Martin Luther
Martin Luther in 1529
by Lucas Cranach
German religious leader
born Nov. 10, 1483, Eisleben, Saxony [Germany]
died Feb. 18, 1546, Eisleben
Main
German theologian and religious reformer who was the
catalyst of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation.
Through his words and actions, Luther precipitated a
movement that reformulated certain basic tenets of
Christian belief and resulted in the division of
Western Christendom between Roman Catholicism and
the new Protestant traditions, mainly Lutheranism,
Calvinism, the Anglican Communion, the Anabaptists,
and the Antitrinitarians. He is one of the most
influential figures in the history of Christianity.
Early life and education » Early life
Soon after Luther’s birth, his family moved from
Eisleben to the small town of Mansfeld, some 10
miles to the northwest. His father, Hans Luther, who
prospered in the local copper-refining business,
became a town councillor of Mansfeld in 1492. There
are few sources of information about Martin Luther’s
childhood apart from his recollections as an old
man; understandably, they seem to be coloured by a
certain romantic nostalgia.
Luther began his education at a Latin school in
Mansfeld in the spring of 1488. There he received a
thorough training in the Latin language and learned
by rote the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the
Apostles’ Creed, and morning and evening prayers. In
1497 Luther was sent to nearby Magdeburg to attend a
school operated by the Brethren of the Common Life,
a lay monastic order whose emphasis on personal
piety apparently exerted a lasting influence on him.
In 1501 he matriculated at the University of Erfurt,
at the time one of the most distinguished
universities in Germany. The matriculation records
describe him as in habendo, meaning that he was
ineligible for financial aid, an indirect
testimonial to the financial success of his father.
Luther took the customary course in the liberal arts
and received the baccalaureate degree in 1502. Three
years later he was awarded the master’s degree. His
studies gave him a thorough exposure to
Scholasticism; many years later, he spoke of
Aristotle and William of Ockham as “his teachers.”
Early life and education » Conversion to monastic
life
Having graduated from the arts faculty, Luther
was eligible to pursue graduate work in one of the
three “higher” disciplines—law, medicine, or
theology. In accordance with the wishes of his
father, he commenced the study of law. Proudly he
purchased a copy of the Corpus Juris Canonici
(“Corpus of Canon Law”), the collection of
ecclesiastical law texts, and other important legal
textbooks. Less than six weeks later, however, on
July 17, 1505, Luther abandoned the study of law and
entered the monastery in Erfurt of the Order of the
Hermits of St. Augustine, a mendicant order founded
in 1256. His explanation for his abrupt change of
heart was that a violent thunderstorm near the
village of Stotternheim had terrified him to such a
degree that he involuntarily vowed to become a monk
if he survived. Because his vow was clearly made
under duress, Luther could easily have ignored it;
the fact that he did not indicates that the
thunderstorm experience was only a catalyst for much
deeper motivations. Luther’s father was
understandably angry with him for abandoning a
prestigious and lucrative career in law in favour of
the monastery. In response to Luther’s avowal that
in the thunderstorm he had been “besieged by the
terror and agony of sudden death,” his father said
only: “May it not prove an illusion and deception.”
By the second half of the 15th century, the
Augustinian order had become divided into two
factions, one seeking reform in the direction of the
order’s original strict rule, the other favouring
modifications. The monastery Luther joined in Erfurt
was part of the strict, observant faction. Two
months after entering the monastery, on Sept. 15,
1505, Luther made his general confession and was
admitted into the community as a novice.
Luther’s new monastic life conformed to the
commitment that countless men and women had made
through the centuries—an existence devoted to an
interweaving of daily work and worship. His spartan
quarters consisted of an unheated cell furnished
only with a table and chair. His daily activities
were structured around the monastic rule and the
observance of the canonical hours, which began at
2:00 in the morning. In the fall of 1506, he was
fully admitted to the order and began to prepare for
his ordination to the priesthood. He celebrated his
first mass in May 1507 with a great deal of fear and
trembling, according to his own recollection.
Early life and education » Doctor of theology
But Luther would not settle for the anonymous
and routine existence of a monk. In 1507 he began
the study of theology at the University of Erfurt.
Transferred to the Augustinian monastery at
Wittenberg in the fall of 1508, he continued his
studies at the university there. Because the
university at Wittenberg was new (it was founded in
1502), its degree requirements were fairly lenient.
