Triumphant in his return to Wittenberg in the spring of 1522 and securely established as leader of the Reformation, Luther settled in at his old quarters on the second floor in the Black Cloister residence hall of the Augustinian Monastery. He lived with another monk and a single personal assistant, who was also one of Luther’s students. He happily resumed his duties as priest at the Castle Church, and as professor of theology and biblical studies at the university. He was paid a modest annual salary of 200 gulden, and received a small honorarium for delivering additional lectures.
He continued his work with remarkable energy and devotion, preaching twice each Sunday, and twice more during the week, usually focusing on a single book of the Bible or one of the Ten Commandments. Once each week Luther spoke to a select group of friends and associates he called his “familiar colloquium.” These private lectures, beginning with the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, were later published as commentaries. Luther preached, exhorted, wrote, prayed, and counseled his parishioners, and reveled in the hard work. “My bed was not made up for a whole year,” he said, “and became foul with sweat. But I worked all day, and was so tired at night that I fell into bed without knowing that anything was amiss.”1 For relaxation he found time in the evenings to play an occasional game of chess, or strum on his lute. He had a small single-lane bowling alley installed on the side of his hall. Since the fifth century, Germans had played the game as part of a religious ritual: the number of pins knocked down reduced the penance owed for sins. Now, the nine pins representing devils and demons, or papal officials—to Luther they were the same thing—and he enjoyed knocking them down with rounded rocks or balls. He loved to have company for dinner, usually university colleagues and students, with whom he could enjoy hearty foods and dark beer. “I eat like a Bohemian and drink like a German,” he said, “thank God, Amen.”2
Luther was in great demand all across Germany, and his popularity was matched only by his influence. He lived in open defiance of the Edict of Worms, for the authorities, fearful of renewed protest, did not dare arrest him. In May he went on another speaking tour, visiting Altenberg, Borna, Eilenberg, Torgau, and Zwickau. Overflow crowds, often numbering in the tens of thousands, filled churches, city halls, and town squares. Everyone, it seemed, was anxious to see and hear the man who had challenged Rome and whose messages had changed their lives. Luther was confident, he said, that his listeners knew they could not rely on good works for their salvation. But did they understand the importance of love? “Without love,” he said, “faith is nothing. As St. Paul says, ‘if I had the tongues of angels and could speak of the highest things on faith, and have not love, I am nothing.’” Luther also insisted upon patience in reform, for some things were moving too fast, or worse, superficially. “There are some who can run,” he said, “while others must walk, and still others can hardly creep.” Still he enjoyed blasting the Roman Church and ridiculing papal traditions, rules, and customs that detracted from the true essence of Christianity. “No, my dear friends,” he said, “the kingdom of God does not consist in outward things, which can be touched or perceived, but in faith.” And he continued to reject the idea that only a pope could tell him how to be a faithful Christian. “I refuse to go to confession simply because the Pope has commanded it and insists upon it,” he said. “For I wish him to keep his hands off confession…. I will not let private confession be taken from me. But I will not have anybody forced to it.”3
Martin Luther, the German Hercules (courtesy Stiftung Luthergedenkstätten in Sachsen-Anhalt).
Sometimes local orthodox bishops arranged rallies and special masses to counter Luther’s personal appearances in their towns, but attendance was sparse. Luther’s followers came to him for more than just his views on theology, justification, and salvation. He was asked about everything: politics, government, civic affairs, taxation, interest rates, agriculture, marriage, family. A Swiss university student wrote, “As far as one can tell from his face, the man is kind, gentle and cheerful. His voice is sweet and sonorous so that I am struck by the sweet speaking of the man. Everyone, even though not Saxon, who hears him once, desires to hear him again, such tenacious hooks does he fix in the minds of his listeners.”4 Another admirer gushed, “He combines heaven and earth into one morsel when he speaks.”5 Luther was a celebrity with no equal in Germany, and in all of Europe as well.
