Luther. Grisar Hartmann
begun a “very thorough study” of the African Father of the Church.
In the latter notes, which were also published in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works,[51] he once flies into a violent fit of indignation with the celebrated Wimpfeling, who was mixed up in a literary dispute with the Augustinian Order. He calls the worthy man “a garrulous barker and an envious critic of the fame of the Augustinians, who had lost his reason through obstinacy and hate, and who requires a cut of the knife to open his mole’s eyes”; he, “with his brazen front, should be ashamed of himself.”[52] Glibness of tongue, combined with intelligence and fancy, and, in addition to unusual talents, great perseverance in study, these were the qualities which many admired in the new teacher. Whoever had to dispute with so sharp and fiery an opponent, was sure to get the worst of the encounter. The fame of the new teacher soon spread throughout the Augustinian province, but his originality and want of restraint naturally raised him up some enemies.
Alongside of his readiness in controversy which some admired, many remarked in him quarrelsomeness and disputatiousness. He never learnt how to live “at peace” with his brothers,[53] as some of the old monks afterwards told the Humanist Cochlæus. His Catholic pupil Johann Oldecop, says of his leaving Erfurt for Wittenberg, that the separation was not altogether displeasing to the Augustinians of Erfurt, because Luther was always desirous of coming off victor in differences of opinion, and liked to stir up strife.[54] Hieronymus Dungersheim, a subsequent Catholic opponent who watched him very narrowly, writes that he “had always been a quarrelsome man in his ways and habits,” and that he had acquired that reputation even before ever he came to the monastery.[55] Dungersheim questioned those who had known him as a secular student at Erfurt. The above statements come, it is true, from the camp of his adversaries, but they are not only uncontradicted by any further testimony, but entirely agree with other data regarding his character.
Luther, in his own account of himself which he gave later, tells us that he was then and during the first part of his career as a monk, so full of zeal for the truth handed down by the Church that he would have given over to death any denier of the same, and have been ready to carry the wood for burning him at the stake. He also says in his queer, exaggerated fashion, that in those days he worshipped the Pope. At the same time he announces that his study of the Bible at Erfurt had already shown him many errors in the Papist Church, but that he had sought to soothe his conscience with the question: “Art thou the only wise man?” though by so doing he had retarded his understanding of the Holy Scriptures.[56] He also asserts later that his father’s words spoken at the banquet which followed his first Mass, viz. that his religious vocation was probably a delusion, had pierced ever deeper into his mind and appeared to him more and more true. Yet he likewise tells us elsewhere of his persevering zeal in his profession, and of his excessive fastings and disciplines.
It is hard to find the real clue in this tangle of later statements, all of them influenced by polemical considerations.
He says quite seriously, and this may very well be true, that what he was wont to hear at times outside the monastery from unbelieving “grammarians,” i.e. humanists, regarding the great difference between the teaching of Holy Scripture and that of the existing Church, made a deep impression on him.[57] He had, however, calmed himself, so he says, with the thought that this was other people’s business. In the monastic library he once came across some sermons of John Hus. Their contents appeared to him excellent, nevertheless, so he writes, from aversion for the author’s name, he laid aside the book without reading any further, though not without surprise that such a man should have written in many ways so well and so correctly. Johann Grefenstein, his master at Erfurt, had once let fall the remark in his presence that Hus had been put to death without any previous attempt being made to instruct or convert him.
At that time, Hus failed to make any impression on him. Doubts, however, assaulted him in the shape of temptations. Those he repulsed, well aware of the danger. In June, 1521, writing at the Wartburg, he says that more than ten years before, much that was taught by Popes, Councils and Universities had appeared to him absurd and in contradiction with Christ, but that he had put a bridle on his thoughts in accordance with the Proverb of Solomon: “Lean not upon thy own prudence.”[58] Certain it is that his clear mind must early have perceived that the Church of that day fell far short of the ideal, and it is possible that even in those early years, such a perception may have awakened in him doubts and discontent and have led him to take a too gloomy view of the state of the Church.
In any case, Luther’s own testimony as given above leads us to suspect the presence in his mind at an early date of a deep-seated dissatisfaction which foreboded ill to the monk’s future fidelity to the Church.[59]
A strong moral foundation would have been necessary to save a mind so singularly constituted from wavering, and if we may believe the statement of his contemporary, Hieronymus Dungersheim of Leipzig, this was just what Luther had always lacked. Dungersheim, in a pamphlet against Luther the heretic, harks back to the years he spent at Erfurt as a secular student and accuses him of evil habits, probably contracted then, but the after effects of which made themselves felt when he had entered into religion and caused him to rebel against his profession. If Luther, so he says, was now persuaded that no religious could keep the vow of chastity, in his case the inability could only be due to a certain “former bad habit,” of which stories were told, and to his neglect of prayer.[60] In another writing the same opponent accuses him openly of having indulged in the grossest vice during his academic years, and mentions as his informant one of the comrades who had, later on, accompanied Luther to the gates of the monastery.[61] He says nothing, perhaps, indeed, he knew nothing more definite, and with regard to Luther’s life in religion, he is unable to adduce anything to his discredit.
But yet another of Luther’s later adversaries has strong words for our hero’s early life. His testimony, which has not so far been dealt with, must be treated of here because such charges, if well founded, doubtless contribute much to the psychological explanation of the processes going forward in Luther. This testimony is given by Hieronymus Emser of Dresden, who, it is true, was himself by no means spotless, and who, on that account, was roundly reprimanded by the man he had attacked. In his rejoinder to Luther, a pamphlet published in 1520, and the only one preserved, he says: “Was it necessary on account of my letter that you should hold up to public execration my former deviations which are indeed, for the most part, mere inventions? What do you think has come to my ears concerning your own criminal deeds (‘flagitia’)?” He will be silent about them, he says, because he does not wish to return evil for evil, but he continues: “That you also fell, I must attribute to the same cause which brought about my own fall, namely, the want of public discipline in our days, so that young men live as they please without fear of punishment and do just what they like.”[62] We must remember that at Erfurt Emser and Luther had stood in the relation of teacher and disciple. His words, like those of Dungersheim written from Leipzig, voice the opinion on Luther later on current in the hostile University circles of Erfurt.
When Luther in his later years speaks of the “sins of his youth,” this, in his grotesquely anti-catholic vocabulary, means the good works of his monastic life, even the celebration of Holy Mass. Once, however, at the end of his tract on the Last Supper (1528),[63]