authority has been unconditionally conferred, he declares in the same sermon that he “rejects and condemns” almost all the matrimonial impediments or prohibitions invented by the Pope.[383] Virginity he refuses to reject absolutely, but nevertheless he declares: “It is true that he who does not marry must lead an immoral life, for how can it be otherwise?” “without a special grace” it is utterly impossible.[384]
According to his ideas, the duties incident to matrimony cannot be complied with without sin. “No conjugal duty can be performed without sin,” he teaches in conclusion,[385] “though God by His mercy overlooks it”—a statement which certainly does not show any great esteem for matrimony, although Luther is under the impression that he is raising the union of man and wife to a higher plane. The Church had never taught that the use of matrimony, which she looked upon as based on the order of nature, involved any sin. Some few theologians had, it is true, spoken of venial sin as unavoidable here, but these were opposed by others, and, besides, the views of these theologians concerning sinfulness differed widely from those of Luther. Luther’s erroneous notion that every feeling of concupiscence was sinful, indeed mortally sinful, caused him to see grievous sin even here.
In view of his severity in this matter, the freedom of speech which he retains even in the revised edition (1519), and his coarse treatment of the sexual subject is all the more surprising. His tendency to throw off the fetters of decency is at times quite needlessly offensive. Cochlæus remarks of this work: “Luther here speaks in the most filthy way of the intercourse between husband and wife, contrary to the laws of natural modesty.”[386]
Others, and Cochlæus himself in his previous indecent writings, bear witness to the excess of coarseness of this sort which, partly as a consequence of Italian Humanism, had found its way into German literature at that time. Few, however, went so far as Luther. Several of his contemporaries told him so openly, though they were themselves accustomed to strong expressions. It is notorious that the sixteenth century was accustomed to speak more bluntly and openly than is at present usual. Yet in judging Luther’s case a circumstance which is often overlooked should also be borne in mind, namely, that the standard by which he is to be tried is not that of profane authors and literary men of Humanistic leanings, but that of professedly religious writers. Luther not only professed to be a religious writer, but also gave himself out as the introducer of a great reform in faith and morals. From this standpoint the impropriety of his speech must assuredly be more severely judged. He employs by preference such language in his bitter and violent polemics, seeking to make an impression upon the lower classes by a naturalism not far removed from filthy talking. The vulgar figures of speech of which he makes use are all saturated with hate and rendered still more distasteful by the unclean aspersions he is ever casting on his adversaries; from his manner of writing we can gather the satisfaction he derives from seeing the defenders of virginity, the religious and clergy, thus overwhelmed with filth.
Certain preachers of the late Middle Ages, religious and others, for instance, Geiler von Kaysersberg, when dealing with sexual matters sometimes went very far in their plain speaking on the subject, yet their words were, without exception, characterised by gravity and the desire of saving souls. Their tone excludes any levity; indeed, the honesty and simplicity of these productions of the Middle Ages impress the reader at every turn; he may perhaps be inclined to extol the greater delicacy of feeling which obtains at the present day, but he will refrain from blaming the less covert style of days gone by. Luther’s “cynical” language, however, impresses one as an attempt to pit nature, with all its brutality, with its rights and demands, against the more exalted moral aims of earlier ages; the trend of such language, as contemporary Catholics urged, was downwards rather than upwards.
One tract of Luther’s, which dates from about that time, that “Against the Clerical State falsely so called of Pope and Bishops,” contains a chapter “Concerning Vows,”[387] in which the descriptions are so coarse and the language so nasty that Staupitz might well have considered even his censure of certain earlier writings of Luther’s not sufficiently strong: “Your works are praised,” he had told him, “by those who keep houses of ill-fame,”[388] etc. Several particularly violent polemical tracts of those years, meant by Luther for his theological adversaries generally, are so brimful of words descriptive of the vilest parts and functions of the human body, that it would be impossible to match them in the writings of previous ages. His manner of speech was considered by his foes to have reached the lowest depths of thought and feeling. The vulgarity of his language was held to display the utter depravity of his mind.
In polemics Luther was not merely the “greatest, but also the coarsest writer of his century”; such is the opinion recently expressed by a Protestant historian.[389]
In the work dating from 1522, “Bulla Coenæ Domini, i.e. the Bull concerning the Evening feed of our most holy Lord, the Pope,”[390] he replies, with startling fluency, to the menaces of this Papal Bull against all heretics, including himself. Therein he describes the life and manners of the Roman “prostitutes” with the express intention of degrading all that Catholics considered most worthy of respect and veneration. The Pope and his followers he represents as indulging in every kind of sensuality, “rape, seduction and fornication” to their heart’s content.
Still more degrading are the opprobrious and insulting figures of which he makes use in 1522 in his furious reply “Against King Henry of England,” who had attacked and pilloried his teaching.[391] In his tract it is his aim not only to “lay bare the shame of the Roman prostitute before the whole world, to her eternal disgrace,” but also, as he says further down, to reveal the “shameless audacity” of the King of England, who is a defender of “the scarlet woman of Rome, the tipsy mother of unchastity”; the King, “that fool,” “lies and gibbers like the filthiest of prostitutes,” and that, merely to defend the Pope and his Church, “who are after all nothing more than pimp and procuress, and the devil’s own dwelling.” All this abuse is crammed into a few pages. To conclude, the King, according to Luther’s dictum and description, has been fitly consigned to “the dungheap with the Thomists, Papists and other such-like excrements.” Side by side with all this we find his grand assurances of his, Luther’s, position as the messenger of God. “Christ through me has begun His revelations of the abomination in the Holy Place”;[392] “I am convinced that my doctrines have come down to me from Heaven,”[393] etc. The King he politely describes as a crowned donkey, an infamous knave, an impudent royal windbag, the excrement of hogs and asses. The King, according to him, is more foolish than a fool; His Majesty ought to be pelted with mud; he deserves nothing better, this stupid donkey, this Thomistic hog, this lying rascal and carnival clown, who sports the title of king. He is a nit which has not yet turned into a louse, a brat whose father was a bug, a donkey who wants to read the Psalter but is only fit for carrying sacks, a sacrilegious murderer. He is a chosen tool of the devil, a papistical sea-serpent, a blockhead and as bad as the worst rogues whom indeed he outrivals; an abortion of a fool, a limb of Satan whose God is the devil—and so forth.
One of the unfortunate effects of his public struggle on Luther was, that he entangled himself more and more in a kind of polemics in which his invective was only rivalled by his misrepresentation of his opponents’ standpoint and arguments.
Preachers of the new faith frequently complained of his insulting and unjust behaviour.
Thus Ambrose Blaurer, the spokesman of the innovation in Würtemberg, laments, in 1523, that Luther’s enemies quite rightly made capital out of the hateful language employed in his controversial writings. “They wish to make this honey [Luther’s teaching] bitter to us because Luther is so sharp, pugnacious and caustic, … because he scolds and rants. … Verily this has often displeased me in him, and I should not advise anyone to copy him in this respect. Nevertheless I have not rejected his good, Christian teaching.”[394] Matthew Zell, also a Lutheran, wrote in 1523: “Nothing has turned me more against Luther and pleased me less in him, and the same is true of other good men, than the hard, aggressive and bitter vindications and writings which he has composed against even his own friends, not to speak of the Pope, the bishops and others whom he has attacked so violently and so derisively that hardly has anything sharper, more violent and mocking ever been read.”[395]
Carlstadt, Luther’s friend, and later