, 246; exegetical method of, 250-54

Psychohistory, 82, 91, 94, 98, 109, 300 Psychology, 82; and interpretations of Luther, 98-99, 106, 107, 108, 109, Radical Reformation. See Reformation: left wing of the Reformation: uncertain survival of,

8-12; preceded by the Devil's counterreformation, 12, 72, 267; as reestablishing justice in Church and world, 46; varied meanings of, 50-51; and apostolic poverty movement,

50-51; Luther's views of, 57, 71, 72, 73, 302; as betterment, 73, 79, 80; three theological principles of, 192, 220, 225; and schism, 249; Luther's perspective on the "success" of,

264-67, 269-71; first martyrs of the, 265; as the beginning of the Last Days, 265-67; effect of Luther's marriage on interpretation of, 275

—in the cities: importance of jurisprudence to theology of, 221; characteristics of, 221, 223, 233, 235, 327; distinguished from Luther's nn

Reformation (continued) theology, 224-25, 229, 270-71, 289; concept of the Church in, 270-71; and the Kingdom of God on earth,

—left wing of the, 227, 229, 262. See also Anabaptists Reformation breakthrough, Luther's:

93, 151-58, 161, 164-66, 173, 327; used against the Devil, 156; as a process, 165-66 Renaissance: Italian, 8, 97; and German nationalism, 44

Sacramentarians, 227, 229. See also Eucharist, sacrament of; Marburg Saints: Luther's critique on veneration of, 18; all believers as, 93; Church as communion of, 249, 250

Scatological language: Luther's use of, 107; and the Devil, 107; in the monastic tradition, 108; and Reformation propaganda, 109; and Luther's Reformation breakthrough,

Schmalkaldic League: defeat of, 9, 18, 240; significance of, 238; golden age of, 238-39; impact of the bigamy of Philip of Hesse on, 284

Scholasticism: disparaged, 98, 170; and the question of human freedom, 213. See also Aristotle, philosophy of; Universities; Via antiqua; Via moderna

Scripture, 8; 46; papal authority over, 42-43; and Luther's reformation breakthrough, 152-54, 158, 160; Luther's exegesis of, 168-74,

214-16, 250-54; Luther's "scriptural principle," 172; and preaching, 173-74; contradicts conventional morality, 175, 215;

Staupitz's exegesis of, 181; humanist contributions to the study of, 214; Prierias's view of, 215; as the basis of Luther's authority, 220; as popular issue of the Reformation, 221; views of urban reformers on, 223; fourfold sense of, 250-53; distinction between spirit and letter of, 250-51; Luther as translator of, 304-06, 308-09

191-92; and papal infallibility, Sexuality: medieval monastic attitude toward, 272, 273, 275; Luther's reevaluation of, 272—76; modern criticism of Luther's views on, 275; as primeval sin, 275

Tetrapolitan Confession, 237 Third Reich, 40; effect of, on attitude toward post-Reformation German patriotism, 40; selective use of Luther's work during, 40, 292; effect of, on Luther's credibility, 219; use of Luther's works against the Jews in,

Thirty Years' War: religious settlement of, 11; evaluations of, 12; effects of, Trent, Council of: and Roman Catholic doctrine, 8

Tribulations: role of the Devil in, 175; new Reformation understanding of, Universities: traditional curriculum of, 113; Aristotle as principle authority in, 113; educational goals of, 114; as professional schools, 115; and scholasticism, 116-17; and humanism, 123

Via antiqua: defined, 117; authorities of, 118 'Via moderna: at Erfurt, 116, 117, 118; defined, 117; and nominalism, 117; and the critique of scholasticism,

117; authorities of, 118; decisive characteristic of, 118—19; influence of, on science and theology, 119; essential concepts of, for the Reformation, 120; impact on Luther,

120-23; and the via Gregorii, 122; introduced at Wittenberg, 122; views of Roman Catholic scholars on, 122-23; terminists, 169-70

Virgin Mary, 93; Immaculate Conception of, 93; Bodily Assumption of, 93; Luther's invocation of, 125, 128, 129 Witches, 102; and witchcraft, 102-03,

105; witch hunts, 107; and prejudice against women, 277 Women: and witches, 277; and sexuality, 277; Luther's reevaluation of, 277

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations.

Agricola (Schneider), Johannes (ca.

Agricola (Kastenbauer), Stephan (ca.

