4. Demonology and Demonomania

“Come O Lord Jesus, Amen! The breath of Thy mouth dismays the diabolical gainsayer.” “Satan’s hate is all too Satanic.”[1036]

Oh, that the devil’s gaping jaws were crushed by the blessed seed of the woman![1037] How little is left for God.[1038] “The remainder is swallowed by Satan who is the Prince of this world, surely an inscrutable decree of Eternal Wisdom.”[1039] “Prodigies everywhere daily manifest the power of the devil!”[1040]

Against such a devil’s world, as Luther descried, what can help save the approaching “end of all”?

“The kingdom of God is being laid waste by Turk and Jew and Pope,” the chosen tools of Satan; but “greater is He Who reigns in us than he who rules the world; the devil shall be under Christ to all eternity.”[1041] “The present rage of the devil only reveals God’s future wrath against mankind, who are so ungrateful for the Evangel.”[1042] “We cannot but live in this devil’s kingdom which surrounds us”;[1043] “but even with our last breath we must fight against the monsters of Satan.”[1044] Let the Papists, whose glory is mere “devil’s filth,” rejoice in their successes.[1045] As little heed is to be paid to them as to the preachers of the Evangel who have gone astray in doctrine, like Agricola and Schwenckfeld; they calmly “go their way to Satan to whom indeed they belong”;[1046] “they are senseless fools, possessed of the devil.” The devil “spues and ructates” his writings through them; this is the devil of heresy against whom solemnly launch the malediction: “God’s curse be upon thee, Satan! The spirit that summoned thee be with thee unto destruction!”[1047]

Luther’s letters during his later years are crammed with things of this sort.

The thought of the devil and his far-spread sphere of action, to which Luther had long been addicted, assumes in his mind as time goes on a more serious and gloomy shape, though he continues often enough to refer to the Divine protection promised against the powers of darkness and to the final victory of Christ.

In his wrong idea of the devil Luther was by no means without precursors. On the contrary, in the Middle Ages exaggerations had long prevailed on this subject, not only among the people but even among the best-known writers; on the very eve of Luther’s coming forward they formed no small part of the disorders in the ecclesiastical life of the people. Had people been content with the sober teaching of Holy Scripture and of the Church on the action of the devil, the faithful would have been preserved from many errors. As it was, however, the vivid imagination of laity and clergy led them to read much into the revealed doctrine that was not really in it; witness, for instance, the startling details they found in the words of St. Paul (Eph. vi. 12): “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood: but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” Great abuses had gradually crept into the use of the blessings and exorcisms of the Church, more particularly in the case of supposed sorcery. Unfortunately, too, the beliefs and practices common among the people received much too ready support from persons of high standing in the Church. The supposition, which in itself had the sanction of tradition, that intercourse with the devil was possible, grew into the fantastic persuasion that witches were lurking everywhere, and required to have their malicious action checked by the authority of Church and State. That unfortunate book, “The Witches’ Hammer,” which Institoris and Sprenger published in 1487, made these delusions fashionable in circles which so far had been but little affected by them, though the authors’ purpose, viz. to stamp out the witches, was not achieved.

It is clear that at home in Saxony, and in his own family, Luther had lived in an atmosphere where the belief in spirits and the harm wrought by the devil was very strong; miners are credited with being partial to such gloomy fancies owing to the nature of their dangerous work in the mysterious bowels of the earth. As a young monk he had fancied he heard the devil creating an uproar nightly in the convent, and the state of excitement in which he lived and which accompanied him ever afterwards was but little calculated to free him from the prejudices of the age concerning the devil’s power. His earlier sermons, for instance those to be mentioned below on the Ten Commandments, contain much that is frankly superstitious, though this must be set down in great part to the beliefs already in vogue and above which he failed to rise. Had Luther really wished to play the part of a reformer of the ecclesiastical life of his day, he would have found here a wide field for useful labour. In point of fact, however, he only made bad worse. His lively descriptions and the weight of his authority merely served to strengthen the current delusions among those who looked to him. Before him no one had ever presented these things to the people with such attractive wealth of detail, no one had brought the weight of his personality so strongly to bear upon his readers and so urgently preached to them on how to deal with the spirits of evil.

