A Monk Against a Continent
Having briefly described the economic, political, moral, religious and intellectual conditions that produced the Reformation in Germany, we may count it one of the marvels of history that one man, unknowingly, gathered all these forces into himself in a revolt that changed a continent. There is no need to exaggerate the hero's part; had Luther kept obeying the Roman Catholic Church, historical change would have chosen another figure. Still, the fear and trembling, and at the same time the stubborn resistance, of a rough monk facing Europe's firmest institutions and most sacred traditions set the heart beating, and remind us once more how far man stands from clay or ape.
What kind of man was this embodiment of his age's hopes and summit of German history? In 1526, when Luther was forty-three, Lucas Cranach painted him with a heavy frame, curly black hair, a stern, serious face with a touch of humor, a large nose and shining black eyes in which his enemies saw the glint of the devil. His plain, broad face did not suit a politician. In another portrait by Cranach, of 1532, he is stout and cheerful, with a fleshy, broad face brimming with the joy of life. In 1524 Luther laid aside the monk's habit and put on ordinary clothes; sometimes he wore the professor's gown, sometimes a plain suit. He did not think mending his own clothes beneath him. His wife complained that a man as great as he patched his own trousers with scraps from his son's.
Marriage and Home
Luther married simply. He regarded the sexual relation as natural, like eating, and, like Paul, thought marriage fitter for a man than burning in deprivation. Under medieval influence he considered even marital intercourse somewhat sinful, but held that "God forgives this sin." He thought preserving virginity against God's command to be fruitful would be a breach of that command, and said that if a preacher of the Gospel cannot live chastely without a wife, he had better marry, for God made marriage a balm for the pain of loneliness. He thought the manner of human generation a little comic, and said that if God had consulted him, he would have advised making man from earth, as with Adam. Following the traditions of his people about woman's place and duty, he believed God had made woman for childbearing, cooking and prayer. A wife should love, honor and obey her husband; the husband should rule her kindly; she belongs in her sphere, the home, where the motion of a woman's finger does more with children than two fists of a man. Between husband and wife, there should be no talk of "mine and yours," since their property belongs to both. Like most men of his time, Luther disliked learned women, and wished that women would say the Lord's Prayer to themselves before speaking. Yet he disliked authors who wrote satires on women, and said that women's faults should be corrected in private and gently. (The book includes harsher remarks of his on women and childbirth, which are omitted here.) Despite his frankness on sex and marriage, he was not blind to beauty; he said that hair is a woman's loveliest ornament and loved to see it flowing.
It was apparently not sexual need that brought Luther to marriage. He once said in jest that he married to please his father, and to vex the devil and the pope. But it took him a long time to decide, and to some extent the decision was made for him. After a group of nuns left their convents at his urging, he tried to find them husbands. Finally one, Katharina von Bora, of a respectable family but unwilling to chase men, was left alone. She had set her heart for a time on a young student from an old family, but when she failed to win him, she took up domestic service to avoid hunger. Luther proposed Dr. Glatz as her husband. Katharina, who did not like Dr. Glatz, replied that she would prefer Herr Amsdorf or Dr. Luther. Luther was then forty-two and Katharina twenty-six. He thought their unlikeness a bar, but his father advised him to leave descendants. So the former nun and former monk were married on June 27, 1525.
Frederick the Wise gave them the Augustinian monastery to live in, and Luther's salary was raised to 300 gulden a year ($7,500 in the book's conversion), later to 400 and then 500. Luther bought a farm, which Katharina loved and managed. She bore six children and with energy and devotion raised them and supplied every need of the household, from brewing beer to raising fish, poultry and pigs and growing vegetables. Luther called her "my lord, Kate," and noted that whenever he forgot man's natural dependence on woman, Katharina put him in his place. But she had to put up with his lack of foresight and sudden storms of anger. Luther set no value on money and wasted his income on gifts. He even refused royalties on his books, which brought rich profits to their publisher. His letters to and about Katharina show his affection growing and their family life happy. What he had heard in youth came true for him: the most precious gift God can give a man is a chaste, loving, God-fearing wife who keeps house.
