Bushes and trees were still bare, yet there were March cups in the grass and the warm sun had now, at midday, lured some bumblebees and bees. The March cups have a certain effect on the heart, not harmless and therefore to be used only in small quantities to increase the pulse. The bulbs are easily confused with onions, so one should be careful to warn the children. In this sheltered and warm location I discovered on the ground some shoots of goutweed, which had bravely survived the winter. This is good against thick leg veins and gout and contributes to a delicious salad and vegetable. I saw the first little buds of eyebright, useful, as the name suggests, when applied to inflamed eyes. Wild garlic, which also grows in these locations, was not yet to be seen. I sat down, as I often did in the spring, on a tree stump, took my hat off, and attempted to think over my situation and get a clear vision before my eyes.
My previous life, which was still easy to survey as it had not been very long so far, passed before me. I, like almost all men, had passably gone through it with compromises and half truths. In order to gain both my father’s—or rather, his followers’—as well as Magister Philippus’s good opinions, I had often buried my own true thoughts, which were in opposition to the church, but not to the true Christian faith.
One thing was, and still is, especially dubious to me: the torture and crucifixion of Christ, which was supposed to reconcile the sins of men with God. Even as a youth I had asked myself, Why did God in His almighty goodness not simply forgive man for his sins without allowing His own innocent Son to be murdered? Of course I had never openly expressed this question and am glad that I will no longer be alive when the storm of indignation, and worse, against me will be raised after my memoirs appear. The closer I am to death, the stronger I believe that Christ need not have died on the cross. His words say that he wanted to create the kingdom of peace with man on earth. Already in Isaiah, chapter 11, verse 9, it says, “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.”
Also other thoughts, of whose truths I was convinced, I held close because, after all, one wants to live and succeed.
Now what remained for me, in view of the justification required from me? I wanted to remain a professor or become a regular one, properly paid, and provide for my family. What was required of me was, at first glance, not difficult to comply with, as I knew the teachings of my father (which were so much stricter in comparison to Magister Melanchthon’s views) by heart and could easily recite them. But also required of me was the reporting of other heretical persons. I could perhaps evade that and say I did not know of any. Of course, they would not believe me because I had demonstrably been in conversation with some. A small report now and then, if possible empty or even well meaning, I could perhaps hand over. Yet would they not always demand more from me and continually drag me into denouncing my students or colleagues?
While I pondered these perplexing thoughts, I looked up and saw in the distance a man hastening up the hill in my direction. He came nearer, and I recognized my famulus, Thomas. He was quite out of breath when he handed me a sealed envelope.
“Herr Professor, this note had earlier been delivered to your landlady with the comment that it should be handed over to Dr. Luther swiftly. So I rushed out here after you.”
Thomas stopped for a moment and wiped the sweat from his forehead. I very much liked the young seventeen-year-old and entrusted him with many thoughts that were not intended to become public. Thomas came from a wealthy yet decent tanner family of Neustadt, which lay on the Orla River, and, having worked for a pharmacist, who had freely shared his knowledge with him, he had come to Jena to study medicine. He had been very helpful to me in the study of plants, had assisted in the investigation into their healing effects, and had generally been an able assistant. He was also a big strong lad, and in Jena it was advantageous in the evenings to have a well-muscled, quick-witted, and fearless companion when traveling through the town. Would the commission also expect me to report on this brave young man?
I asked him to sit down for a moment beside me and broke the seal on the letter. It was from my brother Johannes, councillor at the duke’s court in Weimar. He wrote:
AD 1559, 10th of March in Weimar
Highly honored and dear brother Paul,
Greetings in God. Your brother Johannes wishes you good health and well-being. This missive goes forth with a joyful message: His Grace, Duke John Frederick, notwithstanding the theological disputes in Jena in which you seem to be implicated and for which, due to his strong Lutheranism, he is not without responsibility, has decided—read and be amazed—to make you his personal physician. The name of our father, the Protestant attitude of the duke, as well as your good reputation as a doctor of medicine have let him decide in your favor.
He has been especially impressed by the report from a trusted councilman in Jena whom you have helped recover from severe depression and temporary confusion, as well as a persistent bloody stool. That the man is now dead, the duke believes the surgeon is to be blamed, to whom you passed on the sick man for ongoing care. At any rate, the man had passed on his good judgment about you to the duke—naturally, before his death.
A letter from the duke’s secretary will soon reach you that will confirm this news. Until this happens, keep it to yourself. But I advise you to settle all your affairs in Jena, notify your family in Wittenberg that you will soon be moving to Weimar, and abstain as much as possible from controversy.
An apartment for yourself and your family has already been rented. You will receive the usual salary of a personal physician, which will allow you to live in a befitting manner, far better than you currently can. With that, I will close, since the messenger for Jena is already waiting.
Your brother in life and in Christ,
Johannes
Thomas, who sat near me, had turned his head aside a bit embarrassedly while I read the letter. After I had folded it and put it in my pocket, he looked at me expectantly. “Thomas,” I said then, “this letter says there are some major changes for me ahead that, however, you may not yet be told about. I ask you to go back into the town while I stay here for a while. You will soon discover—and possibly even profit from—what awaits me.”