Among non-Catholics it has been too usual to lay the whole blame on the Middle Ages and the later Catholic period. They do not realise how greatly Luther’s influence counted in the demonology and demonomania of the ensuing years. Yet Luther’s views and practice show plainly enough, that it was not merely the Catholic ages before his day that were dishonoured with such delusions concerning the devil, and that it was not the Catholics alone, of his time and the following decades, who were responsible for the devil-craze and the bloody persecutions of the witches in those dark days of German history in the 17th century.[1048]

The Mischief Wrought by the Devil

Luther’s views agree in so far with the actual teaching of the olden Church, that he regards the devils as fallen angels condemned to eternal reprobation, who oppose the aims of God for the salvation of the world and the spiritual and temporal welfare of mankind. “The devil undoes the works of God,” so he says, adding, however, in striking consonance with the teaching of the Church and to emphasise the devil’s powerlessness, “but Christ undoes the devil’s works; He, the seed [of the woman] and the serpent are ever at daggers drawn.”[1049] But Luther goes further, and depicts in glaring and extravagant colours the harm which the devil can bring about. He declares he himself had had a taste of how wrathful and mighty a foe the devil is; this he had learned in the inward warfare he was compelled to wage against Satan. He was convinced that, at the Wartburg, and also later, he had repeatedly to witness the sinister manifestations of the Evil One’s malignant power.

Hence in his Church-postils, home-postils and Catechism, to mention only these, he gives full vent to his opinions on the hostility and might of Satan.

Many Lutheran preachers and religious writers were accustomed to remind the people not only of the tales in the Table-Talk, but also of what was contained in the early exposition of the Ten Commandments, in the Prayer-book of 1522 and in the Church-postils, Commentary on Galatians, etc. Books of instances such as those of Andreas Hondorf in 1568 and Wolfgang Büttner in 1576 made these things widely known. David Meder, Lutheran preacher at Nebra in Thuringia, in his “Eight witch-sermons” (1605), referred in the first sermon to the Table-Talk, also to Luther’s exposition of the Decalogue, to his Commentary on Genesis and his work “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen.” Bernard Albrecht, the Augsburg preacher, in his work on witches, 1628, G. A. Scribonius, J. C. Gödelmann and N. Gryse all did the same.

In what esteem Luther’s sayings were held by the Protestant lawyers is plain from certain memoranda of the eminent Frankfurt man of law, Johann Fischart, dating from 1564 and 1567. Fischart was against the “Witches’ Hammer” and the other Catholic productions of an earlier day, such as Nider’s “Formicarius,” yet he expresses himself in favour of the burning of witches and appeals on this point to Luther and his interpretation of Holy Scripture.

Holy Scripture and Luther were as a rule appealed to by the witch-zealots on the Protestant side, as is proved by the writings of Abraham Saur (1582) and Jakob Gräter (1589), of the preacher Nicholas Lotichius and Nicholas Krug (1567), of Frederick Balduin of Wittenberg (1628)—whose statements were accepted by the famous Saxon criminalogist Benedict Carpzov, who signed countless death sentences against witches—and by J. Volkmar Bechmann, the opponent of the Jesuit Frederick von Spee. We may pass over the many other names cited by N. Paulus with careful references to the writings in question.[1180]

It must be pointed out, however, that an increase in the severity of the penal laws against witches is first noticeable in the Saxon Electorate in 1572, when it was decreed that they should be burnt at the stake, even though they had done no harm to anyone, on account of their wicked compact with the devil.[1181] As early as 1540, at a time when elsewhere in Germany the execution of witches was of rare occurrence, four persons were burnt at Wittenberg on June 29 as witches or wizards.[1182] Shortly before this Luther had lamented that the plague of witches was again on the increase.[1183]

Even the Catholic clergy occasionally quoted Luther’s statements on witches, as given in his widely read Table-Talk; thus, for instance, Reinhard Lutz in his “True Tidings of the godless Witches” (1571).[1184] This writing, at the very beginning and again at the end, contains a passage from the Table-Talk dealing with witches, devils’ children, incubi and succubi; on the other hand, it fails to refer either to the “Witches’ Hammer” of 1487 or to the Bull, “Summis desiderantes,” of Innocent VIII (1484).

Thus the making of this regrettable mania was in great part Luther’s doing.[1185] And yet a reformer could have found no nobler task than to set to work to sweep away the abusive outgrowths of the belief in the devil’s power.

