Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family

by Elizabeth Rundle Charles

We are just returned from an expedition which might have proved fatal to Martin Luther. Early in the morning, three days since, we started to walk to Mansfeld on a visit to his family, our hearts as full of hope as the woods were full of song. We were armed with swords; our wallets were full; and spirits light as the air. Our way was to lie through field and forest, and then along the banks of the river Holme, through the Golden Meadow where are so many noble cloisters and imperial palaces.

But we had scarcely been on our way an hour when Martin, by some accident, ran his sword into his foot. To my dismay the blood gushed out in a stream. He had cut into a main artery. I left him under the care of some peasants, and ran back to Erfurt for a physician. When he arrived, however, there was great difficulty in closing the wound with bandages. I longed for Elsè or our mother's skillful fingers. We contrived to carry him back to the city. I sat up to watch with him. But in the middle of the night his wound burst out bleeding afresh. The danger was very great, and Martin himself giving up hope, and believing death was close at hand, committed his soul to the blessed Mother of God. Merciful and pitiful, knowing sorrow, yet raised glorious above all sorrow, with a mother's heart for all, and a mother's claim on Him who is the judge of all, where indeed can we so safely flee for refuge as to Mary? It was edifying to see Martin's devotion to her, and no doubt it was greatly owing to this that at length the remedies succeeded, the bandages closed the wound again, and the blood was stanched.

Many an Ave will I say for this to the sweet Mother of Mercy. Perchance she may also have pity on me. O sweetest Lady, "eternal daughter of the eternal Father, heart of the indivisible Trinity," thou seest my desire to help my own careworn mother; aid me, and have mercy on me, thy sinful child.

Erfurt, June, 1503.

Martin Luther has taken his first degree. He is a fervent student, earnest in this as in everything. Cicero and Virgil are his great companions among the Latins. He is now raised quite above the pressing cares of penury, and will probably never taste them more. His father is now a prosperous burgher of Mansfeld, and on the way to become burgomaster. I wish the prospects at my home were as cheering. A few years less of pinching poverty for myself seems to matter little, but the cares of our mother and Elsè weigh on me often heavily. It must be long yet before I can help them effectually, and meantime the bright youth of my little Elsè, and the very life of our toilworn patient mother, will be wearing away.

For myself I can fully enter into what Martin says, "The young should learn especially to endure suffering and want; for such suffering doth them no harm. It doth more harm for one to prosper without toil than it doth to endure suffering." He says also, "It is God's way, of beggars to make men of power, just as he made the world out of nothing. Look upon the courts of kings and princes, upon cities and parishes. You will there find jurists, doctors, councillors, secretaries, and preachers who were commonly poor, and always such as have been students, and have risen and flown so high through the quill that they are become lords."

But the way to wealth through the quill seems long; and lives so precious to me are being worn out meantime, while I climb to the point where I could help them! Sometimes I wish I had chosen the calling of a merchant, men seem to prosper so much more rapidly through trade than through study; and nothing on earth seems to me so well worth working for as to lift the load from their hearts at home. But it is too late. Rolling stones gather no moss. I must go on now in the track I have chosen. Only sometimes again the fear which came over me on that night in the forest. It seems as if heaven were against me, and that it is vain presumption for such as I even to hope to benefit any one.

Partly, no doubt, it is the depression, caused by poor living, which brings these thoughts. Martin Luther said so to me one day when he found me desponding. He said he knew so well what it was. He had suffered so much from penury at Magdeburg, and at Eisenach had even seriously thought of giving up study altogether and returning to his father's calling. He is kind to me and to all who need, but his means do not yet allow him to do more than maintain himself. Or rather, they are not his but his father's, and he feels he has no right to be generous at the expense of his father's self-denial and toil.

I find life looks different, I must say, after a good meal. But then I cannot get rid of the thought of the few such meals they have at home. Not that Elsè writes gloomily. She never mentions a thing to sadden me. And this week she sent me a gulden, which she said belonged to her alone, and she had vowed never to use unless I would take it. But a student who saw them lately said our mother looked wan and ill. And to increase their difficulties, a month since the father received into the house a little orphan girl, a cousin of our mother's, called Eva von Schönberg. Heaven forbid that I should grudge the orphan her crust, but when it makes a crust less for the mother and the little ones, it is difficult to rejoice in such an act of charity.

Erfurt, July, 1503.