Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  In the “Historien des ehrwirdigen in Gott seligen thewren Mannes Gottes,” Mathesius says of Luther: “In the year 45 he brought out the mighty, earnest book against the Papacy founded by the devil and maintained and bolstered up by lying signs, and, in the same year, also caused many scathing pictures to be struck off in which he portrayed for the benefit of those unable to read, the true nature and monstrosity of Antichrist, just as the Spirit of God in the Apocalypse of St. John depicted the red bride of Babylon, or as Master John Hus summed up his teaching in pictures for the people, of the Lord Christ and of Antichrist.” “The Holy Ghost is well able to be severe and cutting,” says Mathesius of this book and the caricatures: “God is a jealous God and a burning fire, and those who are driven and inflamed by His Spirit to wage a ghostly warfare against the foes of God show themselves worthy foemen of those who withstand their Lord and Saviour.” Mathesius, like many others, was full of admiration for the work.

  The woodcuts pleased Luther so well that he himself wrote autograph inscriptions above and below a proof set, and hung them up in his room.

  “The devil knows well, that, when the foolish people hear high-sounding words of abuse, they are taken in and blindly believe them without asking for any further grounds or reasons.” The words are Luther’s own, though written at an earlier date. That they applied even more to caricatures Luther was well aware, nor was this the first time that he had flung such pictures amongst the masses the better to excite them. As early as 1521, at Luther’s instigation, with the help of Cranach’s pencil, Melanchthon and Schwertfeger had done something of the sort in the “Passional Christi und Antichristi.” In a booklet of 1526, “Das Bapstum mit seinen Gliedern,” containing sixty-five caricatures and scurrilous doggerel verses composed by Luther, everything religious, from the Pope down to the monks and nuns, was held up to ridicule.

  The use of caricature was, it is true, not unusual in those days of violent controversy, nor were Catholics slow to have recourse to it against Luther; Cochlæus, for instance, in his “Lutherus Septiceps” has a crude illustration of a figure with seven heads. But everything of this nature, his own earlier productions included, was put into the shade by Luther’s final pictures of the Papacy.

  At the end of his “Wider das Bapstum” Luther had ventured to hope that he would be able to go even further in another booklet, and, that, should he die in the meantime, God would raise up another man who would “make things a thousand times hotter.” His threat he practically carried out in his “Popery Pictured,” in what Paul Lehfeldt calls his “highly offensive and revolting woodcuts,” which “certainly made things a thousand times worse seeing the appeal they made to the imagination.” The fact, that, “in spite of the numerous reprints,” very few copies indeed have survived is attributed by Lehfeldt to the indignation felt in both camps, Lutheran and Catholic, which led to the wholesale destruction of the book.

  So pleased was the Elector of Saxony with the “Wider das Bapstum” that he helped to push it; he bought twenty florins’ worth of copies and had them distributed; this Luther hastened to tell Amsdorf with all the greater satisfaction, seeing that he had heard that others were expressing their disapproval of the book. It may be that the Elector also helped to spread the caricatures. If we may believe a sermon by Cyriacus Spangenberg, some of Luther’s own friends nevertheless made representations and begged him “to desist from publishing such figures, as of late he had caused to be circulated against the Pope.” Yet three years after Luther’s death the fanatical Flacius Illyricus, in bringing out a new edition of the caricature of the Pope on the sow, with a fresh description of it, characterised it as a “prophetic picture by Elias the Third of blessed memory,” and took severely to task all who felt otherwise. He has it, that “Many who walk according to the flesh rather than in the wisdom, piety and retirement of the spirit, did a few years ago actually dare to call these and certain other like figures shameless prints, and fancies of a brainless old fool.” The writer thinks he has proved, that, “far from being an outcome of wanton stupidity they proceeded from a ghostly, godly wisdom and zeal.”

  Such attempts at vindication only prove that Luther was not alone in allowing himself to be dominated, and his mind darkened by such morbid fancies.

  The psychology reflected in these much-debated woodcuts deserves more careful scrutiny.

  Those undoubtedly take too superficial a view of the matter, who, in their desire to exonerate Luther, refuse to see in these caricatures anything more than the exuberant effusions of ridicule gone mad. On the other hand, some of Luther’s enemies are no less wrong in failing to see that the indignation which speaks from these drawings is meant in bitter earnest.

  If, as is only right, we view this frivolous imagery in the light of Luther’s mental state at the time and of his whole attitude then, it will stand out as a sort of confession of faith on the part of the author, appalling indeed, but absolutely truthful, a picture of his deepest thoughts and feelings, steeped as they were in his sombre pseudo-mysticism and devil-craze. The same holds good likewise of the “Wider das Bapstum” of which this set of illustrations is a sort of supplement.

  The revolting images which rise before his mind like bubbles to the surface of the fermenting tan, seem to him so true to fact that he protests that the cuts are in no sense defamatory; “should anyone feel offended or hurt in his feelings by them I am ready to answer for their publication before the whole Empire.”