After only a year of study, Luther had completed the
requirements not only for the baccalaureate in Bible
but also for the next-higher theological degree,
that of Sententiarius, which would qualify him to
teach Peter Lombard’s Four Books of Sentences
(Sententiarum libri IV), the standard theological
textbook of the time. Because he was transferred
back to Erfurt in the fall of 1509, however, the
university at Wittenberg could not confer the
degrees on him. Luther then unabashedly petitioned
the Erfurt faculty to confer the degrees. His
request, though unusual, was altogether proper, and
in the end it was granted.
His subsequent studies toward a doctoral degree
in theology were interrupted, probably between the
fall of 1510 and the spring of 1511, by his
assignment to represent the observant German
Augustinian monasteries in Rome. At issue was a
papal decree that had administratively merged the
observant and the nonobservant houses of the order.
It is indicative of Luther’s emerging role in his
order that he was chosen, along with a monastic
brother from Nürnberg, to make the case for the
observant houses in their appeal of the ruling to
the pope. The mission proved to be unsuccessful,
however, because the pope’s mind was already made
up. Luther’s comments in later years suggest that
the mission made a profoundly negative impression on
him: he found in Rome a lack of spirituality at the
very heart of Western Christendom.
Soon after his return Luther transferred to the
Wittenberg monastery to finish his studies at the
university there. He received his doctorate in the
fall of 1512 and assumed the professorship in
biblical studies, which was supplied by the
Augustinian order. At the same time, his
administrative responsibilities in the Wittenberg
monastery and the Augustinian order increased, and
he began to publish theological writings, such as
the 97 theses against Scholastic theology.
Although there is some uncertainty about the
details of Luther’s academic teaching, it is known
that he offered courses on several biblical
books—two on the book of Psalms—as well as on Paul’s
epistles to the Romans, the Galatians, and the
Hebrews. From all accounts Luther was a stimulating
lecturer. One student reported that he was a man of
middle stature, with a voice that combined sharpness
in the enunciation of syllables and words, and
softness in tone. He spoke neither too quickly nor
too slowly, but at an even pace, without hesitation
and very clearly.
Scholars have scrutinized Luther’s lecture notes for
hints of a developing new theology, but the results
have been inconclusive. Nor do the notes give any
indication of a deep spiritual struggle, which
Luther in later years associated with this period in
his life.
The indulgences controversy » Indulgences and
salvation
In the fall of 1517 an ostensibly innocuous
event quickly made Luther’s name a household word in
Germany. Irritated by Johann Tetzel, a Dominican
friar who was reported to have preached to the
faithful that the purchase of a letter of indulgence
entailed the forgiveness of sins, Luther drafted a
set of propositions for the purpose of conducting an
academic debate on indulgences at the university in
Wittenberg. He dispatched a copy of the Ninety-five
Theses to Tetzel’s superior, Archbishop Albert of
Mainz, along with a request that Albert put a stop
to Tetzel’s extravagant preaching; he also sent
copies to a number of friends. Before long, Albert
formally requested that official proceedings be
commenced in Rome to ascertain the work’s orthodoxy;
meanwhile, it began to be circulated in Germany,
together with some explanatory publications by
Luther.
Luther clearly intended the Ninety-five Theses to
be subservient to the church and the pope, and their
overall tone is accordingly searching rather than
doctrinaire. Nevertheless, there is a detectable
undercurrent of “reforming” sentiment in the
work—expressed in several theses beginning with the
phrase “Christians are to be taught that…”—as well
as some openly provocative statements. Thesis 86,
for example, asks,
Why does not the pope, whose wealth today is greater
than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the
basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than
with the money of poor believers?
Scholars have disagreed about how early Luther
began to formulate the theological positions that
eventually caused him to part ways with the church.
If he had done so by the fall of 1517, then the
Ninety-five Theses must be viewed as the
first—albeit hesitant—manifesto of a new theology.
Most scholars, however, believe that Luther’s
conversion was a lengthy process that did not
culminate until well after the indulgences
controversy was in full swing in the spring of 1518.
Indeed, his conversion to a new understanding of the
gospel was heavily influenced by the controversy,
according to this view.
By the end of 1518, according to most scholars,
Luther had reached a new understanding of the
pivotal Christian notion of salvation, or
reconciliation with God. Over the centuries the
church had conceived the means of salvation in a
variety of ways, but common to all of them was the
idea that salvation is jointly effected by humans
and by God—by humans through marshalling their will
to do good works and thereby to please God, and by
God through his offer of forgiving grace. Luther
broke dramatically with this tradition by asserting
that humans can contribute nothing to their
salvation: salvation is, fully and completely, a
work of divine grace.
