The falsehood of the legend of Luther’s suicide was most convincingly proved by N. Paulus in his special work on the subject (1898). This scholar submitted the fable to the sharp knife of criticism with a broadminded love of truth that honours his Catholicism as much as his acumen does honour to him as a critic.
It is barely credible to us to-day what inventions grew up in the 16th century, both on the Catholic and the Protestant side, about the deaths of well-known public men who happened to be the object of animosity to one party or the other. Suicide, or murder at the hands of friend or foe, or, more frequently, dreadful maladies or sudden death under the most horrible shapes were the ordinary penalties assigned to opponents, not only by the populace but even by the more credulous type of learned writers. We must not forget that Luther himself had at hand a list of the persecutors of the Evangel, who, in his own day, had been snatched away by sudden death, and that it served him on occasion in his sermons and writings.
It is an undeniable fact that Luther did much to pave the way for such stories. His printed Table-Talk could well be taken as a model. Among the fearsome tales of death he himself related was e.g. that of Mutian the humanist, who, refusing to become a Lutheran, fell from poverty into despair and poisoned himself; of the Archbishop of Treves, Richard of Greiffenklau, who was “bodily carried off to hell by the devil”; of the Catholic preacher, Urban of Kunewalde, who, “having fallen away from the Evangel,” was “struck by a thunderbolt” in the church, and then again by a flash of lightning that passed through his body from head to foot, because he had asked heaven for a sign to prove that he was in the right, etc. “All these perished miserably,” he says, “like senseless swine. And so too it will happen with the others.”
In those days, partly owing to Luther’s influence, people were very ready to admit the devil’s intervention in the horrible death that befell their foes; the Catholic champions would all seem to have had a shocking end, could we but trust the writers in the Protestant camp.
Eck they depicted entirely possessed by the devil and “dying like a brute beast, quite out of his mind.” Of Emser (when still living) Luther himself says, that he had been killed suddenly by the “fiery darts and arrows of the devil.” Cochlæus, according to other writers, was removed from the world in an awful way. Johann Fabri it was said had died in despair, saying to those who exhorted him to have confidence: “Too late, too late.” Pighius was made out to have died by his own hand. Latomus was represented as crying out on his death-bed that he was a devil incarnate and had claws on his fingers and toes. Hofmeister, the learned Augustinian, according to the Protestant version, repeatedly said before dying: “I belong to the devil body and soul.” Of the Jesuits, even their founder, Ignatius of Loyola, had a bad death. Canisius was struck dumb in the pulpit at Worms and was carried off by the judgment of God; some were not wanting, however, who declared that he had been converted to Luther’s doctrine. Seven years before his death, it was reported of Bellarmine, the great controversialist of that day, that “he had died miserably and in despair,” carried off on the back of a fiery he-goat from hell; and “even to this very day,” so it was told during his lifetime, “Bellarmine may be heard gruesomely howling in the wind, astride his flaming, winged steed.”
Needless to say, many of the converts who turned their back on Luther and took the part of the Catholic Church “perished miserably”! “Many of these devil’s henchmen,” writes a “simple minister of the Word,” “who knowingly and of malice aforethought, as they themselves admit, deny the known truth of the Evangel, have been carried off alive by the devil, or have howled before their death like wolves and tigers, as notoriously happened in the case of that firebrand Staphylus.”
If similar tales, representing in an unfavourable light Luther’s life and death, were equally rife among the Catholics, this can be no matter for surprise if we bear in mind how greatly they were vexed by the exaggerated eulogies passed on him and his life’s work, and how much they had been stung by his polemics and furious onslaught on the Church. Whoever loved the olden Church held Luther’s very name in execration.
One such tale early current at Halle was that, when the funeral procession arrived at Wittenberg, the coffin was found empty, Luther’s corpse having vanished on the road. A number of rooks having described circles in the air about the corpse at Halle, a later tale made them out to have been devils “streaming to the funeral of their prophet.” Proof of this general foregathering of the devils was even found in the comparative calmness of those possessed, who, it was argued, had evidently been forsaken for a while by their diabolical tenants, the latter’s presence at the burial explaining their temporary departure from their usual habitats. The corpse, it was also said, gave out so evil a smell that the bearers had to leave it on the road to Wittenberg.
