Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin

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It is chiefly from what Luther himself has told us that we are
enabled to picture to ourselves this remarkable occurrence. Rumour,
and rumour only, has given the name of Alexius to that unknown
friend whose death so terrified him, and has represented this friend
as having been struck dead by lightning at his side.

The Luther of later days declared that his monastic vow was a
compulsory one, forced from him by terror and the fear of death.
But, at the same time, he never doubted that it was God who urged
him. Thus he said afterwards, 'I never thought to leave again the
convent. I was entirely dead to the world, until God thought that
the time had come.'

PART II.

_LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR, UNTIL HIS ENTRY ON THE WAR OF
REFORMATION--1505-1517._

CHAPTER I.

AT THE CONTENT AT ERFURT, TILL 1508.

Luther's resolve to follow a monastic life was arrived at suddenly,
as we have seen. But he weighed that resolve well in his mind, and
just as carefully considered the choice of the convent which he
entered.

The Augustinian monks, whose society he announced his intention to join,
belonged at that time to the most important monastic order in Germany.
So much had already been said with justice, in the way of complaint and
ridicule, of the depravation of monastic life, its idleness, hypocrisy,
and gross immorality, that many of them fancied that the solemn
renunciation of marriage and the world's goods, and the absolute
submission of their wills to the commands of their superiors and the
regulations of their Order, constituted true service to God, and raised
them to a peculiar position of holiness and merit. Outward discipline,
at all events, was universally insisted on. Among the German institutions
of this Order, whilst neglect and depravity had crept in elsewhere, a
large number had, for some time past, distinguished themselves by a
strict adherence to their old statutes, originating, it was supposed,
from their founder St. Augustine, but relating, at the best, to mere
matters of form. These institutions formed themselves into an
association, presided over by a Vicar of the Order, as he was called,
a Vicar-General for Germany. To this association belonged the convent
at Erfurt. Its inmates were treated with marked favour and respect by
the higher and educated classes in the town. They were said to be
active in preaching and in the care of souls, and to cultivate among
themselves the study of theology. Arnoldi, Luther's teacher,
belonged to this convent. As the Order possessed no property, but
all its members lived on alms, the monks went about the town and
country to collect gifts of money, bread, cheese, and other
victuals.

According to the rules of the Order, applications for admission were
not granted at once, but time was taken to see whether the applicant
was in earnest. After that he was received as a novice for at least
a year of probation. Until that year expired he was at liberty to
reconsider his wish.

Luther, before taking this final step, thought of his parents, with
a view to lay before them his resolve. The monastic brethren,
however, endeavoured to dissuade him, by reminding him how one must
leave father and mother for Christ and His Cross, and how no one who
has put his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom
of God. Upon his writing to his father on the subject, the latter,
strong in the conviction of his paternal rights, flew into a passion
with his son. 'My father,' says Luther later, 'was near going mad
about it; he was ill satisfied, and would not allow it. He sent me
an answer in writing, addressing me in terms that showed his
displeasure, and renouncing all further affection. Soon after he
lost two of his sons by the plague. This epidemic had likewise
broken out so violently at Erfurt, that about harvesttime whole
crowds of students fled with their teachers from the town, and
Luther's father received news that his son Martin had also fallen a
victim. His friends then urged him that, if the report proved false,
he ought at least to devote his dearest to God, by letting this son
who still remained to him, enter the blessed Order of God's
servants. At last the father let himself be talked over; but he
yielded, as Luther informs us, with a sad and reluctant heart.

The young novice was welcomed among his brethren with hymns of joy,
and prayers, and other ceremonies. He was soon clothed in the garb
of his Order. Over a white woollen shirt he was made to wear a frock
and cowl of black cloth, with a black leathern girdle. Whenever he
put these on or off a Latin prayer was repeated to him aloud, that
the Lord might put off the old and put on the new man, fashioned
according to God. Above the cowl he received a scapulary, as it was
called--in other words, a narrow strip of cloth hanging over
shoulders, breast, and back, and reaching down to his feet. This was
meant to signify that he took upon him the yoke of Him who said, 'My
yoke is easy, and my burden is light.' At the same time, he was
handed over to a superior, appointed to take charge of the novices,
to introduce them to the practices of monastic devotion, to
superintend their conduct, and to watch over their souls.

