I have just obtained a nomination on a foundation, which will, I hope, for the present at least, prevent my being any burden on my family for my own maintenance. The rules are very strict, and they are enforced with many awful vows and oaths which trouble my conscience not a little, because, if the least detail of these rules to which I have sworn is even inadvertently omitted, I involve myself in the guilt of perjury. However, it is a step onward in the way to independence; and a far heavier yoke might well be borne with such an object.
We (the beneficiaries on this foundation) have solemnly vowed to observe the seven canonical hours, never omitting the prayers belonging to each. This insures early rising, which is a good thing for a student. The most difficult to keep is the midnight hour, after a day of hard study; but it is no more than soldiers on duty have continually to go through. We have also to chant the Miserere at funerals, and frequently to hear the eulogy of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This last can certainly not be called a hardship, least of all to me who desire ever henceforth to have an especial devotion to Our Lady, to recite daily the Rosary, commemorating the joys of Mary, the Salutation, the journey across the mountains, the birth without pain, the finding of Jesus in the Temple, and the Ascension. It is only the vows which make it rather a bondage. But, indeed, in spite of all, it is a great boon. I can conscientiously write to Elsè now, that I shall not need another penny of their scanty store, and can even, by the next opportunity, return what she sent, which, happily, I have not yet touched.
August, 1503.
Martin Luther is very dangerously ill; many of the professors and students are in great anxiety about him. He has so many friends; and no wonder! He is no cold friend himself, and all expect great honour to the University from his abilities. I scarcely dare to think what his loss would be to me. But this morning an aged priest who visited him inspired us with some hope. As Martin lay, apparently in the last extremity, and himself expecting death, this old priest came to his bed-side, and said gently, but in a firm tone of conviction,—
"Be of good comfort, my brother, you will not die at this time; God will yet make a great man of you, who shall comfort many others. Whom God loveth and proposeth to make a blessing, upon him he early layeth the cross, and in that school, who patiently endure learn much."
The words came with a strange kind of power, and I cannot help thinking that there is a little improvement in the patient since they were uttered. Truly, good words are like food and medicine to body and soul.
Erfurt, August, 1503.
Martin Luther is recovered! The Almighty, the Blessed Mother, and all the saints be praised.
The good old priest's words have also brought some especial comfort to me. If it could only be possible that those troubles and cares which have weighed so heavily on Elsè's early life and mine, are not the rod of anger, but the cross laid on those God loveth! But who can tell? For Elsè, at least, I will try to believe this.
The world is wide in these days, with the great New World opened by the Spanish mariners beyond the Atlantic, and the noble Old World opened to students through the sacred fountains of the ancient classics, once more unsealed by the revived study of the ancient languages; and this new discovery of printing, which will, my father thinks, diffuse the newly unsealed fountains of ancient wisdom in countless channels among high and low.