Thomas nodded willingly and took himself off home.
I stayed back, completely surprised by the news from my brother. Yes, it came at the right time because it helped me avoid the difficult decision of my conscience that had arisen from the demands of the Protestant Control Commission.
What actually is the conscience? Is it not the ability to decide what is good and what is evil? The scale, immovable and eternal, that indicates unerringly the rightness or the wrongness of a man’s actions and thoughts, rooted originally in the human soul, implanted by God for all time to judge one’s deeds? Or does it change with time so that, for example, the requirement of deviation from the strict Lutheran doctrine commanded by the conscience, the indication of heretics to the Holy Inquisition now thought unconscionable, wrong, but by former opinion was justifiable? Or justifiable by the followers of the old church but unjustifiable for my father? So, a dual conscience? Can I choose which one? Does God Himself, who created man after His own image, have a conscience?
If I had not received the letter now in my pocket, how would I, in view of my wishes to progress and rise at the university, have behaved before the commission? The decision was taken from me, my conscience not tested, and yet I was not well, because I sensed how weak I would have been in the coming situation.
It was past midday, and below me in the sunshine lay the town of Jena, which I would soon be leaving. Beyond the Haynberg where the sun sets lay Weimar and the ducal court. In the end, I thought, we all go into the grave, and the conscience, this plague, goes with us. Until then, man must endure, plain and simple, in accordance with his nature. Or as a friend of mine from Trier once said, “You are born, in the end you die, and in between you have to muddle through.”
So I stood up and went back into town. My thoughts were lightened by the idea of how I would in three days notify the Protestant Control Commission in writing that I would not even think of appearing before them. They would do all they could to pursue me, considering their zealous nature, but since I was in possession of the appointment through the duke, they could—as my father liked to say—lick my ass, although I admit that medically speaking, there is no therapeutic benefit to be expected.
Chapter 16
. . . tells how my family and I settled in Weimar.
At the beginning of the month of April in AD 1559, I moved with my belongings, including my collection of medicinal, pharmaceutical, and chemistry books, to Weimar. This departure from Jena in the light of day after saying good-bye to my colleagues and students was, far from being a flight from danger, rather a deliberate departure to friendlier climes, from quarrelsome theologians to—as I hoped—the friendlier and more open world of the duke’s court. At least that is what I told myself. I was very happy and encouraged the horse to speed along. For this I had good reason. On the previous day someone had mentioned that the powerful and influential as well as vain and scheming Basilius Monner, jurist and educator of the duke’s sons and not unknown to me, as he had been an acquaintance of my father’s as well as an eager supporter of the Fläz, had expressed that one should hold me and let go only when I had sufficiently justified myself.
My good brother expected me at the market square in Weimar, to which I directed my cart. When I arrived, he took the horse by the halter, called to me that I should remain seated, and led the horse and cart behind two magnificent adjoining houses. The house on the right was built and occupied by Antonius Pestel, the duke’s secretary.
In the house on the left Master Lucas Cranach spent his last days, and Christian Brück, the duke’s secretary, of sad memory, his next to the last before his fateful fall in Gotha. I will tell of that later.
We reached the small Schlossgasse, where a tremendous surprise awaited me. Barely had my brother stopped the horse before a nicely decorated burgher house, and hardly had I descended from the cart, when the door flew open and Anna with our four-year-old daughter, Margarethe, came out. The little one pulled away from her mother and rushed up to me. I kissed her on her red cheeks and turned to my wife. We hugged each other joyfully, and in a stroke the barmaid in Jena disappeared from my memory, or, more probably, I gave her a place rather far back in my thoughts. The surprise made me almost speechless, which did no harm because Anna and Johannes began quickly to talk about how this had all come about and how, before my departure from Jena, the apartment on the second floor of the master carpenter Hagenstolz, who lived on the ground floor and had a workshop in the rear, had been rented and prepared so that we could make ourselves immediately comfortable there. We had a great advantage in that the house was connected to a water supply system, which must not be taken for granted. It acted in the following way, which I will insert here because the connection between water supply and the occurrence of plague and diseases interested me as a physician.
The town master mason was responsible for the water supply, for which he had a pipe master and his assistants. The source well outside the town, several sources in Passendorf, Gelmeroda, the Lützendorf headwaters, the Kirschbachtal Valley, and Wallendorf, provided clean water, a great improvement from the conditions in other towns, which took their water directly from the rivers in which also filth and waste were dumped. Water was here provided to the town through several wooden pipes, mainly to the castle, to town buildings and those belonging to the church, to single residences of higher town and court families, and to inns and local fountains. The location of Weimar in a depression enabled the natural flow of water to the houses and fountains.
We had freshwater in the house, and the sun shone in two places, outside and in our hearts, and still on the same evening we were once again able to participate in the creativity of God. This participation succeeded not immediately but soon so that the following year our son Johann Ernst was born.