Above all, it was held important that the monks should be taught to
subdue their own wills. They had to learn to endure, without
opposition, whatever was imposed upon them, and that, indeed, all
the more cheerfully, the more distasteful it appeared. Any tendency
to pride was overcome by enjoining immediately the most menial
offices on the offender. Friends of Luther tell us how, during his
first period of probation in particular, he had to perform the
meanest daily labour with brush and broom, and how his jealous
brethren took particular pleasure in seeing the proud young graduate
of yesterday trudge through the streets, with his beggar's wallet on
his back, by the side of another monk more accustomed to the work.
At first, we are told, the university interceded on his behalf as a
member of their own body, and obtained for him at least some
relaxation from his menial duties. From Luther's own lips, in after
life, we hear not a word of complaint about any special vexations
and burdens. As far as was possible, he did not allow them to daunt
him; nay, he longed for even severer exercises, to enable him to win
the favour of God. Even as a Reformer he remembered with gratitude
the 'Pedagogue,' or superintendent of his noviciate; he was a fine
old man, he tells us, a true Christian under that execrable cowl.

The novice found each day, as it went by, fully occupied with the
repetition of set prayers and the performance of other acts of
devotion. For the day and night together there were seven or eight
appointed hours of prayer, or _Horae_. During each of these the
brethren who were not yet priests had to say twenty-five
Paternosters with the Ave Maria, more ample formulas of prayer being
prescribed meanwhile to the priests. Luther was also introduced
already then to certain theological studies, which were under the
supervision of two learned fathers of the monastery. But what was of
the most importance for him was that a Bible--the Latin translation
then in general use in the Church--was put into his hands. Just
about this time, a new code of statutes had come in force for these
Augustinian convents, drawn up by Staupitz, the Vicar of the Order,
which enjoined, as matters of duty, assiduous reading, devout
attention to the Hours, and a zealous study of Holy Writ. Teachers
were wanting to Luther, and he found it very difficult to understand
all he read. But with genuine appetite he read himself, so to speak,
into his Bible, and clung to it ever afterwards.

At the end of his year of probation followed his solemn admission to
the Order. Faithfully 'unto death' did Luther then promise to live
according to the rules of the holy father Augustine, and to render
obedience to Almighty God, to the Virgin Mary, and to the prior of
the monastery. Before doing so, he put on anew the dress of his
Order, which had been consecrated with holy water and incense. The
prior received his vows and sprinkled holy water upon him as he
prostrated himself upon the ground in the form of a cross. When the
ceremony was over, his brethren congratulated him on being now like
an innocent child fresh from the baptism. He was then given a cell
of his own, with table, bedstead, and chair. It looked out upon the
cloistered yard of the monastery. It was destroyed by a fire on
March 7, 1872.

[Illustration: Fig. 4.--LUTHER'S CELL AT ERFURT.]

Luther now, by an inviolable promise, had bound himself to that
vocation through which he aspired to gain heaven. The means whereby
he hoped to realise his aspiration were abundantly provided for him
in his new home. If he sought the favour of the Virgin and of other
saints who should intercede for him before the judgment-seat of God
and Christ, he found at once in his Order a fervent worship of the
Virgin in particular, and all possible directions for her service.
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which Pius IX., in our
own days, first ventured to raise into a dogma of the Church, was
zealously defended by the Augustinians, and firmly maintained by
Luther himself, even after the beginning of his war of Reformation.
John Palz, one of his two theological teachers in the convent, wrote
profusely in honour of this doctrine, and described all Christians
as its spiritual children. Under its mantle, says Luther, he had to
creep into the presence of Christ. From the multitude of other
saints Luther selected a number as his constant helpers in need. We
notice particularly that among these, in addition to St. Anne and
St. George, was the Apostle Thomas; from him who himself had once
betrayed such cowardice and want of faith he might well hope for
peculiar sympathy. We have already mentioned the set prayers which
filled up a great portion of the day. He was required above all
things to learn and repeat them accurately, word by word.
Afterwards, as he tells us, the _Horae_ were read aloud after
the manner of magpies, jackdaws, or parrots.

