CHAPTER 1. MAIN ARTICLE Melanchthon and Bucer among the witnesses. However, Philip was unable to keep the marriage secret, and he threatened to make Luther's advice public. Luther told him to "tell a good, strong lie" and deny the marriage completely, which Philip did during the subsequent public controversy.[200] In the view of Luther's biographer
Martin Brecht, "giving confessional advice for Philip of Hesse was one of the worst mistakes Luther made, and, next to the landgrave himself, who was directly responsible for it, history chiefly holds Luther accountable".[201]
Brecht argues that Luther's mistake was not that he gave private pastoral advice, but that he miscalculated the political implications.[202] The affair caused lasting damage to Luther's reputation.[203]
Main article: Martin Luther and antisemitism See also: Christianity and antisemitism Luther wrote negatively about the Jews throughout his
The original title page of On the Jews and Their Lies, written by Martin Luther in 1543 career.[204] Though Luther rarely encountered Jews during his life, his attitudes reflected a theological and cultural tradition which saw Jews as a rejected people guilty of the murder of Christ, and he lived within a local community that had expelled Jews some ninety years earlier.[205] He considered the Jews blasphemers and liars because they rejected the divinity of Jesus.[206] In 1523,
Luther advised kindness toward the Jews in That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew and also aimed to convert them to Christianity.[207] When his efforts at conversion failed, he grew increasingly bitter toward them.[208]
Luther's major works on the Jews were his 60,000-word treatise Von den Juden und Ihren Lügen (On the Jews and Their Lies), and Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom
Geschlecht Christi (On the Holy Name and the Lineage of Christ), both published in 1543, three years before his death.[209] Luther argued that the Jews were no longer the chosen people but "the devil's people", and referred to them with violent language.[210][211] Citing Deuteronomy
13, wherein Moses commands the killing of idolaters and the burning of their cities and property as an offering to God, Luther called for a "scharfe Barmherzigkeit" ("sharp mercy") against the Jews "to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames."[212] Luther advocated setting synagogues on fire, destroying Jewish prayerbooks, forbidding rabbis from preaching, seizing
Jews' property and money, and smashing up their homes, so that these "envenomed worms" would be forced into labour or expelled "for all time".[213] In Robert Michael's view, Luther's words "We are at fault in not slaying them" amounted to a sanction for murder.[214] "God's anger with them is so intense," Luther concluded, "that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!"[212]
Luther spoke out against the Jews in Saxony, Brandenburg, and Silesia.[215] Josel of Rosheim, the Jewish spokesman who tried to help the Jews of Saxony in 1537, later blamed their plight on "that priest whose name was
Martin Luther—may his body and soul be bound up in hell!—who wrote and issued many heretical books in which he said that whoever would help the Jews was doomed to perdition."[216] Josel asked the city of Strasbourg to forbid the sale of Luther's anti-Jewish works: they refused initially, but did so when a Lutheran pastor in Hochfelden used a sermon to urge his parishioners to murder Jews.[215] Luther's influence persisted after his death. Throughout the 1580s, riots led to the expulsion of Jews from several German Lutheran states.[217]
Luther was the most widely read author of his generation, and within Germany he acquired the status of a prophet.[218] According to the prevailing view among historians,[219] his anti-Jewish rhetoric contributed significantly to the development of antisemitism in Germany,[220] and in the 1930s and 1940s provided an "ideal underpinning" for the Nazis' attacks on Jews.[221]
Reinhold Lewin writes that anybody who "wrote against the Jews for whatever reason believed he had the right to justify himself by triumphantly referring to Luther."
According to Michael, just about every anti-Jewish book printed in the Third Reich contained references to and quotations from Luther. Heinrich Himmler wrote admiringly of his writings and sermons on the Jews in 1940.[222]
The city of Nuremberg presented a first edition of On