It will be no matter for surprise to the dispassionate observer that the memory of the vows Luther had broken and the thought of his early days in the monastery—which presented so striking a contrast with his later life—were subject-matters of warped and distorted images. Particularly is this true of his monastic years which he insists on depicting as one long night of sadness and despair.
Not merely in the fictions in which he came to shroud the more fervent days of his life as a monk, but also in his explanations of the various stages of his apostasy, Luther affords us fresh data for the psychological study of his personality, and thus the present chapter may serve to supplement the previous one. Only after having studied the legend he wove around himself and compared it with the truth as otherwise known, will it be possible to arrive at a considered judgment concerning Luther’s mental states.
1. Luther’s later Picture of his Convent Life and Apostasy
What Luther says of his life as a monk is what will chiefly interest us, but, before proceeding to consider his words and the strange problems they present, we must first refer to the legendary traits comprised in his statements on the first period of his struggle; how false they are to the facts will be clearly perceived by whoever has read the detailed accounts already given.
The Legend about his First Public Appearance
“Not only have the dates been altered,” says Hausrath, of Luther’s later statements concerning his first public appearance, “but even the facts. No sooner does the elderly man begin to tell his tale than the past becomes as soft wax in his hands. The same words are placed on the lips, now of this, now of that, friend or foe. The opponents of his riper years are depicted as his persecutors even in his youth. Albert of Mayence had never acted otherwise towards him than as a liar and deceiver. Even previous to the Worms visit he had sought to annul his safe-conduct.… Of Tetzel he now asserts, that, unless Duke Frederick had pleaded for him to the Emperor Max, he would have been put in a sack and drowned in the Inn on account of his dissolute life.… The same holds good of the [equally untrue] statement that Tetzel had sold indulgences for sins yet to be committed.… It is also an exaggeration of his old age when Luther asserts that, in his youth, the Bible had been a closed book to all.… To the old Reformer almost everything in the monastery appears in the blackest of hues.”[592]
“The reason of my journey to Rome,” he declares, “was to make a confession from the days of my boyhood and to become pious.”[593] “But at Rome I came across the most unlearned of men.”[594]—God “led me, all unwittingly, into the game [his struggle].”[595] “I behaved with moderation, yet I brought the greatest ruin on them all.”[596] “I thought I was doing the Pope a service yet I was condemned.”[597]—“One, and that not the least of my joys and consolations, is, that I never put myself out of the Papacy. For I held fast to the Scarlet Woman and served the murderess in all things most humbly. But she would have none of me, banished me and drove me from her.”[598] “I only inveighed against abuses and against the godless collectors of alms and [indulgence] commissioners from whom even Canon Law itself protects the Pope. The Pope wanted to defend them contrary to his own laws; this annoyed me. Had he thrown them over I should in all likelihood have held my tongue, but the hour had rung for his downfall; hence there was nothing to be done for him, for when God intends to bring about a man’s fall He blinds and hardens him.”[599] “I was utterly dead to the world until God thought the time had come; then Junker Tetzel stung me with his indulgences, and Dr. Staupitz spurred me on against the Pope.”[600] “Silvester [Prierias] thereupon entered the lists and sought to overwhelm me with the thunders of the following syllogism: Whoever raises doubts against any word or deed of the Roman Church is a heretic; Martin Luther doubts, etc. With that the ball began.”[601]
Generally speaking, however, Luther prefers to trace the whole of his quarrel with the Church back to Tetzel and to his righteous censure of the abuse of indulgences. He seems to have completely forgotten the deep theological chasm that separated him from the Church even before his quarrel with Tetzel. His theological attitude at that time, the starting-point of his whole undertaking, has disappeared from his purview; he has forgotten his burning desire to win the day for his own doctrines against free-will, against the value of works, against justification as taught by Catholic tradition, and for his denial of God’s Will that all men should be saved. His early antagonism to the theological schools and to Canon Law as a whole has lapsed into oblivion.[602]
In the preface to the 1545 edition of his Latin works Luther asserts, as a fact, that he had been estranged from the Church only through the indulgence controversy.