In one letter of Luther’s, which speaks of the time he passed in the Castle of Coburg, we hear more of the disagreeable than of the cheering effects of wine.
“I have brought on headache by drinking old wine in the Coburg,” he complains to his friend Wenceslaus Link, “and this our Wittenberg beer has not yet cured. I work little and am forced to be idle against my will because my head must have a rest.”[1042] In the Electoral accounts 25 Eimer of wine are set down for the period of Luther’s stay at the Coburg;[1043] seeing that he and two companions spent only 173 days there, our Protestant friends have hastened to allege “the frequent visits he received” in the Coburg.[1044] It is true that he had a good many visitors during the latter part of his stay. However this may be, the illness showed itself as early as May, 1530. His own diagnosis here is no less unsatisfactory than the accounts concerning the other maladies from which he suffered. No doubt the malady was chiefly nervous.
In October of that same year, Luther protested that he had been “very abstemious in all things”[1045] at the Coburg, and Veit Dietrich, his assistant at that time, wrote in the same sense on July 4: “I carefully observed that he did not transgress any of the rules of diet.”[1046] His indisposition showed itself in unbearable noises in the head, at times accompanied by extreme sensitiveness to light.[1047] Luther was convinced that the trouble was due to the qualities of the strong wines provided for him at the castle—or, possibly, to the devil. “We are very well off,” he says in June, 1530, “and live finely, but for almost a month past I have been plagued not only with noises but with actual thundering in my head, due, perhaps, to the wine, perhaps to the malice of Satan.”[1048] Veit Dietrich inclined strongly to the latter view. He tells us of the apparition of a “flaming fiery serpent” under which form the devil had manifested himself to Luther during his solitude in the Coburg: “On the following day he was plagued with troublesome noises in his head; thus the greater part of what he suffered was the work of the devil.”[1049] Luther himself complained in August of a fresh indisposition, this time scarcely due to nerves, which, according to him, was the result either of wine, or of the devil. “I am troubled with a sore throat, such as I never had before; possibly the strong wine has increased the inflammation, or perhaps it is a buffet of Satan [2 Cor. xii. 7].”[1050] Four days later he wrote again: “My head still buzzes and my throat is worse than ever.”[1051] In the following month some improvement showed itself, and even before this he had days free from suffering; still, after quitting the Coburg, he still complained of incessant headache caused, as he thought, by the “old wine.” When all is said, however, it does seem that later controversialists were wrong in so confidently attributing his illness in the Coburg merely to excessive love of the bottle.
Luther often vaunted the wholesome effects of beer. In a letter to Katey dated February 1, 1546, he extols the aperient qualities of Naumburg beer.[1052] In another to Jonas, dated May 15, 1542, he speaks of the good that beer had done in relieving his sufferings from stone; beer was to be preferred to wine; much benefit was also to be derived from a strict diet.[1053]
All these traits from Luther’s private life, taken as a whole, may be considered to confirm the opinion expressed above, p. 311 f., regarding the charges which may stand against him and those of which he is to be acquitted.
CHAPTER XVIII
LUTHER AND MELANCHTHON