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This letter calls, however, for some further observations.

It is hard to believe that Luther, in an everyday letter to a friend, should have spoken in earnest of a previous connection of his with three women at once. Is it likely that he would accuse himself of such intercourse, and that in a letter to a man whose good opinion of himself and his work he was in every way careful to preserve?

We are not here concerned with the question whether such jests were suitable, coming from a reformer of faith and morals, yet they certainly do not, as has been thought, contain anything of a nature to compromise him in his relations with the escaped nuns.

That Luther is jesting is plain from the conclusion: “Joking apart, I say all this in order to urge you on to what you are striving after [viz. marriage]. Farewell.” Hence it is clear that what precedes was said as a joke.

He chose to make the matter one of jest because he fancied that thus he could best answer Spalatin’s objection against his former invitation to him to marry. The latter had retorted: “Why am I expected to start? Set the example yourself by your own marriage!” Luther thereupon replied in the following terms:

“As for your observations about my marriage, do not be surprised that I, who am such a famous lover (famosus amator), do not proceed to matrimony. It is still more remarkable that I, who write so frequently concerning marriage and have so much to do with women (sic misceor feminis), have not become a woman long since, not to mention the fact that I have not as yet even taken one to wife. Still, if you want my example, here you have a forcible one, for I have had three wives at one time (tres simul uxores habui) and loved them so desperately that I lost two who will get other bridegrooms; as for the third I can hardly keep hold of her with my left arm, and she too will perhaps soon be snatched away from me. But you, you slothful lover, you do not even venture to become the husband of one wife. Take care, however, lest I [though still in spirit disinclined to marriage] do not nevertheless outstrip you people who are all ready for the wedding, for God is wont to bring to pass what we least expect.” Then follow the words already mentioned, introduced by the formula: “Joking apart.”

These rather unseasonable words were written in a merry mood on Easter Sunday, just as Luther was on the point of leaving Wittenberg for Eisleben. As Luther had not yet made up his mind whether to marry or not, he evaded Spalatin’s invitation to do so immediately with the jest about being a “famous lover,” words probably applied to him by Spalatin in the letter to which this is an answer. He means to say: As a famous lover I have already given you the encouraging example you desire, and the proof of this is to be found in the “three women I loved so deeply as to lose them.” This refers doubtless to three aspirants to matrimony with whom Spalatin was acquainted, and whom common report had designated as likely to wed Luther; who they actually were we do not know. Some Protestants have suggested Ave Alemann and Ave Schönfeld (see above p. 139). The first, a native of Magdeburg, had been presented to Luther during his stay in that town as a likely wife. He would have preferred the second. But of neither could he have said in his letter that they would shortly have other bridegrooms, for Alemann had been married some time, and Schönfeld had to wait long for a spouse. Thus it is incorrect to class them amongst the “three wives,” and these must be sought among others who had intercourse with Luther. The third, at any rate, seems to have been Catherine von Bora, who was stopping at that time in Wittenberg and actually was engaged on matrimonial plans.

In any case, the husband who loses three wives through his “too great love” is a joke on a par with the wonder expressed by Luther, that, after having written so much about marriage and had so much to do with women, he had not himself been turned into a woman.

In his not very choice pleasantries when referring to the intercourse with women which resulted from his writings, Luther makes use of a very equivocal expression, for “misceor feminis,” taken literally in the context in which it stands, would imply sexual commerce with women, which is not at all what the writer intends to convey. It cannot be denied that the jest about the three women and the ambiguous word “misceor,” are out of place and not in keeping with the gravity and moral dignity which we might expect from a man of Luther’s position. Such jests betray a certain levity of character, nor can we see how certain Lutherans can describe the letter as “scrupulously decorous.”

It is nevertheless true, and more particularly of this letter, that the unrestrained humour which so often breaks out in Luther’s writings must be taken into account in order to judge fairly of what he says; it is only in this way that we are able to interpret him rightly. Owing to the fact that the jocose element which, in season and out of season, so frequently characterises Luther’s manner of speaking is lost sight of, his real meaning is often misunderstood.

