XXXVI. THE DARKER SIDE OF LUTHER’S INNER LIFE. HIS AILMENTS

XXXVI. THE DARKER SIDE OF LUTHER’S INNER LIFE. HIS AILMENTS

The struggles of conscience which we already had occasion to consider (vol. v., p. 319 ff.) were not the only gloomy elements in Luther’s interior life. Other things, too, must be taken into our purview if we wish to appreciate justly the more sombre side of his existence, viz. his bodily ailments and the mental sufferings to which they gave rise (e.g. paroxysms of terror and apprehension), his temptations, likewise his delusions concerning his intercourse with the other world (ghosts, diabolical apparitions, etc.), and, lastly, the revelations of which he fancied himself the recipient.

1. Early Sufferings, Bodily and Mental

It is no easy task to understand the nature of the morbid phenomena which we notice in Luther. His own statements on the subject are not only very scanty but also prove that he was himself unable to determine exactly their cause. Nevertheless, it is our duty to endeavour, with the help of what he says, to glean some notion of what was going on within him. His gloomy mental experiences are so inextricably bound up with his state of health, that, even more than his “agonies of conscience” already dealt with, they deserve to take their place on the darker background of his psychic life. Here again, duly to appreciate the state of the case, we shall have to review anew the whole of Luther’s personal history.

Fits of Fear; Palpitations; Swoons

What first claims our attention, even in the early days of Luther’s life as a monk, are the attacks of what he himself calls fears and trepidations (“terrores, pavores”). It seems fairly clear that these were largely neurotic,—physical breakdowns due to nervous worry.

According to Melanchthon, the friend in whom he chiefly confided, Luther gave these sufferings a place in the forefront of his soul’s history. The reader may remember the significant passage where Melanchthon says, that, when oppressed with gloomy thoughts of the Divine Judgments, Luther “was often suddenly overwhelmed by such fits of terror (‘subito tanti terrores’)” as made him an object of pity. These terrors he had experienced for the first time when he decided to enter the monastic life, led to this resolution by the sudden death of a dearly loved friend.[306]

We hear from Luther himself of the strange paroxysms of fear from which he suffered as a monk. On two occasions when he speaks of them his words do not seem to come under suspicion of forming part of the legend which he afterwards wove about his earlier history (see below, xxxvii.). These statements, already alluded to once, may be given more in detail here. In March, 1537, he told his friends: “When I was saying Mass [his first Mass] and had reached the Canon, such terror seized on me (ita horrui) that I should have fled had not the Prior held me back; for when I came to the words, ‘Thee, therefore, most merciful Father, we suppliantly pray and entreat,’ etc., I felt that I was speaking to God without any mediator. I longed to flee from the earth. For who can endure the Majesty of God without Christ the Mediator? In short, as a monk I experienced those terrors (horrores); I was made to experience them before I began to assail them.”[307] Incidentally it may be noted that “Christ the Mediator,” whom Luther declares he could not find in the Catholic ritual, is, as a matter of fact, invoked in the very words which follow those quoted by Luther: “Thee, therefore, most merciful Father, we suppliantly pray and entreat through Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord to accept and bless these gifts,” etc. Evidently when Luther recorded his impressions he had forgotten these words and only remembered the groundless fear and inward commotion with which he had said his first Mass.

Something similar occurred during a procession at Erfurt, when he had to walk by the side of Staupitz, his superior, who was carrying the Blessed Sacrament. Fear and terror so mastered Luther that he was hardly able to remain. Telling Staupitz of this later in Confession, the latter encouraged him with the words: “Christ does not affright, He comforts.” The incident must have taken place after 1515, the Eisleben priory having been founded only in that year.[308]

If we go back to the very beginning of his life in the monastery we shall find that the religious scruples which assailed him at least for a while, possibly also deserve to be reckoned as morbid. We shall return below to the voice “from heaven” which drove him into the cloister.

Unspeakable fear issuing in bodily prostration was also at work in him on the occasion of the already related incident in the choir of the Erfurt convent, when he fell to the ground crying out that he was not the man possessed. Not only does Dungersheim relate it, on the strength of what he had heard from inmates of the monastery,[309] but Cochlæus also speaks of the incident, in his “Acta,” and, again, in coarse and unseemly language in the book he wrote in 1533, entitled “Von der Apostasey,” doubtless also drawing his information from the Augustinian monks: “It is notorious how Luther came to be a monk; how he collapsed in choir, bellowing like a bull when the Gospel of the man possessed was being read; how he behaved himself in the monastery,” etc.[310] We may recall, how, according to Cochlæus, his brother monks suspected Luther, owing to this attack and on account of a “certain singularity of manner,” of being either under diabolical influence or an epileptic.[311] The convulsions which accompanied the fit may have given rise to the suspicion of epilepsy, but, in reality, they cannot be regarded as sufficient proof. Epilepsy is well-nigh incurable, yet, in Luther’s case, we hear of no similar fits in later life. In later years he manifested no fear of epileptic fits, though he lived in dread of an apoplectic seizure, such as, in due course, was responsible for his death. A medical diagnosis would not fail to consider this seeming instance of epileptic convulsions in conjunction with Luther’s state of fear. For the purpose of the present work it will be sufficient to bring together for the benefit of the expert the necessary data for forming an opinion on the whole question, so far as this is possible.

From the beginning Luther seems to have regarded these “states of terror” as partaking to some extent of a mystic character.

To what a height they could sometimes attain appears from the description he embodied in his “Resolutiones” in 1518, and of which Köstlin opines that, in it Luther portrayed the culminating point to which his own fears had occasionally risen. It is indeed very probable that Luther is referring to no other than himself when he says in the opening words of this remarkable passage: “I know a man who assures me that he has frequently felt these pains.”[312] G. Kawerau also agrees with Köstlin in assuming that Luther is here speaking of himself,[313] a view which is, in fact, forced upon us by other similar passages. Walter Köhler declares: “Whether Luther intended these words to refer to himself or not, in any case they certainly depict his normal state.”[314]

Luther, after saying that, “many, even to the present day,” suffer the pangs of hell so often described in the Psalms of David, and [so Luther thinks], by Tauler, goes on to describe these pangs in words which we shall now quote in full, as hitherto only extracts have been given.[315]

“He often had to endure such pains, though in every instance they were but momentary; they were, however, so great and so hellish that no tongue can tell, no pen describe, no one who has not felt them believe what they were. When at their worst, or when they lasted for half an hour, nay, for the tenth part of an hour, he was utterly undone, and all his bones turned to ashes. At such times God and the whole of creation appears to him dreadfully wroth. There is, however, no escape, no consolation either within or without, and man is ringed by a circle of accusers. He then tearfully exclaims in the words of Holy Scripture: ‘I am cast away, O Lord, from before Thy eyes’ [Ps. xxx. 23], and does not even dare to say: ‘Lord, chastise me not in Thy wrath’ [Ps. vi. 1]. At such a time the soul, strange to tell, is unable to believe that it ever will be saved; it only feels that the punishment is not yet at an end. And yet the punishment is everlasting and may not be regarded as temporal; there remains only a naked longing for help and a dreadful groaning; where to look for help the soul does not know. It is as it were stretched out [on the cross] with Christ, so that ‘all its bones are numbered.’ There is not a nook in it that is not filled with the bitterest anguish, with terror, dread and sadness, and above all with the feeling that it is to last for ever and ever. To make use of a weaker comparison: when a ball travels along a straight line, every point of the line bears the whole weight of the ball, though it does not contain it. In the same way, when the floods of eternity pass over the soul, it feels nothing else, drinks in nothing else but everlasting pain; this, however, does not last but passes. It is the very pain of hell, is this unbearable terror, that excludes all consolation!… As to what it means, those who have experienced it must be believed.”[316]

A physical accompaniment of these fears was, in Luther’s case, the fainting fits referred to now and again subsequent to the beginning of his struggle against the Church.

On the occasion of the attack of which we are told by Ratzeberger the physician, when he was found by friends lying unconscious on the floor, he had been “overpowered by melancholy and sadness.” It is also very remarkable that when his friends had brought him to, partly by the help of music, he begged them to return frequently, that they might play to him “because he found that as soon as he heard the sound of music his ‘tentationes’ and melancholy left him.”[317] According to Kawerau the circumstances point to this incident having taken place in 1523 or 1524.[318]

On the occasion of a serious attack of illness in 1527 his swoons again caused great anxiety to those about him. This illness was preceded by a fit in Jan., 1527. Luther informs a friend that he had “suddenly been affrighted and almost killed by a rush or thickening of the blood in the region of the heart,” but had as quickly recovered. His cure was, he thinks, due to a decoction of milk-thistle,[319] then considered a very efficacious remedy. The rush of blood to the heart, of which he here had to complain, occurred at a time when Luther had nothing to say of “temptations,” but only of the many troubles and anxieties due to his labours.

The more severe bout of illness began on July 6, 1527, at the very time of, or just after, some unusually severe “temptation.”[320] Jonas prefaces his account of it by saying that Luther, “after having that morning, as he admitted, suffered from a burdensome spiritual temptation, came back partially to himself (‘utcunque ad se rediit’).” The words seem to presuppose that he had either fainted or been on the verge of fainting.[321] Having, as the same friend relates, recovered somewhat, Luther made his confession and spoke of his readiness for death. In the afternoon, however, he complained of an unendurable buzzing in his left ear which soon grew into a frightful din in his head. Bugenhagen, in his narrative, is of opinion that the cause of the mischief here emerges plainly, viz. that it was the work of the devil. A fainting fit ensued which overtook Luther at the door of his bedchamber. When laid on his bed he complained of being utterly exhausted. His body was rubbed with cloths wrung out of cold water and then warmth was applied. The patient now felt a little better, but his strength came and went. Amongst other remarks he then passed was one, that Christ is stronger than Satan. When saying this he burst into tears and sobs. Finally, after application of the remedies common at that time, he broke out into a sweat and the danger was considered to be over.

There followed, however, the days and months of dreadful spiritual “temptations” already described (vol. v., p. 333 ff.). At first the bodily weakness also persisted. Bugenhagen was obliged to take up his abode in Luther’s house for a while because the latter was in such dread of the temptations and wished to have help and comfort at hand. For a whole week Luther was unable either to read or to write.

At the end of August and again in September the fainting fits recurred.

His friends, however, were more concerned about Luther’s mental anguish than about his bodily sufferings. The latter gradually passed away, whereas the struggles of conscience continued to be very severe. On Oct. 17, Jonas wrote to Johann Lang: “He is battling amidst the waves of temptation and is hardly able to find any passage of Scripture wherewith to console himself.”[322]

In 1530 again we hear of Luther’s life being endangered by a fainting fit, though it seems to have been distinct from the above attack of illness. This also occurred after an alarming incident during which he believed he had actually seen the devil. It was followed the next day by a loud buzzing in the head. Renewed trouble in the region of the heart, accompanied by paroxysms of fear, is reported to have been experienced in 1536.[323] After this we hear no more of any such symptoms till just before Luther’s death. In the sudden attack of illness which brought his life to a close he complained chiefly of feeling a great oppression on the chest, though his heart was sound.[324]

Nervousness and other Ailments

Quite a number of Luther’s minor ills seem to have been the result of overwrought nerves due partly to his work and the excitement of his life. Here again it is difficult to judge of the symptoms; unquestionably some sort of connection exists between his nervous state and his depression and bodily fears;[325] the fainting fits are even reckoned by some as simply due to neurasthenia.

There can be no doubt that his nervousness was, to some extent inherited, to some extent due to his upbringing. His lively temper which enabled him to be so easily carried away by his fancy, to take pleasure in the most glaring of exaggerations, and bitterly to resent the faintest opposition, proves that, for all the vigour of his constitution, nerves played an important part.

Already in his monastic days his state was aggravated by mental overstrain and the haste and turmoil of his work which led him to neglect the needs of the body. His uninterrupted literary labours, his anxiety for his cause, his carelessness about his health and his irregular mode of life reduced him in those days to a mere skeleton. At Worms the wretchedness of his appearance aroused pity in many. It is true that when he returned from the Wartburg he was looking much stronger, but the years 1522-25, during which he led a lonely bachelor’s life in the Wittenberg monastery, without anyone to wait on him, and sleeping night after night on an unmade bed, brought his nervous state to such a pitch that he was never afterwards able completely to master it. On the contrary, his nervousness grew ever more pronounced, tormenting him in various ways.

So little, however, did he understand it that it was to the devil that he attributed the effects, now dubiously, now with entire conviction.

Among these effects must be included the buzzing in the head and singing in the ears, to which Luther’s letters allude for many a year. When, at the end of Jan., 1529, the violent “agonies and temptations” recurred, the buzzing in the ears again made itself felt. He writes: “For more than a week I have been ailing from dizziness and humming in the head (‘vertigo et bombus’), whether this be due to fatigue or to the malice of the devil I do not know. Pray for me that I may be strong in the faith.”[326] He also complains of this trouble in the head in the next letter, dating from early in Feb.[327] He was then unable to preach or to give lectures for nearly three weeks.[328]

He goes on to say of himself: “In addition to the buffets of the angel of Satan [the temptations] I have also suffered from giddiness and headache.”[329] It was, however, as he himself points out, no real illness: “Almost constantly is it my fate to feel ill though my body is well.”[330]

In the new kind of life he had to lead in the Castle of Coburg in 1530, when, to want of exercise, was added overwork and anxiety of mind, these neurasthenic phenomena again reappeared. He compares the noises in his head to thunder, or to a whirlwind. There was also present a tendency to fainting. At times he was unable even to look at any writing, or to bear the light owing to the weakness of his head.[331] Simultaneously the struggle with his thoughts gave him endless trouble; thus he writes: “It is the angel of Satan who buffets me so, but since I have endured death so often for Christ, I am quite ready for His sake to suffer this illness, or this Sabbath-peace of the head.”[332] “You declare,” he says laughingly in a letter to Melanchthon, “that I am pig-headed, but my pig-headedness is nothing compared with that of my head (‘caput eigensinnigissimum’); so powerfully does Satan compel me to make holiday and to waste my time.”[333] Towards the middle of August his head improved, but the tiresome buzzing frequently recurred. Luther complained later that, during this summer, he had been forced to waste half his time.[334]

When, from this time onwards, “we hear him ever saying that he feels worn-out (‘decrepitus’), weary of life and desirous of death … all this is undoubtedly closely bound up with these nerve troubles.”[335] The morning hours became for him the worst, because during them he often suffered from dizziness. After his “prandium,” between nine and ten o’clock, he was wont to feel better. As a rule he slept well.

The attacks which occurred early in 1532 must also be noted.

In Jan., so his anxious pupil Veit Dietrich writes, Luther had a foreboding of some illness impending and fancied it would come in March; in reality it came on on Jan. 22. “Very early, about four o’clock, he felt a violent buzzing in his ears followed by great weakness of the heart.” His friends were summoned at his request as he did not wish to be alone. “When, however, he had recovered and had his wits about him (‘confirmato animo’), he proceeded to storm against the Papists, who were not yet to make gay over his death.” “Were Satan able,” he says, “he would gladly kill me; at every hour he is at my heels.” “The physician declared,” so the account goes on, “after having examined the urine, that Luther stood in danger of an attack of apoplexy, which indeed he would hardly escape.” The prediction was, however, not immediately verified and the patient was once more able to leave his bed. On Feb. 9, however (if the date given in the Notes be correct),[336] after assisting at a funeral in the church of Torgau, he was again seized with such a fit of giddiness as hardly to be able to return to his lodgings. When he recovered he said: “Do not be grieved even should I die, but continue to further the Word of God after my death.… It may be we are still sinners and do not perform our duty sufficiently; if so we shall cloak it over with the forgiveness of sins.” This time again he was not able to work for a whole month.

What he at times endured from the trouble in his head we learn from a statement in the Notes of the Table-Talk made by Cordatus: “When I awake and am unable to sleep again on account of the noise in my ears, I often fancy I can hear the bells of Halle, Leipzig, Erfurt and Wittenberg, and then I think: Surely you are going to have a fit. But God frequently intervenes and gives me a short sleep afterwards.”[337]

No notable improvement took place until the middle of 1533.

The noises in the head began again in 1541. He fancied then that he could hear “the rustling of all the trees and the breaking of the waves of every sea” in his head.[338] When he wrote this he was also suffering from a discharge from the ear, which, for the time, deprived him of his hearing; so great was the pain as to force tears from him. Alluding to this he says that his friends did not often see him in tears, but that now he would gladly weep even more copiously; to God he had said: “Let there be an end either of these pains or of me myself,” but, now that the discharge had ceased, he was beginning to read and write again quite confidently.[339]

From the commencement of his struggle, however, until the end of his life his extreme nervous irritability found expression in the violence of what he said and wrote. There can be no question that, had he not been in a morbidly nervous state, he would never have given way to such outbursts of anger and brutal invective. “There was a demoniacal trait,” says a Protestant Luther biographer, “that awakened in him as soon as he met an adversary, at which even his fellow-monks had shuddered, and which carried him much further than he had at first intended.” He became the “rudest writer of his age.” In his controversy with the Swiss Sacramentarians he “was domineering and high-handed.” “His disputatiousness and tendency to pick a quarrel grew ever stronger in him after his many triumphs.”[340]—But, even among his friends and in his home, he was careless about controlling his irritation. We find him exclaiming: “I am bursting with anger and annoyance”; as we know, he excited himself almost “to death” about a nephew and threatened to have a servant-maid “drowned in the Elbe.”[341] (Cp. the passages from A. Cramer quoted below, towards the end of section 5.)

Other maladies and indispositions, of which the effects were sometimes lasting, also deserve to be alluded to. Of these the principal and worst was calculus of which we first hear in 1526 and then again in 1535, 1536 and 1545. In Feb., 1537, Luther was overtaken by so severe an attack at Schmalkalden that his end seemed near.—In 1525 he had to complain of painful hæmorrhoids, and at the beginning of 1528 similar troubles recurred. The “malum Franciæ,” on the other hand, cursorily mentioned in 1523,[342] is not heard of any more. The severe constipation from which he suffered in the Wartburg also passed away. Luther was also much subject to catarrh, which, when it lasted, caused acute mental depression. The “discharge in his left leg” which continued for a considerable while[343] during 1533 had no important after-effects.

The maladies just mentioned, to which must be added an attack of the “English Sweat,” in 1529, do not afford sufficient grounds for any diagnosis of his physical and mental state in general.[344] On the other hand, the oppression in the præcordial region and his nervous excitability are of great importance to whoever would investigate his general state of health.

The so-called Temptations no Mere Morbid Phenomena

Anyone who passes in review the startling admissions Luther makes concerning his struggles of conscience (above, vol. v., pp. 319-75), or considers the dreadful self-reproaches to which his apostasy and destruction of the olden ecclesiastical system gave rise, reproaches which lead to “death and hell,” and which he succeeded in mastering only by dint of huge effort, cannot fail to see that these mental struggles were something very different from any physical malady. Since, however, some Protestants have represented mere morbid “fearfulness” as the root-cause of the “temptations,” we must—in order not to be accused of evading any difficulties—look into the actual connection between natural timidity and the never-ending struggles of soul which Luther had to wage with himself on account of his apostasy.

