3. Ghosts, Delusions, Apparitions of the Devil
In investigating the many ghostly apparitions with which Luther believed he had been favoured, our attention is perforce drawn to the Wartburg. We must, however, be careful to distinguish the authentic traditions from what has been unjustifiably added thereto. As to the explaining and interpreting of such testimonies as have a right to be regarded as historical, that will form the matter of a special study. In order that the reader may build up an opinion of his own we shall meanwhile only set on record what the sources say, the views of those concerned being given literally and unabridged. This method, essential though it be for the purposes of an unbiassed examination, has too often been set aside, recourse being had instead to mere assertions, denials and pathological explanations.
The Statements Concerning Luther’s Intercourse with the Beyond
On April 5, 1538, Luther, in the presence of his friends, spoke of the personal “annoyance” to which the devil had subjected him while at the Wartburg by means of visible manifestations. The pastor of Sublitz, then staying at Wittenberg, had complained of being pestered at his home by noisy spooks; they flung pots and pans at his head and created other disturbances. Referring to such outward manifestations of the spirit-world, Luther remarked: “I too was tormented in my time of captivity in Patmos, in the castle perched high up in the kingdom of the birds. But I withstood Satan and answered him in the words of the Bible: God is mine, Who created man and ‘set all things under his feet’ (Ps. viii. 7). If thou hast any power over them, try what thou canst do.”[381]
On another occasion he related before his friend Myconius and in the presence of Jonas and Bugenhagen, “how the devil had twice appeared at the Wartburg in the shape of a great dog and had tried to kill him.” It is Myconius who relates this, mentioning that it had been told him by Luther at Gotha in 1538,[382] “in the house of Johann Löben, the Schosser.”
Of one of these two apparitions, the physician Ratzeberger, Luther’s friend, had definite information. He, however, quotes it only as an instance of the many ghostly things which Luther had experienced there: “Because the neighbourhood was lonely many ghosts appeared to him and he was much troubled by disturbances due to noisy spooks. Among other incidents, one night, when he was going to bed, he found a huge black bull-dog lying on his bed that refused to let him get in. Luther thereupon commended himself to our Lord God, recited Ps. viii. [the same as that mentioned above], and when he came to the verse ‘Thou hast set all things under his feet’ the dog at once disappeared and Luther passed a peaceful night. Many other ghosts of a like nature visited him, all of whom he drove off by prayer, but of which he refused to speak, for he said he would never tell anyone how many spectres had tormented him.”[383]
According to the account of his pupil Mathesius, Luther often “called to mind how the devil had tormented him in mind and caused him a burning pain which sucked the very marrow out of his bones.”[384] Of visible apparitions Mathesius has, however, very little to say: “The Evil Spirit,” so we read in his account of Luther’s sayings, “most likely wished to affright me palpably, for on many nights I heard him making a noise in my Patmos, and saw him at the Coburg under the form of a star, and in my garden in the shape of a black pig. But my Christ strengthened me by His Spirit and Word so that I paid no heed to the devil’s spectre.”[385] Mathesius, in his enthusiasm, actually goes so far as to compare such things to Satan’s tempting of Christ in the wilderness.
The encounter with the great black dog in the Wartburg is related in an old edition of Luther’s Table-Talk with a curious addition, which tells how Luther, on one occasion, calmly lifted from the bed the dog, which had frequently tormented him, carried him to the window, and threw him out without the animal even barking. Luther had not been able to learn anything about it afterwards from others, but no such dog was kept in the Castle.[386]
Of the strange din by which the devil annoyed him within those walls Luther speaks more in detail in the German Table-Talk. “When I was living in Patmos … I had a sack of hazel nuts shut up in a box. On going to bed at night I undressed in my study, put out the light, went to my bedchamber and got into bed. Then the nuts began to rattle over my head, to rap very hard against the rafters of the ceiling and bump against me in bed; but I paid no attention to them. After I had got to sleep there began such a din on the stairs as though a pile of barrels was being flung down them, though I knew the stairs were protected with chains and iron bars so that no one could come up; nevertheless, the barrels kept rolling down. I got up and went to the top of the stairs to see what it was, but found the stairs closed. Then I said: ‘If it is you, so be it,’ and commended myself to our Lord Christ of Whom it is written: ‘Thou shalt set all things under his feet,’ as Ps. viii. says, and got into bed again.” All this, so the account proceeds, had been related by Luther himself at Eisenach in 1546.[387] Cordatus, however, must have heard the story of the nuts from his own lips even before this. He tells it in 1537 as one of the numerous instances of the persecution Luther had had to endure from the spooks of the Wartburg: “Then he [the devil] took the walnuts from the table and flung them up at the ceiling the whole night long.”[388]
It also happened (this supplements an incident touched upon above in vol. ii., p. 95), so Luther related on the above occasion, in 1546, that the wife of Hans Berlips, who “would much have liked to see [Luther], which was, however, not allowed,” came to the Castle. His quarters were changed and the lady was put into his room. “That night there was such an ado in the room that she fancied a thousand devils were in it.”[389] This story is not quite so well authenticated as the incidents which Luther relates as having happened to himself, for it is clear that he had it directly, or indirectly, only from this lady’s account. Her anxiety to see Luther would seem to stamp her as a somewhat eccentric person, and it may also be that she went into a room, already reputed to be haunted, quite full of the thought of ghosts and that her imagination was responsible for the rest.
