Cochlæus says of Luther in 1524: “According to what I hear, in his excessive indulgence in beer, Luther is worse than a debauchee.”[991] Here again we have merely an echo of statements made by strangers, albeit in this instance stronger and more positive.—Less weight is to be attached to the account of Jacob Ziegler of Landau, who writes from Rome to Erasmus on February 16, 1522, that there Luther was regarded as “given to fornication and tippling,” adding that he was considered as the precursor of Antichrist.[992]—Of the inhabitants of Wittenberg generally Ulrich Zasius complains, in a letter of December 21, 1521, to Thomas Blaurer, that it was reported they ran almost daily to communion but afterwards swilled beer to such an extent that they were unable to recognise each other.[993] To his other charges against the life led there and against the heads of the movement, Blaurer replied, but, curiously enough, the complaint of drunkenness he does not even refer to.[994] From the detailed description given by a Catholic Canon of Wittenberg on December 29, 1521, we do, however, learn that the greatest abuses prevailed in connection with the Supper, and that some even communicated who had previously been indulging in brandy.[995]
The last witness had nothing to say of Luther personally. On the other hand, another does state that, the night before his death, he was “plane obrutus potu.” This, however, comes from a later writer, who lived far away and has shown himself otherwise untrustworthy.[996]
Another less unreliable report also has to do with Luther’s death-bed. Johann Landau, the Mansfeld apothecary, who was a Catholic, and had occasion to handle Luther’s corpse, left the following in the notes he made: “In consequence of excessive eating and drinking the body was full of corrupt juices,” Luther had “exceeded in the use of sweet foreign wines.” “It is said,” he continues, “that he drank every day at noon and in the evening a sextar of rich foreign wine.”[997] This statement does not appear to be restricted to the last days of Luther’s life, which were spent with Count Mansfeld. It is well known that Luther died after a meal. What amount the “sextar” and the “stuebchen,” to be mentioned immediately, represented has not yet been determined, as the measures differed so much in various parts of the country. The sextar, according to G. Agricola, was usually a quarter of the stuebchen, as, according to him, twenty-four sextars or six stuebchen went to one amphora; the sextar itself contained four gills.[998] In a letter of Luther’s, dating from the period of his stay at Mansfeld, we find the following: “We live well here,” he writes to Katey, “and the council allows me for each meal half a gallon of excellent Rheinfall. Sometimes I drink it with my companions. The wine produced here is also good and the Naumburg beer quite capital.”[999] Rheinfall (more correctly Reinfal) was a southern wine then highly prized.[1000] Luther, as a rule, preferred to keep to Naumburg beer.[1001]
Luther’s Own Comments on the “Good Drink.”
The following statements of Luther’s concerning his indulgence in spirituous liquors are especially noteworthy; of these some have been quoted without sufficient attention being paid to their real meaning.
“Know that all goes well with me here,” Luther writes in 1540 from Weimar to his Katey, who was anxious about him; “I feed like a Bohemian, and swill like a German, for which God be thanked, Amen.”[1002] Soon after he repeats, in a letter to the same addressee, the phrase which has since grown famous, this time in a slightly amended form: Know “that we are well and cheerful here, thanks be to God; we feed like Bohemians, though not too much, and swill like Germans, not deeply but with jollity.”[1003] He is fond of thus speaking of his “feeding and swilling,” though, such expressions being less unconventional then than now, stress must not be laid on them. In both letters he was clearly seeking by his jests to reassure his wife, who was concerned for his health. During his last weeks at Eisleben he also wrote to Katey: “We have plenty on which to feed and swill.”[1004]
“If the Lord God holds me excused,” he says in a famous utterance in the Table-Talk, “for having plagued Him for quite twenty years by celebrating Mass, He assuredly will excuse me for sometimes indulging in a drink to His honour; God grant it and let the world take it as it will.”[1005]
Of the last decade of Luther’s life his pupil Mathesius relates, that, in the evening, “if not inclined for sleep, he had to take a draught to promote it, often making excuse for so doing: ‘You young fellows must not mind if our Elector and an old chap like me take a generous drink; we have to try and find our pillow and our bolster in the tankard.’”[1006] The same witness relates another utterance of about the same time: “He came home from a party and drank the health of a guest: ‘I must make merry to-day, for I have received bad tidings; for this there is no better cure than a fervent Paternoster and a brave heart. For the demon of melancholy is much put out when a man insists upon being merry.’”[1007]
Here we have two reasons, want of sleep and depression resulting from bad news, which induced him to have a “good drink.” A third reason was furnished by his temptations to doubt and vacillate in faith. The “good drink” must not, however, be too deep as it “recently was at the Electoral couchee at Torgau, where, not satisfied with the usual measures, they pledged each other in half-gallon cans. That they called a good drink. Sic inventa lege inventa est et fraus legis.”[1008]