Luther’s temptations, according to his own accurate and circumstantial statements, consisted chiefly of remorse of conscience and doubts about his undertaking; they made their appearance only at the commencement of his apostasy, whereas the morbid sense of fear was present in him long before. Of such a character were the “terrores” which led him to embrace monasticism, the unrest he experienced during his first zealous years of religious life, and the dread of which he was the victim while saying his first Mass and accompanying Staupitz in the procession; this morbid fear is also apparent in the monk’s awful thoughts on predestination and in his subsequent temptations to despair. Moreover, such crises, characterised by temptations and disquieting palpitations ending in fainting fits, were in every case preceded by “spiritual temptations,” and only afterwards did the physical symptoms follow. Likewise the bodily ailments occasionally disappeared, leaving behind them the temptations, though Luther seemed outwardly quite sound and able to carry on his work.[345]

Hence the “spiritual temptations” or struggles of conscience were of a character in many respects independent of this morbid state of fear.

They occur, however, on the one hand, in connection with other physical disorders, as in the case of the attack of the “English Sweat” or influenza which Luther had in 1529, and which was accompanied by severe mental struggles; on the other hand, they appear at times to excite the bodily emotion of fear and in very extreme cases undoubtedly tended to produce entire loss of sleep and appetite, cardiac disturbance and fainting fits. Luther himself once said, in 1533, that his “gloomy thoughts and temptations” were the cause of the trouble in his head and stomach;[346] in his ordinary language the temptations were, however, “buffets given him by Satan.”[347] He is fond of clothing the temptations in this Pauline figure and of depicting them as his worst trials, and only quite exceptionally does he call his purely physical sufferings “colaphi Satanæ,” they, too, coming from Satan. Now we cannot of course entirely trust Luther’s own diagnosis—otherwise we should have to reduce all his maladies to a work of evil spirits—yet his feeling that the “temptations” were on the one hand a malady in themselves and on the other a source of many other ills, should carry some weight with us.

It is also clear that, in the case of an undertaking like Luther’s, and given his antecedents, remorse of conscience was perfectly natural even had there been no ailment present. It was impossible that a once zealous monk should become faithless to his most solemn vows and, on his own authority and on alleged discoveries in the Bible, dare to overthrow the whole ecclesiastical structure of the past without in so doing experiencing grave misgivings. Add to this his violence, his “wild-beast fury” (J. von Walther), his practical contradictions and the theological mistakes which he was unable to hide. Hence we need have no scruple about admitting what is otherwise fairly evident, viz. that his ghostly combats stand apart and cannot be attributed directly to any bodily ailment.

It remains, however, true that such struggles and temptations throve exceedingly on the morbid fear which lay hidden in the depths of his soul. It must also be granted that neurasthenia sometimes gives rise to symptoms of fear similar to those experienced by Luther, as we shall hear later on from an expert in nervous diseases, whom we shall have occasion to quote (see section 5 below). Consideration for such facts oblige the layman to leave the question open as to how much of Luther’s fear is to be attributed to nervousness or to other physical drawbacks.

We do not think it desirable here to enter further into the views of the older Catholic polemics, already referred to, who looked upon Luther as possessed (as labouring under an “obsessio” or at least a “circumsessio”). The fits of terror he endured both before and after his apostasy seemed to them to prove that he was really a demoniac. As already pointed out above (vol. iv., p. 359), this field is too obscure and too beset with the danger of error to allow of our venturing upon it.[348] Quite another matter is it, however, with regard to temptations, with which, according to Holy Scripture and the constant teaching of the Church, the devil is allowed to assail men, and to discuss which in Luther’s case we will now proceed, using his own testimonies.

2. Psychic Problems of Luther’s Religious Development

From the beginning of his apostasy and public struggle we find in Luther no peace of soul and clearness of outlook; rather, he is the plaything of violent emotions. He himself complains of having to wrestle with gloomy temptations of the spirit. It is these that we now propose to investigate more narrowly. In so doing we must also examine how his nervous state reacted on these temptations, whereby we shall, maybe, discern more clearly than before the connection of Luther’s doctrine with his distress of soul.

Temptations to Despair

As to the temptations admitted by Luther to be such, we must first of all recall the involuntary thoughts of despair which occurred to him in the convent and the inclination he felt, against his will, to abandon all hope of his salvation and even to blaspheme God. Everybody in the least acquainted with the spiritual life knows that such darkening of the soul may be caused by the Spirit of Evil and often accompanies certain morbid conditions of the body. When the two, as is often the case, are united, the effects are all the more far-reaching. Now, on his own showing, this was precisely the case with the unhappy inmate of the Erfurt monastery. Luther felt himself compelled, as he says, to lay bare his temptations (the “horrendæ et terrificæ cogitationes”) to Staupitz in confession.[349] The latter comforted him by pointing out the value of such temptations as a mental discipline. Staupitz, and others too, had, however, also told him that his case was to some extent new to them and beyond their comprehension.[350] Hence, understood by none, he passed his days sunk in sadness. All to whom he applied for consolation had answered him: “I do not know.”[351] His fancy must, indeed, have strayed into strange bypaths for both Pollich, the Wittenberg professor, and Cardinal Cajetan expressed amazement at the oddness of his thoughts.

His theological system finally became the pivot around which his thoughts revolved; to it he looked for help. He had created it under the influence of other factors to which it is not here needful to refer again; particularly it had grown out of his own relaxation in the virtues of his Order and religious life.[352] His system, however, had for its aim to combat despair, overmastering concupiscence and the consciousness of sin by means of a self-imposed tranquillity. He was determined to arrive by main force at peace and certainty. Only little by little, so he wrote in 1525, had he discovered, “God leads down to hell those whom He predestines to heaven, and makes alive by slaying”; whoever had read his writings “would understand this now very well”; a man must learn to despair utterly of himself, and allow himself to be helplessly saved by the action of God, i.e. by virtue of the forgiveness won by fiducial faith.[353] How he himself was led by God down to hell he sets forth in his “Resolutiones,” in the account of his mental sufferings given above (p. 101 f.), a passage which transports the reader into the midst of the pains which Luther endured in his anxiety.

The man most deeply initiated into the darker side of Luther’s temptations and struggles was the friend of his youth, the Augustinian, Johann Lang. He, too, apparently suffered severely beneath the burden of temptations regarding predestination and the forgiveness of sins. It was in a letter to him, that, not long after the nailing up of the Wittenberg Theses, Luther penned those curious words: They would pray earnestly for one another, “that our Lord Jesus may help us to bear our temptations which no one save us two has ever been through.”[354] Shortly before this Luther had commended to the care of his friend, then prior at Erfurt, a young man, Ulrich Pinder of Nuremberg, who had opened his heart to him at Wittenberg; on this occasion he wrote that Pinder was “troubled with secret temptations of soul which hardly anyone in the monastery with the exception of yourself understands.”[355] He also alludes to the temptations peculiar to himself in that letter to Lang, in 1516, in which he describes his overwhelming labours, which “seldom leave him due time for reciting the hours or saying Mass.” On the top of his labours, he says, there were “his own temptations from the world, the flesh and the devil.”[356] To this same recipient of his confidences Luther was wont regularly to give an account of the success attending his attacks on the ancient Church and doctrine; he kindled in him a burning hatred of those Augustinians at Erfurt who were well disposed towards scholasticism and Aristotle, and forwarded him the controversial Theses for the Disputations at the Wittenberg University embodying his new doctrine of the necessity of despairing of ourselves and of mystically dying, viz. the new “Theology of the Cross.”

Some mysterious words addressed to Staupitz, in which Luther hints at his inward sufferings, find their explanation when taken in conjunction with the above. He assured Staupitz (Sep. 1, 1518) in a letter addressed to him at Salzburg, that the summons to Rome and the other threats made not the slightest impression on him: “I am enduring incomparably worse things, as you know, which make me look upon such fleeting, shortlived thunders as very insignificant.”[357] His temptations against God and His Mercy were of a vastly different character. By the words just quoted he undoubtedly meant, says Köstlin, “those personal, inward sufferings and temptations, probably bound up with physical emotions, to which Staupitz already knew him to be subject and which frequently came upon him later with renewed violence. They were temptations in which, as at an earlier date, he was plunged into anxiety concerning his personal salvation as soon as he started pondering on the hidden depths of the Divine Will.”[358]

The Shadow of Pseudo-Mysticism

In this connection it will be necessary to return to Luther’s earlier predilection for a certain kind of mysticism.[359]

As we know, at an early date he felt drawn to the writings of the mystics, for one reason, because he seemed to himself to find there his pet ideas about spiritual death and wholesome despair. Their description of the desolation of the soul and of its apparent abandonment by God appeared to him a startling echo of his own experiences. He did not, however, understand or appreciate aright the great mystics, particularly Tauler, when he read into them his own peculiar doctrine of passivity.

To a certain extent throughout his whole life he stood under the shadow of this dim, sad mysticism.

He will have it that he, like the mystics, had frequently been plunged in the abyss of the spirit, had been acquainted with death and with states weird and unearthly. He refuses to relate all he has been through and actually gives as his ground for silence the very words used by St. Paul when speaking of his own revelations: “But I forbear, lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth in me, or anything he heareth from me” (2 Cor. xii. 6). When speaking thus of the mystic death he fails to distinguish between such thoughts and feelings as may have been the result solely of a morbid state of fear, or of remorse of conscience, and the severe trials through which the souls of certain great and holy men had really to pass.

It is indeed curious to note how he was led astray by a combination of fear, mysticism and temptation.

He was deluded into seeing in his own states just what he desired, viz. the proof of the truth of his own doctrine and exalted mission to proclaim it; he will not hear of this being a mere figment of his own brain. On the contrary, he is convinced that he, like the inspired Psalmist, has passed through every kind of the terrors which the latter so movingly describes. Like the Psalmist, he too must pray, “O Lord, chastise me not in thy wrath,” and like him, again, he is justified in complaining that his bones are broken and his soul troubled exceedingly (Ps. vi.). He even opines that those who have endured such things rank far above the martyrs; David, according to him, would much rather have perished by the sword than have “endured this murmuring of his soul against God which called forth God’s indignation.”[360]

There is no doubt that Johann Lang might have been able to tell us much about these gloomy aberrations of Luther’s, for he had a large share in Luther’s development.

It is worthy of note that it was to this bosom friend that Luther sent his edition of “Eyn Deutsch Theologia.”[361] “Taulerus tuus” (“Your Tauler”[362]) so he calls the German mystic when writing to his friend, and in a similar way, in a letter to Lang, he speaks of the new theology built entirely on grace and passive reliance as “our theology.” “Our theology and St. Augustine,” he says, “are progressing bravely at our University and gaining the upper hand, thanks to the working of God, whereas Aristotle is now taking a back seat.”[363] We must not be of those who, “like Erasmus, fail to give the first place to Christ and grace,” so he writes to Lang, knowing that here he would meet with a favourable response. The man who “knows and acknowledges nothing but grace alone” judges very differently from one “who attributes something to man’s free-will.”[364]

It was not long before Luther’s pseudo-mysticism translated itself into deeds. He persuades himself that he is guided in all his actions and resolutions by a sort of Divine inspiration. A singular sort of super-naturalism and self-sufficiency gleams in the words he once wrote to Lang. After reminding him of the unquestioned truth, that “man must act under God’s power and counsel and not by his own,” he goes on to explain defiantly, that, for this reason, he scorns once and for all any objections the Erfurt Augustinians might urge against the “paradoxical theses” he had sent them a little earlier, also their charge that he had shown himself hasty and precipitate: God was enough for him; of their counsel and instruction he stood in no need.[365] As though real wisdom and true mysticism did not teach us to welcome humbly the opinion of well-meaning critics, and not to trust too implicitly our own ideas, particularly in fields where one is so liable to trip. But the “Theology of the Cross,” sealed by his fears, now seemed to him above all controversy. During his temptations he had come to see its truth, and it also fell in marvellously with his changed views on the duties of a religious and with his renunciation of humility and self-denial.

At a time when mysticism and the study of Tauler still exercised a powerful influence over him he was wont in his fits of terror to revert to Tauler’s misapprehended considerations on the inward trials of the soul.

In pursuance of this idea and hinting at his own mental state he declares in his “Operationes in psalmos” (1519-21), that, according to St. Paul (Rom. v. 3 f.), tribulations work in us patience and trial and hope, and thus the love of God and justification; tribulation, however, consisted chiefly of inward anxiety, and trial called for patience and calm endurance of this anxiety; the greater the tribulation, the higher would hope rise in the soul. “Thus it is plain that the Apostle is speaking of the assurance of the heart in hope,[366] because, after anxiety cometh hope, and then a man feels that he hopes, believes and loves.” “Hence Tauler, the man of God, and also others who have experienced it, say that God is never more pleasing, more lovable, sweeter and more intimate with His sons than after they have been tried by temptation.”[367] It is quite true that Tauler said this; he also teaches that the greater the desolation by which God tries the souls of the elect, the higher the degree of mystical union to which He wishes to call them; for death is the road to life. It is quite another thing, however, whether Tauler would have approved of Luther’s application of what he wrote.

Luther also refers both to Tauler and to himself elsewhere in the “Operationes,” where he speaks of the fears of conscience regarding the judgment of God which no one can understand who had not himself experienced them; Job, David, King Ezechias and a few others had endured them; “and finally that German theologian, Johannes Tauler, often alludes to such a state of soul in his sermons.”[368] Tauler, however, when speaking of such afflictions, is thinking of those souls who seek God and are indeed united to Him in love, but who are tried and purified by the withdrawal of sensible grace, and by being made to feel a sense of separation from Him and the burden of their nature.

In his church-postils he again summons Tauler to his aid in order to depict the fears with which he was so familiar, seeking consolation, as it were, both for himself and for others. In his sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Advent (1522) he speaks of “those exalted temptations concerning death and hell, of which Tauler wrote.” Evidently speaking from experience he says: “This temptation destroys flesh and blood, nay, penetrates into the marrow of the bones and is death itself, so that no one can endure it unless marvellously borne up. Some of the patriarchs tasted this, for instance, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and Moses, but, towards the end of the world, it will become more common.” Finally, he assures his hearers, that, there were such as were “still daily tried” in this way, “of which but few people are aware; these are men who are in the agony of death, and who grapple with death”; still Christ holds out the hope that they are not destined to death and to hell; on the other hand, it is certain that the “world, which fears nothing, will have to endure, first death, and, after that, hell.”[369]

Other Ordeals

Other temptations that assailed Luther must be taken into account. Unfortunately he does not say what “new” form of temptation it was of which he wrote to Johann Lang in 1519. He says: A temptation had now befallen him which showed him “what man was, though he had fondly believed that he was already well enough aware of this before”; he felt it even more severely than the trials he had to endure before the Leipzig Disputation; he would discuss it with him only by word of mouth when Lang came to see him.[370] Is he here referring to temptations of the flesh of an unusual degree of intensity? We have already heard him bewail his temptations to ambition and hate. Moreover, in this very year he speaks of temptations against chastity in his Sermon on Marriage: It is a “shameful temptation,” he says; “I have known it well, and I imagine you too are acquainted with it; ah, I know well how it is when the devil comes and excites and inflames the flesh.… When one is on fire and the temptation comes I know well what it is; then the eye is already blind.”[371] Already before this he had had to fight against “very many temptations” of the sort, which are “wont to attend the age of youth.”[372] Later on they startled him by their waxing strength. Of the temptations of the senses (“titillatio”) to which he was exposed he had complained, for instance, in the same year (1519) in a letter to his superior Staupitz,[373] and the worldly intercourse into which he was drawn, “the social gatherings, excessive indulgence in the pleasures of the table, and general lukewarmness,” of which he speaks on the same occasion, make such temptations all the more likely in the case of a young man of a temper so lively and impressionable, especially as his lukewarmness took the shape of neglect of prayer and the means of grace, and of the help he might have derived from the exercises of the Order.

Such fleshly temptations he bewailed even more loudly when at the Wartburg. There, as we may recall, he became the plaything of evil lust (“libido”) and the “fire of his untamed flesh.” “Instead of glowing in spirit, I glow in the flesh.”[374] Admitting that he himself “prayed and groaned too little for the Church of God,” he exclaims: “Pray for me, for in this solitude I am falling into the abyss of sin!”[375] Though in bodily health and well cared for, he is “being well pounded by sins and temptations,” so he wrote to his old friend Johann Lang.

To all this was still added great trouble of conscience concerning his undertaking as a whole. When he was passionately declaring that his misgivings were from the devil and resolving never to flinch in his antagonism to the hated vow of chastity he was himself falling into the state which he himself describes: “You see how I burn within (‘quantis urgear æstibus’).” This to Melanchthon, after having explained to him the struggle waging within between his feelings and his knowledge of the Bible in the matter of the vow of chastity. He is being carried away to take action, and yet is unable, as he here admits, to prove his object by means of the text of Scripture.[376] He feels himself to be “the sport of a thousand devils” in the Wartburg on account of this and other temptations; he falls frequently, yet the right hand of God upholds him.[377] The castle is full of devils, so he wrote from within its walls, and very cunning devils to boot, who never leave him at peace but behave in such a way that he “is never alone” even when he seems to be so.[378] Hence he was writing “partly under the stress of temptation, partly in indignation.” What he was writing was his “De votis monasticis,” by means of which, as he here says, he is about “to free the young folk from the hell of celibacy.”[379]

Ten years later he still recalls the “despair and the temptation concerning God’s wrath” which had then been raging within him.[380]

His temptations at that time must have been rendered even worse by the morbid conditions then awakening in him, by the dismal, racking sense of fear that peopled his imagination with thousands of devils, and the mental confusion resulting from his state of nervous overstrain.

It would carry us too far to pursue the diabolical temptations to despair (or what he held to be such) throughout the rest of his life, and to examine their connection with his maladies. We shall only remark, that, even at a later date, when we find him the butt of severe temptations of this sort, an under-current of other trouble is frequently to be detected. The “terrors” he endured in his youthful years indeed moderated but never altogether disappear. The “spiritual sickness” of 1537 of which he speaks, when for a whole fortnight he could scarcely eat, drink or sleep, shows the degree to which these thoughts of despair and struggles of conscience could reach.

Summary

To sum up what we have said of Luther’s temptations, a distinction must be made between the temptations of the Evil One, which Luther himself regarded as such, and certain other things the real nature of which he failed to grasp. Moreover, there are those “temptations” which bore on his work and doctrines and which he wrongly regarded as temptations of the devil, whereas they were no more than the prick of conscience. All three are at times reacted on by a morbid state which he likewise failed rightly to understand, but which was made up of that predisposition to anxiety to which his nature was so prone and a kind of nervous irritability due to his struggles and over-great labours. Only those of the first and second class have any title to be regarded as temptations.

To the first class, i.e. to the temptations he felt and described as such, belongs first of all that despair which often disquieted him even in his later years; then again the temptations of the flesh of which we have also heard him speak. Though he ascribes both to the machinations of the Evil One, yet his method of fighting them was fatally mistaken. The temptations to despair he withstood by his erroneous doctrine of grace and faith alone, and, the more such thoughts torment him, the more defiantly does he stand by this doctrine. In the case of the temptations against chastity he failed to make sufficient use of the remedies of Christian penance and piety; on the contrary, under the stress of their allurements, he finally saw fit to demolish even the barrier raised by solemn vows made unto God.

The second class of temptations, which to him, however, did not seem to be such, includes all the mental aberrations we have had occasion to note during the course of his life story, particularly at the beginning of his apostasy. Here we shall only indicate the more important. It may be allowed that many of them masqueraded under specious pretexts and the appearance of good (“sub specie boni”). Thus, e.g. there was something fine and inspiring in his plans of exalting the grace of Christ at the expense of the mere works of the faithful; of giving the religious freedom of the Christian full play, regardless of unwarranted human ordinances; of improving the cut-and-dry theology of the day by a deeper and more positive study of the Bible; and of stopping the widespread decline in ecclesiastical learning and ecclesiastical life by stronghanded reforms. He allowed himself, however, to be altogether led astray in both the conception and the carrying out of these plans.

