The Monk Luther
Luther and the German Reformation
« Se la vita è sventura,
Perchè da noi si dura?
Intatta luna, tale
E' lo stato mortale.
Ma tu mortal non sei,
E forse del mio dir poco ti cale.
Pur tu, solinga, eterna
peregrina,
Che sì pensosa sei, tu forse
intendi,
Questo viver terreno,
Il patir nostro, il sospirar,
che sia;
Che sia questo morir, questo
supremo
Scolorar del sembiante,
E perir dalla terra, e venir
meno
Ad ogni usata, amante compagnia.
E tu certo comprendi
Il perchè delle cose . . . .”
CANTO
NOTTURNO Dl UN PASTORE ERRANTE DELL' ASIA (Night Song of A Wandering Shepherd In Asia),
1829-1830
"If life is nothing but pain and care,
Why should we the burden bear?
O spotless Moon, such _is_
Our mortal life, indeed;
But you are immortal,
Nor will, perhaps, to my words give heed.
Yet you, eternal, lonely wanderer,
Who, thoughtful, look on this earthly scene,
Must surely understand
What all our sighs and sufferings mean;
What means this death,
This color from our cheeks that fades,
This passing from the earth, and losing sight
Of every dear, familiar scene.
Well must you understand
The reason for these things . . . .”
Count Giacomo Leopardi,
CANTO
NOTTURNO Dl UN PASTORE ERRANTE DELL' ASIA (Night Song of A Wandering Shepherd In Asia),
1829-1830
The poem of Leopardi, Canto Notturno of 1829-30, puts us in
mind of the reality of death and self-extinction in the context of an
indifferent world and a meaningless existence.
This is how far the European soul has traveled since the time of the
Reformation. For Luther, the meaning of
existence is crystal clear. He found it
in the tears and wounds of Jesus. The
realization that the Mercy of God is Jesus on the Cross, the mitigation of
God’s own Justice, which is the origin of His Mercy, when Luther had this
insight, the Reformation in Europe was
ignited. Because the insight that faith
in the story of the incarnation of God in Jesus, of Jesus among us, was the
only way to salvation meant that good works were no longer the “only” way, and
that perhaps good works were no more than a means to bribe our way to
Heaven. This was a direct challenge to
the Catholic Church, which was an institution that oversaw an empire of “good
works,” the tangible consequences of which were the revenues of the Vatican. How offensive this was to the young doctor of
Theology in Wittenberg, and even to the monk in Erfurt, is evident from
the nature of the explosion.
However important, and it was important, the interests of
the German Länder, initially only Hesse and Saxony, in the lands of the Church
and the opposition to the Emperor, the focus for me must be on Luther himself,
and if he was not totally unaware of such motives, and of the German sense of
nationalism that would soon help his battle against Rome, his purpose was
always religious. To bring the good news
of a re-interpretation of Christianity, based on Paul and Augustin, on the Psalms,
and on the Nominalism he had learned in Erfurt.
Doctor Luther was always a theologian, a professor at a University. But he was also a revolutionary of the
spirit.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Martin Luther at Age 50 (1533)
Can we envision today what it was, in the late fifteenth
century, in the early sixteenth century, to experience the Wrath of God? We
cannot even conceive of the Wrath of God.
We can conceive of a Wrath of Nature, and we experience it when there is
a great earthquake or tsunami or any other natural catastrophe. But we do not think of these events as
reflecting the Wrath of God. At least
most of us don’t. But even the most
devout Fundamentalist knows what an earthquake is, or a tsunami, or a flood or
hurricane, and that these are climactic
events for which our current state of scientific knowledge can easily account, and even translate into mathematical equations. Nobody believes that God is
moving the earth, or blowing up storms and floods. Perhaps the wrath of God is the ultimate
cause of these catastrophes, but it is not the Wrath of God itself that we
experience. But in the early sixteenth
century, in Europe, Christians felt the Wrath
of God all the time, in themselves, when tortured by doubt and fear, as well as
in the ways of the world and the changes in the weather.
This is the spiritual milieu of the young Luther. We do not know much about the psychological
motivations of the other great religious innovators and teachers. The Prince Gautama, for example, what do we
know about his motivations in renouncing worldly power and wealth to starve in
the desert? But in Luther we have a well-documented case. If nothing more, we have his own letters and
books, which breathe his passion and his motives, his terseness, baring his
soul in the process.
