5. The collapse of the Augustinian Congregation
The fifth Council of the Lateran took measures against many abuses which had crept in among the mendicant Orders, particularly among the Hermits of St. Augustine. As we know, the German Congregation under Staupitz and with Luther as Rural Vicar was no better off than the other branches. It is from June 30, 1516, i.e. during the period of Luther’s “vicariate” that we find a curious note in the “Acta Generalatus Ægidii Viterbiensis.” (Above, p. 497.)
“Universo ordini significamus bellum nobis indictum ab episcopis in concilio Lateranensi, ob idque nos reformationem indicimus omnibus monasteriis.” [Cp. 2 Jan., 1517]. “Religioni universæ quæcunque in concilio acta sunt contra mendicantes per litteras longissimas significamus et reformationem exactissimam indicimus.”
In thus doing the Minister-General’s intention, to judge by the few scraps his Acts contain, was to bring back his people “ad communem vitam.” No doubt too many dispensations had been given for the sake of making study easier, or for other reasons. The reader may remember the incident (above, vol. i., p. 297, n. 1) of Gabriel Zwilling’s being sent to Erfurt and the words used by Luther in his letter to Lang. Zwilling, who, after leaving the Augustinians, became one of the Zwickau “Prophets” but afterwards accepted an appointment as Lutheran minister at Torgau, had joined the Augustinians in 1502 and matriculated at Wittenberg University in 1512; hence he had already been sixteen years an Augustinian at the time when Luther wrote that he had “not yet seen or learnt the rites and usages of the Order.” Does not this seem to prove that the Rule must have been greatly relaxed and that too many exceptions were allowed in the common way of life? Luther himself, as we know, had been dispensed in his student-days from attending Matins and had been assigned a serving-brother; this is proved by the manuscript notes of the Table-Talk made by Rörer. “(Staupitzius) absolvit eum a matutinis et addidit fratrem famulum.” (Kroker, “Archiv für Reformationsgesch.,” 1908, p. 370.) It has indeed been urged that Zwilling’s ignorance of the “rites” was due to the smallness of the Wittenberg monastery. But, as Luther wrote to Lang on Oct. 26, 1516, the house contained “twenty-two priests, twelve students, and, in all, forty-one persons.” (“Briefwechsel,” 1, p. 67). This was surely enough to allow of the carrying out of the “rites and usages of the Order.” Zwilling, moreover, was sent to Erfurt, not only to get a better insight into the ways of the Order, but, mainly, to learn Greek: “Ut et ipse et alii quam optime, i.e. christianiter, græcisent.”
6. The Tower Incident (vol. I, pp. 388-400)
To avoid giving unnecessary offence we did not unduly insist on the locality in which Luther professed to have received his chief revelation. To have suppressed all mention of the locality would, however, have been wrong seeing that the circumstance of place is here so closely bound up with the historicity of the event. We, however, confined ourselves to a bald statement and explanation of what is found in the sources, and chose the most discreet heading possible for the section in question. In spite of this, Adolf Harnack (“Theol. Literaturztng.,” 1911, p. 302), dealing with our first volume, informed his readers that, on this point, we had made our own “the olden fashion of vulgar Catholic polemics” and had made of the “locality a capital question,” no doubt in the hope that Catholic readers would take the matter very much as the olden Christians took Arius’s death in the closet. Needless to say, what Harnack wrote was repeated and aggravated by the lesser lights of German Protestantism. The truest remark, however, made by Harnack in this connection, is that, the actual “locality in which Luther first glimpsed this thought is of small importance,” and that, even had I made out my case, “what would it really matter?”
As to our authorities the chief one is Johann Schlaginhaufen’s notes of Luther’s Table-Talk in which the words are related as having been spoken some time between July and Sept., 1532.
