1. Luther’s Novitiate and Early Life
On July 16, 1505, Martin Luther, then a student at the University of Erfurt, invited his friends and acquaintances to a farewell supper. He wished to see them about him for the last time before his approaching retirement to the cloister. “The bright, cheerful young fellow,” as his later pupil, Mathesius, calls him, was a favourite in his own circle. Those assembled to bid him farewell, amongst whom were also “honest, virtuous maidens and women,” were doubtless somewhat taken aback at their friend’s sudden determination to leave the world; but Luther was outwardly “beyond measure cheerful” and showed himself so light of heart that he played the lute while the wine-cup circled round.
On the following morning — it was the feast of St. Alexius, as Luther remembered when an old man — some of his fellow-students accompanied him to the gate of the Augustinian monastery and then, with tears in their eyes, saw the doors close upon him. The Prior, who was already apprised of the matter, greeted the timid new-comer, embraced him, and then, in accordance with the Rule, confided him to the Master of Novices to be initiated into the customs of the community.
In the quiet monastic cell and amid the strange new surroundings the student was probably able little by little to master the excitement which, though hidden from outsiders, raged within his breast; for the determination to become a monk had been arrived at under strange, soul-stirring circumstances. He was on his way back to Erfurt, after a visit to his parents’ house, when, near Stotternheim, he was overtaken by a thunderstorm, and as a flash of lightning close beside him threatened him “like a heavenly vision,” he made the sudden vow: “Save me, dear St. Anne, and I will become a monk.” He appears also at that very time to have been reduced to a state of great grief and alarm by the sudden death of a dear comrade, also a student, who had been stabbed, either in a quarrel or in a duel. Thus the thoughts which had perhaps for long been attracting his serious temperament towards the cloister ripened with overwhelming rapidity. Could we but take a much later assertion of his as correct, the reason of his resolve was to be found in a certain vexation with himself: because he “despaired” of himself, he once says, therefore did he retire into the monastery.
It was his earnest resolution to renounce the freedom of his academic years and to seek peace of soul and reconciliation with God in the bosom of the pious community. He persisted in keeping the vow made in haste and terror in spite of dissuading voices which made themselves heard both within himself and around him, and the determined opposition of his father to his embracing the religious state. Some were full of admiration for the energetic transformation of the new postulant. Thus the respected Augustinian of Erfurt, Johann Nathin, compared the suddenness and decision of his step to the one-time conversion of Saul into the Apostle Paul. Crotus Rubeanus, the Humanist, then stopping at Erfurt, in a later letter to Luther, expressed himself no less forcibly with regard to the heavenly flash which had made him a monk. The brothers of the “German Congregation of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine” — such was the full title of the Order — on their part rejoiced at the acquisition of the highly gifted and promising youth, who had already taken his degree as Master of Philosophy at the University of Erfurt.
If the novice, after gradually regaining peace of mind within the silent walls, permitted his thoughts to recur to his former way of life, this must have presented itself to him as full of trouble and care and very deficient in the homely joys of family life. Luther’s early career differed hardly at all from that of the poorest students of that time. He was born on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben in Saxony; his parents were Hans Luther, a miner of peasant extraction (he signed himself Luder) and Margaret Luther. They had originally settled in the town of Mansfeld, but had gone first to Möhra and then to Eisleben. Their gifted son spent his childhood in Mansfeld and first attended school there. His father was a stern, harsh man. His mother, too, though she meant well by him, once beat him till the blood came, all on account of a nut. The boy was also intimidated by the stupid brutality of his teachers, and it does not appear that the customary religious teaching he received, raised his spirits or led to a freer, more hopeful development of his spiritual life. He was one day, as he relates later, “beaten fifteen times in succession during one morning” at school, to the best of his knowledge without any fault of his own, though, probably, not without having brought the punishment upon himself by insubordination and obstinacy. After that, in his fourteenth year, he received instruction in Magdeburg from the “Pious Brethren of the Common Life,” and begged his bread by singing from door to door. A year later he went to Eisenach, where his mother had some poor relatives, to continue his Latin studies. In this town he still pursued the same hard mode of earning his living, until a charitable woman, Ursula, the wife of Kunz (Konrad) Cotta, received him into her well-to-do and comfortable household, furnishing him with food and lodging. Luther, in his old age, recalled with great gratitude the memory of his noble benefactress.