Luther goes on to allude to another ghostly visitation, possibly a new one. He says: “On such occasions we must always say to the devil contemptuously: “If you are Christ’s Master, so be it!” For this is what I said at Eisenach.”[390] Nothing further is known, however, of any such occurrence having taken place at Eisenach. He may quite well have taken Eisenach as synonymous with the Wartburg.
To pass in review the other ghostly apparitions which occurred during his lifetime, we must begin with his early years.
When still a young monk at Wittenberg Luther already fancied he heard the devil making a din. “When I began to lecture on the Psalter, and, after we had sung Matins, was seated in the refectory studying and writing up my lecture, the devil came and rattled in the chimney three times, just as though someone were heaving a sack of coal down the chimney. At last, as it did not cease, I gathered up my books and went to bed.”[391] “Once, too, I heard him over my head in the monastery, but, when I noticed who it was, I paid no attention, turned over and went to sleep again.”[392]
Luther can tell some far more exciting stories of ghosts and “Poltergeists,” of which others, with whom he had come in contact in youth or manhood, had been the victims. Since, however, he seems to have had them merely on hearsay, they may be passed over. Of himself, however, he says: “I have learnt by experience that ghosts go about affrightening people, preventing them from sleeping and so making them ill.”[393]
We find also the following statement: “The devil has often had me by the hair of my head, yet was ever forced to let me go”;[394] from the context this, however, may refer to mental temptations.
He says, however, quite definitely of certain experiences he himself had gone through in the monastery: “Oh, I saw gruesome ghosts and visions.” This was probably at the time when “no one was able to comfort” him.[395] He was referring to incidents to which no definite date can be assigned, when, anxious to refute their claim to illumination by the spirits, he told the fanatics: “Ah, bah, spirits … I too have seen spirits!”
The Table-Talk relates how on one occasion Luther himself, in a strange house, was witness of a remarkable spectral visitation. He is said to have related the incident and to “have seen it with his own eyes as did also many others.”[396] A maiden, a friend of the old proctor [at the University], was lying in bed ill at Wittenberg. She had a vision; Christ appearing to her under a glorious form, whereupon she joyfully adored her visitor. A messenger was at once sent “from the college to the monastery” to fetch Luther. He came and exhorted the young woman “not to allow herself to be deceived by the devil.” She thereupon spat in the face of the apparition. “The devil then disappeared and the vision turned into a great snake which made a dash at the maiden in her bed and bit her on the ear so that the drops of blood trickled down, after which the snake was seen no more.” This story was introduced into the German Table-Talk by Aurifaber (1566).[397] The young woman was probably hysterical and was the only beholder of the vision. In all likelihood what the others saw was merely the blood, which might quite well have come from a scratch otherwise caused. The story has been quoted as a proof of the dispassionate way in which Luther regarded visions.
As a further proof of the “sobriety which he coupled with a faith so ardent and enthusiastic” Köstlin quotes the following:[398] “He himself related this tale,” the Table-Talk says [the date is uncertain but it was after he had already begun to preach the “Word”]; “he was once praying busily in his cell, and thinking of how Christ had hung on the cross, suffered and died for our sins, when suddenly a bright light shone on the wall, and, in the midst, a glorious vision of the Lord with His five wounds appeared and gazed at him, the Doctor, as though it had been Christ Himself. When the Doctor saw it he fancied at first it was something good, but soon he bethought him it must be a devilish spectre, because Christ appears to us only in His Word and in a lowly and humble form, just as He hung in shame upon the cross. Hence the Doctor adjured the vision: ‘Begone thou shameless devil! I know of no other Christ than He Who was crucified, and Who is revealed and preached in His Word,’ and soon the apparition, which was no less than the devil in person, disappeared.”[399]—This story told by his pupils must refer to some statement made by Luther, though the dramatic liveliness of its imagery may well lead us to suspect that it has been touched up. Some natural effect of light and shade might well account for the appearance which the young monk so “busy” at his prayers thought he saw.
ed., 58, p. 129.