Alaric I (+ 410), King of the Goths from Albertus Magnus (ca. 1193-1280), 169 Albrecht VII (¢ 1560), Count of Mansfeld from 1486, 5

Albrecht of Brandenburg (1490-1545), Archbishop of Magdeburg and Administrator of Halberstadt from 1513, Archbishop of Mainz and Elector from 1514, 14, 74, 108,

Aleander, Hieronymus (1480-1542), 36, 37, 38, 198, 199, 201, 203, 210 Alexander IV (Rinaldo Segni) (+ 1261), Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.),

King of Macedonia from 336 B.C.,113 Ambrosius (St. Ambrose), Amman, Caspar, (+ 1524), 306 Anna of Luxembourg (1366-94), wife of King Richard II of England from Aquila, Jakobus (¢ 1476), 132-33

Aquinas, Thomas, Saint (1225/26-1274), 117, 118, 130, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), 113, 114, 119, 121, 139, 146, 159-61, 170,

Arius (ca. 260?—336), 263 Arnoldi, Bartholomaeus. See Usingen, Bartholomaeus Arnoldi von Athanasius (ca. 295-373), 263 Augustine, Aurelius (St. Augustine of Hippo) (354-430), 55, 66-68, 71,

97, 122, 127-30, 138, 143, 144, 152-53, 158-59, 160-61, 180, 194, 211, 223, 259, 301, 309 Barbarossa. See Frederick I Barnes, Robert (ca. 1495-1540), 267,

Bebel, Heinrich (1472-1518), 123 Berlichingen, Gotz von, 156 Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint (ca.

1091—1153), 66, 68-70, 71, 80, 225 Biel (Byhel, Byel), Gabriel (ca.

1410-95), 118, 121, 138 Boleyn, Anne (1507-36), wife of King Henry VIII of England. from 1533, Bora, Catherine of. See Luther née

Braun, Johannes, 93, 100-101, 104, Brentius, Johannes (1499-1 570), 241 Briick (Pontanus; Heintze), Gregor Bucer (Butzer), Martin (1491-1551),

Bugenhagen, Johannes (1485-1558), 278, 281, 320-21, 323 Cajetan (Jacobus de Vio), Thomas (1469-1534), 14, 16, 18, 21, 23, 24,

144, 195, 196, 197, 325 Calixtus I, Saint (+222), Pope from 217 Calixtus III (Alfonso Borgia) (1378-1458), Pope from 1455, 16,

Calvin, John (Jean Cauvin) (1509-64), 221, 222, 225, 270, 289, 312, 317 Capito, Wolfgang, 293 Carlstadt (Karlstadt), Andreas

Bodenstein von (ca. 1480-1541), 221, 232—33, 246, 299, 301-03, 325 Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), wife of King Henry VIII of England from 1509 to 1533, 269, 286

Catherine of Austria (1507-78), wife of King John III of Portugal from 1525, Celtis (Pickel), Konrad (1459-1508), Charlemagne (742-814), King of the Franks from 768, Holy Roman

Charles V (Charles I) (1500-1558), Duke of Burgundy and King of Castile from 1507, King of Spain from 1516 to 1556, King of Germany and Emperor, 1519-56, 9, 10,

24-40, 31, 39, 44, 49, 178, 183, 186, 196, 199, 200, 203, 218, 220, 236-37, 238, 265, 284, 315 Charles the Bold (1433-77), Duke of Burgundy from 1467, 30, 32

Christian III (1503-59), King of Denmark and Norway, Duke of Schleswig and Holstein from 1534, Christina of Saxony (1505-49), wife of Landgrave Philip I of Hesse from Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 B.c.),

Clement IV (Guido Fulcodi) (+ 1268), Clement V (Raimond Bertrand de Got) (¢ 1314), Pope from 1305, 58-59 Clement VI (Peter Roger) (1292-1352),

Clement VII (Giulio de' Medici) (1478-1534), Pope from 1523, 236 Cochlaeus (Dobeneck), Johannes (1479-1552), 3) 45 88, 144, 145, 288

Columbus, Christopher (1451-1506), Conrad (Konradin) (1252-68), Duke of Swabia, King of Sicily and Jerusalem from 1254, 258

Constantine the Great (ca. 274-337), Roman Emperor from 306, 42, 67, Copernicus, Nicolaus (1473-1543), Cortés, Hernando (ca. 1485-1547), 30

Cranach, Lucas (the Elder) Cranach, Lucas (the Younger) Crotus Rubeanus (1480?—1539), 124, Denifle, Heinrich Seuse (1844-1905),

Dietrich, Veit (1506-49), 310 Duns Scotus, John (ca. 1270-1308), 117-18, 130, 161, 169, 301 Eck (Maier), Johannes (1486-1543),

13, 22, 187, 195, 200, 246, 249, 295, Ecken, Johann von der (¢ 1524), 38, 39, Elisabeth of Hesse (1502-57), wife of INDEX OF NAMES nee EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Duke John the Younger of Saxony from 1519, 286, 287 Erasmus of Rotterdam, Desiderus (1469-1536), 29, 83, 95, 98-99, 123, 149, 168, 171, 172, 210,

211-16, 217, 218-19, 220, 221, 225, 259, 283, 299-303, 312, 327 Essen (van Esschen), Johannes von Eusebius of Caesarea (ca.