The writing flowed. Luther was appalled at the “deplorable, wretched deprivation” of basic biblical knowledge many Saxons exhibited.6 This was not their fault, he said however, for they had never been properly instructed. At the heart of Luther’s theology was each believer’s personal connection to God. Prayer was an indispensable feature of faith, and Luther meant to teach believers how to pray; so in 1522 he wrote a small tract called A Little Prayer Book. Luther hoped that the common man and woman would benefit from basic guidance on the utility of prayer (he continued to pray earnestly, several times each day, as he had learned in monk’s training). Catholic prayer books were not uncommon in medieval days, and were in fact quite popular with the small percentage of the population that was “devout and literate.” These books, the Church taught, were to be “regarded as essential for any layman who wished to save his soul, and often promised forgiveness, and indulgences from the pains of purgatory, as well as other rewards such as protection in childbirth and at the time of death for those who used them.”7 But of course Luther disapproved of such dogma. Luther’s prayer book was written with the aim of reforming orthodox books on prayer. In a cover letter that accompanied the book’s release, Luther wrote that Catholic prayer books “need a thorough reformation if not total extermination…. To begin with, I offer this simple Christian form of prayer and mirror for recognizing sin, based on the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments.”8 A Little Prayer Book became one of Luther’s most acclaimed and enduring works.
Luther’s book was a guidebook to the essential components of the Christian faith. The book had three components. First, the Ten Commandments, God’s eternal and compelling instructions that told man what he should and shouldn’t do. Next, the Christian Creed, which pointed the believer to God, served as an expression of belief in the Holy Trinity, and made clear the everlasting grace and mercy given through Christ. Finally, the Lord’s Prayer (the “Our Father” or Paternoster), which teaches that everything man could want and need would be provided by God. In these three components Luther found the summarized content of the entire Bible. (Later editions of his Prayer Book would include meditations on the Psalms, selected epistles, and the story of the Passion.) Luther’s book was meant to memorialize and sustain faith, and his emphases are still vital for much of the Christian Church today.
For Luther everything came from faith, and faith alone (sola fides). Faith assured salvation. From faith came love, and love brought about good works—there was no greater commandment, Christ had said, than “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In writing his prayer book, Luther noted that while the Christian could never know the doctrines well enough, prayer would provide all the assistance he might need. Later he would develop his prayer book further into a “catechism”—a book of questions and answers on the fundamentals of the faith. He wrote, “There are still many benefits and fruits to be gained, if it is daily read and practiced in thought and speech. For example, the Holy Spirit is present in such reading, repetition and mediation. He bestows ever new and more light and devoutness. In this way the catechism is daily loved and appreciated better.”9 His book differed from Catholic prayer books in one other respect: it actually omitted most prepared prayers. Luther said, “You will never pray well from a book. You may certainly read it and learn how and what you should pray for, and it may kindle the desire in you. But prayer must come freely from the heart, without any made-up or prescribed words, and it must itself form the words that are burning in the heart.”10 A Little Prayer Book became a milestone of evangelical piety.
Luther proudly noted that his prayer book was free from all papal influence, and not “puffed up with promises of indulgences.”11 But it did include comments which, even today, stir controversy between Protestants and Catholics. As regards the Virgin Mary, Luther wrote, “She is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin—something exceedingly great. For God’s grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil.” Luther’s preferred that the saying of the rosary be eliminated. He could tolerate it, however, if the Christian kept Mary’s role in proper perspective. Luther explained that “what the Hail Mary says is that all glory should be given to God, using these words: ‘Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus Christ. Amen!’ You see that these words are not concerned with prayer but purely with giving praise and honor. We can use the Hail Mary as a meditation in which we recite what grace God has given her. Second, we should add a wish that everyone may know and respect her…. He who has no faith is advised to refrain from saying the Hail Mary.”12 Luther’s views on the Virgin Mary, deeply rooted in his Augustinian training, would continue to evolve.
Luther’s A Little Prayer Book was immensely popular, quickly moving through nine editions in 1522 alone, fifteen more before the decade was over, and thirty-five in Luther’s lifetime.13 Prayer remained central to his theology, and he would have much more to say about it in years to come. In the book’s preface he wrote that “I just don’t have the time to undertake such a reformation; it is too much for me alone. So until God gives me more time and grace, I will limit myself to the exhortation in this book.”14 Luther would revisit the topic of prayer several more times in the remaining twenty-four years of his life. He would publish his Booklet for Laity and Children in 1525, the Large and Small Catechisms in 1529, and A Simple Way to Pray for a Good Friend in 1535, among others. Theological historian William R. Russell notes that Luther saw prayer and catechism as inseparable: prayer enacts doctrine, and doctrine informs prayer. The two were intertwined, meaningless one without the other, “like two chambers of a single heart working together to give life to [Luther’s] understanding of evangelical theology.”15 In this sense, prayer stood at the center of Luther’s Reformation.
