The Church’s exhortation to make use of fasting as a remedy in the struggle against sin—in which counsel she had the support both of Holy Scripture and of immemorial experience—was thus described by Luther: “No eating or drinking, gluttony or drunkenness can be so bad as fasting; indeed, it would be better to swill day and night rather than to fast for such a purpose,” so “ludicrous and shameful in God’s sight” was such fasting.[696]
“Confession” (as made by Catholics), Luther asserted in 1538, “is less to be condoned than any infamy.” “The devil assails Christians with pressing temptations, most of all on account of their confessions.”[697]
The life of the Saints in the Catholic Church, he says elsewhere, consisted in “their having prayed much, fasted, laboured, taken the discipline, slept on hard pallets and worn poor clothing, a kind of holiness which any dog or pig might practise any day.”[698]
He voices his abhorrence of the monastic life in figures such as the following: “Discalced Friars are lice placed by the devil on God Almighty’s fur coat, and Friars-preacher are the fleas of His shirt.” “I believe the Franciscans to be possessed of the devil, body and soul,”[699] and, reverting once again to his favourite image, he adds elsewhere: “Neither the dens of evil women nor any secret sins are so pernicious as those rules and vows which the devil himself has invented.”[700]
We have to proceed to the uninviting task of collecting other sayings of Luther’s, particularly from the Table-Talk, which are characteristic of his more than plain manner of speaking, and to pass in review the somewhat peculiar views held by him on matters sexual. As it is to be feared that the delicacy of some of our readers will be offended, we may point out that those who wish are at liberty to skip the pages which follow and to continue from Section 7 of the present chapter which forms the natural sequence of what has gone before. Certainly no one would have had just cause for complaint had one of the guests at Luther’s table chosen to take leave when the conversation began to turn on matters distasteful to him. The historian, however, is obliged to remain. True to his task he may not close his ears to what is said, however unpleasant the task of listener. He must bear in mind that Cordatus, one of Luther’s guests, in the Diary he wrote praises Luther’s Table-Talk as “more precious than the oracles of Apollo.” This praise Cordatus bestows not only on the “serious theological discourses,” but also expressly on those sayings which were apparently merely frivolous.[701] Another pupil, Mathesius, who was also frequently present, assures us he never heard an improper word from Luther’s lips.[702] This he writes in spite of the fact, that one of the first anecdotes he relates, embellished with a Latin verse from Philo, contains an unseemly jest,[703] and that he himself immediately after tells how Luther on one occasion told the people from the pulpit that: “Ein weiter Leib und zeitiger Mist ist gut zu scheiden”; he even mentions that Luther was carried away to express himself yet more plainly concerning the ventral functions, till he suddenly reined in and corrected himself. The truth is that Mathesius was an infatuated admirer of Luther’s.
As a matter of fact, terms descriptive of the lower functions of the body again and again serve Luther not only to express his anger and contempt, but as comparisons illustrative of his ideas, whether on indifferent matters or on the highest and most sacred topics. It is true that what he said was improper rather than obscene, coarse rather than lascivious. Nor, owing to the rough and uncouth character of the age and the plainness of speech then habitual, were his expressions, taken as a whole, so offensive to his contemporaries as to us. Yet, that Luther should have cultivated this particular sort of language so as to outstrip in it all his literary contemporaries, scarcely redounds to his credit. His readers and hearers of that day frequently expressed their disgust, and at times his language was so strong that even Catherine Bora was forced to cry halt.
As a matter of course the devil came in for the largest share of this kind of vituperation, more particularly that devil who was filling Luther with anxiety and trouble of mind. The Pope and his Catholic opponents came a good second. Luther was, however, fond of spicing in the same way even his utterances on purely worldly matters.
“When we perceive the devil tempting us,” he says, “we can easily overcome him by putting his pride to shame and saying to him: ‘Leck mich im Arss,’ or ‘Scheiss in die Bruch und hengs an den Halss.’”[704] This counsel he actually put in practice: “On May 7, 1532, the devil was tormenting me in the afternoon, and thoughts troubled me, such as that a thunderbolt might kill me, so I replied to him: ‘Leck mich im Arss, I am going to sleep, not to hold a disputation.’”[705] When the devil would not cease urging his sins against him he had a drastic method of effectually disposing of his importunity.[706]
He relates in the Table-Talk, in 1536, the “artifice” by which the parish-priest of Wittenberg, his friend Johann Bugenhagen (Pomeranus), had put the devil to flight. It was a question of the milk which the devil had bewitched by means of sorceresses or witches. Luther says: “Dr. Pommer’s plan was the best, viz. to plague them [the witches] with filth and stir it into the milk so that everything stank. For when his [Pommer’s] cows also lost their milk, he promptly took a vessel filled with milk, relieved himself in it, poured out the contents and said: ‘There, devil, eat that.’ After that he was no longer deprived of the milk.”[707] Before this his wife and the maids had worried themselves to death trying “to get the butter to come”—as we read in another account of this occurrence in a version of the Table-Talk which is more accurately dated—but all to no purpose. “Then Pommer came up, mocked at the devil and eased himself in the churn. Thereupon Satan ceased his tricks, for he is proud and cannot bear to be laughed at.”[708]
Less formal, according to him, was the action of another individual, who had put Satan to flight by a “crepitus ventris.”[709]