We still have instructive writings by Catholic authors of that day which, whilst by no means promoting the popular ideas concerning the devil, are unquestionably rooted in the Middle Ages. Such a work is the Catechism of Blessed Peter Canisius. One particular in which the “Larger” Canisian Catechism differs from Luther’s Larger German Catechism is, that, whereas in the latter the evil power of Satan over material things is dealt with at great length, the Catechism of Canisius says never a word on the material harm wrought by the devil. While Luther speaks of the devil sixty-seven times, Canisius mentions him only ten times. Canisius’s book was from the first widely known amongst German-speaking Catholics and served down to the last century for purposes of religious instruction.[1186] Though this is true of this particular book of Canisius, the influence of which was so far-reaching, it must in honesty be added that even a man like Canisius, both in his other writings and in his practical conduct, was not unaffected by the prevailing ideas concerning the devil.

Luther’s Devil-mania; its Connection with his Character and his Doctrine

Had Luther written his Catechism during the last period of his life he would undoubtedly have brought the diabolical element and his belief in witches even more to the fore. For, as has been pointed out (above, pp. 227, 238), Luther’s views on the power the devil possesses over mankind and over the whole world were growing ever stronger, till at last they came to colour everything great or small with which he had to deal; they became, in fact, to him a kind of fixed idea.

In his last year (1546), having to travel to Eisleben, he fancies so many fiends must be assembled there on his account, i.e. to oppose him, “that hell and the whole world must for the nonce be empty of devils.”[1187] At Eisleben he even believed that he had a sight of the devil himself.[1188]

Three years before this he complains that no one is strong enough in belief in the devil; the “struggle between the devils and the angels” affrights him; for it is to be apprehended that “the angels whilst fighting for us often get the worst for a time.”[1189] His glance often surveys the great world-combat which the few who believe wage on Christ’s side against Satan, and which has lasted since the dawn of history; now, at the very end of the world, he sees the result more clearly. Christ is able to save His followers from the devil’s claws only by exerting all His strength; they, like Luther, suffer from weakness of faith, just as Christ Himself did in the Garden of Olives(!); they, like Luther, stumble, because Christ loves to show Himself weak in the struggle with the devil; mankind’s and God’s rights have come off second best during the age-long contest with the devil. In Jewry, for which Luther’s hatred increases with age, he sees men so entirely delivered over to the service of the devil that “all the heathen in a lump” are simply nothing in comparison with the Jews; but even the “fury of the Jews is mere jest and child’s play” compared with the devilish corruption of the Papacy.

“The devil is there; he has great claws and whosoever falls into them him he holds fast, as they find to their cost in Popery. Hence let us always pray and fear God.” This in 1543.[1190] But we must also fear the devil, and very much too, for, as he solemnly declares in 1542: “Our last end is that we fear the devil”; for the worst sins are “delusions of the devil.”[1191] “The whole age is Satanic,”[1192] and the “activity of the devil is now manifest”; the speaker longs for “God at length to mock at Satan.”[1193] “The devil is all-powerful at present, several foreign kings are his train-bearers.... God Himself must come in order to resist the proud spirit.... Shortly Christ will make an end of his lies and murders.”[1194]

The whole of his work, the struggle for the Evangel, seems to him at times as one long wrestling with the boundless might of Satan.[1195] All his life, so he said in his old age, he had forged ahead “tempestuously” and “hit out with sledge-hammer blows”; but it was all against Satan. “I rush in head foremost, but ... against the devil.”[1196] As early as 1518, however, he knew the “thoughts of Satan.”[1197]

It is not difficult to recognise the different elements which, as Luther grew older, combined permanently to establish him in his devil-mania.

Apart from his peculiar belief in the devil, of which he was never to rid himself, there was the pessimism which loomed so large in his later years;[1198] there was also his habit of regarding himself and his work as the pet aversion and chief object of Satan’s persecution, for since, according to his own contention, his great struggle against Antichrist was in reality directed against the devil, the latter naturally endeavoured everywhere to bar his way. If great scandals arise as the result of his sermons, it is Satan who is to blame; “he smarts under the wounds he receives and therefore does he rage and throw everything into confusion.”[1199] The disorderly proceedings against the Catholics at Erfurt which brought discredit on his teaching were also due to the devil. The Wittenberg students who disgrace him are instigated by the devil. Dr. Eck was incited against him by Satan. The Catholic princes who resist him, like Duke George of Saxony, have at least a “thousand devils” who inspire them and assist them. Above all, it is the devil himself who delivers his oracles through the mouthpiece of those teachers of the innovations who differ from Luther, deluding them to such an extent that they lose “their senses and their reason.”[1200] If Satan can do nothing else against the Evangel he sends out noisy spirits so as to bolster up the heresy of the existence “of a Purgatory.”[1201]

Such ideas became so habitual with him, that, in later years, the conviction that the devil was persecuting his work developed into an abiding mania, drawing, as it were, everything else into its vortex.