As a boy he had experienced but little of life’s pleasures and received small kindness from the world; but now life’s horizon brightened somewhat for the growing youth.
Full of enthusiasm for the career mapped out for him by his father, that, namely, of the Law, he went in the summer of 1501 to the University of Erfurt. His parents’ financial circumstances had meanwhile somewhat improved as the result of his father’s industry in the mines at Mansfeld. The assiduous student was therefore no longer dependent on the help of strangers. According to some writers he took up his abode in St. George’s Hostel. He was entered in the Matriculation Register of the Erfurt High School as “Martinus Ludher ex Mansfelt,” and for some considerable time after he continued to spell his family name as Luder, a form which is also to be found up to the beginning of the seventeenth century in the case of others (Lüder, Luider, Leuder). From 1512 he began, however, to sign himself “Lutherus” or “Luther.” The lectures on philosophy, understood in the widest sense of the term, which he first attended were delivered at the University of Erfurt by comparatively capable teachers, some of whom belonged to the Augustinian Order. The Catholic spirit of the Middle Ages still permeated the teaching and the whole life of the little republic of learning. As yet, learning was still cast in the mould of the traditional scholastic method, and the men, equally devoted to the Church and to their profession, who were Luther’s principal teachers, Jodocus Trutfetter of Eisenach and Bartholomew Arnoldi of Usingen, later an Augustinian, were well versed in the scholastic spirit of the day.
Alongside the traditional teaching of the schools there already existed in Erfurt and the neighbourhood another, viz. that of the Humanists, or so-called poets, which, though largely at variance with Scholasticism, was cultivated by many of the best minds of the day. Luther, with his vivacity of thought and feeling, could not long remain a stranger to them. With their spiritual head Mutianus at Gotha, close by, they formed one of the more prominent groups of German Humanists, although, so far, they had not produced any work of great consequence. The contrast between Humanism and Scholasticism, which was to come out so strongly at a later period, was as yet hardly noticeable in the Erfurt schools. Crotus Rubeanus, at that time a University friend of Luther’s, became at a later date, however, the principal author of the “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,” a clever and biting libel on monks and Scholastics, written from a Humanist standpoint. Crotus boasted subsequently of his intimate intercourse (“summa familiaritas”) with Luther.
Another Humanist friend whose spiritual relationship with him dates from that time, was Johann Lang, afterwards an Augustinian monk, with whom Luther stood in active interchange of thought during the most critical time of his development, as may be seen from the letters quoted below, and who, caught up by the Lutheran movement, left his Order to become the first preacher of the new faith in Erfurt. The third name which we find in connection with Luther is that of Kaspar Schalbe, a cousin, or possibly a brother of the lady already mentioned, Mistress Ursula
Cotta of Eisenach. Schalbe did not turn out any better than the others. A few years later, on being charged before the Elector of Saxony with a crime against morality, he was glad to avail himself of Luther’s mediation with the Ruler of the land. Finally, we also know that a later patron and supporter of Luther, the Humanist Spalatinus, was then carrying on his studies in Erfurt. George Burckhardt of Spalt — whence his name Spalatinus — was a student there from 1498 to 1502, and, from 1505 to 1508, was engaged as a clerical preceptor in the immediate vicinity of the town. Luther and Spalatinus always looked on themselves later as early friends whom fate had brought together.
