Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  In a written memorandum which he presented during the Conference he makes a similar threat, which, however, as already shown in the case of Thann (above, f.), it is wrong to take as meaning that he really declared he had acted wrongly in the advice given to the Landgrave.

  He begs the Landgrave, “again to conceal the matter and keep it secret; for to defend it publicly as right was impossible”; should the Landgrave, however, be determined, by revealing it, to “cause annoyance and disgrace to our Confession, Churches and Estates,” then it was his duty beforehand to consult all these as to whether they were willing to take the responsibility, since without them the matter could not take place and Luther and Melanchthon alone “could do nothing without their authority. And rather than assist in publicly defending it, I would repudiate my advice and Master Philip’s [Melanchthon’s], were it made public, for it was not a public advice, and is annulled by publication. Or, if this is no use, and they insist on calling it a counsel and not a Confession, which it really was, then I should rather admit that I made a mistake and acted foolishly and now crave for pardon; for the scandal is great and intolerable. And my gracious Lord the Landgrave ought not to forget that his Serene Highness was lucky enough in being able to take the girl secretly with a good conscience, by virtue of our advice in Confession; seeing that H.S.H. has no need or cause for making the matter public, and can easily keep it secret, which would obviate all this great trouble and misfortune. Beyond this I shall not go.”

  These attempts at explanation and subterfuge to which the sadly embarrassed authors of the “testimony” had recourse were keenly criticised by Feige, the Hessian Chancellor, in the sober, legal replies given by him at the Conference. He pointed out, that: The Landgrave, his master, could not now “regard or admit his marriage to be a mere ‘liaison’”; he would indeed keep it secret so far as in him lay, but deny it he could not without prejudice to his own honour; “since it has become so widely known”; those to whom he had appealed, “as the chiefs of our Christian Churches, for a testimony,” viz. Luther and his theologians, must not now leave him in the lurch, “but bar witness, should necessity arise, that he had not acted unchristianly in this matter, or against God.” Philip, moreover, from the very first, had no intention of restricting the matter to the private tribunal of conscience; the request brought by Bucer plainly showed, that he “was publicly petitioning the tribunal of the Church.” The fact is that the instructions given to Bucer clearly conveyed the Prince’s intention of making public the bigamy and the advice by which it was justified.

  Hence, proceeded Feige: Out with it plainly, out with the theological grounds which “moved the theologians to grant such a dispensation!” If these grounds were not against God, then the Landgrave could take his stand on them before the secular law, the Emperor, the Fiscal and the Courts of Justice. Should the theologians, however, really wish to “repudiate” their advice, nothing would be gained; the scandal would be just as great as if they had “admitted” it; and further, it would cause a split in their own confession, for the Prince would be obliged to “disclose the advice.” Luther wanted to get out of the hole by saying he had acted foolishly! Did he not see how “detrimental this would be to his reputation and teaching”? He should “consider what he had written in his Exposition of Genesis twelve years previously, and that this had never been called into question by any of his disciples or followers.” He should remember all that had been done against the Papacy through his work, for which the Bible gave far less sanction than for the dispensation, and which “nevertheless had been accepted and maintained, in opposition to the worldly powers, by an appeal to a Christian Council.”

  Hence the Landgrave must urgently request, concludes Feige, that the theologians would, at least “until the Council,” take his part and “admit that what he had done had been agreeable to God.”

  The Saxon representatives present at the Conference were, however, ready to follow the course indicated by Luther in case of necessity, viz. to tell a downright lie; rather than that the Prince should be forced to vindicate openly his position it was better to deny it flatly. They declared, without, however, convincing the Conference, “that a flat denial was less culpable before God and in conscience — as could be proved by many examples from Scripture — than to cause a great scandal and lamentable falling away of many good people by a plain and open admission and vindication.”

  Philip of Hesse was not particularly edified by the result of the Eisenach Conference. Of all the reports which gradually reached him, those which most aroused his resentment were, first, that Luther should expect him to tell a lie and deny the second marriage, and, secondly, his threat to withdraw the testimony, as issued in error.