Everywhere he hears behind him the footsteps of his old enemy, the devil.

“Satan has often had me by the throat.... He has frequently beset me so hard that I knew not whether I was dead or alive ... but with God’s Word I have withstood him.”[1202] He lies with me in my bed, so he says on one occasion; “he sleeps much more with me than my Katey.”[1203] His struggle with him degenerates into a hand-to-hand brawl, “I have to be at grips with him daily.”[1204] His pupils related, that on his own giving, when he was an old man “the devil had walked with him in the dormitory of the [former] monastery ... plaguing and tormenting him”; that “he had one or two such devils who were in the habit of lying in wait” for him, and, “that, when unable to get the better of his heart, they attacked and troubled his head.”[1205] Whether the narrators of these accounts are referring to actual apparitions or not does not much matter.

Later on, when dealing with his delusions, we shall have to speak of the diabolical apparitions Luther is supposed to have had. There is no doubt, however, that Luther’s first admirers took his statements concerning his experiences with the devil rather more seriously than he intended, as, for instance, when Cyriacus Spangenberg in his “Theander Lutherus”[1206] relates a disputation on the Winkle-Mass which he supposed Luther to have actually held with the devil, and even goes so far as to prove from the bruises which the devil in person inflicted on him that Luther was “really a holy martyr.”[1207] Even some of his opponents, like Cochlæus, fancied that because Luther said “in a sermon that he had eaten more than one mouthful of salt with the devil, he had therefore most probably been in direct communication with the devil himself, the more so since some persons were said to have seen the two hobnobbing together.”[1208] Here we shall merely point out generally that to Luther the power of Satan, his delusions and persecutions, were something that seemed very near,[1209] an uncanny feeling that increased as he grew older and as his physical strength gave out.

“The devil is now very powerful,” he says in 1540, “for he no longer deals with us through the agency of others, of Duke George, for instance, or the Englishman [Henry VIII], or of the Mayence fellow [Albert], but fights against us visibly. Against him we must pray diligently.”[1210] “Didn’t he even ride many grand and holy prophets. Was not David a great prophet? And yet even he was devil-ridden, and so was Saul and ‘Bileam’ too.”[1211]

We must, moreover, not overlook the link which binds Luther’s devil-mania to his doctrinal system as a whole, particularly to his teaching on the enslaved will and on justification.

Robbed of free-will for doing what is good, when once the devil assumes the mastery, man must needs endure his anger and perform his works. Luther himself found a cruel rider in the devil. Again, though man by the Grace of God is justified by faith, yet the old diabolical root of sin remains in him, for original sin persists and manifests itself in concupiscence, which is essentially the same thing as original sin. All acts of concupiscence are, therefore, sins, being works of our bondage under Satan; only by the free grace of Christ can they be cloaked over. The whole outer world which has been depraved by original sin is nothing but the “devil’s own den”; the devil stands up very close (“propinquissimus”)[1212] even to the pious, so that it is no wonder if we ever feel the working of the spirit of darkness. “Man must bear the image either of God or of the devil.” Created to the image of God he failed to remain true to it, but “became like unto the devil.”[1213]

Hence his doctrines explain how he expected every man to be so keenly sensible of “God’s wrath, the devil, death and hell”; everyone should realise that ours is “no real life, but only death, sin and power of the devil.”[1214] It is true that in his doctrine faith affords a man sufficient strength, and even makes him master of the devil; but, as he remarks, this is “in no wise borne out by experience and must be believed beforehand.” Meanwhile we are painfully “sensible” that we are “under the devil’s heel,” for the “world and what pertains to it must have the devil for its master, who also clings to us with all his might and is far stronger than we are; for we are his guests in a strange hostelry.”[1215]

The Weapons to be used against the Devil

On the fact that faith gives us strength against all Satanic influences Luther insists frequently and in the strongest terms.