There was grave peril to himself in that sort of spiritualism, thanks to which he so frequently attributes all his doings to the direct inspiration and guidance of Almighty God; real and enlightened dependence on God is something very different; again, there was danger in his perverted interpretation of the teaching of the mystics of the past, in his exaggeration of the strength of man’s sinful concupiscence and neglect of the remedies prescribed in ages past, particularly of the practices of his own Order, also in his passionate struggles against the so-called holiness-by-works prevalent among the Augustinians, in his characteristic violence and tendency to pick a quarrel, and, above all, in the working of his inordinate self-esteem and unbounded appreciation of his own achievements as the leader of the new movement, which led him to exalt himself above all divinely appointed ecclesiastical authority.

In the above we were obliged to hark back to Luther’s earlier days, and this we shall again have to do in the following pages. The truth is, that many of the secrets of his earlier years can be explained only in the light of his later life, whilst, conversely, his youth and years of ripening manhood assist us in solving some of the riddles of later years. Hence we cannot be justly charged with repeating needlessly incidents that have already been related.

* * * * *

Just as the Wartburg witnessed the strongest temptations that Luther had ever to bear, so, too, it formed the stage of certain of those manifestations from the other world of which he fancied himself the recipient. Such manifestations, which lead one to wonder whether Luther suffered from hallucinations, are of frequent occurrence in his story. We shall now proceed to review them in their entirety.

3. Ghosts, Delusions, Apparitions of the Devil

In investigating the many ghostly apparitions with which Luther believed he had been favoured, our attention is perforce drawn to the Wartburg. We must, however, be careful to distinguish the authentic traditions from what has been unjustifiably added thereto. As to the explaining and interpreting of such testimonies as have a right to be regarded as historical, that will form the matter of a special study. In order that the reader may build up an opinion of his own we shall meanwhile only set on record what the sources say, the views of those concerned being given literally and unabridged. This method, essential though it be for the purposes of an unbiassed examination, has too often been set aside, recourse being had instead to mere assertions, denials and pathological explanations.

The Statements Concerning Luther’s Intercourse with the Beyond

On April 5, 1538, Luther, in the presence of his friends, spoke of the personal “annoyance” to which the devil had subjected him while at the Wartburg by means of visible manifestations. The pastor of Sublitz, then staying at Wittenberg, had complained of being pestered at his home by noisy spooks; they flung pots and pans at his head and created other disturbances. Referring to such outward manifestations of the spirit-world, Luther remarked: “I too was tormented in my time of captivity in Patmos, in the castle perched high up in the kingdom of the birds. But I withstood Satan and answered him in the words of the Bible: God is mine, Who created man and ‘set all things under his feet’ (Ps. viii. 7). If thou hast any power over them, try what thou canst do.”[381]

On another occasion he related before his friend Myconius and in the presence of Jonas and Bugenhagen, “how the devil had twice appeared at the Wartburg in the shape of a great dog and had tried to kill him.” It is Myconius who relates this, mentioning that it had been told him by Luther at Gotha in 1538,[382] “in the house of Johann Löben, the Schosser.”

Of one of these two apparitions, the physician Ratzeberger, Luther’s friend, had definite information. He, however, quotes it only as an instance of the many ghostly things which Luther had experienced there: “Because the neighbourhood was lonely many ghosts appeared to him and he was much troubled by disturbances due to noisy spooks. Among other incidents, one night, when he was going to bed, he found a huge black bull-dog lying on his bed that refused to let him get in. Luther thereupon commended himself to our Lord God, recited Ps. viii. [the same as that mentioned above], and when he came to the verse ‘Thou hast set all things under his feet’ the dog at once disappeared and Luther passed a peaceful night. Many other ghosts of a like nature visited him, all of whom he drove off by prayer, but of which he refused to speak, for he said he would never tell anyone how many spectres had tormented him.”[383]

According to the account of his pupil Mathesius, Luther often “called to mind how the devil had tormented him in mind and caused him a burning pain which sucked the very marrow out of his bones.”[384] Of visible apparitions Mathesius has, however, very little to say: “The Evil Spirit,” so we read in his account of Luther’s sayings, “most likely wished to affright me palpably, for on many nights I heard him making a noise in my Patmos, and saw him at the Coburg under the form of a star, and in my garden in the shape of a black pig. But my Christ strengthened me by His Spirit and Word so that I paid no heed to the devil’s spectre.”[385] Mathesius, in his enthusiasm, actually goes so far as to compare such things to Satan’s tempting of Christ in the wilderness.

The encounter with the great black dog in the Wartburg is related in an old edition of Luther’s Table-Talk with a curious addition, which tells how Luther, on one occasion, calmly lifted from the bed the dog, which had frequently tormented him, carried him to the window, and threw him out without the animal even barking. Luther had not been able to learn anything about it afterwards from others, but no such dog was kept in the Castle.[386]

Of the strange din by which the devil annoyed him within those walls Luther speaks more in detail in the German Table-Talk. “When I was living in Patmos … I had a sack of hazel nuts shut up in a box. On going to bed at night I undressed in my study, put out the light, went to my bedchamber and got into bed. Then the nuts began to rattle over my head, to rap very hard against the rafters of the ceiling and bump against me in bed; but I paid no attention to them. After I had got to sleep there began such a din on the stairs as though a pile of barrels was being flung down them, though I knew the stairs were protected with chains and iron bars so that no one could come up; nevertheless, the barrels kept rolling down. I got up and went to the top of the stairs to see what it was, but found the stairs closed. Then I said: ‘If it is you, so be it,’ and commended myself to our Lord Christ of Whom it is written: ‘Thou shalt set all things under his feet,’ as Ps. viii. says, and got into bed again.” All this, so the account proceeds, had been related by Luther himself at Eisenach in 1546.[387] Cordatus, however, must have heard the story of the nuts from his own lips even before this. He tells it in 1537 as one of the numerous instances of the persecution Luther had had to endure from the spooks of the Wartburg: “Then he [the devil] took the walnuts from the table and flung them up at the ceiling the whole night long.”[388]

It also happened (this supplements an incident touched upon above in vol. ii., p. 95), so Luther related on the above occasion, in 1546, that the wife of Hans Berlips, who “would much have liked to see [Luther], which was, however, not allowed,” came to the Castle. His quarters were changed and the lady was put into his room. “That night there was such an ado in the room that she fancied a thousand devils were in it.”[389] This story is not quite so well authenticated as the incidents which Luther relates as having happened to himself, for it is clear that he had it directly, or indirectly, only from this lady’s account. Her anxiety to see Luther would seem to stamp her as a somewhat eccentric person, and it may also be that she went into a room, already reputed to be haunted, quite full of the thought of ghosts and that her imagination was responsible for the rest.

Luther goes on to allude to another ghostly visitation, possibly a new one. He says: “On such occasions we must always say to the devil contemptuously: “If you are Christ’s Master, so be it!” For this is what I said at Eisenach.”[390] Nothing further is known, however, of any such occurrence having taken place at Eisenach. He may quite well have taken Eisenach as synonymous with the Wartburg.

* * * * *

To pass in review the other ghostly apparitions which occurred during his lifetime, we must begin with his early years.

When still a young monk at Wittenberg Luther already fancied he heard the devil making a din. “When I began to lecture on the Psalter, and, after we had sung Matins, was seated in the refectory studying and writing up my lecture, the devil came and rattled in the chimney three times, just as though someone were heaving a sack of coal down the chimney. At last, as it did not cease, I gathered up my books and went to bed.”[391] “Once, too, I heard him over my head in the monastery, but, when I noticed who it was, I paid no attention, turned over and went to sleep again.”[392]

Luther can tell some far more exciting stories of ghosts and “Poltergeists,” of which others, with whom he had come in contact in youth or manhood, had been the victims. Since, however, he seems to have had them merely on hearsay, they may be passed over. Of himself, however, he says: “I have learnt by experience that ghosts go about affrightening people, preventing them from sleeping and so making them ill.”[393]

We find also the following statement: “The devil has often had me by the hair of my head, yet was ever forced to let me go”;[394] from the context this, however, may refer to mental temptations.

He says, however, quite definitely of certain experiences he himself had gone through in the monastery: “Oh, I saw gruesome ghosts and visions.” This was probably at the time when “no one was able to comfort” him.[395] He was referring to incidents to which no definite date can be assigned, when, anxious to refute their claim to illumination by the spirits, he told the fanatics: “Ah, bah, spirits … I too have seen spirits!”

The Table-Talk relates how on one occasion Luther himself, in a strange house, was witness of a remarkable spectral visitation. He is said to have related the incident and to “have seen it with his own eyes as did also many others.”[396] A maiden, a friend of the old proctor [at the University], was lying in bed ill at Wittenberg. She had a vision; Christ appearing to her under a glorious form, whereupon she joyfully adored her visitor. A messenger was at once sent “from the college to the monastery” to fetch Luther. He came and exhorted the young woman “not to allow herself to be deceived by the devil.” She thereupon spat in the face of the apparition. “The devil then disappeared and the vision turned into a great snake which made a dash at the maiden in her bed and bit her on the ear so that the drops of blood trickled down, after which the snake was seen no more.” This story was introduced into the German Table-Talk by Aurifaber (1566).[397] The young woman was probably hysterical and was the only beholder of the vision. In all likelihood what the others saw was merely the blood, which might quite well have come from a scratch otherwise caused. The story has been quoted as a proof of the dispassionate way in which Luther regarded visions.

As a further proof of the “sobriety which he coupled with a faith so ardent and enthusiastic” Köstlin quotes the following:[398] “He himself related this tale,” the Table-Talk says [the date is uncertain but it was after he had already begun to preach the “Word”]; “he was once praying busily in his cell, and thinking of how Christ had hung on the cross, suffered and died for our sins, when suddenly a bright light shone on the wall, and, in the midst, a glorious vision of the Lord with His five wounds appeared and gazed at him, the Doctor, as though it had been Christ Himself. When the Doctor saw it he fancied at first it was something good, but soon he bethought him it must be a devilish spectre, because Christ appears to us only in His Word and in a lowly and humble form, just as He hung in shame upon the cross. Hence the Doctor adjured the vision: ‘Begone thou shameless devil! I know of no other Christ than He Who was crucified, and Who is revealed and preached in His Word,’ and soon the apparition, which was no less than the devil in person, disappeared.”[399]—This story told by his pupils must refer to some statement made by Luther, though the dramatic liveliness of its imagery may well lead us to suspect that it has been touched up. Some natural effect of light and shade might well account for the appearance which the young monk so “busy” at his prayers thought he saw.

ed., 58, p. 129.

It is hardly possible to suppress similar doubts concerning other accounts we have from his lips; his statements also refer to events which occurred long previous. At any rate, in a select circle of his pupils, the opinion certainly prevailed that Luther was tried by extraordinary other-world apparitions, and this conviction was the result of remarks dropped by him.

Greater stress must be laid on those statements of his which bear on inward experiences, where the most momentous truths were concerned and which occurred at certain crises of his life.

In Nov., 1525, he assured Gregory Casel, the Strasburg theologian, in so many words, that “he had frequently had inward experience that the body of Christ is indeed in the Sacrament; he had seen dreadful visions; also angels (‘vidisse se visiones horribiles, sæpe se angelos vidisse’), so that he had been obliged to stop saying Mass.”[400]

He spoke in this way in the course of the official negotiations with Casel, the delegate of the Protestant theologians of Strasburg. The words occur in Casel’s report of the interview published by Kolde. It is true that Luther also speaks here of the outward “Word” as the support of his doctrine, particularly on the Sacrament. “We shall,” he says, “abide quite simply by the words of Scripture—until the Spirit and the unction teach us something different.” He avers that the Strasburgers who denied the Sacrament come with their “Spirit” and wish to explain away the words of the Bible concerning the body of Christ in the Bread. This, however, is not the “light of the Spirit,” but the “light of reason”; he himself had long since learnt to reject reason in the things of God. They were not convinced of their cause as he was, otherwise they would defend their teaching publicly as he did, for he would rather the whole world were undone than be silent on God’s doctrine, because it was God’s business to watch over it.

His opponents declared they had their own inward experience. “How many inward experiences have I not had,” he replies, “at those times when my mind was idle (‘cum eram otiosus’)! All sorts of things came before my mind and everything seemed as reasonable as could be. But, by God’s grace, I addressed myself to greater and more earnest matters and began to distrust reason. I too, like them, was ‘in dangers’ [2 Cor. xi. 26], and in even greater ones. And if it is a question of piety of life, I hope that there, too, we are blameless.” Coming back once more to the spirit which the Strasburgers had set up against the Word of God, he describes in his own defence the “terrors of death he himself had been through (‘mortis horrorem expertus’)” and then speaks of the angelic visions referred to above which had disturbed him even at the Mass.[401]

He also will have it that at other times he had been consoled by angels, though he does not tell us that he had seen them. In 1532 he said to Schlaginhaufen: “God strengthened me ten years ago by His angels, in my struggles and writings.”[402]

Luther, repeatedly and in so many words, appeals to his realisation of the divine truths, and it may be assumed he imagined he felt something of the sort within him, or that he thus interpreted certain emotions. “I am resolved to acknowledge Christ as Lord. And this I have not only from Holy Scripture but also from experience. The name of Christ has often helped me when no one was able to help. Thus I have on my side the deed and the Word, experience and Scripture. God has given both abundantly. But my temptations made things sour for me.”[403]

The Table-Talk assures us that, “Dr. Martin proved it from his own experience that Jesus Christ is truly God; this he also confessed openly; for if Christ were not God then there was certainly no God at all.”[404] It was no difficult task for him to include himself in the ranks of those “who had received the first fruits of the spirit.”[405]

In addition to this, however, as will be shown below,[406] he thinks his doctrine has been borne in upon him by God through direct revelation. More than once, without any scruple, he uses the word “revelatum”; he is also fond of setting this revelation in an awesome background: it had been “strictly enjoined on him (‘interminatum’) under pain of eternal malediction” to believe in it.[407]

In fact a certain terror is the predominating factor in this gloomy region where he comes in touch with the other world. He has not merely had experience that there are roving spirits who affright men,[408] but, in a letter from the Wartburg, he insists quite generally, that, “the visions of the Saints are terrifying.” Of course, as we well know, delusions and hallucinations very often do assume a terrifying character.

Luther also asserts that “divine communications” are always accompanied by inward tortures like unto death, words which give us a glimpse into his own morbid state.[409] And yet he fully admits elsewhere the very opposite, for he is aware that God is, above all things, the consoler. “It is not Christ Who affrights us”;[410] and “it is Satan alone who wounds and terrifies.”[411] But, in practice, according to him, things work differently; there the fear from which he and others suffer comes to the fore. “We are oftentimes affrighted even when God turns to us the friendliest of glances.”[412]

This change of standpoint reminds us of another instance of the same sort. Luther’s teaching on the terrifying character of the divine action is much the same as his theological teaching that fear is the incentive to good deeds. While, as a rule, he goes much too far in seeking to rid the believer of any fear of God as the Judge, preaching an unbounded confidence and even altogether excluding fear from the work of conversion, yet, elsewhere, he emphasises most strongly this same fear, as called for and quite indispensable; this he did in his controversies with the Antinomians and, even earlier, as on the occasion of the Visitations, on account of its religious influence on the people.

No change or alteration is, however, apparent in the accounts he gives above of the cases in which he came in touch with the other world; he sticks firmly by his statement that he had experienced such things both mentally and palpably. Hence the difficulty of coming to any decision about them.

* * * * *

But there are further alleged experiences, also detailed at length, which have a place here, viz. the apparitions of the devil himself.

In 1530 Luther was thrown into commotion by a glimpse of the devil, under the shape of a fiery serpent, outside the walls of the Coburg. One evening in June, about nine o’clock, as his then companion Veit Dietrich relates, Luther was looking out of the window, down on the little wood surrounding the castle. “He saw,” says this witness, “a fiery, flaming serpent, which, after twisting and writhing about, dropped from the roof of the nearest tower down into the wood. He at once called me and wanted to show me the ghost (‘spectrum’) as I stood by his shoulder. But suddenly he saw it disappear. Shortly after, we both saw the apparition again. It had, however, altered its shape and now looked more like a great flaming star lying in the field, so that we were able to distinguish it plainly even though the weather was rainy.” Here the pupil undoubtedly did his best to see something. On his master, however, the firm conviction of having seen the devil made a deep impression. He had just enjoyed a short respite after a bout of ill-health. The night after the apparition he again collapsed and almost lost consciousness. On the following day he felt, so Dietrich says, “a very troublesome buzzing in the head”; the apparition leads the narrator to infer that Luther’s bodily trouble, which now recommenced in an aggravated form, had been entirely “the work of the devil.”[413] So certain was Luther of having seen the devil that he mentioned the occurrence in 1531 at one of the meetings held for the revision of his translation of the Psalms. The words of the Psalmist concerning “sagittæ” and “fulgura,” etc. (Ps. xviii. (xvii.) 15), he applies directly to his own personal experiences and to the incident in question, “Just as I saw my devil flying over the wood at the Coburg.”[414] He means by this the fading away and disappearance of the above-mentioned fiery shape; this psalm speaks of a “materia ignita,” which no doubt suggested his remarks.—Later, as Mathesius relates, he said he had seen the “evil spirit at the Coburg, in the form of a star.”[415] Kawerau terms the apparition an “optical hallucination.”[416]

By the word hallucination is understood an apparent perception of an external object not actually present. That the “apparition” at the Coburg and other similar ones already mentioned or yet to be referred to were hallucinations is quite possible though not certain. It is true that the excessive play Luther gave to his imagination, particularly at the Wartburg and, later, at the Coburg, was such that it is quite within the bounds of possibility that he fancied he saw or heard things which had no real existence. On the other hand, moreover, we know what a large share his superstition had in distorting actual facts. Hence, generally speaking, most of the ghosts or visions he is said to have seen can be explained by a mistaken interpretation of the reality, without there being any need to postulate an hallucination properly so-called. Much of what has been related might come under the heading of illusions, though, probably, not everything. To analyse them in detail is, however, impossible as the circumstances are not accurately known. Certainly no one, however much inclined to the supernatural, who is familiar with Luther and his times, will be content, as was once the case, to believe that the devil sought to interfere visibly and palpably with his person and his teaching.

As to the apparition of the devil at the Coburg in the shape of a flame, a serpent and a star, we may point out that the whole may well have been caused simply by a lantern or torch carried by somebody in that lonely neighbourhood. We might also be tempted to think of St. Elmo’s fire, except that the form of the apparition presents some difficulty.—So, too, the black dog in the Wartburg was most likely some harmless intruder. The noise of the nuts flying up against the ceiling may have been produced by the creaking of a weather-cock, or of a door or shutter in the wind [or by the rats]. Other tales again may be rhetorical inventions, simple fictions of Luther’s brain, not involving the least suggestion of any illusion or hallucination, for instance, when he speaks of the angels who appeared to him at Mass. Such an apparition was a convenient weapon to use against opponents who alleged they were under the influence of the “Spirit.” Moreover, some of these tales were told so long after the event as to leave a wide scope to the imagination.

To proceed with the accounts of the apparitions of the devil: About the reality of two of such, Luther is quite positive.

