To divert his thoughts from these saddening cares he often turned to Æsop. It is of interest to note how highly he always prized Æsop’s Fables, not merely as a means of education for the young in the elementary schools, but even as furnishing a stimulating topic for conversation with his friends.
He is very fond of adducing morals from these fables both in his Table-Talk and in his writings.
Æsop’s tale of the fight between the wounded snake and the crab he dictated to his son Hans as a Latin exercise,[1391] and, in 1540, when a Mandate of the Kaiser aroused his suspicions owing to its kindly wording, the old man at once related to his guests the fable of the wolf who seeks to lead the sheep to a good pasture, and declared that he could easily see through this “Lycophilia.”[1392]
For a long time he had a work on hand which he was destined never to complete; he was anxious to provide a new and better edition of Æsop for the schools, which, so he hoped, should replace the, in some respects unseemly, fables of Steinhöwel’s edition then in use which had been corrupted by additions from Poggio’s Facetiæ. A series of amusing and at the same time instructive fables which he translated with this object in view is still extant. That he found time for such a work in the midst of all his other pressing labours is sufficient evidence that he had it much at heart. The Preface to his unfinished little work, which he read aloud to a friend in 1538, pointed out, that writings of this kind were intended for “children and the simple,” whose mental development he wished to keep in view, carefully excluding anything that was offensive. The collection of Fables then in circulation, “though written professedly for the young,” unfortunately contained tales with narratives of “shameful and unchaste knavery such as no chaste or pious man, let alone any youth, could hear or read without injury to himself; it was as though the book had been written in a common house of ill fame or among dissolute scamps.”[1393]
He was very determined in putting down scandals when they occurred in his own home. A young relative, who was addicted to drunkenness, he took severely to task, pointing out the good example, which in the interests of the Evangel his household was strictly bound to give; when the maidservant, Rosina, whom he had taken into his house, turned out a person of bad life, he could not sufficiently express his indignation and dismissed her from the family. A similar case also occurred at the time of his flight from Wittenberg in July, 1545; he writes to Catherine in the letter in which he tells her of his intention of not returning: “If Leck’s ‘Bachscheisse,’ our second Rosina and deceiver, has not yet been laid by the heels, do what you can that the miscreant may feel ashamed of herself.”[1394]
Catherine Bora was a good helper in matters of this sort. In fact she performed with zeal and assiduity the duties that fell to her lot in tending the aged and infirm man, and looking after the house and the small property. Amidst his many and great difficulties he often confessed that she was a comfort to him, and gratefully acknowledges her work. In his letters to her during his later years he writes in so religious a strain, and in such heartfelt language, that the reader might be forgiven for thinking that Luther had entirely succeeded in forgetting the irreligious nature of the union between a monk and a nun. “Grace and peace in the Lord,” he writes in a letter from Eisleben of Feb. 7, 1546, to his “housewife.” “Read, you dear Katey, John and the Smaller Catechism, of which you once said: All that is told in this book applies to me. For you try to care for your God just as though He were not Almighty and could not make ten Dr. Martins should the old one be drowned in the Saale, etc. Leave me in peace with your cares, I have a better guardian than even you and all the angels.”[1395]
3. Luther’s Death at Eisleben (1546)
In March, 1545, there was sent to Luther by Philip of Hesse an Italian broadside purporting to have been printed in Rome, and containing a fearsome account of Luther’s supposed death. In it “the ambassador of the King of France” announces that Luther had wished his body set up on the altar for adoration; also that before he died he had received the Body of Christ, but that the Host had hovered untouched over the grave after the funeral; a diabolical din had been heard coming from the grave, but, on opening it, it was found to be empty though it emitted a murderous stench of brimstone. Luther at once published the narrative with an half-ironical, half-indignant commentary. He sought to persuade the people that the Pope had actually wished for his death and damnation. In a poem which he prefixed to the pamphlet he tells the Pope in his usual style that: his life was indeed the Pope’s plague, but that his death would be the Pope’s death too; the Pope might choose which he liked best, the plague or death.—About the real origin of this alleged Italian production nothing is known.[1396]
In his bodily sufferings and anxiety of mind concerning the present and the future of his life’s work Luther frequently spoke of his desire for a speedy release by death. His words on this subject throw a strong light on his frame of mind.