If he wished in penitence to be freed from the sins which had
tormented him so long, and were a daily burden on his conscience,
the means of confession provided by the Church were always ready for
him in the convent. Once a week, at the least, every brother had to
attend the private confessional. All his sins, without exception,
had then to be revealed, if he wished to obtain for them
forgiveness. Luther endeavoured to unbosom to his father-confessor
all he had done from his youth up; but this was too much even for
the priest. It was by means of a complete inward contrition,
corresponding to the infinite burden of sin, that the person
confessing was to make himself worthy of the forgiveness which the
priest then testified to him by absolution. According to the
prevailing doctrine, however, what was wanting to the penitent in
completeness of contrition, was supplied by the Sacrament of
Absolution. But the punishments reserved by God for sinners were not
supposed to be ended by this absolution or forgiveness; these had to
be atoned for by peculiar observances, imposed by the priest, and by
prayer, alms, fasting, and other acts of mortification. For him who
was not forgiven, remained hell; for him who had not expiated his
sins, at least the fear and pains of purgatory. Such was and still
is the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Thus Luther was now summoned and directed to pursue methodically the
painful work of self-examination, which had oppressed him even
before he entered the convent, and to use all the means of grace
here offered to him. But the more he searched into his life and
thoughts, the more transgressions of God's will he found, and the
more grievously did they afflict his conscience. It was not, indeed,
as might have been imagined with a strong young man like himself, a
question of any sensual appetites, stimulated all the more by the
restraints of the convent. It was with the passions of anger,
hatred, and envy against his brethren and fellow-creatures, that he
had to reproach himself. Those who disliked him accused him in
particular of self-conceit, and of letting his temper break out too
easily. Faults of that description, in thought, word, or deed, were
to his own conscience as deadly sins, though to the priest who
listened to him at confession, they seemed too trifling to call for
enumeration. To these were added a number of smaller offences
against the ordinances of the Church and the convent, with reference
to outward observances and forms of worship, prayers, and so on, all
of which, insignificant as they must seem to us, the Church was
accustomed to treat as grievous sins. Finally, there arose in his
mind a constant restlessness, which made him look for sins where
none in reality existed. What he had said once before about washing
one's hands, that it only made them become fouler, he had now to
experience for himself. His contrition made him feel pain and fear
in abundance, but not so as to enable him to say to himself that it
purged the evil in the sight of God. Absolution was pronounced over
him again and again, but who ever gave him any assurance that he had
fulfilled its conditions, and therefore could really confide in its
efficacy? As for acts of penance, he willingly performed them, and,
indeed, did far more in the way of prayer, fasting, and vigil than
either the rules of the convent demanded or his father-confessor
enjoined. His body, from his hardy training as a child, was well
prepared for such austerities, but in spite of that, he had for a
long while to suffer from their results. Luther, in later years,
could well bear witness of himself that he had caused his own body
far more pain and torture with those practices of penance than all
his enemies and persecutors had caused to theirs.

What leisure remained, after his other monastic duties were over, he
devoted most industriously to the study of theology. He read, in
particular, the writings of the later Scholastic theologians, with
whom he had partly occupied himself during his philosophical course.
Of some of these, such as the Englishman Occam, in particular, whose
acuteness of reasoning he especially admired, there were writings
which, in reference to questions of external Church polity, might
have led him even then into paths of his own, if his mind had been
disposed for it. These writings were directed against the absolute
power of the Pope in the Church, and against his aggressions in the
territory of Empire and State. But any such aim was very far removed
from the monastic Order to which Luther had devoted himself, and
from the theologians who were here his teachers. Palz, whom we have
mentioned already, had especially distinguished himself by his
glorification of the Papal indulgences. Moreover, the whole Order,
and the German convents belonging to it in particular, were indebted
to the Pope for various acts of favour. Nor was Luther himself less
careful to hold firmly to the ordinances of the hierarchy, than to
avail himself of the means of salvation offered by the Church.

