Luther on Beer: Collection of Authentic Quotes

ecently I was browsing an online retail store for a customizable mug to give as a gift to a fellow pastor. There was already a mug available for purchase called the “Martin Luther Beer Stein,” which contained two alleged Luther quotes. One of them sounded obviously apocryphal and the other sounded suspect. So I decided to dig a little and to compile and translate a relatively comprehensive list of authentic Luther quotes on beer and drinking. (It turned out to be a good project to work on during a terrible blizzard.) My compilation has a twofold bent:

1. It provides quotes that could be used on customized mugs, glasses, steins, or tankards (a Christmas gift to you from Red Brick Parsonage). Incidentally, the quotes you glean here for this purpose don’t necessarily have to be the ones that portray beer (or wine) favorably. Any of Luther’s warnings against drunkenness would also be appropriate for drinkware.
2. It provides rarely cited quotes about beer, wine, and drinking in general that are of historical interest and/or provide insight into Luther’s life, character, and views.

This isn’t the sort of project I would normally publish on this site. It’s liable to end up becoming one of my most popular posts, and I’d rather have people visiting this site to dine on hearty doctrinal meat that will nourish their souls than to satisfy their curiosity about a topic of worldly, everyday interest. The fact that some of these quotes also contain scriptural admonition and instruction helped to allay my concerns. But I would also ask any conscientious reader who appreciates this collection to do me the honor of reading at least one other post on my site, if you have not already. If you’re looking for suggestions, “Luther’s House Sermon on the Canaanite Woman” and “Martin Luther’s Favorite Christmas Hymn?” should prove to be enriching without unduly taxing your time.

In compiling this list, I verified that the apocryphal-sounding quote on the Martin Luther Beer Stein was in fact apocryphal. (Luther never said, “It is better to think of church in the ale-house than of the ale-house in church.”) The quote I was suspicious about, however, turned out to be an actual Luther quote (included in #4 below), though reading it out of context can give a mistaken impression about what Luther was saying. I do my best below to provide context for the quotes that require it.

I was somewhat surprised to discover that, as you will see, there are not many quotes where Luther praises beer outright. In fact, he commonly has three complaints about beer. The first will no doubt disappoint many Lutherans: Luther says more than once that he wishes beer had never been invented, primarily because of the waste of barley that would have been able to “keep all of Germany alive” in other forms. (A home-brewing friend of mine confirmed that brewing is indeed “a fairly inefficient use of grain.”)

His second complaint is much more gratifying to beer aficionados: Luther did not like light beer, and there was a lot of light beer to be had, even in his own cellar (by necessity). One of the most common beers in Luther’s day was kofent, which derives from the Latin word conventus, “convent,” because apparently monks were the first to brew it. Proper kofent was made by pouring water onto the draff (spent grain) from a previous batch of actual beer—akin to using a used tea bag to make a new pot of tea or the same coffee grounds to brew a new pot of coffee. But the term could also be used for any beer that was weaker or didn’t taste quite right, no matter how it was made. Kofent was also called thin or weak beer (Dünnbier), after-beer (Nachbier or Afterbier), table beer (Speisebier, Tafelbier, Tischbier), and other names. So basically, whenever Luther rails against kofent, just imagine him shredding Busch Light, Bud Light, Miller Lite, etc., or for that matter the regular flagship “beers” produced by those companies.

His third complaint pops up later in his life when brewers started lining their barrels with pitch to prevent them from absorbing the beer into their wood and admitting the atmospheric air through their pores. The pitch gave the beer a peculiar flavor, which apparently the peasants liked, but Luther claimed it caused chest congestion. Unfortunately, the table talk where Luther rails against “the new invention of pitch” (#24) is undated; if this quote could be confidently dated, it would be critical to beer brewing history. Since there is another quote about the peasants’ fondness for pitch dated February 1539 (#25), #24 probably dates to the late 1530s.

Luther was not a drunk, as many other historians have also noted. He in fact regularly rebuked and lamented drunkenness both in private conversation and from the pulpit, including one particularly memorable sermon (#28). He did not even shy away from admonishing princes and their courtiers against it. Not to mention that Luther simply could not have accomplished everything he did if he were a drunk. Luther did, however, regularly enjoy alcoholic beverages, and it is untrue that the historical record never documents Luther getting drunk, as some have maintained. The most obvious example dates to the end of May 1536, when a number of Protestant theologians gathered in Wittenberg to hold discussions and attempt to reach agreement on the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. Among those attending was Wolfgang Musculus, who wrote a daily report of the negotiations to bring back to Augsburg. Musculus reported the following events for May 29, the day the so-called Wittenberg Concord was signed (Theodor Kolde, ed., Analecta Lutherana [Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1883], 229):

At 1 o’clock our brothers [namely, the other southern German theologians] left to make it to [Bad] Düben, leaving me and [Martin] Frecht with [Justus] Menius and [Friedrich] Myconius in Wittenberg. After they departed, Philipp [Melanchthon] led me to the university and showed me the Greek Epiphanius, two books written very long ago. For dinner Dr. Luther and Philipp and Lucas [Cranach] the painter were at our lodging, where Dr. Luther told us about the deceits with which he had been repeatedly tested. After dinner we went over together to the abode of Master Lucas the painter and drank some more. After leaving the painter’s house, we brought Dr. Luther home, where we continued doing the Saxon thing and drank some more. He was in marvelously fine spirits and was making benevolent promises of every kind.

Luther was riding a high from the successfully concluded negotiations—negotiations concluded with an agreement that had sided with his position almost entirely—and if this isn’t a description of him getting drunk, I don’t know what is. I am sure that countless Christians still today could be identified who, like Luther, are otherwise known as sober people who, if they drink, drink in moderation and acknowledge drunkenness as a sin and are against it, and who nevertheless have drunk too much on occasion. This doesn’t excuse the drunkenness; those Christians themselves would not excuse it. (Remember that Luther continued practicing private confession with Pastor Johannes Bugenhagen until his death, and doubtless would have also confessed the times he got drunk as sins.) But Christians are sinful humans too; they, too, are known to abuse God’s good gifts now and then. Christians are not defined by perfection, but by repentance. In addition, Luther himself noted that he would rather live in the joy and freedom of the gospel and have one too many beers on occasion than live under the law and paralyze himself with scrupulous worry “about committing any little sin” (see #4). (If you think that means he took a soft stance on drunkenness and other sins, just read the quotes below.)