It is hardly possible to suppress similar doubts concerning other accounts we have from his lips; his statements also refer to events which occurred long previous. At any rate, in a select circle of his pupils, the opinion certainly prevailed that Luther was tried by extraordinary other-world apparitions, and this conviction was the result of remarks dropped by him.
Greater stress must be laid on those statements of his which bear on inward experiences, where the most momentous truths were concerned and which occurred at certain crises of his life.
In Nov., 1525, he assured Gregory Casel, the Strasburg theologian, in so many words, that “he had frequently had inward experience that the body of Christ is indeed in the Sacrament; he had seen dreadful visions; also angels (‘vidisse se visiones horribiles, sæpe se angelos vidisse’), so that he had been obliged to stop saying Mass.”[400]
He spoke in this way in the course of the official negotiations with Casel, the delegate of the Protestant theologians of Strasburg. The words occur in Casel’s report of the interview published by Kolde. It is true that Luther also speaks here of the outward “Word” as the support of his doctrine, particularly on the Sacrament. “We shall,” he says, “abide quite simply by the words of Scripture—until the Spirit and the unction teach us something different.” He avers that the Strasburgers who denied the Sacrament come with their “Spirit” and wish to explain away the words of the Bible concerning the body of Christ in the Bread. This, however, is not the “light of the Spirit,” but the “light of reason”; he himself had long since learnt to reject reason in the things of God. They were not convinced of their cause as he was, otherwise they would defend their teaching publicly as he did, for he would rather the whole world were undone than be silent on God’s doctrine, because it was God’s business to watch over it.
His opponents declared they had their own inward experience. “How many inward experiences have I not had,” he replies, “at those times when my mind was idle (‘cum eram otiosus’)! All sorts of things came before my mind and everything seemed as reasonable as could be. But, by God’s grace, I addressed myself to greater and more earnest matters and began to distrust reason. I too, like them, was ‘in dangers’ [2 Cor. xi. 26], and in even greater ones. And if it is a question of piety of life, I hope that there, too, we are blameless.” Coming back once more to the spirit which the Strasburgers had set up against the Word of God, he describes in his own defence the “terrors of death he himself had been through (‘mortis horrorem expertus’)” and then speaks of the angelic visions referred to above which had disturbed him even at the Mass.[401]
He also will have it that at other times he had been consoled by angels, though he does not tell us that he had seen them. In 1532 he said to Schlaginhaufen: “God strengthened me ten years ago by His angels, in my struggles and writings.”[402]
Luther, repeatedly and in so many words, appeals to his realisation of the divine truths, and it may be assumed he imagined he felt something of the sort within him, or that he thus interpreted certain emotions. “I am resolved to acknowledge Christ as Lord. And this I have not only from Holy Scripture but also from experience. The name of Christ has often helped me when no one was able to help. Thus I have on my side the deed and the Word, experience and Scripture. God has given both abundantly. But my temptations made things sour for me.”[403]
The Table-Talk assures us that, “Dr. Martin proved it from his own experience that Jesus Christ is truly God; this he also confessed openly; for if Christ were not God then there was certainly no God at all.”[404] It was no difficult task for him to include himself in the ranks of those “who had received the first fruits of the spirit.”[405]
In addition to this, however, as will be shown below,[406] he thinks his doctrine has been borne in upon him by God through direct revelation. More than once, without any scruple, he uses the word “revelatum”; he is also fond of setting this revelation in an awesome background: it had been “strictly enjoined on him (‘interminatum’) under pain of eternal malediction” to believe in it.[407]
In fact a certain terror is the predominating factor in this gloomy region where he comes in touch with the other world. He has not merely had experience that there are roving spirits who affright men,[408] but, in a letter from the Wartburg, he insists quite generally, that, “the visions of the Saints are terrifying.” Of course, as we well know, delusions and hallucinations very often do assume a terrifying character.
