THE LETTERS of MARTIN LUTHER by Martin Luther
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THE AGES DIGITAL LIBRARY COLLECTIONS THE LETTERS OF MARTIN LUTHER by Martin Luther Books For The Ages AGES Software • Albany, OR USA Version 1.0 © 1997 2 THE LETTERS OF MARTIN LUTHER SELECTED AND TRANSLATED BY MARGARET A. CURRIE 3 PREFACE 1 ABOUT a hundred years ago Coleridge wrote: “I can scarcely conceive a more delightful volume than might be made from Luther’s letters, especially those from the Wartburg, if translated in the simple, idiomatic, hearty mother-tongue of the original.” One’s first impulse on reading those words is to search for this “delightful volume,” but, though nearly a century has elapsed since Coleridge thus wrote, no such volume is to be found in present-day German, even in Germany. This treasure ought to be accessible to all classes. The reason why all classes have not had access to Luther’s letters long ago is, that they have lain embedded, many of them in Latin, in the volumes of De Wette; also in Old German, in the twenty-four huge volumes of Walch’s edition of Luther’s Works, published about 170 years ago; and in the three volumes of Dr. Gottfried Schutze’s German edition of Luther’s hitherto unpublished letters, translated from the Latin in 1784. From the two latter sources De Wette culled most of the 2,324 letters published in 1826, in his first five volumes, which he dedicated to the Grand Duke Karl August, of Saxe-Weimar, Goethe’s friend, in grateful remembrance of the services rendered by the princes of the Saxon Ernestine line to the Reformation, and of the use he had been permitted to make of the treasures in the Grand Ducal library in Weimar. De Wette gives the literary history of every letter, thus making them a Tagebuch of Luther’s life. In the Preface to Dr. Schutze’s German edition of Luther’s letters the translator says: “From different quarters a wish has been expressed to see Dr. Schutze’s unprinted letters in the hands of the German public, and I did not know how one could become better acquainted with the character of this Paul-like man than from his letters, in which his heart lies exposed, and which bring us so much in contact with the spirit of the Reformation; and if, at times, they verge on vehemence, yet they never leave the reader unedified.” The Latin edition is dedicated to Frederick V. of Denmark. In the Preface to Stroebel’s Selected Letters — Nurnberg, 1780 — the author 4 says: “The more of Luther’s letters I read, my respect for this wonderful man always increased, and most of them gave me such pleasure that I believed I would be conferring a favor on many of his admirers, especially among the laity, to whom his voluminous works were scarcely accessible, if I made them better acquainted with his noble and honest heart, thus inspiring his ungrateful children with more respect for him to whom they owe so much, and who, in every relation of life, appears as noble as he was amiable, although many who never read his works assert the opposite.” Dr. Enders, in his splendid collection of Luther’s “Briefwechsel,” mostly in Latin — the first volume was published in 1884, and the tenth in 1903 — says that they are intended not only for the learned, but for a larger public who are interested in all Luther’s letters. Dr. Enders derives most of those letters from De Wette, Walch, Aurifaber, Schutze, and Stroebel. Luther was the first classic writer of the German language, and his words, as Richter says, were half-battles; while according to Coleridge, his “miraculous and providential translation of the Bible was the fundamental act of the construction of literary German.” This busiest of men was the most indefatigable of letter-writers; and in his letters all the events of those stormy times are mirrored, as well as the influences which developed his own religious life. His letters are specially valuable because of his allusions to his herculean labors in the field of Bible translation. But his love for the Scriptures lightened the task. Referring specially to the Psalms, which occupied him so continuously through life, Luther said: “The Holy Scriptures were to believing souls what the meadow is to the animal, what the home is to man, the nest to the bird, the cleft of the rock to the sea-fowl, the stream to the fish.” Busch, in prefacing Bismarck’s Life, claims for his hero a hundred years hence a place alongside of Luther, and asks who would not now be glad to have fuller details of the Reformer in the great days and hours of his life? His letters abundantly supply these details, while at the same time they throw light on many a disputed point of Reformation history. In Luther’s lifetime collections of his letters began to appear. The first, in 1530, contained four letters. In 1546 Cruciger issued eight letters of consolation, and gradually these were increased. In 1556, Aurifaber, in Jena, with the Elector John Frederick, meditated issuing 2000. 