Just as he had urged his friend Spalatin, so, though in more serious language, Luther exhorts the Elector Albert, Archbishop of Mayence, to matrimony.

This alone should be a sufficient reason for him, he writes, namely, that he is a male; “for it is God’s work and will that a man should have a wife. … Where God does not work a miracle and make of a man an angel, I cannot see how he is to remain without a wife, and avoid God’s anger and displeasure. And it is a terrible thing should he be found without a wife at the hour of death.” He points out to him that the downfall of the whole clergy is merely a question of time, since priests are everywhere scoffed at; “priests and monks are caricatured on every wall, on every bill, and even on the playing cards.” The sanguinary peasant risings which were commencing are also made to serve his ends; God is punishing His people in this way because “the bishops and princes will not make room for the evangel”; the Archbishop ought therefore to follow the “fine example” given recently by the “Grand Master in Prussia,” i.e. marry, and “turn the bishopric into a temporal principality.”[359]

This letter was printed in 1526. Dr. Johann Rühel received instructions to sound the Archbishop as to his views and seek to influence him. It is a well-known fact that Albert was more a temporal potentate than an ecclesiastical dignitary, and that his reputation was by no means spotless.

Archbishop Albert was said to have asked Dr. Rühel, or some other person, why Luther himself did not take a wife, seeing that he “was inciting everyone else to do so.” Should he say this again, Luther writes to Rühel, “You are to reply that I have always feared I was not fit for it. But if my marriage would be a help to his Electoral Grace, I should very soon be ready to prance along in front of him as an example to his Electoral Grace; before quitting this life I purpose in any case to enter into matrimony, which I regard as enjoined by God, even should it be nothing more than an espousal, or Joseph’s marriage.”[360] In what way he feared “not to be fit” for marriage, or why he contemplated nothing more than a “Joseph’s marriage,” Luther does not say. A “Joseph’s marriage” was certainly not calculated to satisfy the demands which he himself was accustomed to make, in the name of nature, concerning conjugal life. At any rate, his observation to Dr. Rühel is very remarkable, as being one of the first indications of his approaching marriage.

At this critical period of his life the free and unrestrained tone which he had employed at an earlier date becomes unpleasantly conspicuous in his letters, writings and sermons. It is sufficient to read the passages in his justification of the nuns’ flight where he treats of his pet conviction, viz. the need of marrying, in words which, from very shame, are not usually repeated. “Scandal, or no scandal,” he concludes his dissertation on the nuns who had forsaken their vow of chastity, “necessity breaks even iron and gives no scandal!”[361] He had already once before complained that our ears have become “much purer than the mouth of the Holy Ghost,” referring to certain sexual matters spoken of very openly in the Old Testament.[362] He himself, however, paid little heed to such conventions, and, especially when jesting, delighted to set them at defiance.

Many passages already quoted from his letters to friends prove this. The “misceor feminis” and the “three wives” on his hands were unbecoming jokes. Kawerau, the historian of Luther, admits the “cynicism of his language”[363] and this unpleasing quality, which is more particularly noticeable when he becomes abusive, is also to be met with even elsewhere, especially in the years which we are now considering.

Luther, for instance, jocosely speaks of himself as a virgin, “virgo,” and, in a letter to Spalatin where he refers playfully to his own merry and copious tippling at a christening at Schweinitz, he says: “These three virgins were present [Luther, Jonas and his wife], certainly Jonas [as a virgin], for as he has no child we call him the virgin.”[364] Jonas, one of the priests who married, had celebrated his nuptials February 22, 1522.

On account of his habit of making fun Luther’s friends called him a “merry boon companion.”