The forms in which Luther’s utterance has been handed down: The friends who, in 1532, either habitually or occasionally, attended at Luther’s parties and noted down his sayings were three in number, viz. Schlaginhaufen, Cordatus and Veit Dietrich. The (yet unpublished) notes of the last as given in the Nuremberg MS. contain nothing about this utterance. From Cordatus we have the version given below as No. III. But, according to Preger, the editor of Schlaginhaufen, Cordatus “at this time was no longer at Wittenberg”; if this be true, then what he says on the subject must have come to him at second hand, though, otherwise, his notes contain much valuable first-hand information. Nevertheless both Preger and Kroker, two experts on the Table-Talk, are at one in arguing that an attentive comparison of Cordatus’s notes with those of the other guests, proves that Cordatus not seldom fails to keep closely enough to Luther’s actual words and sometimes misses his real meaning, which is less so the case with Schlaginhaufen. As for Lauterbach, as Kawerau points out, he was not at that time a regular visitor at Luther’s house, though we several times hear of his being present at the Table-Talk. It is more than doubtful whether his version of the utterance in question (given below as IV) was taken down from Luther’s lips. Moreover his notes, as printed by Bindseil, often show traces of subsequent correction.
In Schlaginhaufen, on the other hand, we find throughout first-hand matter, the freshness, disorder, and even faulty grammar, showing how little it has been touched up by the collector’s hand. He was a personal friend of Luther’s, and, whilst awaiting a call to the ministry, stayed at the latter’s house from November, 1531, where he was always present at the evening repast. Luther was aware that he was taking notes of the conversations, and, on one occasion (Preger, p. 82) particularly requested him to put down something. He was comforted in his anxieties by Luther (above, vol. v., p. 327), nor, when he left Wittenberg at the end of 1532 to become minister at Zahna, did he break his friendly relations with Luther. He quitted Zahna in Dec., 1533, and took over the charge of Köthen.
The notes of Schlaginhaufen made public by Preger in 1888 are not in his own handwriting. The Munich codex (Clm. 943) used by Preger is rather the copy made by some unknown person about 1551, written with a hasty hand, and (as we were able to convince ourselves by personal inspection) by one, who, in places, could not quite decipher the original (now lost). There are, however, three other versions of Schlaginhaufen’s notes of the utterance under consideration: That of Khummer (mentioned above, vol. i., p. 396), that made in 1550 by George Steinhart, minister in the Chemnitz superintendency, and that of Rörer, which, thanks to E. Kroker the Leipzig city-librarian, we are now able to give. That of Steinhart is found bound up in a Munich codex entitled “Dicta et facta Lutheri et aliorum.” (Clm. 939, f., 10.) Steinhart evidently made diligent use of the papers left by Schlaginhaufen, Lauterbach and others. Generally speaking, his work is well done. Steinhart’s rendering of the utterance in question agrees word for word with that of Khummer, though they both differ from the Munich copy published by Preger and show it to be lacking in some respects. Rörer’s text V, in many ways, stands by itself.
Khummer had fled from Austria on account of his Lutheran leanings and gone to Wittenberg, where he matriculated on May 11, 1529. He was then a fellow-student of Lauterbach. He is supposed to have been given by Luther (between 1541 and 1545) charge of the parish of Ortrand, where he still was in 1555 when the Visitors gave a good account of him. His collection, now in the Royal Dresden Library, contains a copy (not all in his own handwriting) made in 1554 from Lauterbach’s Diary (1538), and, further, in the second part, this time all in his own handwriting, copies of many things said by Luther at table. “We shall not be far wrong,” says Seidemann (p. x.), “if we surmise that Khummer obtained his version from Pirna [where Lauterbach had been superintendent since 1539].” Below we give his version as printed in Seidemann (p. 81, n.):