  Luther had, so far, avoided all direct correspondence with the Landgrave concerning the disastrous affair. Now, however, he was forced to make some statement in reply to a not very friendly letter addressed to him by the Prince.

  In this Philip, alluding to the invitation to tell a lie, says: “I will not lie, for lying has an evil sound and no Apostle or even Christian has ever taught it, nay, Christ has forbidden it and said we should keep to yea and nay. That I should declare the lady to be a whore, that I refuse to do, for your advice does not permit of it. I should surely have had no need of your advice to take a whore, neither does it do you credit.” Yet he declares himself ready to give an “obscure reply,” i.e. an ambiguous one; without need he would not disclose the marriage.

  Nor does Luther’s threat of retracting the advice and of saying that he had “acted foolishly” affright him. The threat he unceremoniously calls a bit of foolery. “As to what you told my Councillors, viz. that, rather than reveal my reasons, you would say you had acted foolishly, please don’t commit such folly on my account, for then I will confess the reasons, and, in case of necessity, prove them now or later, unless the witnesses die in the meantime.” “Nothing more dreadful has ever come to my ears than that it should have occurred to a brave man to retract what he had granted by a written dispensation to a troubled conscience. If you can answer for it to God, why do you fear and shrink from the world? If the matter is right ‘in conscientia’ before the Almighty, the Eternal and Immortal God, what does the accursed, sodomitic, usurious and besotted world matter?” Here he is using the very words in which Luther was wont to speak of the world and of the contempt with which it should be met. He proceeds with a touch of sarcasm: “Would to God that you and your like would inveigh against and punish those in whom you see such things daily, i.e. adultery, usury and drunkenness — and who yet are supposed to be members of the Church — not merely in writings and sermons but with serious considerations and the ban which the Apostles employed, in order that the whole world may not be scandalised. You see these things, yet what do you and the others do?” In thus finding fault with the Wittenberg habits, he would appear to include the Elector of Saxony, who had a reputation for intemperance. He knew that Luther’s present attitude was in part determined by consideration for his sovereign. In his irritation he also has a sly hit at the Wittenberg theologians: At Eisenach his love for the “lady” (Margaret) had been looked upon askance; “I confess that I love her, but in all honour.... But that I should have taken her because she pleased me, that is only natural, for I see that you holy people also take those that please you. Therefore you may well bear with me, a poor sinner.”

  Luther replied on July 24, that he had not deserved that the Landgrave should write to him in so angry a tone. The latter was wrong in supposing, that he wanted to get his neck out of the noose and was not doing all that he could to “serve the Prince humbly and faithfully.” It was not no his own account that he wished to keep his advice secret; “for though all the devils wished the advice to be made public, I would give them by God’s Grace such an answer that they would not find any fault in it.”

  It was, so Luther says in this letter, a secret counsel as “all the devils” knew, the keeping secret of which he had requested, “with all dilige
nce,” and which, even at the worst, he would be the last to bring to light. That he, or the Prince himself, was bound to silence by the Seal of Confession, he does not say, though this would have been the place to emphasise it. He merely states that he knew what, in the case of a troubled conscience, “might be remitted out of mercy before God,” and what was not right apart from this necessity. “I should be sorry to see your Serene Highness starting a literary feud with me.” It was true he could not allow the Prince, who was “of the same faith” as himself, “to incur danger and disgrace”; but, should he disclose the counsel, the theologians would not be in a position to “get him out of the bother,” because, in the eyes of the world, “even a hundred Luthers, Philips and others” could not change the law; the secret marriage could never be publicly held as valid, though valid in the tribunal of conscience. He wished to press the matter before the worldly authorities; but here the Prince’s marriage would never be acknowledged; he would only be exposing himself to penalties, and withdrawing himself from the “protection and assistance of the Divine Judgment” under which he stood so long as he regarded it as a marriage merely in conscience.

  In this letter Luther opposes the “making public of the advice,” which he dreaded, by the most powerful motive at his command: The result of the disclosure would be, that “at last your Serene Highness would be obliged to put away your sweetheart as a mere whore.” He would do better to allow her to be now regarded as a “whore, although to us three, i.e. in God’s sight, she is really a wedded concubine”; in all this the Prince would still have a good conscience, “for the whole affair was due to his distress of conscience, as we believe, and, hence, to your Serene Highness’s conscience, she is no mere prostitute.”

