According to Melanchthon, the friend in whom he chiefly confided, Luther gave these sufferings a place in the forefront of his soul’s history. The reader may remember the significant passage where Melanchthon says, that, when oppressed with gloomy thoughts of the Divine Judgments, Luther “was often suddenly overwhelmed by such fits of terror (‘subito tanti terrores’)” as made him an object of pity. These terrors he had experienced for the first time when he decided to enter the monastic life, led to this resolution by the sudden death of a dearly loved friend.
We hear from Luther himself of the strange paroxysms of fear from which he suffered as a monk. On two occasions when he speaks of them his words do not seem to come under suspicion of forming part of the legend which he afterwards wove about his earlier history (see below, xxxvii.). These statements, already alluded to once, may be given more in detail here. In March, 1537, he told his friends: “When I was saying Mass [his first Mass] and had reached the Canon, such terror seized on me (ita horrui) that I should have fled had not the Prior held me back; for when I came to the words, ‘Thee, therefore, most merciful Father, we suppliantly pray and entreat,’ etc., I felt that I was speaking to God without any mediator. I longed to flee from the earth. For who can endure the Majesty of God without Christ the Mediator? In short, as a monk I experienced those terrors (horrores); I was made to experience them before I began to assail them.” Incidentally it may be noted that “Christ the Mediator,” whom Luther declares he could not find in the Catholic ritual, is, as a matter of fact, invoked in the very words which follow those quoted by Luther: “Thee, therefore, most merciful Father, we suppliantly pray and entreat through Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord to accept and bless these gifts,” etc. Evidently when Luther recorded his impressions he had forgotten these words and only remembered the groundless fear and inward commotion with which he had said his first Mass.
Something similar occurred during a procession at Erfurt, when he had to walk by the side of Staupitz, his superior, who was carrying the Blessed Sacrament. Fear and terror so mastered Luther that he was hardly able to remain. Telling Staupitz of this later in Confession, the latter encouraged him with the words: “Christ does not affright, He comforts.” The incident must have taken place after 1515, the Eisleben priory having been founded only in that year.
If we go back to the very beginning of his life in the monastery we shall find that the religious scruples which assailed him at least for a while, possibly also deserve to be reckoned as morbid. We shall return below to the voice “from heaven” which drove him into the cloister.
Unspeakable fear issuing in bodily prostration was also at work in him on the occasion of the already related incident in the choir of the Erfurt convent, when he fell to the ground crying out that he was not the man possessed. Not only does Dungersheim relate it, on the strength of what he had heard from inmates of the monastery, but Cochlæus also speaks of the incident, in his “Acta,” and, again, in coarse and unseemly language in the book he wrote in 1533, entitled “Von der Apostasey,” doubtless also drawing his information from the Augustinian monks: “It is notorious how Luther came to be a monk; how he collapsed in choir, bellowing like a bull when the Gospel of the man possessed was being read; how he behaved himself in the monastery,” etc. We may recall, how, according to Cochlæus, his brother monks suspected Luther, owing to this attack and on account of a “certain singularity of manner,” of being either under diabolical influence or an epileptic. The convulsions which accompanied the fit may have given rise to the suspicion of epilepsy, but, in reality, they cannot be regarded as sufficient proof. Epilepsy is well-nigh incurable, yet, in Luther’s case, we hear of no similar fits in later life. In later years he manifested no fear of epileptic fits, though he lived in dread of an apoplectic seizure, such as, in due course, was responsible for his death. A medical diagnosis would not fail to consider this seeming instance of epileptic convulsions in conjunction with Luther’s state of fear. For the purpose of the present work it will be sufficient to bring together for the benefit of the expert the necessary data for forming an opinion on the whole question, so far as this is possible.
From the beginning Luther seems to have regarded these “states of terror” as partaking to some extent of a mystic character.
