As to what Luther says, viz. that the instruction given to the people had formerly borne only on the three points named above, and that of the two sacraments treated of in his Catechism “sad to say nothing had hitherto been taught,”[1931] it is only necessary to say that numerous prayer-books and manuals on confession dating from the close of the Middle Ages contain abundant matter both on the sacraments and on other things touching doctrine.[1932]
Before Luther’s day the term Catechism had not been taken to mean the book itself, but the subject-matter which was taught by word of mouth and was confined to the points indicated above. It was in this sense that he said, for instance in the Table-Talk: “The Catechism must remain and be supreme in the Christian Church.”[1933] It was he and Melanchthon[1934] who initiated the custom of applying the term not only to the contents of the volume but also to the volume itself.[1935] Hence, it is verbally true, that, before Luther’s day, there existed no “Catechism”; the religious writings dealing with the subject bore other and different titles. Nor was the arrangement of question and answer regarded as essential to the body of instructions which went under the term of Catechism, a circumstance which also seemed to favour the assertion, that, before Luther’s day, no such thing was known. But if question and answer be essential, then, even his own Larger Catechism could not rightly have borne the title, seeing that it has not this form. Nevertheless the system of question and answer had always been highly prized and had sometimes been made use of on the model of the questions put at baptism.
Amongst the older writings that most nearly approach the ideal of the Catholic Catechism, deserve to be mentioned two books then widely known which are constantly making their appearance in the thirty years before Luther’s day, viz. the “Fundamentum æternæ felicitatis” and the “Discipulus de eruditione Christi—fidelium compendiosus,” the second of which also contains questions and objections. Both go beyond the three main points given above and include a popular summary, intended for the use of the clergy, of the seven sacraments, the nine sins, the works of mercy and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost.[1936] It was also the usual thing for books on the Decalogue to include other points of importance, and thus to deal with almost the whole of the matter treated of in the Catechism. In fact, as Zezschwitz says, there was rather an “over-abundance of material in the domain of catechetics” than any dearth.
Finally, the use of the so-called tables, i.e. sheets printed only on one side and each giving a different point of the Catechism, which, as we saw, was the form under which Luther’s Shorter Catechism first appeared (above, p. 483), was nothing new either. “Luther followed in this respect a custom then widespread,”[1937] as is shown by the studies of Geffcken, Cohrs and Falk (1908); Falk, in particular, carefully sought out the Catholic tablets of the kind still in existence. So far only one example of Luther’s printed tablets, and that in Low German, has been brought to light.[1938]
Hence the statement that Luther’s Catechism was his own “creation” calls for considerable revision.
The directness and concision of his style must, however, always commend themselves to the reader, even to those who regret that in this work he tampered with the doctrines of the olden Church. But, as regards the division, the work rests on a foundation hallowed by centuries of ecclesiastical usage. This even Protestants have now begun to see.
According to F. Cohrs, even in Luther’s “Kurcz Form,” we see “Evangelical catechetics springing up on the soil of the popular religious literature of the Middle Ages.”[1939]
Otto Albrecht, like others, admits, that, in his appreciation of the three chief points of instruction, and more particularly of the Decalogue, Luther “is in agreement with the similar efforts made in the 14th and 15th century.” It was according to him “only natural” that Luther, in his “Kurcz Form” of 1520 and again in his “Deudsche Messe” of 1526, should protest, that, “in these three points, he was safeguarding the heirloom of the Church.” In this instance his critical attitude towards the past comes out only in his exclusion of the Hail Mary, in his rearrangement of the three parts, and, of course, above all, in the new meaning he gives to them. Moreover, according to Albrecht, Luther’s gradual enlargement of his “Betbüchlin” shows that the latter was but an “Evangelical version of the mediæval prayer and confession handbooks, which themselves, in turn, had led up to the Catechisms of the 16th century.”[1940]
Such a view also fits in with Luther’s own words far better than did the exaggerations formerly current. He says, for instance, in 1532, in his “Brieff an die zu Franckfort am Meyn”: “This we have received even from the first beginnings of Christianity. For there we see that the Creed, the Our Father and the Ten Commandments were summarised as a short form of doctrine for the young and the simple, and were, even from the very first, termed the Catechism.”[1941] Even in the original preface to the Larger Catechism he had declared that, “for the sake of the common people he was keeping to the three points which have ever been the rule in Christendom in ages past.”[1942]