One of these took place close to his dwelling. The devil he then espied in the shape of a wild-boar in his garden under his window. “Once Martin Luther was looking out of the window,” so an account dating from 1548 tells us, “when a great black hog appeared in the garden.” He recognised it as a diabolical apparition and jeered at Satan who appeared in this guise, though he had once been a “beautiful angel.” “Thereupon the hog melted into nothing.”[417] He himself refers to this apparition in the words already recorded, in which he classes it with the work of the noisy spirits in the Wartburg and the “appearance of the star” at the Coburg.[418]

Indeed the hog and the flaming vision at the Coburg even found their way into his printed sermons. We read in the home-postils: “The devil is always about us in disguise, as I myself witnessed, taking, e.g. the form of a hog, of a burning wisp of straw, and such like”[419] (cp. above, vol. v., p. 287 ff.).

The other apparition, the one which possibly suggests most strongly an hallucination, was that which he experienced at Eisleben at the time he was trying to adjust the quarrels between the Counts of Mansfeld, i.e. just before his death. We have accounts of this from two different quarters, based on statements made by Luther; first that of Michael Cœlius, a friend who was present at his death, in the funeral oration he delivered immediately after at Eisleben on Feb. 20, and, secondly, that of Luther’s confidant, the physician Ratzeberger. The former in his address recounts for the edification of the people how Luther “during his lifetime” had suffered trials and persecutions at the hands of the devil before going to his eternal rest; hence in this world he had been “disturbed and troubled in his peace of mind” by Satan. It was true that latterly he had “enjoyed some happiness” at Eisleben, but “that had not lasted long; one evening indeed,” so Cœlius continues, “Luther had lamented with tears, that, while raising his heart to God with gladness and praying at his open window, he had seen the devil, who hindered him in all his labours, squatting on the fountain and making faces at him. But God would prove stronger than Satan, that he knew well.”[420]—Ratzeberger’s account quite agrees with this as to the circumstances; he had learnt that Luther “related the incident to Dr. Jonas and Mr. Michael Cœlius.” His information is not derived from the funeral oration just mentioned, but clearly from elsewhere. He is right in implying that it was Luther’s habit to say his night prayers at the window; he has, however, some further particulars concerning the behaviour of the devil: “It is said that when Dr. Martin Luther was saying his night prayers to God at the open window, as his custom was before going to bed, he saw Satan perched on the fountain that stood outside his dwelling, showing him his posterior and jeering at him, insinuating that all his efforts would come to nought.”[421] The first place, however, belongs to the account of Cœlius, who, by his mention of the tears Luther shed, sets vividly before the reader the commotion into which the apparition, which had occurred shortly before, had thrown him.

Excitement and trouble of mind were then pressing heavily on the aging man. His frame of mind was caused not merely by the quarrel between the “wrangling Counts” of Mansfeld with whom “no remonstrances or prayers brought any help,”[422] not merely by his usual “temptations,” but also, as Ratzeberger tells us, by the healing up of the incision in the left leg, he (Ratzeberger) had made, and which now led to bodily disorders. The disorders now made common cause with his “annoyance melancholy and grief.” The “violent mental excitement,” together with the bad effects of the healing up of the artificial wound, were, according to this physician, what “brought about his death.” Ratzeberger was not, however, then at Eisleben and we are in possession of more accurate accounts of the circumstances attending Luther’s death.

In explanation of Luther’s singular delusion regarding the jeering devil we may remark that he is fond of attributing the obstacles in the way of peace to the devil’s wrath and envy. “It seems to me that the devil is mocking us,” he writes of the difficulties on Feb. 6, “may God mock at him in return!”[423] The Eisleben councillor, Andreas Friedrich, writes to Agricola on Feb. 17 (18) of these same concerns, that Luther, when he found there was still no prospect of a settlement, had complained: “As I see, Satan turns his back on me and jeers as well.”[424] Here, curiously enough, we have exactly what occurred at the fountain. If the apparition, as is highly probable, belongs somewhat later, then we may assume that the vivid picture of the devil under this particular shape with which Luther was so familiar led finally to some sort of hallucination. His extravagant ideas of Satan generally might, in fact, have been sufficient. Everything that went against him was “Satanic,” and his only hope is that “God will make a mockery of Satan.”[425]

The account Luther gives in his Table-Talk of the two devils who, in his old age, accompanied him whenever he went to the “sleep-house” may be dealt with briefly. In this passage he is alluding in his joking way to his bodily infirmities.[426] Hence the “one or two” devils who dogged his footsteps are here described as quite familiar and ordinary companions, which is not in keeping with the idea of true apparitions; they were the nicer sort, i.e. pretty, well-mannered devils; they “attacked his head” and thus caused the malady to which he was most subject, hence in his usual style he threatens to “bid them begone into his a⸺,” in short he is here merely jesting. This forbids our taking the statement as meant in earnest though it is twice quoted in the German Table-Talk quite seriously. In the early days, immediately after Luther’s death, the statements concerning the “two devils” were, strange to say, reverently repeated by his pupils as an historic fact; in reality they were all too eager to unearth miraculous incidents in his life.

At a later period, when rationalism had made some headway, Protestant biographers of Luther as a rule preferred to say nothing about the apparitions Luther had met with, or to treat them as pious, harmless jests misinterpreted by his pupils. This, however, is not at all in accordance with historic criticism. Luther admirers of an earlier date, on the other hand, went too far in the contrary direction and showed themselves only too ready to follow their master into the other world, or to represent him as holding intercourse with it. Cyriacus Spangenberg (1528-1604), a Luther zealot, is an instance in point. In his “Theander Lutherus,” speaking of Luther “the real holy martyr,” he says: He deserved to be termed a martyr on account of the visible hostility of the devil; one or two devils had been in the habit of accompanying him in his walks in the dormitory in order to attack him, and his illnesses were caused simply by the devil. Needless to say, he does not allow the incidents mentioned above to escape him: Satan had tormented him at the Coburg in the shape of a fiery star and in the garden under that of a hog; he had tried to deceive him in his cell under the dazzling image of Christ, had affrighted him in the Wartburg by making a devilish noise with the nuts, and, finally, even in his monkish days had driven the student at a late hour from his studies by the din he made.[427]

It is a fact worthy of note that the older Protestant writers, when speaking of the apparitions Luther had, never mention any such or any revelations of a consoling character, but merely terrifying stories of devils and diabolical persecutions. This agrees with the observation already made above (p. 128 f.). It is evident that as good as nothing was known of any consoling apparitions; nor would the mild and friendly angels have been in place in the warlike picture which his friends transmitted of Luther. That he did not think himself a complete stranger to such heavenly communications has, however, been proved above, and it may be that his imagination would have had more to relate concerning this friendlier world above had he not had particular reasons for being chary about speaking of such visions.

The Disputation with the Devil on the Mass

In Spangenberg even Luther’s famous disputation with the devil on private Masses is also made to do duty among the other apparitions. He, like many others, takes it as an actual occurrence and represents it as further proof of the “real martyrdom” of his hero.[428] As, conversely, this disputation also plays a part in the works of Luther’s adversaries, it may be worth while to examine it somewhat more narrowly. It is urged that Luther admits he had been instructed by the devil regarding the falsity of the Catholic doctrine of the Mass, and, that, by thus tracing it back to the devil, he stamps with untruth an important portion of his teaching, seeing, that, from the father of lies, nothing but lies can be expected.

What then are we to believe concerning this disputation, judging from Luther’s own words which constitute our sole source? The only possible answer is, that Luther is merely making use of a rhetorical device.

It is true, that, in his “Von der Winckelmesse” (1533), Luther speaks in so elusive a way of his dispute with the devil, and of the truth he had learnt from the latter, that the incident was taken literally, not merely by Spangenberg and other of Luther’s oldest friends, but actually by Cochlæus too, and was, at a later date, made the subject of many disquisitions. Yet, if we look into the matter carefully, we shall find he speaks from the very outset not of any actual apparition of the devil, but merely of his inward promptings: “On one occasion,” so he introduces the story, “I woke up at midnight and the devil began a disputation with me in my heart,” such as he has with me “many a night.”[429] He then goes on, however, to describe the disputation as graphically as had it been a real incident.

Luther’s object with the writing in question is to fling at the Papists his arguments against private Masses under a new and striking form. He pretends that the Papists would be at a loss to answer Satan, but would be forced to despair “were he to bring forward these and other arguments against them at the hour of death.” Hence he introduces himself and shows how the devil had driven him into a corner on account of his former celebration of Mass. As for the arguments they are his usual ones. Here, put in the mouth of the devil, they are to overwhelm him with despair for his former evil wont of saying Masses. The only reason he can espy why he should not despair is that he has now repented and no longer says the Mass.

He himself alludes to the artifice; writing to a friend, he says, that by the introduction of the devil he intends to attack the Papists “with a pamphlet of a new kind”; even those friendly to the Evangel would be astonished at his new way of writing; they were, however, to be told that this was merely a challenge thrown to the Papists; that it only represented himself as driven into a corner by the devil on account of the Masses he had formerly said, in order to induce the Papists to examine their consciences and see how they could vindicate themselves with regard to the Mass.[430]—Thus, for once, the devil might well figure as an upholder of Luther’s doctrine.

In the course of the drama the devil never grows weary of proving, that, owing to the Masses Luther had said, and the idolatry he had thus practised, he had been brought to the verge of everlasting destruction. The devil’s arguments are given at great length and Luther concedes everything save that he refuses to despair. The statement that he should, so he urges, is worthy of the devil, who, in his temptations, constantly confuses the false with the true.[431] Luther, here, even introduces the devil in a quasi-comic light: “Do you hear, you great, learned man?” etc. “Yes, my dear chap, that is not the same,” etc. In a similar tone Luther then turns on the Papists who say to him: “Are you a great Doctor and yet have no answer ready for the devil?”

Certain Protestant writers, even down to our own times, have, however, insisted that, at any rate inwardly, the devil had sought to reduce Luther to despair on account of his celebration of Mass as a Catholic; that the spirit of darkness had attached so much importance to the suppression of the Gospel, that he attempted to disquiet Luther with such self-reproaches.[432] It is true Luther once says that the devil reproached him with his “misdeeds, for instance, with the sacrifice of the Mass,” and other Catholic practices of which he had formerly been guilty.[433] On other occasions, however, he quite absolves the devil of any change concerning the Mass. He says, e.g.: “The devil is such a miscreant that he does not reproach me with my great and awful crimes such as the celebration of Mass,”[434] etc. Thus he had persuaded himself quite independently of the devil that the Mass was a grievous crime. We have, in fact, in Luther’s statements concerning his inward experiences a crying instance of his changeableness. We shall return below to his self-reproach on account of his celebration of Mass (see section 4).

Possession and Exorcism

We may conclude our examination of diabolical apparitions by some statements concerning the exorcisms Luther undertook and his treatment of cases of possession.

His first followers believed he had been successful in 1545 in driving out Satan in the case of a person possessed. The testimony of two witnesses of the incident must here come under consideration, both young men who were present on the occasion, viz. Sebastian Fröschel, Deacon at Wittenberg, and Frederick Staphylus, a man of learning who afterwards abandoned Lutheranism and became Superintendent of the University of Ingolstadt.[435] The latter knows nothing of any success having attended Luther’s efforts, whereas the former boasts that such was the case, though he somewhat invalidates his testimony by saying nothing of the embarrassing situation in which Luther found himself at the close of the scene. According to both accounts the incident was more or less as follows:

A girl of eighteen from Ossitz in the neighbourhood of Meissen who was said to be possessed was brought one Tuesday to Luther, and, while at his bidding reciting the Creed, was “torn” by the devil as soon as she reached the words “and in Jesus Christ.” Luther hesitated at first to set about the work of liberation and expressed his contempt for the devil whom he “well knew.” The next day, after his sermon, he caused the “possessed” girl to be brought to him in the sacristy of the parish church of Wittenberg by the above-mentioned Fröschel.

We hear nothing of any regular examination as to whether it was a case of possession, or not rather hysteria, as seems more likely. At any rate, the unhappy girl when passing from the church through the entrance to the sacristy, was seen to “fall down and hit about her.” The door of the sacristy, where several doctors, ecclesiastics and students were gathered, was locked. Luther delivered an address on his method of driving out the devil: He did not intend to do this in the way usual in Apostolic time, in the early Church and later, viz. by a command and authoritative exorcism, but rather by “prayer and contempt”; the Popish exorcism was too ostentatious and of it the devil was not worthy; at the time when exorcism had been introduced miracles were necessary for the confirmation of the faith, but this was now no longer the case; God Himself knew well when the devil had to depart and they ought not to tempt Him by such commands, but, on the contrary, pray until their prayers were answered. Thus Luther, not unwisely, refused to perform any actual “driving out of the devil.”

The Church’s ritual for exorcism was, however, not so ostentatious as Luther pretends, and combined commands issued in a tone of authority in the name of Christ (Matt. x. 8; Mark xvi. 17) with an expression of contempt for the devil and reprobation of his evil deeds. Fröschel noted down the address in question together with everything that occurred and said later in a sermon, that Luther’s action ought to serve as a model in future cases.

In the sacristy the Creed and Our Father were recited, two passages on prayer (from John xvi. and xiv.) were also read aloud by Luther. Then he, together with the other ecclesiastics present, laid hands on the head of the girl and continued reciting prayers. When no sign appeared of the devil’s departure, Luther wished to go, but first took care to spurn the girl with his foot, the better to mark anew his disdain for the devil. The poor creature whom he had thus insulted followed him with threatening looks and gestures. This was all the more awkward since Luther was unable to escape, the key of the sacristy door having been mislaid; hence he was obliged, he the devil’s greatest and best-hated foe on earth, to remain cheek by jowl with the Evil One.

The satirical description Staphylus gives of the situation cannot be repeated here, especially as the writer seems to have added to its colour.[436] Luther was unable to jump out of the window, so he says, because it was protected with iron bars; “hence he had to remain shut up with us until the sacristan could pass in a strong hatchet to us through the bars; this was handed to me, as I was young, for me to burst open the door, which I then did.” In place of all this, Fröschel merely says of the girl, who was taken home the following day, that afterwards “on several occasions” reports came to Wittenberg to the effect that the evil spirit no longer “tormented and tore her as formerly.”

In the pulpit the Deacon immortalised the incident for his Wittenberg hearers and made it known to the whole world in his printed sermon “Vom Teuffel.”[437]

Luther himself says nothing of it, though disposed in later life to lay great stress on stories of the devil.[438] Earlier than this, in 1540, he had hastened to tell his Katey of the supposed deliverance of a girl at Arnstadt from the devil’s power through the ministrations of the Evangelical pastor there; the latter had “driven a devil out of the girl in a truly Christian manner.”[439] He does not, however, mention this incident in his published works.

On the other hand we have in the Table-Talk a full account of his treatment of a woman “possessed,” or, rather, clearly ailing from a nervous disorder. Her symptoms were regarded, as was customary at a time when so little was known of this class of maladies, as “purely the work of the devil, as something unnatural, due to fright and devil-spectres, seeing that the devil had overlaid her in the shape of a calf.” Luther, on visiting the woman thus “bodily persecuted by the devil,” again laid great stress on the need of praying that she might be rid of her guest, though this time he did not scorn the use of the formula of exorcism. “The night after, she was left in peace, but, later, the weakness returned. Finally, however, she was completely delivered from it;”[440] in other words, the malady simply took its natural course.

Another much-discussed case which occurred after the middle of the ’thirties was that of a girl at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, a report of which came to Luther from Andreas Ebert, the Lutheran pastor there (see above, vol. iii., p. 148). In his reply to the circumstantial account of how the “possessed” girl was able to produce coins by magic Luther shows himself in so far cautious that he is anxious to have it made clear whether the story is quite true and whether the coins are real. Nevertheless, he does not hesitate to declare, that, should the incident be proved, it would be a great omen (“ostentum”), as Satan, with God’s permission, was thus setting before them a picture of the greed of money prevailing among certain of the princes. He was loath to see exorcism resorted to, “because the devil in his pride laughs at it”; all the more were they to pray for the girl and against the devil, and this, with the help of Christ, would finally spell her liberation; meanwhile, however, he expresses his readiness to make public all the facts of the case that could be proved. In his sermons he spoke of the occurrence to his hearers as a “warning.”[441]

Theodore Kirchhoff, who, in the “Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie,” mentions “Luther’s exorcisms of hysterical women folk,” not without bewailing his error, points out that it was in part his own fancied experience with the devil which led him to regard “similar phenomena in others as diabolical”; “his many nervous ailments,” he says, “strengthened his personal belief in the devil.” “Indeed, so far did he go in his efforts to drive out the devil that once he actually proposed that an idiot should be done to death.”[442] “Such a doctrine [on the devil’s action], backed by the authority of so great a man, took deep root.” It would be incorrect, writes Kirchhoff, to say, that Luther inaugurated a healthier view of “possession”; on the contrary his opinion is, “that, owing to Luther’s hard and fast theories, the right understanding and treatment of the insane was rendered more difficult than ever; for, if we consider the immense spread of his writings and what their influence became, it is but natural to infer that this also led to his peculiar view becoming popular.”[443] Needless to say, other circumstances also conspired to render difficult the treatment of the mentally disordered; long before Luther’s day they had been regarded by many as possessed, and as the physicians would not undertake to cure possessions, this condition was neglected by the healing art. In many instances, too, the relatives were against any cure being attempted by physicians.

4. Revelation and Illusion. Morbid Trains of Thought

One ground for considering the question of Luther’s revelations in connection with the darker side of his life lies in the gloomy and unearthly circumstances, which, according to his own account, accompanied the higher communications he received (“sub æternæ iræ maledictione”),[444] or else preceded them, inducing within his soul a profound disturbance (“ita furebam.”…), “I was terrified each time.”[445]

A further reason is the unfortunate after-effect that the supposed revelations from above had upon his mind. Outwardly, indeed, he seemed an incarnation of confidence, but, inwardly, the case was very different. Chapter xxxii. (vol. v.) of the present work will have shown how it was his new doctrines, and his overturning of the Church which accounted for his “agonies of soul,” his “pangs of hell” and “nightly combats” with the devil, or rather with his own conscience. “Why do you raise the standard of revolt against the house of the Lord?… Such thoughts upset one very much.”[446] His irritation, melancholy and pessimism were largely due to his disappointment with the results of his revelations. “They know it is God Whose Word we preach and yet they say: We shan’t listen.” “We are poor and indifferent trumpeters, but to the assembly of the heavenly spirits ours is a mighty call.” “My only remaining consolation is that the end of all cannot be far off.” “It must soon come to a head. Amen.”[447] And yet, for all that, he insisted on his divine mission so emphatically (above, vol. iii., p. 109 ff.).

The revelations which confirmed him in the idea of his mission deserve more careful examination than has hitherto been possible to us in the course of our narrative.

That Luther ever laid claim to having received his doctrine by a personal revelation from God has been several times denied in recent times by his defenders. They urge that he merely claimed to have received his doctrine from above, “in the same way that God reveals it to all true Christians”; in this and in no other sense, does he speak of his revelations, nor does he ascribe to himself any “peculiar mission.”