Luther continued to attack the Catholic Church. Anxious to rid communities and churches of Roman control, he wrote that congregations had the right to appoint their own ministers.16 Another pamphlet exposed the sexual hypocrisy of Church leaders. Bishops, Luther noted, received substantial funds because of the dalliances of priests, who paid one gulden each year per mistress they kept. These arrangements were commonplace, and Luther mocked the open secrets by quoting the “proverb” that acknowledged them: “Chaste priests are not liked by the Bishop—indeed they are his enemies.”17 This tract too was a bestseller.
When his opponents attacked him, Luther scoffed. In an essay called A Letter of Consolation to all who Suffer Persecution he wrote, “They threaten us with death. If they were as smart as they are stupid, they would threaten us with life.”18 When two reform Augustinians were burned at the stake in Brussels, Luther grieved for them but wished he had been in their place. “I thought I would be the first to be martyred for the sake of this holy gospel,” he wrote, “but I am not worthy of it.”19 He seemed to relish the idea that more martyrs would be forthcoming and said as much in Letter to the Christians in the Netherlands. He was inspired by the two monks and wrote his first hymn about them.20 His lyrics celebrated the men’s death, for they had died in defense of the gospel:
Leave all their ashes never will,
Into all lands they scatter;
Stream, hole, ditch, grave—naught keeps them still
With shame the foe they spatter.21
The next few years saw the release of even more of Luther’s works. Though still very much a single man, his writing often concerned marriage and family. He disapproved of the legal system regarding marriage that the Church had developed over the centuries. He believed that these rules of canon law—who could marry, and when, and how—were not founded on Scripture. He found such a basis in Leviticus, however, and contemplated to what extent these Old Testament laws ought to be followed. He compromised, ultimately holding that Levitical law set up natural law guidelines, and wrote accordingly. Natural law, Luther believed, consists of an objective and universal moral code, embedded in human nature and common to humanity. While not a sacrament, Luther wrote, he saw marriage as a great and mysterious thing, “divine in its source, but worldly in its sphere.”22 He believed that God was pleased when a man and a woman married, and he believed that it was the duty of married couples to have children and rear them properly. Luther worried that refusal to marry might lead to sexual sin or depravity. The union between man and woman was both a natural and divine right. Vows of celibacy were human inventions, and therefore non-binding—for priests, monks, nuns, and even the pope’s crusaders, the celebrated Teutonic Knights.23 He watched with some satisfaction as monks and priests broke their vows of celibacy and celebrated their freedom with public weddings. As he approved of marriage for all, Luther also seemed to approve divorce, when adultery, abandonment, or impotence were present.
Luther was willing to take on any subject in his work. He wrote of the Christian’s duty to comply with government, and of the necessity for citizens to provide for the disadvantaged. He encouraged Protestant education and took on banks and lending houses. Indifferent to money and ignorant of all but basic medieval economic practices, Luther believed that greed was a sin, that avarice was the Devil’s work, and that using money to make more money (“Zinskauf”) was evil. He saw little value in wealth and viewed the pursuit of wealth as a waste of time and talent. With this basis, of course, he disdained all of the Church’s efforts in that regard.24
Responding to the papal accusation that he did not believe that Jesus was born to a virgin, Luther produced a tract called That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew. He asserted his belief—a basic tenet of Christianity—that Christ was the Messiah as foretold in the Old Testament. The topic also allowed Luther to condemn persecution of Jews in Europe (many Catholics and Protestants alike believed that Jews were unclean and in league with Satan). Luther wrote:
If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian. They have dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs rather than human beings; they have done little else than deride them and seize their property…. If the apostles, who also were Jews, had dealt with us Gentiles as we Gentiles deal with the Jews, there would never have been a Christian among the Gentiles…. When we are inclined to boast of our position [as Christians] we should remember that we are but Gentiles, while the Jews are of the lineage of Christ. We are aliens and in-laws; they are blood relatives, cousins, and brothers of our Lord. Therefore, if one is to boast of flesh and blood the Jews are actually nearer to Christ than we are…. If we really want to help them, we must be guided in our dealings with them not by papal law but by the law of Christian love. We must receive them cordially, and permit them to trade and work with us, that they may have occasion and opportunity to associate with us, hear our Christian teaching, and witness our Christian life. If some of them should prove stiff-necked, what of it? After all, we ourselves are not all good Christians either.25
Originally optimistic that Jews would convert to Christianity after the truth of his Reformation was revealed to them, Luther’s attitude—and public writings—towards Jews would change dramatically in later years.