Luther’s understanding came to him after a long
inner conflict in which he agonized, even despaired,
over his inability to marshal his will adequately to
do good works. While meditating on The Letter of
Paul to the Romans (1:17)—in which the Apostle
declares, “For in it [i.e., the gospel] the
righteousness of God is revealed through faith for
faith: as it is written, ‘He who through faith is
righteous shall live’”—Luther experienced an
illumination that he later described as a kind of
conversion. “It was as if the very gates of heaven
had opened before me,” he wrote. The dramatic and
intensely personal nature of this experience helps
to explain Luther’s determined refusal, during the
indulgences controversy, to recant his theological
views.
The indulgences controversy » Luther, Cajetan,
and Eck
By the summer of 1518 the causa Lutheri (“the
case of Luther”) had progressed far enough to
require that Luther present himself in Rome to be
examined on his teachings. After his territorial
ruler, the elector Frederick III of Saxony,
intervened on his behalf, Luther was summoned
instead to the southern German city of Augsburg,
where an imperial Diet was in session. Frederick
took action not because he supported Luther’s
teachings—which were still being formed—but because
he felt that it was his responsibility as a prince
to ensure that his subject was treated fairly. Rome,
for its part, acceded to Frederick’s wishes because
it needed German financial support for a planned
military campaign that it hoped to sponsor against
the Ottoman Empire—whose forces were poised to
invade central Europe from Hungary—and because
Frederick was one of the seven electors who would
choose the successor of the ailing Holy Roman
emperor Maximilian I. The papacy had a vital
interest in the outcome of this election.
Against these larger political issues, the case
of the Wittenberg professor paled in importance.
Luther’s antagonist at the imperial Diet, Cardinal
Cajetan, was head of the Dominican order, an ardent
defender of the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, and
one of the most learned men in the Roman Curia.
Cajetan had taken his assignment seriously and was
thus well prepared for his interrogation of Luther.
Once the two men met, their fundamental differences
quickly became apparent. Their encounter was made
even more difficult by the fact that neither had
great respect for the other—Cajetan observed that
Luther had “ominous eyes and wondrous fantasies in
his head,” while Luther remarked that Cajetan may
well be “a famous Thomist, but he is an evasive,
obscure, and unintelligible theologian.”
In Cajetan’s view the key issues were Luther’s
denial that the church is empowered to distribute as
indulgences the infinite “treasury of merits”
accumulated by Christ on the cross—on this point
Luther directly contradicted the papal bull
Unigenitus Dei Filius (1343; “Only Begotten Son of
God”) of Clement VI—and Luther’s insistence that
faith is indispensable for justification. After
three days of discussion (October 12–14), Cajetan
advised Luther that further conversations were
useless unless he was willing to recant. Luther
immediately fled Augsburg and returned to
Wittenberg, where he issued an appeal for a general
council of the church to hear his case.
Luther had reason to be nervous. Papal
instructions from August had empowered Cajetan to
have Luther apprehended and brought to Rome for
further examination. On Nov. 9, 1518, Leo X issued
the bull Cum postquam (“When After”), which defined
the doctrine of indulgences and addressed the issue
of the authority of the church to absolve the
faithful from temporal punishment. Luther’s views
were declared to be in conflict with the teaching of
the church.
Well aware that he was the cause of the
controversy and that in Cum postquam his doctrines
had been condemned by the pope himself, Luther
agreed to refrain from participating in the public
debate. Others, however, promptly took his place,
sounding the knell of reform in both church and
society. The controversy was drawing participants
from wider circles and addressing broader and
weightier theological issues, the most important of
which was the question of the authority of the
church and the pope. Eventually, a bitter dispute
between Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt, a
colleague of Luther at Wittenberg, and Johann Eck, a
theologian from Ingolstadt and an able defender of
the church, drew Luther back into the fray. Because
the entire controversy was still considered an
academic matter, Eck, Carlstadt, and Luther agreed
to a public debate, which took place in Leipzig in
June 1519.
