Life of Luther Part 1

Life of Luther.

by Julius Koestlin.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

No German has ever influenced so powerfully as Luther the religious life, and, through it, the whole history, of his people; none has ever reflected so faithfully, in his whole personal character and conduct, the peculiar features of that life and history, and been enabled by that very means to render us a service so effectual and so popular. If we recall to fresh life and remembrance the great men of past ages, we Germans shall always put Luther in the van: for us Protestants, the object of our love and veneration, who will not prevent, however, or prejudice the most candid historical inquiry; for others, a rock of offence, whom even slander and falsehood will never overcome.

I have already in my larger work, 'Martin Luther: his Life and Writings,' 2 vols., 1875, put together all the materials available for that subject, together with the necessary references, historical and critical, and have endeavoured to explain and ill.u.s.trate at length the subject matter of his various writings. I now offer this sketch of his life to the wide circle of what are called educated German readers. For further explanations and proofs of statements herein contained I would refer them to my larger work. Further investigation has prompted me to make some alterations, but only a few, in matters of detail.

For the ill.u.s.trations and ill.u.s.trative doc.u.ments I beg to express my warm thanks, and those of the publisher, to the friends who have kindly a.s.sisted us in the work.

J. KOSTLIN, Professor at the University of Halle-Wittenberg.

_Oct_. 31, 1881, the anniversary of Luther's 95 Theses.

LUTHER'S LIFE.

PART I.

LUTHER'S CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH UP TO HIS ENTERING THE CONVENT.--1483-1505.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.

On the 10th of November, 1483, their first child was born to a young couple, Hans and Margaret Luder, at Eisleben, in Saxony, where the former earned his living as a miner. That child was Martin Luther.

His parents had shortly before removed thither from Mohra, the old home of his family. This place, called in old records More and More, lies among the low hills where the Thuringian chain of wooded heights runs out westwards towards the valley of the Werra, about eight miles south of Eisenach, and four miles north of Salzungen, close to the railway which now connects these two towns. Luther thus comes from the very centre of Germany. The ruler there was the Elector of Saxony.

Mohra was an insignificant village, without even a priest of its own, and with only a chapel affiliated to the church of the neighbouring parish. The population consisted for the most part of independent peasants, with house and farmstead, cattle and horses.

Mining, moreover, was being carried on there in the fifteenth century, and copper was being discovered in the copper schist, of which the names of Schieferhalden and Schlackenhaufen still survive to remind us. The soil was not very favourable for agriculture, and consisted partly of moorland, which gave the place its name. Those peasants who possessed land were obliged to work extremely hard.

They were a strong and st.u.r.dy race.

From this peasantry sprang Luther. 'I am a peasant's son,' he said once to Melancthon in conversation. 'My father, grandfather--all my ancestors were thorough peasants.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: Coat of arms]

His father's relations were to be found in several families and houses in Mohra, and even scattered in the country around. The name was then written Luder, and also Ludher, Luder, and Leuder. We find the name of Luther for the first time as that of Martin Luther, the Professor at Wittenberg, shortly before he entered on his war of Reformation, and from him it was adopted by the other branches of the family. Originally it was not a surname, but a Christian name, identical with Lothar, which signifies one renowned in battle. A very singular coat of arms, consisting of a cross-bow, with a rose on each side, had been handed down through, no doubt, many generations in the family, and is to be seen on the seal of Luther's brother James. The origin of these arms is unknown; the device leads one to conclude that the family must have blended with another by intermarriage, or by succeeding to its property. Contemporaneous records exist to show how conspicuously the relatives of Luther, at Mohra and in the district, shared the st.u.r.dy character of the local peasantry, always ready for self-help, and equally ready for fisticuffs. Firmly and resolutely, for many generations, and amidst grievous persecutions and disorders, such as visited Mohra in particular during the Thirty Years' War, this race maintained its ground. Three families of Luther exist there at this day, who are all engaged in agriculture; and a striking likeness to the features of Martin Luther may still be traced in many of his descendants, and even in other inhabitants of Mohra. Not less remarkable, as noted by one who is familiar with the present people of the place, are the depth of feeling and strong common sense which distinguish them, in general, to this day. The house in which Luther's grandfather lived, or rather that which was afterwards built on the site, can still, it is believed, but not with certainty, be identified. Near this house stands now a statue of Luther in bronze.