5 One is struck, in reading Luther’s letters, by the great love which bound that Wittenberg circle together, extending to far-away Nurnberg, the home of Pirkheimer, Albrecht Durer, Spengler, Link, and Osiander — to Strassburg, where Capito, Bucer, and Matthew Zell, with his wife Katherine, that succorer of many, labored; and Luther is interested in all that concerns each. In Hering’s Die Mystik Luthers, we see the fresh interest which entered Luther’s life through Tauler’s writings. His own dark hours had been a puzzle to him long before he made the acquaintance of the Mystics. “The just shall live by faith” had been his first comforter, but Tauler was his first human comforter. “Although unknown in the schools of theology, and therefore despised,” Luther writes, “yet I have found more pure theology in his book than in all the scholastic teachers in all the universities put together.” Finding an old book containing an outline of Tauler’s theology, he edited it; and a peculiar interest attaches to it, as the issue of Deutsche Theologie (Theologia Germanica) in 1516 was Luther’s first appearance in print. Another great joy to him was the accession of the Anhalt Princes to the Reformed faith. These three brothers were his warm friends; and he sent them Nicolas Hausmann as their Court preacher. Max Muller says that in every crisis in their country’s history the Anhalt Princes came to the front. With Luther “out of sight was not out of mind.” When his good Elector had him carried off to the Wartburg, after his grand appearance at Worms in 1521 he at once began writing to his anxious friends in Wittenberg. On May 12 he wrote to Melanchthon, Amsdorf, and Agricola. He surveys with deep pain the general state of the Church, and reproaches himself for not shedding tears over her wretched condition in the presence of Antichrist. He admonishes Melanchthon to defend the walls of Jerusalem with the gifts God had given him; and he would aid him through his prayers. He asks anxiously who is filling the pulpit where he was wont to preach; and, along with these weighty matters, he does not forget his friend Agricola’s domestic concerns, sending two golden gulden — one to the baby, another to buy wine for his wife. And his friends must send him his papers at once, so that he may resume his work, since not a moment could Junker Georg f1 lose in his seclusion except through frequent headaches; for, even when following the chase, he spiritualized what he saw in the hunting-field. And when he left his 6 “Patmos” he took with him his gift to the German people, the New Testament, in their mother-tongue. Coleridge speaks of the great interest of the Wartburg letters; but those from Coburg Castle are not a whit less interesting, especially those to Melanchthon, dated from the “Castle so full of evil spirits,” in which he endeavors to encourage his friend. “The six months spent here,” says a recent German writer, “might be called the mid-hour of his life. He is no longer the monk who sighs over his sins, nor the embarrassed peasant’s son, who, dazzled by the august assembly at Worms, begs for a day’s grace before answering for himself. He has been made strong by inward and outward storms which, however, were powerless to rob him of his childlike innocence of heart and poetic freshness of feeling; for he knows that the wondrous Christian experience with which God has honored him is now the common property of hundreds of thousands. Hence he got through an amount of work which fills us with astonishment; for, while holding in his hands the threads which set all the Evangelical princes and theologians in motion in Augsburg, he had leisure to be professor to his students, Veit Dietrich, etc., seelsorger for those in affliction, bookmaker for his dear Germans, and the most loving of sons, husbands, and fathers.” f2 On his arrival he wrote above the door of his room, “I shall not die, but live,” from his beloved 118th Psalm. Till his books arrived, he at once began writing to his friends, and in his first letter says: “We have reached our Sinai, which I shall turn into a Zion, and build three tabernacles — one to the Psalter, one to the Prophets, and one to AEsop.” Luther intended reconstructing and purifying AEsop’s Fables.