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,[1446] “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[1447] 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,[1448] 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.[1449] 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.[1450]
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.”[1451] 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.”[1452]
Though historically the tales of “the pious panegyrist,” as Maurenbrecher a Protestant calls him,[1453] 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.[1454] 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.”[1455]
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, that he should be called as Superintendent [to Eisleben].”[1456] 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.”[1457] 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.”[1458]
Luther’s most ardent admirer after Flacius was perhaps Nicholas Amsdorf. In the Jena edition of Luther’s works for which he was responsible Amsdorf extols him in the Introduction as a man of God, “the like of whom has not been seen on earth since St. Paul’s day,” a man whom God “had raised up by His special Grace as a chosen instrument and bestowed on the German nation”; “by the Spirit and Word of God he had been led to attack the Pope, and his services in revealing him as Antichrist must be esteemed as highly as his vigorous advocacy of the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation and Justification through Christ.” Nay “he had been specially raised up” “in order to unmask the Roman Antichrist.” But, on account of all his other doctrines too, “pious Christians ought to acknowledge with grateful hearts this great miracle which God has shown to the world and used against the Pope in these last sad times through the precious man of God Martin Luther.” Amsdorf, however, as he hints in the same Preface, found to his dismay that Protestant “cavillers” were now even more numerous than in Luther’s lifetime, who “picked from Luther’s writings only antologies and contradictions.” Some had even dared to distort his writings. He complains that the Wittenberg complete edition of Luther’s works was so unreliable that he was now compelled to undertake the present new Jena edition: “Many things in those tomes were deleted, expurgated and altered for the sake of currying favour.”[1459] The real Luther, particularly as he is seen in his denial of the need of good works, is numbered by Amsdorf among the Saints; this is clear from the title of one of Amsdorf’s works, where he places Luther on a par with the Apostle of the Gentiles.[1460]
Particularly around Luther’s tomb did veneration centre. Thus the verses of August Buchner invite his readers to visit Luther’s tomb, and proclaim it a greater thing to have seen this little resting place than even the proud Temple of Capitoline Jove.[1461]
Immediately after his death a lengthy “poem” was published at Wittenberg entitled “Epitaphium,” celebrating both the deceased and his grave:
“In mine own sweet Fatherland
I did die a death so grand.
At Wittenberg in peace I lie;
To God be praise and thanks on high.”
In it Luther tells how he had been sent by God that he might—
“Before the trump of doom unmask that devil’s child
The Antichrist, with fiendish sin defiled.”
For ever and for ever it would remain true that
“Pope and Antichrist have sprung
From the wicked devil’s dung.”[1462]
His grave was marked only by a stone let into the ground bearing on it a metal plate with his name, the date and place of his death, and his age.[1463]
On a bronze memorial tablet in the wall was described in Latin verse the dark night in which the world was plunged under the Papacy, until at last Luther “once more made known the Grace of Christ, and, moved by the Divine inspiration (‘Dei adflatu monitus’) and called by the Word of God, had caused the new light of the Evangel to illuminate the world.” Like Paul his tongue had sent forth lightnings, like John the Baptist he had shown to the world in its darkness the Saving Lamb of God, and also brought to light the Tables of Moses, the Prophet of God, in their counter-distinction from the Gospel. The altars had been purged of the Roman idols. In reward for all this he had been exalted by Christ to the stars in order that he might share in His eternal joy.[1464] Beside the monument there was placed in the following century a framed painting representing Luther in the pulpit, pointing with his finger to the Crucified, while a dragon with wide-open jaws was swallowing the Pope and his helpers. On this painting the verses given above were repeated.[1465]
The Elector Johann Frederick had another memorial tablet cast, but, owing to his defeat in the Schmalkalden War, this was taken by his sons to Weimar and later, in 1571, to Jena, where it was put up in the church of St. Michael. On it, above the life-size figure of the deceased, stands the verse: “Pestis eram vivus, moriens ero mors tua papa.” Other Latin verses at his feet state that, through him, the great fraud had been exposed whereby godless Rome had ensnared Christ’s flock. Would that Christ would help the orthodox school of Jena to vanquish the swarm of false doctrines (of the New Believers) that was springing up now, when the end of the world was so close.[1466]