We also need to remember that alcoholic beverages were also viewed and used medicinally in Luther’s day (as they are to an extent still today, e.g. hot toddies); there was no Robitussin for sale. If someone is knocked out by prescription or over-the-counter medication today, we think nothing of it, if it gives the person relief or helps him or her to rest and recover. But when people did the same with beer or wine back then, we tend to shake our heads and call them drunks. Luther was often ill, especially toward the end of his life, and often drank to allay his illnesses and pain. This also helps to explain the large amount of alcohol he appears to have consumed during his final days in Eisleben (see #37).

All the translations below are my own, except for #2. WA stands for Weimarer Ausgabe (Weimar Edition of Luther’s works), Br for the Briefwechsel (Correspondence) volumes in that series, and TR for the Tischreden (Table Talk) volumes in that series. I have generally organized the following quotes chronologically. If any Luther scholar or aficionado thinks there are other quotes that should be included in this list, please comment below or use the information on the About page to submit them. I will be happy to give them my serious consideration.

With that, please enjoy these Luther quotes on beer and drinking. You don’t need to enjoy these quotes in moderation, but please do so enjoy the beverages they describe. “[It is false, deceiving teachers who] order people to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is consecrated through the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:3–5). “Everything is permissible for me, but I will not be mastered by anything” (1 Cor. 6:12). “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).

Luther on Beer and Drinking

#1

We must begin by correcting the modern marketing narrative created by the Einbecker Brewery. At some point relatively recently, one of their marketing agents came up with this rhyming jingle: “Der beste Trank den einer kennt, wird Ainpöckisch Bier genennt!” (“The best of drinks to all is clear: It bears the name Einbecker beer!”) Luther is supposed to have spoken this rhyme on the spot after Duke Erich of Brunswick had a servant send him a silver tankard of Einbecker beer after his famous stand at the Diet of Worms on April 18, 1521.

Luther said no such thing. However, the context in which Luther is supposed to have said those words is legitimate. Duke Erich did have a servant send Luther a silver tankard filled with Einbecker beer to refresh himself after his famous stand. But what Luther actually said in response was (source):

As Prince Erich has thought of me today, so may Christ think of him in his final battle [i.e. in his final hours].

According to Franz von Kramm, one of Duke Erich’s page boys who attended him, Duke Erich did in fact remember Luther’s words on his deathbed and had Franz “revive him with evangelical comfort.”

These circumstances not only automatically make Einbecker beer the official beer of the Reformation, but they also make this quote one of the best candidates for a custom drinkware printing or engraving for the diehard Lutheran in your life. Yes, the quote says nothing about beer. Yes, it requires explanation. But it is at the heart of one of the most pivotal events of church history, and it came from the heart of the Church’s greatest post-biblical reformer as he held a tankard of Germany’s finest.

#2

Immediately after returning from the Wartburg, Luther preached a famous series of daily sermons from March 9–16, 1522, in order to restore order in Wittenberg. In his sermon on Monday, March 10, he preached these well-known words (Luther’s Works 51:77):

In short, I will preach [the Word], teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man [to believe it] by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip [Melanchthon] and [Nikolaus von] Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.

#3

In a letter to Landgrave Philip of Hesse on or around May 20, 1530, about the Sacramentarian Controversy, Luther said that even his adversaries would prefer to take back some of their hastily-published and poorly-thought-out arguments at this point, if they could (WA Br 5:311, no. 1573):

If the beer were back in the barrel, they would just leave it in there at this point.

In a work written three years earlier, Luther similarly used the concept of wishing the beer were back in the barrel as a metaphor for wishing an ordeal had never been started (Luther’s Works 37:19).

#4

In July of 1530, while staying at the Coburg Fortress during the Diet of Augsburg, Luther penned a letter to Jerome Weller. Born in 1499, Weller matriculated at Wittenberg in 1525. From 1527 to 1536, Weller and his family lived in Luther’s house and ate at his table, in return for which he tutored Luther’s children. Weller struggled badly with depression, which Luther addressed in this letter (WA Br 5:519, no. 1670).

Therefore be of good cheer and stouthearted, and drive these terrible thoughts right out of your mind. And as often as the devil vexes you with these thoughts, right then and there seek out conversation with people, or drink a larger amount, or joke, jest, or do anything else more cheerful. Sometimes a person needs to drink a larger amount, play games, jest, and even commit some sin in hatred and contempt of the devil, so that we do not give him any opportunity to give us a bad conscience about extremely trivial matters. Otherwise we are conquered, if we end up too anxiously worrying about committing any little sin. Accordingly, if the devil should ever say, “Do not drink,” you should respond to him this way, “Instead, precisely because you prohibit it, I will drink, and I will drink an even larger amount.” Thus one must always do the opposite of whatever Satan forbids. Why else do you suppose it is that I drink wine so undiluted, converse so freely, and devour food so often like I do, other than to mock and vex the devil, who is determined to vex and mock me?

#5

On Saturday, July 29, 1531, Luther preached a sermon on John 7:32–35, during which he made this illustration (WA 33:417–18):

When a good beer is available, everyone makes a rush for it and does not dawdle, for they know that it will not last long; they won’t have it every day. Therefore people get it while it is available. If it were available for a long time, then our mouths would spoil us anyway, so that we didn’t appreciate it. But here people think that the Word will remain eternally, even though it remains and lasts a very short time.

#6

At his table in December of 1531, Luther, no doubt with a beer in hand, spoke these words recorded by Veit Dietrich (WA TR 1:60, no. 139):

If our Lord God can forgive me for crucifying and martyring him for some twenty years, he can certainly also make allowances for me when I take a drink to his glory now and then. God grant it! The world can interpret it however it wants and tends to do.

Luther is referring to his years as a priest performing the so-called sacrifice of the mass.

#7

Toward the end of that same month, Luther said these words at his table, recorded by Johannes Schlaginhaufen and Conrad Cordatus (WA TR 2:23, no. 1281; 2:425, no. 2344):

The man who invented beer brewing has been the bane of Germany. Rye can’t be anything but expensive in our territories. The horses eat the majority of our grain in oats, which are planted everywhere, for we cultivate more oats than rye. After that, the pious peasants and townspeople use up the vast majority of grain with their beer-swilling. In the splendid land of Thuringia, which is very fertile land, they have learned this piece of worthlessness: Wherever good, high-quality grain used to grow, dyer’s woad must now grow, which burns up and drains the soil to an extent beyond all measure.

#8

On February 27, 1532, Luther wrote home to his wife, Katharina or Käthe (Katie or Katy), while on a visit in Torgau (WA Br 6:270, no. 1908):

I am sleeping extremely well, some six or seven hours consecutively, and afterwards two or three hours more. It is due to the beer, I think. But I am sober, just like in Wittenberg.

#9

In the spring of 1532, Luther said these words at his table, recorded by Veit Dietrich (WA TR 1:107, no. 254):

Wine is blessed and is attested in Scripture, but beer is a human tradition.