It is true Luther taught that the content of the faith to which every true Christian adheres had come into the world by a revelation bestowed on mankind; he also taught that the Holy Ghost lends His assistance to every man to enable him to grasp and hold fast to this revelation: “This is a wisdom such as reason has never framed, nor has the heart of man conceived it, no, not even the great ones of this world, but it is revealed from heaven by the Holy Ghost to those who believe the Gospel.”[448]—This, however, is not the question, but rather, whether he never gave out that he had reached his own fresh knowledge, and that reading of the Bible which he sets up against all the rest of Christendom, thanks to a private and particular illumination, and whether he did not base on such a revelation his claim to infallible certainty?

Luther’s Insistence on Private Revelation

Luther certainly never dreamt of making so bold and hazardous an assertion so long as a spark of hope remained in him that the Church of Rome would fall in with his doctrines. It was only gradually that the phantom of a personal revelation grew upon him, and, even later, its sway was never absolute, as we can see from our occasional glimpses into his inward struggles of conscience.

We may begin with one of his latest utterances, following it up with one of his earliest. Towards the end of his life he insisted on the suddenness with which the light streamed in upon him when he had at last penetrated into the meaning of Rom. i. 17 (in the Tower), thus setting the coping-stone on his doctrines by that of the certainty of salvation.[449] Again, at the outset of his public career, we meet with those words of which Adolf Harnack says: “Such self-reliance almost fills us with anxiety.”[450]

The words Harnack refers to are those in which Luther solemnly assures his Elector that he had “received the Evangel, not from man, but from heaven alone, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This he wrote in 1522 when on the point of quitting the Wartburg.[451]

In the same year in his “Wyder den falsch genantten geystlichen Standt,” full of the spirit he had inhaled at the Wartburg, he declared that he could no longer remain without “name or title” in order that he might rightly honour and extol the “Word, office and work he had from God.” For the Father of all Mercies, out of the boundless riches of His Grace, had brought him, for all his sinfulness, “to the knowledge of His Son Jesus Christ and set him to teach others until they too saw the truth”; for this reason he had a better right to term himself an “Evangelist by the Grace of God” than the bishops had to call themselves bishops. “I am quite sure that Christ Himself, Who is the Master of my doctrine, calls and regards me as such.” Hence he will not permit even “an angel from heaven to judge or take him to task concerning his doctrine”; “since I am certain of it I am determined to be judge, not only of you, but, as St. Paul says (Gal. i. 8), even of the angels, so that whoever does not accept my doctrine cannot be saved; for it is God’s and not mine, therefore my judgment also is not mine but God’s own.”[452]

Such Wartburg enthusiasm, where all that is wanting is the actual word revelation, agrees well with his statement about the sort of ultimatum (“Interminatio”) sent him by God: “Under pain of eternal wrath it had been enjoined on him from above,” that he must preach what had been given him; he describes this species of vision as one of the greatest favours God had bestowed on his soul.[453] Nor did he scruple to make use of the word “revelation.”

The dispute he had with Cochlæus in the presence of others at Worms in 1521 shows not only that he had sufficient courage to do this but also, that, previously, from whatever cause, he had hesitated to do so. We have Cochlæus’s already quoted account of the incident in the detailed report of his encounter with Luther.[454] It is true he only published it in 1540, but it is evidently based on notes made by the narrator at the time. In reply to the admonition, not to interpret Holy Scripture “arbitrarily, and against the authority and interpretation of the Church,” Luther urged that there might be circumstances where it was permissible to oppose the decrees of the Councils, for Paul said in 1 Corinthians: “If anything be revealed to another sitting, let the first hold his peace,”[455] though, so Luther proceeded, he had no wish to lay claim to a revelation. In the event, however, as he was always harking back to this instance of revelation mentioned by the Apostle it occurred to Cochlæus to pin him down to this expression. Hence, without any beating about the bush, he asked him: “Have you then received a revelation?” Luther looked at him, hesitated a moment and then said: “Yes, it has been revealed to me, ‘Est mihi revelatum.’” His opponent at once reminded him that, before this, he had protested against being the recipient of any revelation. Luther, however, said: “I did not deny it.” Cochlæus rejoined: “But who will believe that you have had a revelation? What miracle have you worked in proof of it? By what sign will you confirm it? Would it not be possible for anyone to defend his errors in this way?” The text in question speaks of a direct revelation. It was in this sense that Luther had appealed to it before, and that Cochlæus framed his question. It is impossible to understand Luther’s answer as referring to a revelation common to all true Christians. Either Luther made no answer to Cochlæus’s last words or it was lost in the interruption of his friend Hieronymus Schurf.[456] In any case his position was a difficult one and it was simpler for him when he repeated the same assertion later in his printed writings quietly to treat all objections with contempt. At any rate he never accused the above account given by Cochlæus of being false.

Again, in 1522, Luther declares in his sermons at Wittenberg,[457] that “it was God Who had set him to work on this scheme” (the reform of the faith), and had given him the “first place” in it. “I cannot escape from God but must remain so long as it pleases God my Lord; moreover, it was to me that God first revealed that the Word must be preached and proclaimed to you.” Hence his revelation was similar to that of the prophets, for he is alluding to the prophet Jonas when he says that he could “not escape from God.”[458] The Wittenbergers, he says, ought therefore to have consulted him before rashly undertaking their own innovations under Carlstadt’s influence: “We see here that you have not the Spirit though you may have an exalted knowledge of Scripture.”[459] Hence, on the top of his knowledge of Scripture, he himself possesses the “Spirit.”

From the twelvemonth that followed Luther’s spiritual baptism at the Wartburg also date the asseverations he makes, that his doctrine was, not his, but Christ’s own,[460] and that it was “certain he had his doctrines from heaven.”[461]

“By Divine revelation,” as we learn from him not long after, “he had been summoned as an anti-pope to undo, root out and sweep away the kingdom of malediction” (the Papacy).[462] In 1527 he assures us: This doctrine “God has revealed to me by His Grace.”[463] And, at a later period, though rather more cautiously, he does not shrink from occasionally making use of the word revelation. From the pulpit in 1532 he urged opponents in his own camp to lay aside their peculiar doctrines, because, “God has enjoined and commanded one man to teach the Evangel,” i.e. himself.[464]

So familiar is this idea to him that it intrudes itself into his conversations at home. It was the “Holy Ghost” who had “given” to him his doctrine, so he told his friends and pupils in his old age.[465] At Wittenberg, according to his own words which Mathesius noted down, they possessed, thanks to him, the divine revelation. “Whoever, after my death, despises the authority of the Wittenberg school, provided it remains the same as now, is a heretic and a pervert, for in this school God has revealed His Word.” He also complains in the same passage that the sectarians within the new fold who turned against him had fallen away from the faith.[466]

At that time, i.e. during the ’forties, the idea of an inspiration grew stronger in him. He boasts that his understanding of Romans i. 17 was due to the “illumination of the Holy Ghost,” and tells how he suddenly felt himself “completely born anew,” as if he had passed “through the open portals into Paradise itself,” and how, “at once, the whole of Scripture bore another aspect.”[467]

Thus his idea of the revelation with which he had been favoured gradually assumed in his mind a more concrete shape.

According to the funeral oration delivered by his friend Jonas on Feb. 19, 1546, at Eisleben, Luther often spoke to his friends of his revelations, hinting in a vague and mysterious way at the sufferings they had entailed. Jonas tells the people in so many words, “that Martin himself had often said: ‘What I endure and have endured for the doctrine of the beloved Evangel which God has again revealed to the world, no one shall learn from me here in this world, but on That Day it will be laid open.’ Only at the Last Day will he tell us what during his life he ever kept sealed up in his heart, viz. the great victories which the Son of God won through him against sin, devil, Papists and false brethren, etc. All this he will tell us and also what sublime revelations he had when he began to preach the Evangel, so that verily we shall be amazed and praise God for them.”[468]

Hence Luther had persuaded his friends that he had been favoured with particular revelations.

From all the above it becomes clear that the revelation which Luther claimed was regarded by him throughout as a true and personal communication from above, and not merely as a knowledge acquired by reflection and prayer under the Divine assistance common to all. It was in fact only by considering the matter in this light that he was able effectually to refute the objections of outsiders and to allay to some extent the storms within him. The very character of his revolt against the Church, against the tradition of a thousand years, against the episcopate, universities, Catholic princes and Catholic instincts of the nation demanded something more than could have been afforded by a mere appeal to the revelation common to all. Of what service would it have been to him in his struggles of conscience, and when contending with the malice and jealousy of the sects, to have laid claim to a vague, general revelation?

Nevertheless, the appeals Luther makes to the revelation he had received are at times somewhat vague, as some of the passages quoted serve to prove. We shall not be far wrong if we say that he himself was often not quite clear as to what he should lay claim. His ideas, or at any rate his statements, concerning the exalted communications he had received, vary with the circumstances, being, now more definite, now somewhat misty.

Here, as in the parallel case of his belief in his mission, his assertions are at certain periods more energetic and defiant than at others (see above, vol. iii., p. 120 ff.).

However this may be, the idea of a revelation in the strict sense was no mere passing whim; it emerges at its strongest under the influence of the Wartburg spirit, and, once more, summons up all its forces towards the end of his days, when Luther seeks for comfort amid his sad experiences and for some relief in his weariness. Yet, in him, the idea of a revelation always seems a matter of the will, something which he can summon to his assistance and to which he deliberately holds fast, and which, as occasion requires, is decked out with the necessary adjuncts of angels descending from heaven, visions, spirits, inward experiences, inward menaces, or triumphs over the temptations of the devil.

Some Apparent Withdrawals

Various apparently contradictory statements, such as the reader must expect to meet with in Luther, are not, however, wanting, even concerning his revelations.

Discordant statements of the sort do not, indeed, occur in the passages, where, as in the quotations given above, he is defending his theological innovations against the authority of the Church. Often they are a mere rhetorical trick to impress his hearers with his modesty. In his sermons at Wittenberg in 1522, for instance, he declared that he was perfectly willing to submit his “feeling and understanding” to anyone to whom “more has been revealed”; by this, however, he does not mean his doctrine but merely the practical details of the introduction of the new ritual of public worship, then being discussed at Wittenberg. This is clear from the very emphasis he here lays on his teaching, thanks to which the Wittenbergers now have the “Word of God true and undefiled,” and from his description of the devil’s rage who now sees that “the sun of the true Evangel has risen.”[469]

Again, when, in his later revision of the same course of sermons, we hear him say: “You must be disciples, not of Luther, but of Christ,”[470] and: “You must not say I am Luther’s, or I am the Pope’s, for neither has died for you nor is your master, but only Christ,”[471] he has not the least intention of denying the authority of the doctrine revealed to him, on the contrary, on the same page, he has it that, “Luther’s doctrine is not his but Christ’s own”;[472] he had already said, “Even were Luther himself or an angel from heaven to teach otherwise, let it be anathema.”[473] He is simply following St. Paul’s lead[474] and pointing out to his hearers the supreme source of truth; he still remains its instrument, the “Prophet,” “Evangelist” and “Ecclesiastes by the grace of God,” favoured, like the inspired Apostle of the Gentiles, with revelations.

Nevertheless, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact, that, subsequent to 1525, Luther tended at times to be less insistent on his revelations. From strategic considerations he was careful to keep more in the background his revelations from the Spirit now that the fanatics were also claiming their own special enlightenment by the “Spirit.” His eyes were now opened to the danger inherent in such arbitrary claims to revelation, and, accordingly, he now begins to insist more on the outward “Word.”[475]

It is true, that, in Nov., 1525, in refutation of the Zwinglian theologians of Strasburg, he still appealed not merely to his visions of angels (see above, p. 127) but also to the certain light of his doctrine inspired by the Holy Ghost, and to his sense of the “Spirit.” “I see very well,” he says, “that they have no certainty, but the Spirit is certain of His cause.”[476] Even then, however, a change had begun and he preferred to appeal to Holy Scripture, which, so he argued, spoke plainly in his favour, rather than to inspirations and revelations. Hence his asseveration that this outward Word of God has much more claim to consideration than the inward Word, which can so easily be twisted to suit one’s frame of mind. He now comes unduly to depreciate the inward Word and the Spirit which formerly he had so highly vaunted, though, on the other hand, he continues to teach that the Spirit and the inward enlightening of the Word are necessary for the interpretation of Holy Scripture.

His Commentary on Isaias contains a delightful attack on the “all-too spiritual folk, who, to-day, cry Spirit, Spirit!” “Let us not look for any private revelations. It is Christ who tells us to ‘search the Scriptures’ [John v. 39]. Revelations puff us up and make us presumptuous. I have not been instructed,” so he goes on, “either by signs or by special revelations, nor have I ever begged signs of God; on the contrary I have asked Him never to let me become proud, or be led astray from the outward Word through the devil’s tricks.” He then launches out against those who pretend they have “particular revelations on the faith,” being “misled by the devil.” These words occur in the revised and enlarged Scholia on Isaias published in 1534. It may, however, be that they did not figure in Luther’s lectures on Isaias (1527-30) but were appended somewhat later.[477]

After thus apparently disowning any title to private revelation and a higher light Luther’s inevitable appeal to the certainty of his doctrine only becomes the more confident. Thanks to his temptations and death-throes, he had become so certain, that he can declare: Possessed of the “Word” as I am, I have not the least wish “that an angel should come to me, for, now, I should not believe him.”

“Nevertheless, the time might well come,” so he continues in this passage of the Table-Talk, “when I might be pleased to see one [an angel] on certain matters.” “I do not, however, admit dreams and signs, nor do I worry about them. We have in Scripture all that we require. Sad dreams come from the devil, for everything that ministers to death and dread, lies and murder is the devil’s handiwork.”[478]

It is true Luther was often plagued by terrifying dreams, and as he numbered them among his “anxieties and death-throes” what he says about them may fittingly be utilised to complete the picture of his inward state. To such an extent was the devil able to affright him, so he says, that he “broke out into a sweat in the midst of his sleep”; thus “Satan was present even when men slept; but angels too were also there.”[479] He assures us, that, in his sleep, he had witnessed even the horrors of the Last Judgment.

The “Temptations” as one of Luther’s Bulwarks

The states of terror and the temptations he underwent were to Luther so many confirmations of his doctrine. Some of his utterances on this subject ring very oddly.

To be “in deaths often” was, according to him, a sort of “apostolic gift,” shared by Peter and Paul. In order to be a doctor above suspicion, a man must have experienced the pains of death and the “melting of the bones.” In the Psalms he hears, as it were, an echo of his own state of soul. “To despair where hope itself despairs,” and “to live in unspeakable groanings,” “this no one can understand who has not tasted it.” This he said in 1520 in a Commentary on the Psalms.[480] And, later, in 1530, when engaged at the Coburg in expounding the first twenty-five psalms: “‘My heart is become like wax melting in the midst of my bowels’ [Ps. xxi. 15]. What that was no one grasps who has not felt it.”[481] “In such trouble there must needs be despair, but, if I say: ‘This I do simply and solely at God’s command,’ there comes the assurance: Hence God will take your part and comfort you. It was thus we consoled ourselves at Augsburg.”[482]

Many others who followed him were also overtaken by similar distress of mind. Struggles of conscience and gloomy depression were the fate of many who flocked to his standard (cp. above, vol. iv., pp. 218-27). Johann Mathesius, Luther’s favourite pupil, so frequently referred to above, towards the end of his life, when pastor at Joachimsthal, once declared, when brooding sadly, that the devil with his temptations was sifting him as it were in a sieve and that he was enduring the pangs of hell described by David. The very mention of a knife led him to think of suicide. He was eager to hold fast to Christ alone, but this he could not do. After the struggle had lasted two or three months his condition finally improved.[483]

Such were Luther’s temptations, of which, afterwards, he did not scruple to boast. “Often did they bring us to death’s door,” he says of the mental struggles in which his new doctrine and practice of sheltering himself behind the merits of Christ involved him. But, nevertheless, “I will hold fast to that Man alone, even though it should bring me to the grave!”[484]

Again, in 1532, we hear him making his own the words: “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord” (Ps. cxxix. 1). The prophet is not complaining of any mere “worldly temptations,” but of “that anguish of conscience, of those blows and terrors of death such as the heart feels when on the brink of despair and when it fancies itself abandoned by God; when it both sees its sin and how all its good works are condemned by God the angry Judge.… When a man is sunk in such anxiety and trouble he cannot recover unless help is bestowed on him from above.… Nearly all the great saints suffered in this way and were dragged almost to the gates of death by sin and the Law; hence David’s exclamation: ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord!’”—The whole trend of what he says, likewise the counsels he gives on the remedies that may bring consolation, show plainly his attachment to this dark night of the soul and his conviction that he is but treading in the footsteps of the “great Saints” and “Prophets.”[485]

At any rate there is no room for doubt that this opened out a rich field for delusion; what he says depicts a frame of mind in which hallucinations might well thrive; we shall, however, leave it to others to determine how far pathological elements intervene.

In the certainty that his cause was inspired he calmly awaits the approach of the fanatics; they can serve only to strengthen in him his sense of confidence. Of them and their “presumptuous certainty” he makes short work in a conversation noted down by Cordatus:[486] Marcus Thomae (Stübner) he requests to perform a miracle in proof of his views, warning him, however, that “My God will assuredly forbid your God to let you work a sign”; he also hurls against him the formula of exorcism: “God rebuke thee, Satan” (Zach. iii. 2).[487] Nicholas Storch and Thomas Münzer, so he assures us, openly show their presumption. A pupil of Stübner was anxious to set himself up as a teacher, but the fellow had only been able to talk fantastic rubbish to him. Of people such as these he had come across quite sixty. Campanus, again, is simply to be numbered among the biggest blasphemers. Carlstadt, who wanted to be esteemed learned, was only distinguished by his arrogant mouthing. Nowhere was there profundity or truth. “Not one of you has endured such anxieties and temptations as I.”[488] “And yet Carlstadt wanted us to bow to his teaching.… Like Christ, however, I say: ‘My doctrine is not mine but his that sent me’ (John vii. 16). I cannot betray it as the world would have me do. The malice of all these ministers of Satan only serves my cause and exercises me in indomitable firmness.”[489] Hence he derives equal benefit from the malice of his opponents within the fold and from the inward apprehensions of which Satan was the cause.

The manifold errors which had sprung from the seed of his own principles, in any other man would have elicited doubts and scruples; Luther, however, finds in them fresh support for his dominating conviction: My glorious sufferings at the devil’s hands are being multiplied and, thereby, too, the witness on behalf of my doctrine is being strengthened.

The mystical halo of the “man of suffering” certainly made a great impression on some of his young followers and admirers such as Spangenberg, Mathesius, Cordatus and Veit Dietrich. On others of his circle the effect was not so lasting.

Melanchthon, for instance, was well acquainted with Luther’s fits of mystic terror, yet how severe is the criticism he passes on Luther’s ground-dogmas, particularly after the latter’s death.

The doctrine of man’s entire unfreedom in doing what is good may serve as an instance.

This palladium of the new theology had been discovered by Luther when overwhelmed with despair; by it he sought to commit himself entirely into God’s hands and blindly and passively to await salvation from Him; this he regarded as the only way out of inward trials; no man could face the devil with his free will; he himself, so he wrote, “would not wish to have” free-will, even were it offered him (“nollem mihi dari liberum arbitrium”), in order that he might at least be safe from the devil; nay, even were there no devil, free-will would still be to him an abomination, because, with it, his “conscience would never be safe and at rest.” The words occur in the work he declared to be his very best and a lasting heirloom for posterity.[490] This particular doctrine, Melanchthon was, however, so far from regarding as a “revelation,” that he wrote in 1559: “Both during Luther’s lifetime and also later, I withstood that Stoical and Manichæan delusion which led Luther and others to write, that all works whether good or evil, in all men whether good or bad, take place of necessity. Now it is evident that this doctrine is contrary to God’s Word, subversive of all discipline and a blasphemy against God.”[491] Melanchthon did not even scruple to call upon the State to intervene and prohibit such things being said. In his Postils, dealing with the question whether heretics should be put to death, he declares: “By divine command the public authorities must proceed against idolaters and also interdict blasphemous language, as, for instance, when a man teaches that good or evil takes place of necessity and under compulsion.”[492]

He could not well have said anything more deadly against the foundation on which Luther’s whole edifice was reared.