Luther’s words as they were heard by Schlaginhaufen:
| I. Copies of Steinhart (1550) and Khummer (1554): | II. Anonymous Copy of (Preger) 1551: |
| “Hæc vocabula iustus et iustitia dei erant mihi fulmen in conscientia. Mox reddebar pavidus auditor. Iustus, ergo punit. Sed cum semel in hac turri speculabar de istis vocabulis Iustus ex fide vivit, iustitia dei, mox cogitaveram, [Steinhart: cogitabam] si vivere debemus iusti ex fide et iustitia dei debet esse ad salutem omni credenti, mox erigebatur mihi animus. Ergo iustitia dei est, quæ nos iustificat et salvat. Et facta sunt mihi hæc verba iucundiora, Dise khunst hat mir der heilig geist aüff diser cloaca aüff dem Thorm (ein)gegeben.”[1662] | “Hæc vocabula: iustus et iustitia erant mihi fulmen in conscientia. Mox reddebar pavidus auditis: Iustus—ergo puniet, Iustus ex fide vivit, Iustitia dei revelatur sine lege. Mox cogitabam, si vivere debemus ex fide et si iustitia dei debet esse ad salutem omni credenti, mox erigebatur mihi animus: ergo iustitia dei est, quo nos iustificat et salvat, et facta sunt mihi hæc verba iucundiora. Dise kunst hatt mir d[er] S[piritus] S[anctus] auf diss Cl. eingeben.” |
Here the identical text of Khummer and Steinhart (I) supplies certain missing parts in text II, and, as it is the more understandable of the two, is more likely to represent the earlier form of Schlaginhaufen’s rendering. Thus in text II, line 1-2, the word “Dei” after “iustitia” is wrongly omitted; so also, the words “Sed cum semel in hac turri speculabar de istis vocabulis,” or others to that effect, are required to introduce the “mox cogitabam” a few lines below. Read alone the “Iustus ex fide,” as in II, is not intelligible. In both I and II there is, on the other hand, an omission, viz. after the words “omni credenti” which III, IV and V seek to supply each in their own way. Here we shall not be far wrong in assuming the omission to have been the fault of the lost original of Schlaginhaufen of which they made use. The fact that No. I here refrains from completing the passage is in itself a testimony to its copyist’s integrity. Again, in the Steinhart-Khummer version, the final allusion in the German words at the end to the “Thorm” (tower) brings us back to the “turris” mentioned earlier. Now, what is noteworthy, is that, at the conclusion of this version which seems the better of the pair, the word “cloaca” is spelt out in full (as it also is below, in Rörer’s copy).
In II, however, we find only the abbreviation “Cl.” Now, in the MS. followed by the editor of text II, though we find a large number of abbreviations, they are merely the ones in use in those times. “Cl.,” however, is a most singular one, and, were it not explained by other texts, would be very difficult to understand. Why then is it used? It can hardly be merely from the desire to avoid using any word in the least offensive to innocent ears, for, elsewhere, in the same pages (e.g. in Preger’s edition, Nos. 364, 366, 375) the coarsest words are written out in full without the slightest scruple. Hence in this connection the copyist must have had a special reason to avoid spelling out so comparatively harmless a word.
The remaining texts are those of Cordatus, Lauterbach and Rörer.
Cordatus was assigned too high a place by his modern editor, Wrampelmeyer (1885). He had, indeed, his merits, but, as Preger points out, an inspection of the many items he took from Schlaginhaufen shows him to have been careless and often mistaken. Moreover, he has wantonly altered the order of the utterances instead of retaining Schlaginhaufen’s chronological one. Those utterances which he had not heard himself (such as the one in question) have naturally suffered most at his hands. As for Lauterbach’s so-called “Colloquia” preserved at Gotha (ed. H. E. Bindseil), it also betrays signs of being a revision and rearrangement of matter collected together or heard personally by this most industrious of all the compilers of Luther’s sayings. Whether Lauterbach was actually present on the occasion in question cannot be told, but it seems scarcely likely that he was if we compare his account carefully with that of Schlaginhaufen. On Rörer’s connection with Schlaginhaufen, see Kroker, “Archiv für Reformationsgesch.,” 7, 1910, p. 56 ff.
