Luther, vol. 6 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

6. The Tower Incident (vol. I, pp. 388-400)

To avoid giving unnecessary offence we did not unduly insist on the locality in which Luther professed to have received his chief revelation. To have suppressed all mention of the locality would, however, have been wrong seeing that the circumstance of place is here so closely bound up with the historicity of the event. We, however, confined ourselves to a bald statement and explanation of what is found in the sources, and chose the most discreet heading possible for the section in question. In spite of this, Adolf Harnack (“Theol. Literaturztng.,” 1911, p. 302), dealing with our first volume, informed his readers that, on this point, we had made our own “the olden fashion of vulgar Catholic polemics” and had made of the “locality a capital question,” no doubt in the hope that Catholic readers would take the matter very much as the olden Christians took Arius’s death in the closet. Needless to say, what Harnack wrote was repeated and aggravated by the lesser lights of German Protestantism. The truest remark, however, made by Harnack in this connection, is that, the actual “locality in which Luther first glimpsed this thought is of small importance,” and that, even had I made out my case, “what would it really matter?”

As to our authorities the chief one is Johann Schlaginhaufen’s notes of Luther’s Table-Talk in which the words are related as having been spoken some time between July and Sept., 1532.

The forms in which Luther’s utterance has been handed down: The friends who, in 1532, either habitually or occasionally, attended at Luther’s parties and noted down his sayings were three in number, viz. Schlaginhaufen, Cordatus and Veit Dietrich. The (yet unpublished) notes of the last as given in the Nuremberg MS. contain nothing about this utterance. From Cordatus we have the version given below as No. III. But, according to Preger, the editor of Schlaginhaufen, Cordatus “at this time was no longer at Wittenberg”; if this be true, then what he says on the subject must have come to him at second hand, though, otherwise, his notes contain much valuable first-hand information. Nevertheless both Preger and Kroker, two experts on the Table-Talk, are at one in arguing that an attentive comparison of Cordatus’s notes with those of the other guests, proves that Cordatus not seldom fails to keep closely enough to Luther’s actual words and sometimes misses his real meaning, which is less so the case with Schlaginhaufen. As for Lauterbach, as Kawerau points out, he was not at that time a regular visitor at Luther’s house, though we several times hear of his being present at the Table-Talk. It is more than doubtful whether his version of the utterance in question (given below as IV) was taken down from Luther’s lips. Moreover his notes, as printed by Bindseil, often show traces of subsequent correction.

In Schlaginhaufen, on the other hand, we find throughout first-hand matter, the freshness, disorder, and even faulty grammar, showing how little it has been touched up by the collector’s hand. He was a personal friend of Luther’s, and, whilst awaiting a call to the ministry, stayed at the latter’s house from November, 1531, where he was always present at the evening repast. Luther was aware that he was taking notes of the conversations, and, on one occasion (Preger, p. 82) particularly requested him to put down something. He was comforted in his anxieties by Luther (above, vol. v., p. 327), nor, when he left Wittenberg at the end of 1532 to become minister at Zahna, did he break his friendly relations with Luther. He quitted Zahna in Dec., 1533, and took over the charge of Köthen.

The notes of Schlaginhaufen made public by Preger in 1888 are not in his own handwriting. The Munich codex (Clm. 943) used by Preger is rather the copy made by some unknown person about 1551, written with a hasty hand, and (as we were able to convince ourselves by personal inspection) by one, who, in places, could not quite decipher the original (now lost). There are, however, three other versions of Schlaginhaufen’s notes of the utterance under consideration: That of Khummer (mentioned above, vol. i., p. 396), that made in 1550 by George Steinhart, minister in the Chemnitz superintendency, and that of Rörer, which, thanks to E. Kroker the Leipzig city-librarian, we are now able to give. That of Steinhart is found bound up in a Munich codex entitled “Dicta et facta Lutheri et aliorum.” (Clm. 939, f., 10.) Steinhart evidently made diligent use of the papers left by Schlaginhaufen, Lauterbach and others. Generally speaking, his work is well done. Steinhart’s rendering of the utterance in question agrees word for word with that of Khummer, though they both differ from the Munich copy published by Preger and show it to be lacking in some respects. Rörer’s text V, in many ways, stands by itself.

Khummer had fled from Austria on account of his Lutheran leanings and gone to Wittenberg, where he matriculated on May 11, 1529. He was then a fellow-student of Lauterbach. He is supposed to have been given by Luther (between 1541 and 1545) charge of the parish of Ortrand, where he still was in 1555 when the Visitors gave a good account of him. His collection, now in the Royal Dresden Library, contains a copy (not all in his own handwriting) made in 1554 from Lauterbach’s Diary (1538), and, further, in the second part, this time all in his own handwriting, copies of many things said by Luther at table. “We shall not be far wrong,” says Seidemann (p. x.), “if we surmise that Khummer obtained his version from Pirna [where Lauterbach had been superintendent since 1539].” Below we give his version as printed in Seidemann (p. 81, n.):

Luther’s words as they were heard by Schlaginhaufen:

I. Copies of Steinhart (1550) and Khummer (1554):

II. Anonymous Copy of (Preger) 1551:

“Hæc vocabula iustus et iustitia dei erant mihi fulmen in conscientia. Mox reddebar pavidus auditor. Iustus, ergo punit. Sed cum semel in hac turri speculabar de istis vocabulis Iustus ex fide vivit, iustitia dei, mox cogitaveram, [Steinhart: cogitabam] si vivere debemus iusti ex fide et iustitia dei debet esse ad salutem omni credenti, mox erigebatur mihi animus. Ergo iustitia dei est, quæ nos iustificat et salvat. Et facta sunt mihi hæc verba iucundiora, Dise khunst hat mir der heilig geist aüff diser cloaca aüff dem Thorm (ein)gegeben.”[1662]

“Hæc vocabula: iustus et iustitia erant mihi fulmen in conscientia. Mox reddebar pavidus auditis: Iustus—ergo puniet, Iustus ex fide vivit, Iustitia dei revelatur sine lege. Mox cogitabam, si vivere debemus ex fide et si iustitia dei debet esse ad salutem omni credenti, mox erigebatur mihi animus: ergo iustitia dei est, quo nos iustificat et salvat, et facta sunt mihi hæc verba iucundiora. Dise kunst hatt mir d[er] S[piritus] S[anctus] auf diss Cl. eingeben.”