In the evening of August 20, 1535 Your Electoral Grace's dedicated MARTIN LUTHER, DOCTOR To Philip Melanchthon1 [Wittenberg,] August 29, 1535
In the summer of 1535 most of the faculty and students of Wittenberg University, including Melanchthon, moved to Jena because of the plague which was again harassing the people of Wittenberg.2 The University in Wittenberg was not closed, however, but continued to function. In the following letter Luther, who was dean of the Theological Faculty at that time, asks Melanchthon to distribute the enclosed theses for two doctoral disputations among the theological students who are in Jena. He also invites Melanchthon and others to the graduation festivities. Then Luther reports some details: he has heard nothing from the Electoral court regarding the "synod"; Brück has arrived in Wittenberg; he, Luther, is ill with diarrhea, but hopes to be better by "tomorrow." In conclusion Luther mentions the French envoys who are trying to get Melanchthon to come to France, a certain letter of the Elector to Melanchthon, and his latest confrontation with the Archbishop of Mainz.
On Philip Melanchthon, see LW 48, 77, n. 3.
Text in Latin: WA, Br 7, 244–245.
Here we are sending the theses of the disputations,3 excellent Philip, which we would kindly ask you to distribute to the theological candidates; we also ask you, in our behalf, to invite everyone to the disputation at the time and place mentioned. Unless it seems wise to you to do otherwise I do not believe it is necessary to post the theses on the doors there,4 since you are strangers there and do not live in the town where the University is located. When you people come, however, you will find them posted on the doors here according to custom and in the usual form. Then we shall also officially invite you to the banquet, even though we would like to know [now] (as you can guess) how many of you will come. The festivity will be on the day of the Holy Cross,5 [and] we look forward with joy to your coming. For now another constellation of the stars has passed without doing any damage,6 and in three days not even one case of death has occurred. Today one occurred, but it had nothing to do with the plague.
From the court I hear nothing about that synod which you mention.7 Perhaps they are diligently hiding such great mysteries from us, and I am willingly ignorant of such mysteries. Today Doctor Brück8 arrived.
I shall visit him tomorrow if I am in a position to do so, for yesterday and today I have been suffering from diarrhea, and my body has been weakened so that I cannot sleep and have no appetite, and we have nothing to drink.9 I hope to feel better tomorrow. In the last two days I have had fifteen bowel movements.
Write to me whether you have swallowed that letter of the Sovereign10 by which I was quite disturbed because of you (as I wrote),11 and also how your health is.12 I have become suspicious (as you have read
[by now])13 of those envoys of yours.14 You know that faithless and rotten disciple of mine,15 and he has many people who go along with him and who are like him.
May the Lord guide and preserve you. Amen.
In February of 1535, in an attempt to gain the good will of the Smalcaldic League, the French king, Francis I, wrote a letter to the league in which he explained his general policies. He especially tried to justify the persecution of the evangelicals in France as police action against criminals. See C. R. 2, No.
1247; WA, Br 7, 227. Pursuing the same goal of establishing closer ties with the German Protestants, in the spring of 1535 Francis dispatched the French nobleman Barnabé Voré with an invitation to Melanchthon to come to France. Melanchthon declined this invitation (see C. R. 2, No. 1275), but this discouraged neither Voré nor the King. On June 23 Francis wrote to Melanchthon and again invited him to come to France for consultations with "our" learned men for the purpose of bringing about "harmony" in Christendom; C. R. 2, No. 1279. Voré, apparently with a small legation, brought this letter to - 33 Melanchthon, whom he met in Jena sometime between August 4 and August 8. Now Melanchthon was persuaded to accept the invitation (see C. R. 2, No. 1295 and WA, Br 13, 232, addition to WA, Br 7, 215, n.
8; C. R. 2, No. 1297), and on August 15/16 he was at the Electoral court in Torgau (not Weimar, as Manschreck, p. 224, states), seeking a leave of absence; C. R. 2, Nos. 1300, 1302, 1304, 1305.