Gutenberg’s printing press led to a large increase in printed literature, and over 150,000 items were printed in Germany in the 16th century. But sales of Luther’s works—or works inspired by Luther—dwarfed all others. Nearly one thousand books were published in Germany in 1522; four-fifths of those were sympathetic to the Reformation. Some six thousand pamphlets—sermons, essays, and letters meant for public consumption—were printed in the first ten years of the Reformation; more than one-quarter of those were Luther’s. When Church authorities and local governments advised that it was illegal to print Lutheran matters, printers complained that without Luther they would have no businesses at all. Their customers, they said, were not interested in Catholic publications: “what they have in over-abundance is desired by no one and cannot even be given away.”26 A book might take several weeks to produce, while a 6m × 9m pamphlet could be printed in two days. Editions were generally produced in batches of 1,000. Printers in other towns eagerly reprinted their own copies for sale. A pamphlet cost one Pfennig (about the same as a chicken), and was sold in large cities and small towns, at markets and fairs, by bookshop owners and traveling peddlers. Preachers gladly passed out copies, or sold them cheaply. “Luther’s books were everywhere,” wrote the Dutch humanist theologian Erasmus. “No one would believe how widely he has moved men.”27
Gutenberg printing press displayed at St. Augustine Monastery, Erfurt (courtesy Erfurt Evangelical Augustinian Monastery).
The printed word was illuminated by woodcuts or carvings. Bold graphics accompanied the text of books and pamphlets, and were sometimes printed as broadsheets. Luther was aware of the value of illustration. “Without images we can neither think nor understand anything,” he said. Many woodcuts were produced by famed printmaker and portraitist Hans Holbein of Augsburg, and by Luther’s close friend, the Wittenberg artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. The messages of these woodcuts were easily conveyed to the illiterate and served as visual aids for preachers. One series of images called “Passional Christi und Antichristi” (“Passion Book of Christ and Antichrist”), for example, contrasted the piety of the Lord against the decadence and corruption of the pope. Many woodcuts portrayed Luther as the German Hercules crushing his papal opponents and causing Satan to flee in shame. Others were far more crude and, at times, astonishingly graphic. “The Origin of the Monks,” for example, depicted three devils excreting a pile of orthodox monks. In another, called “The Papal Belvidere (Beautiful View), or “Kissing the Pope’s Feet,” a group of peasants scornfully receive a papal bull with sneers and farts. The caption reads: ‘The Pope speaks: Our sentences are to be feared, even if unjust.’ Peasant Response: ‘Be damned! Behold, o furious race, our bared buttocks. Here, Pope, is my ‘Belvidere.’“
Luther’s opponents attempted to counter his popularity with illustrations of their own. While the Church did not have, at least in Germany, an artist as renowned and beloved as Lucas Cranach the elder, several well-known illustrators, including Martin Eisengrein and Johan Jakob Rabus, carried out the propaganda work of the pope.28 One woodcut entitled “Luther’s Game of Heresy” shows him stirring a pot of stew to a boil, assisted by devils. The fumes of the stew are labeled falsehood, unbelief, pride, envy, scandal, disobedience, contempt, heresy, blasphemy, unchastity, fleshly freedom, disorder, and disloyalty.29 The illustration purported to reestablish that the Church held supreme power, and that it was Luther, not the pope, who associated with Satan. On the whole, however, the Church’s propaganda was far less effective than that of the reformers, owing both to Luther’s unprecedented popularity and the widespread contempt of Rome he had inspired.