Luther also asserts that “divine communications” are always accompanied by inward tortures like unto death, words which give us a glimpse into his own morbid state.[409] And yet he fully admits elsewhere the very opposite, for he is aware that God is, above all things, the consoler. “It is not Christ Who affrights us”;[410] and “it is Satan alone who wounds and terrifies.”[411] But, in practice, according to him, things work differently; there the fear from which he and others suffer comes to the fore. “We are oftentimes affrighted even when God turns to us the friendliest of glances.”[412]
This change of standpoint reminds us of another instance of the same sort. Luther’s teaching on the terrifying character of the divine action is much the same as his theological teaching that fear is the incentive to good deeds. While, as a rule, he goes much too far in seeking to rid the believer of any fear of God as the Judge, preaching an unbounded confidence and even altogether excluding fear from the work of conversion, yet, elsewhere, he emphasises most strongly this same fear, as called for and quite indispensable; this he did in his controversies with the Antinomians and, even earlier, as on the occasion of the Visitations, on account of its religious influence on the people.
No change or alteration is, however, apparent in the accounts he gives above of the cases in which he came in touch with the other world; he sticks firmly by his statement that he had experienced such things both mentally and palpably. Hence the difficulty of coming to any decision about them.
But there are further alleged experiences, also detailed at length, which have a place here, viz. the apparitions of the devil himself.
In 1530 Luther was thrown into commotion by a glimpse of the devil, under the shape of a fiery serpent, outside the walls of the Coburg. One evening in June, about nine o’clock, as his then companion Veit Dietrich relates, Luther was looking out of the window, down on the little wood surrounding the castle. “He saw,” says this witness, “a fiery, flaming serpent, which, after twisting and writhing about, dropped from the roof of the nearest tower down into the wood. He at once called me and wanted to show me the ghost (‘spectrum’) as I stood by his shoulder. But suddenly he saw it disappear. Shortly after, we both saw the apparition again. It had, however, altered its shape and now looked more like a great flaming star lying in the field, so that we were able to distinguish it plainly even though the weather was rainy.” Here the pupil undoubtedly did his best to see something. On his master, however, the firm conviction of having seen the devil made a deep impression. He had just enjoyed a short respite after a bout of ill-health. The night after the apparition he again collapsed and almost lost consciousness. On the following day he felt, so Dietrich says, “a very troublesome buzzing in the head”; the apparition leads the narrator to infer that Luther’s bodily trouble, which now recommenced in an aggravated form, had been entirely “the work of the devil.”[413] So certain was Luther of having seen the devil that he mentioned the occurrence in 1531 at one of the meetings held for the revision of his translation of the Psalms. The words of the Psalmist concerning “sagittæ” and “fulgura,” etc. (Ps. xviii. (xvii.) 15), he applies directly to his own personal experiences and to the incident in question, “Just as I saw my devil flying over the wood at the Coburg.”[414] He means by this the fading away and disappearance of the above-mentioned fiery shape; this psalm speaks of a “materia ignita,” which no doubt suggested his remarks.—Later, as Mathesius relates, he said he had seen the “evil spirit at the Coburg, in the form of a star.”[415] Kawerau terms the apparition an “optical hallucination.”[416]
By the word hallucination is understood an apparent perception of an external object not actually present. That the “apparition” at the Coburg and other similar ones already mentioned or yet to be referred to were hallucinations is quite possible though not certain. It is true that the excessive play Luther gave to his imagination, particularly at the Wartburg and, later, at the Coburg, was such that it is quite within the bounds of possibility that he fancied he saw or heard things which had no real existence. On the other hand, moreover, we know what a large share his superstition had in distorting actual facts. Hence, generally speaking, most of the ghosts or visions he is said to have seen can be explained by a mistaken interpretation of the reality, without there being any need to postulate an hallucination properly so-called. Much of what has been related might come under the heading of illusions, though, probably, not everything. To analyse them in detail is, however, impossible as the circumstances are not accurately known. Certainly no one, however much inclined to the supernatural, who is familiar with Luther and his times, will be content, as was once the case, to believe that the devil sought to interfere visibly and palpably with his person and his teaching.
As to the apparition of the devil at the Coburg in the shape of a flame, a serpent and a star, we may point out that the whole may well have been caused simply by a lantern or torch carried by somebody in that lonely neighbourhood. We might also be tempted to think of St. Elmo’s fire, except that the form of the apparition presents some difficulty.—So, too, the black dog in the Wartburg was most likely some harmless intruder. The noise of the nuts flying up against the ceiling may have been produced by the creaking of a weather-cock, or of a door or shutter in the wind [or by the rats]. Other tales again may be rhetorical inventions, simple fictions of Luther’s brain, not involving the least suggestion of any illusion or hallucination, for instance, when he speaks of the angels who appeared to him at Mass. Such an apparition was a convenient weapon to use against opponents who alleged they were under the influence of the “Spirit.” Moreover, some of these tales were told so long after the event as to leave a wide scope to the imagination.