He tries to find here a wholesome remedy against the fear that presses on him. He describes his own attempts to lay hold on it and to fill himself with Christ boldly and trustfully. Even in his last days such words of confidence occasionally pierce the mists of his depression. “We see well,” he says, “that when the devil attacks a [true] Christian he is put to shame, for where there is faith and confidence he has nothing to gain.” This he said in 1542 when relating the story of an old-time hermit who rudely accosted the devil as follows, when the latter sought to disturb him at his prayers: “Ah, devil, this serves you right! You were meant to be an angel and you have become a swine.”[1216]

“We must muster all our courage so as not to dread the devil.”[1217] We must “clasp the faith to our very bosom” and “cheerfully fling to the winds the apparitions of the spirits”; “they seek in vain to affright men.”[1218] Contempt of the devil and awakening of faith are, according to Luther, the best remedies against all assaults of the devil.[1219] A man who really has the faith may even set an example that others cannot imitate.[1220] Luther knows, for instance, of a doctor of medicine who with boundless faith stood up to Satan when the latter, horns and all, appeared to him; the brave man even succeeded in breaking off the horns; but, in a similar case, when another tried to do the same in a spirit of boasting, he was killed by Satan.[1221] Hence let us have faith, but let our faith be humble!

But, provided we have faith and rely on Christ, we may well show the devil our contempt for him, vex him and mock at his power and cunning. He himself, as he says, was given to breaking out into music and song, the better to show the devil that he despised him, for “our hymns are very galling to him”; on the contrary, he rejoices and has a laugh when we are upset and cry out “alas and alack!”[1222] To remain alone is not good. “This is what I do”; rather than be alone “I go to my swine-herd Johann or to see the pigs.”[1223]

In this connection Luther can tell some very coarse and vulgar jokes, both at his own and others’ expense, in illustration of the contempt which the devil deserves; they cannot here be passed over in silence.

Thus, on April 15, 1538, he relates the story of a woman of Magdeburg whom Satan vexed by running over her bed at night “like rats and mice. As he would not cease the woman put her a—— over the bedside, presented him with a f—— (if such language be permissible) and said: ‘There, devil, there’s a staff, take it in your hand and go pilgriming with it to Rome to the Pope your idol.’” Ever after the devil left her in peace, for “he is a proud spirit and cannot endure to be treated contemptuously.”[1224] According to Lauterbach, who gives the story in somewhat briefer form, Luther sapiently remarked: “Such examples do not always hold good, and are dangerous.”[1225]

He himself was nevertheless fond of expressing his contempt for the devil after a similar way when the latter assailed him with remorse of conscience.

“I can drive away the devil with a single f——.”[1226] “To shame him we may tell him: Kiss my a——”,[1227] or “Ease yourself into your shirt and tie it round your neck,” etc.[1228] On May 7, 1532, when troubled in mind and afraid lest “the thunder should strike him, he said: ‘Lick my a——, I want to sleep, not to hold a disputation.’”[1229] On another occasion he exclaims: “The devil shall lick my a—— even though I should have sinned.”[1230] When the devil teased him at night, “suggesting all sorts of strange thoughts to him,” he at last said to him: “Kiss me on the seat! God is not angry as you would have it.” Of course, seeing that the devil “‘fouls’ the knowledge of God,” he must expect to be “fouled” in his turn. Luther frequently said, so the Table-Talk relates, that he would end by sending “into his a—— where they belonged” those “twin devils” who were in the habit of prying on him and tormenting him mentally and bodily; for “they had brought him to such a pass that he was fit for nothing.”[1231] The Pope had once played him (Luther) the same trick: “He has stuck me into the devil’s behind”;[1232] “for I snap at the Pope’s ban and am his devil, therefore does he hate and persecute me.”[1233]

He relates, in May, 1532, according to Schlaginhaufen’s Notes, his method of dismissing the devil by the use of stronger and stronger hints: When the devil came to him at night in order to plague him, he first of all told him to let him sleep, because he must work during the day and needed all the rest he could get. Then, if Satan continued to upbraid him with his sins, he would answer mockingly that he had been guilty of a lot more sins which the devil had forgotten to mention, for instance, he had, etc. (there follows the choice simile of the shirt as given above); thirdly, “if he still goes on accusing me of sins I say to him contemptuously: ‘Sancte Satanas ora pro me; you have never done a wrong and you alone are holy; be off to God and get grace for yourself.’”[1234]

