engaged in teaching. He had taken his degree at Wittenberg in 1510, and was at the outset a zealous representative of Scholasticism, though he speedily attached himself to Luther’s new teaching. He was the first to proclaim the solubility of religious vows. Wenceslaus Link worked at the University from 1509 to about 1516, eventually succeeding Staupitz as Augustinian Vicar-General, and, later, by his marriage in 1523, gave the last Augustinians of the unfortunate Congregation the signal for forsaking the Order. Another Augustinian, Johann Lang, who had been Luther’s friend since the days of his first studies at Erfurt, had come to Wittenberg about 1512 as teacher at the “Studium” of the Order, though he soon left it to return to Erfurt. Johann Staupitz, the Superior of the Congregation, resigned in 1512 his Professorship of Holy Scripture at Wittenberg, being unable to attend to it sufficiently owing to his frequent absence, and made over the post to Luther, whom, as he says in his eulogistic speech to the Elector of Saxony, he had been at pains to form into a “very special Doctor of Holy Scripture.”
The teaching in the University at that time was, of course, from the religious standpoint, Catholic. Its scholarship was, however, infected with the humanistic views of the Italian naturalism, and this new school had already stamped some of the professors with its freethinking spirit.[82]
The influence of Humanism on Luther’s development must be admitted, though it is frequently overrated, the subsequent open alliance of the German Humanists with the new gospel being set back, without due cause, to Luther’s early days. As a student he had plunged into the study of the ancient classics which he loved, but there was a great difference between this and the being in complete intellectual communion with the later Humanists, whose aims were in many respects opposed to the Church’s. Thanks to the practical turn of his mind, the study of the classics, which he occasionally continued later, never engaged his attention or fascinated him to the extent it did certain Humanists of the Renaissance, who saw in the revival of classic Paganism the salvation of mankind. As a young professor at the University he was not, however, able to escape entirely the influence of the liberalism of the age, with its one-sided and ill-considered opposition to so many of the older elements of culture, an opposition which might easily prove as detrimental as a blind and biassed defence of the older order.
It is not necessary to demonstrate here how dangerous a spirit of change and libertinism was being imported in the books of the Italian Humanists, or by the German students who had attended their lectures.
With regard to Luther personally, we know that he not only had some connection with Mutian, the leader of a movement which at that time was still chiefly literary, but also that Johann Lang at once forwarded to Mutian a lecture against the morals of the “little Saints” of his Order delivered by Luther at Gotha in 1515.[83] Luther also excused himself in a very respectful letter to this leader of the Humanists for not having called on him when passing through Gotha in 1516.[84] Luther’s most intimate friend, Lang, through whom he seems to have entered into a certain exchange of ideas with Humanism, was an enthusiastic Humanist and possessed of great literary connections. Lang, for his part, speaks highly to Mutian of the assistance rendered him in his studies by Luther.[85] There can therefore be no doubt that Luther was no stranger to the efforts of the Humanists, to their bold and incisive criticism of the traditional methods, to their new idealism and their spirit of independence. Many of the ideas which filled the air in those days had doubtless an attraction for and exerted an influence on the open-hearted, receptive disposition of the talented monk.
Luther’s friendship with Spalatin, which dated from his Erfurt days, must also be taken into account in this regard. For Spalatin, who came as tutor and preacher in 1508 to the Court of the Elector of Saxony, was very closely allied in spirit with the Humanists of Erfurt and Gotha. It was he who asked Luther for his opinion respecting the famous dispute of the Cologne Faculty with the Humanist Reuchlin, a quarrel which engaged the sympathy of scholars and men of education throughout the length and breadth of Germany. Luther, in his reply, which dates from January or February, 1514, had at that time no hesitation in emphatically taking the side of Reuchlin, who, he declared, possessed his love and esteem. God, he says, would carry on His work in spite of the determined opposition of one thousand times one thousand Cologne burghers, and he adds meaningly that there were much more important matters with the Church which needed reform; they were “straining at gnats and swallowing camels.”[86] The conservative attitude of the authorities at Cologne was at that time not at all to his taste. Not long after Luther writes very strongly to Spalatin, again in favour of Reuchlin, against Ortwin de Graes of Cologne, and says among other things that he had hitherto thought the latter an ass, but that he must now call him a dog, a wolf and a crocodile, in spite of his wanting to play the lion,[87] expressions which are quite characteristic of Luther’s style.
On the appearance of the “Letters of Obscure Men,” and a similar satirical writing which followed them, and which also found its way into Luther’s hands, the young Wittenberg professor, instead of taking the field against the evil tendency of these attacks of the Humanist party on the “bigots of Scholasticism and the cloister” as such diatribes deserved, and as he in his character of monk and theologian should have done, sought to take a middle course: he approved of the purpose of the attacks, but not of the satire itself, which mended nothing and contained too much invective. Both productions, he says, must have come out of the same pot; they had as their author, if not the same, at least a very similar comedian. It is now known that the real author of the letters which caused such an uproar was his former University friend, Crotus Rubeanus.[88]
On what terms did Luther stand with respect to Erasmus, the leader of the Humanists, before their great and final estrangement? As he speaks of Erasmus in a letter of 1517 to Lang as “our Erasmus,” we may infer that until then he was, to a certain extent, favourably disposed towards him. He rejoiced on reading his humanistic writings to find that “he belaboured the monks and clergy so manfully and so learnedly and had torn the veil off their out-of-date rubbish.”[89] Yet, on the same occasion, he confesses that his liking for Erasmus is becoming weaker. It was not the attitude of Erasmus to the Church in general which even then separated Luther from him, but his new teaching on Grace, the origin of which will be treated of later. It is true Luther conveyed to him through Spalatin his good wishes for his renown and progress, but in the same message he admonished him not to follow the example of nearly every commentator in interpreting certain passages where Paul condemns “righteousness by works” as referring only to the Mosaic ceremonial law, and not rather to all the works of the Decalogue. If such are performed “outside the Faith in Christ,” then though they should make of a man a Fabricius, a Regulus, or a paragon of perfection, yet they have as little in common with righteousness as blackberries have with figs”; it is not the works which justify a man, but rather our righteousness which sanctifies the works. Abel was more pleasing to God than his works.[90] The exclusive sense in which Luther interprets these words, according to which he does not even admit that works of righteousness are of any value for the increase of righteousness, is a consequence of his new standpoint, to which he is anxious to convert Erasmus and all the Humanists.
He had the Humanists in his mind when he wrote as follows to Johann Lang: “The times are perilous, and a man may be a great Greek, or Hebrew [scholar] without being a wise Christian.... He who makes concessions to human freewill judges differently from him who knows nothing save Grace alone.”[91] But this is to forestall a development of his error, which will be described later. At the time that his new doctrine originated he was far more in sympathy with the theories of certain groups of late mediæval mystics