  There were, however, three more bitter pills for the Landgrave to swallow. He had pleaded his distress of conscience. Luther hints, that, “one of our best friends” had said: “The Landgrave would not be able to persuade anyone” that the bigamy was due to distress of conscience; which was as much as to say, that “Dr. Martin believed what it was impossible to believe, had deceived himself and been willingly led astray.” He, Luther, however, still thought that the Prince had been serious in what he had said “secretly in Confession”; nevertheless the mere suspicion might suffice to “render the advice worthless,” and then Philip would stand alone.... The Landgrave, moreover, had unkindly hinted in his letter, that, “we theologians take those who please us.” “Why do not you [Princes] do differently?” he replies. “I, at least, trust that this will be your Serene Highness’s experience with your beloved sweetheart.” “Pretty women are to be wedded either for the sake of the children which spring from this merry union, or to prevent fornication. Apart from this I do not see of what use beauty is.” Marry in haste and repent at leisure was the result of following our passions, according to the proverb. Lastly, Luther does not hide from the Landgrave that his carelessness in keeping the secret had brought not only the Prince but “the whole confession” into disrepute, though “the good people” belonging to the faith were really in no way involved in what Philip had done. “If each were to do what pleased him and throw the responsibility on the pious” this would be neither just nor reasonable.

  Such are the reasons by which he seeks to dissuade the warrior-Prince from his idea of publishing the fatal Wittenberg “advice,” to impel him to allow the marriage to “remain an ‘ambiguum,’” and “not openly to boast that he had lawfully wedded his sweetheart.”

  He also gives Philip to understand that he will get a taste of the real Luther should he not obey him, or should he expose him by publishing the “advice,” or otherwise in writing. He says: “If it comes to writing I shall know how to extricate myself and leave your Serene Highness sticking in the mud, but this I shall not do unless I can’t help it.” The Prince’s allusion to the Emperor’s anger which must be avoided, did not affright Luther in the least. In his concluding words his conviction of his mission and the thought of the anti-Evangelical attitude of the Emperor carry him away. “Were this menace to become earnest, I should tweak the Emperor’s forelock, confront him with his practices and read him a good lecture on the texts: ‘Every man is a liar’ and ‘Put not your trust in Princes.’ Was he not indeed a liar and a false man, he who ‘rages against God’s own truth,’” i.e. opposes Luther’s Evangel?

  Faced by such unbounded defiance Philip and his luckless bigamy, in spite of the assurance he saw fit to assume, seemed indeed in a bad way. One can feel how Luther despised the man. In spite of his painful embarrassment, he is aware of his advantage. He indeed stood in need of the Landgrave’s assistance in the matter of the new Church system, but the latter was entirely dependent on Luther’s help in his disastrous affair.

  Hence Philip, in his reply, is more amiable, though he really demolishes Luther’s objections. This reply he sent the day after receiving Luther’s letter.

  Certain words which had been let fall at Eisenach had “enraged and maddened” him (Philip). He had, however, good “scriptural warrant for his action,” and Luther should not forget that, “what we did, we did with a good conscience.” There was thus no need for the Prince to bow before the Wittenbergers. “We are well aware that you and Philip [Melanchthon] cannot defend us against the secular powers, nor have we ever asked this of you.” “That Margaret should not be looked upon as a prostitute, this we demand and insist upon, and the presence of pious men [Melanchthon, etc.] at the wedding, your advice, and the marriage contract, will prove what she is.” “In fine, we will allow it to remain a secret marriage and dispensation, and will give a reply which shall conceal the matter, and be neither yea nor nay, as long as we can and may.” He insists, however, that, “if we cannot prevent it,” then we shall bring the Wittenberg advice “into the light of day.”

  As to telling a downright lie, that was impossible, because the marriage contract was in the hands of his second wife’s friends, who would at once take him to task.