The fine arts had its role in the wave of reform media and propaganda. Hans Sachs was a shoemaker from Nuremberg who wrote more than 6,000 poems and songs, earning him the title of Meisterlieder (master songster). Caught up in the tide of the Reformation, in 1523 Sachs wrote a poem in honor of his hero Luther, “The Nightingale of Wittenberg, Which is Heard Everywhere,” which became a national sensation. The Nuremburg council at first forbade Sachs from publishing further, but quickly realized the futility of the action and rescinded the ban.
Music was a popular method of spreading the reform message. Often, lyrics or poems were circulated from town to town via pamphlet or broadside, and were then set to the melody of traditional folk songs, a method known as contrafacta. One common theme centered on an idea called verkehrte, or, the world turned upside down: because of Luther, nothing was as it seemed, or as it used to be, and spiritual leaders had become transgressors. Another theme characterized the pope as Lucifer, or the antichrist. Using this message, Luther wrote a poem called “Nun treiben wir den Pabst hinaus” (“Now we drive out the Pope”). When set to music, his words became lyrics:
Now we drive out the pope
from Christ’s church and God’s house.
Therein he has reigned in a deadly fashion
and has seduced unaccountably many souls.
Now move along, you damned son,
you Whore of Babylon.
You are the abomination and the Antichrist,
full of lies, death and cunning.
Your indulgence, bull and decree,
now they receive their seal in the toilet.
Thereby you stole the good from the world,
and defiled Christ’s blood as well.
The Roman idol is cast out.
We accept the true pope.
He is God’s Son, the Rock and Christ
on whom His church is built.
He is the sweet highest Priest,
who was sacrificed on the Cross.
He shed His blood for our sins,
true indulgence flowed from his wounds.
He rules His church through his word,
God the Father Himself invests Him with power.
He is the head of Christianity,
to Him be all praise and glory for eternity.
As dear summer goes past,
grant us Christians joy and peace.
Give us a fruitful year, Lord,
and preserve us from pope and Turks.30
While the content of Luther’s reform messages was eagerly embraced by his audiences, he ingeniously included another component of persuasion. In the prefaces to his works, he urged his readers to discuss the contents with others and read them aloud to the illiterate. In this way Luther’s works were read in homes, discussed in shops, and debated in taverns. They were read in “spinning bees in Saxony and bakeries in Tyrol,” church historian John A. Hartmann described. “In some cases entire guilds of weavers or leather-workers in particular towns declared themselves supporters of the Reformation, indicating that Luther’s ideas were being propagated in the workplace.” It was said that “better sermons could be heard in the inns of Ulm than in its churches.”31
Before Luther’s death in 1546, more than three million copies of his writings, excluding his Bible translations, were printed. Luther’s popularity as a writer was even more impressive considering the fact that the Edict of Worms had banned the sale and ownership of his books.32 The Edict had warned that the spread of Luther’s message must be prevented, otherwise “the whole German nation, and later all other nations, will be infected by this same disorder.” But it was too late—the infection had taken hold in Germany and beyond. Thanks in large part to the printing press, much of Germany had become Protestant; or more specifically, Lutheran. As Will Durant puts it, “Printing was the Reformation. Gutenberg made Luther possible.”33
This massive popularity of Luther’s works in the 1520s showed Rome there would be no stopping the Reformation movement in Germany. Andrew Pettegree, noted Reformation scholar at St. Andrews University, calls it the “Culture of Persuasion.” He writes, “It was the superabundance, the cascade of titles that created the impression of an overwhelming tide, an unstoppable movement of opinion…. Pamphlets and their purchasers had together created the impression of irresistible force.”34
*
For all of Luther’s accomplishments, perhaps his most important contribution to the Reformation was his translation of the Bible from Greek and Hebrew to German. He had completed a first draft of the New Testament while at the Wartburg, but now, upon his return to Wittenberg, he set out to revise and polish it. Already he had acquired a complete Latin Bible from the University Library at Erfurt, and he continued to improve his understanding of the original languages of the Scriptures. His working knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was moderate at best, however, so he enlisted the assistance of his friend Melanchthon, who was an accomplished Greek scholar, and also sought the advice of Erfurt’s Professor George Sturz and his old confidant Spalatin.