The way in which Bugenhagen or Pomeranus, the pastor of Wittenberg, with Luther’s fullest approval, drove the devil out of the butter churn (vol. iii., p. 229 f.) became famous at Wittenberg, and, thanks to the Table-Talk, elsewhere too. It may here be remarked that the incident was no mere joke. For when, in 1536, the question of the harm wrought by the witches was discussed amongst Luther’s guests, and Bartholomew Bernhardi, the Provost, complained that his cow had been bewitched for two years, so that he had been unable to get any milk from her, Luther related quite seriously what had taken place in Bugenhagen’s house. (“Then Pommer came to the rescue, scoffed at the devil and emptied his bowels into the churn,” etc.). According to Lauterbach’s “Diary” Luther returned to the incident in 1538 and stamped the whole proceeding with his approval: “Dr. Pommer’s plan is the best, viz. to plague them [the witches] with muck and stir it well up, for then all their things begin to stink.”[1235] What is even more remarkable than the strange practice itself is the way in which Luther comes to speak of “Pommer’s plan.” It is his intention to show that the method of combating witches had made progress since Catholic times. For, in Lauterbach, the passage runs: “The village clergy and schoolmasters had a plan of their own [for counteracting spells] and plagued them [the witches] not a little, but Dr. Pommer’s plan, etc. (as above).”[1236] Hence not only did Luther sanction the superstition of earlier ages, but he even sought to improve on it by the invention of new practices of his own.

Luther is also addicted to the habit dear to the German Middle Ages of using the devil as a comic figure; as he advanced in age, however, he tended to drop this habit and also the kindred one of chasing the devil away by filthy abuse; the truth is that the devil had now assumed in his eyes a grimmer and more tragic aspect.

Formerly he had been fond of describing in his joking way how the devil, “though he had never actually taken his doctor’s degree,”[1237] proved himself an “able logician” in his suggestions and disputations; when he brought forward objections Luther would reply: “Devil, tell me something new; what you say I already know.”[1238] In his book on the “Winkle-Mass,” pretending to “make a little confession,” he tells how, “on one occasion, awakening at midnight,” the devil began a disputation against the Mass with the words: “Hearken, oh most learned Doctor, are you aware that for some fifteen years you said such Winkle-Masses nearly every day?”[1239] Whereupon he had “seized on the old weapons” which “in Popery he had learnt to put on and to use” and had sought an excuse. “To this the devil retorted: ‘Friend, tell me where this is written, etc.’”[1240] Formerly he had been fond of poking fun at the Papists by telling them how they “were beset merely by naughty little devils, legal rather than theological ones;[1241] that they were tempted only to homicide, adultery and fornication,” in short, to sins of the second table of the Law, by “puny fiendkins and little petty devils,” whereas we on the other hand have “by us the great devils who are doctores theologiæ”; “these attack us as the leaders of the army, for they tempt us to the great sins against the first table,” to question the forgiveness of sins, to doubts against faith and to despair.[1242]

He was very inventive and quite indefatigable in devising new epithets with the help of the devil’s name; his adversaries were, according to him, “full of devils, on whose backs moreover lived other and worse devils”; it seems to him to fall all too short of the truth to say they are “endevilled,” “perdevilled,” or “superdevilled” and “the children of Satan.”[1243] The devil’s mother, grandmother and brothers and sisters are frequently alluded to by Luther, particularly when in a merry mood. In hours of gloom or emotion he could, however, curse people with such words as “may the devil take you,”[1244] “May the devil pay you out,” or “May he tread you under foot!”

He was perfectly aware, nevertheless, of the failings of his tongue, and even expressed his regret for them to his friends. During his illness, in 1527, we are told how he begged pardon for and bewailed the “hasty and inconsiderate words he had often used the better to dispel the sadness of a weak flesh.”[1245]

Melancholy is “a devil’s bath” (“balneum diaboli”), so he remarked on another occasion, against which there is no more effective remedy than cheerfulness of spirit.[1246]

5. The Psychology of Luther’s Jests and Satire

Joking was a permanent element of Luther’s psychology. Often, even in his old age, his love of fun struggles through the lowering clouds of depression and has its fling against the gloomy anxiety that fills his mind, and against the world and the devil.

Gifted with a keen sense of the ridiculous, it had been, in his younger days, almost a second nature to him to delight in drollery and particularly to clothe his ideas in playful imagery. His mind was indeed an inexhaustible source of rich and homely humour.