At Mohra, then, Luther's father, Hans, had grown up to manhood. His grandfather's name was Henry, but of him we hear nothing during Luther's time. His grandmother died in 1521. His mother's maiden name was Ziegler; we afterwards find relations of hers at Eisenach; the other old account, which made her maiden name Lindemann, probably originated from confusing her with Luther's grandmother.

What brought Hans to Eisleben was the copper mining, which here, and especially in the county of Mansfeld, to which Eisleben belonged, had prospered to an extent never known around Mohra, and was even then in full swing of activity. At Eisleben, the miners' settlements soon formed two new quarters of the town. Hans had, as we know, two brothers, and very possibly there were more of the family, so that the paternal inheritance had to be divided. He was evidently the eldest of the brothers, of whom one, Heinz, or Henry, who owned a farm of his own, was still living in 1540, ten years after the death of Hans. But at Mohra the law of primogeniture, which vests the possession of the land in the eldest son, was not recognised; either the property was equally divided, or, as was customary in other parts of the country, the estate fell to the share of the youngest.

This custom was referred to in after years by Luther in his remark that in this world, according to civil law, the youngest son is the heir of his father's house.

We must not omit to notice the other reasons which have been a.s.signed for his leaving his old home. It has been repeatedly a.s.serted, in recent times, and even by Protestant writers, that the father of our great Reformer had sought to escape the consequences of a crime committed by him at Mohra. The matter stands thus: In Luther's lifetime his Catholic opponent Witzel happened to call out to Jonas, a friend of Luther's, in the heat of a quarrel, 'I might call the father of your Luther a murderer.' Twenty years later the anonymous author of a polemical work which appeared at Paris actually calls the Reformer 'the son of the Mohra a.s.sa.s.sin.' With these exceptions, not a trace of any story of this kind, in the writings of either friend or foe, can be found in that or in the following century. It was at the beginning of the eighteenth century, in an official report on mining at Mohra, that the story, evidently based on oral tradition, a.s.sumed all at once a more definite shape; the statement being that Luther's father had accidentally killed a peasant, who was minding some horses grazing.

This story has been told to travellers in our own time by people of Mohra, who have gone so far as to point out the fatal meadow. We are forced to notice it, not, indeed, as being in the least authenticated, but simply on account of the authority recently claimed for the tradition. For it is plain that what is now a matter of hearsay at Mohra was a story wholly unknown there not many years ago, was first introduced by strangers, and has since met with several variations at their hands. The idea of a criminal flying from Mohra to Mansfeld, which was only a few miles off, and was equally subject to the Elector of Saxony, is absurd, and in this case is strangely inconsistent with the honourable position soon attained, as we shall see, by Hans Luther himself at Mansfeld.

Moreover, the very fact that Witzel's spiteful remark was long known to Luther's enemies, coupled with the fact that they never turned it to account, shows plainly how little they ventured to make it a matter of serious reproach. Luther during his lifetime had to hear from them that his father was a Bohemian heretic, his mother a loose woman, employed at the baths, and he himself a changeling, born of his mother and the Devil. How triumphantly would they have talked about the murder or manslaughter committed by his father, had the charge admitted of proof! Whatever occurrence may have given rise to such a story, we have no right to ascribe it either to any fault or any crime of the father. More on this subject it is needless to add; the two strange statements we have mentioned do not attempt to establish any definite connection between the supposed crime and the removal to Eisleben.

The day, and even the very hour, when her first-born came into the world, Luther's mother carefully treasured in her mind. It was between eleven and twelve o'clock at night. Agreeably to the custom of the time, he was baptised in the Church of St. Peter the next day. It was the feast of St. Martin, and he was called after that saint. Tradition still identifies the house where he was born; it stands in the lower part of the town, close to St. Peter's Church.

Several conflagrations, which devastated Eisleben, have left it undestroyed. But of the original building only the walls of the ground-floor remain: within these there is a room facing the street, which is pointed out as the one where Luther first saw the light.

The church was rebuilt soon after his birth, and was then called after St. Peter and St. Paul; the present font still retains, it is said, some portions of the old one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 2.--HANS LUTHER.]