No one could, of course, blame his love of a joke, but his jokes were sometimes very coarse; for instance, that concerning his friend Jonas in his letter of February 10, 1525, to Spalatin, of which the tone is indelicate, to say the least, even if we make all allowance for the age and for the customs in vogue among the Wittenberg professors. Jonas, he there says, was accustomed to write his letters on paper which had served the basest of services; he (Luther) was, however, more considerate for his friends. “Farewell,” he concludes, “and give my greetings to the fat husband Melchior [Meirisch, the stout Augustinian Prior of Dresden, who had married on February 6]; my wishes for him are, that his wife may prove very obedient; she really ought to drag him by the hair seven times a day round the market-place and, at night, as he richly deserves, ‘bene obtundat connubialibus verbis.’ ”[365]

The reference in this letter to Carlstadt and his “familiar demon” (a fanatical monk who was given to prophesying) calls to mind the indecent language in which Luther assailed the Anabaptists and “fanatics” during those years. He makes great fun at the expense of the “nackte Braut von Orlamünde” and her amorous lovers, referring, in language which is the reverse of modest, to a ludicrous, mystical work produced by the “fanatics.”[366]

Melanchthon is very severe in censuring Luther’s free behaviour and coarse jests, especially when in the presence of ex-nuns. It has been pointed out by a Protestant that Luther’s tendency to impropriety of language, though it cannot be denied, is easily to be explained by the fact of his being a “monk and the son of a peasant.”[367] It is hard to see what his being a monk has to do with it, and by what right the excesses which were perhaps noticeable in some few frivolous monks are to be regarded as characteristic of the religious state. Melanchthon’s reproaches lead the same writer to say, this time with at least some show of reason, that his friend surpassed Luther in “delicacy of feeling.”

Melanchthon, on June 16, 1525, in a confidential letter written in Greek to Camerarius about Luther’s recent marriage, complains of his behaviour towards the runaway nuns then at Wittenberg: “The man,” he says, “is light-hearted and frivolous (εὐχερής) to the last degree; the nuns pursued him with great cunning and drew him on. Perhaps all this intercourse with them has rendered him effeminate, or inflamed his passions, noble and high-minded though he is.” Melanchthon desiderates in him more “dignity,” and says that his friends (“we”), had frequently been obliged to reprove him for his buffoonery (βωμολοχία).[368]

In consequence of this unseemly behaviour with the nuns, blamed even by his intimate friends, we can understand that the professors of theology at Leipzig and Ingolstadt came to speak of Luther with great want of respect.

Hieronymus Dungersheim, the Leipzig theologian, who had before this had a tilt at Luther, wrote, with undisguised rudeness in his “Thirty Articles,” against “the errors and heresies” of Martin Luther: “What are your thoughts when you are seated in the midst of the herd of apostate nuns whom you have seduced, and, as they themselves admit, make whatever jokes occur to you? You not only do not attempt to avoid what you declare is so hateful to you [the exciting of sensuality], but you intentionally stir up your own and others’ passions. What are your thoughts when you recall your own golden words, either when sitting in such company, or after you have committed your wickedness? What can you reply, when reminded of your former conscientiousness, in view of such a scandalous life of deceit? I have heard what I will not now repeat, from those who had intercourse with you, and I could supply details and names. Out upon your morality and religion, out upon your obstinacy and blindness! How have you sunk from the pinnacle of perfection and true wisdom to the depths of depravity and abominable error, dragging down countless numbers with you! Where now is Tauler, where the ‘Theologia Deutsch’ from which you boasted you had received so much light? The ‘Theologia’ condemns as utterly wicked, nay, devilish through and through, all that you are now doing, teaching and proclaiming in your books. Glance at it again and compare. Alas, you ‘theologian of the Cross!’ What you now have to show is nothing but the filthiest wisdom of the flesh, that wisdom which, according to the Apostle Paul (Rom. viii. 6 f.), is the death of the soul and the enemy of God.”