In spite of all, Luther always stood by his pseudo-mystic idea of his having received revelations. Without it he could never have ventured to threaten as he did the secular and ecclesiastical authorities who opposed his dogmas, with “extermination” and “great revolts,” or to proclaim so confidently that they would fall, blown over by the breath of Christ’s mouth, or to prophesy that, even beyond the grave, he would be to the impenitent Papists, what, according to the prophet Osee, God threatened to be to Israel, viz. “a bear in the road and a lion in the path.”[493]

His whole process of thought was, as it were, held captive in the heavy chains of this idea.

Three Perverted Theories Dominating Luther’s Outlook

In order to enter even more deeply into Luther’s mentality three categories of ideas by which he determined his life well deserve consideration here. Only at the point we have now reached can some of his statements be judged of aright.

Among his strange ideas must be reckoned his threefold conviction, first, that he was called to be the opponent of Antichrist, secondly, that Popery was a thing of boundless and utter depravity, thirdly, that in his own personal experiences and gifts he was blessed beyond all other men. Here again we shall have to refer to many passages already quoted and also to some fresh ones of Luther’s which afford a glimpse into his perverted mode of thought and incredible prejudice.

His obstinate belief in his mission against Antichrist keeps the thought of a mortal combat ever before his mind; a decisive battle at the approaching end of all, between heaven and hell, between Christ and the dragon. This struggle, such as he viewed it, needless to say existed only in his imagination. If, according to him, the devil fights so furiously that at times Christ Himself seems on the point of succumbing, this is only because Luther’s cause does not thrive, or because Luther himself is again the butt of gloomy fears. As early as 1518, as we know, he fancied he had detected the Papal Antichrist, and could read the thoughts of Satan, who was at work behind his opponents.[494] In this idea he subsequently confirmed himself by his reading of the Old-Testament prophecies, on which, till almost the very end of his life, he was wont laboriously to base new calculations. From the dawn of his career it has been borne in on him with ever-growing clearness how Christ, using Luther as His tool, will overthrow, as though in sport, this “man of sin” of which Popery is the embodiment; at the very close of his days, when the sight of the evils rampant in Germany was causing him the utmost anxiety, he seems to hear the trump that heralds the Coming of the Judge.

Using images that suggest a positive obsession, he depicts the world as full of the traces of Antichrist and the devil his forerunner. Yet all the machinations of the old serpent avail only to strengthen the defiance with which he opposes Satan and all his myrmidons. The signs in the heavens above and on the earth below all point to him, the great, albeit unworthy, champion of God’s cause. Though Antichrist and the powers that are his backers in this world may for the time have the better of the struggle this is but the last flicker of the dying flame which, by prophecy and vision, he had been predestined to extinguish (above, vol. iii., p. 165 ff., etc.).

Hence his confidence in unveiling the action of Antichrist as portrayed in the birth of the Monk-Calf; like some seer he hastens to pen a special work for the instruction of the people in the meaning of the Calf’s anatomy.[495] His growing uncanny imagination goes on to describe, in colours more and more glaring, the abominations of that Antichrist from whom he has torn the veil. The fury of the Turk is but child’s play to the horror of the Papal Antichrist. That portion of the Table-Talk which deals with Antichrist, comprising no less than 165 sections brimful of the maddest fancies, begins with the description of Antichrist’s head. “The head is at the same time the Pope and the Turk. A living animal must have both soul and body. The spirit or soul of Antichrist is the Pope, his flesh or body the Turk”;[496] the concluding words on the subject are in the same vein: “The blood of Abel cries for vengeance on them,” viz. on the followers of the Pope-Antichrist.[497] These chapters of the Table-Talk dealing with Antichrist scarcely do credit to the human mind. We can, however, understand them, for to Luther nothing is plainer than that the “nature of his foes is utterly devilish”; all he sees is the claws, paws, horns and poison-fangs of Antichrist.[498]

Luther revealed the anti-Christian nature of the Pope, in accordance with the prophet Daniel whom he read on the principle: “Sic volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas”; “Nevertheless we attach but little importance to our deliverance and are very ungrateful. This, however, is our consolation, viz. that the Last Day cannot now be long delayed. Daniel’s prophecy is fulfilled to the letter and paints the Papacy as plainly as though it had been written post factum.”[499]

In spite of Antichrist and “all that is mighty” the Article concerning Holy Scripture and the Cross still holds the field. And, so Luther proceeds in the Table-Talk, “I, a poor monk, had to come,” with “an unfortunate nun” [Catherine Bora who doubtless was present], and “seize upon it and hold it. Thus ‘verbum’ and ‘crux’ are the conquerors; they make us confident.”[500]

The reason why Luther longed with such ardour for the coming of the Last Day has already been shown to have been his growing pessimism and the depression resulting from the sad experiences with which he had met (above, vol. v., p. 245 ff.). In his elastic way he, however, manages, when preaching to the people, to give a rather different reason for his prediction of the fall of Antichrist and the coming of the end. In Popery, he declares, we were not allowed to speak of the Last Judgment; “how we dreaded it”; “we pictured Christ to ourselves as a Judge to Whom we had to give account. To that we came, thanks to our works.” But now it is quite otherwise. “Now on the contrary I should be glad if the Last Day were to come, because there is no greater consolation.”[501] Here he speaks as though inspired solely by the purest of intentions when he looked forward to the coming of the vanquisher of Antichrist.

* * * * *

The wickedness of his opponents and the weapons to be used against them constitute a second group of ideas. Here, once again, the psychological or pathological appreciation of Luther’s strange and morbid train of thought makes imperative a further investigation of certain points already discussed in other connections.

Often Luther seems unable to stem the torrent of charges and insults that streams from him as soon as adversaries appear in his field of vision. Frequently it almost looks as though some superhuman agency outside himself had opened the sluice-gates of his terrible eloquence. He is determined to rage against them “even to the very grave”; his wrath against them “refreshes his blood.” It is actually when expressing his hatred in the most incredible language that he is most sensible of the “nearness of God.” Do not his Popish foes deserve even worse than he, a mere man, is able to heap on them? Those scoundrels who “only seek a pretext for telling lies against us and misleading simple folk, though quite well aware that they are in the wrong.”[502] Their palpable obstinacy, in spite of their better judgment, was so great, so he argued, that it was only because Luther advocated it that they refused to hear of any moral reform, for instance, of the clergy marrying, etc., otherwise they would have held it “quite all right.” He does not shrink from demanding that such roguery should “be hunted down with hounds,” no less than the wickedness of these “most depraved of brothel-keepers, open adulterers, stealers of women and seducers of maidens.”[503]

The most curious thing, however, one, too, that must weigh heavily in the balance when judging of his mental state, is that, as shown elsewhere, by dint of repeating this he actually came to believe that his caricature of Catholicism was perfectly true to fact. The calumnies become part of his mental framework, the very frequency and heat of his charges blinding him to all sense of their enormity, and clouding his outlook. What is even worse is, that, even when he occasionally glimpses the truth he yet believes it lawful to deviate from it where this suits his purpose. Thus he came to formulate the dangerous theory of the lie of necessity and the useful lie which we have already described in his own words. He goes so far as to say, that the nature of his foes was utterly devilish (above, p. 155, n. 4), and, when assailing the wickedness of Popery, he considers “everything lawful for the salvation of souls” (“omnia nobis licere arbitramur”).[504] Our “tricks, lies and stumblings” may “easily be atoned for, for God’s Mercy watches over us.”[505]

On other occasions his opponents become “a pack of fools”; they deserve nothing but scorn and no heed should be paid to their objections. Even should the world write against him he will only pity them. All earlier ages and “a thousand Fathers and Councils of the Church” cannot rob him of the golden grains of truth which he alone possesses.

No sooner does he speak of the Papists and their religion, than, irresistibly, there rises up before his mind the picture of the “tonsures, cowls, frocks and bawling in the choir,” in short the so-called holiness-by-works, on which he seizes to load ridicule on all that is Popish.

This Luther is apt to do even when treating of subjects quite alien to this sort of polemics.

In his “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen” (1539) he has a lengthy dissertation on the marks of the Church; the subject being a wide one he is anxious to get on with it, yet, even so, his pen again and again wanders off into vituperation. He apostrophises himself incidentally as follows: “But how is it that I come again to speak of the infamous, filthy menials of the Pope? Let them begone, and, for ever,” etc. With these words he breaks off a wild outburst in which he had declared that the Pope and his men were persecuting the Word of God, i.e. Luther’s doctrine, “though well aware of its truth; very bad Apostles, Evangelists and Prophets must they be, like the devil and his angels.”[506]

Yet, on the very next page, the same subject crops up again. A lay figure serves to introduce it. To him Luther says: “There you come again dragging in your Pope with you, though I wanted to have no more to do with you. Well, as you insist on annoying me with your unwelcome presence I shall give you a thoroughly Lutheran reception.” He then proceeds to enlarge in “Lutheran” fashion on the fact, that the Pope “condemns the wedded life of the bishops and priests.” “If a man has seduced a hundred maidens, violated a hundred honourable widows and has besides a hundred prostitutes behind him, he is allowed to be not merely a preacher or parson but even a bishop or Pope, and though he keeps on in his evil ways he would still be tolerated in such an office.” “Are you not mad and foolish? Out on you, you rude fools and donkeys!… Truly Popes and bishops are fine fellows to be the bridegrooms of the Churches. Better suited were they to be the bridegrooms of female keepers of bawdy houses, or of the devil’s own daughter in hell! True bishops are the servants of this bride and she is their wife and mistress.” According to you “matrimony is unclean, and a merdiferous sacrament which cannot please God”; at the same time it is supposed to be right and a sacrament. “See how the devil cheats and befools you when he teaches you such twaddle!” Further on he begins anew: “To violate virgins, widows and married women, to keep many prostitutes and to commit all sorts of hidden sins, this he is free to do, and thereby becomes worthy of the priestly calling; but this is the sum total of it all: The Pope, the devil and his Church are enemies to the married state as Dan. (xi. 37) says, and are determined to abuse it in this way so that the priestly office may not thrive. This amounts to saying that the state of matrimony is adulterous, sinful, impure and abominated of God.”

Bidding farewell to Popery, Luther gives it a truly “Lutheran” send off: “So for the present let us be done with the Ass-Pope and the Pope-Ass, and all his asinine lawyers. We will now get back to our own affairs.”

This, however, he only partially succeeds in doing. After discussing the 6th and 7th mark of the Church the “spirit” once more seizes him. The caricature of Popery with which he is wont to pacify his conscience here again figures with the whole of the inevitable paraphernalia: “[Holy] water, salt, herbs, tapers, bells, images, Agnus Dei, pallia, altar, chasubles, tonsures, fingers, hands. Who can enumerate them all? Finally the monks’ cowls,” etc. A page further we again read: “Holy water, Agnus Dei, bulls, briefs, Masses and monks’ cowls.… The devil has decked himself out in them all.”

Weary as he is at the end of the lengthy work, he is still anxious to “tread under foot the Pope, as Psalm xci. [xc., verse 13] says: ‘Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and shalt trample under foot the lion and the dragon’; this we will do with the help and strength of the Seed of the woman that has crushed and still crushes the serpent’s head, albeit we know that he will turn and bite our heel. To the same blessed Seed of the woman be all praise and glory together with the Father and the Holy Ghost, One True God and Lord for ever and ever. Amen.”

Here, in the few pages we have selected for quotation, the whole psychological Luther-problem unrolls itself.

In the pictures his imagination conjures up, the sacrifice of the Mass—the most sacred mystery of Catholic worship—occupies a special place. It is the idolatrous abomination foretold by the prophet, or rather the idol Moasim itself (above, vol. iv., p. 524). One wonders whether he really succeeded in persuading himself that his greatest sin, a sin that cried to heaven for vengeance and deserved eternal damnation (above, p. 136; cp. vol. iv., p. 509), was his having—as a monk and at a time when he knew no better—celebrated the sacrifice of the Mass? It is true that, in the solemn profession he makes of his belief in the Sacrament (1528), when resolved to confess his faith “before God and the whole world,” he says: “These were my greatest sins, that I was such a holy monk and for over fifteen years angered, plagued and martyred my dear Master so gruesomely by my many Masses.” The words occur at the close of his “Vom Abendmal Christi Bekentnis,” with the asseveration, that he would stand firm in this faith to the very end; “and were I, which God forbid, under stress of temptation or in the hour of death to say otherwise, then [what I might say] must be accounted as nought and I hereby openly proclaim it to be false and to come from the devil. So help me My Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.”[507]

According to what he once remarked in 1531 (above, p. 136 f.) it was, however, not the devil who was prompting him to despair by calling up his crying sin of having said Mass. If Luther is indeed telling the truth, and if his doings as a zealous monk really seemed to him to be his worse sins, then we can only marvel at his confusion of mind having gone so far. From other admissions we should rather gather that what disquieted his conscience was more the subversion of the olden worship, the ruin of the religious life and, in fact, the whole working of the innovations. And yet, here, we have a solemn assurance that the very contrary was the case.

It is in itself a problem how he contrives to make such frightful sins of his monastic life—into which, on his own showing, he had entered in ignorance—and of the Masses which he had said all unaware of their wickedness.

But, in his polemics, such is the force with which he is swept along, that he does not pause to consider his blatant self-contradictions, or how much he is putting himself at the mercy of his opponents, or how inadequately his rhetoric and all his playing to the gallery hides the lack of valid proofs and the deficiencies of his reading of Scripture.

As for his foes, in his mind’s eye he sees them wavering and falling, blown over, as it were, by the strength of his reasoning, even when they are not overtaken and slain by the righteous judgment of God. When need arises he has ready a list of deaths, particularly of sudden ones, by which opponents had been snatched away.[508] The “blessed upheaval,” however, which is one day to carry them all off together, is, so at least his morbid fancy tells him, still delayed by his prayers.

* * * * *

As for himself personally, he stood under the spell of a train of thought displaying pathological symptoms, which, taken in the lump, must raise serious questions as to the nature of his changing mental state.

Being chosen by God for such great things, being not merely the “prophet of the Germans” but also destined to bring back the Gospel to the whole Christian world, Providence, in his opinion, has equipped him with qualities such as have hitherto rarely graced a man. This he does not tire of repeating, albeit he ever refers his gifts to God. He is fond of comparing himself not merely with the Popish doctors of his day but also with the most famous of bygone time. In the same way he is fond of measuring foes within the fold by the standard of his own greatness. He is thus betrayed into utterances such as one usually hears only from those affected with megalomania; this sort of thing pleases him so well, that, intent on his own higher mission, he fails to see the bad taste of certain of his exaggerations and how repulsive their tone is.[509]

God at all times has saved His Church “by means of individuals and for the sake of a few”; this Luther pointed out to his friends in 1540, instancing Adam, Abraham, Moses, Elias, Isaias, Augustine, Ambrose and others. “God also did something by means of Bernard and now again through me, the new Jeremias. And so the end draws nigh!”[510] The end, however, for which he has made everything ready, may now come quite peacefully and speedily, for he has not merely done “something,” but “everything that pertains to the knowledge of God has been restored”; “the Gospel has been revealed and the Last Day is at the door.”[511]

Fancying himself the passive tool of Divine Providence, it becomes lawful for him deliberately to scatter over the world his literary bomb-shells, exclaiming: God wills it, for, did He not, He could prevent it! He flings broadcast atrocious charges of a character to arouse men’s worst passions, and, at the same time, writes to his friends: If it is too much, God at our prayer must provide a remedy.[512] Hence it is God Who must bear the blame for everything, seeing that He works through Luther. God made him a Doctor of Holy Scripture, let Him therefore see to it.

He “throws down the keys at the door” of God when the work goes ill. Why did He will it? “I cannot stop the course of events,” he says somewhat more truly in 1525, “for matters have gone too far”; he adds, however: “I will shut my eyes and leave God to act; He will do as He pleases.”[513]

This way of thinking was nothing new in Luther, but may be traced in his earliest literary efforts, which only shows how deeply it was rooted in his mind. “In all I do I wish to be led, not by the rede and deed of man, but by the rede and deed of God!” so he said in 1517, when declining the advice of those who only wished to serve his best interests; yet, in the same letter in which these words occur, he confesses his “precipitancy, presumption and prejudice,” qualities “on account of which he was blamed by all.”[514]

Later, too, as we know, he saw in things both great and small the hand of God at work in him; all his efforts and even his very mistakes were God’s, not his. It was by God that, while yet a monk, he had been “forcibly torn from the Hours,”[515] i.e. freed from the duty of reciting the Divine Office; God had led him like a blinkered charger into the midst of the battle; it was God, again, Who had “flung him into matrimony” and Who had laid upon him, the “wonderful monk,” the burden of preaching to the great ones and the tenor of his message. “Hence you ought to believe my word absolutely … but, even to this day, people do not believe that my preaching is the Word of God.… But, on it I will stake my soul, that I preach the true and pure Word of God, and for it I am also ready to die.… If you believe it you will be saved, if you don’t you will be damned.”[516]

Seeing the tumults and disorders that had arisen through him, he cries: “It is the Lord Who does this”; “we see God’s plan in these things”; “It was God Who began it”; “in our doings we are guided by the Divine Counsel alone.”[517]

It is when in such a frame of mind that he detects those signs and wonders that witness against his foes; given the magnitude of the war he was waging whilst waiting for the coming of the Judge, these signs were no more to be wondered at than the obstinacy of his foes: “Now that the end of the world is coming the people [the Papists] storm and rage against God most gruesomely, blaspheming and condemning the Word of God, though knowing it to be indeed the Word and the Truth. And, on the top of this, are the many dreadful signs and wonders in the skies and among almost all creatures, which are a terrible menace to them.”[518]

Though quite full of the idea that his own doctrine was alone right, yet, as already shown, he went in early days so far as to grant to every man freedom of belief and the right to read Scripture according to his lights; for to him every Christian is a judge of Holy Scripture, a doctor and a tool of the Holy Ghost. The assumption underlying this, viz. that, in spite of all, the necessary unity of doctrine would be preserved, is not easy to explain. When, however, experience stepped in and disproved the assumption, Luther’s behaviour became even more inexplicable. He was by nature so disposed to ignore the claims of logic that the contradiction between his demand that all should bow to his doctrine, and such theories as that the Bible is, for all, the true and only fount of knowledge, and that no other outward ecclesiastical authority exists, never seems to have troubled him. Though he claimed to be the “liberator of minds and consciences,” he, nevertheless, called on the authorities to put down all other doctrines.[519]

The dignity of his chair at Wittenberg is exalted by him to giddy heights. “This university and town,” he said of Wittenberg, may vie with any others. “All the highest authorities of the day are at one with us, like Amsdorf, Brenz and Rhegius. Such men are our correspondents.” In comparison, the sects are simply ludicrous in their insignificance. Woe to those within the fold who dare to run counter to Luther, “like ‘Jeckel’ and ‘Grickel’; they imagine that they alone are clever and that they, like ‘Zwingel’ also, never learnt anything from us! Yet who knew anything 25 years ago? Who stood by me 21 years since, when God, against both my will and my knowledge, led me into the fray? Alas, what a misfortune is ambition!” This he said in 1540,[520] but already eight years before he had complained bitterly: “Each one wants to make himself out to be alone in knowing everything.… Everywhere we find the same Master Wiseacre, who is so clever that he can lead a horse by its tail.” Though one alone has received from God the mission of preaching the Gospel, yet “there are others, even among his pupils, who think they know ten times more about it than he.… Then, hey presto, another doctrine is set up.”[521] “Deadly harm” to Christianity is the result; nevertheless, according to Christ’s prophecy, “factions and sects” there must be; but their source is and remains the devil[522]—who, according to Luther, is the true God of this world in which indeed his finger can everywhere be seen. (See above, vol. v., p. 275 ff.)