To what a height they could sometimes attain appears from the description he embodied in his “Resolutiones” in 1518, and of which Köstlin opines that, in it Luther portrayed the culminating point to which his own fears had occasionally risen. It is indeed very probable that Luther is referring to no other than himself when he says in the opening words of this remarkable passage: “I know a man who assures me that he has frequently felt these pains.” G. Kawerau also agrees with Köstlin in assuming that Luther is here speaking of himself, a view which is, in fact, forced upon us by other similar passages. Walter Köhler declares: “Whether Luther intended these words to refer to himself or not, in any case they certainly depict his normal state.”
Luther, after saying that, “many, even to the present day,” suffer the pangs of hell so often described in the Psalms of David, and [so Luther thinks], by Tauler, goes on to describe these pangs in words which we shall now quote in full, as hitherto only extracts have been given.
“He often had to endure such pains, though in every instance they were but momentary; they were, however, so great and so hellish that no tongue can tell, no pen describe, no one who has not felt them believe what they were. When at their worst, or when they lasted for half an hour, nay, for the tenth part of an hour, he was utterly undone, and all his bones turned to ashes. At such times God and the whole of creation appears to him dreadfully wroth. There is, however, no escape, no consolation either within or without, and man is ringed by a circle of accusers. He then tearfully exclaims in the words of Holy Scripture: ‘I am cast away, O Lord, from before Thy eyes’ [Ps. xxx. 23], and does not even dare to say: ‘Lord, chastise me not in Thy wrath’ [Ps. vi. 1]. At such a time the soul, strange to tell, is unable to believe that it ever will be saved; it only feels that the punishment is not yet at an end. And yet the punishment is everlasting and may not be regarded as temporal; there remains only a naked longing for help and a dreadful groaning; where to look for help the soul does not know. It is as it were stretched out [on the cross] with Christ, so that ‘all its bones are numbered.’ There is not a nook in it that is not filled with the bitterest anguish, with terror, dread and sadness, and above all with the feeling that it is to last for ever and ever. To make use of a weaker comparison: when a ball travels along a straight line, every point of the line bears the whole weight of the ball, though it does not contain it. In the same way, when the floods of eternity pass over the soul, it feels nothing else, drinks in nothing else but everlasting pain; this, however, does not last but passes. It is the very pain of hell, is this unbearable terror, that excludes all consolation!… As to what it means, those who have experienced it must be believed.”
A physical accompaniment of these fears was, in Luther’s case, the fainting fits referred to now and again subsequent to the beginning of his struggle against the Church.
On the occasion of the attack of which we are told by Ratzeberger the physician, when he was found by friends lying unconscious on the floor, he had been “overpowered by melancholy and sadness.” It is also very remarkable that when his friends had brought him to, partly by the help of music, he begged them to return frequently, that they might play to him “because he found that as soon as he heard the sound of music his ‘tentationes’ and melancholy left him.” According to Kawerau the circumstances point to this incident having taken place in 1523 or 1524.
On the occasion of a serious attack of illness in 1527 his swoons again caused great anxiety to those about him. This illness was preceded by a fit in Jan., 1527. Luther informs a friend that he had “suddenly been affrighted and almost killed by a rush or thickening of the blood in the region of the heart,” but had as quickly recovered. His cure was, he thinks, due to a
decoction of milk-thistle, then considered a very efficacious remedy. The rush of blood to the heart, of which he here had to complain, occurred at a time when Luther had nothing to say of “temptations,” but only of the many troubles and anxieties due to his labours.
The more severe bout of illness began on July 6, 1527, at the very time of, or just after, some unusually severe “temptation.” Jonas prefaces his account of it by saying that Luther, “after having that morning, as he admitted, suffered from a burdensome spiritual temptation, came back partially to himself (‘utcunque ad se rediit’).” The words seem to presuppose that he had either fainted or been on the verge of fainting. Having, as the same friend relates, recovered somewhat, Luther made his confession and spoke of his readiness for death. In the afternoon, however, he complained of an unendurable buzzing in his left ear which soon grew into a frightful din in his head. Bugenhagen, in his narrative, is of opinion that the cause of the mischief here emerges plainly, viz. that it was the work of the devil. A fainting fit ensued which overtook Luther at the door of his bedchamber. When laid on his bed he complained of being utterly exhausted. His body was rubbed with cloths wrung out of cold water and then warmth was applied. The patient now felt a little better, but his strength came and went. Amongst other remarks he then passed was one, that Christ is stronger than Satan. When saying this he burst into tears and sobs. Finally, after application of the remedies common at that time, he broke out into a sweat and the danger was considered to be over.