Luther has been praised for taking a stand on behalf of his individual conscience against authority. This I think is the gist of John Osborne's play, "Luther." But I think we must be cautious about looking at another age through the eyes of our own. The individual conscience, or self-consciousness, is too much a creature of the eighteenth century sentimental revolution, of the Romantic movement and eventually of Freud, to be a concept that we can attribute to the thought of the sixteenth century. Luther was a man of his time. His stand was not for his conscience, or for freedom of conscience, as much as it was a stand on behalf of the truth he had found in the Bible. He was taking a stand for God and for God's Word. Not for his individual conscience.It is we that are conscious of our self and of our emotional states and speculate about our unconscious thoughts in order to bring them to consciousness, not Luther. He was testifying for God. But, despite being an anachronism, Osborne's Luther is a very attractive man too, and Luther himself was, after all, unwittingly doing what Osborne says he was doing: taking a stand on behalf of his own consciousness: his own beliefs as he understood them to be, and as opposed to what he was being forced to believe and say by the emissaries of the Emperor and the Pope.
Luther was born in Eisleben, in Saxony-Anhalt, the town
where he was to die, almost by coincidence, after his long and eventful
life. I was only in Eisleben a few
hours, and it was on May 1, and the town was closed. There were very few people in the Hauptmarkt,
the center of town, and all the historical sites were closed.
I saw the house where Luther died, very near
the center of town and directly across from the town church. It seemed to be
the house of a prosperous burger, which probably by now he had become, even in
outward appearance. My impression of the
town was that it was small and provincial and confining.
Even Wittenberg,
a larger town, where Luther achieved his great fame, is not much larger than
Eisleben. We must wonder at the
confinement of Luther’s environment, the provincial backwardness he was
surrounded by, and distill from that awareness the reasons for his religious
fervor. The inward is cultivated when
the environment is cold and desolate and hostile.
This portrait is Protestant propaganda. It was essential to show the world that Luther had not died a horrible death, as Catholic priests had been predicting for years, but that he had died peacefully. Portrait of Luther in the Zeughaus Museum, Berlin.
The Justice of God, thought Luther, is not the trial at the end,
where he sits as Judge and Executioner.
The Justice of God is the mercy he showed to humanity by the
incarnation, by His willingness to become one of us, be mocked and kicked about
and executed by the Law, so as to teach us Humility and Love and Kindness. The
wounds of Jesus on the Cross are God’s Mercy.
The progress of Luther’s thought has been well studied and
recounted. It appears to have been his
reading of the Psalms that started him off in the direction of his
revelation. In the lyrical Psalms he
found the faith in the midst of travail that he was seeking. The Psalms are lyrical, but they are also a
defense of the faith in the mercy of the Lord, who looks after his sheep
in the same way as the shepherd after his flock. Significantly, the God of the
Psalms is also the God of the Tribe.
Copper engraving of 1520 by Lucas Cranach the Elder showing Luther as a monk with tonsure.
Luther’s opposition to Rome
has much of German tribalism and nationalism in it, but Luther’s journey to his conviction of
the necessity of reformation is purely theological. In face of the awesome realization that the
Justice of God, and hence our own personal salvation, depend only on a faith, a
Faith in the meaning of Jesus on the Cross, the ‘good works’ regime of the
Roman Church became offensive to Luther.
A huge and well-organized institution which obtained its revenues by
deceiving ordinary and ignorant people that salvation could be obtained by
doing good deeds, which meant paying for tithes and indulgences that fattened
the Treasury of Rome. This was the
origin of the outrage. The further
possibility of stealing the lands of the Church, and all of its other treasures
throughout the land, added fuel to the fire that was to bring on the German
Reformation.
But the Reformation would never have happened as it did had it not been for the Saxon Electors. For many reasons that I cannot fully account for, many of them having to do with a rivalry between the Albertine Dukes of Saxony, who controlled Meissen and Dresden, and the Ernestine Dukes who controlled Thuringia, the Elector in Wittenberg, the Ernestine Duke Frederick, chose to support Luther in his struggle against the Pope and the German Episcopacy. Part of the problem as well was an election coming up for the title of Emperor between the Hapsburg candidate, Charles, who won and became Charles V, and Francis I of France. In short, there were local German politics involved in the quarrel between the Emperor and the Elector Frederick the Wise when the latter "kidnapped" Luther to protect him from the Emperor, and kept him hidden in the Wartburg as Junker Georg for many months, and no one knew he was there. But perhaps most importantly, Frederick wanted to be a good ruler for his people, and he understood what Luther was saying, and he liked what he heard. He heard a truth for his people and for himself, though he refused to give up his grotesque collection of relics in the Wittenberg Schloss. In the Wartburg, which was also Frederick's castle, Luther translated the New Testament from Greek to German, and thereby changed the world, as I am trying to suggest here.
Portrait of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony and protector of Martin Luther. The Reformation would have been delayed if he had not acted to support Luther. The portrait is propagandistic, painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder, the indefatigable painter of the German Reformation and personal friend of Luther's.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Portraits of John the Steadfast and his wife
(1532-33). He was Elector of Saxony, succeeded Frederick the Wise and was also a protector of Luther
A concomitant of possession of Church lands is the
enhancement of the power of the ducal authority, to the detriment of that of
the Church. Eventually, the religion of
the state will be the religion of its ruler, the principle of cuius Regio eius Religio, which was
institutionalized by the Peace of Augsburg.