Nature had indeed endowed Luther from his cradle with that rare talent of humour which, amidst the trials of life, easily proves more valuable than a gold mine to him who has it. During his secular studies at Erfurt he had been able to give full play to this tendency as some relief after the hardships of early days. His preference for Terence, Juvenal, Plautus and Horace amongst the classic poets leads us to infer that he did so; and still more does Mathesius’s description, who says that, at that time, he was a “brisk and jolly fellow.” Monastic life and, later, his professorship and the strange course on which he entered must for a while have placed a rein on his humour, but it broke out all the more strongly when be brought his marvellous powers of imagination and extraordinary readiness in the use of the German tongue to the literary task of bringing over the masses to his new ideas.

Anyone desirous of winning the hearts of the German masses has always had to temper earnestness with jest, for a sense of humour is part of the nation’s birthright. The fact that Luther touched this chord was far more efficacious in securing for him loud applause and a large following than all his rhetoric and theological arguments.

Humour in his Writings and at his Home

It was in his polemics that Luther first turned to account his gift of humour; his manner of doing so was anything but refined.

The first of his German controversial works against a literary opponent was his “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome wider dem hochberumpten Romanisten tzu Leiptzk”[1247] (the Franciscan Alveld or Alfeld), dating from May and June, 1520. Here he starts with a comical description of the “brave heroes in the market place at Leipzig, so well armed as we have never seen the like before. Their helmets they wear on their feet, their swords on their heads, their shields and breastplates hang down their back, and their lances they grip by the blade.... If Leipzig can produce such giants then that land must indeed be fertile.” On the last page of the same writing he puts the concluding touch to his work by telling Alveld, the “rude miller’s beast,” that he does “not yet know how to bray his hee-haw, hee-haw”; were I, says Luther, “to permit all the wantonness of these thick-heads even the very washerwomen would end by writing against me.” “What really helps it if a poor frog [like this fellow] blows himself out? Even were he to swell himself out to bursting-point he would never equal an ox.”

In his first German booklet against Emser, viz. his “An den Bock zu Leyptzck” (1521),[1248] he plays on the motto of Emser’s coat-of-arms “Beware of the goat.” There was really no call for Emser to inscribe these words on his note-paper, for from his whole behaviour there was no doubt that he was indeed a goat, and also that he could “do no more than butt.” Luther’s reply to all his threats would be: “Dear donkey, don’t lick! But God save the poor nanny-goats, whose horns are wrapped in silk, from such a he-goat; as for me, so God wills, there is no fear. Have you never heard the fable of the ass who tried to roar as loud as the lion? I myself might have been afraid of you had I not known you were an ass,” etc.

It is certainly not easy to believe his assertion, that it was only against his will that he had recourse to all this derision which he heaped on his adversaries in religious matters of such vital importance. He has it that his words, “though maybe biting and sarcastic,” are really “spoken from a heart that is breaking with grief and has been obliged to turn what is serious into abuse.”[1249] As a matter of fact the temptation to use just such weapons was too great, and the prospect of success too alluring for us to place much reliance in such an assurance. His “grief” was of quite another kind.

At a later date his humour, or rather his caustic and satirical manner of treating his opponents, looked to him so characteristic of his way of writing, that as he said, it would be quite easy to tell at a glance which were the polemical tracts due to his pen, even though they did not bear his name. This was his opinion of his “satirical list” of the relics of the Cardinal of Mayence.[1250] Writing of this work to his friend Jonas he says: “Whoever reads it and has ever been familiar with my ideas and my pen will say: Here is Luther; the Cardinal too will say: This is the work of that scamp Luther!... But never mind; if they pipe then I insist on dancing, and, if I survive, I hope one day to tread a measure with the bride of Mayence [the Cardinal].” He had still “some sweet tit-bits” which he would like “to lay on her red and rosy lips.”[1251] This last quotation may serve as a specimen of the rough humour found in his controversial letters.

The reader already knows how the Papacy had to bear the brunt of such jests and of an irony which often descends to the depths of vulgarity. (Above, vol. iii., p. 232-235; vol. iv., pp. 295 f., 304 f, 318 ff.)

But it was not only in his polemics that his jests came in useful. The jovial tone which often characterises his domestic life, the humour that seasons his Table-talk (even though too often it oversteps the bounds of the permissible) and makes itself felt even in his business letters and intimate correspondence with friends, appears as Luther’s almost inseparable companion, with whose smile and whose caustic irony he cannot dispense.

The monotony and the hardships of his daily life were alleviated by his cheerfulness. His intercourse with friends and pupils was rendered more stimulating and attractive, and in many cases more useful. Under cover of a jest he was often able to enforce good instruction more easily and almost without its being noticed. His cheerful way of looking at things often enabled Luther lightheartedly to surmount difficulties from which others would have shrunk.