#10

In the fall of 1532, Cordatus recorded Luther commenting at his table once again on the inventor of beer brewing (WA TR 2:613, no. 2716):

I have frequently cursed the first beer brewer. So much barley is ruined in brewing which could have been used to keep all of Germany alive. And it should be ruined like that if we are going to make such a shameful joke out of it which we then piss against the wall afterwards. There are three pecks in every quarter of beer, and for every one city that brews good beer, there are a hundred of them that brew table beer. The high cost and lack of beer will cause the university to move somewhere else. For the waters here are not healthy at all, but deadly. We will therefore be forced to leave.

According to the Grimm Brothers’ Deutsches Wörterbuch, in Saxony a quarter (Viertel) was equal to a ton (Tonne) or ninety quarts (Kannen; see entries “Tonne,” 2, a, α, and “Kanne,” 2), roughly twenty-two and a half gallons. (Kanne is also the word for “tankard.”) The capacity of a quarter varied by region; for instance, in Westphalia a quarter was synonymous with Stübchen (see #37) and roughly equivalent to a gallon.

#11

Around the same time, Luther made one of his most humorous, and nerdiest, criticisms of Wittenberg’s beer, also recorded by Cordatus (WA TR 2:638–39, no. 2757):

I have lived to see the end of the beer we cherish. It has all turned into kofent. And I ask God to destroy every cause of it—material, formal, efficient, and final—or if it still must be brewed, that a tenth of it would please turn out as beer. In ten years they have never been able to find the trick to it.

Material cause, formal cause, efficient cause, and final cause are all philosophical terms.

#12

Late that same fall, Cordatus recorded him saying the following at his table (WA TR 3:5, no. 2810b):

I believe that Adam was an extremely simple and extremely modest man. I also do not think that he lit candles; he didn’t know that the ox had tallow in his body, and he was not yet sacrificing cattle. I do wonder where he got the skins that he wore. This man Adam was, therefore, without a doubt extremely handsome—living to such an old age that he could see his eighth grandson—without a doubt the wisest man up until Noah, and well practiced in various trials, living in the utmost temperance, drinking neither wine nor beer. I wished that beer brewing had not been invented, for a whole lot of grain is spent in the process and nothing good is brewed.

#13

On November 24 that same year, Luther preached a sermon on 1 Timothy 1:5–7 in Wörlitz (WA 36:356).

If you can sit day and night in the tavern or elsewhere with good companions, chattering and gossiping, singing and shouting, and not grow tired or feel the work that goes into it, then you can certainly also sit in church for an hour and listen, to serve and gratify God.

#14

In the early part of 1533, Cordatus recorded these words of Luther (WA TR 3:113, no. 2948):

It is actually true that kofent is the strongest drink in my cellar, for even though many people drink it, one ton of kofent still outlasts three barrels of beer.

On the “ton,” see #10 above.

#15

While staying in Dessau to minister to Prince Joachim of Anhalt-Dessau, Luther wrote home to his wife on July 29, 1534 (WA Br 7:91, no. 2130):

Yesterday I drank some bad beer. Then I had to sing, “I don’t drink well, sorry to say, though I should like to dearly.” And I thought, what good wine and beer I have at home, besides a beautiful wife or, I should say, overlord. And you would do well to send over to me the entire cellarful of my wine and a bottle of your beer, as soon as you can, otherwise the new beer will prevent me from returning.

Luther’s little ditty appears to be an excerpt from a folk song or folk chant of some sort. I tried to retain his meter in my translation.

#16

In July of 1535, the University of Wittenberg had to be moved to Jena because of the plague. Luther stayed in Wittenberg and continued some of his teaching duties by letter. On August 18, 1535, he wrote to his colleague Justus Jonas (WA Br 7:232, no. 2223):

Here the loneliness of the city is strange, but we are alive and well, by God’s grace, living comfortably enough, except that there is absolutely no beer in the city. Blessed is my belly, which still has quite a bit in the cellar. Certainly the citizens are suffering from the shortage of drink. What would have happened if the school had stayed here? Anything new that’s brewed is drunk while it’s still quite warm right in front of the live coals, so that all those who could possibly brew are compelled to do so by thirsty force. [Alternate translation: so that all those who have drunk it are compelled to brew by thirsty force.]

#17

By September the plague was at an end, and plans were being made for doctorates to be conferred in Wittenberg on two students. Colleagues from the university were expected to return, including Justus Jonas, and Luther was excited at the prospect of having guests. He wrote to Jonas on September 4, 1535 (WA Br 7:249, no. 2234):

Then, if you are able to buy any hares or similar meats, or hunt them for free, send them, since we are planning on filling all of your bellies, if only that drink which they call zythum is successful. For my Katie has brewed seven quarters (as they are called), into which she has mixed thirty-two pecks of malt, wishing to satisfy my palate. She hopes it will turn out to be good beer. Whatever it turns out to be, you will taste it along with the others.

On “quarters,” see #10 above. Note also that Luther’s palate required about four and a half pecks of malt per quarter of beer, compared to the standard three pecks per quarter he mentions in #10. Zythum was a kind of malt liquor brewed by the Egyptians, but it is unlikely that Katie was attempting to brew an ancient recipe. Luther himself later refers to it as beer. In his excitement, he is simply using zythum in a playful way to refer to beer.

#18

In the fall of 1536, Anton Lauterbach and Jerome Weller recorded Luther musing on the following question (WA TR 3:350, no. 3483):

Why is it that the first drink from the tankard tastes the best? Perhaps on account of sin, since the flesh and the mouth are sinful.

#19

Around that same time, the following conversation took place at Luther’s table one evening (WA TR 3:344, no. 3476, anonymously recorded):

“Tomorrow I am supposed to lecture on the drunkenness of Noah [Genesis 9:20ff]. Therefore this evening I will drink enough so that I can then speak from experience about the wicked deed.”

Doctor Cordatus responded, “By no means! You should rather do the opposite.”

Then Luther said, “One does have to make allowances for the failings of every country. The Bohemians gorge, the Wends steal, the Germans have no qualms getting drunk. After all, dear Cordatus, how else could you outdo a German right now, except in drunkenness, especially one who does not love music and women?”

Tappert, in volume 54 of Luther’s Works, translates, “…except by making him drunk.” But that does not seem to be the sense. Luther’s point is that, if you want to best a German, there’s only one arena in which besting him will matter to him and others—drinking.

#20

On January 2, 1538, Luther spent the evening, together with Justus Jonas and apparently Anton Lauterbach (the recorder), in the house of Blasius Matthäus, a Wittenberg councilman. Lauterbach records:

Then absinthe beer was brought out. He responded, “Oh no! People are sending me absinthe beer from France, Prussia, and Russia in my own house! It’s becoming plenty bitter to me.”

