The commencement of their residence at Mansfeld was attended with painful privations to honest John and his wife; for they lived some time in great poverty. "My parents," says the Reformer, "were very poor. My father was a poor wood-cutter, and my mother often carried his wood on her back to procure subsistence for us children. The toil they endured for us was severe, even to blood." The example of parents whom he respected, and the habits in which they trained him, early accustomed Luther to exertion and frugality. Often, doubtless, he accompanied his mother to the wood, and made up his little faggot also.
Promises are given to the just man's labour, and John Luther experienced the reality of them. Having become somewhat more easy in his circumstances, he established two smelting furnaces at Mansfeld. Around these furnaces young Martin grew up; and the return which they yielded enabled his father, at a later period, to provide for his studies. "The spiritual founder of Christendom," says worthy Mathesius, "was to come forth from a family of miners, an image of what God purposed, when he employed him to cleanse the sons of Levi, and purify them in his furnaces like gold."[125] Universally respected for his integrity, his blameless life, and good sense, John Luther was made a counsellor of Mansfeld, the capital of the county of that name. Too great wretchedness might have weighed down the spirit of the child, but the easy circumstances of the paternal roof expanded his heart, and elevated his character.
John availed himself of his new situation to cultivate the society which he preferred. He set great value on educated men, and often invited the clergymen and teachers of the place to his table. His house presented an example of one of those societies of simple citizens which did honour to Germany at the commencement of the sixteenth century, and, as a mirror, reflected the numerous images which succeeded each other on the troubled stage of that time. It was not lost on the child. The sight of men to whom so much respect was shown in his father's house must, doubtless, on more than one occasion, have awakened in young Martin's heart an ambitious desire one day to become a school-master or a man of learning.
As soon as he was of an age to receive some instruction, his parents sought to give him the knowledge and inspire him with the fear of God, and train him in Christian virtues. Their utmost care was devoted to his primary domestic education.[126] This, however, was not the sole object of their tender solicitude.
His father, desirous of seeing him acquire the elements of knowledge for which he himself had so much esteem, invoked the Divine blessing on his head, and sent him to school. As Martin was still a very little boy, his father or Nicolas Emler, a young man of Mansfeld, often carried him in their arms to the house of George Emilius, and went again to fetch him. Emler afterwards married one of Luther's sisters.
The piety of the parents, their activity and strict virtue, gave a happy impulse to the boy, making him of a grave and attentive spirit. The system of education which then prevailed employed fear and punishment as its leading stimulants. Margaret, though sometimes approving the too strict discipline of her husband, often opened her maternal arms to Martin, to console him in his tears. She herself occasionally carried to excess that precept of Divine wisdom, which says, "He that spareth the rod hateth his son." The impetuous temper of the child often led to frequent reproof and correction. "My parents," says Luther, in after life, "treated me harshly, and made me very timid. My mother one day chastised me about a filbert till the blood came. They believed with all their heart they were doing right, but they could not discriminate between dispositions, though this is necessary in order to know when and how punishments should be inflicted."[127]
The poor child's treatment at school was not less severe. His master one morning beat him fifteen times in succession. "It is necessary," said Luther, when mentioning the fact, "it is necessary to chastise children; but it is necessary, at the same time, to love them." With such an education, Luther early learned to despise the allurements of a sensual life. "He who is to become great must begin with little,"[128] justly remarks one of his earliest biographers; "and if children are brought up with too much delicacy and tenderness, it does them harm all the rest of their life."
Martin learned something at school. He was taught the heads of the Catechism, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, hymns, forms of prayer, and the Donat. This last was a Latin grammar, composed in the fourth century by Donatus, St. Jerome's master; and having been improved in the eleventh century by a French monk, named Remigius, was long in high repute as a school-book. He moreover conned the Ciseo-Janus, a very singular almanac, composed in the tenth or eleventh century. In short, he learned all that was taught in the Latin school of Mansfeld.
But the child seems not to have been brought to God. The only religious sentiment which could be discovered in him was that of fear. Whenever he heard Jesus Christ mentioned he grew pale with terror; for the Saviour had been represented to him as an angry Judge. This servile fear, so foreign to genuine religion, perhaps predisposed him for the glad tidings of the gospel, and for the joy which he afterwards experienced when he became acquainted with him who is meek and lowly in heart.
John Luther longed to make his son a learned man. The new light, which began to radiate in all directions, penetrated even the cottage of the miner of Mansfield, and there awakened ambitious thoughts. The remarkable disposition, and persevering application of his son, inspired John with the most brilliant hopes. Accordingly, in 1497, when Martin had completed his fourteenth year, his father resolved to part with him, and send him to a school of the Franciscans at Magdebourg. Margaret behoved, of course, to consent, and Martin prepared to quit the paternal roof.