From the beginning of his ministry at Wittenberg, Luther had preached from time to time upon the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer. In 1518 his friend Agricola published a series of sermons on the Lord's Prayer which Luther had preached in Lent, 1517.[4] In the same year Luther published his own Kurze Auslegung der zehn Gebote, ihrer Erfüllung und Uebertretung.[5] The year 1519 saw the publication of the Kurze Form das Paternoster zu verstehen und zu beten, and the Kurze und gute Auslegung des Vaterunsers vor sich und hinter sich.[7] The Treatise on Good Works[8], which is essentially an exposition of the decalogue, was written in the early months of 1520. During the same period the mind of Luther was frequently occupied with the abuses of the confessional, as we learn from the Confitendi Ratio,[9] and the Kurze Unterweisung wie man beichten soil.[10] All the material for the first and third parts of the present work was, therefore, in hand and had appeared in print before 1520.
In 1520 the Kurze Form came from the press.[11] It consists of three separately composed expositions of the three chief subjects of catechetical instruction in the Middle Ages. The expositions of the Commandments and the Lord's Prayer are reproductions of the Kurze Auslegung der zehn Gebote and the Kurze Form das Paternoster zu verstehen und zu beten. The treatment of the Apostles' Creed is new, as is also the Introduction, in which Luther sets forth the relation of the three parts to one another in the unity of the Christian life.
The work is not scientific and theological, but popular and religious. Its purpose is primarily devotional, not pedagogical. The mediæval root out of which it grew is not to be denied. The catalogue of transgressions and fulfilments attached to the explanation of the decalogue shows that it is intended to be a manual for penitents, but the spirit in which the Creed and the Lord's Prayer are explained is not mediæval, and the manner in which the explanations of the decalogue are simplified and rid of the excrescences of the XV Century hand-books shows the new evangelical conception of confession to which Luther had attained. The division of the Creed into three articles instead of the traditional twelve marks an epoch in the development of catechetical instruction. The little book contains passages of rare beauty, clouded at times, we fear, by the new language into which it has here been put, and seldom has the Wesen des Christentums been more simply and tellingly set forth than in the treatment of the Creed.
In 1522 Luther republished the Kurze Form with a few slight changes and a number of additions under the title Betbüchlein. The Betbüchlein ran through many editions, and grew in the end to a book of rather large proportions, a complete manual of devotion.
In its original form and as the chief content of the Betbüchlein, the Kurze Form exercised a profound influence upon the manuals of Christian doctrine that appeared in ever-increasing number after 1522.[12] Its influence extended to England, where Marshall's Goodly Primer (1534 and 35) offered to English readers a translation of the Betbüchlein, in which, however, no acknowledgments were made to the original author.[13]
The Kurze Form is found in Weimar Ed., VII, 194 ff.; Erl. Ed.,
XXII, 3 ff.; Clemen Ed., II, 38 ff.; Walch Ed., X, 182 ff.; St.
Louis Ed., X, 149 ff.
LITERATURE
F. Cohrs, Die evang. Katechismusversuche vor L.'s Enchiridion (especially I, 1 ff. and IV, 229 ff.), Arts. Katechismen L.'s and Katechismusunterricht in Realencyk., X, 130 ff., and XXIII, 743 ff., and Introd. to Betbüchlein in Weimar Ed., X; O. Albrecht, Vorbemerkungen zu den beiden Katechismen von 1529, in Weimar Ed., XXX', 426 ff. (Further literature cited by all the above.) See also Gecken, Bilderkatechismus d. XV Jh. and von Zezschwitz, System d. Katechetik (especially II, i).