Absinthe beer was beer to which absinthe was added to give it a bitter flavor. This must have been somewhat similar to the current IPA craze which, for the record, is dumb.

#21

About a week later, between January 8–10, Lauterbach recorded this conversation between Philipp Melanchthon and Luther (WA TR 3:537, no. 3693):

Then [Melanchthon] was talking a great deal about his love of wine, and that there is no good wine to be had anywhere. Luther responded, “That’s because we abuse its abundance for our own extravagance. This results in diseases—leprosy, kidney stones and gallstones, gout in the foot, and gout in the hand. Those who are always drinking wine very often have gout in the foot, but beer produces dropsy.”

#22

On February 12, 1538, Luther wrote to Justus Jonas, who was in Zerbst at the time (WA Br 8:197, no. 3216):

Your house is safe—thanks be to Christ—but your beer is ruined, if the same beer is in your cellar that you gave me as a gift. But let the beer be ruined and along with it the old man himself—the container, or rather skin, of this martyred water—provided that the incorruption of the inner man, who drinks living water and the fountain springing up to eternal life, increases from day to day. Amen.

“This martyred water” refers to Jonas’s ruined beer, with Jonas himself, or rather his old Adam, being the skin (leather flask) that held some of it. Luther is combining serious theology with goofiness.

#23

On June 13 that same year, Luther wrote to Anton Unruhe, a judge in Torgau, to thank him for honoring his request to give a certain poor woman justice, and to thank him for something else (WA Br 8:237–38, no. 3238):

But, dear Judge Anton, wasn’t it sufficient for you to hear my request and intercession and give me comforting news of your love and willingness? Did you also have to live in remembrance of my person with a gift, and even do so with an entire vat of Torgau beer of your own brewing? I am not worthy of the kindness, and although I know that you are not poor, but that God has blessed you with good things and abundance, I would have preferred to see you give the beer away to your poor people, who together have brought you more blessing with their prayers than poor Martin has by himself.

A vat (Kufe) was ordinarily a stationary wooden container, open on top and somewhat broader and wider at the bottom than at the top, in which beer was brewed. But the term was then also used for a large enclosed beer barrel with two bottoms, or for the equivalent capacity of beer—some 600 quarts or 150 gallons.

#24

An undated (though probably from the latter half of the 1530s), anonymously recorded comment from Luther’s table (WA TR 5:697, no. 6501):

“Beer is the best drink, especially in winter, whenever it has not evaporated. But it requires a tremendous amount of barley. One-third of the harvested grain is consumed in drink.” Then he began railing against the new invention of pitch, since it caused congestion of the chest. “May God make us all content! If only we wouldn’t pervert his gifts so badly through greediness!”

I am unsure what the “evaporation” refers to, and would appreciate any insights from those with more brewing knowledge than I. That phrase could also possibly be translated: “when it doesn’t evaporate.”

#25

In the middle of February 1539, Lauterbach recorded Luther commenting on Torgau beer at his table. However, in order to understand what he says, we have to go back in time to a story Luther told at his table in January 1537, recorded by Lauterbach and Weller (WA TR 3:384, no. 3539a):

There was a merchant who sold “prophet’s berries” with a lot of hype, saying that if you ate them, you would soon be prophesying. When the Jews heard about this, they were paying an extremely high price for them, and when they put them in their mouths, they were soon prophesying, “This is crap!”

Now back to the February 1539 remarks (WA TR 4:247–48, no. 4347):

Torgau beer was once the distinguished queen above all others. Now it has so degenerated that in Leipzig they call it “prophet’s beer,” since as soon as it hits your tongue, it tastes like kofent, just as the “prophet’s berries” that were sold to the Jews in Frankfurt betrayed that they were crap once they were on the tongue; they were unpleasant in appearance and smelled nice. There’s a nice play on words there—prophet’s berries and prophet’s beer. The peasants now desire and go after the kind of beer that is thinned out and roasted [macerata et assata], dried and roasted [gederret und gebrathen], has a bright, thick, red color, and is pitched. This is what the peasants call a lovely beer.

“Gederret und gebrathen” might simply be Lauterbach rewriting in German what he had already recorded in Latin, “macerata et assata.” (Luther doubtless spoke German most of the time in his house, but recorders often recorded his words in Latin, since Latin was more conducive to taking notes.) On “pitched,” see my introductory remarks at the head of this post.

#26

Probably that same night (in February 1539), Luther was once again talking about Torgau (WA TR 4:248, no. 4349):

[Luther] was lamenting the debauchery of the city of Torgau, the fuel of whose corruption was the tavern. That general assembly of drinking completely corrupted the townspeople. “There people learn to be idle, gamble, gorge, and guzzle; whoring follows afterwards. What harm does it do if they would make even more taverns there—one for the councilmen, another for the townspeople, a third for the women, and a fourth for the servants, so that it would at least be broken up into classes? Then the employees of the court would also have a really nice assembly that is very lively! They themselves would prefer that there were one church in Torgau and five taverns. We definitely saw that during the first visitation, how unpleasant it ended up being for them to have to accommodate us in the tavern for so long. In summary, the world—she is going to the dregs. God help her!”

“The first visitation” to which Luther refers began at the end of April 1529. It was part of an effort to visit the churches in Electoral Saxony in order to learn what condition they were in and what sort of pastors they had. A note on the translation of this table talk: The original has the potential to be misunderstood, because Trinkstube, “tavern,” is a feminine word, and Luther often uses the form Trinkstuben here, which is a plural form in modern German. (Feminine singular and all plural nominatives and accusatives use the same form of the definite article, die.) So the reader must note that Stube used to have a weak declension, that is, all forms except the nominative singular ended in -n. In other words, there was only one tavern in Torgau where everyone from all classes met, and Luther wishes, if the debauchery can’t be stopped, that it would at least be moderated by the existence of additional taverns, which would each be intended for specific classes.

#27

Between May 16 to 18, 1539, Lauterbach recorded Luther comparing German drunkenness to Turkish temperance (WA TR 4:401, no. 4607):

Then he was talking about the sobriety and temperance of the Muslim Turks, who lived in moderation and had a drink brewed from herbs and honey, like our mead, which they call maslach, which has three forms. [Alternate translation: maslach, that is, “threefold.”] One form of it, the strongest, they drank when they were about to go to war. The second form was for daily use, and the third form was for sex—their version of Torgau beer.

According to the second edition of Robley Dunglison’s Medical Lexion: A New Dictionary of Medical Science (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1839), 379.2, maslach was a medicinal excitant, “much used by the Turks,” which contained opium. But I have no idea if this is the same product to which Luther is referring. 