The setting was hardly a friendly one for Luther
and Carlstadt, because Duke George of Saxony had
already established himself as a staunch defender of
the church. Upon hearing the sermon of the opening
ceremony, which exhorted the participants to adhere
to the truth in their debating, George remarked that
he had not realized that theologians were so godless
as to need such preaching. The initial debate
between Eck and Carlstadt covered extensive
theological ground but was listless. Luther’s debate
with Eck was more lively, as Eck, a skillful
debater, repeatedly sought to show that Luther’s
position on the issue of papal primacy was identical
to that of Jan Hus, the Bohemian theologian who was
condemned for heresy at the Council of Constance
(1414–18). This was a conclusion calculated to shock
the audience at Leipzig, whose university had been
founded in the previous century by refugees from the
Hussite-dominated University of Prague. Luther
repeatedly denied the charge but then noted that
some of Hus’s opinions, such as his assertion that
there is one holy Catholic Church, were not
heretical. Eck’s prodding led Luther to state that
even general councils, such as the Council of
Constance, can be in error when they promulgate
opinions not de fide (concerning the faith). This
admission was perceived as damaging to Luther’s
cause and allowed Eck to boast that he had succeeded
in revealing Luther’s true beliefs.
The indulgences controversy » Excommunication
Meanwhile, after a delay caused by the election
of the new German emperor, the formal ecclesiastical
proceedings against Luther were revived in the fall
of 1519. In January 1520 a consistory heard the
recommendation that Luther’s orthodoxy be examined,
and one month later a papal commission concluded
that Luther’s teachings were heretical. Because this
conclusion seemed hasty to some members of the
Curia, another commission, consisting of the heads
of the several important monastic orders, was
convened; it rendered the surprisingly mild judgment
that Luther’s propositions were “scandalous and
offensive to pious ears” but not heretical. After
Eck appeared in Rome and made dire pronouncements on
the situation in Germany, yet another examination of
Luther’s writings was undertaken. Finally, on June
15, 1520, Leo issued the bull Exsurge Domine (“Arise
O Lord”), which charged that 41 sentences in
Luther’s various writings were “heretical,
scandalous, offensive to pious ears,” though it did
not specify which sentences had received what
verdict. Luther was given 60 days upon receiving the
bull to recant and another 60 days to report his
recantation to Rome.
At first Luther believed that the story of the
bull was a malicious rumour spread by Eck. When the
reality of his condemnation became clear, however,
he responded belligerently in a tract titled Against
the Execrable Bull of the Antichrist. Upon the
expiration of the 60-day period stipulated in the
bull, on Dec. 10, 1520, Luther cancelled his
classes, marched to a bonfire started by his
students outside one of the city gates, and threw a
copy of the bull into the fire.
The ensuing bull of excommunication, Decet
Romanum pontificem (“It Pleases the Roman Pontiff”),
was published on Jan. 3, 1521. Martin Luther was
formally declared a heretic. Ordinarily, those
condemned as heretics were apprehended by an
authority of the secular government and put to death
by burning. In Luther’s case, however, a complex set
of factors made such punishment impossible. The new
German king (and Holy Roman emperor), Charles V, had
agreed as a condition of his election that no German
would be convicted without a proper hearing; many,
including Luther himself, were convinced that Luther
had not been granted this right. Others noted
various formal deficiencies in Exsurge Domine,
including the fact that it did not correctly quote
Luther and that one of the sentences it condemned
was actually written by another author. Still others
thought that Luther’s call for reform deserved a
more serious hearing. A proposal was therefore
circulated that Luther should be given a formal
hearing when the imperial Diet convened in Worms
later in the spring.
Understandably, the papal nuncio Girolamo
Aleandro, who represented the Curia in the Holy
Roman Empire, vehemently rejected this idea. His
position was clear: a convicted heretic did not
warrant a hearing. The Diet could do nothing other
than endorse the ecclesiastical verdict and bring
the heretic to his deserved judgment. Charles shared
Aleandro’s sentiment but realized that the idea of
giving Luther a hearing enjoyed widespread support
in Germany. Charles’s adviser Mercurino Gattinara,
mindful of the need for good relations with the
estates (the three main orders of society—clergy,
nobility, and townspeople), repeatedly urged the
emperor not to issue an edict against Luther without
their full consent. Gattinara’s caution was
justified, because in February the estates refused
to support an edict condemning Luther’s writings and
instead urged that, in view of the restlessness of
the commoners, Luther be cited to appear before the
Diet “to the benefit and advantage of the entire
German nation, the Holy Roman Empire, our Christian
faith, and all estates.” Charles acceded, and on
March 6, 1521, he issued a formal invitation to
Luther to appear before the estates assembled in
Worms. Charles’s apparent surrender was perhaps the
only acceptable resolution of the matter; even
Aleandro could easily convince himself that Luther’s
citation was in the best interest of the church. If
Luther recanted, the problem of his heresy would be
removed; if he did not, the estates could no longer
refuse to endorse formal action against him.