Dungersheim then quotes for his benefit the passage from the Epistle of St. James concerning the “earthly and devilish wisdom,” notwithstanding that Luther treats this Epistle with contempt; his real reason for refusing to recognise it was that it witnessed so strongly against his teaching. “What will you say on the day of reckoning to the holy Father Augustine [the reputed founder of the Augustinians] and the other founders of Orders? They come accompanied by a countless multitude of the faithful of both sexes who have faithfully followed in the footsteps of Christ, and in the way of the evangelical counsels. But you, you have led astray and to destruction so many of their followers. All these will raise their voices against you on the dreadful Day of Judgment.”[369]

The Leipzig University professor, in his indignation, refers Luther to the warning he himself (in his sermons on the Ten Commandments) had given against manners of talking and acting which tempt to impurity; he continues: “And now you set aside every feeling of shame, you speak and write of questionable subjects in such a disgraceful fashion that decent men, whether married or unmarried, cover their faces and fling away your writings with execration. In order to cast dishonour upon the brides of Christ you [in your writings], so to speak, lead unchaste men to their couches, using words which for very shame I cannot repeat.”

He also answers his opponent’s constant objection that without marriage, on account of the impulse of nature, people must needs be ever falling into sin. “You forget two things, viz. that grace is stronger than nature and that, as Augustine rightly teaches, no one sins without free consent. You exaggerate that impulse and speak of ‘sin’ merely to exonerate your own behaviour and your doctrine. In other matters you declare that everything is possible to him who believes. You, like all other Catholics, were formerly convinced that involuntary movements of the flesh are not sinful unless a man consents to them; they are to the good a cross rather than a fault, and frequently only come from the devil and are not imputed to them at all.”[370]

This protest from Leipzig was reinforced in 1523 from Ingolstadt by Dr. Johann Eck, who kept a keen eye on Luther and pursued him with a sharp pen. In the following description of Luther his bitter opponent complains not only of the frivolous behaviour of the apostate monk in his former monastery which the Elector had made over to him, but above all of the untruth and dishonesty displayed in his writings. “More than once have I proved,” he says, “that he is a liar and hence that he has for his father, him [the devil] of whom the Scripture says that he is a liar and a murderer.” “The fellow exudes lies from every pore and is inconstancy itself (homo totus mendaciis scatens nil constat). His teaching too is full of deception and calumny. What he has just advanced, he presently rejects without the least difficulty.” “The dregs of those vices of which he is always accusing the Christians, we rightly pour back upon his own head; let him drink himself of the cup he has mixed.” “He heaps up a mountain of evil on the Pope and the Church,” but with “his nun,”—this is what he adds in a later edition in his indignation with Luther’s marriage—“he is really worshipping Asmodeus”; and this he is not ashamed to do in the old monastery of the Augustinians, “where once pious monks served the Lord God, and pious foundations, now alienated from their original purpose, proclaimed the Christian virtues to the faithful.”[371]

It is no pleasant task to examine Luther’s sermons and writings of those years, and to represent to ourselves the turmoil of his mind at the time directly preceding his marriage.

In 1524 he repeatedly discourses to his Wittenberg hearers on his favourite theme, i.e. that man cannot control himself in sexual matters, save by a miracle and with the help of an “exceedingly rare grace.” Speaking of impotence, he says, that although he himself “by the grace of God does not desire a wife,” yet he would not like, as a married man, to go through the experience of those who are impotent. If nature was not to be satisfied, “then death were preferable.” “I have no need of a wife,” he says, “but must provide a relief for your need.”[372] This was perhaps his reply to those who said: “Oh, how the monk feels the weight of his frock, how glad he would be to have a wife!”[373] “Hitherto,” he says, “the married state has been condemned and styled a sensual state. … Alas, would that all men were therein … in support of it we have the Word of God. … Those who have the grace to be chaste are few, and among a thousand there is scarcely one to be found.”[374]

“I have frequently tried to be good,” he says to his hearers in 1524, “but the more I try the less I succeed. See from this what free-will amounts to.” And then, in excuse, he unfolds his theology. “Sin urges so greatly that we long for death. If to-day I avoid one sin, to-morrow comes another. We are obliged to fight without ceasing: the Kingdom of Christ admits all, provided only they fight and hold fast to the Head of the Kingdom, namely, [believe] that Christ is the Redeemer. But if we exalt works, then all is lost! … If we desire to attain to purity, this must not be done by works, but Christ must be born in us anew [by faith]. … Sin cannot harm (‘mordere’) us; the power of sin is at an end. We hold fast to Him who has conquered sin.” “ ‘Summa, summarum,’ works or no works, all is comprised under faith and true doctrine. … But do not let us sleep meanwhile and lull ourselves into security.”[375]

