The first sight of Rome inspired him with great enthusiasm. It was a great moment to him. He fell upon the ground, and, with outstretched hands, exclaimed, “Hail, thou Holy City!” The visit continued four weeks, giving him ample time to see the ruins of the Colosseum, the Baths of Dioclesian, the Pantheon, and other remains of past glory. He visited also the catacombs and other places made sacred by the sufferings of martyrs, and, above all, those churches and shrines where “special grace” could be obtained.
The chief attraction, however, was not that of sight-seeing, but the spiritual blessings that he hoped to receive. It was his purpose to make while there an unreserved confession of all the sins that he had ever committed. Although he had made such confession twice before at Erfurt, he expected an especial blessing from the same confession, if made in the “Holy City.” Mass he celebrated a number of times, and actually wished that his parents were dead, because, by such services at Rome, he thought that he could have been able to deliver them from purgatory.
But in all this he found no satisfaction for his mind; on the contrary, there was aroused in him a consciousness of another way to salvation which had previously taken root in his heart. While he was painfully climbing on his knees in devout prayer the steps of the identical staircase, as was superstitiously believed, which formerly led up to the palace of Pilate in Jerusalem—in order to receive the rich blessings promised by several popes upon all who would perform this meritorious deed—again and again as he struggled up the stairway, the words of Paul—“the just shall live by faith”—came to him as though uttered in tones of thunder. But Luther never became sensible of any blessing.
Even Rome did not give to his soul the peace for which he longed. On the contrary, his sojourn in the “Holy City,” brief though it was, sufficed to convince him that Rome could never supply the needs of his spiritual nature. The high ideals of the sanctity of the worship of the saintly life of the pope and the other ecclesiastical dignitaries, which filled his own soul with aspirations and stimulated him to like endeavors, were rudely shattered. What he saw and heard in Rome was the very opposite of what he had expected. Instead of piety he found levity; instead of holiness he met lasciviousness; instead of seeing pure spirituality, he beheld nothing but carnal-mindedness, greed and self-seeking. Religion was but the cloak which covered up the shame and vice. The white garments of the Church were polluted with the stains of the most disgraceful and carnal manner of living. Wherever he turned he saw hypocrisy and sin. Everything that was to him an object of holy adoration was made the butt of blasphemous jests. Of the impressions made on his mind he wrote:
Nobody can form an idea of the licentiousness, vice and shame that is in vogue in Rome. Nobody would believe it unless he could see it with his own eyes and hear it with his own ears. Rome was once the holiest city, now it is the vilest. It is true what has been said, “If there be a hell, Rome must be built over it.”
Yet in spite of all he saw and heard, he “loved the grand old Church” with all his heart. He did not return from Rome an enemy of the Church, nor even intending to reform it. But if ever a man left the “Holy City” thrust down from the heights of zeal and enthusiasm to the very depths of despair, wounded and crushed in spirit, it was the plain, honest Luther. This experience, however, was but another step in his preparation, for he says:
I would not take a thousand florins for missing that visit to Rome. I would constantly fear that I had wronged the pope. But now I can speak of what I have seen myself.
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AT WITTENBURG
When Luther returned from Rome to Wittenburg in the early summer of 1512, Staupitz sent him to Erfurt to complete his training for the doctorate in theology. His advancement was so rapid that by the time he reached his twenty-ninth year he found himself not only installed in a professorship of Theology at Wittenburg, but also with the main responsibility resting upon him for all instruction that was to be given. From that time the presence of Staupitz was not frequent. In this position he did not hesitate to break through all traditional modes of theological instruction.
Luther was still a genuine monk, with no doubt of his vocation. He became the sub-prior of the Wittenburg Monastery in 1512, and was made district vicar over eleven monasteries in 1515. These administrative duties occasioned frequent interruptions of his professional and literary labors. It was his duty, by means of visitations and frequent correspondence, to learn the condition and decide concerning the necessities of each monastery and its inmates. The already thoroughly occupied professor was thus called to a truly pastoral care of an extensive and difficult field. To every one in doubts and perplexities, like those which agitated him, he sought to give the full benefit of his experience.