The indulgences controversy » Diet of Worms
Luther appeared before the Diet at Worms on
April 17, 1521. He was informed that he had been
called to the meeting to acknowledge as his own the
books that had been published in his name and to
repudiate them. He briefly acknowledged the books
but requested time to ponder his second answer,
which was granted. The following day Luther admitted
that he had used inappropriate language but declared
that he could not and would not recant the substance
of his writings. According to a traditional but
apocryphal account, he ended his statement with the
words, “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help
me. Amen.”
Following his appearance, Luther participated in
intense discussions involving representatives of the
emperor, Aleandro, and the Saxon elector Frederick.
Although every effort was made to induce Luther to
recant, in the end the discussions failed over his
refusal to repudiate a single sentence from the 41
cited in the papal bull. But behind that stood the
charge that Luther, a single individual, presumed to
challenge 1,500 years of Christian theological
consensus. On April 26 Luther hurriedly left Worms,
and on May 8 Charles drew up an edict against him.
Charles undertook one more unsuccessful effort to
obtain the support of the estates, which continued
to fear that Luther’s condemnation would incite
rebellion among the commoners. The Diet then
officially adjourned. On May 25, after the elector
Joachim Brandenburg assured the emperor of the
support of the few rulers who remained in Worms,
Charles signed the edict against Luther.
The document enumerated Luther’s errors along the
lines of Exsurge Domine, declared Luther and his
followers (some of whom were identified by name) to
be political outlaws, and ordered his writings to be
burned. Thus, the causa Lutheri was considered
closed. It was enormously important, however, that
doubts about the propriety of the edict were voiced
at once. Its claim to represent the “unanimous
consent of the estates” was plainly incorrect, since
by the end of May most of the rulers had long since
left Worms. Meanwhile, on his journey back to
Wittenberg, Luther was “kidnapped” by soldiers of
Frederick and taken secretly to Wartburg Castle,
near the town of Eisenach, where he remained in
hiding for the better part of a year. During this
period few people knew of Luther’s whereabouts; most
thought he was dead.
During his stay in the Wartburg, Luther began
work on what proved to be one of his foremost
achievements—the translation of the New Testament
into the German vernacular. This task was an obvious
ramification of his insistence that the Bible alone
is the source of Christian truth and his related
belief that everyone is capable of understanding the
biblical message. Luther’s translation profoundly
affected the development of the written German
language. The precedent he set was followed by other
scholars, whose work made the Bible widely available
in the vernacular and contributed significantly to
the emergence of national languages.
The indulgences controversy » Controversies after
the Diet of Worms
Attempts to carry out the Edict of Worms were
largely unsuccessful. Although Roman Catholic rulers
sought determinedly to suppress Luther and his
followers, within two years it had become obvious
that the movement for reform was too strong. By
March 1522, when Luther returned to Wittenberg, the
effort to put reform into practice had generated
riots and popular protests that threatened to
undermine law and order.
Luther’s attitude toward these developments was
conservative. He did not believe that change should
occur hurriedly. In accordance with his notion of
“making haste slowly,” he managed to control the
course of reform in Wittenberg, where his influence
continued to be strong. Nevertheless, it is
undeniable that Luther’s significance as a public
figure began to decline after 1522. This is not to
say that he did not play a crucial role in the
continuing course of events—for he did. Nor is this
to say that his influence may not be discerned after
1522—for it can. After the Edict of Worms, however,
the cause of reform, of whatever sort, became a
legal and political struggle rather than a
theological one. The crucial decisions were now made
in the halls of government and not in the studies of
the theologians. Moreover, by 1523 various other
reformers, including Thomas Müntzer, Huldrych
Zwingli, and Martin Bucer, had arisen to challenge
Luther’s primacy of place and to put forward a more
radical vision of reform in church and society.