When the child was six months old, his parents removed to the town of Mansfeld, about six miles off. So great was the number of the miners who were then crowding to Eisleben, the most important place in the county, that we can well understand how Luther's father failed there to realise his expectations, and went in search of better prospects to the other capital of the rich mining district. Here, at Mansfeld, or, more strictly, at Lower Mansfeld, as it is called, from its position, and to distinguish it from Cloister-Mansfeld, he came among a people whose whole life and labour were devoted to mining. The town itself lay on the banks of a stream, inclosed by hills, on the edge of the Harz country. Above it towered the stately castle of the Counts, to whom the place belonged. The character of the scenery is more severe, and the air harsher than in the neighbourhood of Mohra.

Luther himself called his Mansfeld countrymen sons of the Harz. In the main, these Harz people are much rougher than the Thuringians.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARGARET LUTHER.]

Here also, at first, Luther's parents found it a hard struggle to get on. 'My father,' said the Reformer, 'was a poor miner; my mother carried in all the wood upon her back; they worked the flesh off their bones to bring us up: no one nowadays would ever have such endurance.' It must not, however, be forgotten that carrying wood in those days was less a sign of poverty than now. Gradually their affairs improved. The whole working of the mines belonged to the Counts, and they leased out single portions, called smelting furnaces, sometimes for lives, sometimes for a term of years. Harts Luther succeeded in obtaining two furnaces, though only on a lease of years. He must have risen in the esteem of his town-fellows even more rapidly than in outward prosperity.

The magistracy of the town consisted of a bailiff, the chief landowners, and four of the community. Among these four Hans Luther appears in a public doc.u.ment as early as 1491. His children were numerous enough to cause him constant anxiety for their maintenance and education: there were at least seven of them, for we know of three brothers and three sisters of the Reformer. The Luther family never rose to be one of the rich families of Mansfeld, who possessed furnaces by inheritance, and in time became landowners; but they a.s.sociated with them, and in some cases numbered them among their intimate friends. The old Hans was also personally known to his Counts, and was much esteemed by them. In 1520 the Reformer publicly appealed to their personal acquaintance with his father and himself, against the slanders circulated about his origin. Hans, in course of time, bought himself a substantial dwelling-house in the princ.i.p.al street of the town. A small portion of it remains standing to this day. There is still to be seen a gateway, with a well-built arch of sandstone, which bears the Luther arms of cross-bow and roses, and the inscription J.L. 1530. This was, no doubt, the work of James Luther, in the year when his father Hans died, and he took possession of the property. It is only quite recently that the stone has so far decayed as to cause the arms and part of the inscription to peel off.

The earliest personal accounts that we have of Luther's parents, date from the time when they already shared in the honour and renown acquired by their son. They frequently visited him at Wittenberg, and moved with simple dignity among his friends. The father, in particular, Melancthon describes as a man, who, by purity of character and conduct, won for himself universal affection and esteem. Of the mother he says that the worthy woman, amongst other virtues, was distinguished above all for her modesty, her fear of G.o.d, and her constant communion with G.o.d in prayer. Luther's friend, the Court-preacher Spalatin, spoke of her as a rare and exemplary woman. As regards their personal appearance, the Swiss Kessler describes them in 1522 as small and short persons, far surpa.s.sed by their son Martin in height and build; he adds, also, that they were dark-complexioned. Five years later their portraits were painted by Lucas Cranach: these are now to be seen in the Wartburg, and are the only ones of this couple which we possess. [Footnote: Strange to say, subsequently and even in our own days, a portrait of Martin Luther's wife in her old age has been mistaken for one of his mother.] In these portraits, the features of both the parents have a certain hardness; they indicate severe toil during a long life. At the same time, the mouth and eyes of the father wear an intelligent, lively, energetic, and clever expression. He has also, as his son Martin observed, retained to old age a 'strong and hardy frame.' The mother looks more wearied by life, but resigned, quiet, and meditative. Her thin face, with its large bones, presents a mixture of mildness and gravity. Spalatin was amazed, on seeing her for the first time in 1522, how much Luther resembled her in bearing and features. Indeed, a certain likeness is observable between him and her portrait, in the eyes and the lower part of the face. At the same time, from what is known of the appearance of the Luthers who lived afterwards at Mohra, he must also have resembled his father's family.

CHAPTER II.

CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS.