#28

Luther also compared the Germans to the Muslim Turks in his famous sermon on 1 Peter 4:7–11 on Exaudi (Easter 7), May 18 (WA 47:763, 764–65, 766). There are a couple quotes from this sermon excerpt that could be printed or engraved on beer mugs and tankards and viewed as encouraging the enjoyment of a good drink, but as you can see, such quotes would be ironically used, considering the larger context of the sermon.

Eating and drinking are not forbidden, but every kind of food is permitted, and you are allowed to have a modest drink for pleasure. But if you wish to go beyond that and be a sow, as if you were born to gulp down beer and wine, then you should know that you are not going to be saved. It’s no wonder that everyone is a beggar! How much money people could save if they didn’t spend it on drink! … Do not think that you are going to be saved if you are a drunken sow day and night. Everyone should know that drunkenness is such a great sin that it is a hindrance to your baptism, faith, and eternal salvation. … If you are weary and dejected, have a drink. But do not think that you are a Christian if you wish to be a sow and do nothing but gorge and guzzle.

#29

After 1529, the children of one of Luther’s sisters, who had married Klaus Polner, lived with him. One of those children was Hans Polner, who was not only mentally slow, but was also given to drink. In the late spring of 1540, Johannes Mathesius recorded this confrontation between Luther and his nephew (WA TR 4:636, no. 5050):

The doctor was remonstrating with his drunken nephew [Hans] Polner: “On account of you and your friends,” he says, “I have a bad reputation among outsiders. For my adversaries scrutinize everything, and when I let out a fart, they smell it in Rome. What if you should ever injure someone? Don’t you stop to think about what a mark you could brand on me, on this house, on this city, on the church, and on the gospel of God? The other drunks are cheerful and pleasant, like my father. They sing and crack jokes. But you are turned completely into a rage. People like that should abstain from wine as if it were poison, and wine is an instant poison to natures of that sort. Cheerful people can drink a larger amount of wine now and then.”

Apparently at a later date, he referred to his nephew’s “feeble head” and said: “His father was as drunk as a sow when he made Polner. A shameful thing! Drunken people should sleep and leave their wives undisturbed, as even Plato writes that men should not marry and bring a wife home unless they are sober” (WA TR 5:332, no. 5725).

#30

Luther’s friend and colleague Philipp Melanchthon traveled to a colloquy in Hagenau after Philip of Hesse’s bigamy became known and was causing a scandal for the Lutherans. The sensitive Melanchthon was so troubled by the scandal that by the time he reached Weimar he had already become so sick that he could not continue the trip. He contracted a bad fever and was bedridden. Luther personally went to see him and arrived in Weimar on June 23, 1540. He found Melanchthon deathly ill, unrecognizable, and unable to hear or speak. Luther later said that Melanchthon’s eyes had already dimmed like a dead person’s. Luther prayed some of his most intense prayers and Melanchthon recovered. In good spirits, Luther wrote home to his wife on July 2, 1540 (WA Br 9:168, no. 3509):

I submissively tender to You and Your Grace the notice that things are going well for me here. I am gorging like a Bohemian and guzzling like a German—God be thanked for this. Amen.

Luther wrote something similar in another letter to his wife on July 16, this time from Eisenach, but in a more qualified and reserved way (WA Br 9:174, no. 3512):

Your grace should know that—God be praised—we are spry and healthy, gorging like the Bohemians (though not excessively), guzzling like the Germans (though not much). But we are happy, for our gracious lord from Magdeburg, Bishop [Nikolaus von] Amsdorf, is our table companion.

#31

On July 26, Luther wrote his wife again from Eisenach (WA Br 9:205, no. 3519):

We would be happy if Your Grace would arrange for us to find a good drink of beer at your place. For, God willing, we will head out for Wittenberg Tuesday morning.

#32

In the summer 1540, Luther composed a number of (spontaneous?) verses, including this set (WA TR 5:108, no. 5375r):

Trinck und iß, / Gott nicht vergiß.
Bewar dein ehr / Dir wirt nicht mehr
Von deiner hab / Den ein tuch zum grab.

Modern version:
Trink’ und iß, / Gott nicht vergiß.
Bewahr’ dein’ Ehr’ / Dir wird nicht mehr
Von deiner Hab’ / Denn ein Tuch zum Grab’.

Drink and dine / with God in mind.
Guard honor, for / there’s nothing more
you’ll have of worth / save a shroud ’neath earth.

#33

People were paid in beer back in Luther’s day too. On April 25, 1541, Luther penned a letter to Elector Johann Friedrich, in which he asked the elector for some recompense for Georg Kleinschmidt, a physician in Wittenberg.

I myself have still never given [Doctor Kleinschmidt] anything for many services, except a drink of beer.

Luther actually refers to him as Doctor Cubito, his frequent misspelling of Kleinschmidt’s alias, Curio.

#34

In lecturing on Genesis 41:45 in 1544 (WA 44:446):

The Germans have a proverb: “The beer tastes like the barrel. If the mother is a whore, the daughter is not pious either.”

#35

Luther’s sermon on June 14, 1545, made such an impression on Anton Lauterbach that he wrote about it later. Even though Georg Rörer’s transcript of that sermon doesn’t include this precise example, Lauterbach recalled that Luther cited offering kofent as actual beer as an example of theft or stealing (WA TR 5:646, no. 6406; cp. WA 49:790, 791). I suppose if you wanted to paraphrase this Luther quote and turn it into a dynamic equivalent for a drinkware (or even a T-shirt) printing or engraving, you could use:

Selling light beer as beer is theft.

#36

In his final visit to Eisleben toward the end of January and into February, 1546, Luther was attempting to resolve a dispute between counts. On February 1, 1546, he wrote home to his wife (WA Br 11:276, no. 4195):

I am drinking Naumburg beer that nearly tastes like the beer from Mansfeld that you recommended to me once. It suits me well, and in the morning it gives me about three bowel movements in three hours.

#37

On February 7, eleven days before his death, Luther wrote home to his wife again (WA Br 11:287):

We are living well here and the council gives me a half-gallon [halbstubigen] of Rebula [Reinfal] at each meal, which is very good. Sometimes I share it with my companions. The local wine here is likewise good, and the Naumburg beer is very good, except that I think that it causes congestion in my chest with its pitch. The devil has ruined the beer in the whole world for us with pitch, and by you he has ruined the wine with sulfur. But here the wine is pure, except what the local method [or the nature of the land] gives to it.