What at all times in his theological studies enlisted his warmest
personal interest was the difficult question, how sinners could
obtain everlasting salvation. And all that he came to read on that
subject in the writings of those theologians, and to hear from his
learned teachers in the convent, served only to increase his
fruitless inward wrestlings, and his anxiety and sense of need. The
great father of the Church, from whom his Order was named, and to
whom their rules were ascribed, had once, on the ground of his own
experiences of the struggle with sin and the flesh, laid down with
great force, and in a triumphant controversy with his opponents, the
doctrine that, as the Apostle says, salvation depends not on the
conduct of man, but on the grace of God, not on the will of man, but
on the willingness of God to pardon, Who alone transforms the
sinner, and grants him the power and the will for good. But any
knowledge or understanding of this theology of Augustine was as
strange to his own Order as to the Scholastics. It was taught,
indeed, that heaven was too high for man to attain to otherwise than
by the grace of God. But it was also taught that the sinner, by his
own natural strength, both could and ought to do enough in God's
sight to earn that grace which would then help him further on the
way to heaven. He who had thus obtained that grace, it was said,
felt himself enabled and impelled to do even more than God's
commands require. Reference to the bitter passion and death of the
Saviour was not omitted, it is true, by the theologians with whom
Luther had to do, and frequently, as, for example, by his teacher
Palz, was impressed on Christian hearts in words full of feeling.
But the chief stress was laid, not on the redeeming love on which
man could rest his confident assurance, but on the necessity of
offering oneself to Him who had offered Himself for man, and of
submitting even to the pains of death, in imitation of Him, and to
pay the penalty of sin. In this way, again and again, Luther saw
before him claims on the part of God which he could never hope to
satisfy. His sorest trial was caused by the thought that God Himself
should have the will to let him fail after all his fruitless
efforts, and finally be numbered with the lost. And it was just with
the later Scholastics that he found, not indeed a theory according
to which God had simply predestined a part of mankind to perdition,
but a general conception of God which would represent Him as a Being
not so much of holy love, as of arbitrary, absolute will.

Luther spent two years in the convent amidst these strivings and
inward sufferings. His spiritual life, as it was called, of strict
discipline and asceticism was quoted in other convents as a model
for imitation. Now and then, indeed, he felt himself puffed up with
a sense of superior sanctity--'a proud saint,' as he afterwards
called himself. But humility was the ruling temper of his mind.
Frequently, in after life, he described his condition as a warning
to others. Thus he speaks of the disciples of the law, who try by
their own works, by constant labour, by wearing shirts of hair, by
self-scourging, by fasting, by every means, in short, to satisfy the
law. Such a one, he tells us, he himself had been. But he had also
learned by experience, he adds, what happens when a man is tempted,
and death or danger frightens him; how he despairs, nay, would fly
from God as from the devil, and would rather that there were no God
at all. So great became his inward sufferings, that he thought both
body and soul must succumb. Thus he tells us later on, when speaking
of the torments of purgatory, of a man, who doubtless was himself,
how he had often endured such agony, only momentary it is true, but
so hellish in its violence, that no tongue could express nor pen
describe it; that, had it lasted longer, even for half an hour, or
only five minutes, he must have died then and there, and his bones
have been consumed to ashes. He himself saw afterwards in these
pains, visitations of a special kind, such as God does not send to
everyone. But they served him then as a proof, and one of universal
application, that that school of the law, as he called it, would
bring no real holiness either to others or himself, but must teach a
man to despair of himself and of any claims or merits of his own.
And, indeed, as we know from all that had gone before, it was not
simply the external barrenness of the regulations of Church and
convent, or a sense of imperfect fulfilment on his part, that caused
his restlessness of conscience; what gave him the deepest anxiety
and harassed him the most were those very inward stirrings, which
revealed to him his opposition to God's eternal demands, the
fulfilment of which he thought indispensable for reconciliation to
God.

His experiences at the convent led him to the perception of those
principles which formed the groundwork of his preaching as a
Reformer. From his exemplary conduct there, and his wonderful and
active conversion, he was compared to St. Paul. In quite another
sense he resembled the great Apostle. The latter, when a Pharisee,
had laboured to justify himself before God by the law and the
prophets. 'O wretched man that I am,' Luther there must have
exclaimed of himself, and afterwards looking back on his
experiences, have counted all as 'dung and loss' in order to be
justified rather by faith through the grace of God and the Saviour,
and to become free and holy.