Beginning in the summer of 1524, large numbers of
peasants in southwestern Germany staged a series of
uprisings that were partly inspired by Luther’s
reform proposals, though they also addressed
long-standing economic and political grievances. By
the spring of 1525 the rebellion, known as the
Peasants’ War, had spread to much of central
Germany. The peasants, who were supported by the
reformer Müntzer, published their grievances in a
manifesto titled The Twelve Articles of the
Peasants; the document is notable for its
declaration that the rightness of the peasants’
demands should be judged by the Word of God, a
notion derived directly from Luther’s teaching that
the Bible is the sole guide in matters of morality
and belief. Luther wrote two responses—Admonition to
Peace Concerning the Twelve Articles of the
Peasants, which expressed sympathy for the peasants,
and Against the Murderous and Robbing Hordes of the
Peasants, which vehemently denounced them. Both
works represented a shift away from his earlier
vision of reform as encompassing societal as well as
religious issues. It is likely that they helped to
alienate the peasants from Luther’s cause.
Luther faced other challenges in the mid-1520s.
His literary feud with the great Dutch humanist
Desiderius Erasmus came to an unfortunate conclusion
when the two failed to find common ground. Their
theological dispute concerned the issue of whether
humans were free to contribute to and participate in
their own salvation. Erasmus, who took the
affirmative view, argued that Luther’s insistence on
the radical priority of grace undermined all human
ethical effort. Luther insisted that Erasmus’s
position reduced the great soteriological drama of
the Incarnation and the cross to shallow moral
concepts.
In 1525 Luther was isolated from various other
reformers in a controversy over the meaning of the
Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper. The dispute
concerned the proper interpretation of Jesus’ words
of institution when he said, “This is my body…This
is my blood.” Whereas Zwingli argued that these
words had to be understood symbolically, as “This
symbolizes my body…This symbolizes my blood,” Luther
argued strenuously for a literal interpretation.
Accordingly, Zwingli held that Jesus was spiritually
but not physically present in the communion host,
whereas Luther taught that Jesus was really and
bodily present. The theological disagreement was
initially pursued by several southern German
reformers, such as Johann Brenz, but after 1527
Luther and Zwingli confronted each other directly,
with increasing rancour and vehemence, particularly
from Luther. As far as he was concerned, Zwingli was
an “enthusiast” who did not take the plain words of
Scripture seriously. Thus, the reform movement
became a house that was publicly divided.
In the view of some, notably Landgrave Philip of
Hesse, this division had serious political
implications. There was no doubt that the emperor
and the princes of the Catholic territories were
determined to suppress the new Lutheran heresy, if
necessary by force. The disagreement over communion
precluded one strategy of dealing with this ominous
Catholic threat, namely by establishing a united
Protestant political (and military) front. Whereas
Luther, in his wonderful otherworldliness, gravely
doubted the wisdom of any effort to protect the
gospel by military means, Zwingli envisioned a
comprehensive anti-Catholic political front that
would reach from Zurich to Denmark. When Philip
first entertained the notion of a colloquy between
Zwingli, Luther, and a number of other reformers, he
was prompted by his desire to create the basis of a
Protestant political alliance. Luther was initially
reluctant and had to be persuaded to attend the
meeting, which was held in Marburg on Oct. 1–4, 1529
(see Marburg, Colloquy of). From the outset Luther
made it clear that he would not change his views: he
took a piece of chalk and wrote the Latin version of
the words of institution, “Hoc est corpus meum”
(“this is my body”), on the table. In the end the
two sides managed to fashion a contorted agreement,
but the deep division within Protestantism remained.
On June 13, 1525, Luther married Katherine of
Bora, a former nun. Katherine had fled her convent
together with eight other nuns and was staying in
the house of the Wittenberg town secretary. While
the other nuns soon returned to their families or
married, Katherine remained without support. Luther
was likewise at the time the only remaining resident
in what had been the Augustinian monastery in
Wittenberg; the other monks had either thrown off
the habit or moved to a staunchly Catholic area.
Luther’s decision to marry Katherine was the result
of a number of factors. Understandably, he felt
responsible for her plight, since it was his
preaching that had prompted her to flee the convent.
Moreover, he had repeatedly written, most
significantly in 1523, that marriage is an
honourable order of creation, and he regarded the
Roman Catholic Church’s insistence on clerical
celibacy as the work of the Devil. Finally, he
believed that the unrest in Germany, epitomized in
the bloody Peasants’ War, was a manifestation of
God’s wrath and a sign that the end of the world was
at hand. He thus conceived his marriage as a
vindication, in these last days, of God’s true order
for humankind.
