The facts about Luther

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Preface

IT is an accepted conclusion nowadays among the " best students of the Protestant Rebellion of the sixteenth century that there are "two Luthers— the Luther of panegyric, of romance, and fiction, and the Luther of history and fact. The former appears in the pulpit, in the Sunday school, and in partisan biographies ; the latter may be discovered from a careful study of his writings and those of his contemporaries, but above all from his private letters, of which former devotees of Luther would only publish what they thought to his credit, garbling or suppressing the rest." These words, quoted from a rare little tract on Luther, written nearly thirty years ago by a Prelate of the Church, who was one of the foremost Reformation scholars of that day, may well serve as the keynote of this present work with its powerful contrasts between the Luther of fact and the Luther of fiction. They also sum up the result of all the studies made in the life and works of Martin Luther since the last great international celebration of 1883 — the four hundredth anniversary of his birth at Eisleben. There are many who still remember the interest and zeal evidenced by tiic Protestant churches throughout Christendom, when that fourth centenary was given a world-wide recognition. It was a celebration with far-reaching effects ; with fatal effects, indeed, for the hero-worship so dear to Luther's followers. In Germany, especially, scholars and publishers vied with one another in acclaiming him as the man to whom the modern world owed most,, if not all, of its present liberty. He was hailed as the restorer of the truer evangelical life, as the spiritual liberator of the human race; and from that time down to the present, no ordinary reader has been able to keep pace with the output of Lutheran literature.

Probably no man ever lived about whom so much has been written as Luther; but it is from the last notable Luther celebration of 1883, that we can date the foremost works which have appeared on the subject. To-day no important source on Luther's life and works remains unpublished. The Weimar Edition of his works — the typical edition, began to appear in 1883. Most of the Protestant authors, from whose works Monsignor O'Hare takes his quotations, have written since that date — Kostlin, Kawerau, Paulsen, Kolde, Hagen, Hausrath, Beard and others, have all written under the impulse of the Luther revival of thirty odd years ago. Throughout the whole period of this activity, the Luther of fiction and the Luther of historic fact have come boldly into conflict, and scholars know with what deplorable results for the heresiarch of Protestantism. But the ordinary man-in-the-street, for whom this volume is particularly designed, is still unaware of these revelations. Throughout the whole period of this activity, the Luther of fiction has been relegated to the realm of the unhistorical. Scholars can no longer satisfy themselves with the general platitude that the greatest achievement of the race to which he belonged and the most important event in history is the Protestant Rebellion of the sixteenth century. We can no longer hold in the face of what modern scholarship has brought to light since 1883 that Luther's rebellion was essentially the beginning of a new religious movement. The Protestant Rebellion marked no new stage in human progress ; it did not close the eyes of a dying medieval Church; it marked no new dawn of the modern era. Protestant scholars of repute no longer hold out to their disciples the old misconceptions that the Rebellion in Germany secured greater purity and spirituality in religion. It did not contribute, as we have been told so often, to the elevation of the laity and to the advancement of woman. It did not fashion a separation of secular from ecclesiastical power. It gave no extraordinary impulse to literature or to science. It did not establish liberty of conscience. In a word, it had nothing in its principles or methods, which was to ennoble our modern civilization.