In 1523 Luther wrote on “the Devil’s chastity,” as he called it, an exposition of the 7th chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, which the Papists used, so he says, as a “fig-leaf” for celibacy and the monastic state. In it he deals with the inspiring, spiritual teaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles in the chapter which commences with the words: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.”[376]

This publication, which has been extolled as “the happy inauguration of a healthy love of the things of sense,”[377] was preceded in 1522 by his sermon “On conjugal life.” We must here call to mind a similar earlier publication of 1519. When, on the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany, he preached a “sermon on the conjugal state,” this was at once printed by some stranger from notes made. Many who read it were filled with astonishment at the unheard-of freedom of speech displayed. Very soon Luther’s friend, Christoph Scheurl, expressed his disapproval of the tone: “I have read many of Martin’s writings which appeal to his best friends more than his sermon on Matrimony, because they are pure, humble, modest, measured and earnest, as beseems a theologian.”[378] After this letter Luther declared that the sermon had been printed without his knowledge, and with many stupid mistakes, so that he was “ashamed” of it,[379] and that same year (1519) he had it reprinted in an amended form.[380] It has been proved, however, that another sermon, which had been taken down and printed at the same time as the first sermon on Matrimony, was reported quite correctly;[381] hence the first printed edition of the sermon on Matrimony was probably not as inexact as Luther afterwards pretended.

When we come to examine the teaching contained in the sermon “On conjugal life” of the year 1522, we find, regarding the marriage tie, notwithstanding the protestation that marriage was to be considered sacred and indissoluble, such sentences as the following: “If the wife is stubborn and refuses to fulfil her duty as a wife,” “it is time for the husband to say: If you refuse, another will comply; if the wife will not, then let the maid come.” She is however to be reprimanded first “before the Church,” and only then is the above counsel to be put in force: “If she refuses, dismiss her, seek an Esther and let Vasthi go. … The secular power must here either coerce the woman or make away with her. Where this is not done, the husband must act as though his wife had been carried off by brigands, or killed, and look out for another.” In short, the marriage is dissolved, and the husband is at liberty to marry the maid.[382] We must not, however, overlook the fact that in other passages of the same sermon Luther gives some quite excellent advice, whether against evil desires, or for the exercise of patience in matrimony.

As one on whom the highest authority has been unconditionally conferred, he declares in the same sermon that he “rejects and condemns” almost all the matrimonial impediments or prohibitions invented by the Pope.[383] Virginity he refuses to reject absolutely, but nevertheless he declares: “It is true that he who does not marry must lead an immoral life, for how can it be otherwise?” “without a special grace” it is utterly impossible.[384]

According to his ideas, the duties incident to matrimony cannot be complied with without sin. “No conjugal duty can be performed without sin,” he teaches in conclusion,[385] “though God by His mercy overlooks it”—a statement which certainly does not show any great esteem for matrimony, although Luther is under the impression that he is raising the union of man and wife to a higher plane. The Church had never taught that the use of matrimony, which she looked upon as based on the order of nature, involved any sin. Some few theologians had, it is true, spoken of venial sin as unavoidable here, but these were opposed by others, and, besides, the views of these theologians concerning sinfulness differed widely from those of Luther. Luther’s erroneous notion that every feeling of concupiscence was sinful, indeed mortally sinful, caused him to see grievous sin even here.