To proceed with the accounts of the apparitions of the devil: About the reality of two of such, Luther is quite positive.
One of these took place close to his dwelling. The devil he then espied in the shape of a wild-boar in his garden under his window. “Once Martin Luther was looking out of the window,” so an account dating from 1548 tells us, “when a great black hog appeared in the garden.” He recognised it as a diabolical apparition and jeered at Satan who appeared in this guise, though he had once been a “beautiful angel.” “Thereupon the hog melted into nothing.”[417] He himself refers to this apparition in the words already recorded, in which he classes it with the work of the noisy spirits in the Wartburg and the “appearance of the star” at the Coburg.[418]
Indeed the hog and the flaming vision at the Coburg even found their way into his printed sermons. We read in the home-postils: “The devil is always about us in disguise, as I myself witnessed, taking, e.g. the form of a hog, of a burning wisp of straw, and such like”[419] (cp. above, vol. v., p. 287 ff.).
The other apparition, the one which possibly suggests most strongly an hallucination, was that which he experienced at Eisleben at the time he was trying to adjust the quarrels between the Counts of Mansfeld, i.e. just before his death. We have accounts of this from two different quarters, based on statements made by Luther; first that of Michael Cœlius, a friend who was present at his death, in the funeral oration he delivered immediately after at Eisleben on Feb. 20, and, secondly, that of Luther’s confidant, the physician Ratzeberger. The former in his address recounts for the edification of the people how Luther “during his lifetime” had suffered trials and persecutions at the hands of the devil before going to his eternal rest; hence in this world he had been “disturbed and troubled in his peace of mind” by Satan. It was true that latterly he had “enjoyed some happiness” at Eisleben, but “that had not lasted long; one evening indeed,” so Cœlius continues, “Luther had lamented with tears, that, while raising his heart to God with gladness and praying at his open window, he had seen the devil, who hindered him in all his labours, squatting on the fountain and making faces at him. But God would prove stronger than Satan, that he knew well.”[420]—Ratzeberger’s account quite agrees with this as to the circumstances; he had learnt that Luther “related the incident to Dr. Jonas and Mr. Michael Cœlius.” His information is not derived from the funeral oration just mentioned, but clearly from elsewhere. He is right in implying that it was Luther’s habit to say his night prayers at the window; he has, however, some further particulars concerning the behaviour of the devil: “It is said that when Dr. Martin Luther was saying his night prayers to God at the open window, as his custom was before going to bed, he saw Satan perched on the fountain that stood outside his dwelling, showing him his posterior and jeering at him, insinuating that all his efforts would come to nought.”[421] The first place, however, belongs to the account of Cœlius, who, by his mention of the tears Luther shed, sets vividly before the reader the commotion into which the apparition, which had occurred shortly before, had thrown him.
Excitement and trouble of mind were then pressing heavily on the aging man. His frame of mind was caused not merely by the quarrel between the “wrangling Counts” of Mansfeld with whom “no remonstrances or prayers brought any help,”[422] not merely by his usual “temptations,” but also, as Ratzeberger tells us, by the healing up of the incision in the left leg, he (Ratzeberger) had made, and which now led to bodily disorders. The disorders now made common cause with his “annoyance melancholy and grief.” The “violent mental excitement,” together with the bad effects of the healing up of the artificial wound, were, according to this physician, what “brought about his death.” Ratzeberger was not, however, then at Eisleben and we are in possession of more accurate accounts of the circumstances attending Luther’s death.
In explanation of Luther’s singular delusion regarding the jeering devil we may remark that he is fond of attributing the obstacles in the way of peace to the devil’s wrath and envy. “It seems to me that the devil is mocking us,” he writes of the difficulties on Feb. 6, “may God mock at him in return!”[423] The Eisleben councillor, Andreas Friedrich, writes to Agricola on Feb. 17 (18) of these same concerns, that Luther, when he found there was still no prospect of a settlement, had complained: “As I see, Satan turns his back on me and jeers as well.”[424] Here, curiously enough, we have exactly what occurred at the fountain. If the apparition, as is highly probable, belongs somewhat later, then we may assume that the vivid picture of the devil under this particular shape with which Luther was so familiar led finally to some sort of hallucination. His extravagant ideas of Satan generally might, in fact, have been sufficient. Everything that went against him was “Satanic,” and his only hope is that “God will make a mockery of Satan.”[425]
The account Luther gives in his Table-Talk of the two devils who, in his old age, accompanied him whenever he went to the “sleep-house” may be dealt with briefly. In this passage he is alluding in his joking way to his bodily infirmities.[426] Hence the “one or two” devils who dogged his footsteps are here described as quite familiar and ordinary companions, which is not in keeping with the idea of true apparitions; they were the nicer sort, i.e. pretty, well-mannered devils; they “attacked his head” and thus caused the malady to which he was most subject, hence in his usual style he threatens to “bid them begone into his a⸺,” in short he is here merely jesting. This forbids our taking the statement as meant in earnest though it is twice quoted in the German Table-Talk quite seriously. In the early days, immediately after Luther’s death, the statements concerning the “two devils” were, strange to say, reverently repeated by his pupils as an historic fact; in reality they were all too eager to unearth miraculous incidents in his life.