These truths have been self-evident to scholars the past twenty-five years. Like all corporate bodies built on error, the Lutheran Church of the sixteenth century has fared badly under the piercing light of modern research, and Luther himself has become more and more remote from all those characteristics of modern civilization to which his followers lay claim as the legacy of his apostasy. Protestant scholars in America, England, and Germany have made plain that Luther's idea of God is repugnant to our natural feelings. Since the publication of Denifle's works, the suite of events in Luther's apostasy has had to be changed ; and we see at last that the furthermost point backwards to which his cleaveage from the Church can be traced is not opposition to the Papacy but the false idea which seems to have haunted him into obsession— his total impotency under temptation. It was this negation of the moral value of human actions, this denial of one's ability to overcome sin, which led to his famous doctrine on the worthlessness of good works. The only hope he had was in a blind reliance on God, whose Son, Jesus Christ, had thrown around him the cloak of His own merits. From this starting-point, it was facilis descensus AvernL Opposition to all good works, and in particular to monastic regulations and to Indulgences, led to opposition to authority, episcopal and papal. Germany was politically ripe for revolt at that moment, and the union of the Empire and the Papacy made it impossible to distinguish the victims, once the national spirit was aroused. That Luther aided, and aided powerfully, in this opposition to the Holy Roman Empire of both Church and State is undeniable; but what Protestant scholars have denied in no uncertain terms is the long litany of triumphs accredited to the Luther of fiction. His greatest work — the translation of the Bible into German — is openly called a plagiarism. The claim that he is the father of popular education is ridiculed by leading Protestant historians. His economic views are considered retrogressive even for his own time. The assertion that he is the founder of the modern State is denied categorically by his latest non-Catholic biographer, who tells us that he preferred despotism to democracy, and that he never doubted the right and duty of the State to persecute for heresy. The Luther of fiction is being more and more obscured by the Luther of fact. But it takes time for the conclusions of scholars to reach the multitude, and with very little limitation the old shibboleths of the middle nineteenth century are being repeated to-day in Lutheran pulpits, Sunday-schools, and partisan biographies.

We have reached another century-mark in the history of the Protestant Church. Four hundred years ago, on All Saints' Eve — the Hallow E'en of our days — the young Professor of Sacred Scripture in the University of Wittenberg attached ninety-five propositions, or theses, to the University bulletin-board on the portals of the old Castle Church of the town. Historians and theologians, both Catholics and Protestants, have viewed that act in many ways. To some it was a defiance hurled at the immoral conditions of Europe, a gage thrown down at last, after several centuries of spiritual conflict, for Rome to pick up or to be branded as a cowardly antagonist of German aspirations, of German love and devotion for. pure doctrine, for pure moral living. To others, it was only an incident — an incident, it is true, which was to set Europe ablaze within five years — but still an incident, which might have been seen and soon forgotten, had not the temporal condition of Europe been ready for the outbreak which followed it. Both sides admit that the Christian faith had then fallen upon evil days, but both sides have since torn away every vestige of hefoworship from the militant figure of the man who centered Europe, political and religious, around himself at the Diet of Worms, three years afterwards. Both sides have yielded much for and against him in the discussions, the polemics, the attacks, the accusations, which have swirled around him since. The Protestant religious world, although deprived of valuable auxiliaries in the Sturm und Drang of the conflict which is now throwing the world into confusion, will not allow this Fourth Centenary of Luther's Theses to pass without an attempt to rehabilitate their great hero, despite the results of modern scholarship.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that were it not for such a work as this, the general reading public — both Catholic and Protestant — might have suffered this rehabilitation without protest; but Monsignor O'Hare has thrown a bridge over the chasm which now separates the Luther of 1917 from the Luther of 1883, and the contrast is so prominent that his conclusions cannot be ignored. The reader is brought in these pages into a close, intimate relation with Luther's friends and opponents, and every statement is based on the most reliable authorities in the Protestant school of historical science. The whole gamut of the apostate's life is here described in a calm, impartial manner which permits no gainsaying. There are many hideous scenes in Martin Luther's life ; there are scenes of coarseness, vulgarity, obscenity and degrading immorality 'which can never be forgiven because of a "rugged peasant nature." The man stands revealed as the very opposite of all that Protestantism has claimed for him. But the reader may take up this work with the assurance, that here there is no unfair attack upon the Founder of Protestantism. It is not with a spirit of bitterness or bigotry that Monsignor O'Hare describes the real Luther. So long as the Luther of fiction exists in popular Protestant literature, there can be no common friendly ground for the proper appraisal of the Rebellion of 1517. And no man, whether he be a Protestant or a Catholic, who has the love of Christ in his heart, can look on with indifference, when there is question of an irenic state of mind on religious problems, or when there is a possibility of a union between the two leading religions of the Western world. There is no doubt that the religious problem to-day is still the Luther Problem, and since almost every statement of those religious doctrines, which are opposed to Catholic moral teaching, find their authorization in the theology of Martin Luther, every Catholic should acquaint himself with the life-story of the man, whose followers can never explain away the anarchy of that immoral dogma: "Be a sinner, and sin boldly ; but believe more boldly still !"