Luther’s words in the revised form:
| III. Cordatus 1537 (Wrampelmeyer, p. 423, No. 1571): | IV. Lauterbach c. 1559 (Bindseil, 1, p. 52): | V. Rörer (Jena, Bos. q. 24 s, Bl. 117´, 118): |
| “Hæc vocabula iustus et iusticia in papatu fulmen mihi erant conscientia, et ad solum auditum terrebant me. Sed cum semel in hac turri (in qua secretus locus erat monachorum) specularer de istis vocabulis Iustus ex fide vivit et Iusticia dei, etc. obiter veniebat in mentem: Si vivere debemus iusti fide propter iusticiam et illa iusticia Dei est ad salutem omni credenti, ergo ex fide est iusticia et ex iusticia vita. Et erigebatur mihi conscientia mea et animus meus, et certus reddebar, iusticiam dei esse quæ nos iustificaret et salvaret. Ac statim fiebant mihi hæc verba dulcia et iucunda verba. Diesze kunst hatt mir der heilige geist auff diesem thurm geben.” | “Nam hæc verba iustus et iustitia Dei erant mihi fulmen in consciencia, quibus auditis expavescebam. Si Deus est iustus, ergo puniet. Sed Dei gratia cum semel in hac turri et hypocausto specularer de istis vocabulis Iustus ex fide vivit et Iustitia Dei, mox cogitabam: Si vivere debemus iusti ex fide et iustitia Dei debet esse ad salutem omni credenti, non erit meritum nostrum, sed misericordia Dei. Ita erigebatur animus meus. Nam iustitia Dei est qua nos iustificamur et salvamur per Christum, et illa verba facta sunt mihi iucundiora. Die Schriefft hat mir der heilige geist in diesem thuen [thurm] offenbaret.” | “Vocabula hæc iustus, misericordia erant mihi in conscientia tristitia. Nam his auditis mox incutiebatur terror: Si Deus est iustus, ergo puniet, etc. Cum autem diligentius cogitarem de significatione et iam incideret locus Hab. 2: Iustus ex fide vivet, item Iustitia Dei revelatur sine lege, cœpi mutare sententiam: Si vivere debemus ex fide, et si iustitia Dei est ad salutem omni credenti, non terrent, sed maxime consolantur peccatores hi loci. Ita confirmatus cogitavi certo iustitiam Dei esse, non qua punit peccatores, sed qua iustificat et salvos (salvat) peccatores pœnitentiam agentes. Diese Kunst hat mir der Geist Gottes auf dieser cloaca [in horto] eingeben.” |
It will be noticed that III and IV resemble each other and both conclude with a mention of the tower (as in Schlaginhaufen I). At the beginning, however, each adds a few words of his own not found in Schlaginhaufen. Cordatus adds a parenthesis about the “locus secretus,” i.e. privy (whether the marks of parenthesis are merely the work of the editor we cannot say, nor whether the parenthetic sentence is supposed to represent Luther’s actual words or is an explanation given by Cordatus himself). At any rate the words really add nothing new to Schlaginhaufen’s account, if we bear in mind the latter’s allusion at the end to the “cloaca” and the fact that Cordatus omits to refer to this place at the end of his account. Hence we seem to have a simple transposition. As to why Cordatus should have transposed the words, we may not unreasonably conjecture that, in his estimation, they stood in the earlier form in too unpleasant proximity with the reception of the revelation.
Lauterbach’s text, even if we overlook the words it adds after “credenti,” betrays an effort after literary polish; it can scarcely be an independent account and most likely rests on Schlaginhaufen. One allusion is, however, of importance, viz. the words “in hac turri et [in Rebenstock’s version: vel] hypocausto” which here replace the mention of the cloaca or privy. Here the “hypocaustum” signifies either a heating apparatus or a heated room.
In Rörer the whole text has been still further polished up. He agrees with II in leaving out the “in hac turri,” but, with I, in introducing the “cloaca” at the end. The words “in horto” which are inserted in his handwriting just above would seem to be his own addition due to his knowledge of the spot (the tower really stood partly in the garden).
