His anger and annoyance had been aroused by certain concrete cases.
One of Melanchthon’s sons had contracted such a marriage as he was denouncing. In his own family circle the same thing happened, probably in the case of his nephew, Fabian Kaufmann. A student, Caspar Beier, who was on intimate terms with Luther’s household, wished to marry at Wittenberg, but was prevented by the lawyers of the Consistory on account of a previous clandestine marriage which, however, he denied; he appealed from the Consistory to the sovereign, and was supported by a letter from Luther. This quarrel kindled a conflagration at Luther’s home. Cruciger, a friend of the house, was against Beier and described his cause as “none of the best”; Catherine Bora, on the other hand, the “fax domestica” as Cruciger called her,[1347] seems to have fanned the flames of Luther’s wrath, in the interests of Beier who was a relative of hers.
To a friend Luther admitted in Jan. that he “was so indignant with the lawyers as he had never before been in all his life during all the struggle on behalf of the Evangel.”[1348]
When the controversy was at its height, viz. in Jan., 1544, the Elector arranged for an interview between Luther and the Consistory. Later, in Dec., those negotiations were followed by others, in which the members of the Wittenberg High Court took part; at last Luther’s obstinacy and violence won the day: All marriages without the knowledge or approval of the parents were to be invalid until the latter consented, or the Consistory had pronounced their opposition groundless. To the Elector, who from the first had agreed with Luther’s view, the latter then addressed the letter referred to above (p. 355) where, appealing to his “Divine mission” to preach the 4th commandment, he announces his final triumph over the lawyers and their edicts.
His triumph he owed to his strong will and, also, possibly, to the fact that the Elector was on his side. The victory also affected the case of Beier, whom Luther hastened to acquaint of his freedom;[1349] it further decided to some extent, the yet more important question whether or not the lawyers were to yield to Luther in ecclesiastical matters. They accepted their humiliation with the best grace possible, but we shall not be far wrong in assuming that they were not over-pleased with Luther’s irregular and illogical handling of questions of law.
Difficulties with the State Church
The far-reaching encroachments of the secular authorities in his Church became for Luther in his later years a source of keen vexation.
Much of his Table-Talk, which turns on the lawyers, voices nothing more than his indignation at the unwarranted interference of the State in his new Church which he was powerless to prevent. Thus, according to notes made at this time by Hieronymus Besold of Nuremberg who was a guest at Luther’s table in 1545, the Master on one occasion gave free rein to his anger with the lawyers in the matter of the sequestration of Church lands: “The lawyers shriek, ‘They are Church lands.’ Give them back ‘their monasteries that they may become monks and nuns and celebrate Mass, and then they too will allow you to preach.’ [In other words their proposal was that the new faith should make its way peacefully. To this Luther’s answer is]: ‘Yes, but then where are we to get our bread and butter?’ ‘We leave that to you,’ they say. Yes, and take the devil’s thanks! We theologians have no worse enemies than the lawyers. If they are asked, ‘What is the Church?’ they reply, ‘The assembly of the Bishops, Abbots, etc. And these lands are the lands of the Church, hence they belong to the bishops.’ That is their dialectics. But we have another dialectics at the right hand of the Father and it tells us, ‘They are tyrants, wolves and robbers’ [and must accordingly be deprived of the lands]. Therefore we here condemn all lawyers, even the pious ones, for they know not what the Church is. If they search through all their books they will not discover what the Church is. Hence we are not going to take any reforms from them. Every lawyer is either a miscreant or an ignoramus (”Omnis iurista est nequista aut ignorista“).… They shall not teach us what ‘Church’ is. There is an old proverb, ‘A good lawyer makes a bad Christian,’ and it is a true one.”[1350]
It is somewhat astonishing to hear Luther in his “Table-Talk on the lawyers”[1351] declaring that it was he who had whitewashed these “bad Christians” and made them to be respected, and that consequently he also could bring them again into disrepute, in other words, that his tongue was powerful enough to do and to undo. “Do not tempt me. If you are too well off I can soon make things warm for you. If you don’t like being whitewashed, well and good, I can soon paint you black again. May the devil make you blush!”[1352]—In one of his very last letters (Feb., 1546), owing to new friction with the lawyers about the Mansfeld revenues, he overwhelms them all with the following general charges: “The lawyers have taught the whole world such a mass of artifices, deceptions and calumnies that their very language has become an utter Babel. At Babel no one could understand his neighbour, but here nobody wants to understand what the other means. Out upon you, you sycophants, sophists and plague-boils of the human race! I write in anger, whether, were I calm, I should give a better report I know not. But the wrath of God is upon our sins. The Lord will judge His people; may He be gracious to His servants. Amen. If this is all the wisdom that the jurists can show then there is really no need for them to be so proud as they all are.”[1353]