There is not the slightest doubt that his extraordinary influence over those who came into contact with him was due in no small part to his kindly addiction to pleasantry. It was indeed no usual thing to see such mighty energy as he devoted to the world-struggle, so agreeably combined with a keen gift of observation, with an understanding for the most trivial details of daily life, and, above all, with such refreshing frankness and such a determination to amuse his hearers.

In order to dispel the anxiety felt by Catherine Bora during her husband’s absence, he would send her letters full of affection and of humorous accounts of his doings. He tells her, for instance, how, in consequence of her excessive fears for him “which hindered her from sleeping,” everything about him had conspired to destroy him; how a fire “at our inn just next door to our room” had tried to burn him, how a heavy rock had fallen in order to kill him; “the rock really had a mind to justify your solicitude, but the holy angels prevented it.”[1252] In such cheerful guise does he relate little untoward incidents. “You try to take care of your God,” he writes to her in a letter already quoted, “just as though He were not Almighty and able to create ten Dr. Martins were the old one to be drowned in the Saale, suffocated in the coal-hole, or eaten up by the wolf.”[1253]

He was also joking, when, about the same time, i.e. during his stay with the Counts of Mansfeld, he used the words which recently were taken all too seriously by a Catholic polemist and made to constitute a charge against Luther’s morals: “At present, thank God, I am well, only that I am so beset by pretty women as once more to fear for my chastity.”[1254]

The irony with which he frequently speaks and writes of both himself and his friends is often not free from frivolity; we may recall, for instance, his ill-timed jest concerning his three wives;[1255] or his report to Catherine from Eisleben: “On the whole we have enough to gorge and swill, and should have a jolly time were this tiresome business to let us.”[1256] The last passage reminds us of his words elsewhere: I feed like a Bohemian and swill like a German.[1257] Among other jests at Catherine’s expense we find in the Table-Talk the threat that soon the time will come when “we men shall be allowed several wives,” words which perhaps are a humorous echo of the negotiations concerning the Hessian bigamy.[1258]

Now and again Luther, by means of his witticisms, tried to teach his wife some wholesome lessons. The titles by which he addresses her may have been intended as delicate hints that her management of the household was somewhat lordly and high-handed: My Lord Katey, Lord Moses, my Chain (Kette) (“catena mea”). To seek to infer from this that she was a “tyrant,” or to see in it an admission on his part that he was but her slave, would be as mistaken as to be shocked at his manner of addressing her elsewhere in his letters, e.g. “to the holy, careful lady, the most holy lady Doctor; to my beloved lady Doctor Self-martyr; to the deeply-learned Lady Catherine,” etc.

It has already been pointed out that many of the misunderstandings of which Luther’s opponents were guilty are due to their inability to appreciate his humour; they were thereby led to take seriously as indicative of “unbelief,” statements which in reality were never meant in earnest.[1259] On the other hand, however, certain texts and explanations of Luther’s have, on insufficient grounds, been taken as humorous even by Protestant writers, often because they seemed in some way to cast a slur upon his memory. For instance, his interpretation of the Monk-Calf was quite obviously never intended as a joke,[1260] nor can it thus be explained away as some have recently tried to do. Nor, again, to take an example from Luther’s immediate circle, can Amsdorf’s offer of the nuns in marriage to Spalatin [1261] be dismissed as simply a broad piece of pleasantry.

Humour a Necessity to Luther in his Struggle with Others and with Himself

There can be no doubt that a remarkable psychological feature is afforded by the combination in Luther of cheerfulness with intense earnestness in work, indeed the persistence of his humour even in later years when gloom had laid a firm hold on his soul constitutes something of a riddle; for even the sufferings of the last period of his life did not avail to stifle his love of a joke, though his jests become perhaps less numerous; they serve, however, to conceal his sadder feelings, a fact which explains why he still so readily has recourse to them.

First of all, a man so oppressed with inner difficulties and mental exertion as Luther was, felt sadly the need of relaxation and amusement. His jests served to counteract the strain, physical and mental, resulting from the rush of literary work, sermons, conferences and correspondence. In this we have but a natural process of the nervous system.

A further explanation of his cheerfulness is, however, to be found in the wish to prove against his own misgivings and his theological opponents how joyous and confident he was at heart concerning his cause.