At a later period, when rationalism had made some headway, Protestant biographers of Luther as a rule preferred to say nothing about the apparitions Luther had met with, or to treat them as pious, harmless jests misinterpreted by his pupils. This, however, is not at all in accordance with historic criticism. Luther admirers of an earlier date, on the other hand, went too far in the contrary direction and showed themselves only too ready to follow their master into the other world, or to represent him as holding intercourse with it. Cyriacus Spangenberg (1528-1604), a Luther zealot, is an instance in point. In his “Theander Lutherus,” speaking of Luther “the real holy martyr,” he says: He deserved to be termed a martyr on account of the visible hostility of the devil; one or two devils had been in the habit of accompanying him in his walks in the dormitory in order to attack him, and his illnesses were caused simply by the devil. Needless to say, he does not allow the incidents mentioned above to escape him: Satan had tormented him at the Coburg in the shape of a fiery star and in the garden under that of a hog; he had tried to deceive him in his cell under the dazzling image of Christ, had affrighted him in the Wartburg by making a devilish noise with the nuts, and, finally, even in his monkish days had driven the student at a late hour from his studies by the din he made.[427]
It is a fact worthy of note that the older Protestant writers, when speaking of the apparitions Luther had, never mention any such or any revelations of a consoling character, but merely terrifying stories of devils and diabolical persecutions. This agrees with the observation already made above (p. 128 f.). It is evident that as good as nothing was known of any consoling apparitions; nor would the mild and friendly angels have been in place in the warlike picture which his friends transmitted of Luther. That he did not think himself a complete stranger to such heavenly communications has, however, been proved above, and it may be that his imagination would have had more to relate concerning this friendlier world above had he not had particular reasons for being chary about speaking of such visions.
The Disputation with the Devil on the Mass
In Spangenberg even Luther’s famous disputation with the devil on private Masses is also made to do duty among the other apparitions. He, like many others, takes it as an actual occurrence and represents it as further proof of the “real martyrdom” of his hero.[428] As, conversely, this disputation also plays a part in the works of Luther’s adversaries, it may be worth while to examine it somewhat more narrowly. It is urged that Luther admits he had been instructed by the devil regarding the falsity of the Catholic doctrine of the Mass, and, that, by thus tracing it back to the devil, he stamps with untruth an important portion of his teaching, seeing, that, from the father of lies, nothing but lies can be expected.
What then are we to believe concerning this disputation, judging from Luther’s own words which constitute our sole source? The only possible answer is, that Luther is merely making use of a rhetorical device.
It is true, that, in his “Von der Winckelmesse” (1533), Luther speaks in so elusive a way of his dispute with the devil, and of the truth he had learnt from the latter, that the incident was taken literally, not merely by Spangenberg and other of Luther’s oldest friends, but actually by Cochlæus too, and was, at a later date, made the subject of many disquisitions. Yet, if we look into the matter carefully, we shall find he speaks from the very outset not of any actual apparition of the devil, but merely of his inward promptings: “On one occasion,” so he introduces the story, “I woke up at midnight and the devil began a disputation with me in my heart,” such as he has with me “many a night.”[429] He then goes on, however, to describe the disputation as graphically as had it been a real incident.
Luther’s object with the writing in question is to fling at the Papists his arguments against private Masses under a new and striking form. He pretends that the Papists would be at a loss to answer Satan, but would be forced to despair “were he to bring forward these and other arguments against them at the hour of death.” Hence he introduces himself and shows how the devil had driven him into a corner on account of his former celebration of Mass. As for the arguments they are his usual ones. Here, put in the mouth of the devil, they are to overwhelm him with despair for his former evil wont of saying Masses. The only reason he can espy why he should not despair is that he has now repented and no longer says the Mass.