Ferdinand I (1503-64), King of Hungary from 1526, King of Bohemia from 1527, King of Germany from 1531, Emperor from 1556, 26,

Feuerbach, Ludwig (1804-72), 272,274 Francis I (1494-1547), King of France from 1515, 26-27, 32, 238 Francis of Assisi, Saint (1181-1226),

Frederick I, Barbarossa (1122-90), King of Germany from 1152, Emperor from 1155, 44 Frederick II (1194-1250), King of Germany from 1212/1215 to 1250,

Emperor from 1220, 44 Frederick II, the Mild (1412-64), Elector of Saxony from 1428, 16-17 Frederick III, the Wise (1465-1525),

Elector of Saxony from 1486, 13-14, 16-18, 19, 20-24, 26, 29, 32, 34-36, 41, 52, 56, 90, 124, 132, 136, 195-96, 246, 259, 279, 280,

Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939), 110 Froben, Johannes (ca. 1460-1527), 212 Gattinara, Mercurio (1465-1530), 30, Gebhard VII (1478-1558), Count of Mansfeld from 1486, 5

George the Bearded (1471-1539), Duke of Saxony from 1500, 17, 22, IQI, 200, 212, 284, 298 Gerard Zerbolt van Zutphen (1367-98),

Gerhard, Paul (¢ 1676), 296 Gerson, John (Jean Charlier) Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Gregory I, the Great (ca. 540-604),

Pope from 590, 97, 181, 309 Gregory of Rimini (¢ 1358), 118, 122, Greiffenklau, Richard (1467-1531), Archbishop of Trier, Elector from Groote, Geert (1340-84), 96-97

Hadrian VI (Adrian Floriszoon) (1459-1523), Pope from 1522, 64, Harnack, Theodosius (1851-89), Hedio, Caspar (1494-1552), 241

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegius, Alexander (ca. 1433-98), 98 Heidegger, Martin (1889-1976), 309 Henry VIII (1491-1547), King of England from 1509, 26, 27, 212,

238-39, 267, 268, 269, 286, 287 Hieronymus, Eusebius (St. Jerome) (ca.

347—Ca. 420), 97, 259 Hollen, Gottschalk (end of fourteenth century to 1481), 75, 77 Hunderlist, Rychardus, 65 Hus, John (Jan) (ca. 1369-1415), 21,

54-56, 59, 66, 197, 239, 249, 299 Hutten, Ulrich von (1488-1523), 42, Innocent III (Lothar of Segni) (1160/61-1216), Pope from 1198, 8,

Jerome, Saint. See Hieronymus, Joachim I (1484-1535), Elector of Brandenburg from 1499, 32 Joachim of Fiore (t 1202), 57-59, 66,

Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) (ca.

Johannes Olivi. See Olivi, Petrus John III (1502-57), King of Portugal from 1521, 35 John XXII (ca. 1244-1334), Pope from 1316, 51, 54, 57, 58, 59

John the Steadfast (1468-1532), Duke of Saxony from 1486, elector from 1525, 17, 18, 19, 20, 35, 90, 280 John the Younger (1498-1537), Duke of Saxony, 286

John Frederick I, the Magnanimous (1503-54), Elector of Saxony from 1532 to 1547, 5, 9, 18, 20-21, 21, 34-35) 75, 280, 292, 293

Jonas (Jodokus Koch), Justus (1493-1555), 3, 5, 7) 10, 241, 282, Julius II (Guiliano della Rovere) (1443-1513), Pope from 1503, 44

Justinian I (483-565), Byzantine emperor from 527, 124 Kessler, Johann (ca. 1502-74), 265, Kunheim, Georg von (1532-1611), 279

Kunheim née Luther, Margaret Lang, Johannes (ca. 1487-1548), 41, 121, 124, 130, 142, 259 Lang von Wellenburg, Matthaus (1468-1540), Archbishop of Salzburg from 1519, 14

