The utmost caution must indeed be exercised in accepting his assertions on this subject. We cannot sufficiently express our amazement at the credulity with which Luther’s rhetorical statements about his life in the convent have often been accepted, for instance even by Köstlin. The fact is, that the ground on which Luther’s later account rests, the elements that he introduces into his transformation of the facts, and above all the bitter and aggressive spirit which directs and permeates everything, have not been adequately recognised and thus the mythological nature of his fiction has remained undetected. Otherwise it would surely have been impossible to assert, that, just as Paul had been through the mill of the Law, so Luther also had been through that of the religious life, in order, by virtue of his experience, to discover the supreme truth.
Various traits in the picture he drew, which, owing to its difficulties, has puzzled many people, may, as we have seen, be explained by his misapprehension or misinterpretation of the phenomena of his own morbid, melancholy mind. Other moral factors have, however, also to be taken into account.
As already pointed out, his depression of mind, due primarily to physical causes, became so pronounced owing to his refusal to submit to proper direction.
His dissatisfaction was increased by his growing impatience with the religious life, by remorse of conscience arising from his tepidity and worldliness, and by his growing antipathy to his vocation.
It may be said, that, had the convent been wisely governed, Luther would never have been admitted to profession but have been quietly dismissed while yet a novice. Both for his superiors and for himself this would have been the better course. A morbid temperament such as his, whatever may have been its cause, was not suited for the religious life, even apart from the obstacles in Luther’s character. The monotony and the penances of the monastic life, the self-discipline and obedience; also the annoyances with which he had to put up from his brother monks, whose habits and upbringing were not his, must necessarily have aggravated his case, particularly as he refused to submit to guidance. His superiors should have foreseen that this brother would be a source of endless difficulties. Instead of this, Staupitz, the vicar, clung to his favourite. He even gave him to understand that he would make of him a great scholar and an ornament of the Order. Had he remained in the world, in a different and freer sphere of action, Luther might possibly have succeeded in shaking off his ailments and the resultant depression. But, in the convent, particularly as he went his own way, he became the victim of ideas and imaginations which promoted the growth of his doctrine and helped to pave the way for his apostasy. Nevertheless, his morbid states could not annul the vows he had taken in the Order, hence his leaving and his breach of the vows cannot be excused on the ground of his illness, though the latter may help to explain his step.
From all the above it is plain how unwarrantable is the assumption that to set aside Luther’s legend is to shut one’s eyes to the severe inward struggles through which he went previous to making his great decision.
There can be no doubt that, previous to his unhappy change of religion, the monk had to wage a hard fight with himself. He was striving against his conscience, and, by overcoming it, he consciously and deliberately incurred the guilt of his apostasy. “A frightful struggle of soul,”[763] may, and indeed must, be assumed, though a very different one from that usually pictured by Protestants and by Luther himself. It would indeed be “stupid” (to use the words of a Protestant biographer of Luther) to seek to “obliterate from history” the deep-down inward struggle which, “maybe, lasted longer than we think.” It is, however, gratifying to find that the same author admits that, as a monk in the Erfurt priory, Luther “found some inward contentment,” in other words, that the legend is false in this particular; he also grants that, at least “in this or that statement,” Luther, in his later accounts, has been guilty of “exaggeration”; that his “development” did not proceed quite on the lines he fancied later, at least that the “change was not quite so sudden,” and, finally, that “physical overstrain” had something to do with his struggles.[764]