  “It was not our intention to enter upon a wordy conflict, or to set your pen to work.” Luther had said, that he would know how to get out of a tight corner, but what business was that of Philip’s: “We care not whether you get out or in.” As to Luther’s malicious allusion to his love for the beautiful Margaret, he says: “Since she took a fancy to us, we were fonder of her than of another, but, had she not liked us, then we should have taken another.” Hence he would have committed bigamy in any case. He waxes sarcastic about Luther’s remark, that the world would never acknowledge her as his wife, hinting that Luther’s own wife, and the consorts of the other preachers who had formerly been monks or priests, were likewise not regarded by the imperial lawyers as lawful wedded wives. He looked upon Margaret as his “wife according to God’s Word and your advice; such is God’s will; the world may regard our wife, yours and the other preachers’ as it pleases.”

  Philip, however, was diplomatic enough to temper all this with friendly assurances. “We esteem you,” he says, “as a very eminent theologian, nor shall we doubt you, so long as God continues to give you His Spirit, which Spirit we still recognise in you.... We find no fault with you personally and consider you a man who looks to God. As to our other thoughts, they are just thoughts, and come and go duty free.”

  These “duty-free” thoughts, as we readily gather from the letter, concerned the Courts of Saxony, whose influence on Luther was a thorn in the Landgrave’s flesh. There was the “haughty old Vashti” at Dresden (Duchess Catherine), without whom the “matter would not have gone so far”; then, again, there was Luther’s “Lord, the Elector.” The “cunning of the children of the world,” which the Landgrave feared would infect Luther, had its head-quarters at these Courts. But if it came to the point, such things would be “disclosed and manifested” by him, the Landgrave, to the Elector and “many other princes and nobles,” that “you would have to excuse us, because what we did was not done merely from love, but for conscience’s sake and in order to escape eternal damnation; and your Lord,
the Elector, will have to admit it too and be our witness.” And in still stronger language, he “cites” the Elector, or, rather, both the Elector and himself, to appear before Luther: “If this be not sufficient, then demand of us, and of your master, that we tell you in confession such things as will satisfy you concerning us. They would, however, sound ill, so help me God, and we hope to God that He will by all means preserve us from such in future. You wish to learn it, then learn it, and do not look for anything good but for the worst, and if we do not speak the truth, may God strike us”; “to prove it” we are quite ready. Other things (see below, xxiv., 2) make it probable, that the Elector is here accused as being Philip’s partner in some very serious sin. It looks as though Philip’s intention was to frighten him and prevent his proceeding further against him. Since Luther in all probability brought the letter to the cognisance of the Elector, the step was, politically, well thought out.

  Melanchthon’s Complaints.

  Melanchthon, as was usual with him, adopted a different tone from Luther’s in the matter. He was very sad, and wrote lengthy letters of advice.

  As early as June 15, to ease his mind, he sent one to the Elector Johann Frederick, containing numerous arguments against polygamy, but leaving open the possibility of secret bigamy. Friends informed the Landgrave that anxiety about the bigamy was the cause of Melanchthon’s serious illness. Philip, on the other hand, wrote, that it was the Saxon Courts which were worrying him. Owing to his weakness he was unable to take part in the negotiations at Eisenach. On his return to Wittenberg he declared aloud that he and Luther had been outwitted by the malice of Philip of Hesse. The latter’s want of secrecy seemed to show the treasonable character of the intrigue. To Camerarius he wrote on Aug. 24: “We are disgraced by a horrid business concerning which I must say nothing. I will give you the details in due time.” On Se, he admits in a letter to Veit Dietrich: “We have been deceived, under a semblance of piety, by another Jason, who protested conscientious motives in seeking our assistance, and who even swore that this expedient was essential for him.” He thus gives his friend a peep into the Wittenberg advice, of which he was the draughtsman, and in which he, unlike Luther, could see nothing that came under the Seal of Confession. The name of the deceitful polygamist Jason he borrows from Terence, on whom he was then lecturing. Since Luther, about the same time, also quotes from Terence when speaking at table about Philip’s bigamy, we may infer that he and Melanchthon had exchanged ideas on the work in question (the “Adelphi”). Melanchthon was also fond of dubbing the Hessian “Alcibiades” on account of his dissembling and cunning.