There followed, however, the days and months of dreadful spiritual “temptations” already described (vol. v., ff.). At first the bodily weakness also persisted. Bugenhagen was obliged to take up his abode in Luther’s house for a while because the latter was in such dread of the temptations and wished to have help and comfort at hand. For a whole week Luther was unable either to read or to write.
At the end of August and again in September the fainting fits recurred.
His friends, however, were more concerned about Luther’s mental anguish than about his bodily sufferings. The latter gradually passed away, whereas the struggles of conscience continued to be very severe. On Oct. 17, Jonas wrote to Johann Lang: “He is battling amidst the waves of temptation and is hardly able to find any passage of Scripture wherewith to console himself.”
In 1530 again we hear of Luther’s life being endangered by a fainting fit, though it seems to have been distinct from the above attack of illness. This also occurred after an alarming incident during which he believed he had actually seen the devil. It was followed the next day by a loud buzzing in the head. Renewed trouble in the region of the heart, accompanied by paroxysms of fear, is reported to have been experienced in 1536. After this we hear no more of any such symptoms till just before Luther’s death. In the sudden attack of illness which brought his life to a close he complained chiefly of feeling a great oppression on the chest, though his heart was sound.
Nervousness and other Ailments
Quite a number of Luther’s minor ills seem to have been the result of overwrought nerves due partly to his work and the excitement of his life. Here again it is difficult to judge of the symptoms; unquestionably some sort of connection exists between his nervous state and his depression and bodily fears; the fainting fits are even reckoned by some as simply due to neurasthenia.
There can be no doubt that his nervousness was, to some extent inherited, to some extent due to his upbringing. His lively temper which enabled him to be so easily carried away by his fancy, to take pleasure in the most glaring of exaggerations, and bitterly to resent the faintest opposition, proves that, for all the vigour of his constitution, nerves played an important part.
Already in his monastic days his state was aggravated by mental overstrain and the haste and turmoil of his work which led him to neglect the needs of the body. His uninterrupted literary labours, his anxiety for his cause, his carelessness about his health and his irregular mode of life reduced him in those days to a mere skeleton. At Worms the wretchedness of his appearance aroused pity in many. It is true that when he returned from the Wartburg he was looking much stronger, but the years 1522-25, during which he led a lonely bachelor’s life in the Wittenberg monastery, without anyone to wait on him, and sleeping night after night on an unmade bed, brought his nervous state to such a pitch that he was never afterwards able completely to master it. On the contrary, his nervousness grew ever more pronounced, tormenting him in various ways.
So little, however, did he understand it that it was to the devil that he attributed the effects, now dubiously, now with entire conviction.
Among these effects must be included the buzzing in the head and singing in the ears, to which Luther’s letters allude for many a year. When, at the end of Jan., 1529, the violent “agonies and temptations” recurred, the buzzing in the ears again made itself felt. He writes: “For more than a week I have been ailing from dizziness and humming in the head (‘vertigo et bombus’), whether this be due to fatigue or to the malice of the devil I do not know. Pray for me that I may be strong in the faith.” He also complains of this trouble in the head in the next letter, dating from early in Feb. He was then unable to preach or to give lectures for nearly three weeks.
He goes on to say of himself: “In addition to the buffets of the angel of Satan [the temptations] I have also suffered from giddiness and headache.” It was, however, as he himself points out, no real illness: “Almost constantly is it my fate to feel ill though my body is well.”