Other versions of these tales deserve to be mentioned. According to Johann Oldecop, the Hildesheim Dominican (†1574), who, however, is not reliable in what he had at second hand, Luther was simply found dead in his bed. According to Simon Fontaine (1558), a French writer, who also speaks of his sudden death, he had “his nun” with him that night; this is also affirmed in the works of Jérôme Bolsec and James Laing, printed in Paris, as well as in a work published at Ingolstadt. According to William Reginald, Professor at the English College of Douay (1597), Luther had been strangled in the night by Catherine Bora. The same tale was afterwards told at Münster in Westphalia by Johann Münch (1617).
Even more common were the reports, quite in accordance with the manners which Luther had fostered, that the devil had murdered him. The Polish scholar, Stanislaus Hosius, asserted this in 1558, and, later, it is mentioned, though only tentatively, by the Dutch theologian, William Lindanus and the Paris theologian Prateolus. In 1615, Robert Bellarmine, speaking in general terms, says that Luther, after an illness lasting only a few hours, “yielded up his soul to the devil”; but the “Compendium fidei” 1607 of Franz Coster (already published in Dutch in 1595) had been beforehand in particulars of Luther’s death at the devil’s hands. He tells how, according to the statement of a noble lady of Eichsfeld, Luther’s body had been found with the “neck red and out of joint,” hence it was plain that “he had been strangled by the devil.” Peter Pázmány a Magyar writer (1613) had heard that the devil had appeared in the shape of a great sheep-dog to the guests at table on the evening previous to Luther’s death, and that Luther had exclaimed: “What, so soon?” Claude de Sainctes (1575) a French theologian, finds nothing extraordinary in Luther’s horrible death, since most of the Church’s foes had been brought to a violent end by the devil as the examples of Zwingli, Carlstadt, Œcolampadius and others showed!
CHAPTER XL. AT THE GRAVE
1. Luther’s fame among the friends he left behind
THE FIRST PANEGYRICS on Luther, the funeral orations and encomiums which were immediately printed and scattered broadcast through Germany constitute an historical phenomenon in themselves. They show orators and writers alike fascinated as it were by Luther’s overpowering personality, and they, in turn, fascinated many thousands who read them. Jonas was the first to deliver at Eisleben an address in his honour, viz. in the afternoon of Feb. 19; this was followed by another by Cœlius previous to the departure of the funeral procession on Feb. 20; whilst Bugenhagen, too, delivered one of his own on the 22nd, after the arrival of the body at the Schlosskirche. The rhetorical effusions of Jonas and Cœlius, who had been present with Luther at the end, likewise Bugenhagen’s address, and the account of Luther’s death which they published in conjunction with Aurifaber, are all crammed with incredible praises. Melanchthon, too, forgetful of all the pain he had suffered at Luther’s hand and shutting his eyes to all his weaknesses, paid his tribute of honour to Luther’s memory, first in a notice affixed at the University, then in a Latin funeral-oration which he delivered in the Schlosskirche as soon as Bugenhagen had had his say, and, again, in a short writing on his friend and master which he prefixed to the second volume of
the Latin edition of Luther’s works (1546).
“Alas, gone is the chariot and horseman of Israel” (2 Kings ii. 12), so Melanchthon said in the notice of Luther’s death, which he addressed to the students, “who ruled the Church in this the old age of the world. For it was not human sagacity that discovered the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins and trust in the Son of God, but God revealed it through this man whom He raised up before our eyes.” In his funeral oration he extols the departed as one of the long line of Divine tools starting in Old Testament times, a man taught by God and exercised in severe spiritual combats, of a friendly nature, not at all passionate or quarrelsome and only inclining to be violent when such medicine was needed by the ailments of the age. “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, lovely and of good fame” according to the Apostle (Philip. iv. 8) had been exemplified in him. Now, however, he had gone to join the company of the Prophets in heaven, etc.