He himself alludes to the artifice; writing to a friend, he says, that by the introduction of the devil he intends to attack the Papists “with a pamphlet of a new kind”; even those friendly to the Evangel would be astonished at his new way of writing; they were, however, to be told that this was merely a challenge thrown to the Papists; that it only represented himself as driven into a corner by the devil on account of the Masses he had formerly said, in order to induce the Papists to examine their consciences and see how they could vindicate themselves with regard to the Mass.[430]—Thus, for once, the devil might well figure as an upholder of Luther’s doctrine.
In the course of the drama the devil never grows weary of proving, that, owing to the Masses Luther had said, and the idolatry he had thus practised, he had been brought to the verge of everlasting destruction. The devil’s arguments are given at great length and Luther concedes everything save that he refuses to despair. The statement that he should, so he urges, is worthy of the devil, who, in his temptations, constantly confuses the false with the true.[431] Luther, here, even introduces the devil in a quasi-comic light: “Do you hear, you great, learned man?” etc. “Yes, my dear chap, that is not the same,” etc. In a similar tone Luther then turns on the Papists who say to him: “Are you a great Doctor and yet have no answer ready for the devil?”
Certain Protestant writers, even down to our own times, have, however, insisted that, at any rate inwardly, the devil had sought to reduce Luther to despair on account of his celebration of Mass as a Catholic; that the spirit of darkness had attached so much importance to the suppression of the Gospel, that he attempted to disquiet Luther with such self-reproaches.[432] It is true Luther once says that the devil reproached him with his “misdeeds, for instance, with the sacrifice of the Mass,” and other Catholic practices of which he had formerly been guilty.[433] On other occasions, however, he quite absolves the devil of any change concerning the Mass. He says, e.g.: “The devil is such a miscreant that he does not reproach me with my great and awful crimes such as the celebration of Mass,”[434] etc. Thus he had persuaded himself quite independently of the devil that the Mass was a grievous crime. We have, in fact, in Luther’s statements concerning his inward experiences a crying instance of his changeableness. We shall return below to his self-reproach on account of his celebration of Mass (see section 4).
Possession and Exorcism
We may conclude our examination of diabolical apparitions by some statements concerning the exorcisms Luther undertook and his treatment of cases of possession.
His first followers believed he had been successful in 1545 in driving out Satan in the case of a person possessed. The testimony of two witnesses of the incident must here come under consideration, both young men who were present on the occasion, viz. Sebastian Fröschel, Deacon at Wittenberg, and Frederick Staphylus, a man of learning who afterwards abandoned Lutheranism and became Superintendent of the University of Ingolstadt.[435] The latter knows nothing of any success having attended Luther’s efforts, whereas the former boasts that such was the case, though he somewhat invalidates his testimony by saying nothing of the embarrassing situation in which Luther found himself at the close of the scene. According to both accounts the incident was more or less as follows:
A girl of eighteen from Ossitz in the neighbourhood of Meissen who was said to be possessed was brought one Tuesday to Luther, and, while at his bidding reciting the Creed, was “torn” by the devil as soon as she reached the words “and in Jesus Christ.” Luther hesitated at first to set about the work of liberation and expressed his contempt for the devil whom he “well knew.” The next day, after his sermon, he caused the “possessed” girl to be brought to him in the sacristy of the parish church of Wittenberg by the above-mentioned Fröschel.
We hear nothing of any regular examination as to whether it was a case of possession, or not rather hysteria, as seems more likely. At any rate, the unhappy girl when passing from the church through the entrance to the sacristy, was seen to “fall down and hit about her.” The door of the sacristy, where several doctors, ecclesiastics and students were gathered, was locked. Luther delivered an address on his method of driving out the devil: He did not intend to do this in the way usual in Apostolic time, in the early Church and later, viz. by a command and authoritative exorcism, but rather by “prayer and contempt”; the Popish exorcism was too ostentatious and of it the devil was not worthy; at the time when exorcism had been introduced miracles were necessary for the confirmation of the faith, but this was now no longer the case; God Himself knew well when the devil had to depart and they ought not to tempt Him by such commands, but, on the contrary, pray until their prayers were answered. Thus Luther, not unwisely, refused to perform any actual “driving out of the devil.”
The Church’s ritual for exorcism was, however, not so ostentatious as Luther pretends, and combined commands issued in a tone of authority in the name of Christ (Matt. x. 8; Mark xvi. 17) with an expression of contempt for the devil and reprobation of his evil deeds. Fröschel noted down the address in question together with everything that occurred and said later in a sermon, that Luther’s action ought to serve as a model in future cases.