Peter Guilday, Ph. D.

Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C.

September fifth, 1916.

Table Of Contents

Chapter Pages

Preface 3-7

I. Luther — His Friends and Opponents 9- 2 9

CHAPTER I. Luther: His Friends and Opponents

THIS modest volume is issued to present to the public at large some of the most prominent and important features in the life and career of Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism. We wish to declare in the beginning that this little work makes no pretention to either originality or scholarship; neither does it claim to set forth in its pages anything that is not already well-known, and fully authenticated in the life of Luther and the development of the new system of religion he gave to the world. Abler and more competent writers have long since covered the whole ground. Learned and distinguished historians like Janssen, Denifle, Grisar, and many others, have painted with masterly accuracy the real picture of the reformer from material supplied for the most part by his own acknowledged writings. These celebrated authors have practically pronounced the last word on the protagonist and champion of Protestantism, and there seems to be slight justification for the publication of a new work on the old subject.

Whilst we recognize all this to be true, we feel that we may be pardoned for attempting to tell anew, but in greater brevity and directness, the salient and more striking features connected with the apostate monk of Wittenberg and his religious movement, because there are a large number in the community, who in the hurry and high pressure of modern life have not the time to examine the ponderous and exhaustive volumes of the authors alluded to above, and who, moreover, have not»the means to secure these works, much as they might desire to do so, on account of prohibitive prices. Taking all this into consideration, we believe we will be excused for intruding on a field that has already been well covered, and for presenting to the general public a plain, but well-authenticated sketch of the man who in the sixteenth century inaugurated a movement which bears the name of "Reformation" and caused a large and fearful defection from the Church of which he was a member, and to which the bulk of mankind adhered all through the centuries from its establishment by Jesus Christ. In treating of this historical character whose startling influence was exercised on his own country and on the world at large, we have no intention to wound the convictions and sensibilities of any in the community who may disagree with us. Our aim is to tell the truth about the standard-bearer of the Reformation, and of this no one should be afraid, for truth and virtue triumph by their own inherent beauty and power. The poet aptly sings :

"Truth hath such a face and such a mien, As to be loved needs only to be seen."

In dealing with Luther it is well to remember that students of history have given him such attention as has been accorded to few men of any age, and about fewer still have they expressed such widely divergent views. His friends insist that he was a model of virtue and possessed eminent qualities which in every way made him worthy of his position as a religious reformer, while his opponents openly denounce him and insist that in his own day he was known as a "trickster and a cheat," one whose titanic pride, unrestrained temper, and lack of personal dignity utterly unfitted him to reform the Church and the age.

To his followers the name and memory of Luther are objects of religious veneration. They have for the last four centuries surrounded him with such an aura of flattery and pedantry, that he is looked upon as one of the glories of Germany, nay, the foremost figure in their Hall of Immortals. By dint of minatory iteration, his admirers have been brought to believe that "he is the precious gift of God to the nation." Lutheran writers from Mathesius to Kostlin have invariably filled the German mind with all that reverent love could conjure up for their hero's justification and exaltation. To call in question the powers of the Reformer or deny the divine mission of the Reformation was ever considered blasphemous and unpatriotic.