As to the childhood of Martin Luther, and his further growth and mental development, at Mansfeld and elsewhere, we have absolutely no information from others to enlighten us. For this portion of his life we can only avail ourselves of occasional and isolated remarks of his own, partly met with in his writings, partly culled from his lips by Melancthon, or his physician Ratzeberger, or his pupil Mathesius, or other friends, and by them recorded for the benefit of posterity. These remarks are very imperfect, but are significant enough to enable us to understand the direction which his inner life had taken, and which prepared him for his future calling. Nor less significant is the fact that those opponents who, from the commencement of his war with the Church, tracked out his origin, and sought therein for evidence to his detriment, have failed, for their part, to contribute anything new whatever to the history of his childhood and youth, although, as the Reformer, he had plenty of enemies at his own and his parents' home, and several of the Counts of Mansfeld, in particular, continued in the Romish Church. There was nothing, therefore, dark or discreditable, at any rate, to be found attaching either to his home or to his own youth.

It is said that childhood is a Paradise. Luther in after years found it joyful and edifying to contemplate the happiness of those little ones who know neither the cares of daily life nor the troubles of the soul, and enjoy with light hearts the good thing which G.o.d has given them. But in his own reminiscences of life, so far as he has given them, no such sunny childhood is reflected. The hard time, which his parents at first had to struggle through at Mansfeld, had to be shared in by the children, and the lot fell most hardly on the eldest. As the former spent their days in hard toil, and persevered in it with unflinching severity, the tone of the house was unusually earnest and severe. The upright, honourable, industrious father was honestly resolved to make a useful man of his son, and enable him to rise higher than himself. He strictly maintained at all times his paternal authority. After his death, Martin recorded, in touching language, instances of his father's love, and the sweet intercourse he was permitted to have with him. But it is not surprising, if, at the period of childhood, so peculiarly in need of tender affection, the severity of the father was felt rather too much. He was once, as he tells us, so severely flogged by his father that he fled from him, and bore him a temporary grudge. Luther, in speaking of the discipline of children, has even quoted his mother as an example of the way in which parents, with the best intentions, are apt to go too far in punishing, and forget to pay due attention to the peculiarities of each child. His mother, he said, once whipped him till the blood came, for having taken a paltry little nut. He adds, that, in punishing children, the apple should be placed beside the rod, and they should not be chastised for an offence about nuts or cherries as if they had broken open a money-box. His parents, he acknowledged, had meant it for the very best, but they had kept him, nevertheless, so strictly that he had become shy and timid. Theirs, however, was not that unloving severity which blunts the spirit of a child, and leads to artfulness and deceit. Their strictness, well intended, and proceeding from a genuine moral earnestness of purpose, furthered in him a strictness and tenderness of conscience, which then and in after years made him deeply and keenly sensitive of every fault committed in the eyes of G.o.d; a sensitiveness, indeed, which, so far from relieving him of fear, made him apprehensive on account of sins that existed only in his imagination. It was a later consequence of this discipline, as Luther himself informs us, that he took refuge in a convent. He adds, at the same time, that it is better not to spare the rod with children even from the very cradle, than to let them grow up without any punishment at all; and that it is pure mercy to young folk to bend their wills, even though it costs labour and trouble, and leads to threats and blows.

We have a reference by Luther to the lessons he learned in childhood from his experience of poverty at home, in his remarks in later life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to strut and swagger, but must be humble and learn to be silent and to trust in G.o.d, and to whom G.o.d also has given good sound heads.

As to Luther's relations with his brothers and sisters we have the testimony of one who knew the household at Mansfeld, and particularly his brother James, that from childhood they were those of brotherly companionship, and that from his mother's own account he had exercised a governing influence both by word and deed on the good conduct of the younger members of the family.

His father must have taken him to school at a very early age. Long after, in fact only two years before his death, he noted down in the Bible of a 'good old friend,' Emler, a townsman of Mansfeld, his recollection how, more than once, Emler, as the elder, had carried him, still a weakly child, to and from school; a proof, not indeed, as a Catholic opponent of the next century imagined, that it was necessary to compel the boy to go to school, but that he was still of an age to benefit by being carried. The school-house, of which the lower portion still remains, stood at the upper end of the little town, part of which runs with steep streets up the hill. The children there were taught not only reading and writing, but also the rudiments of Latin, though doubtless in a very clumsy and mechanical fashion. From his experience of the teaching here, Luther speaks in later years of the vexations and torments with declining and conjugating and other tasks which school children in his youth had to undergo. The severity he there met with from his teacher was a very different thing from the strictness of his parents.

