That Luther was perfectly content “without anything out of the common” is confirmed by other writers, and concerning the general frugality of his household there can be no question. In this respect we may well believe what Mathesius says, for he was a regular attendant at Luther’s evening table in the forties of the century. His assertion that Luther “drank but little” must, however, be considered in the light of other of his statements.
What Mathesius thought of the “sleeping-draught” and the feasts at which, so he relates, Luther assisted from time to time, appears from a discourse incorporated by him in his “Wedding-sermons.” Here he speaks of the “noble juice of the grape and how we can make use of it in a godly fashion and with a good conscience”; he is simply the mouthpiece of Luther. Like Luther, he condemns gluttony and “bestial drunkenness,” but is so indulgent in the matter of cheerful carousing that a Protestant Canon in the eighteenth century declared, that Mathesius had gone astray in his sermon on the use of wine.[1023] Mathesius says that we must have “a certain amount of patience” with those who sometimes, for some quite valid reason, “get a little tipsy,” or “kick over the traces,” provided they “don’t do so every day” and that “the next morning they are heartily sorry for it”; the learned were quite right in distinguishing between “ebriositas” and “ebrietas”; if a ruling Prince had worked industriously all day, or a scholar had “read and studied till his head swam,” such busy and much-tired people, if they chose “in the evening to drink away their cares and heavy thoughts, must be permitted some over-indulgence, particularly if it does not hinder them in the morning from praying, studying and working.”[1024]
This is the exact counterpart of Luther’s theory and practice as already described, in the distinction made between “ebriositas” and “ebrietas,” in the statement that drunkenness is no more than a venial sin, in the unseemly and jocose tone employed when speaking of tipsiness, and in the license accorded those who (like Luther) had much work to do, or (again, like Luther), were plagued with “gloomy thoughts.” The other conditions are also noteworthy, viz. that it must not be of “daily occurrence” and that the offender must afterwards be “heartily sorry”; in such a case we must be tolerant. All this agrees with Luther’s own teaching.
Such passages, coming from the master and his devoted disciple, must be taken as the foundation on which to base our judgment. Such general statements of principle must carry more weight than isolated instances of Luther’s actual practice, more even than the various testimonies considered above. In the eyes of the impartial historian, moreover, the various elements will be seen to fit into each other so as to form a whole, the elements being on the one hand the highly questionable principle we have just heard expressed, and on the other his own admissions concerning his practice, supplemented by the testimony of outsiders.
In the first place, there is no doubt that his theory was dangerously lax. We need only call to mind the string of reasons given in vindication of a “good drink” and mere “ebrietas.” Such excuses were not only insufficient but might easily be adduced daily in ever-increasing number. Luther’s limitation of the permission to occasional bouts, etc., was altogether illusory and constituted no real barrier against excess. How could such theories, we may well ask, promote temperance and self-denial? Instead of resisting the lower impulses of nature they give the reins to license. They are part and parcel of the phenomenon so noticeable in early Lutheranism, where Christian endeavour, owing to the discredit with which penance and good works were overwhelmed, was not allowed to rise above the level of ordinary life, and indeed often failed to attain even to this standard. How different sound the injunctions of Christ and His Apostles to the devoted followers of the true Gospel: Take up thy cross; resist the flesh and all its lusts; be sober and watch.
The result as regards Luther’s practice must on the whole be considered as unfavourable, though it is not of course so well known to us as his theory. It may also, quite possibly, have varied at different periods of his life, for instance, may not have been the same when Mathesius was acquainted with him, i.e. when his mode of life had become more regular, as when Count Hoyer of Mansfeld wrote so scornfully after the Diet of Worms. Nevertheless, Luther’s vigorous denunciation of habitual drunkenness on the one hand, and the extraordinary amount of work he contrived to get through on the other, also the absence of any very damaging or definite charge by those who had every opportunity of observing him at Wittenberg, for instance, the hostile Anabaptists and other “sectarians,” all this leads us to infer, that he availed himself of his theories only to a very limited extent. His own statements, however, as well as those of his friends and opponents, enable us to see that his lax principle, “ebrietas est ferenda,” was not without its effects upon his habits of life. The allegation of his joy of living, and his healthy love of the things of sense, does not avail to explain away his own admissions, nor what others laid to his charge. The worst of it is, that we gain the impression that the lax theory was conceived to suit his own case, for all the reasons which he held to excuse the “good drink” and the subsequent “ebrietas” were present in his case—depression caused by bad news, cares and gloomy thoughts, pressure of work, temptations to sadness and doubts, sleeplessness and mental exhaustion.
From the Cellar and the Tap-Room.
The task remains of considering certain further traits in Luther’s life with regard to his indulgence in drinking.
During the first part of his public career Luther himself speaks of the temptation to excessive eating and drinking and other bad habits to which he was exposed. This he did in 1519 in his remarkably frank confession to his superior Staupitz.[1025] Here the expression “crapula” must be taken more seriously than on another occasion when, in a letter to a friend written from the Wartburg in the midst of his arduous labours, he describes himself as “sitting idle, and ‘crapulosus.’”[1026]
After Luther’s marriage, when he had settled down comfortably in the Black Monastery, it was Catherine, who, agreeably with the then custom, brewed the beer at home. It seems, however, to have been of inferior quality, indeed not fit to set before his guests. That he had several sorts of wine in his cellar we learn on the occasion of the marriage of his niece Lena in 1538. He complains that in Germany it was very hard to buy “a really trustworthy drink,” as even the carriers adulterated the wines on the way.[1027]