According to the similar address delivered by Jonas only at the end of the world would people clearly see what “splendid revelations he had had when first he began to preach the Evangel.” Luther had the “Spirit of God in rich and exalted measure,” he was “a past master in spiritual combats.” “In the hour of death he had cast all his cares on Christ.” In the spirit of Luther, who was equal to Noe in his words and preaching, Jonas prophesied, that what he had once said would be fulfilled, viz. that, after his death, “all Papists and monks would be scattered and brought low”; Luther’s death, like that of all the prophets, would have in it “a special power and efficacy to overcome the godless, stiff-necked and blinded Papists,” nay, before two years were over, they would all be overtaken by a “gruesome chastisement.” — To such an extent had Luther’s pseudo-mysticism and fanatical expectations infected his pupils. Nevertheless Luther’s admissions concerning the imperfection of his work were also taken over by his pupils. “In spite of the great and bright light of the Evangel,” so Jonas confesses in his funeral oration, “the world has reached such a pass that now among many are found not only the common sins and shortcomings but, to boot, blasphemy, disorders, defiance, or deliberate persistence in the grossest vices; yet no one is ready to acknowledge that he is a sinner.” The sermon in question was again preached by Jonas at Halle later on.
Cœlius, in his funeral oration, declared that no one before Luther had known how to call upon God, how to look up to Him in trouble, or what a man ought to do, or how he was to serve God. But “by him God has unlocked Holy Writ which formerly was a book closed and sealed.” The dear man had been a “real Elias and Jeremias; he was a new John the Baptist, preaching the great day of the Lord, or else an Apostle.”
According to Bugenhagen’s sermon, the deceased was “undoubtedly the Angel of whom it is written in the Apocalypse (xiv.): ‘And I saw an angel flying through the midst of heaven having the eternal Gospel to preach.’” Through him, “the God-sent reformer of the Church,” God the Father has “revealed” the great mystery of His Beloved Son Jesus Christ.
These eulogies, which owe their fulsomeness partly to the bad taste of the humanistic period, were strong in their effects on men’s minds; the preachers, moreover, who had been trained or appointed by Luther, were anxious thereby to strengthen their own position and to show their scorn for Popery. Even in the above addresses Luther and what he stood for is contrasted with “the oppression and tyranny of the hateful Popedom” from which the world had been delivered. (Bugenhagen.)
In many of the churches Luther’s picture was hung up with the inscription: “The Holy Dr. Martin Luther (‘Divus et sanctus,’ etc.).” Writings were published bearing such titles as “Luther, the Prophet,” “Luther, the Wonder-Worker.” All sorts of medals were struck in his honour, one with the inscription: “Propheta Germaniæ, Sanctus Domini,” others with Luther’s motto: “Pestis eram vivus,” etc. Even in his lifetime pictures appeared in reprints of his works where he was represented with a halo and with the Dove, as the symbol of the Holy Ghost, descending on him from heaven.
The most popular biography of Luther was that of Johann Mathesius, who died as pastor of Joachimsthal in Bohemia. He met with a success such as can be accounted for only by the passion in favour of Wittenberg then prevalent in Protestant Germany. The appellations so common in later years, Luther the “Wonder-Worker,” “Chosen Instrument,” “True German Prophet,” “Man full of Grace and the Holy Spirit,” are to be met with already in the “Historien” of Mathesius, delivered originally as sermons and first published in 1566. In these “stories” he has interwoven in Luther’s laurel wreath much that is untrue or doubtful, for instance, the saying attributed to Erasmus and since frequently quoted on his authority, is spurious, viz. “that, when Dr. Luther explains Scripture, on one of his pages there is more reason and common sense than in all the tomes and scrolls of Scotists, Thomists, Albertists, Nominalists and Sophists.” Mathesius wishes people “not to be forgetful of so worthy a man’s life and testimony,” yet even he gives us a glimpse into the bitter controversies now already raging among the Lutherans; he points out how “God loves the peacemakers and calls them His own dear children while He sends adrift all who delight in war and strife.” He himself had some experience of the antagonism between the progressive party and the more old-fashioned Lutherans. Indeed one of the principal reasons why he wrote the “Historien” was because “many an ungrateful fellow actually forgets this great man and his faithful industry and toil.” He already sees the “Wittenberg cisterns” defiled by “all kinds of brackish, foul, baneful, muddy and uncleanly waters.”