As a student, Luther devoted himself with great zest to the various branches of philosophy, and, carried away by the spirit of the Humanists, in his private time he studied the Latin classics, more particularly Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Ovid, also Terence, Juvenal, Horace and Plautus. At a later date he was able to make skilful use of quotations from these authors when occasion demanded. Amongst others, he attended the lectures of Hieronymus Emser, a subsequent opponent well worth his metal. Of his life during those years, which, owing to the laxity of morals prevailing in the town, must have been full of danger for him, we learn little, owing to the silence of our sources. Luther himself in his later years coarsely described the town as a “beer house” and a “nest of immorality.”
Unlike his frivolous comrades, he was often beset with heavy thoughts, no doubt largely due to the after effects of his gloomy youth. Among his chums he was known as “Musicus,” on account of his learning to play the lute, and as the “Philosopher,” owing to his frequent fits of moodiness.
In the monastery, where the reader left him, he no doubt remained subject to such fits of depression, especially at the beginning when dwelling on his change of life. It is difficult to say how far the feeling of self-despair, which he mentions, had mastered him before his entry into conventual life. In later years, apart from the vow and the mysterious “heavenly terror,” he also says that in leaving the world he was seeking to escape the severity of his parents. His statements, however, do not always agree. As for the precipitate vow to enter a monastery, he must have been well aware that, even if valid when originally made, it was no longer binding on him from the day when, after conscientious self-examination, he became aware that, owing to his natural disposition, he had no vocation for a religious life. Not every character is fitted for carrying out the evangelical counsels, and to force oneself into a mould, however good, for which one is manifestly unsuited is certainly not in accordance with the will of a wise and beneficent Providence.
Luther, agreeably with the statutes of the Order, during the whole period of his novitiate and until the hour of his profession had arrived, was perfectly free to return to his fellow-students, the religious tie never having been intended to bring him misery in place of the happiness which it promises. Immediately after coming to the monastery, i.e. before his clothing, he was, according to the Rule, given considerable time in which to weigh earnestly, under the direction of an experienced brother of the Order, whether, as stated in the statutes of the Augustinians, “the spirit which was leading him was of God.” Only after this did he receive the habit of the Order, apparently, however, in the same year, 1505. The habit consisted of a white woollen tunic, a scapular, also white, falling over the breast and back, and a black mantle with a hood and wide sleeves to be worn over all.
After the clothing began the novitiate, which lasted a whole year. During this period the candidate had not only to undertake a series of exercises consisting in prayer, manual labour and penitential works, but had also to discharge certain humiliating offices, which might help him to acquire the virtue of humility as practised in the Order. Out of consideration for the University and his academic dignity Luther was, however, speedily exempted from some of the latter duties. It appears that during his noviceship he was attentive to the rules, and that the superiors treated him with fatherly kindness. Although some members of the community may have observed the Rule from routine, while others, as is often the case in large communities, may not have been conspicuous for their charity — Luther refers to something of this kind in his Table-Talk — yet the spirit of the Erfurt monastery was, like that of most of the other houses of the Congregation, on the whole quite blameless. The novice himself, as yet full of goodwill, was not only satisfied with his calling, but even looked on the state he had chosen as a “heavenly life.”
From the very first, however, as he himself complains later, he was constantly “worried and depressed” by thoughts connected with religion. He was sorely troubled by the fear of God’s judgment, by gloomy thoughts on predestination, and by the recollection of his own sins. Although he made a general confession in the monastery and renewed it again later, his confessions never gave him any satisfaction, so that his director laid on him the obligation not to hark back to things which caused him sadness of spirit nor to dwell on the details of his sins. “You are a fool,” he once said to him; “God is not angry with you, but it is you who are angry with Him.”