Reinfal was highly valued sweet wine from the Istrian peninsula and is today known as Ribolla Gialla in Italy and Rebula in Slovenia, though it is now principally a dry wine. Stubigen is not a form of Stübich (which was a shipping barrel roughly equivalent to a ton [see #10]), but an old form of its diminutive, Stübchen. According to the Grimm Brothers’ Deutsches Wörterbuch, a Stübchen was “at the most four quarts” or a gallon. Even though Luther was sometimes sharing it, he was still drinking relatively heavily if he was drinking a good portion of a half-gallon of wine (two and half bottles in today’s terms) at every meal and some Naumburg beer besides. But one must also remember that Luther was not doing well at the time, and he and his companions probably viewed his drinking as also serving medicinal purposes. See my comments in the introduction at the head of this post.

Martin Luther’s Praise of Music (German)

Brief Introduction

First Page of Praetorius’s 1607 Reprint of Luther’s Preface, Entitled Encomion Musices

In 1607, the Lutheran composer and musician, Michael Praetorius (1571–1621), had Installments 1–4 of his Musae Sioniae (Muses of Zion) series published together in Wolfenbüttel. He had his woodcut portrait printed on the back of the special title page, and immediately opposite his portrait, a reprint of a work by Martin Luther under the title Encomion Musices (Praise of Music).

I will trace the origins and subsequent use and translation of this work, and the debates surrounding it, in greater detail in the Afterword below. For now, the reader should be aware that Luther originally composed this work in Latin in 1538, as a preface for a motet collection printed in Wittenberg by Georg Rhau. Praetorius used a 1564 German translation of this preface by the cantor Johann Walther (1496–1570) as his base text; Praetorius’s father had once been Walther’s colleague in Torgau. But Praetorius also consulted a version of the preface printed by Wolfgang Figulus (c. 1525–after 1588) in 1575, and he inserted text from Figulus’s version in four places in Walther’s text—additions which he felt contributed something that was missing in Walther’s version. Thus the Encomion Musices is a hybrid version of Luther’s preface.

I have distinguished Walther’s original translation from the Figulus interpolations by placing the latter in brackets [ ]. (No such distinction appeared in Praetorius’s reprint.) I also bolded the parts that Praetorius put in bold typeface, but the reader should be aware that neither Walther’s nor Figulus’s versions, as originally printed, contained any bold typeface.

I produced this original translation using Praetorius’s hybrid reprint, Walther’s original translation as printed in the Weimar Edition, and Figulus’s version. (The preface preceding the text in the Weimar Edition also lent much assistance to my Afterword.) As far as I am aware, this is the first complete, from-the-ground-up English translation of this particular version of Luther’s preface, though if any readers are aware of another, I invite you to inform me thereof, so that I can give proper credit. You can find my English translation of Luther’s original Latin preface in this separate post. I present these fresh translations today, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Praetorius’s death, to the glory of the triune God, with the prayer that they will renew and increase the reader’s appreciation for God’s gift of music.

Martin Luther’s Encomion Musices (Praise of Music)

First Page of Luther’s Preface in Johann Walther’s Lob und preis Der Himlischen Kunst Musica (1564)

A preface by the holy, cherished man of God,
Doctor Martin Luther, on the heavenly art of music,
never before printed in German.¹

To all admirers of the liberal art of music, I, Doctor Martin Luther, wish grace and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Though I would sincerely like to commend and highly praise this beautiful and precious gift of God, the liberal art of music, I find that it provides so much and such great benefit, and is so glorious and noble an art, that I do not know where to begin or end in praising it, or in what manner and form I might praise it as it deserves to be praised and to be cherished and appreciated by everyone. I am so overwhelmed by the rich abundance of praise for this art, that I cannot extol and praise it sufficiently. For who can say and point out everything that might be written and said about it? And even if a person really wanted to say and point out everything, he would still forget many points. In short, it is impossible for anyone to sufficiently praise or extol this noble art.

First of all, if you give the subject proper consideration, you will find that this art was given by God to each and every creature from the beginning of the world, and was created with all of them from the beginning. For there is absolutely nothing in the world that does not produce a noise and sound, so that even the air—though it is invisible and impalpable by itself, and it seems to possess the very least music, that is, beautiful tones and sound, and seems to be completely mute and inaudible—nevertheless, when it is moved and forced through something, it too produces its music and tones, and what was previously mute now begins to become audible and a form of music, so that it can now be heard and felt, though it was not heard or felt before. The Spirit is pointing out wonderful and great mysteries through this, which I won’t talk about right now.

Second, the music, tones, and singing of the animals, and especially of the birds, is much more wonderful still. [Ah, what a glorious music it is, with which the almighty Lord in heaven has endowed his singing instructor, the dear nightingale, along with its young pupils and so many countless thousands of birds in the air, since every single genus has its own style and melody, its sweet, glorious call and singular coloratura, which no one on earth can comprehend!] King David himself, the excellent musician who sings and plays purely divine songs on his lute and string-play, testifies to this, and he prophesies and sings with great amazement and passionate spirit about the wonderful singing of the birds in Psalm 104. There he says, “Upon them² sit the birds of the sky and sing amid the branches.”

But what should I say about the human voice, with which all other singing, tones, and sounds simply cannot compare? For God has endowed the human voice with so great a music that his super-abundant and incomprehensible kindness and wisdom neither can nor may be understood even in this one thing. For the philosophers and scholars have certainly pushed themselves hard and taken great pains to investigate and understand this wonderful work and art of the human voice—how it happens that the air can produce words, sounds, singing, and tones through such a small and slight movement of the tongue, and then, too, through an even slighter movement of the throat or neck, likewise in many different styles and ways, depending on how it is governed and directed by the mind, and can do all that so powerfully and forcefully that it is not only distinctly heard, but also perceived and understood so far and wide, in every direction. But they have only attempted to investigate it; they have not actually discovered the answers. Indeed, no one has yet come forward who could even say and show where human laughter comes from (to say nothing of crying), and how human laughter happens. They are amazed by it, but that’s all the further they get; they cannot discover it. But we should entrust the reflection on the immeasurable wisdom of God in this one creature to those who have more time than we. I just wanted to touch on it briefly.

Now I should also say something about the benefit of this noble art, which is so great that no one, no matter how eloquent he may be, can sufficiently relate it. I can point out this one thing for now, to which experience also testifies: After the holy word of God nothing whatsoever deserves to be glorified and praised as highly as music does, namely for this reason, that she is a ruler over every emotion of the human heart (to say nothing right now of the irrational animals). She masters and controls the very emotion that frequently rules and overpowers humans, as if it were their lord.