Leo X (Giovanni d' Medici) (1475-1521), Pope from 1513, 14, 15, 22, 27, 30, 45, 150, 183, 186, 188, 193, 195-96, 199, 218, 247, 249

Linck, Wenzeslaus (1483-1547), 41, Lindemann, Hans, go, 124 Lindemann, Heinrich (mayor of Lindemann, Heinrich (student in Lindemann, Johann (1519), 90, 91

Lindemann, Kaspar (t 1536), 90 Lombard, Peter (ca. 1100-1160), 138 Lotther, Melchior (ft after 1528), 41 Loyola (Ifigo Lépez de Recalde),

Ignatius of (1491-1556), 8, 149, 317 Luder (family name). See entries under Luscinius. See Nachtgal (Lucinius), Luther, Elisabeth (1527-28), 278, 322

Luther, Hans (1459-1530), 83-88, 86, 90-92, 98, 102, 104, 107, 109, 123, 124-25, 129, 147, 186, 281, 310, 311 Luther, Heine (1510), 84, 147

Luther, Johannes (Hans) (1526-75), Luther, Magdalena (Lenchen) (1529Luther, Margaret. See Kunheim née Luther, Martin (1531-65), 278

Luther, Paul (1533-93), 150, 278 Luther née Bora, Catherine (14991552), 5, 237, 275-83, 281, 310, Luther née Lindemann, Margaret

(Hanna) (1531), 85-88, 86, go—92, 98, 102-104, 106, 109, 129, 186, Mansfeld. See Albrecht VII; Gebhard Margaretha of Austria (1480-1530),

Governor of the Netherlands from Marschalk, Nikolaus (+1525), 123 Marsilius von Inghen (ca. 1330-96), 118 Mauburnus, Johannes (1460?—1501), 97

Maurice, Duke. See Moritz Maximilian I (1459-1519), Regent in Burgundy from 1477; King of Germany from 1493; Emperor from 1508, 13-14, 22, 24-25, 25, 26, 27,

Melanchthon (Schwarzert), Philipp (1497-1560), 4, 8, 9-10, 17, 83, 123, 138, 168, 210, 227, 229, 241, 255, 280, 281-82, 283, 303-04,

308, 311, 320, 323, 324, 326, 329, Mentelin, Johannes (+1478), 305 More, Thomas (1478-1535), 267, 269 Moritz (1521-53), Duke of Saxony from 1541, Elector from 1547, 9, 10

Mosellanus, Petrus (+1524), 325-27 Miinzer, Thomas (ca. 1488-1525), 61, Mutianus (Muth) Rufus, Konrad (1470-1526), 108, 124, 259

Nachtgal (Luscinius), Ottmar (ca.

Nathin, Johannes (+1529), 126, 130, 135, 138, 139, 140, 151 Occam (Ockham). See William of Oecolampadius (Heussgen or Hiissgen), Johannes (1482-1531),

Olivi, Petrus Johannes (1248/49Osiander, Andreas (1498-1552), 241, Paltz, Johannes Jeuser von (ca. 1445I511), 129, 130, 131, 135, 139, 151,

Paul III (Alessandro Farnese) (14681549), Pope from 1534, 8, 328 Paul, Saint (the Apostle), 8, 49, 108, 126, 126-27, 143, 147, 152-153,

158, 159, 161, 164, 170, 172, 180, 223, 242, 257, 263, 270, 299, 310 Peter, Saint (the Apostle), 58, 147, 170, Philip I, the Magnanimous (1504-67),

Landgrave of Hesse from 1518, 236-39, 244, 284-89, 285 Pierre d'Ailly (1350-1420), 118 Pius IX (Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti)

(1792-1878), Pope from 1846, 93 Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) (1876-1958), Plato (427-347 B.C.), 113, 161, 309 Plautus (ca. 250-184 B.C.), 123

Prierias, Sie Mazzolini (14561523), 42,143, 45, 186, 193-95, 215, Proles, Andreas (1429-1503), 13236 Ranke, Leopold von (1795-1886),

Ratzeberger, Matthaus (1501-59), 136, Reinecke (Reinicke), Hans (Johannes) Reuchlin, Johannes (1455-1522), 123, Revius, Jakob (+1658), 296

Richard II (1367-1400), King of England from 1377 to 1399, 54 Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875-1926), 318 Rosheim, Josel von, 292, 293, 294

Rufinus (ca. 345-410), 262 Rufus. See Mutianus (Muth) Rufus, Sale, Margarethe von der (1522-66), wife of Landgrave Philip I of Hesse from 1540, 284, 286, 287