The opponents of Luther, on the contrary, stoutly maintain that his greatness was taken on trust and that the writers alluded to in the preceding paragraph have invariably, with a fatuous blindness mistaken for patriotism, fed and nourished the German mind, not on the real Luther, but on a Luther glossed over and toned down with respectful admiration and conjured under the influence of partisan-colored traditions intended to prevent him from being catalogued in his proper page in the world's history. Reverential tenderness keyed to its highest pitch cannot, however, they claim, efface the clearly etched lineaments of the man of flesh and blood, the man of moods and impulses, of angularities and idiosyncracies which dominated his career and singled him out as a destructive genius unfitted to carry out any kind of reformation either in Church or State.

In discussing Luther and his religious movement we feel at liberty to say that many, both in the ranks of his friends and of his opponents, have perhaps at times indulged in too great a display of feeling and exaggeration. It would help considerably to cool down the bitterness aroused among all parties did they honestly endeavor to discover for themselves the findings and conclusions of non-partisan writers on the delicate but interesting question. Wiser council and juster appreciation would inevitably reward the searchers after truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Of these unbiased writers, many of whom are Protestants, there is no scarcity. They have been delving into the pages of history to find out the real Luther and they have not be#n afraid to tell in the interest of truth what sort of a man he actually was. These scholarly and reliable authors assert that Luther unquestionably possessed certain elements of greatness. They admit that he was a tireless worker, a forceful writer, a powerful preacher, and an incomparable master of the German language. They credit him with a keen knowledge of human nature and of the trend of the world of his day. They allege, moreover, that he was capable of taking advantage of everything that favored his schemes of yoking to his own chariot all the forces that were then at work to injure and oppose the ancient and time-honored religion of Catholics. But whatever else of praise these writers bestow on the man, it is equally clear and beyond question that they are all agreed in declaring that Luther possessed a violent, despotic and uncontrolled nature. Many of these writers, although Protestants and not friendly to the Catholic Church, have not been afraid to tell their co-religionists that the rights Luther assumed to himself in the matter of liberty of conscience, he unhesitatingly and imperiously denied to all who differed from him, as many specific cases overwhelmingly confirm. His will and his alone, they declare, he dogmatically set up as the only standard he wished to be recognized, followed, and obeyed. In their historical investigations they discovered many other shortcomings in the character of the man unbecoming in one who claimed to be a reformer, and in their love of truth and real scholarship they have honestly acknowledged that there was something titanic, unnatural and diabolical in the founder of Protestantism.

One of these fearless writers was the Protestant Professor Seeberg of Berlin. He was no friend of the Catholic Church, but his deep study of the man and his movement forced him to say: "Luther strode through his century like a demon crushing under his feet what a thousand years had venerated." The same author further remarks: "In him dwelt The Superhuman/ or, in Neitzsche's Philosophy, the 'Uebermensch/ who dwells 'beyond moral good and evil/ "

In November 1883 the English Protestant Bishop Bewick applied to Luther the epithets "foul-mouthed" and "scurrilous."

In the December "Century" issued in 1900, Augustine Birrell, a distinguished English Protestant writer, declared that "Luther was not an ideal sponsor of a new religion; he was a master of billingsgate and the least saintly of men. At times, in reading Luther, one is drawn to say to him what Herrick so frankly says of himself:

'Luther, thou art too coarse to love/ "Had Luther been a brave soldier of fortune his coarseness might have passed for a sign of the times ; but one likes leaders of religion to be religious ; and it is hard to reconcile coarseness and self-will, two leading notes of Luther's character, with even rudimentary religion. To want to be your own pope is a sign of the heresiarch, not of the Christian."

