From all the above it is plain that there is good reason for not accepting the extravagant statement that Luther’s writings on education constitute the “charter of our national schools.” Others have extolled him as the founder of the “Gymnasium” on account of his reference in these works to the Latin schools. But even this is scarcely true, for, in them, the author either goes beyond the field covered by the Gymnasium or else fails to reach it. The Protestant pastor, Julius Boehmer, says in the popular edition of Luther’s works:[63] “It will not do to regard the work (”An die Radherrn“) as the ‘Charter of the Gymnasium,’ as has often been done, seeing that, as stated above, it is concerned with both the Universities and the lower-grade schools.”[64]
As to attendance at the Universities, of which Luther also speaks, he asks the authorities to forbid the matriculation of any but the “clever ones,” though among the masses “every fellow wanted a doctorate.”[65]
What he says of the various Faculties at the Universities is also noteworthy. With the object of reforming philosophy and the Arts course he wishes that of all the writings of Aristotle, that blind heathen master, who had hitherto led astray the Universities, only the “Logica,” “Rhetorica” and “Poetica” should be retained; “the books: ‘Physicorum,’ ‘Metaphysicæ,’ ‘De anima’ and ‘Ethicorum’ must be dropped”; curiously enough these are the very works on which Melanchthon was later on to bestow so much attention. We know how hateful Aristotle was to Luther, because, in his heathen way, he teaches nothing of grace and faith, but, on the other hand, extols the natural virtues. Luther’s impulsive and unmethodical mode of thought was also, it must be said, quite at variance with the logical mind of the Stagirite.
According to Luther “artistic education must be wholly rooted out as a work of the devil; the very most that can be tolerated is the use of those works which deal with form, but even these must not be commented on or explained.”[66]
“The physicians,” he says, “I leave to reform their own Faculty; I shall see myself to the lawyers and theologians; and, first of all, I say that it would be a good thing if the whole of Canon Law from the first syllable to the last were expunged, more particularly the Decretals. We are told sufficiently in the Bible how to conduct ourselves in all matters.” Secular law, so he goes on, has also become a “wilderness,” and accordingly he is in favour of drastic reforms. “Of sensible rulers in addition to Holy Scripture there are plenty”; national law and national usage ought certainly not to be subordinated to the Imperial common law, or the land “governed according to the whim of the individual.… Justice fetched from far afield was nothing but an oppression of the people.” Theology, according to him, must above all be Biblical, though now everything is made to consist in the study of the Book of Sentences of the schoolman, Peter Lombard, and of his commentators, the Gospel in both schools and courts of justice being left “forlorn” in the dust under the bench.[67]
He rightly commends the Disputations, sometimes termed “circulares,” held at the Universities by the students under the direction of their professor; it pleased him well that the students should bring forward their own arguments, even though they were sometimes not sound; for “stairs can only be ascended step by step.” The Disputations, in his view, also accustomed young men to “reflect more diligently on the subjects discussed.”[68]
To conclude, we may say a few words concerning the incentives he uses when urging parents to entrust their children to the schools.
Here Luther considerably oversteps the limits. In one passage, for instance, he thinks it his right to threaten the parents with the worst punishments of hell should they refuse to allow gifted children to study, in order to place them later at the service of the pure Word of God, or of the Christian rulers, as though forsooth parents and children had no right in the sight of God to choose their own profession. “Tell me what hell can be deep and hot enough for such shameful wickedness as yours?” “If you have a child who studies well, you are not free to bring him up as you please, nor to treat him as you will, but must bear in mind that you owe it to God to promote His two rules.” Should the father refuse to allow the boy to become a preacher, he says, then, so far as in him lies, he was really consigning to hell all those whom the budding preacher might have assisted; compared with such a crime against the common weal the “outbreaks of the rebellious peasants were mere child’s play.” This he says in a printed letter addressed in 1529 to the town commandant, Hans Metzsch of Wittenberg, which served as a prelude to his pamphlet “Das man Kinder zur Schulen halten solle.”[69] The writing is solely dictated by Luther’s bitter annoyance at the dearth of pastors and the indifference displayed within his fold.
In this letter, as in both his works on the schools, Luther, whilst dealing with the excuses of the parents, at the same time throws some interesting sidelights on the decline in learning and its causes.