Just as, meanwhile, inside the Catholic Church, the laws, dogmas,
and School theories relating to the means of salvation, were never
able to supplant entirely the thought of the simple testimony of the
Bible, and of the Church's own confession of God's forgiving love
and His redeeming and absolving grace, or to prevent simple, pious
Christians from seeking here a refuge in the inmost depths of their
hearts, so now, at this very convent of Erfurt, where Luther's
inward development in those theories and dogmas had reached so high
a pitch, he received also the first serious impressions in the other
direction. They found with him a difficult and gradual entrance,
from the energy and consistency with which he had taken up his
original standpoint. But with all the more energy, and with perfect
consistency, did he abandon that standpoint, when new light dawned
upon him from his new conception of the truth.

Luther's teacher at the convent, by whom we shall have to understand
the superintendent of the novices, had already made a deep
impression upon him, by reminding him of the words of the Apostles'
Creed about the forgiveness of sins, and representing to him, what
Luther had never ventured to apply to himself, that the Lord himself
had commanded us to hope. For this he referred him to a passage in
the writings of St. Bernard, where that fervent preacher, imbued
though he was in his theology with the Church notions of the middle
ages, insists on the importance of this very faith in God's
forgiveness, and appeals to the words of St. Paul that man is
justified by grace through faith. Remarks of this kind sank into
Luther's mind, and took root there, though their fruit only ripened
by degrees. Of his teacher Arnoldi, also, he spoke with admiration
and gratitude, for the comfort he had known how to impart to him.

But the one who at this time acquired by far the most potent,
wholesome, and lasting influence upon Luther, was the Vicar-General,
John von Staupitz. He was a remarkable man, of a noble and pious
disposition, and a refined and far-seeing mind. A master of the
forms of Scholastic theology, he was also deeply read in Scripture;
he made its teachings the special standard of his life, and was
careful to enjoin others to do the same. He strove after an inward,
practical life in God, not confined to mere forms and observances.
Sharp conflicts and controversies were not to his taste; but mildly
and discreetly he sought to plant, in his own field of work, and to
leave what he had planted in God's name to grow up.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.--STAUPITZ. (From the Portrait in St. Peter's
Convent at Salzburg.)]

It was during his visits to Erfurt that Staupitz came in contact
with the gifted, thoughtful, and melancholy young monk. He treated
Luther, both in conversation and letter, with fatherly confidence,
and Luther unlocked to him, as to a father, his heart and its cares.
Upon his wishing to confess to him all his many small sins, Staupitz
insisted first on distinguishing between what were really sins, and
what were not; as for self-imagined sins, or such a patchwork of
offences as Luther laid before him, he would not listen to them;
that was not the kind of seriousness, he would say, that God wished
to have. Luther tormented himself with a system of penance,
consisting of actual pain, punishments, and expiations. Staupitz
taught him that repentance, in the Scriptural meaning, was an inward
change and conversion, which must proceed from the love of holiness
and of God; and that, for peace with God, he must not look to his
own good resolutions to lead a better life, which he had not the
strength to carry out, or to his own acts, which could never satisfy
the law of God, but must trust with patience to God's forgiving
mercy, and learn to see in Christ, whom God permitted to suffer for
the sins of man, not the threatening Judge, but rather the loving
Saviour. To Christ above all he referred him, when Luther pondered
on the secret eternal will of God, and was near despair. God's
eternal purpose, he would say, shines clearly in the wounds of
Christ. Did his temptations not cease, he bade him see in them means
to draw him to the love of God. The thoughts of Staupitz turned in
this on the temptations to pride, which might themselves be the
means of curing that pride, and on the great things for which God
wished to prepare him. In a simple, practical manner, and from the
experiences of his own life, he would thus counsel and converse with
Luther. During the long course of a confidential intercourse with
his friend, his own theology in later years became visibly
developed, and his pupil of earlier days became afterwards his
teacher. But Luther, both then and throughout his life, spoke of him
with grateful affection as his spiritual father, and thanked God
that he had been helped out of his temptations by Dr. Staupitz,
without whom he would have been swallowed up in them and perished.