A Father's Grief
Luther was a kind and devoted father who seemed by instinct to know how to mix discipline with love. "Punish [your children] if need be, but set reward and encouragement beside the rod." He wrote hymns for his children and sang them to the lute. A spirit that did not fear battle with the emperor was broken by the death of his beloved fourteen-year-old daughter Magdalena (the book's age). He said that in a thousand years God had not given any bishop a gift as great as the daughter he had given him. During her illness Luther prayed night and day for her recovery: "Dear God, though I love my daughter very much, if it is your will to take her from me, I shall gladly give her into your hands." To Magdalena he said: "Dear Lena, my little daughter, I know it is hard for you to leave your father here. But are you ready to go to your other Father?" She answered, "Yes, dear father, God's will is dear to me." Luther wept bitterly for a long time at her death, and as she was lowered into the grave he murmured to her as if she were alive: "My darling daughter, soon you will rise from death and shine like a star in heaven. How strange to know she is at peace, and yet be sad and grieving!"
Not content with six children, Luther took in eleven orphaned children of his brothers and sisters and housed them in the large monastery where he lived. As a loving father he cared for them and talked with them for hours at a time. Sometimes Katharina complained that they took up his time. Some of these children recorded his conversations, and the notes, 6,596 items in all, rival in quantity, wit and wisdom Boswell's notes on Samuel Johnson and the recorded sayings of Napoleon. Luther himself did not revise these table sayings, and few men have had their private talk so widely heard. The real Luther is known not by his theological quarrels but by this Table Talk.
Appetite, Anger and Faith
As able a writer as he was, Luther also enjoyed life. No sensible person will blame his taste for good food, beer and the comforts Katharina provided. He could cover up his bodily appetites out of prudence, but bodily pleasure, before English Puritans condemned it, was ordinary and natural to Renaissance Italians and Reformation Germans. Even Erasmus's frank remarks on the body surprise us. Luther ate heartily but made up for it with long fasts. Though he himself overindulged in drink, he thought drunkenness a national fault of the Germans. We should remember that when drinking water was polluted, beer was to Germans what wine was to Italians and French. There is no evidence that he poisoned or intoxicated himself with beer. He justified his drinking this way: if God forgives my sin of crucifying him by saying Mass for twenty years, he will excuse an occasional drink in his honor.
Luther's faults are not hidden from us. He speaks of humility but is proud; he attacks fixed principles but holds principles that are fixed, and heaps abuse on opponents; he laughs at superstition but is himself superstitious; he condemns intolerance but in practice shows none. Taken together these traits show that Luther was no model of firmness and virtue but a man like changing nature, forged in the fire of battle. He himself said: "In beating my opponents I never hesitated, but if salt does not sting, what use is it?" He compared papal decrees to filth; called the popes "the devil's seed" and Antichrist; called bishops "vermin," faithless deceivers and "empty-headed apes"; likened priestly ordination to the mark of the beast in Revelation; and compared monks to fleas on the pelt of the Almighty. He said the Rhine was too small to hold all the Roman usurpers, cardinals, archbishops, bishops and abbots, and that it would be better if God consumed them with lightning like Sodom and Gomorrah. (The book gives more coarse examples; they are omitted.) Such talk recalls the emperor Julian: "No beast is more savage than an angry theologian." But Luther himself, like Clive, marveled at his own moderation.
Many people think I deal harshly with the popes, but I reproach myself for mildness and leniency. I wish my breath were lightning that swallowed the pope and his court and turned them to ash. As long as I live I shall not stop cursing the base, and I will say nothing pure of them; for I cannot pray unless I curse them at the same time. How can I say to God "Hallowed be thy name" without adding "Cursed be the name of the papists"? How can I say to Christ "Thy kingdom come" without wishing "May the pope's rule fall"? Anger gives me inspiration and strength. Whenever anger seizes me I write well, pray well and speak well, for anger quickens the blood in my veins and sharpens my mind.
