St. Bernard, says Luther, had declared the religious life to be worthless and had said: “Perdite vixi” (“I have shamefully wasted my life”). The great Saint of the religious life, the noblest patron and representative of the virtues of the cloister, Luther depicts as condemning with these words the religious life in general as an abominable error; he would have him brand his own life and his attention to his vows, as an existence foreign to God which he had too late recognised as such! By this statement, says Luther, he “hung up his cowl on the nail,” and proceeds to explain his meaning: “Henceforward he cared not a bit for the cowl and its foolery and refused to hear any more about it.”[257] Thus, so Luther assures us, St. Bernard, at the solemn moment of quitting this world, “made nothing” (“nihili fecit”) of his vows.[258]
When quoting the words “Perdite vixi” Luther frequently seeks to convey an admission on the Saint’s part of his having come at last to see that the religious life was a mistake, and merely led people to forget Christ’s merits; that he had at last attained the perception during sickness and had laid hold on Christ’s merits as his only hope.[259] Even on internal grounds it is too much to assume Luther to have been in good faith, or merely guilty of a lapse of memory. That we have here to do with a distorted version of a perfectly harmless remark is proved to the historian by another passage, dating from the year 1518, where Luther himself refers quite simply and truly to the actual words employed by St. Bernard and sees in them merely an expression of humility and the admission of a pure heart, which detested the smallest of its faults.[260]
Denifle has followed up the “Perdite vixi” with great acumen, shown the frequent use Luther made of it and traced the words to their actual context in St. Bernard’s writings. The text does not contain the faintest condemnation of the religious life, so that Luther’s incessant misuse of it becomes only the more incomprehensible.[261]
St. Bernard is here speaking solely of his own faults and imperfections, not at all of the religious life or of the vows. Nor were the words uttered on his death-bed, when face to face with eternity, but occur in a sermon preached in the full vigour of manhood and when the Saint was eagerly pursuing his monastic ideal.
Again, what things were not circulated by Luther, in the stress of his warfare, concerning the history of the Popes and the Church? Here, again, some of his statements were not simply errors made in good faith, but, as has been pointed out by Protestant historians, malicious inventions going far beyond the matter contained in the sources which we know to have been at his command. The Popes “poisoned several Emperors, beheaded or otherwise betrayed others and put them to death, as became the diabolical spectre of the Papacy.”[262] The bloodthirsty Popes were desirous of “slaying the German Emperors, as Clement IV did with Conradin, the last Duke of Suabia and hereditary King of Naples, whom he caused to be publicly put to death by the sword.”[263] Of this E. Schäfer rightly says, that the historian Sabellicus, whom Luther was utilising, simply (and truly) records that: “Conradin was taken while attempting to escape and was put to death by order of Charles [of Anjou]”; Clement IV Sabellicus does not mention at all, although it is true that the Pope was a strong opponent of the Staufen house.[264]
The so-called letter of St. Ulrich of Augsburg against clerical celibacy, with the account of 3000 (6000) babies’ heads found in a pond belonging to St. Gregory’s nunnery in Rome, is admittedly one of the most impudent forgeries found in history and emanated from some foe of Gregory VII and opponent of the ancient law of celibacy. Luther brought it out as a weapon in his struggle against celibacy, and, according to Köstlin-Kawerau, most probably the Preface to the printed text published at Wittenberg in 1520 came from his pen.[265] The manuscript had been sent to Luther from Holland. Emser took him to task and proved the forgery, though on not very substantial grounds. Luther demurred to one of his arguments but declared that he did not build merely on a doubtful letter. In spite of this, however, the seditious and alluring fable was not only not withdrawn from circulation but actually reprinted. When Luther said later that celibacy had first been introduced in the time of St. Ulrich, he is again speaking on the authority of the supposititious letter. This letter was also worked for all it was worth by those who later took up the defence of Luther’s teaching.[266]
To take one single example of Luther’s waywardness in speaking of Popes who were almost contemporaries: He tells us with the utmost assurance that Alexander VI had been an “unbelieving Marane.” However much we may execrate the memory of the Borgia Pope, still so extraordinary an assertion has never been made by any sensible historian. Alexander VI, the pretended Jewish convert and “infidel” on the Papal throne! Who could read his heart so well as to detect an infidelity, which, needless to say, he never acknowledged? Who can credit the tale of his being a Marane?
When, in July 14, 1537, Pope Paul III issued a Bull granting an indulgence for the war against the Turks, Luther at once published it with misleading notes in which he sought to show that the Popes, instead of linking up the Christian powers against their foes, had ever done their best to promote dissensions amongst the great monarchs of Christendom.[267]
In 1538 he sent to the press his Schmalkalden “Artickel” against the Pope and the prospective Council, adding observations of a questionable character regarding their history and meaning. He certainly was exalting unduly the Articles when he declared in the Introduction, that “they have been unanimously accepted and approved by our people.” It is a matter of common knowledge, that, owing to Melanchthon’s machinations, they had never even been discussed. (See vol. iii., p. 434.) They were nevertheless published as though they had been the official scheme drafted for presentation to the Council. Luther also put into the printed Artickel words which are not to be found in the original.[268] The following excuse of his statement as to their having been accepted at Schmalkalden has been made: “It is evident, that, owing to his grave illness at Schmalkalden, he never learnt the exact fate of his Articles.” Yet who can believe, that, after his recovery, he did not make enquiries into what had become of the Articles on which he laid so much weight, or that he “never learnt” their fate, though the matter was one well known to both the Princes and the theologians? Only after his death were these Articles embodied in the official Confessions.[269]