In view of his severity in this matter, the freedom of speech which he retains even in the revised edition (1519), and his coarse treatment of the sexual subject is all the more surprising. His tendency to throw off the fetters of decency is at times quite needlessly offensive. Cochlæus remarks of this work: “Luther here speaks in the most filthy way of the intercourse between husband and wife, contrary to the laws of natural modesty.”[386]

Others, and Cochlæus himself in his previous indecent writings, bear witness to the excess of coarseness of this sort which, partly as a consequence of Italian Humanism, had found its way into German literature at that time. Few, however, went so far as Luther. Several of his contemporaries told him so openly, though they were themselves accustomed to strong expressions. It is notorious that the sixteenth century was accustomed to speak more bluntly and openly than is at present usual. Yet in judging Luther’s case a circumstance which is often overlooked should also be borne in mind, namely, that the standard by which he is to be tried is not that of profane authors and literary men of Humanistic leanings, but that of professedly religious writers. Luther not only professed to be a religious writer, but also gave himself out as the introducer of a great reform in faith and morals. From this standpoint the impropriety of his speech must assuredly be more severely judged. He employs by preference such language in his bitter and violent polemics, seeking to make an impression upon the lower classes by a naturalism not far removed from filthy talking. The vulgar figures of speech of which he makes use are all saturated with hate and rendered still more distasteful by the unclean aspersions he is ever casting on his adversaries; from his manner of writing we can gather the satisfaction he derives from seeing the defenders of virginity, the religious and clergy, thus overwhelmed with filth.

Certain preachers of the late Middle Ages, religious and others, for instance, Geiler von Kaysersberg, when dealing with sexual matters sometimes went very far in their plain speaking on the subject, yet their words were, without exception, characterised by gravity and the desire of saving souls. Their tone excludes any levity; indeed, the honesty and simplicity of these productions of the Middle Ages impress the reader at every turn; he may perhaps be inclined to extol the greater delicacy of feeling which obtains at the present day, but he will refrain from blaming the less covert style of days gone by. Luther’s “cynical” language, however, impresses one as an attempt to pit nature, with all its brutality, with its rights and demands, against the more exalted moral aims of earlier ages; the trend of such language, as contemporary Catholics urged, was downwards rather than upwards.

One tract of Luther’s, which dates from about that time, that “Against the Clerical State falsely so called of Pope and Bishops,” contains a chapter “Concerning Vows,”[387] in which the descriptions are so coarse and the language so nasty that Staupitz might well have considered even his censure of certain earlier writings of Luther’s not sufficiently strong: “Your works are praised,” he had told him, “by those who keep houses of ill-fame,”[388] etc. Several particularly violent polemical tracts of those years, meant by Luther for his theological adversaries generally, are so brimful of words descriptive of the vilest parts and functions of the human body, that it would be impossible to match them in the writings of previous ages. His manner of speech was considered by his foes to have reached the lowest depths of thought and feeling. The vulgarity of his language was held to display the utter depravity of his mind.

In polemics Luther was not merely the “greatest, but also the coarsest writer of his century”; such is the opinion recently expressed by a Protestant historian.[389]

In the work dating from 1522, “Bulla Coenæ Domini, i.e. the Bull concerning the Evening feed of our most holy Lord, the Pope,”[390] he replies, with startling fluency, to the menaces of this Papal Bull against all heretics, including himself. Therein he describes the life and manners of the Roman “prostitutes” with the express intention of degrading all that Catholics considered most worthy of respect and veneration. The Pope and his followers he represents as indulging in every kind of sensuality, “rape, seduction and fornication” to their heart’s content.

Still more degrading are the opprobrious and insulting figures of which he makes use in 1522 in his furious reply “Against King Henry of England,” who had attacked and pilloried his teaching.[391] In his tract it is his aim not only to “lay bare the shame of the Roman prostitute before the whole world, to her eternal disgrace,” but also, as he says further down, to reveal the “shameless audacity” of the King of England, who is a defender of “the scarlet woman of Rome, the tipsy mother of unchastity”; the King, “that fool,” “lies and gibbers like the filthiest of prostitutes,” and that, merely to defend the Pope and his Church, “who are after all nothing more than pimp and procuress, and the devil’s own dwelling.” All this abuse is crammed into a few pages. To conclude, the King, according to Luther’s dictum and description, has been fitly consigned to “the dungheap with the Thomists, Papists and other such-like excrements.” Side by side with all this we find his grand assurances of his, Luther’s, position as the messenger of God. “Christ through me has begun His revelations of the abomination in the Holy Place”;[392] “I am convinced that my doctrines have come down to me from Heaven,”[393] etc. The King he politely describes as a crowned donkey, an infamous knave, an impudent royal windbag, the excrement of hogs and asses. The King, according to him, is more foolish than a fool; His Majesty ought to be pelted with mud; he deserves nothing better, this stupid donkey, this Thomistic hog, this lying rascal and carnival clown, who sports the title of king. He is a nit which has not yet turned into a louse, a brat whose father was a bug, a donkey who wants to read the Psalter but is only fit for carrying sacks, a sacrilegious murderer. He is a chosen tool of the devil, a papistical sea-serpent, a blockhead and as bad as the worst rogues whom indeed he outrivals; an abortion of a fool, a limb of Satan whose God is the devil—and so forth.