Other interpretations of the texts in question: Kawerau (p. 62 f.) takes Lauterbach’s “hypocaustum” to refer to Luther’s workroom in the tower, which Luther had retained since his monkish years and from which “he stormed the Papacy.” Unfortunately, in the references given by Kawerau, we find no allusion to any such prolonged residence in a room in the tower.
Luther himself once casually alludes to two different “hypocausta” (or warmed rooms) in the monastery. According to a letter dated in Nov., 1527 (“Briefwechsel,” 6, p. 117), whilst the Plague was raging, he put up his ailing son Hans in “meo hypocausto,” whilst the wife of Augustine Schurf, the professor of medicine, when she was supposed to have contracted the malady, was also accommodated in a “hypocaustum” of her own. For another sick lady, Margareta von Mochau, he found room “in hybernaculo nostro usitato,” and, with his family, took up his own lodgings “in anteriore magna aula.” Hans’s “hypocaustum” was probably the traditional room furnished with a stove still shown to-day as Luther’s (Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 491). Unfortunately this room is not near the town-wall, or the tower, but on the opposite side of the building. There is another allusion elsewhere (Feb. 14, 1546, “Briefe,” 5, p. 791) to a “hypocaustum,” but, there again, no reference is made to its being situated in the tower.
An undated saying in Aurifaber’s German Table-Talk, in which Luther expresses a fear for the future of his “poor little room” “from which I stormed the Pope” (Erl. ed., 62, p. 209; Förstemann, 4, p. 474) might refer to any room. As a monk Luther is not likely to have had a warmed cell of his own but merely the use of the common-room of the community. He himself speaks of what he suffered from the cold (above, p. 194); elsewhere he tells us of the noise once made by the devil “in the chimney” of the refectory (above, p. 125) to which Luther had betaken himself to prepare his lecture, presumably for the sake of more warmth.
In vol. i. (p. 397) we perhaps too hastily assumed the “necessary building” to have been a privy which Luther, in 1519, asked permission to erect. It may even have been the “pleasant room overlooking the water” in which Luther “drank and made merry”—to the great disgust of the fanatic Ickelsamer. (See above, vol. iii., p. 302.) Being new it would no doubt have been “pleasant” and no doubt, too, it also had a fire-place. It may be conjectured that, possibly Lauterbach, with his allusion to the “tower” and the “hypocaustum” was intending to suggest this room as the scene of the revelation rather than the more ignoble locality of which Cordatus speaks.
Others have sought to escape the disagreeable meaning of the text in other ways. Wrampelmeyer interpreted it figuratively: The tower was Popery and the “hypocaustum” Luther’s spiritual “sweat bath.” Preger did much the same and even more. He says: “I hold that ‘Cl.,’ from which abbreviation the other readings seem to have sprung[!], stands for ‘Capitel’ [i.e. chapter].” Even Harnack inclines to this latter view. The meaning would then be: “This art the Holy Ghost revealed unto me on this chapter” (of the Epistle to the Romans). But, apart from the clumsiness of such a construction, as it was pointed out by Kawerau, such an abbreviation as “Cl.” for “capitel” or “capitulum” is unheard of. With even less reason Scheel tentatively makes the suggestion to read “Cl.” as “claustrum,” or “cella.”
Kawerau admits that “Cl.” stands for “cloaca,” but he urges that it arose through a misunderstanding on Schlaginhaufen’s part of Cordatus’s “secretus locus”—as though Schlaginhaufen was likely to depend on second-hand information regarding an utterance he had heard himself.
Kawerau further points out, that the locality in which the revelation was received is, after all, of no great moment, that “the stable at Bethlehem was not unworthy of witnessing God’s revelation in Christ”; Scheel, likewise, asks whether all Christians, even those of the Roman persuasion, do not believe that God is present everywhere? They certainly do, and nothing could have been further from our intentions than any wish to prejudice the case by making the locality of the incident a “capital question.” Had Luther received his supposed revelation on Mount Thabor, or on Sinai, or before the altar of the Schlosskirche we can assure our critics that we should have faithfully recorded the testimonies with the same regard for historical truth.