Translation involved new tongues as well as old, so Luther took to the streets and fields of central Saxony and studied the characteristics of the German vernacular. He intended that his New Testament be read and understood by his people, the German people, and so he “looked them on the mouth.”35 He visited with peasants in the field and mothers in their homes. He listened to tradesman and artisans in their shops, and to butchers, shoemakers, and blacksmiths. He drew on the rhythm and cadence of the people, following his own love of poetry and music. While painstakingly mindful of the original biblical text, Luther wanted his translation to acknowledge how German people spoke in their homes, their marketplaces, their streets and fields. He wanted the people to be able to relate to Holy Scripture. In a country where different German dialects were spoken in different regions—so much so that some people struggled to understand others—Luther’s goal was a lofty one; he meant to equip every German-speaking Christian with the ability to hear and understand the Word of God.
Luther compared his translation work to that of teaching a bird to sing a new song. “Oh God,” he said, “What great and hard toil it requires to compel the writers against their will to speak German. They do not want to give up their Hebrew … just as though a nightingale should be compelled to imitate a cuckoo and give up her glorious melody, even though she hates a song in monotone.” Luther’s efforts brought a rare display of humility. “I have undertaken to translate the Bible into German,” he said. “This was good for me; otherwise I might have died in the mistaken notion that I was a learned fellow.”36 Luther was meticulous in his work. While translating, he spoke his sentences out loud, so that the cadence would be satisfactory. Luther wanted his translation to “ring through all the senses into the heart” so that those hearing it might “rightly conceive of the word[s] and the feeling behind [them].”37 He hoped that people would look to the Bible “so that we might seize and taste the clear, pure Word of God itself and hold to it, for there alone God dwells in Zion.”38 He knew that some in his audience might be skeptical. “Then they began to say: ‘Yes, but how can we know what God’s Word is, and what is right or wrong? We must learn this from the Pope and the councils.’ Very well then, let them conclude and say what they please, yet I will reply, you cannot put your confidence in that nor thus satisfy your conscience, for you must determine this matter yourself, for your very life depends upon it. Therefore God must speak to your heart: This is God’s Word; otherwise you are undecided.” Luther wanted Protestants to experience what he had experienced. “The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me.”39
Luther took liberties in his work. He arranged the books in a different order than they appeared in the Vulgate Bible. He separated Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation from the other books. He named John as the most important of the gospels, “the one, fine, true, and chief gospel, far superior to the other three,” because it contained the passage “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever shall believe on Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16). He listed Paul’s epistles—particularly Romans—among the “truest and noblest” books. This was no surprise, for it was Paul who proclaimed the basis for Luther’s entire theology: He who through faith is just shall live. And because the book of James seemed to “have nothing of the nature of the gospel in it,” he considered it to be “an epistle of straw,” and wished that it had not even been included in the Bible. Luther also criticized the mysterious book of Revelation, for it was neither gospel nor faith-based. Still, he invited others to disagree. “I leave everyone free to hold his own opinions,” he wrote. “I would not have anyone bound to my opinion or judgment. I say what I feel.”40
Luther sent the initial New Testament proofs to Spalatin, his “foretaste of our new Bible,” he called it, and it met with enthusiastic approval. Luther’s final version was delivered to Wittenberg printer Hans Lufft, who, anticipating high demand, employed two other local printers and generated an initial press of three thousand copies. Luther’s Das Neue Testament was released in September 1522 to tremendous acclaim. It was “a noble monument of literature, a vast enterprise,” writes theologian William R. Russell. “The poetic soul finds in this translation evidence of genius and expressions as natural, as beautiful, and melodious as in the original languages.”41 Even Johan Cochlaeus, the dean of the Liebfrauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) in Frankfurt and one of Luther’s most outspoken critics, recognized the work’s power. “Even tailors and shoemakers, yea, even women and ignorant persons who had accepted this new Lutheran gospel, and could read a little German, studied it with the greatest avidity as the fountain of all truth,” he wrote. “Some committed it to memory, and carried it about in their bosom. In a few months such people deemed themselves so learned that they were not ashamed to dispute about faith and the gospel not only with Catholic laymen, but even with priests and monks and doctors of divinity.”42 This was exactly what Luther wanted; in his view all Christian men and women who had been baptized were priests, and were capable of understanding and discussing the Scriptures. Despite the relatively high cost of a gulden and a half per book, in a matter of weeks the New Testament was the most popular printed work in Germany. A second edition, which contained a few corrections and improvements, appeared in December.