Strange indeed is the frame of mind here presented to the observer. So much is Luther the plaything of his fancy and the feeling of the moment, that, at times he seems the victim of a sort of self-suggestion and to be following blindly the idea which happens to hold the field.

His judgment being seen to be so confused, it becomes easier to estimate at their right value certain of his ideas, particularly his conviction that he and his cause owed their preservation to a series of palpable miracles. He contrived to spread among his pupils the belief that “holy Luther” was the greatest prophet since the time of the Apostles.[523] Yet anyone who reflects how Luther could devote a special tract to proving that so everyday an occurrence as the “escape” of a nun from her convent was worthy of being deemed a great miracle for all time, can only marvel at the facility with which Luther could delude himself.[524]

Other Abnormal Lines of Thought and Behaviour

Luther’s action presents many other problems to the psychologist, for instance, in its waverings and contradictions. Strong in his belief in his Divine mission, he roundly abuses kings and princes in the vilest terms, and yet, at the same time, he teaches respect and obedience towards them and even sets himself up as a model in this respect, all according to his mood and as they happen to be favourable to him or the reverse. On the one hand, he presumes to incite the people to acts of violence, and, on the other, he preaches no less cogently the need of calmness and submission. He boasts of the courage with which he had dashed into the very jaws of Behemoth, and of his utter contempt for his foes; yet this same Luther is obsessed by the idea that his own life is threatened by poison and sorcery, just as his party is menaced by the hired assassins of the monks and Papists. While he extols the University of Wittenberg as the bulwark of theological unity, he is at the same time so distrustful of the doctrine of his friends that his intercourse with them suffers, and, to at least one of his intimates, Wittenberg becomes a “cave of the Cyclops.”

Such contradictions and many of the like combined to induce in him an abnormal state of mind. Harmony and consistency of thought and feeling was something he never knew. Hence the charge brought against him, not merely by opponents, but even by many of his own followers, viz. of being muddled, illogical and not sure of his ground.

While he is perfectly able at times to speak and write with such candour and truth that one cannot but admire the wholesome sense, and sober, witty, cheery style of his literary productions, yet their tone and character change entirely as soon as it becomes a question of his polemics or of his Evangel. Then his mind becomes overcast, his thoughts pursue one another like storm-clouds, assuming meanwhile the strangest shapes and the reader is over whelmed by a torrent of mingled abuse and paradox. His very proofs are caught up in the whirl and become so distorted that it is often impossible even to tell whether they are meant in earnest or are merely in the nature of a challenge.

According to Luther, to mention only a few of the strangest of his sayings, his doctrine of justification and the forgiveness of sins is present “in all creatures” and is confirmed by analogy.[525] The very doctrine of creation rests on the doctrine of justification as on “its foundation.”[526] “If the article of our souls’ salvation is embraced and adhered to with a firm faith, then the other articles follow naturally, for instance, that of the Trinity.”[527]

Marriage he finds stamped on the whole of nature, “even on the hardest stones.” New-born infants he assumes capable of eliciting an act of faith in baptism; simply because he could not otherwise defend against the Anabaptists the traditional infant baptism and at the same time maintain that the efficacy of the sacraments depends on faith. His doctrine of the spiritual omnipresence of the body of Christ is an absurdity involving the presence of Christ in all food; but even this is not too much for him if it enables him to defend his theory of the Supper. His imputation-theory led him to that considered utterance which has shocked so many: “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still.”[528] “Sic volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas,” was elsewhere his answer to another objection.[529]

He made no odds about declaring rhetorically, of all classes of men and all branches of religious knowledge: that, “in a word, before me no one knew anything.”[530] Of the daring eloquence he can use when expressing such ideas we have a sample in the statement: “Were the Papists, particularly those who are now bawling at me in their writings, all stamped together in the wine-press and then boiled down and distilled seven times over, not a quarter would be left capable of using their tongues to teach even one article [of the Catechism], nor from the whole of their doctrine could so much be drawn as would serve to teach a manservant how to behave in God’s sight towards his master or a maid towards her mistress.”[531] He alone, Luther, it was, who had brought to all ranks and classes throughout the world “a good conscience and order.”[532]

Finally we have the paradox apparent in his practical instructions and the curious behaviour into which his belief in his mission occasionally led him. We may recall the means to be employed for overcoming temptations, one of the mildest of which was a good drink,[533] and the measures to be taken to induce peace of soul. “Break out into abuse,” such is his advice, and that will bring inward peace.[534] If this does not work, then coarse humour will often succeed, one of those jests, for instance, where the sacred and sublime is vulgarised simply to raise a laugh. “Against the devil Luther makes use of ‘stronger buffoonery’ and dismisses him curtly, nay, often rudely.”[535] Pointless jests often spoil the force of his words. For instance, he found himself in a difficulty about the second wife whom one of Carlstadt’s followers, acting on Luther’s own principles, wished to take in addition to his ailing spouse; whilst stipulating that the man must first “feel his conscience assured and convinced by the Word of God,” and doing his best to dissuade him from taking such a step, Luther adds in a jesting tone, that it were perhaps better to let the matter take its course, as at Orlamünde (under the rule of Carlstadt and his Old-Testament ideas) they would soon be introducing circumcision and the Mosaic Law in its entirety.[536]

His instability of mind and ever-changing feeling ended by impressing a peculiar stamp on his whole mentality.

At one time he is delighted to see all things subject to the new Evangel, and extols the gigantic success of his efforts; at another he complains bitterly that the world is turning its back on the Word and deserting the little flock of true Evangelicals. Thus the world could promptly assume in his mind quite contradictory aspects. Of his alternating moods of confidence and despair he told his friends: “My moods vary quite a hundred times a day—nevertheless I stand up to the devil.”[537] Hence he was aware of his vacillations, though on the same occasion he declares that he knows right well how Holy Scripture strengthens him against them. He also feels and acknowledges his inconsistency, in being, for all his changeableness, so rigid and obstinate in his dealings with his friends. They knew his character, he said, and called it “obstinate.”[538]

Profound depression can alone account for the step he took in 1530, when, for a while, he discontinued his sermons at Wittenberg because he was sick of the indifference of his hearers to the Word of God and disgusted with their conduct. The editor of the sermons of this year, which have only recently been published, remarks justly, that “the only possible explanation of this step is a pathological one.”[539] Luther even went so far as to declare from the pulpit that he was “not going to be a swine-herd.”[540] Yet, a little after, during the journey to the Coburg, a sudden change occurred, and we find Luther making jokes and writing in a quite optimistic vein, and, no sooner had he reached his new abode, than he plunged into new literary labours. Nevertheless, whilst at the Castle, he was again a victim of intense depression, was visited by Satan’s “embassy” and even vouchsafed a glimpse of the enemy of God. On his departure from the Coburg good humour again got the better of him, as we see from his jovial letter to Baumgärtner of Oct. 4, 1530, and on reaching Wittenberg, he was soon up to his ears in work, so that he could write: “I am not only Luther, but Pomeranus, Vicar-General, Moses, Jethro and I know not who else besides.”[541] The facility with which his moods altered is again apparent when, in his last days, he left Wittenberg in disgust only to return again forthwith in the best of spirits. (See below, xxxix., 1.)

Yet in his attitude to the olden Church this same man, who otherwise shows himself so instable, knows how to display such defiant obstinacy that Protestants who look too exclusively at this side of his character have even been able to speak of his inflexible firmness. What steels him here is his ardent belief in his calling.

The idea of his vocation ever serves to help him over his difficulties. An instance of that marvellous elasticity of mind with which he seizes on his calling to pacify both himself and his friends, is to be found in an intimate conversation held after the “greatest of his temptations” in 1527, and recorded by Bugenhagen. After Luther had declared that he saw nothing to regret in his severity towards his foes he went on to speak, with tears in his eyes, of the sects that would spring up and which his friends would not be able to withstand. He proceeded to admit that “he was sorry if he had given scandal by his buffoonery and by his vituperation,[542] but that the cause could not be displeasing to the pious, for he loved mankind [this is Bugenhagen’s remark] too much and was an enemy to all hypocrisy.” “God had not ordained” that he, so Luther here declares, “should appear as a stern and austere figure. The world finds no sins (‘crimina’) wherewith to reproach me, but, because it follows its own judgment, it takes great offence at me, as I see. Possibly,” so he goes on, “God wishes to delude the blind and ungrateful world (‘mundum stultum facere’) so that it may perish in its contempt and never see what excellent gifts God has bestowed on me alone out of so many thousands, wherewith I am to minister unto those who are His friends. Thus the world, which refuses to acclaim the word of salvation which God sends through me, will find in me, according to the divine counsel, what offends it and is to it a stumbling-block. For this God is answerable; for I shall pray that I may never be to any a cause of scandal by my sins.”

“This I learnt with wondrous joy from his own lips,” adds Bugenhagen.[543] Others will, however, find Luther’s enigmatical train of thought more difficult to understand.

* * * * *

The above are but a few instances of an abnormal turn of mind; of the like the present work contains others in abundance. Anyone desirous of penetrating further into the folds and windings of a mind so involved should study Luther’s letters, particularly those dating from 1517 to 1522 and from 1540 to 1546. He will there find much of the same sort, which can hardly be termed either sane or reasonable; but even the passages we have quoted suffice to reveal in him an uncanny power of self-deception such as few historic characters display. Many a great genius has betrayed psychological peculiarities, indeed it seems at times to be the fate of those endowed with eminent gifts to overstep the boundaries and to venture further than the reason and reflection of thinking men can follow.[544] That Luther carried certain mental peculiarities to their utmost limit is plain from what we have seen, nor can it be right to close one’s eyes to the fact.

Luther showed the defects of a “genius” not least in his vituperation and in the other far from commendable methods he used in his polemics. It was precisely these defects which led Erasmus to question whether he was quite in his right mind. “Had a man said this in the delirium of fever, could he have uttered anything more insane?” Thus Erasmus in his “Hyperaspistes.”[545] He often speaks of his opponent’s feverish fancies. He denies that his spirit is a “sober” one, and maliciously supposes that he was drunk. In spite of his usual moderation and reticence, the scholar, when dealing with Luther’s assertions, constantly uses such words as “delirus,” “insanus,” “lymphatus,” “sine mente,” “mera insania.” On one occasion he says of the “devils, spectres, ‘lamiæ,’ ‘megæræ’ and other more than tragic words” which Luther was addicted to flinging at his foes, that such a habit was a “sign of coming madness” (“venturæ insaniæ præsagia”); elsewhere he views with misgiving the sort of compulsion (“non agere sed agi”) which urges Luther to abuse all who differ from him.[546]

In other circles, too, the opinion prevailed that Luther was suffering from some sort of mental disease. We may recall the remarks of Boniface Amerbach, who was not unkindly disposed to Luther, in sending the latter’s tract of 1534 against Erasmus, to his brother Basil (above, vol. iv., p. 183).

In Luther’s immediate surroundings we also find traces of a fear that the Master stood in some danger of losing his mind.

A thoroughgoing investigation of the matter by some unbiassed expert in mental diseases would, however, be of immeasurably greater value than the mere opinions of contemporary admirers and opponents. But the difficulty is to find an impartial expert. Protestant theologians will not easily be found ready to agree with Catholic writers regarding the process which made of a quondam monk the founder of the Protestant faith, or to see Luther’s scruples in quite the same light. Entire agreement would seem for ever excluded, owing to differences of outlook so deep-seated. If, to some, Luther appears as a “new Paul,” and as one who removed every obstacle to free religious research, then the view they take of his inward change and later spiritual life must perforce be coloured to some extent by this idea.

Nor must the fact be lost to sight that many of the apparently suspicious symptoms were, in Luther’s case, quite wilful. Thus his outbreaks of fury against Popery, the psychological origin of which we have already described (vol. iv., p. 306 ff.), are largely an outcome of the feelings of hatred he deliberately encouraged, and a reaction against his earlier and better convictions. Again, self-deception and lack of self-control, i.e. moral elements, played a great part in him. Since, however, even at the outset of his career he already displayed these moral defects, they must be carefully distinguished from his morbid states and no less from his doubts and remorse of conscience.

At the very least, however, we should give to the purely historical facts such unbiassed, broadminded recognition as that editor of the great Weimar Edition of Luther’s works (see above, p. 168), who, as we heard, spoke of the “pathological” explanation of certain acts and statements of Luther’s as the only one possible. The word “pathological,” and other similar ones, had, however, been used even earlier, and, that, even by non-Catholics, as descriptive of certain of Luther’s states, nor was the remark entirely new, that in many a great genius we find something pathological.[547]

5. Luther’s Psychology according to Physicians and Historians

It is not our intention in the following to criticise the opinions quoted; they have been collected chiefly with the object in view of providing those qualified to judge with matter on which to exercise their wits. Nevertheless, we have no intention of depriving ourselves of the right of making occasional observations. Thus Hausrath’s opinion, to be given immediately, calls for some revision, as will be clear even to the lay mind. No disturbance of Luther’s intellectual functions or mental malady amounting to actual “psychosis” can be assumed at any period of his life. This, however, is a quite different thing from admitting that his case was not entirely normal.

“The psychology of men, who, like him, are engaged in such a struggle,” rightly remarks a Protestant theologian, “is exceedingly complicated. Discrepancies are to be met with side by side, and, according to the circumstances, now one element now another comes to the fore.”[548] In Luther’s case the co-existence of bouts of illness with the unfettered use of his powers, of fundamental delusions with true though misapplied ideas, of frivolity, sensuality and temptations to despair, and, on the top of all this, the contradictory statements he himself makes about himself, i.e.—he, the only man who could have told us how the facts really stood—all these circumstances render any sure conclusion extremely difficult.

No Protestant hitherto has used terms so strong to describe Luther’s overwrought nerves as his most recent biographer, Hausrath, the Heidelberg theologian, in his first edition of his “Life of Luther.” His assertions do undoubtedly err on the side of exaggeration.[549] For instance, when he says, that, owing to his illness in the monastery Luther had more than once been in danger of sinking into “the abyss of religious melancholia.”[550] Erroneously regarding the “temptations”—in reality mere remorse of conscience—from which Luther suffered, as the outcome of his morbid bodily and mental state, he even ventures to hint expressly at the nature of the malady: “The regularity with which the attacks return during all the years spent in the monastery and after he had commenced his public career, leads us to infer a recurrent psychosis, the attacks of which became less frequent after his marriage, but never altogether ceased.”[551]

In recent times, apart from Hausrath, two other writers, both of them non-Catholics, have looked more closely into Luther’s pathology. Dr. Berkhan in an article in the “Archiv für Psychiatrie” entitled “Die nervösen Beschwerden Luthers,” and Gustav Kawerau in the study “Etwas vom kranken Luther,” printed in the “Deutsch-evangelische Blätter.” The two Protestants, Küchenmeister and Ebstein, who also dealt with Luther’s maladies,[552] failed to discuss the psychological phenomena here under consideration; what interested them was more Luther’s ordinary illnesses though, it is true, they bring forward various data which may prove of interest here; these, nevertheless, must be cautiously used, as the authors are somewhat deficient in historical criticism. Older writers who treated of Luther’s illnesses, e.g. the Protestant pastor Friedrich Siegmund Keil, Garmann, the Chemnitz physician and an anonymous writer in the “Neues Hannöversche Magazin” are even less satisfactory.

Of the two first mentioned, Kawerau supplies a careful review of those statements of Luther’s which concern his nervous maladies, not, however, carrying them back to his earliest years. He gives us the picture “of a man occupying a most responsible position, ever in friction with his surroundings” and “in a state of nervous overstrain due to too much work of body and mind.”[553] With these words he seeks to pave the way for a psychological appreciation of all that, as he says, “so often appears repulsive or regrettable in Luther, for instance, his waxing irritability, his unbridled anger, the excesses he commits by word and pen, and his sudden changes of mood.” He even opines that “the spiritual temptations may be accounted for by his all-too-great labours and anxieties, and their effect upon his constitution”;[554] his conclusion is that a fuller knowledge of Luther’s ailments “helps us to understand him aright and better to appreciate his greatness.”[555]

The other writer, Dr. Berkhan, a Brunswick physician, had, previous to Kawerau, attempted to lift the veil which shrouds the “anomalies” presented by Luther; he did not, however, properly sift his materials, nor did he consider the various symptoms in their complexus.[556] He comes to the conclusion that some of Luther’s troubles, for instance, his “hallucinations,” “must be ascribed to an affection of the nerve centres.” These “hallucinations” he attributes to “fluxions” due to overwork. Such hallucinations, according to him, were, in Luther’s case, of two kinds; some optical and some auditory. They were induced, so he thinks, not only by the permanent excitement of Luther’s life, but also by “his doubts and controversies.” What Luther terms temptations Berkhan also regards as, in the main, mere psychic depression bound up with nerve disturbance. In view of certain other symptoms he diagnoses a case of præcordial trouble.[557]

After Kawerau and Berkhan we must refer to P. J. Möbius, the Leipzig expert in mental ailments. He is known in connection with his highly original studies on Rousseau, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche; on Luther he has not expressed his views at any great length, but, such as they are, they are drastic enough.[558]

Möbius points out[559] that “in Luther’s case the pathological element is of the utmost significance.” “Even Luther’s recent biographer, Professor Hausrath,” he writes, “spoke of ‘recurrent psychosis.’[560] According to what Kraepelin now says, it would be better to term it a mild form of maniacal depression.[561] The main point is that Luther, from his youth upwards, suffered at times from the dumps without any apparent cause, was oppressed with gloomy forebodings, sadness, fear and despair. The melancholic phases may easily be traced throughout Luther’s life; probably, too, the periods when he felt his power and gave vent to his boundless wrath should be regarded as morbid and maniacal. We may take it that, in Luther’s case, the morbid mood made the illness, and that his fantastic interpretation of certain incidents—combats with the devil, intercourse with spirits and Divine inspirations—are to be explained, not as delusions, but as the explanations he sought in the ideas then current.”

“The present writer,” continues Möbius, “does not in the least believe that Luther suffered from hallucinations. It seems always to have been a case of placing a superstitious interpretation on real phenomena. The black pig in the garden and the black dog on his bed, were, most likely, of flesh and blood. In many instances (the wrestling with the demon, and so forth) the language is simply figurative. With Luther the pathological element made history. His morbid fear led him to brood over justification; the sense of his own utter weakness convinced him that man can do nothing of his own strength and by his own works, and that the only possible course is to stretch out yearning hands and seize on Grace. In his melancholic state he fell in with the doctrine of justification by faith alone of St. Paul (who himself suffered from the same ailment [!]), and, around this centre, his theological ideas grouped themselves, and, with ‘sola fides’ as his war-cry, he proceeded to do battle with the ancient Church. Thus, from the monk’s melancholia, sprang the Reformation.”

