A strong moral foundation would have been necessary to save a mind so singularly constituted from wavering, and if we may believe the statement of his contemporary, Hieronymus Dungersheim of Leipzig, this was just what Luther had always lacked. Dungersheim, in a pamphlet against Luther the heretic, harks back to the years he spent at Erfurt as a secular student and accuses him of evil habits, probably contracted then, but the after effects of which made themselves felt when he had entered into religion and caused him to rebel against his profession. If Luther, so he says, was now persuaded that no religious could keep the vow of chastity, in his case the inability could only be due to a certain “former bad habit,” of which stories were told, and to his neglect of prayer.[60] In another writing the same opponent accuses him openly of having indulged in the grossest vice during his academic years, and mentions as his informant one of the comrades who had, later on, accompanied Luther to the gates of the monastery.[61] He says nothing, perhaps, indeed, he knew nothing more definite, and with regard to Luther’s life in religion, he is unable to adduce anything to his discredit.
But yet another of Luther’s later adversaries has strong words for our hero’s early life. His testimony, which has not so far been dealt with, must be treated of here because such charges, if well founded, doubtless contribute much to the psychological explanation of the processes going forward in Luther. This testimony is given by Hieronymus Emser of Dresden, who, it is true, was himself by no means spotless, and who, on that account, was roundly reprimanded by the man he had attacked. In his rejoinder to Luther, a pamphlet published in 1520, and the only one preserved, he says: “Was it necessary on account of my letter that you should hold up to public execration my former deviations which are indeed, for the most part, mere inventions? What do you think has come to my ears concerning your own criminal deeds (‘flagitia’)?” He will be silent about them, he says, because he does not wish to return evil for evil, but he continues: “That you also fell, I must attribute to the same cause which brought about my own fall, namely, the want of public discipline in our days, so that young men live as they please without fear of punishment and do just what they like.”[62] We must remember that at Erfurt Emser and Luther had stood in the relation of teacher and disciple. His words, like those of Dungersheim written from Leipzig, voice the opinion on Luther later on current in the hostile University circles of Erfurt.
When Luther in his later years speaks of the “sins of his youth,” this, in his grotesquely anti-catholic vocabulary, means the good works of his monastic life, even the celebration of Holy Mass. Once, however, at the end of his tract on the Last Supper (1528),[63] speaking of the sins of his youth, he seems to distinguish between the Catholic works above referred to and other faults of which he accuses himself in the same general terms.
In the young Augustinian’s Erfurt days he was prevented by the Rule from cultivating any intimate and distracting friendship with persons in the world. We only know that he, and likewise his brother monk Johann Lang, had some friendly intercourse with the Humanist Petreius (Peter Eberbach), who not long after, in a letter dated May 8, 1512, greets Lang—then already with Luther at Wittenberg—in these words: “Sancte Lange et Sancte Martine orate pro me.” Mutianus, the Gotha canon and chief of the Humanists, who was very unorthodox in his views, in a letter to Lang of the beginning of May, 1515, seems to remember Luther, for he sends greetings to the “pious Dr. Martin.”
His intercourse with the Humanists led Luther to make use of philology in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. He thus entered upon a useful, we may even say indispensable, course, in which he might have done great service. At Erfurt he continued constantly to study his copy of the Bible, which had become an inseparable companion. “As no one in the monastery read the Bible” (at any rate not with his zeal) he was able to flatter himself with being first in the house in the matter of biblical knowledge; indeed in this field he was probably the greatest expert in the whole Congregation.
In addition to this, he began to turn his busy mind to the study of Hebrew, and contrived to provide himself with a dictionary, which at that time was considered a treasure. Lang, with his humanistic culture, was able to assist him with the Greek.
Meanwhile the dispute in the Order with regard to the observance had reached a point when it seemed right to the party to which Luther belonged to seek the intervention of Rome in their favour, or to anticipate an appeal on the part of their opponents. The choice of seven houses “of the observance” resulted in Luther being chosen as the delegate to represent them in Rome. So little opposed to the Church was Luther’s theology and Bible interpretation in his Erfurt days, and so considerable was the number of brethren, even in other Observantine houses who held him to be a faithful monk, that they deemed him best suited for so difficult a mission. What Cochlæus, according to information drawn from Augustinian sources, relates later sounds, however, quite reasonable, viz. that he was selected on account of his “cleverness and his forceful spirit of contradiction,” which promised a complete victory over the other faction.[64]
Luther’s journey to Rome, according to Oldecop, was undertaken from Erfurt.
3. The Journey to Rome
The Saxon, or more correctly German, Congregation of Augustinians, at the time of Luther’s journey to Rome, had reached a crisis in its history.