Roman Catholic authorities were stunned by the success of Luther’s New Testament, and immediately issued orders forbidding the book. Local orthodox representatives were authorized to confiscate it, but there were too many books in circulation, and directives to deliver up the books to Church officials, so that they could be destroyed, were ignored. The Church then sought to attack the book’s errors or falsehoods, although the majority of those proved to be the result of mistranslations in established Latin versions rather than Luther’s mistakes. One issue arose over Luther’s translation of the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer. He had substituted “Unser Vater in dem Himmel” for “Unser Vater, der du bist im Himmel” (“Our Father in Heaven,” for “Our Father which art in Heaven”). But this criticism fell upon deaf ears; indeed, subsequent Catholic versions of the New Testament followed Luther’s editions in this and most other respects.
Another translation was not dealt with so easily, and remains controversial to this day. Luther inserted the word “allein” (“alone”) into the text of Romans 3:8, so that the verse now read: “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith alone apart from the deeds of the law.” This addition seemed to significantly affect the meaning of the verse, shaping it to confirm to Luther’s key interpretation of the significance of good works. Here was the proof, the Romanists charged, that Luther was more interested in his own personal theology than what the Bible actually said, and what the Church taught. Luther’s doctrine of faith alone—sola fides—was a false one.
Luther fully acknowledged that the word “alone” did not appear in the original Greek or Latin at Romans 3:28. He wrote, “I know very well that in Romans 3 the word “sola” is not in the Greek or Latin text—the papists did not have to teach me that. It is fact that the letters s-o-l-a are not there. And these blockheads stare at them like cows at a new gate, while at the same time they do not recognize that it conveys the sense of the text—if the translation is to be clear and vigorous, it belongs there. I wanted to speak German, not Latin or Greek, since it was German I had set about to speak in the translation.”
What mattered for Luther was placing the words in an interpretive context. His translation was meaning-oriented; it was the meaning of the Scripture, he believed, that had to be communicated to the reader. He wrote, “The text itself, and Saint Paul’s meaning, urgently require and demand it. For in that passage he is dealing with the main point of Christian doctrine, namely, that we are justified by faith in Christ without any works of the Law. Paul excludes all works so completely as to say that the works of the Law, though it is God’s law and word, do not aid us in justification. ..So, when all works are so completely rejected—which must mean faith alone justifies—whoever would speak plainly and clearly about this rejection of works will have to say ‘Faith alone justifies and not works.’”
Luther’s intellect, and his ego, afforded him the opportunity to ridicule the skeptics who dared challenge his work. He wrote:
If your papist wishes to make a great fuss about the word sola (alone), say this to him: “Dr. Martin Luther will have it so, and he says that a papist and a donkey are the same thing.” … For once, we also are going to be proud and brag, with these blockheads; and just as Paul brags against his mad raving saints, I will brag against these donkeys of mine! Are they doctors? So am I. Are they scholars? So am I. Are they preachers? So am I. Are they theologians? So am I. Are they debaters? So am I. Are they philosophers? So am I. Are they logicians? So am I. Do they lecture? So do I. Do they write books? So do I.
I will go even further with my boasting: I can expound the psalms and the prophets, and they cannot. I can translate, and they cannot. I can read the Holy Scriptures, and they cannot. I can pray, they cannot. Coming down to their level, I can use their rhetoric and philosophy better than all of them put together. Plus I know that not one of them understands his Aristotle. If any one of them can correctly understand one preface or chapter of Aristotle, I will eat my hat! No, I am not overdoing it, for I have been schooled in and have practiced their science from my youth. I recognize how deep and broad it is. They, too, are well aware that I can do everything they can do. Yet they treat me as a stranger in their discipline, these incurable fellows, as if I had just arrived this morning and had never seen or heard what they teach and know. How they do brilliantly parade around with their science, teaching me what I outgrew twenty years ago! To all their noise and shouting I sing, with the harlot, “I have known for seven years that horseshoe nails are iron.”