Savonarola, Girolamo (1452-98), 21,78 Schalbe, Heinrich, 90, 100, 104 Schauenburg, Adolf von (1511-56), Elector of Cologne from 1547, 9

Schonfeld, Ave von (ft ca. 1540), 281 Schulze (Scultetus), Hieronymus (t1522), Bishop of Brandenburg 1507-21, Bishop of Havelberg from Schurff, Augustin (+1548), 323

Schurff, Hieronymus (1481-1554), 38, Schwarz, Matthaus, 33 Schwenckfeld von Ossig, Kaspar Sickingen, Franz von (1481-1523),

Sigismund (1368-1437), King of Germany from 1411, Emperor from Spalatin (Johann Burkhard), Georg (1484—-1545), 24, 41, 124, 197, 259,

260, 261, 265, 276, 278, 328 Staupitz, Johannes von (ca. 1468-1524), IOI—O02, 130-32, 134, 135, 136, 13846, 152, 162, 180-84, 186, 190, 197

Steinbach, Wendelin, 121, 122 Sturm, Kaspar (ca. 1475-1548), 198, Tacitus, Cornelius (ca. 55 to after 116), Tauler, Johannes (ca. 1300-1361), 180,

Tetzel, Johannes (1465-1519), 74, Thomas Aquinas. See Aquinas, Thomas, Trutfetter, Jodokus (ca. 1460-15109), 114, 118, 120-23, 130, 223

Ulrich (1487-1550), Duke of Wurttemberg from 1498 to 1519, and, again, from 1534, 238 Usingen, Bartholomaeus Arnoldi von

(1465-1532), 114, 118-19, 121, Valla, Lorenzo (1406-57), 42, 261 Vergerio the Younger, Pietro Paolo Virgil (Vergil Maro, Publius), (70-19

Vos, Heinrich (Hendrik Voes) (1523), Washington, George (1732-99), President of the United States of America from 1789 to 1797, 47

Wenceslaus (1361-1419), King of Bohemia from 1378, King of Germany from 1378 to 1400, 54 Wesel, Johannes von (ca. 1419-81), ,

Wied, Hermann von (1477-1552), Archbishop of Cologne, Elector from William III (1425-82), Margrave of Meissen and Landgrave of Thuringia from 1428, 132-33

William of Occam (Ockham) (ca.

1285-1349), 118-20, 169-70 William of Orange (1533-84), Governor of Utrecht, Zeeland, and Holland from 1559 to 1566, and, again, from Wyclif, John (1320-84), 54-56, 59, 66

Zutphen. See Gerard Zerbolt van Zweig, Stefan (1881-1942), 110 Zwingli, Huldrych (1484-1531), 64, 66, 229, 232, 233-38, 234, 240,

241, 242, 244, 299, 322 feta ee oie i suid ty ; os on Martin Luther, this is the definitive Beh of the Fas figure of the Protestant

- Reformation. Heiko A. Oberman portrays the controversial reformer in the context of his own time, analyzing his state of mind and describing his world more closely than has ever been done before.

"A brilliant account of Luther's evolution as a man, a thinker, and a Christian, written with a learned sympathy. ... Every person interested

- in Christianity should put this on his or her reading list."

LAWRENCE CUNNINGHAM, Commonweal "If the world is to gain from Luther it must turn to the real Luther—furious, violent, foul-mouthed, passionately concerned.

Him it 1S find in Oberman's book, a labour of love."* G. R, ELTON, Journal of Ecciesiastical History "Elegantly composed, powerfully revisionist, Oberman's Luther

___ has been beautifully produced. With over seventy illustrations, maps, a chronological outline, and two indexes, this book is designed

_ for hard, questioning use. It will get it. Luther scholars will debate it; modern historians will too; all who read it will wonder."

THOMAS D' EVELYN, Christian Science Monitor "This is the biography of Luther for our time _by the world's foremost authority."

STEVEN OZMENT, Harvard University "Oberman makes such good sense of the man that all other attempts to explain him'... seem trivial by comparison. This book deserves its fame."

ERIC CHRISTIANSEN, Spectator "Brilliant .. . [and] highly recommended."

The late Heiko A. Oberman was professor of medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation history at the University of Arizona.

Cover Illustration; Lutas Cranach the Elder, Portrait of Luther as "Junker Joerg," disguised | as a country squire (detail), 1521. Photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York

Yale University Press NEW HAVEN AND |LONDON BIOGRAPHY $19. 00 £9.99. p tas tet obs ti a ean lag Bee pr dhef alas aha x edit