While Luther’s enemies indulged themselves in
sarcastic pronouncements upon his matrimony—Erasmus
remarked that what had begun as tragedy had turned
into comedy—his friends and supporters were
chagrined over what they took to be the poor timing
of his decision. (It is noteworthy that Luther was
not the first of the reformers to marry.) Katherine
of Bora proved to be a splendid helpmate for Luther.
Table Talks, a collection of Luther’s comments at
the dinner table as recorded by one of his student
boarders, pays tribute to “Dr. Katie” as a skillful
household manager and as a partner in theological
conversations. The couple had five children:
Johannes, Magdalene, Martin, Paul, and Margarete.
Luther’s letters to his children, as well as his
deep sadness at the loss of his daughter
Magdalene—who died in his arms in September 1542—are
indicative of the warm relationships that
characterized his family and marriage.
Later years
As a declared heretic and public outlaw, Luther
was forced to stay out of the political and
religious struggle over the enforcement of the Edict
of Worms. Sympathetic rulers and city councils
became the protagonists for Luther’s cause and the
cause of reform. When Charles V convened a Diet to
meet at Augsburg in 1530 to address unresolved
religious issues, Luther himself could not be
present, though he managed to travel as far south as
Coburg—still some 100 miles north of Augsburg—to
follow developments at the Diet. In Augsburg it fell
to Luther’s young Wittenberg colleague Philipp
Melanchthon to represent the Protestants.
Melanchthon’s summary of the reformers’ beliefs, the
Augsburg Confession, quickly became the guiding
theological document for the emerging Lutheran
tradition.
Luther’s role in the Reformation after 1525 was
that of theologian, adviser, and facilitator but not
that of a man of action. Biographies of Luther
accordingly have a tendency to end their story with
his marriage in 1525. Such accounts gallantly omit
the last 20 years of his life, during which much
happened. The problem is not just that the cause of
the new Protestant churches that Luther had helped
to establish was essentially pursued without his
direct involvement, but also that the Luther of
these later years appears less attractive, less
winsome, less appealing than the earlier Luther who
defiantly faced emperor and empire at Worms.
Repeatedly drawn into fierce controversies during
the last decade of his life, Luther emerges as a
different figure—irascible, dogmatic, and insecure.
His tone became strident and shrill, whether in
comments about the Anabaptists, the pope, or the
Jews. In each instance his pronouncements were
virulent: the Anabaptists should be hanged as
seditionists, the pope was the Antichrist, the Jews
should be expelled and their synagogues burned. Such
were hardly irenic words from a minister of the
gospel, and none of the explanations that have been
offered—his deteriorating health and chronic pain,
his expectation of the imminent end of the world,
his deep disappointment over the failure of true
religious reform—seem satisfactory.
In 1539 Luther became embroiled in a scandal
surrounding the bigamy of Landgrave Philip. Like
many other crowned heads, Philip lived in a
dynastically arranged marriage with a wife for whom
he had no affection. Engaging in extramarital
relationships disturbed his conscience, however, so
that for years he felt unworthy to receive
communion. His eyes fell on one of his wife’s
ladies-in-waiting, who insisted on marriage. Philip
turned to Luther and the Wittenberg theologians for
advice. In his response, which he amply augmented
with biblical references, Luther noted that the
patriarchs of the Old Testament had been married to
more than one wife and that, as a special
dispensation, polygamy was still possible. Philip
accordingly entered into a second marriage secretly,
but before long it became known—as did Luther’s role
in bringing it about.
From the mid-1530s Luther was plagued by kidney
stones and an obvious coronary condition. Somewhat
sheepishly, he attributed his poor health to the
severity of his life in the monastery. He
nevertheless continued his academic teaching—from
1535 to 1545 he lectured on the Book of Genesis, one
of his most insightful biblical expositions—and
preached regularly at the city church until his
colleague Johannes Bugenhagen assumed that
responsibility. Even then, Luther continued to
preach in the Augustinian monastery. After the death
of one of his oldest friends, Nikolaus Hausmann, in
1538 and that of his daughter Magdalene four years
later, references to death became increasingly
abundant in Luther’s correspondence. Thus he wrote
in a June 1543 letter to a friend:
I desire that there be given me a good little hour
when I can move onward to God. I have had enough. I
am tired. I have become nothing. Do pray earnestly
for me so that the Lord may take my soul in peace.
