world had never before heard the like, succeeded in winning an immense success for the standard he had raised.[110]
Luther from the very outset of his career was too liberal in his blame of the customs and conditions in the Church which happened to meet with his disapproval.
Scarcely had he finished his course of studies as a learner than he already began to wax eloquent against various abuses. In his characteristic love of exaggeration of language he did not fear to use the sharpest epithets, nor to magnify the evil, whether in his academic lectures or in the pulpit, or in his letters and writings. He wrote, for instance, to Spalatin in 1516 to dissuade the Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise, from promoting Staupitz to a bishopric: he who becomes a bishop in these days falls into the most evil of company, all the wickedness of Greece, Rome and Sodom were to be found in the bishops; Spalatin should compare the carryings-on of the present bishops with those of the bishops of Christian antiquity; now a pastor of souls was considered quite exemplary if he merely pursued his worldly business and built up for himself with his riches an insatiable hell.[111]
In his first lectures at Wittenberg he complains that “neither monasteries nor colleges, nor Cathedral churches will in any sort accept discipline.”[112] The clergy, he says, in another place, generalising after the fashion common among preachers, should be the eyes of the Church, but to-day they do not direct the body, i.e. the Faithful, for they are blinded: they are the soul, but they do not give life, but rather kill by their deadly example; about nothing do they trouble less than about souls.[113] In similar language he, in these lectures, represents the bishops and priests as simply “full of the most abominable unchastity”; according to him, they bring to the pulpit nothing but “their views and fables, nothing but masquerading and buffoonery,” so that the Church can do nothing but cry aloud over the misery in which it is sunk. “The strength of her youth has forsaken her.”[114]
One of the earliest portions of Luther’s correspondence which has been preserved and which takes us back to his little world at Wittenberg, throws a clearer light on his character at that time. It deals with an unpleasant dispute with his brother monks at Erfurt, which he became involved in owing to his having taken his doctorate at Wittenberg instead of at Erfurt. The Erfurt monastery reproached him with a serious infringement of the rules and disrespect for the Theological Faculty there; he had, they said, entered the teaching Corporation of Erfurt in virtue of the oath which he had taken in the customary manner on his appointment as Sententiarius, and was therefore under strict obligation to take his degree of Doctor in this Faculty and not elsewhere. Other unknown charges were also made against him, but were speedily withdrawn. It is highly probable that the tension between Observantines and Conventuals increased the misunderstanding.
Nathin, the Erfurt Augustinian, first wrote a rather tactless letter to Luther about it all, as it would appear in the name of the council of the monastery. Luther was extremely angry and allowed his excitement free play. He first expresses his surprise in two letters to the Prior and the council, and was about to despatch a third when he learnt that the accusations against him, with the exception of that regarding his doctorate, had been withdrawn. While Nathin’s letter and also the two passionate replies of the young Doctor have been lost, two other letters of the latter regarding the matter exist, and are professedly letters of excuse. The first is in reality nothing of the kind, but rather the opposite. In this letter, dated June 16, 1514, and addressed to the Prior and the council, Luther to begin with complains vehemently of the evil reports against his person which, according to his information, some of those he was addressing at Erfurt had circulated previously. Nathin’s letter had, however, been the last straw. “This letter,” he says, which was written in the name of all, angered him so much with its lies and its provoking, poisonous scorn, that “I had almost poured out the vials of my wrath and indignation on his head and the whole monastery, as Master Paltz did.” They had probably received the two “amazed replies”; as however the other charges had been withdrawn, he would hold the majority of those he was addressing as excused; they must now, on their part, forget any hurt they had felt at his previous replies; “Lay all that I have done,” these are his words, “to the account of the furious epistle of Master Nathin, for my anger was only too well justified. Now, however, I hear still worse things of this man, viz. that he accuses me everywhere of being a dishonourable perjurer on account of the oath to the Faculty which I am supposed to have taken and not kept.” He goes on to explain that he had been guilty of no such crime, for the Biblical lectures at the commencement of which he was supposed to have taken the oath, and at which, it is true, in accordance with the customs of the University, such an oath was generally taken, had not been begun by him at Erfurt; at his opening lecture on the Sentences in that town he had, so far as he remembers, taken no oath, nor could he recall having ever taken any oath in the Faculty at Erfurt. He closes with an expression of respect and gratitude to the Erfurt Faculty. Though he was the injured party, he was calm and contented and joyful, for he had deserved much worse of God: they too should lay their bitterness aside, “as God has clearly willed my departure (excorporatio) from Erfurt, and we must not withstand God.”[115] This letter and Luther’s previous steps cannot be regarded as giving proof of a harmoniously attuned disposition. He may have been in the right in the matter of the oath, a question of which it is difficult to judge. It was not, however, very surprising that the Erfurt monks took steps to force Luther to make more satisfactory amends to the Faculty than the strange letter of excuse given above. It is plain that under pressure of some higher authority invoked by them, a second letter, this time of more correct character, was despatched by the Wittenberg Doctor. In judging of this academic dispute, we must bear in mind the store that was set in those days on University traditions.
The second letter in question, dated December 21, 1514, is addressed to the “excellent Fathers and Gentlemen, the Dean and other Doctors of the Theological Faculty of Studies at Erfurt” and in the very first words shows itself to be a humble apology and request for pardon. It contains further information regarding the affair. He begs them at least not to deem him guilty of a fault committed knowingly and out of malice; if he had done anything unseemly, at least it was unintentionally (“extra dolum et conscientiam”); he begs them to dispense and ratify, to supply what is wanting and to remit, if not the penalty, at least the fault.[116]
We learn nothing further about the dispute. The negotiations did not lead to the renewal of the good relations with Erfurt, which had been interrupted by his brusque departure. The people of Erfurt were amongst the first to object to the new, so-called Augustinism and Paulinism of the Wittenberg Professor.
CHAPTER II
HARBINGERS OF CHANGE
1. Sources, Old and New
The history of Luther’s inward development during his first years at Wittenberg up to 1517, is, to a certain extent, rather obscure. The study of deep psychological processes must always be reckoned amongst the most complex of problems, and in our case the difficulty is increased by the nature of Luther’s own statements with regard to himself. These belong without exception to his later years, are uncertain and contradictory in character, and in nearly every instance represent views influenced by his controversies and such as he was wont to advocate in his old age. Thanks to more recent discoveries, however, we are now possessed of works written by Luther in his