All of this, of enormous importance for the subsequent history of what
became Germany,
is the consequence of Luther’s “scruples” about the proper way to worship
God. His opposition to Rome is institutional, but that is the
consequence of events of Empire and of politics, which he never would have
anticipated. His concern was for the
salvation of the soul, not for Germany’s
perennial contest with Rome.
From the point of view of Rome, Luther is one of many people within the Church and the Universities who are critical and demand reform. Reform is discussed as a cure of the Church by many intellectuals in the days of Luther. Erasmus is a reformer as well, and Thomas More. But the case of Luther is different in that he defied the Church not only in rhetoric and print, as a Professor of Theology at the University of Wittenberg, but interfered with the Church's revenues. Luther's 95 Theses were prompted by events that were going on across the river from Wittenberg, in Dessau, outside the jurisdiction of the Saxon Elector, but nonetheless close enough to tempt the common people of Sachsen-Anhalt to walk across the river and spend all their money on the fake indulgences.
In his polemical period, in the early decades of the
sixteenth century, Luther was a humble man.
In his dispute with Erasmus over Free Will, he is deferential to the
Dutch Humanist, and humbles himself by saying that he is “a barbarian.” There is a pride in this claim from the Saxon monk, so far from the sophisticated Louvain, or the Basel, of Erasmus. He highlights his
differences with Erasmus in terms of erudition and refinement of prose and
knowledge of Latin. He disagrees totally
with Erasmus however, on the matter of Free Will, and is not shy in pointing out
the older man’s errors of Logic, self-delusions and rationalizations. Above all he condemns Erasmus for his
irony. These are not times for laughter,
but for tears. Irony has no place in
Luther’s heart. How can we laugh in this vale of tears?
The Seven Heads of
Martin Luther, was a work of Johannes Cochlaeus and printed in Leipzig in 1529. Cochlaeus, a spokesperson of the old Church
opposition and decided opponent of Luther, depicted the reformer as a
many-headed heretic with multiple contradictions in his scathing pamphlet. The heads are: Doctor, Martin, Luther, Ecclesiastic,
Enthusiast, Dissenter, Barrabas
Luther argues with Erasmus over Free Will, a theory that Erasmus
has articulated, but which he thinks the faithful should not ultimately concern
themselves with.
This shows contempt for his readers. Luther is irate.
Of course we should concern ourselves with
these issues!
And of course there is no
Free Will.
We have no will to overpower
the Will of God.
It is God, not us, that
wills.
How can we have Free Will?
To defy the Lord? Only if He intends it so,
as he proved with Adam and Eve in Eden,
who defied Him not because they willed it freely, but because they must,
because Satan had to be defeated.
Erasmus of Rotterdam
The fate of human beings has already been determined by God,
even before the story of our lives begins to unfold. The only thing we can do
is hope that we are among the saved, by having faith in the God on the Cross,
that He has Mercy for us. Is hope the same as salvation? Perhaps, for it is one of the three
benedictions, Hope, Love, Faith, these three, but above all, Love, which is
what the God taught is in His incarnation.
This is the faith of Doctor Martin Luther. This he taught,
and a conflagration followed.
The Emperor Charles V sought to defeat the Reformation in German lands, and after some victories, failed.
The Reformation in Germany. The map below shows the areas of predominance of
the Lutherans (in orange), the Catholics (in blue) and the Calvinists (in
yellow) in the year 1547.
PROTESTANT PROPAGANDA DURING THE REFORMATION
The Good Host
Iconoclasts removing icons from the Churches
Pieter Bruegel the Younger, Peasants Pay the Tithe (1615)
This was anti-Catholic propaganda intended to remind the peasants of the tithe
they paid to the Catholic Church, often in kind.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Portrait of Martin Luther (1529) and of Luther's wife, Katharina von Bora (1529).
Both these portraits are an argument for clerical marriage and therefore
Protestant propaganda. The Bible quotes
clarify the role allocation. For Luther
it reads: By being quiet and having hope
you will become strong. (Durch
Stillesein und Hoffen würdet ihr stark sein).
Above the head of Katharina von Bora it says: She will be blessed by begetting
children. (Sie wird selig werden durch
Kinderzeugen). The marriage of Luther
and Katharina von Bora produced six children:
three daughters and three sons.
The painting below is also Protestant propaganda. Jesus’ parable (John 10.1) is used against
the Roman Catholic Chruch: “. . . he who
does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man
is a thief and a robber.” Portrayed as
thieves, the Pope, a monk, a cardinal and a scribe enter through the roof of a
house. In the foreground, right: the
Catholics; left: the Reformed. Christ, to whom John points, receives the
converts next to the door in the left background.
