Luther’s advice to his pupil Hieronymus Weller, when the latter was tempted and troubled, as stated above (p. 175), was to follow his example and “to drink deeper and jest more freely,” and to answer the devil when he objected to such drinking, that “he would drink all the more because he forbade it”; he himself (Luther), for no other reason, was wont to drink more deeply and talk more freely than to scorn the devil by his “hard drinking.”[1009] “When troubled with gloomy thoughts,” he declared on another occasion, it was his habit “to have a good pull at the beer”; Melanchthon had a different sort of remedy, viz. consulting the stars; Luther, however, considered his practice the better one.[1010]
These and such-like utterances circulated far and wide, often in a highly exaggerated form, and Luther had only himself to thank if many Catholics, on the strength of them, came to regard him as a regular drunkard. This impression was in no way diminished by the rough humour which accompanied his talk of eating and drinking. People then were perfectly acquainted with the fact that the Table-Talk was regarded, even by some enthusiastic Lutherans, as only a half revelation, the truth being that they did not make sufficient allowance for Luther’s vein of humour and exaggeration.
It was, however, quite seriously that Luther spoke in August, 1540, when the excessive drinking of the miners was discussed at table: “It is not well,” he said, “but if they work hard for the rest of the week, then we must allow them some relaxation (at the week-end). Their work is hard and very dangerous and some allowance must be made for the custom of the country. I, too, have an occasional tipple, but not everybody must follow my example, for not all have the work to do that I have.”[1011] Here, accordingly, we have a fourth reason alleged in excuse of his drinking, possibly the most usual and practical one, viz. his fatiguing work.—In May of the same year he expressed his opinion of the extent to which drinking might be allowable in certain circles; this he did because he had been accused of not reproving drunkenness at the Court: “On the contrary,” he says, “I have spoken strongly about it before the whole Court; truly I spoke forcibly and severely to the nobles, reproaching them with tempting and corrupting the Prince. This greatly pleased the old gentleman [the Elector Johann], for he lived temperately.... I said to the nobles: ‘You ought to employ yourselves after dinner in the Palæstra or in some other good exercise, after which you might have a good drink, for drinking is permissible, but drunkenness never (ebrietas est ferenda, sed ebriositas minime).’”[1012] “Cheerful people,” he said in May or June, “may sometimes indulge more freely in wine,” but if drinking makes a man angry, he must avoid it like “poison.” These words were meant for his nephew, Hans Polner, who was in the habit of returning to Luther’s house much the worse for drink. With him Luther was very wroth: “On your account I am ill-spoken of by foreigners. My foes spy out everything that goes on about me.... When you do some mischief while drunk, you forget what shame you are bringing not only upon me and on my house, but on the town, the Church and the Evangel. Others after a drinking-bout are merry and friendly; such was the case with my father; they simply sing and jest; but you, you fly into a rage.”[1013]
Luther, when preaching to the people, often denounced the prevalent habit of drinking, a circumstance which must not be overlooked when passing judgment upon him. The German vice of drunkenness which he saw increasing around him in the most alarming manner caused him such distress, that he exclaimed in one of his postils: “Our poor German land is chastised and plagued with this devil of drink, and altogether drowned in this vice, so that life and limb, possessions and honour, are shamefully lost while people lead the life of swine, so that, had we to depict Germany, we should have to show it under the image of a sow.”[1014] Only “the little children, virgins and women” were exempt from the malady; “unless God strikes at this vice by a national calamity everything will go down to the abyss, all sodden through and through with drink.”[1015] Was this the way to be grateful “to the light of the Evangel” which had burst upon Germany?[1016] His question shows that he was speaking primarily of the conditions prevailing under the new Evangel. Looking back on the Catholic past he has perforce to admit, that, although this vice was by no means unknown then, yet “I remember that when I was young it [drunkenness] was looked upon by the nobility as a great shame, and that worthy gentry and Princes sought to combat it by wise prohibitions and penalties; but now it is even worse and more prevalent amongst them than amongst the peasants; so far has it come that even Princes and men of gentle birth learn it from their squires, and are not ashamed of it; it is regarded as honourable and quite a virtue by Princes, nobles and burghers, so that whosoever refuses to become a sodden brute is despised.”[1017]
In powerful passages such as these he assails the vice from both the natural and the supernatural standpoint. Yet his chief complaint is not so much its existence as its appalling extent; his reproofs are intended for those who “get drunk daily,” for those “maddened and sodden with drink,” for those who “day and night are ever pouring the liquor down their throats.” He expressly states that he is willing to be lenient in cases where a man is drunk only now and again. “It may be borne with and overlooked,” he says in the sermon quoted, “if from time to time a person by mistake takes a glass too much, or, after being exhausted by labour and toil, gets a little the worse for drink.”[1018]
In 1534, in an exposition of Psalm ci., where he describes the doings of the “Secular Estate,” he is no less hopeless concerning this plague which afflicts Germany: “Every country must have its own devil; our German devil is a good skin of wine and surely his name is Swill”; until the last day eternal thirst would remain the German’s curse; it was quite useless to seek to remedy matters, Swill still remained the all-powerful god.[1019] More dignified language would assuredly have been better in place here and elsewhere where he deals with this subject. For quaint homeliness it would, however, be hard to beat him; referring to their drinking habits, he tells the great men at the Court: “In the morning you really look as though your heads had been pickled in brine.”[1020] Yet, from the very passage in the Table-Talk where this is recounted, we learn that he said to the guests, again in a far too indulgent strain: “The Lord God must account the drunkenness of us Germans a mere daily [i.e. venial] sin, for we are unable to give it up; nevertheless, it is a shameful curse, harmful alike to body, soul and property.”
Witnesses to Luther’s Temperate Habits.
Within Luther’s camp the chief witnesses to his temperate habits are Melanchthon and Mathesius.
Melanchthon in his formal panegyric on the deceased says, that “though a stout man, he was very moderate in eating and drinking (‘natura valde modici cibi et potus’). I have seen him, when quite in good health, abstaining entirely from food and drink for four days. At other times I frequently saw him content himself for many days with a little bread with kippers.”[1021] His four days’ abstinence, however, probably coincided with one of his attacks—“temptations,” which, as we know from Ratzeberger, his medical adviser, were usually accompanied by intense dislike for food. Besides, before his marriage, Luther had not the same attention and care he received later from his wife. It is not unlikely that Melanchthon was thinking of this period when he speaks of the “bread and kippers,” for the passage really refers to the beginning of his acquaintanceship with Luther, possibly even to his monastic days. However this may be, we must not forget that the clause is part of a panegyric.
Mathesius, Luther’s attentive pupil and admirer, says of him in his sermons, that Luther, “although he was somewhat corpulent, ate and drank little and rarely anything out of the common, but contented himself with ordinary food. In the evening, if not inclined to sleep, he had to take a draught to promote it, often making excuse for so doing.”[1022]