In the new kind of life he had to lead in the Castle of Coburg in 1530, when, to want of exercise, was added overwork and anxiety of mind, these neurasthenic phenomena again reappeared. He compares the noises in his head to thunder, or to a whirlwind. There was also present a tendency to fainting. At times he was unable even to look at any writing, or to bear the light owing to the weakness of his head. Simultaneously the struggle with his thoughts gave him endless trouble; thus he writes: “It is the angel of Satan who buffets me so, but since I have endured death so often for Christ, I am quite ready for His sake to suffer this illness, or this Sabbath-peace of the head.” “You declare,” he says laughingly in a letter to Melanchthon, “that I am pig-headed, but my pig-headedness is nothing compared with that of my head (‘caput eigensinnigissimum’); so powerfully does Satan compel me to make holiday and to waste my time.” Towards the middle of August his head improved, but the tiresome buzzing frequently recurred. Luther complained later that, during this summer, he had been forced to waste half his time.
When, from this time onwards, “we hear him ever saying that he feels worn-out (‘decrepitus’), weary of life and desirous of death … all this is undoubtedly closely bound up with these nerve troubles.” The morning hours became for him the worst, because during them he often suffered from dizziness. After his “prandium,” between nine and ten o’clock, he was wont to feel better. As a rule he slept well.
The attacks which occurred early in 1532 must also be noted.
In Jan., so his anxious pupil Veit Dietrich writes, Luther had a foreboding of some illness impending and fancied it would come in March; in reality it came on on Jan. 22. “Very early, about four o’clock, he felt a violent buzzing in his ears followed by great weakness of the heart.” His friends were summoned at his request as he did not wish to be alone. “When, however, he had recovered and had his wits about him (‘confirmato animo’), he proceeded to storm against the Papists, who were not yet to make gay over his death.” “Were Satan able,” he says, “he would gladly kill me; at every hour he is at my heels.” “The physician declared,” so the account goes on, “after having examined the urine, that Luther stood in danger of an attack of apoplexy, which indeed he would hardly escape.” The prediction was, however, not immediately verified and the patient was once more able to leave his bed. On Feb. 9, however (if the date given in the Notes be correct), after assisting at a funeral in the church of Torgau, he was again seized with such a fit of giddiness as hardly to be able to return to
his lodgings. When he recovered he said: “Do not be grieved even should I die, but continue to further the Word of God after my death.… It may be we are still sinners and do not perform our duty sufficiently; if so we shall cloak it over with the forgiveness of sins.” This time again he was not able to work for a whole month.
What he at times endured from the trouble in his head we learn from a statement in the Notes of the Table-Talk made by Cordatus: “When I awake and am unable to sleep again on account of the noise in my ears, I often fancy I can hear the bells of Halle, Leipzig, Erfurt and Wittenberg, and then I think: Surely you are going to have a fit. But God frequently intervenes and gives me a short sleep afterwards.”
No notable improvement took place until the middle of 1533.
The noises in the head began again in 1541. He fancied then that he could hear “the rustling of all the trees and the breaking of the waves of every sea” in his head. When he wrote this he was also suffering from a discharge from the ear, which, for the time, deprived him of his hearing; so great was the pain as to force tears from him. Alluding to this he says that his friends did not often see him in tears, but that now he would gladly weep even more copiously; to God he had said: “Let there be an end either of these pains or of me myself,” but, now that the discharge had ceased, he was beginning to read and write again quite confidently.
From the commencement of his struggle, however, until the end of his life his extreme nervous irritability found expression in the violence of what he said and wrote. There can be no question that, had he not been in a morbidly nervous state, he would never have given way to such outbursts of anger and brutal invective. “There was a demoniacal trait,” says a Protestant Luther biographer, “that awakened in him as soon as he met an adversary, at which even his fellow-monks had shuddered, and which carried him much further than he had at first intended.” He became the “rudest writer of his age.” In his controversy with the Swiss Sacramentarians he “was domineering and high-handed.” “His disputatiousness and tendency to pick a quarrel grew ever stronger in him after his many triumphs.” — But, even among his friends and in his home, he was careless about controlling his irritation. We find him exclaiming: “I am bursting with anger and annoyance”; as we know, he excited himself almost “to death” about a nephew and threatened to have a servant-maid “drowned in the Elbe.” (Cp. the passages from A. Cramer quoted below, towards the end of section 5.)
Collected Works of Martin Luther Page 855