To the testimony of Professor Seeberg and Mr. Birrell we desire to add another illustration of the change which has come over the minds of men regarding the German reformer. Licentiate Braun, in a contribution written for the "Evangelische Kirchenzeitung," March 30, 1913, p. 195, tells in all honesty and straight-forwardness, how with strips from the skin of his own co-religionists Protestant theologians have pieced together not a fictitious, but a genuinely reliable account of the life of Luther. This able Protestant theologian writes as follows:

"How small the Reformer has become according to the Luther studies of our own Protestant investigators ! How his merits have shrivelled up ! We believed that we owed to him the spirit of toleration and liberty of conscience. Not in the least! We recognized in his translation of the Bible a masterpiece stamped with the impress of originality — we may be happy now if it is not plainly called a 'plagiarism !' We venerated in him the father of the popular school system — a purely 'fictitious greatness' which we have no right to claim for him! We imagined that we found in Luther's words splendid suggestions for a rational treatment of poverty and that a return to him would bring us back to the true principles of charity — but the laurels do not belong to him, they must be conceded to the Catholic Church ! We were delighted to be assured that this great man possessed an insight into national economics marvelous for his day — but 'unbiased' investigation forces the confession that there were many indications of retrogressive tendencies in his economic views !"

"Did we not conceive of Luther as the founder of the modern State ? Yet in all that he said upon this subject there was nothing of any value which was at all new ; as for the rest, by making the king an 'absolute Patriarch' he did not in the least improve upon the coercive measures employed by the theocracy of the Middle Ages."

"Just think of it, then, all these conclusions come to us from the pen of Protestant theologians ! Reliable historians give book and page for them. What is still more amazing, all these Protestant historians continue to speak of Luther in tones of admiration, in spite of the admissions which a 'love of truth' compels them to make. Looking upon the 'results' of their work thus gathered together, we cannot help asking the question : What, then, remains of Luther?"

This question, remember, is put, not by a Catholic, but by an eminent Protestant theologian. It is an important question and deserves serious consideration. Who will answer it? The bigot and the preacher of "The Gospel of Hate" resent the question and like all enemies of truth they refuse to give it consideration. They hate the light and close their eyes to its illumination. Many of them hate truth as a business. Their books and their lectures bring them reputation or money. Like Judas, they ask, "'What will you give me?" For a price the low, the vile, the false feed the fires that burn in the hearts of certain fanatics. Unlike these are the Seebergs, the Birrells and the Brauns. They are not afraid of the truth. They sought it with unbiased minds and once they discovered it they boldly communicated their findings to the world. Ask them the question : Who and what Luther really was, and their answer is straight-forward, direct and unhesitating. They tell that nothing remains but an unpleasant memory of the man who divided the Church of God, and who, destitute of constructive genius, depraved in manners and in speech, falsely posed as a reformer sent by God. The investigations they made in the field of reliable history convinced them that the father of Protestantism appeared to fill the world with light, but it was only the light of a passing meteor consuming and destroying' itself in its fall. To the enemies of truth these scholarly researches are most embarrassing and disappointing.

As a distinguished writer puts it, "they pluck jewel after jewel from Luther's crown and make the praises chanted to him by the ranters o£ all times sound hollow in honest ears attuned to truth/' All impartial history proclaims that Luther had very fe\y, if any, of the qualifications that men naturally expect to find in one who poses as a religious reformer. The "Man of God," "the supernatural spirit," in which role he is represented by partisan writers, Luther was only in romance and myth. He attempted reformation and ended in deformation. Unfitted for the work he had outlined for himself, his ungovernable transports, riotous proceedings, angry conflicts and intemperate controversies frustrated his designs at every turn. His teaching, like his behavior, was full of inconsistencies, and his contempt of all the accepted forms of human right and of all authority, human and divine, could not but result in lamentable disaster. His wild pronouncements wrecked Germany, wrecked her intellectually, morally, politically. The havoc wrought directly or indirectly by him is almost without example in history. The outcome in the century following was that the nation became a mere geographical term and was thrown back two hundred years in development, in culture and progress. History presents no apology for the unbridled jealousy, fierce antagonism, and unremitting opposition that marked the^- career of this man toward the Church of his forefathers. JHe was a revolutionist, not a reformer. The true reformer restores society to its primitive purity; the revolutionist violently upsets the constitution of society, putting something else in its place. While pretending to reform, he wrote and preached not for but against good works, and the novel teaching was eagerly accepted by the unthinking and bore those awful fruits of which the historians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have painted the sorrowful picture. He rent asunder -4;he unity of the Church till, alongside of the one true

Church, there have arisen hundreds of warring sects ; nay, there are those who extol him as the founder of a religion, forgetting that this is his greatest shame, for, if he founded a religion it is not the Christian religion established by Christ fifteen hundred years before. No wonder he went down in ignominious defeat and that the Church he unnecessarily attacked and relentlessly endeavored to destroy remained as the central figure of all Christendom to proclaim alike to the humblest peasant and the greatest savant its Divine mission and heavenly authority to teach men the ways of eternal life.