Though historically the tales of “the pious panegyrist,” as Maurenbrecher a Protestant calls him, cannot be said to rank very high, yet the energy with which he claims a thoroughly German character for Luther and for his own biographical work was pleasing to many. He uses the term “Prophet of the Germans” ad nauseam, even in the Preface addressed to the Wittenberg authorities; God had bestowed Luther “as a gift on us, the descendants of Japhet, and the Holy German Empire in these last days”; he, Mathesius, had a living “under the Bohemian Crown,” but as a German by birth he had “preached officially in his mother tongue” and “of set purpose, had these German sermons, to the honour of Our God and the blessed German Theology, published in German in order that some at least in Germany might be reminded what this blessed German Church in the Kingdom of Bohemia thought of the doctrines of this great German Prophet.”
By his exertions for the preservation of the Table-Talk Mathesius also sought to glorify Luther’s memory.
An influential group of panegyrists, who, like Mathesius, noted down, collected, or published Luther’s utterances, comprises Cordatus, Dietrich, Rörer, Schlaginhaufen, Lauterbach and, to pass over others, Aurifaber, Stangwald and Selnecker. Cordatus, who went as Superintendent to Stendal in 1540, compared Luther’s sayings to the oracles of Apollo. Aurifaber, one of those present at Luther’s death at Eisleben, became in 1551 Court Chaplain at Weimar and in 1566 pastor at Erfurt. In the “Colloquia,” or Table-Talk, which he caused to be printed at Eisleben in 1566, he says, in the Preface addressed to the Imperial towns of Strasburg, Augsburg, Ulm, Nuremberg, etc., that Luther was the “Venerable and highly enlightened Moses of the Germans.”
Like Aurifaber and Stangwald (1571), Selnecker (1577) took for the motto of his edition of the Table-Talk the words of Christ, “Gather up the fragments that remain,” etc. (John vi. 12); he further embellished his collection with the words:
“What, full of God’s spirit, Luther once taught
That doth his godly flock now hold fast.”
Of the Lutheran die-hards who were never weary of fighting for the true olden spirit of Luther in opposition to the Protestant critics who very soon sprang up, the most eminent were Flacius Illyricus, Justus Menius, Nicholas Amsdorf and Cyriacus Spangenberg.
Concerning the father of the latter, Johann Spangenberg, Luther, in the last days of his life, had advised and “faithfully exhorted, t
hat he should be called as Superintendent [to Eisleben].” Full of boundless admiration for Luther his son Cyriacus wrote his “Theander Lutherus,” where he says that the latter was the “greatest prophet since the days of the Apostles” and a “real martyr,” particularly because the devil had persecuted him so greatly. In consideration of this he canonises him and speaks of him as “St. Luther.” In the preface he assures us that it was only Luther’s holy and persistent prayers that had hitherto spared Germany the perils of war which would otherwise have overtaken her. The significant and lengthy title of this remarkable work runs as follows: “Theander Lutherus; of the worthy man of God, Dr. M. Luther’s spiritual Household and Knighthood, of his office as Prophet, Apostle and Evangelist; How he was the third Elias, a new Paul, the true John, the best Theologian, the Angel of Apocalypse xiv., a faithful witness, wise pilgrim and true priest, also a good labourer in our Lord God’s vineyard, all summed up in one-and-twenty sermons.”
Flacius Illyricus, the Wittenberg Professor famous for his connection with the “Magdeburg Centuries,” made Luther’s exemplary life play its part among the “Marks of the true Religion.” He proves in the book bearing this title the advantages of Protestantism over Popery by the mark of holiness, and by the pious life of some of the New Believers so different from that of the Catholics, and, in so doing, he appeals boldly to the founder of Protestantism. Whatever was alleged against Luther was false; “the Papists have never ceased from spreading these untruths, particularly in distant lands where the true state of the case is not so well known.”
Collected Works of Martin Luther Page 888