Let this be the answer to your first question. Please do not give these donkeys any other answer to their useless braying about that word sola than simply this: “Luther will have it so, and he says that he is a doctor above all the doctors of the pope.” Let it rest there. I will from now on hold them in contempt, and have already held them in contempt, as long as they are the kind of people (or rather donkeys) that they are.43
Even while his New Testament was still in the press, Luther began work on the Old Testament. Again he sought the assistance of colleagues. He founded a Collegium Biblieum, or Bible Club, to discuss matters of translation and interpretation. Each member of the group had a particular field of expertise. Luther excelled in modern German. Phillip Melanchthon was an expert on the Greek language; Justus Jonas, the scholar and lawyer who had accompanied Luther to Worms and who had guided the Wittenberg Reformation in Luther’s absence, was proficient in Hebrew; Johann Bugenhagen was a master on the Vulgate Bible, the 4th century Latin Bible that the Catholic Church had adopted as its official version; Caspar Cruciger and Matthäus Aurogallus were Hebrew scholars; and Castle Church Deacon Georg Röer served as proofreader. Occasionally local Jewish rabbis, or non–German biblical scholars who were passing through Wittenberg, joined in the discussions. This group of learned men met once each week, at Luther’s residence; their meetings took them past the supper hour and well into the night. Arguing, discussing, and working together, sometimes the men might spend three days to translate a single Biblical line. Sometimes they searched weeks for the correct translation of a single word. As with his New Testament, Luther endeavored to make the Old Testament reader-friendly for his countrymen and women. He hoped, he said, “to make Moses so German that no one would suspect he was a Jew.”44
By Christmas 1523, the Pentateuch, or first five Books of the Old Testament, went to press. Next came the Psalter, or Book of Psalms (always Luther’s favorite), which came out a year later. The entire Bible, containing both Testaments and lavishly illustrated with woodcuts, finally was completed a decade later, in 1534. For twenty years Luther would continually edit and modify his German Bible. Five new and original versions were released in his lifetime; Luther saw the last edition of his German Bible appear in 1545, just a year before his death.
Luther’s translation won readers with kraftvolles Deutsch, its forceful Germanic vigor and strength. He succeeded in transforming sacred text into the language of the common people. His Bible was so popular, and was distributed so thoroughly, that it extended into the daily life and work of so many Germans. Luther even insisted that large-print Bibles be released for the benefit of those with poor eyesight. The German Bible became (and remains today), an esteemed part of the national heritage, facilitating the emergence of a standard, and modern, “High German” language. While it was officially printed in Wittenberg, countless other editions were distributed through black market presses in Strassburg, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Cologne, Lübeck, and Halberstadt, among other places. In forty years, over one hundred thousand copies of Luther’s Bible were sold.
Almost immediately Luther’s Bible was printed in other countries and in other languages. It served as the primary source of translations in France, Holland, Sweden, Iceland, and Denmark. It had a particular impact in England; William Tyndale, considered to be the father of the English Bible, utilized Luther’s work extensively in both the King James and Revised Standard versions. For Protestants, the Bible was no longer a foreign book written only in Latin to be read and interpreted only by Catholic priests. Over the generations, many millions of Europeans read Luther’s words. Luther’s Reformation would no longer depend upon the words and actions of the Reformer. It was now rested on his translation of the Word of God which every person could read and consider for himself. Luther’s mastery of the common vernacular perfectly complimented his steadfast enthusiasm for the gospel. He recognized his own gifts; he had, he said, “a truly devout, faithful, diligent, Christian, learned, experienced, and practiced heart.” He recognized the magnitude of his achievement. “I do not wish to praise myself,” he said, “but the work speaks for itself.” He referred to himself as a “Doctor of the Sacred Scriptures.”45
For Luther, however, there would be no rest. There were many challenges still before him; some would come from his enemies in Rome and others from supposed allies in Europe. In short order he would surprise all who knew him by taking a wife and starting a family. And more perilously, despite all the lessons he had taught of Christian love and political moderation, legions of Protestant faithful would ignore his pleas and go to war.