  So much had he brooded over the illustrations, that, as is shown by his answer to Amsdorf concerning the Furies, he could describe their every detail with an enthusiasm and minuteness such as few artists could equal, even when descanting on their own work. In the midst of his sufferings of body and mind and of all his toil, he finds leisure to explain to his friend how: The first Fury, Megæra, assists at the birth of the Pope-Antichrist, because she is the incarnation of hate and envy and thus shows that the Pope “as the true imitator, nay, ape, of Satan hinders all that is good”; the second, Alecto, according to classic teaching, has the special task of symbolising that “the Pope works all that is evil”; in this he is helped by the “old serpent of Paradise”; the latter it is who is to blame for all the misfortunes of the human race from the beginning, and for still “daily filling the world with new misfortunes by means of the Pope, Mohamed, the Cardinals, the Archbishop of Mayence, etc.; and who simply can’t cease its sad abominations”; as for the third Fury, Tisiphone, she is passive, she arouses God’s anger, whereby the tyrants and the wicked, as, for instance, Cain, Saul and Absalom, are punished for the doings of the two other Furies, etc. “Such is the devil of those possessed and of the insane, who also blaspheme God. This Fury rules more particularly in the opinions of the Pope and the heretics and in their blasphemous doctrines which fall under a well-merited reprobation.”

  It is characteristic of the mental attitude of the writer that, in the very next letter to the same friend, he replies to a question of Amsdorf’s regarding a fox of abnormal shape recently caught; according to Luther “it might well portend the end of all things”; this end he will “pray for and await”; but “of any Council or negotiations” he is determined “to hear nothing, believe nothing, hope nothing and think nothing.” “Vanity of vanities,” such is his greeting to Trent; as for Germany, he can only discern “the spark of the coming fire prepared for its chastisement, the decline of all justice, the undermining of law and order and the end of the Empire.” “May God remove us and ours before the desolation comes!”

  When in such a mood he is convinced that the fresh revelation of Antichrist in the new engravings constitute a grand service to the Kingdom of God. He knows already the exalted reward of their faith prepared for himself and his faithful followers. “I have this great advantage: my Master is called Shevlimini [see above, vol. iv., ]; He told us: ‘I will raise you up at the last day’; then He will say: ‘Dr. Martin, Dr. Jonas, Mr. Michael, come forth,’ and summon us all by our names as Christ says in John: �
�And He calls them all by name.’ Therefore be not affrighted.” This he said shortly before his death, reviewing his last publications.

  By a similar misuse of the words of the Bible he invites all his followers, and that too in the name of the “Spirit,” to do to the Pope just what the three rude fellows are doing over the inverted tiara of the Pope in the woodcut entitled “The worship of the Pope as God of the world.” The verses below the picture are scarcely credible:

  “To Christ’s dear Kingdom the Pope has done

  What they are doing to his own crown.

  Says the Spirit: Give him quits,

  Fill it brimful as God bids.”

  In the margin express reference is made to the solemn words of God (Apoc. xviii. 6), where the voice from heaven proclaims judgment on Babylon: “Render to her as she also hath rendered to you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup wherein she hath mingled, mingle ye double unto her.”

  It would surely be hard to find anywhere so filthy a parody of the sacred text as Luther here permits himself.

  The same must be said of the utter hatred which gleams from every one of the pictures. Into it we gain some insight from a letter of Luther’s to Jonas: To console his suffering colleague he has a fling at the Council of Trent: “God has cursed them as it is written: ‘Cursed be he who trusts in man.’” God, says he, will surely destroy the Council, legates and all. Jonas was ailing from stone, besides being tormented with “dire fancies.” Luther, who himself suffered severely from stone, exclaimed to his friend Amsdorf: Would that the stone would pass into the Pope and these Gomorrhaic cardinals! A prey to anger and depression, to hatred, defiance and fear of the devil, he is yet determined to mock at Satan who is ever at his heels in small matters as well as in great. “I shall, please God, laugh at Satan though he seeks to deride me and my Church.”

  Such, judging by the letters he wrote in that period, was the soil which produced both the caricatures and the “Wider das Bapstum vom Teuffel gestifft.”

  So deeply seated in Luther’s devil-lore, not to say devil-mania, was the tendency that inspired the woodcuts, that, when once his conscience pricked him on account of the excessive coarseness of one of the scenes, he could not be moved to admit any more than that the drawing might be improved on the score of decency and be made to look ... “more diabolical.” The picture in question was that of the “Birth of the Pope-Antichrist.” Evidently some friends had protested against the cynical boldness of the birth-scene. Luther writes to Amsdorf: “Your nephew George has shown me the picture of the Pope, but Master Lucas is a coarse painter. He might have spared the female sex as the creature of God and for the sake of our own mothers. He could well design other figures more worthy of the Pope, i.e. more diabolical; but do you be judge.” Later on, when Amsdorf still betrayed some scruple, Luther promised him: “I shall take diligent steps should I survive to see that Lucas the painter substitutes for this obscene picture a more seemly one.” So far as is known, however, no such substitution took place, and still less was the caricature withdrawn from circulation; nor, again, would it have been at all easy even for the cleverest painter to produce something “more diabolical.”