In the sacristy the Creed and Our Father were recited, two passages on prayer (from John xvi. and xiv.) were also read aloud by Luther. Then he, together with the other ecclesiastics present, laid hands on the head of the girl and continued reciting prayers. When no sign appeared of the devil’s departure, Luther wished to go, but first took care to spurn the girl with his foot, the better to mark anew his disdain for the devil. The poor creature whom he had thus insulted followed him with threatening looks and gestures. This was all the more awkward since Luther was unable to escape, the key of the sacristy door having been mislaid; hence he was obliged, he the devil’s greatest and best-hated foe on earth, to remain cheek by jowl with the Evil One.
The satirical description Staphylus gives of the situation cannot be repeated here, especially as the writer seems to have added to its colour.[436] Luther was unable to jump out of the window, so he says, because it was protected with iron bars; “hence he had to remain shut up with us until the sacristan could pass in a strong hatchet to us through the bars; this was handed to me, as I was young, for me to burst open the door, which I then did.” In place of all this, Fröschel merely says of the girl, who was taken home the following day, that afterwards “on several occasions” reports came to Wittenberg to the effect that the evil spirit no longer “tormented and tore her as formerly.”
In the pulpit the Deacon immortalised the incident for his Wittenberg hearers and made it known to the whole world in his printed sermon “Vom Teuffel.”[437]
Luther himself says nothing of it, though disposed in later life to lay great stress on stories of the devil.[438] Earlier than this, in 1540, he had hastened to tell his Katey of the supposed deliverance of a girl at Arnstadt from the devil’s power through the ministrations of the Evangelical pastor there; the latter had “driven a devil out of the girl in a truly Christian manner.”[439] He does not, however, mention this incident in his published works.
On the other hand we have in the Table-Talk a full account of his treatment of a woman “possessed,” or, rather, clearly ailing from a nervous disorder. Her symptoms were regarded, as was customary at a time when so little was known of this class of maladies, as “purely the work of the devil, as something unnatural, due to fright and devil-spectres, seeing that the devil had overlaid her in the shape of a calf.” Luther, on visiting the woman thus “bodily persecuted by the devil,” again laid great stress on the need of praying that she might be rid of her guest, though this time he did not scorn the use of the formula of exorcism. “The night after, she was left in peace, but, later, the weakness returned. Finally, however, she was completely delivered from it;”[440] in other words, the malady simply took its natural course.
Another much-discussed case which occurred after the middle of the ’thirties was that of a girl at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, a report of which came to Luther from Andreas Ebert, the Lutheran pastor there (see above, vol. iii., p. 148). In his reply to the circumstantial account of how the “possessed” girl was able to produce coins by magic Luther shows himself in so far cautious that he is anxious to have it made clear whether the story is quite true and whether the coins are real. Nevertheless, he does not hesitate to declare, that, should the incident be proved, it would be a great omen (“ostentum”), as Satan, with God’s permission, was thus setting before them a picture of the greed of money prevailing among certain of the princes. He was loath to see exorcism resorted to, “because the devil in his pride laughs at it”; all the more were they to pray for the girl and against the devil, and this, with the help of Christ, would finally spell her liberation; meanwhile, however, he expresses his readiness to make public all the facts of the case that could be proved. In his sermons he spoke of the occurrence to his hearers as a “warning.”[441]
Theodore Kirchhoff, who, in the “Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie,” mentions “Luther’s exorcisms of hysterical women folk,” not without bewailing his error, points out that it was in part his own fancied experience with the devil which led him to regard “similar phenomena in others as diabolical”; “his many nervous ailments,” he says, “strengthened his personal belief in the devil.” “Indeed, so far did he go in his efforts to drive out the devil that once he actually proposed that an idiot should be done to death.”[442] “Such a doctrine [on the devil’s action], backed by the authority of so great a man, took deep root.” It would be incorrect, writes Kirchhoff, to say, that Luther inaugurated a healthier view of “possession”; on the contrary his opinion is, “that, owing to Luther’s hard and fast theories, the right understanding and treatment of the insane was rendered more difficult than ever; for, if we consider the immense spread of his writings and what their influence became, it is but natural to infer that this also led to his peculiar view becoming popular.”[443] Needless to say, other circumstances also conspired to render difficult the treatment of the mentally disordered; long before Luther’s day they had been regarded by many as possessed, and as the physicians would not undertake to cure possessions, this condition was neglected by the healing art. In many instances, too, the relatives were against any cure being attempted by physicians.