Melanchthon's request was turned down. Through his councilors the Elector informed Melanchthon of his displeasure over the fact that Melanchthon had entered into negotiations with the French without the prior knowledge of and approval by the court. Melanchthon was told to abandon his plan to go to France; if he should desire it, however, the Elector would write to King Francis and excuse Melanchthon for not coming; C. R. 2, 907 f. Melanchthon accepted this offer from the Elector, and on August 17 the Elector promised to send to Melanchthon in Jena a copy of his letter to the French King; C. R. 2, No. 1300. The Elector's letter to Francis is dated August 18; C. R. 2, No. 1303. Thus the Elector and his councilors had every reason to believe that the case was closed; see C. R. 2, 908, 910. Whether they really thought so or only later said they had thought so is an open question; in view of Melanchthon's request for the letter to Francis I, however, they could have felt justified in assuming that Melanchthon was, if not content, then at least agreeable.
In connection with his visit to Torgau, Melanchthon had presented a written petition to the Elector (C.
R. 2, No. 1302), asking for his leave of absence. The date of this petition is uncertain. The C. R. editors assign August 18 to the document, yet in a note they also give August 17. Clemen, WA, Br 7, No. 2221,
Introduction, dates the document August 15; he does so on the basis of the Elector's August 19 statement (C. R. 2, 907) to the effect that Melanchthon had been at court on August 15, and had "then" presented a document to which an oral reply had been given. Clemen's date seems to have the most solid foundation, even though Clemen bypasses certain facts and fails to make certain observations. (a) One may ask whether Clemen has the right to deduce from the Elector's statement everything which he does. The statement was made in a summary report in which a document by Melanchthon, marked (A), was forwarded to Brück; no details about the negotiations with Melanchthon were mentioned, except that the answer which had been orally given to Melanchthon was summarized, and Melanchthon's seeming acceptance of this answer was underscored. Clemen in no way documents that the "writing" which the Elector forwarded as exhibit (A) to Brück on August 19, and which according to the Elector's statement
Melanchthon had presented on August 15 (C. R. 2, 907), is identical with the extant, undated Melanchthon petition, C. R. 2, No. 1302. Only further research in the archives could establish this. (b) Melanchthon received the Elector's answer, at least the portion assuring him that a letter would be written to the King of France, on August 16; see C. R. 2, No. 1300. Consequently Melanchthon was in contact with the Electoral officials at least twice, once on August 15 (see loc. cit.), and again on August 16 (see C. R. 2, 907). (c)
The Electoral officials considered the case closed, and they and the Elector thought that Melanchthon had accepted the negative answer given him. In his report to Brück the Elector presented the situation in such a way that it is clear beyond any doubt that after an answer had been given to Melanchthon which he seemingly, had accepted, the case was reopened by Melanchthon and Luther. See C. R. 2, 908, 910. (d)
And finally, on August 19 the Elector mentioned two letters from Melanchthon which he forwarded to Brück: one marked (A) given to the Elector on August 15 and orally dealt with by the Electoral officials, and one characterized as an "additional" letter; C. R. 2, 907, 908. On August 24 the Elector replied to a second letter from Melanchthon; C. R. 2, 910. This second letter is not extant; at least it is not printed in C.
In light of these observations, events must have taken place as follows: On August 15 Melanchthon was at court in Torgau, apparently turning over to the Electoral officials a petition to the Elector in support of his request for a leave of absence; C. R. 2, 907. On that day or the next Melanchthon orally received a negative reply from the Elector, and on August 16 he received the promise that the Elector would write to King Francis, excusing Melanchthon for not coming to France; C. R. 2, Nos. 1300, 1304. The officials believed that Melanchthon was satisfied; they went ahead and drafted the letter to France, completing it on August 18 (C. R. 2, 908, and ibid., No. 1303), and thought the case dosed. They were wrong, for they received a second letter from Melanchthon, and even more, Luther got into the act. One of the two
Melanchthon letters is missing. The one which is extant, C. R. 2, No. 1302, could be the one of August 15, as Clemen suggests, but it could also be the one written after Melanchthon's request had been rejected by the Elector. That the dateline of the extant letter is Torgau only establishes the fact that, provided this
- 34 extant letter was the second letter, Melanchthon wrote it after his second meeting with the Electoral officials, the one of August 16, and before he left for Wittenberg, where he was on August 17. At least the Elector thought that Melanchthon was in Wittenberg on that day (C. R. 2, No. 1300). And on August 18
Melanchthon wrote from Wittenberg (not Jena, as Clemen, WA, Br 7, 229 states) to Jonas that he has been for "two days" in Wittenberg; he also told Jonas that "thus far" he had not yet received the Elector's permission to go to France—a statement which would make no sense at all, if Melanchthon had not still been expecting an answer from the Elector, i.e., an answer to his second letter with which he had tried to change the court's position which had been made clear to him on August 15/16—but that he did not really expect to receive this permission. See C. R. 2, No. 1301. By August 19 Melanchthon had left Wittenberg for Jena "quite angry" about the Elector's refusal to grant him the leave of absence, as Luther wrote to Jonas on that day; WA, Br 7, 232.