Such harsh words were characteristic of the age. As the learned Cardinal Gasquet said, "many authentic preachers and pamphleteers were in this respect like Luther." Abuse and aggression marked the militant intellectuals of that time. People liked aggressiveness and took courtesy in speech as timidity. When his wife reproached him, "Dear husband, you have become very foul-mouthed," he answered, "A twig can be cut with a bread knife, but to fell a tree you need an axe." A gentle reply might have calmed an enemy's anger, but it could not overthrow the pope's power. A fighting man could not speak softly. Indeed, only stubborn and aggressive men could fight pope and emperor.
The struggle with pope and emperor made Luther stubborn, strong-willed, self-reliant, bound to principle, unchanging and intolerant; but he was not without kindness. In his middle years he was a model of sociability and cheer, and a sympathetic friend to the needy. He was humble then, and still remembered that he was a peasant's son. So humble that he thought his collected writings worthless and urged people to read the Bible instead of them. He forbade his followers to use the name "Lutheran Church." When he preached he spoke the language of his hearers. His jokes were rustic and rough: he said his enemies watched his every act so closely that if he let a breeze go in Wittenberg they would smell it at once (a coarse example the book gives; it is toned down here). He loved music and wrote for German Christians gentle, stirring hymns which, like the Catholic Church's, were sung in polyphony. "I would not trade my love for music for anything," he said. "After theology, no art equals music. For music gladdens man and gives him peace of mind."
Joy, Superstition and Reason
His belief made him lenient in morals, for by it a good deed without faith that Christ redeemed man's sins brings no salvation, and sin, so long as that faith remains, does not rule it out. He told Melanchthon, who suffered over his small faults, jestingly to "sin boldly," for God forgives only those who sin from the heart, though he despised those who timidly try to find some remedy for their sins. But a jest is not a document; what is certain is that Luther was not strict in moral matters. He said, "The kind God wants us to eat and drink and be merry"; "I look for pleasure and accept it wherever it is. Thank God that we can now be merry with a quiet conscience." He advised followers to hold feasts on Sundays with dancing and merrymaking.
He allowed recreation, was a skilled chess player, and thought card playing a harmless fault for the immature. He considered dancing a respectable way for young men and women to meet and mix in healthy surroundings, and said he too would like to join the dances but feared that young people would otherwise whirl about madly. Some Protestant preachers worked to ban the theater, but Luther opposed them: Christians should not ban plays because indecent acts sometimes appear in them, for then they would also have to ban reading the Bible. Overall his sense of the joy of life is surprising for a man who thought "every instinctive desire is far from God or contrary to his will" and that God would cast nine of every ten people into hell. He was better than his doctrines.
Luther had a powerful mind, but the afflictions of youth and a combative temper kept him from using his mind to found a rational philosophy. Like all his contemporaries he believed in spirits, witches, demons, healing toads and in jinn who make women pregnant in baths or beds. Though he despised astrologers, he sometimes used their methods. He prized mathematics for resting on indisputable proofs and praised astronomy for reaching the heavens, but, like nearly all his contemporaries, he disliked Copernicus's ideas as at odds with Scripture. He held that human reason must not pass the bounds of religious faith.
No doubt Luther rightly saw that feeling, more than reasoning, is the lever of history. It is reformers who set the world moving; philosophers in every generation dress the great ignorance of anything but the whole in new phrases. So while Erasmus reasoned, Luther prayed, and while Erasmus paid court to princes, Luther spoke with God, sometimes commanding like a man who has fought stubbornly for God, sometimes pleading like a child lost in infinite space. Believing God was beside him, he faced the greatest difficulties and mastered them. "I have accepted the hatred of the whole world, from emperor and pope to their servants. But what of it? Forward in God's name!" He had the courage to face all his enemies because his mind could not reach as far as doubting the justice of his cause or the rightness of his aim. Luther did not turn away from what he knew to be true and what had to be done.