For nothing on earth is more capable of making the sorrowful glad, making the glad sorrowful, bracing up the despairing, enticing the proud to humility, calming and suppressing passionate and excessive love, curtailing envy and hate, and who can enumerate all the other emotions of the human heart that rule people, and entice and drive them either to virtue or vice? For ruling these emotions of the mind and keeping them in check, nothing, I say, is more powerful than music. Yes, the Holy Spirit himself praises and honors this noble art as an instrument of his own office by attesting in Holy Scripture that his gifts, that is, the incitement and inducement to every kind of virtue and all good works, are given to the prophets through music. We see this in the prophet Elisha who, when he is about prophesy, commands that an instrumentalist be brought to him, and while the instrumentalist is playing on the strings, the hand of the Lord came upon him, etc. [2 Kings 3:14–19]. On the other hand, Scripture testifies that Satan, who drives people to every vice and depravity, is driven away through music. This is shown in King Saul. When the spirit from God came upon him, David would take his lyre and play with his hand and Saul would be refreshed and would feel better, and the evil spirit would depart from him [1 Sam. 16:14–23]. It was therefore for good reason that the holy fathers and prophets brought the word of God into many different songs and string-play[, so that music would always remain in the church]. As a result, we have so many kinds of excellent songs and psalms from them, which move the hearts of mankind both with words and also with the singing and sound.³ But in the irrational animals, string-playing, and other instruments, we only hear the singing, sound, and tones, without speech and words. It is to humans alone, in preference to the other creatures, that the voice has been given with speech, so that they would be able and learn how to praise God with singing and words at the same time, namely with the clear and sonorous proclamation and praise of God’s kindness and grace, in which beautiful words and lovely tones are heard at the same time.

Moreover, if a person compares humans to each other and considers the voice of each one, he will discover how God is such a glorious and complex creator in what he distributes to the voices of humans, how there is such a great difference among humans with respect to voice and speech, and how one is so far superior to another in this. For they say that you cannot find two people who have exactly the same voice, speech, and articulation, even if one person devotes himself to another’s style with careful diligence and tries to be like him and imitate everything like the ape.

And when natural music is sharpened and polished by craft, there a person can finally see and recognize with great amazement just a bit of the great and perfect wisdom of God in his wonderful work of music (for it cannot be comprehended or understood completely). Within this craft, it is particularly special and deserving of amazement when one person sings a plain tune, or tenor (as the musicians call it),⁴ and three, four, or five other parts are also sung alongside it, which accompany this plain[, simple] tune or tenor on all sides with shouts of joy, as it were, playing and jumping around this tenor, wonderfully adorning and embellishing this tune with many different styles and tones, and leading a heavenly round dance, so to speak[—meeting each other in friendly fashion and embracing each other with congeniality and love]. Those who understand and are affected by it just a little cannot help but be overcome with amazement at it, and they must suppose that there is nothing more remarkable in the world than a song adorned with many parts like that. But whoever has neither inclination nor affection for it, and is not moved by such a lovely wonder, must truly be a thick blockhead who does not deserve to hear such lovely music, but the desolate, wild donkey-braying of the hymn-tune by itself, or the singing and music of dogs or sows.

Now what more can I say? The subject and the benefit of this noble art is much greater and richer than may be related in a short space like this. Therefore I wish to have this art entrusted to everyone, and especially to the young people, and I hereby wish to admonish them to let this precious, beneficial, and joyous creature of God be cherished, loved, and esteemed by them. Through the knowledge and diligent use of this art, they can sometimes drive away evil thoughts, and can also avoid bad company and other vice. I then also admonish them to get in the habit of recognizing, lauding, and praising God the Creator in this creature, and to flee and avoid with all diligence those who are corrupted by sexual immorality and who misuse this beautiful element and art [Natur und Kunst]⁵ (just as the unchaste poets also do with their element and art) to serve shameful, frenzied, unchaste passion. You can know for certain that it is the devil who is driving them like that, contrary to nature. Since nature should and is meant to use such a noble gift only to honor and praise God, the Creator of all creatures, these depraved and unnatural children [ungeratene Kinder unnd Wechselbelge]⁶ are driven by Satan to take away and rob this gift from God the Lord, and to use it to honor and worship the devil, who is an enemy of God, nature, and this lovely art. With that, I wish to have you all entrusted to God the Lord. Written in Wittenberg, in 1538.

Afterword

Preliminary note: This Afterword is essentially the same as that printed in the companion post. If you already read that one, you can skip this one.

The history of the transmission of this preface through the ages is consistently marked by both admiration and errors. Since the admiration is fairly consistent, while the errors vary, I will categorize and trace the errors.

Error Category 1: Faulty Citation

Melanchthon’s Reprint of Luther’s Preface in Liber selectarum declamationum (1541)

The errors of faulty citation trace back to two facts: First, Rhau’s Symphoniae Iucundae did not enjoy particularly widespread distribution, which is the case with most printed musical collections. Second, Luther’s friend and colleague Philipp Melanchthon reprinted Luther’s preface on pages 768–71 of his Liber selectarum declamationum (Strasbourg: Crato Mylius, 1541). But he also reprinted a preface of his own immediately before it (pp. 766–68), also written in praise of music, also written for a musical collection published by Georg Rhau (Selectae Harmoniae Quatuor Vocum de Passione Domini [Select Four-Part Harmonies about the Lord’s Passion]), and also written in 1538. For his own preface in his 1541 collection, Melanchthon correctly cited the original source. But above Luther’s preface, he simply wrote, “Alia Martini Lutheri [Another Preface, by Martin Luther].” Since Melanchthon’s book experienced a wider distribution and went through reprintings, many understandably, though incorrectly, assumed that both Melanchthon’s and Luther’s prefaces had been printed back-to-back in the same work. (And since the Selectae Harmoniae also did not enjoy a wide distribution, there weren’t copies of the work handy against which to check that assumption.)

Thus the 1703 Buddeus reprinting⁷ and the 1873 reprinting in the Latin volumes of the Erlangen Edition⁸ (both Latin), Johann Jacob Greiff’s German translation (which appeared in Part 22 of the Leipzig Edition [1734]⁹ and Part 14 of the first Walch Edition [1744]¹⁰), and the 1898 German translation in the second Walch Edition (based on the Latin text of the Erlangen Edition)¹¹ all mistakenly connect Luther’s preface either to harmonies about the Lord’s Passion or, even more incorrectly, to a supposed harmony of the accounts of the Lord’s Passion.

Error Category 2: Textual Modification

Other errors originate with one or the other of the two earliest German translations.