On August 19 the Elector informed Brück in Wittenberg that, in addition to Melanchthon, Luther also was at court in Torgau, that Luther had been informed of the reasons for the denial of Melanchthon's petition, and that the court had the impression that Luther was satisfied. In spite of all this, Luther wrote a letter, says the Elector, which was included for Brück. See C. R. 2, 908. It is difficult to establish any details about this journey of Luther to Torgau; Luther would have needed approximately a day and a half to two days in order to make this round-trip journey of about 90 kilometers and to take care of his affairs at court. On August 19 Luther was back in Wittenberg; WA, Br 7, No. 2223; C. R. 2, 909. On August 17 the Elector had thought Luther to be in Wittenberg; C. R. 2, 903. The Elector's report to Brück (C. R. 2,
908) would seem to justify the assumption that Luther was at court on August 18, the day on which the letter to Francis I was completed. And further, Melanchthon would hardly have gone to Wittenberg had he met Luther in Torgau on August 15/16. It is safe, then, to suggest that under the impact of the news which Luther received from Melanchthon personally about the frosty reception that had been accorded him at court, Luther, who favored Melanchthon's trip to France (WA, Br 7, 232), traveled to Torgau sometime on August 17 in an attempt to support Melanchthon's (second) petition for a leave of absence. After Luther had been informed of the reasons for the denial of this petition (and feeling that little else could be done) but prior to leaving again for Wittenberg, Luther left at court his own official letter to the Elector (WA, Br
7, No. 2221, dated August 17) in a last attempt to change the Elector's mind. If one wishes to wring every possible inference from the Elector's report to Brück, then one may deduce that all these events took place on August 18, probably in the morning, and that Luther used the afternoon for returning to Wittenberg.
Then Luther would either have redated his letter to the Elector, or he would have actually written it on the 17 (perhaps while still in Wittenberg) and would have taken it along. It is reasonable to assume that Luther also took along the second letter of Melanchthon to the Elector mentioned above, and left it at court, along with his own. This would explain the fact that on August 18 (see above), while still in Wittenberg,
Melanchthon had still been waiting, though with little hope, for a positive answer from the Elector. In any event, Luther returned to Wittenberg with mixed emotions; on the one hand he realized that his mission had been as unsuccessful as that of Melanchthon; on the other hand he did not know what would happen next (WA, Br 7, 232); i.e., Luther was uncertain how Melanchthon would react to the frigid reception, and how the court would react to the renewed pleas made by Melanchthon and himself.
The Elector found himself in a dilemma. By August 18, when the letter to King Francis had been completed, the Elector had thought that the case was closed; while he and his officials must have been aware of possible unhappiness on the part of Melanchthon and Luther, they must nevertheless have felt that things had been smoothed over. At that point the two petitions appeared, undoubtedly much to the surprise and annoyance of the Elector, who was now more than ever determined not to let Melanchthon go; see C. R. 2, 910. And so on August 19 (C. R. 2, No. 1304) the Elector sent to Brück in Wittenberg a brief report about the events, together with Melanchthon's two letters, the letter from Luther, and a draft of a reply to Melanchthon's second request for a leave of absence. He left it to Brück's discretion to pressure Luther and Melanchthon (whom the Elector thought still to be in Wittenberg) in an attempt to make them withdraw their petitions. In his own handwriting the Elector, in a postscript, spelled out his determination not to let Melanchthon go, as well as some of the reasons for this decision. Whether the envisioned meeting between Brück and Luther actually took place could not be established, though it is almost certain, for Luther tells of having seen the draft of the Elector's tart, brusque, final reply to Melanchthon. Luther referred to it above, p. 87 (at note 10). Since the date of the final version of this letter