Schoolmasters, he says, in those days were tyrants and executioners, the schools were prisons and h.e.l.ls, and in spite of blows, trembling, fear, and misery, nothing was ever taught. He had been whipped, he tells us, fifteen times one morning, without any fault of his own, having been called on to repeat what he had never been taught.

At this school he remained till he was fourteen, when his father resolved to send him to a better and higher-cla.s.s place of education. He chose for that purpose Magdeburg; but what particular school he attended is not known. His friend Mathesius tells us that the town-school there was 'far renowned above many others.' Luther himself says that he went to school with the Null-brethren. These Null-brethren or Noll-brethren, as they were called, were a brotherhood of pious clergymen and laymen, who had combined together, but without taking any vows, to promote among themselves the salvation of their souls and the practice of a G.o.dly life, and to labour at the same time for the social and moral welfare of the people, by preaching the Word of G.o.d, by instruction, and by spiritual ministration. They undertook in particular the care of youth. They were, moreover, the chief originators of the great movement in Germany, at that time, for promoting intellectual culture, and reviving the treasures of ancient Roman and Greek literature. Since 1488 a colony of them had existed at Magdeburg, which had come from Hildesheim, one of their head-quarters. As there is no evidence of heir having had a school of their own at Magdeburg, they may have devoted their services to the town-school.

Thither, then, Hans Luther sent his eldest son in 1497. The idea had probably been suggested by Peter Reinicke, the overseer of the mines, who had a son there. With this son John, who afterwards rose to an important office in the mines at Mansfeld, Martin Luther contracted a lifelong friendship. Hans, however, only let his son remain one year at Magdeburg, and then sent him to school at Eisenach. Whether he was induced to make this change by finding his expectations of the school not sufficiently realised, or whether other reasons, possibly those regarding a cheaper maintenance of his son, may have determined him in the matter, there is no evidence to show. What strikes one here only is his zeal for the better education of his son.

Ratzeberger is the only one who tells us of an incident he heard of Luther from his own lips, during his stay at Magdeburg, and this was one which, as a physician, he relates with interest. Luther, it happened, was lying sick of a burning fever, and tormented with thirst, and in the heat of the fever they refused him drink. So one Friday, when the people of the house had gone to church, and left him alone, he, no longer able to endure the thirst, crawled off on hands and feet to the kitchen, where he drank off with great avidity a jug of cold water. He could reach his room again, but having done so he fell into a deep sleep, and on waking the fever had left him.

The maintenance his father was able to afford him was not sufficient to cover the expenses of his board and lodging as well as of his schooling, either at Magdeburg or afterwards at Eisenach. He was obliged to help himself after the manner of poor scholars, who, as he tells us, went about from door to door collecting small gifts or doles by singing hymns. 'I myself,' he says,' was one of those young colts, particularly at Eisenach, my beloved town.' He would also ramble about the neighbourhood with his school-fellows; and often, from the pulpit or the lecturer's chair, would he tell little anecdotes about those days. The boys used to sing quartettes at Christmas-time in the villages, carols on the birth of the Holy Child at Bethlehem. Once, as they were singing before the door of a solitary farmhouse, the farmer came out and called to them roughly, 'Where are you, young rascals?' He had two large sausages in his hand for them, but they ran away terrified, till he shouted after them to come back and fetch the sausages. So intimidated, says Luther, had he become by the terrors of school discipline. His object, however, in relating this incident was to show his hearers how the heart of man too often construes manifestations of G.o.d's goodness and mercy into messages of fear, and how men should pray to G.o.d perseveringly, and without timidity or shamefacedness. In those days it was not rare to find even scholars of the better cla.s.ses, such as the son of a magistrate at Mansfeld, and those who, for the sake of a better education, were sent to distant schools, seeking to add to their means in the manner we have mentioned.

After this, his father sent him to Eisenach, bearing in mind the numerous relatives who lived in the town and surrounding country, and who might be of service to him. But of these no mention has reached us, except of one, named Konrad, who was sacristan in the church of St. Nicholas. The others, no doubt, were not in a position to give him any material a.s.sistance.