All this may sound very strange, and may, perhaps, shock a great many non-Catholics ; but they must kindly remember that they were taught that the subject under consideration had but one side, and that inherited prejudices prevented them from examining the facts and finding the truth they really love. The light they needed was kept from them and they were innocently led to believe that Luther was justified in his defection from the Church he once loved and defended, but which he afterwards disgraced by a notoriously wicked and scandalous life. They heard him praised for what ignorant men called his '''robust Christianity/ 5 which was akin to Judas's betryal of the Master, and they believed this when they lauded him as an "apostle of liberty" in spite of the fact, as history shows, that he was one of the most intolerant of men. They have heard the anti-Catholic of every shade of character rake-up the muck of history, vilify the clergy, hold up nuns as the wickedest of women, exploit the Pope as "Anti-Christ" and the ''Man of Sin"; resort, in a word, to every known means of ridicule and misrepresentation to depict the spotless Spouse of Christ as the "great harlot of the Apocalypse/'' "the mother of fornications and the abominations of the earth." They have heard the wild, monstrous and even impossible statements of the lying and slanderous in the community, whose only aim is to advance the nefarious and diabolical work of inflaming the passions of the rabble and to keep alive the blind, prejudiced, and irrational discrimination against everything Catholic. The pity of it all is, that, in this day of enlightenment, many who would be ashamed to listen to professional charlatans in any other avocation of life, will think that they are doing a "service to God" by giving a willing ear and swallowing down without a qualm the silly, senseless, and unwarranted reproaches which unscrupulous haranguers, paid hirelings, and vile calumniators unblushingly and without the vestige of proof urge against the religion which Christ established for all time till the consummation of the world, and which history tells has civilized the peoples and the nations.

But, whilst this is all true, we feel that the most generous allowance must be made for the Church's enemies and their deluded followers. The fact is they cannot help their antagonism and distrust, for they have been brought up from infancy to loathe the Catholic Church, whose history, they were made to believe by their false teachers, was distinguished for nothing save bloodshed, crime, and fraud. Their anti-Catholic views and prejudices and hostilities had their origin in the so-called Reformation period, and since that time all Protestant "mankind descending by ordinary generation" have come into the world with a mentality biased, perverted, and prejudiced. They and their fathers have been steeped and nurtured in opposition, and in most cases without meaning to be unjust they feel instinctively a strong and profound antipathy to everything that savors of Catholicity. Ministers and lecturers and tracts, every channel of propagating error, bigotry, and misrepresentation, are used to preserve, circulate and keep alive popular hatred and distrust of the one true Church of Christ which, all who have any sense should know, is indestructible. How men in the possession of their wits can engage in the useless and vain task of attempting to displace and destroy a Godfounded religion, established for all time and for all peoples, surpasses all understanding. The fact nevertheless remains that many, unfortunately for themselves, are obsessed with an insane hatred of Catholicism and in the exuberance of an enthusiasm akin to that of a Celsus, a Porphyry, and a Julian, they treat the public to a campaign of abuse and vilification of the Church which is a disgrace to themselves and a violation of all Christian teaching. All these and many other influences at work in the world to destroy true Christianity tend to bind the opponents of the Church with iron bonds to their present inherited convictions, and hence they hate the Church because they do not know her in all her beauty and truthfulness. How could it be otherwise with them ? Would we ourselves have been any better under the same conditions ?