One of the unfortunate effects of his public struggle on Luther was, that he entangled himself more and more in a kind of polemics in which his invective was only rivalled by his misrepresentation of his opponents’ standpoint and arguments.

Preachers of the new faith frequently complained of his insulting and unjust behaviour.

Thus Ambrose Blaurer, the spokesman of the innovation in Würtemberg, laments, in 1523, that Luther’s enemies quite rightly made capital out of the hateful language employed in his controversial writings. “They wish to make this honey [Luther’s teaching] bitter to us because Luther is so sharp, pugnacious and caustic, … because he scolds and rants. … Verily this has often displeased me in him, and I should not advise anyone to copy him in this respect. Nevertheless I have not rejected his good, Christian teaching.”[394] Matthew Zell, also a Lutheran, wrote in 1523: “Nothing has turned me more against Luther and pleased me less in him, and the same is true of other good men, than the hard, aggressive and bitter vindications and writings which he has composed against even his own friends, not to speak of the Pope, the bishops and others whom he has attacked so violently and so derisively that hardly has anything sharper, more violent and mocking ever been read.”[395]

Carlstadt, Luther’s friend, and later theological opponent, underwent such rough treatment at his hands, that a modern Protestant writer on Carlstadt says of the chief work Luther directed against him: Its characteristic feature is the wealth of personal invective. … Though attempts have been made to explain the terrible bitterness of his polemics by Luther’s disposition and the difficulty of his situation at the time the work was composed, yet the deep impression left by his controversial methods should not be overlooked. From that time forward they were generally imitated by the Lutheran party, even in disputes among themselves, and made to serve in lieu of true discussion; that such a procedure was entirely alien to Christian charity seems not to have been noticed. The author also refers and, with even greater reason, to the attacks against the “Papists,” “to the constantly recurring flood of abusive language, insults, misrepresentations and suspicions which the reformer poured upon his foes.” He made use of “his extraordinary command of language,” to accuse Zwingli, after his death, most maliciously of heresy.[396]

Amongst other opponents of the new faith, Erasmus, in a writing addressed to Luther, says: “Scarcely one of your books have I been able to read to the end, so great and insatiable is the tendency to libel which they display (‘insatiata conviciandi libido’). If there were only two or three libels one might think you had given vent to them without due consideration, but as it is, your book swarms with abuse on every page (‘scatet undique maledictis’). You begin with it, go on with it, and end with it.”[397] Thomas Murner says, in a reply to Luther, as early as 1520, “I see and understand that you are angry. Therefore it will be best for me to keep cool in order that it may not be said that we both are mad. You really go too far.”[398]

It is true that Murner is very severe and satirical towards Luther; in fact, all Luther’s opponents who wrote against him frequently made use of stronger expressions than became the cause they advocated, being incited and encouraged in this by the language he employed. The Dominican, Conrad Köllin, in his answer to Luther’s attacks on the indissolubility of Christian marriage, is a good instance in point.[399] The Dominicans of Cologne were particularly irritated by Luther’s insults, for at the very outset of the struggle he had called them asses, dogs and hogs.[400]

That Luther’s scolding and storming grew worse and worse as the years went on has been pointed out by the Protestant historian Gustav Krüger, who remarks that Melanchthon could never “see eye to eye with him in this”; Luther, however, did not “by any means always reflect upon what he said, and he must not be held responsible for all he flung among the people by word and pen.”[401]