Illustration for a pamphlet against the trade in indulgences
in a woodcut of 1520. Here the devil is
squatting on a letter of indulgence and clasping a bishop’s staff and the
indulgence cash box. In his mouth,
clergymen are sitting around a table, and the road to purgatory lies on his head.
FAITH THROUGH THE SPOKEN WORD
The psychoanalyst and historian Erik H. Erikson wrote the following, in his book
Young Man Luther, (Norton, 1962 pb ed., p. 107):
"After
1505 Luther had made no bones about the pernicious influence which
“rancid Aristotelianism” had had on theology. Scholasticism had made
him lose faith, he said; through St. Paul he had recovered it. He put the problem in terms of organ modes, by describing scholastic disputations as
dentes and
linguae:
the teeth are hard and sinister, and form words in anger and fury; the
tongue is soft and suavely persuasive. Using these modes, the devil can
evoke purely intellectual mirages (
mira potest suggere in intellectu). But the organ through which the word enters to replensish the heart is the ear (
natura enim verbi est audiri),
for it is in the nature of the word that it should be heard. On the
other hand, faith comes from listening, not from looking (
quia est auditu fides, non ex visu). Therefore, the greatest thing one can say about Christ, and about all Christians, is that they have
aures perfectas et perfossas: good and open ears. But only what is perceived at the same time as a matter
affectionalis [of affection] and
moralis [of
morality] as well as intellectual can be a matter sacred and divine:
one must, therefore, hear before one sees, believe before one
understands, be captivated before one captures.
Fides est “locus” animae: faith is the seat, the organ of the soul."
"I am the Alpha and the Omega. The First and the Last." Book of Revelations, 22.13" (Wood panel in the Parish Church of Röcken)
LUTHER IN ERFURT
Lucas Cranach, Portrait of Luther as Monk but without the tonsure
Martin Luther (1483-1546) after achieving renown. Portrait in the Zeughaus Museum,
Berlin
The University (Collegium Maius) at Erfurt
The Georgen Burse were the student quarters at Erfurt. Here Luther lived as a student from 1501 to 1505.
In the vicinity of the Georgen Burse
THE COLLEGIUM MAIUS
The Collegium Maius, where Luther studied Law in the early years of the 16th century.
In 1501, at the age of 19, Luther entered the University of Erfurt, which he later described as a beer-house and a whorehouse. He received a Master's Degree in 1505. He then enrolled at the Law School but abandoned his studies that same year of 1505.
Here Luther studied from 1501 to 1505
Approach to the Augustinerkloster, the Augustinian Monastery at Erfurt
The walls of the Augustinerkloster from the outside
The Cloister of the Augustinian Monks in Erfurt
On this door, on July 17, 1505, Luther knocked and fatefully entered the Cloister.
July 17, 1505. Day of Entrance to the Augustinian-Eremitic Cloisters in Erfurt
The Cloister Buildings
The Entrance to the Monastery
Stone elements from the Monastery Library which was destroyed during the war. The Monastery, originally built from the year 1277 onwards, was bombed on February 25, 1945 and the old Library was destroyed.
Inner Courtyard
Inner Corridors with the original sixteenth century floors
New living quarters for the Augustinian monks still residing in the Monastery. A meditation room in the basement of the new building marks the spot where several monks lost their lives during the bombing of February 1945.
Luther walked on these flagstones in the Cloister.
THE MONASTIC CHURCH OF THE AUGUSTINIAN MONKS
INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH
On this flagstone Martin Luther prostrated himself when he was ordained to the priesthood in 1507.
Below: Epitaph to Abbot Peter (Petrus II) Schederich who died in
1546 and was the last Abbot of the Monastery of Schulpforta in the Augustinerkloster at Erfurt
Luther's Living Quarters
Luther's cell was on the second floor of this building
Model of the Augustinerkloster as it was in the time of Luther
Luther lived in four different cells during his stay at the
Augustinian Monastery in Erfurt. This one was his last one.
Monk's Cells
Writing table in a Monk's Cell
Monk's habit
THE MONASTERY LIBRARY
THE BOOKS
Printing Press at the Cloister
Copy of the Septuagint
(Oxford,
Sheldonian) 1720
One of the treasures of the Augustinian’s Library in Erfurt: part of the Torah
engraved in leather.
He courageously defied the entire established order of things in his day: Pope and Emperor. He stood up against the cosmos of his time on behalf of his individual conscience. His translation of the New Testament from Greek to German, and his Hymns, are the origin of the German language. He unwittingly unleashed a process of real property transfers, the privatization of the lands of the Church, that gave birth to Capitalism and to the Modern World.
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