In February 1546 Luther journeyed, despite his
failing health, to Eisleben, the town where he was
born. He set out to mediate an embarrassing quarrel
between two young and arrogant noblemen, the counts
Albrecht and Gebhard of Mansfeld. He was successful,
and he so informed his wife in what proved to be his
last letter. One day later, on February 18, death
came. His body was interred in the Castle Church in
Wittenberg.
Significance
Martin Luther is assuredly one of the most
influential figures in Western civilization during
the last millennium. He was the catalyst for the
division of Western Christendom into several
churches, but he also left a host of cultural
legacies, such as the emphasis on vernacular
language. He was primarily a theologian, and there
is a great wealth of insights in his writings, which
in their definitive scholarly edition (the so-called
Weimar Edition) comprise more than 100 folio
volumes. But he was not a systematic theological
thinker. Much like St. Augustine in late antiquity,
Luther was what might be called a polemical
theologian. Most of his writings —such as Bondage of
the Will against Erasmus and That These Words ‘This
Is My Body’ Still Stand Against all Enthusiasts
against Zwingli—were forged in the heat of
controversy and were inescapably given to one-sided
pronouncements, which are not easy to reconcile with
positions he took in other writings. It is,
therefore, not easy to find agreement on the
elements of Luther’s theology.
Moreover, the assessment of Luther’s theological
significance was for centuries altogether dependent
on the ecclesiastical orientation of the critic.
Protestant scholars viewed him as the most stunning
exponent of the authentic Christian faith since the
time of the Apostles, while Catholics viewed him as
the epitome of theological ignorance and personal
immorality. These embarrassingly partisan
perspectives have changed in recent decades, and a
less confessionally oriented picture of Luther has
emerged.
Certain key tenets of Luther’s theology have
shaped Protestant Christianity since the 16th
century. They include his insistence on the Bible,
the Word of God, as the only source of religious
authority; his emphasis on the centrality of grace,
appropriated by faith, as the sole means of human
salvation; and his understanding of the church as a
community of the faithful—a priesthood of all
believers—rather than as a hierarchical structure
with a prominent division between clergy and laity.
Luther was not the first to express these notions,
and indeed recent scholarship on the 15th century
has shown that much of what was traditionally
considered Luther’s revolutionary innovation had
striking antecedents. Nevertheless, the vigour and
centrality that these ideas received in Luther’s
thought made them in important respects dramatically
new. Certain corollaries of Luther’s central
teachings also made his achievement new and
noteworthy. His insistence, for example, that sacred
Scripture be available to commoners prompted him not
only to translate the Bible into German but also to
compose hymns and to advocate the establishment of
schools in the cities.
Recent interpreters of Luther have attempted to
understand his thought in terms of his struggle
against the overpowering reality of the Devil or in
terms of his intense fear of a death that would
permanently separate him from God. Although there is
evidence to support both views, neither quite
captures Luther’s spiritual essence. What seems to
characterize him more than anything else is an
almost childlike trust in God’s overarching
forgiveness and acceptance. Luther talked much about
his tentationes (“temptations”), by which he meant
his doubts about whether this divine forgiveness was
real. But he overcame these doubts, and his life
thereafter was one of joyous and spontaneous trust
in God’s love and goodness toward him and all
sinners. Luther called this “Christian freedom.”
The centre of scholarly attention in Luther
studies in the late 20th century was Luther’s
understanding of the proper role of the Christian in
society and politics. According to many scholars,
Luther’s disavowal of the German peasants in 1525
and his notion that, as he once put it, “the Gospel
has nothing to do with politics” facilitated a
tendency toward political passivity among Protestant
Christians in Germany. Likewise, his strident
pronouncements against the Jews, especially toward
the end of his life, have raised the question of
whether Luther significantly encouraged the
development of German anti-Semitism. Although many
scholars have taken this view, this perspective puts
far too much emphasis on Luther and not enough on
the larger peculiarities of German history.
Luther’s notions developed in opposition to the
belief developed by the medieval Catholic Church
that all of society wore a Christian mantle. The
notion of a “Christian” politics or a “Christian”
economics was anathema to Luther. However, this did
not mean that the public realm had no principles
that needed to be honoured. What Luther rejected was
the notion that there was a uniquely “Christian”
approach to these realms; uniquely Christian, Luther
insisted, was only that which pertained to Jesus’
salvational work of redemption.
Hans J. Hillerbrand