Luther’s friend, Martin Bucer, strove to console himself in a peculiar fashion for the insults and libels which increased as Luther grew older. To the above-mentioned Ambrose Blaurer he wrote concerning Luther’s attacks on the Zwinglians: “These are terrible invectives and even calumnies, but if you take into account Luther’s character, the evil is diminished. He is by nature violent and accustomed to vituperation, and the abuse of such men (‘conviciari assuetorum convicia’) is not to be made so much of as that of persons of a more peaceable temper.” Two years later, however, Bucer confesses to the same friend his real concern regarding Luther’s outbreaks of passion: “It thrills me with a deadly fear (‘tantum non exanimor’) when I think of the fury that boils in the man whenever he is dealing with an opponent. With what utter rage did he not fall on the [Catholic] Duke George.”[402]

In recent times Protestants have spoken with a certain admiration of the “heroic, yea, godlike,” rage which always inspired Luther’s vituperation. One admirer emphasises the fact, that he “was only too often right,” because his Popish opponents were altogether hardened, and “therefore it could do their souls no harm to make use of sharp weapons against them”; “it was necessary to warn people against these obdurate enemies and to unveil their wickedness with that entire openness and plainness of speech which alone could impress his contemporaries. He considered this his sacred duty and performed it with diligence.” “When he laid about him so mightily, so scornfully, so mercilessly, his efforts were all directed against the devil.” “Where it is necessary for the salvation of souls,” this theologian urges in excuse, “true charity must not refrain from dealing severe wounds, and Luther was obliged to describe as filth what actually was such.” “Thus we see why he not unfrequently chooses dirty, common words and comparisons intentionally in order adequately to express his horror. His eloquence becomes at times a stream carrying with it a quantity of mud, dirt and filth of every kind; but had it not been for it this filth would never have been swept away.”[403] All this is expressed, even more briefly and drastically, by the Luther biographer, Adolf Hausrath, where, in reply to Harnack’s criticism of the “barbarity of Luther’s polemics,” he says: “Since Luther’s road led him to his goal it must have been the right road, and fault-finders should hold their tongues. … He knew the best language to make use of in order to shake his Germans out of their stupid respect for the Roman Antichrist.” … Luther, the “prophet,” treated his foes “exactly as they deserved,” save in the case of Zwingli.[404]

This was too much for Gustav Kawerau, another historian of Luther. He pointed out, as against Hausrath, that, not to mention others, Duke George and also Schwenckfeld had experienced such treatment at Luther’s hands as was certainly not “deserved.” If Hausrath “thanked God” for the barbarity of Luther’s prophetical polemics, he, for his part, felt compelled to “protest against the proclamation of any prophetical morality which would oblige us to set aside our own moral standard.” “This is to do Luther and his cause, a bad service,” says Kawerau. … “We are not going to venerate in Luther what was merely earthly.”[405] Whether the “earthliness” of his libels and filthy polemics clung only to Luther’s feet, or whether it involved his character and whole work, Kawerau does not say.

We may fairly ask whether on the whole the character of the man has been more correctly gauged by those who look upon his favourite kind of controversy as nothing more than the disfiguring dirt under his feet, or by those others who trace it back to the very nature of his titanic struggle with the Church. Bucer, as we just saw, traced Luther’s outbursts to the violence of his temper, and Luther himself frequently declares that he wrote “so severely, intentionally and with well-considered courage.”[406] This he looks upon as demanded by his position and, therefore, it is, as he thinks, “well done.”[407] According to Wilhelm Walther, Luther had chosen the “heroic method of development,” i.e. “of isolating himself as it were from the whole world”; his standpoint was not “within the grasp” of the world of his opponents.[408] Thus, unless he wished to forsake his cause, he had to carry it through single-handed, straining every nerve and having recourse to vituperation the like of which had never hitherto been heard.

We shall examine elsewhere the psychological questions involved in this sort of polemics (vol. iv., xxvi. 3). The above will suffice concerning the influence exercised on his literary activity by the public position which Luther had assumed.