  For the coarseness of the drawings there exists no shred of excuse.

  Luther had indeed never disdained to be coarse and vulgar when this served his purpose; as time went on, however, his love for the language of the gutter became much more noticeable, at least in his controversial writings. To some extent this was the reaction of the impression he saw produced on the masses by his words, his growing sense of the power of his tongue being in part responsible for the ever more frequent recourse he had to this “original” mode of speech; to some extent too his obscene language and imagery were simply an outcome of his devil-craze, with which, indeed, they were in perfect keeping.

  Certain admirers have sought to excuse Luther by pointing out that, after all, none of his obscenities was of a nature to excite concupiscence; this we must indeed allow, but the admission affords but a small crumb of comfort. Without finding anything actually lascivious, either in the draughtsmanship of these pictures or in the filthy language to which Luther was generally addicted, one can still regret his “peculiarity” in this respect.

  That, in those days, people were more inured than our refined contemporaries to the controversial use of such revolting coarseness has been stated and is indeed perfectly true. The fact is, however, that what contributed to harden the people was the frequency with which the Protestants in their polemics had recourse to the weapon of obscenity. Who had more responsibility in the decline in the sense of modesty and propriety among German folk than the Wittenberg writer whose works enjoyed so wide a circulation? It has been pointed out elsewhere that though certain Catholic writers of that age, and even of earlier times, were not entirely innocent of a tendency to indelicacy, Luther outdid them all in this respect. Nevertheless, however great the lack of refinement may have been, though the lowest classes then may have been even more prone than now to speak with alarming frankness of certain functions of the body, and though even the better classes and the writers may have followed suit, yet so far did Luther venture to go, that the humanist Willibald Pirkheimer was expressing the feeling of very many when he said, in 1529: “Such is the audacity of his unwashed tongue that Luther cannot hide what is in his heart; he seems either to have completely gone off his head or to be egged on by some evil demon.”

  As day is to night so is the contrast between such strictures and the praise bestowed on Luther by his own side, not indeed so much for the works last mentioned as for his literary labours in general. The unprejudiced historian must admit that there is some ground for such praise (cp. xxxiv., 2). That Luther’s popular writings must contain much that is really instructive and edifying amidst a deal of dross is surely clear from the favourable reception they met even in quarters not at all blinded by prejudice. In what has gone before we ourselves have repeatedly dwelt on the better elements often to be found in the non-polemical portion of Luther’s literary legacy.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  END OF LUTHER’S LITERARY LABOURS. THE WHOLE REVIEWED

  1. Towards a Christianity void of Dogma. Protestant Opinions

  With the concluding years of Luther’s life we reach a point whence may be undertaken with advantage a survey of the character of his theological and literary labours from several sides from which we have not as yet had opportunity to approach them.

  We naturally turn first of all to the religious content of his literary life-work; here it may be advisable to hear what Protestant theologians have to say.

  These theologians will tell us how many of the olden dogmas Luther, explicitly or implicitly, relinquishes, and whether and how he undermines the very idea of faith as known to Christians of old; we shall also have to consider the Protestant strictures which assert that the doctrines, which he either retained or set up for the first time, were fraught with so much that was illogical that they may be said to bear within them the seeds of dissolution. The conclusions reached will show whether or not he was actually heading for a “Christianity void of dogma.”

  (a) Protestant Critics on Luther’s Abandonment of Individual Christian Dogmas and of the Olden Conception of Faith

  It is hard to deny that a certain amount of truth lurks in the contention of a certain modern school of Protestant thought which insists that Luther practically made an end of “the old, dogmatic Christianity.” Luther did not, of course, look so far ahead, nor were the consequences of his own action at all clear to him, and when Catholics took pains to point them out he was not slow to repel them with the utmost indignation. Still, logic is inexorable in demanding its rights.

  Here we are happily able to state the case almost entirely in the words of Protestant theologians of the modern school, such as, for instance, Adolf Harnack.

  “The acknowledged authorities on dogma,” says Harnack, speaking of Luther’s attitude towards the pillars of the Churc
h’s teaching, “have been torn down, and thereby dogma itself, qua dogma, i.e. the unfailing teaching institution ordained by the Holy Ghost, has been done away with.... The revision has been extended even beyond the second century of the Church’s history and up to its very beginnings, and has everywhere been carried out radically. An end has been made of that history of dogma which started in the age of the apologists, nay, of the Apostolic Fathers.” Harnack therefore, in his detailed work on the history of dogma, refrained from dealing with any theologians later than Luther, instead of following the usual course among Protestant authors, and giving an account of the development of doctrine in later Protestantism and among Luther’s followers. He pertinently asked: “How can there be in Protestantism any history of dogma after Luther’s Prefaces to the New Testament and his great reformation writings?”