Those versed in the ways of the spiritual life are well aware that many a one aiming at perfection is exposed to the purifying fire of trials such as these. Traditional Catholic teaching and the experience of those skilled in the direction of conventual inmates had laid down the remedies most effectual for such a condition. What Luther himself relates later with regard to the encouragement he received from his superiors and brothers in the monastery, shows clearly that suitable direction, enlightenment and encouragement were not wanting to him either then or in the following years. He himself praises his “Præceptor” and “monastic pædagogue,” i.e. the Novice-Master, as “a dear old man,” who “under the damned frock was without doubt a true Christian.” It was probably he who said to him in an hour of trial that he should always recall the article of the Creed “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” “What are you doing, my son?” he said to him on another occasion; “do you not know that the Lord has Himself commanded us to hope?” words which made a great and unforgettable impression on him. Later, in the year 1516, he pointed out another brother, Master Bartholomew (Usingen), as the “best paraclete and comforter” in the Erfurt monastery, as he could testify from his own experience. The monks knew well and impressed it upon his troubled mind that, through the merits of the Redeemer, and after earnest preparation of the soul, true forgiveness may be obtained, and that through the cross of Christ, and through it alone, we can do all things necessary, even in the midst of the bitterest assaults.
Luther, however, too often responded to such admonitions only by cherishing his own views the more. He continued morbidly to torment himself. This self-torture, at any rate during the first enthusiastic days of his religious life, may have assumed the form of pious scruples, but later it gradually took on another character under the influence of bodily affections. He did not, like other scrupulous persons, regain his peace of mind, because, led away by his distorted and excited fancy, he liked, as he himself admits, to dwell on the doubts as to whether the counsels he received were not illusion and deception. Sad experience taught him into what devious paths and to “what a state of inward unrest, self-will and self-sufficiency are capable of leading a man.”
The Superior or Vicar-General of the Saxon or German Augustinian Congregation to which Luther belonged was at that time Johann Staupitz, a man highly esteemed in the world of learning and culture.
He frequently visited Erfurt and had thus the opportunity of talking to the new brother whom the University had given him, and who may well have attracted his attention by his careworn look, his restless manner and his peculiar, bright, deep-set eyes. Staupitz soon began to have a great esteem for him. He had great influence over Luther, though unable to free him from the strange spirit, already too deeply rooted. To the sad doubts concerning his own salvation which Brother Martin laid before him, Staupitz replied by exhorting him as follows in the spirit of the Catholic Church: “Why torment yourself with such though
ts and broodings? Look at the wounds of Christ and His Blood shed for you. There you will see your predestination to heaven shining forth to your comfort.” Quite rightly he impressed upon him, in the matter of confession and penance, that the principal thing was to arouse in himself the will to love God and righteousness, and that he must not pause before unhealthy imaginations of sin. The lines of thought, however, which the imaginative and emotional young man laid bare to him, were probably at times somewhat strange, and it is Luther himself who relates that Staupitz once said to him: “Master Martin, I fail to understand that.”
In spite of his inward fears Luther persevered, which goes to prove the strength of will which was always one of his characteristics. As the Order was satisfied with him, he was admitted at the end of the year of novitiate to profession by the taking of the three Vows of the Order. He received on this occasion the name of Augustine, but always preferred to it his baptismal name of Martin. The text of the Vows which he read aloud solemnly before the altar, according to custom, in the presence of the Prior Winand of Diedenhofen and all the brothers, was as follows: “I, Brother Augustine Luder, make profession and vow obedience to Almighty God, Blessed Mary ever Virgin and to thee Father Prior, in the name of, and as representing the Superior-General of the Hermits of St. Augustine, and his successors, likewise to live without property and in chastity until death, according to the Rule of our Holy Father Augustine.” The young monk, voluntarily and after due consideration, had thus taken upon himself the threefold yoke of Christ by the three Vows, i.e. by the most solemn and sacred promise which it is possible to make on earth. He had bound himself by a sacred oath to God to prepare himself for heaven by treading a path of life in which perfection is sought in the carrying out of the evangelical counsels of our Saviour, and throughout his life to combat the temptations of the world with the weapons of poverty, chastity and obedience.
Collected Works of Martin Luther Page 573