My brother told me that I had leisure to familiarize myself with Weimar and to prepare myself for my medical activity, as the duke was currently in Gotha and therefore my first visit would still be a few days in coming. But I would be paid my salary tomorrow morning from the court coffers.
My wife had already been in the town several days and reported all sorts of gossip to me, information it does not harm a new citizen to know. The people reported much that was happening at court, of which the health of the duke especially interested me. Some of his habits were mentioned, which I made note of and was later able to make use of.
John Frederick often marveled over my diagnostic art, because I did not tell him that I discovered certain physical and also mental ills less through my medical ability than through an acquaintance with his daily habits.
Now, reader, I believe it is necessary, since much time has passed and much is threatened with oblivion, to insert an explanation of an enlightening sort about family and the court relationships of the Ernestine Wettins of my time. If I have already mentioned some of these details, that is not a problem because repetitio est mater studiorum. My writing will serve, not only to preserve the memories of myself, my weaknesses and moral failures, hereby strengthening the morals of the reader, but also to present the reader with new historical information. Please do not jump over this passage; otherwise much that will be spoken about later will not be sufficiently understandable.
What I am going to write here will not always be praiseworthy. It is true that the dukes and electors were well disposed toward me, but my congenital and sometimes annoying exactitude did not allow me to artificially brighten things when a critical representation was required.
We remember that Elector John Frederick I, the Magnanimous—the later so-called born elector—in the battle at Mühlberg on the 24th of April, 1547, was defeated by the emperor and taken prisoner. His son, called the Middle One, was wounded during the battle.
Led before the emperor, the elector, who had previously fought so bravely, stammered, “Most Gracious Emperor!” But this the emperor rejected gruffly and responded in French because in Spanish, Latin, and German he was only slightly conversant: “This you should have realized long ago.”
The Magnanimous, brother of Frederick the Wise, was, like him, protector and promoter of my Herr Father and the reformation of the old church. He was capably educated by Georg Spalatin and my father and, nevertheless, or perhaps even because of it, devoted to tournaments and hunting as well as rich eating and drinking, which was not to the benefit of his girth or his intellectual nimbleness. One wishes almost that his diplomatic skills, especially considering the intrigues of the imperial councillors, would have been equal to his spiritual imperturbability. Unfortunately, not true. He held tight to the Lutheran faith, even when it hurt his land, his dynasty, and himself. Sometimes, I suspect, he listened to his conscience.
He was without doubt wronged when he, still heir apparent, was promised the emperor’s sister to marry and the promise was broken. Surely the emperor had fear for her soul because of the now-rampant Protestantism in Saxony.
This injustice, I think today, did not justify him in rejecting the council called by the pope or in considering a competing council or in appointing a follower of the new teaching to the Naumburg bishop’s see; it did not justify invading the convent of Wurzen in order to introduce the Reformation or, with the help of Philipp of Hesse, taking the duke of Brunswick prisoner. All of this led, as we know, to his being put under the ban of the empire and his condemnation to death. One may consider here the reversal of fate for the elector’s house. Barely thirty years previously, Frederick the Wise could have secured the emperor’s crown had he wanted it. But with the fall of John Frederick, the Ernestine ducal house fell into obscurity. It was no longer a significant power among the German princes, quite different from the Albertinian electoral house in Dresden.
Saxony once was a po
werful land. Anno 1423, Frederick the Belligerent was successful in the Duchy of Saxony—in being invested with the Duchy of Saxony-Wittenberg as a fief by the emperor and later in gaining the electorship. He was therefore archmarshal, and in the part of Germany with Saxon law he, as imperial vicar, had to administer the land for the emperor should he die and a new one not yet be elected.
In the year of my father’s birth, 1483, the dominion of the House of Wettin stretched from the Werra and Main Rivers eastward over the Elbe River, from Coburg and the crest of the Ore Mountains to almost the gates of Berlin. On the Elbe River were the residences of Dresden, Meissen, Torgau, and Wittenberg. From the rocks of the Ore Mountains a stream of silver flowed into the coffers of the elector. Wettin was, after Habsburg, the most powerful German dynasty. But sic transit Gloria mundi: in the year 1485 the unfortunate division of the vast holdings and the decline of Saxony began and continued to my time.
Anno 1552, John Frederick was freed from prison and resided until his death in Weimar. With him came Lucas Cranach, who had faithfully comforted him in imprisonment. John Frederick died in 1554, a half year after Master Cranach, who immortalized him in his glorious painting in the attitude of petitioner and silent sufferer.
John Frederick had four sons, of whom three survived. The other, John Ernest, died only a year after his birth.
John Frederick II, the Middle One; John William I; as well as John Frederick III, the Younger, took up residence at Hornstein Castle in Weimar and were my new lords, because they shared the rule, although later I served the Middle One alone, who, after some curious changes and abdications among the brothers, governed the remaining Ernestinian lands in Thuringia from Gotha.
Shadows of My Father Page 19