[543] “Briefwechsel Bugenhagens,” ed. Vogt, p. 67 ff.
[544] We remember having recently read in a review, that many, at the present day, consider “mental aberration an indispensable condition of mental greatness.”
[545] “Si hæc a febricitante dicerentur, quid dici possit insanius!” “Opp.,” 10, col. 1282, in 1526.
[546] The passages are given in Latin above, vol. iv., p. 353, n. 3.
[547] Cp. above, vol. ii., pp. 267 and 274; cp. also below, what Hausrath and Möbius say. The expression “abnormal state of temper” is used by W. Köhler in the “Theol. Literaturbericht,” vol. 23 (1903), p. 499. Elsewhere he calls Luther “the most paradoxical figure imaginable, who speaks differently to every hearer” (ib., vol. 24, 1904, p. 517).—See also Döllinger (“Kirchenlexikon,”[2] art. “Luther,” col. 344), and Möhler, “Symbolik,” § 48, 1873 ed., p. 423. U. Berlière, O.S.B., recently remarked: “Une étude psychologique de Luther ne peut être séparée de son histoire ni de l’évolution de sa vie intérieure, encore moins de son état pathologique.… Cette étude n’est pas encore achevée” (“Revue bénédictine,” 1906, p. 630 f.).
[548] See Köhler, “Ein Wort zu Denifles Luther,” p. 27.
[549] Cp. above, vol. i., p. 383. Cp. also the remarks on the next page, n. 2.
[550] In the art. “Luthers Bekehrung” (“N. Heidelb. Jahrb.,” 6, 1896), p. 193.
[551] “Luthers Leben,” 1, 1905, p. 109 f. The author speaks of the “secret sufferings of soul” which did not, however, interfere with the thoroughness of his work (p. 110); incidentally, in exoneration of the violence of Luther’s writings against Zwingli, he urges that Luther wrote it “at a time of great depression, which he even wished his opponents might endure for but a quarter of an hour to see if it would not convert them” (2, p. 213). At the Wartburg “his mental suffering returned, as it always did when he remained for any length of time without outward stimulus or active intercourse with the outside world” (1, p. 475). In the supplement to his unaltered 2nd edition Hausrath deals with the objections raised against his “pathological” view though he considerably modifies his wordings (1, p. 573 ff.).
[552] On Ebstein see below, p. 176 f. Ebstein’s is an improvement on Küchenmeister, “Dr. Martin Luthers Krankengesch.,” Leipzig, 1881. Küchenmeister did not do justice to the historical material and always quotes at second hand. Th. Kolde rightly speaks of his work as a “book that had better not have been written” (“Anal. Lutherana,” p. 50). He also thinks Berkhan’s treatment of the subject (ib., p. 51) “of small value.”