Proceeding on similar lines, Professor Willy Hellpach, of Carlsruhe, observed in the Berlin “Tag” (“Psychologische Rundschau,” Jan. 18, 1912): “Several years ago the Jesuit scholar, Pater Grisar, published in the ‘Kölnische Volkszeitung’ an article entitled ‘Ein Grundproblem aus Luthers Seelenleben.’ Of this work Möbius said, and quite rightly, that it was the best account so far given of the pathology of Luther’s mind. That Luther’s mind was at times morbidly depressed without any reasonable cause has never been doubted by any who knew him, even when they happened to be Evangelicals. Hausrath, in his biography, had spoken of ‘recurrent psychosis’ a statement, which, it is true, he modified later on account of the storm of indignation which broke out among those queer folk who seem to look upon a gifted man’s malady as a worse blot than the greatest crime.” Hellpach points out that laymen are wrong when they imagine that “psychosis” involves “an absolute derangement of the power of thought.”

Wilhelm Ebstein, a Professor of Medicine,[562] recently, and not without reason, registered a protest against the view of those who maintain that Luther was actually out of his mind. Himself interested in the treatment of cases of gout and calculus, he comes to the conclusion that Luther’s chief sufferings were caused by uric acid and faulty digestion, the two together constituting the principal trouble, and being accompanied, as is so often the case with gout, by “neurasthenic symptoms which at times recall psychosis”;[563] his “hypochondriacal depression which passed all bounds” was entirely due to these ailments. Not only these “nervous symptoms,” but also the other ailments of which Luther had to complain, his palpitations, headaches, dizziness, sore-throat, defective hearing, impaired digestion, fainting fits, and particularly his oppression in the region of the heart and the feelings of fear which accompanied it, all these were, according to Ebstein, due more or less to gout and the other troubles resulting from the presence of uric acid.[564]

There can be no doubt that this learned physician gives us many useful observations, but he has not himself selected his historical matter and carefully tested its source. Much of it comes from Küchenmeister, whereas, at the present stage of research, a medical opinion, to carry real weight, must necessarily enter at greater length into the facts more recently brought to light. Some of Küchenmeister’s opinions have, however, been revised by Ebstein, and not without good reason.

Among those of Ebstein’s statements that must be characterised as historically untenable are the following, viz. that Luther’s hallucinations and visions occurred “almost without exception at a time when he was yet under the influence of the asceticism of the monastery, with its night-vigils, spiritual exercises and strenuous mental labours,” i.e. in his Catholic days; likewise, that, in the monastery, he had striven “most diligently to outdo the other monks in the matter of fasting, watching,” etc.; that, in later days, he had “always been able to master his morbid states, and to bid defiance to his moods of depression,” and that these latter had “in no way detracted” from his mental labours; that his method of controversy had never been a morbid one, as Küchenmeister had asserted on insufficient grounds, and that, when even Luther referred to mental sufferings and temptations, his “bodily ailments” always occupied the first place and constituted the leading factor.[565]

His theory that Luther suffered from gout is also eminently doubtful.

Of any symptoms of gout, for instance, of gouty swellings, we hear nothing from Luther[566] though he was wont to expatiate on his complaints, and though, according to Ebstein, he possessed a “rare knowledge of medical matters.”[567] Nor did Luther permanently suffer from sluggishness and constipation of the bowels; we hear of it only at Worms and at the Wartburg in 1521, and then again in 1525. To put down “his moodiness, melancholia and depression” as Ebstein terms the remorse of conscience experienced in 1528 at the time of his greatest “temptations” to an attack of piles, described by Luther in a letter to his friend Jonas on Jan. 6, 1528, is to misapprehend the facts of the case; for, actually, it was three years before this that Luther had for a while been troubled with hæmorrhoids, as is evident both from the text of the inquiry made by Jonas (“ante triennium”), and from Luther’s answer: “My illness was as follows,” etc.[568]

Moreover, Luther was not suffering from stone in 1521, and it is only in 1526 that we hear him speaking of it for the first time; after this the malady was for a long time in abeyance,[569] until, between 1537 and 1539, it once more attacked him severely; it is again referred to in 1543.

Hence we must still await a more accurate medical diagnosis to determine—if indeed this be possible—how far the history of Luther’s outward and inward troubles was dependent on uric acid.[570] Maybe, eventually, greater stress than hitherto will be laid on Luther’s heart troubles; if so, then it will become necessary to find out what the so-called “cardiogmus” was, from which, according to Melanchthon, Luther suffered severely early in 1545; for, in his friend’s opinion, it was to this that Luther’s death later on was due.[571] Ebstein himself says of the oppression in the region of the heart and the resultant anxiety[572] from which Luther suffered, until his death was ultimately brought about by “heart failure,” that it “leads us to diagnose some heart affection”; this, according to his theory, was due, in part directly to gout, in part also to the obstinate constipation which accompanied it. According to him the periodic attacks of heart-oppression suggest heart asthma or angina pectoris, which, notoriously, often co-exists with gout.

As regards Luther’s mental sufferings, Ebstein will not hear of Berkhan’s hypothesis of “fluxions”; he himself, however,—and herein lies his principal fault,—does not make sufficient account of his patient’s frequent nervous states. He thinks that Luther’s black outlook, which, according to him, resulted from gout, was not bound up directly with any sufferings.[573] As regards the “hallucinations of sight and hearing,”[574] which Luther regarded as the work of the devil, he declares, that Luther, from time to time, fell into a condition of “weakness and irritability which make the temporary disturbance of his brain-powers quite intelligible”; as to the cause of the lapses, Ebstein finds it in “the strenuous mental labour” leading to a “condition of inanition.”[575] He also allows, that, even as a monk, and in early life, Luther was a victim of moodiness.[576] He is, however, quite right when he says: “Insanity cannot be thought of, nor even epilepsy.”[577] In his admiration for Luther, he also credits him with having in his lifetime endured “more days of suffering than of well-being.” To make this statement entirely true it would, however, be necessary to include amongst the days of suffering, those when he was so paralysed by remorse of conscience as to be incapable of work. At any rate we quite admit with Ebstein that, in Luther, we have “a man, during a great part of his life, sorely tried by bodily ailments,”[578] a fact which can only make one wonder the more at the extent of his labours.

* * * * *

To pass now to some older Catholic writers. In 1874 Bruno Schön, of Vienna, published an essay in which he depicted Luther as mentally deranged.[579]

The author, who was chaplain to a lunatic asylum, was not merely no historian and still less an expert in mental disease, but lacked even a proper acquaintance with Luther’s life and writings. His historical groundwork he took from second-rate works, and his opinion was biassed by his conviction that Luther could not but be insane. He makes no real attempt to prove such a thing; all he does is to give us an account, clothed in psychiatric terminology, of the different forms of madness from which Luther suffered; in the first place he was afflicted with megalomania and the mania of persecution, two forms of insanity frequently found together.—But nervous irritability, anxiety, moodiness, excitability, a too high opinion of himself, perversion of judgment and even hallucinations—could such be proved in Luther’s case—all these would not entitle us to say that he was ever really insane. Nervous derangement, says Kirchhoff, is not psychosis, and people subject to hallucinations are not always insane.[580]

Long before this other Catholic writers had instanced certain peculiarities in Luther’s mental state, though they, like almost all recent writers, with the exception of Hausrath, were ignorant of one of the most remarkable elements to be taken into consideration, viz. the fits of terror to which Luther had been subject from early youth. The treatment of this matter was made all the harder by the fact that Luther’s extravagant after-accounts of his life in the monastery, and the growth of his ideas, were received with too much credulity, and that his letters, his Table-Talk and many details of his life were but little known.

Maximilian Prechtl, Abbot of Michaelfeld (†1832), though he refuses to regard Luther as insane, nevertheless calls attention to the many “phantoms of a sick brain” which he had seen; “Luther believed,” so he says, “that he often saw the devil, and that under different shapes.”[581] The learned Abbot brought out a new annotated edition of Luther’s “Against the Papacy founded by the Devil,” which he published at the time of the Reformation-Festival in 1817, in order to show the mad fury, hate and mental confusion to which its author had fallen a victim. Luther’s writing betrays, so he opines, “no common fury but the insane passion of the man, then almost at death’s door.”[582] Too great stress must not be laid on some of the opinions he here advances, which overstep the limits he himself had traced and appear to credit Luther with insanity. Prechtl spoke out more strongly in his “Rejoinder” to the attacks made on his remarks. He emphasises “the incontrovertible proofs” to be found in Luther “of a troubled fancy,” and asserts that “he was not always in his right mind.”

Somewhat earlier, in 1810, the Catholic layman Friedrich von Kerz, who continued Stolberg’s “Geschichte der Religion Christi,” published a book “Über den Geist und die Folgen der Reformation” in which he comes to a far too unfavourable opinion of Luther’s mental state, which he seeks to bolster up by statements incapable of historical proof. In a nutshell, what he tentatively advances is, that, “owing to the shock following the death of a friend struck down at his side, Luther had lost his reason”; “the symptoms of a twisted mind soon became apparent.” “Luther not seldom appears in the light of an inexplicable moral enigma, so that we are led, not indeed willingly, to wonder whether a certain recurrent mental aberration and periodic madness was not in reality the first and perhaps the only source of his vocation as a Reformer, of all his public acts and of the greater part of his reforms.”[583]

As against Kerz, Schön and even Prechtl, we must urge that we have no proof that Luther was actually the slave of his morbid fancies, or mentally diseased; no such proof to support the hypothesis of insanity is adduced by any of the writers named. Of the temporary clouding of the mind they make no mention.

As for the kind of megalomania met with in Luther, when he insists on his being the mouthpiece of revelation, this is not the sort usual in the case of the mentally deranged, when the patient appears to be held captive under the spell of his delusion. Luther often wavered in his statements regarding his special revelation, indeed sometimes went so far as to deny it; in other words he was open to doubt. Moreover, at the very times when he clung (or professed to cling) to it with the greatest self-complacency, he was suffering from severe attacks of depression, whereas it is not usual for megalomania and depression to exist side by side. As for the periodic fits of insanity suggested by Hausrath his moods alternated too rapidly. His morbid ideas do not constitute a paranoic system of madness, and still less is it possible to attribute everything to mere hypochondriacal lunacy.

The theory of Luther’s not being a free agent is excluded not only by his doubts and remorse of conscience, but also by the bitter determination with which at the very beginning he persuades himself of his ideas, insists upon them later when doubts arise, and finally surrenders himself to their spell by systematic self-deception. Such behaviour does not accord with that of a man who is not free. It must also be noted that the morbid symptoms of which Schön speaks, in whatever light they be regarded, do not occur simultaneously; some disappear while others become more marked as time goes on. This, however, also makes it difficult and wellnigh impossible to discover what were the components which originally went to make up Luther’s mentality before it had been seared by the errors and inward commotion of his later passionate life. Above all a fact repeatedly pointed out already must not be overlooked, viz. that, throughout, wilful giving way to passion, lack of self-control and too high an opinion of himself, united with self-deception played a great part with him, particularly in those outbreaks of fury against Pope and Papists in which one might be tempted to see the work of a maniac. In view of Luther’s aptitude to pass rapidly from craven fear to humorous self-confidence it would be necessary in order to prove his insanity, to show clearly as far as possible—a demonstration which has not yet been attempted—that periods of depression or fear really alternated with periods of exaltation, and what the duration of these periods was.

We cannot too much impress on those who may be inclined to assume that, at least at times, Luther was not in his right mind the huge and truly astounding powers of work displayed by the man. Only comparatively seldom do we hear of his being disinclined to labour or incapable of work, and almost always the reason is clear. Even were the advocates of intermittent insanity ready to allow the existence of lengthy lucid intervals still so extraordinary a power for work would prevent our agreeing with them any more than with Schön, Möbius, Hausrath and the older authors referred to above.

As to the question of the possibility of such a disability having been inherited either from his father or his mother—a matter into which modern psychiaters are always anxious to inquire: Here, again, we find nothing to support the theory of mental derangement. Hans Luther, his father, was a stern, rude man of violent temper, and his wife, Margaret, would also appear to have been a harsh woman, without any joy in life and displaying small traces of the more winning traits of affection. Neither of the pair did much to sweeten the lad’s hard boyhood and youth. This certainly explains to some extent the thread of depression and pessimism which runs side by side with the lively and more cheerful one in the monk and university professor. Of greater importance to the question in hand is the irritability and violence of temper which showed itself in his father. If the latter really committed manslaughter in a fit of anger, as seems probable, and as has also been admitted by Protestant scholars,[584] then the son’s irritability, and his startling tendency to break out into foaming rage against his opponents, may doubtless be traced back in part to the effects of heredity. In 1906 the fact came to light that another Hans Luther, besides Martin’s father, resided at Mansfeld, and the latter, according to the records of the law-courts, would appear to have borne a bad character and to have been frequently punished for brawling and for being too ready with his knife. If the latter, as the name would imply, was a relative of Martin’s we have here one more argument to prove that the family was exceptionally irritable.[585]

Luther’s nervous irritability ought, indeed, to be made more account of than it has hitherto been.

Addendum. Some Medical Opinions on Nervous Degeneration, and Abnormal Ideas.

What was said above about Luther’s “nervousness” (p. 105 ff) may here be supplemented by some quotations from August Cramer, the expert psychiater, now of Berlin. It is true that what we shall quote is not intended to refer to Luther, yet what he says may serve to explain certain of Luther’s symptoms, and, possibly, to show that some which were put down to mental derangement may have been due rather to a form of neurasthenia.[586]

“Even perfectly normal children are sometimes inclined in their growing period to display great variations of temper, and to be violent and changeable in their affections about the age of puberty. This, however, is far more noticeable in the case of people of a strongly developed nervous temperament. Groundless outbreaks of anger, marked pathological absence of mind and entire inability to concentrate their thoughts are often the result. Fits of oppression and anxiety are not unknown; headaches are fairly frequent and the patients seem at times not to be masters of themselves. They also tend to swing from an exaggerated idea of their own importance to a despondent lack of self-confidence. In their bents and friendships they are very fickle.” Hence we have here already in a very marked degree that instability which von Magnan has pointed out as characteristic of degenerates.

In later life, too, such highly strung temperaments are often, at least in the worse cases, predisposed to sudden changes of views, and to fly to extremes, their varying moods tend at times to become periodic, they are over-sensitive, are frequently unable to bear alcohol, their sexual inclinations are abnormal and they are often addicted from an early age to masturbation.… Thus the predominant characteristic of the degenerate is lack of constancy (p. 175).

Of “nervosity” where it is combined with fear the same author says: “The change of mood is often entirely without cause and is by no means of a regular type, though instances of a periodic character are occasionally to be met with.… We meet, for example, persons whom we cannot possibly describe as ill, who at times are exceptionally capable, lively and good-tempered, and yet at other times give the impression of being downhearted, self-centred and scarcely able to get through their daily tasks.”

“Apart from those who are habitually depressed, there are others who suffer from time to time, without any outward cause, from slight fits of depression, mostly accompanied by more or less severe fits of anxiety. Looking more carefully into these various types, we shall find that they belong almost exclusively to strongly marked nervous temperaments.… In bad cases the periodic changes of mood may become stronger and stronger, and lead eventually between the fortieth and sixtieth year to actual ‘folie circulaire.’ Anxiety is, of course, common to all nervous people, but in many cases it plays the prominent part.… Often the patients complain of all kinds of accompanying symptoms, not seldom of palpitations, weakness in the legs, headaches, attacks of dizziness, and, particularly, of the paralysing effects of their vague dreads. When this anxiety overtakes them they become unable to work as usual, and their spirit of enterprise is checked” (p. 207 ff.).

As to how far what Cramer says is applicable to Luther’s mental states may here be left open. The same holds good of what we shall quote below from C. Wernicke and H. Friedmann. What the former says of “autochthonous” ideas may conceivably be applicable to Luther’s conviction of the private revelations he had received and of which he speaks so strongly above (p. 142 ff.) as even to suggest actual auditory hallucination; that there was no real hallucination seems more likely for the reason that Luther elsewhere is disposed to regard the incidents as of an inward character and is not quite so wholly under their sway as would have been the case had they been strictly speaking hallucinatory.

As to “exalted ideas,” of which both speak, they put us in mind of some of Luther’s ideas concerning his own person, position, achievements and persecutions (cp. our summary in vol. iv., pp. 329-41).

It must, however, be noted that “exalted ideas” can be present in a mind otherwise perfectly sound, and that, consequently, even if Luther had such ideas it would not prove him to have been mentally deranged; the same holds good of “autochthonous” ideas, which, occurring singly, are no warrant of insanity.

Again, even should Luther’s idea of his revelations turn out to be originally “autochthonous,” yet the reception he accorded it, the interpretation he placed on it and the use he made of it seem, as we have already set forth, to have been both deliberate and responsible. This is confirmed by the circumstance that, in time, his keen sense of such impressions waned under the objections brought against them, and that his insistence on the “revelations” and his interpretation of them no longer found quite the same vigorous expression as before. Nevertheless, we repeat it once more: It is for experts to pass a definite judgment, but, in order to do so fairly, they must not submit to the microscope merely one class of Luther’s mental manifestations, but consider him as a whole, as monk no less than as Reformer, and examine his mentality on all its sides.

Writing of certain kinds of abnormal ideas, viz. those which he calls “autochthonous,” Carl Wernicke says:[587] “The patient becomes aware of ideas springing up in his mind that are alien to him and not his own, i.e. which have not arisen along the normal ideas and on the ordinary lines of association.” Speaking of those actually suffering from mental derangement, Wernicke again alludes to this class: “Objective observers, who are quite conscious of the alien character of the autochthonous ideas and attach no fundamental importance to them, are only to be found as the exception among those who are really mentally unsound. Almost always the ideas are conceived as ‘ready-made,’ as ‘forced upon the mind,’ as ‘inspired,’ or as ‘derived,’ but, from whom, depends entirely on the individuality of the patient and on the nature of the autochthonous idea (which is not uninfluenced by the former). Pious thoughts are inspired by God, evil thoughts by the devil; more enlightened people have recourse to material remedies and put their case in the hands of a doctor.”

Of the so-called “exalted ideas” Wernicke says: “These are sharply defined from autochthonous ideas by the fact that they are in no way regarded by the patient himself as alien intruders into his consciousness: on the contrary, he sees in them the stamp of his innermost self, and fancies that, in vindicating them, he is in reality asserting his own personality.”

“One has to determine in each individual case whether the idea is truly morbid and ‘exalted,’ or does not come within normal bounds.”[588] On the next page he declares: “That almost any incident may give rise to an ‘exalted idea,’ that the nature of the emotion may be of the most varied character, and that ideas exist, which, though in themselves normal, are nevertheless able so to determine the individual’s action as to impress on it a morbid stamp.”

H. Friedmann[589] says of the same class of ideas: “According to its origin the ‘exalted’ idea … may find a place in the mental process without any apparent cause. A strong emotion may, so to speak, fling itself on a single idea, and, without any actual derangement of the mind, allow it, and it alone, to assume a morbid supremacy.” A few pages further we read:[590] “Hence, as a matter of fact, in the case of the ‘exalted’ idea, we have not an isolated monomaniacal affection but a general disturbance of the emotions and judgment. The result, likewise, is not an idée fixe as in the case of mania, but merely a strong belief.”

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