Lady Music, woodcut printed in Walther’s Lob und preis Der Himlischen Kunst Musica (1564)

The Lutheran cantor Johann Walther was the first to translate Luther’s preface into German. He included his translation in his 1564 publication, Lob und preis Der Himlischen Kunst Musica (Laud and Praise for the Heavenly Art of Music), which was an enlarged, swan-song-reprint of his 1538 work, Lob und preis der löblichen Kunst Musica (Laud and Praise for the Laudable Art of Music). (It is important to note that Luther wrote a different, poetic German preface for Walther’s 1538 work.) The dead giveaway that the German preface is Walther’s translation and not original with Luther is how the German text in Walther’s work compares to the section about listening to “some crap-poet” in the Latin version: “But as for those who are not affected by [figural music], they indeed are truly without taste and deserve to spend their time listening to some crap-poet [aliquem Merdipoetam] or to the music of swine.”

As Martin Brecht details in the third volume of his Luther biography,¹² on Pentecost Sunday of 1538, Simon Lemnius, a talented but misguided University of Wittenberg student, offered some poems for sale outside of the Wittenberg parish church that he had secretly published through Nickel Schirlentz. In them, Lemnius made subtle insinuations about public figures in the town. He was subsequently placed under house arrest, but broke his fetter and escaped before he could be called up before the university rector (Melanchthon at the time). After his sermon on Sunday, June 16, Luther issued a pronouncement against Lemnius, in which he referred to him as a “dishonorable rogue” and a “shameful would-be poet.” After Lemnius’s escape, in September of that same year, he published an enlarged collection of poems which also took shots at Luther, among others. This led Luther to compose, apparently at least somewhat spontaneously, five elegiac Latin couplets at his table on Thursday, September 30, in which he referred to Lemnius as a Merdipoeta, “crap-poet”—no doubt a label he had already been using for him.¹³

This context not only explains Luther’s phrase, “some crap-poet,” in his Latin preface, as well as his reference to “the crude poets” in the final paragraph of that preface, but it also shows that the German preface in Walther’s edition was his own translation and not a Luther original. You can read the corresponding section in Walther’s 1564 work above. You will note there the disappearance of any reference to poets, because Luther’s original words would have been confusing in 1564 to people who knew little, if anything, about Simon Lemnius. But Walther also betrays himself in what he substitutes for Luther’s “crap-poet” reference—“the desolate, wild donkey-braying of the hymn-tune by itself.” For in his concluding remarks (Beschlus) in the back of his 1564 work, Walther not only verifies that Luther composed the preface twenty-six years earlier (1564 minus twenty-six equals 1538) but also makes it clear why he is publishing Luther’s preface in German now:

I see and experience that this art of music is being disparaged and despised by many who pride themselves in being evangelical and Lutheran. They think that it’s papistic [i.e. too Roman Catholic] when four- or five-part songs are used in Christian assembly and during divine services, and as if it would strengthen the papacy if music were promoted in figural singing.

Luther was not addressing any such problem in his own time. Thus it is clear twice-over from this one section that the Luther preface in Walther was translated and edited by Walther.

In spite of this, Johann Nicolaus Forkel in the second volume (1801) of his Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (General History of Music)¹⁴ and Hugo Holstein in his 1883 article, “Eine unbekannte Schrift Luthers über die Musik [An Unknown Writing of Luther on Music]”¹⁵ push the German preface in Walther as Luther’s original. Forkel says that, “judging from the language, [the German version] must originate with Luther himself” (though I’ll show later that the German version at Forkel’s disposal was actually Praetorius’s hybrid), and that he had “read somewhere” (?) that Luther had nailed this preface to the church doors in Wittenberg in order to give church music the strongest possible promotion—the assumption being that, if he did so, he would have nailed up a German version. Holstein insisted that the German preface in Walther was Luther’s original and that the Latin version originated with Melanchthon, who translated it. But the idea of Melanchthon creating the concept of “some crap-poet” without it being in Luther’s original is unimaginable, not to mention that Melanchthon’s take on the Lemnius affair was different than Luther’s.

First Page of Figulus’s Version of Luther’s Preface (1575)

The second German version of Luther’s preface appeared in a musical collection published by Wolfgang Figulus (c. 1525–after 1588) in 1575. After carefully comparing this German version to both the 1538 Latin preface and Walther’s 1564 German translation, I don’t think Figulus’s version even merits being called a translation. It seems to be merely a reworking and compacting (with one glaring exception) of Walther’s translation, apparently simply for the purpose of boosting the sales of his work. (Beneath the title on the title page of the first tenor part-book, we find this “clickbait”: “With a German preface by the Reverend Father Dr. Martin Luther that has not been previously printed.”) This version would probably merit no further attention, except that the esteemed musicologist Walter Blankenburg (1903–1986) apparently went to great lengths to demonstrate “that the preface that Figulus published in 1575, rather than being an alternative German translation, was indeed Luther’s original draft that he then translated into Latin in 1538.”¹⁶ I am admittedly unfamiliar with Blankenburg’s work, but apart from the shorter length in Figulus and the first three words of his version of the preface more closely matching the Latin (Ich wolt warlich || Vellem certe), the evidence against such a conclusion is quite strong. Consider the following:

1. If anyone were to come into the possession of a supposed original draft in German, it would be Walther, not Figulus. Recall that Walther actually published a work in 1538, the same year Luther published a poetic preface for that work and wrote his Latin preface for Rhau’s collection. Walther was Luther’s friend and collaborator.
2. The idea of Luther possessing a draft for any preface he wrote at this time is problematic. In 1538 he dealt with the Lemnius affair and suffered from severe attacks of dysentery and gout, on top of his regular domestic duties and busy schedule of preaching, teaching, and letter writing. “Because of the great quantity of his business [at this time], his friends frequently had to be content with brief letters.”¹⁷ In reading the Latin preface, one gets the impression that Luther threw it out of his sleeve, as it were. His great genius is certainly still on display, but it does not possess the kind of organization and progression of thought that one finds in his more carefully crafted works, or that one would expect if he wrote it on the basis of a draft.
3. The preface in Figulus begins and ends the same way Walther’s translation does—word for word. (Beginning [Walther/Figulus]: Allen Liebhabern/liebhabern der freien Kunst Musica wündsch/wünsch Ich/ich Doctor Martinus Luther Gnad/Genad und Fried von Gott dem Vater und unserm HERrn/HERRN Jhesu Christ/[omit Jhesu] Christo etc. Ich wolt… Ending: Hiemit will/wil ich euch alle/allen Gott dem HERRN/HErrn befohlen/bevolen haben.) What are the odds of the beginning and ending of Walther’s translation—and I have already demonstrated that his version was indeed a translation—just so happening to match Luther’s supposed original German draft? Especially when Luther’s Latin simply begins, “Martin Luther to Devotees of Music. Salvation in Christ [to you all].”?
4. If what Figulus published was Luther’s original draft, Luther did a poor job following his draft when he converted it into Latin. In one place in particular the preface in Figulus has much more content than Luther’s Latin; in a number of other places it has less.
5. In the one place where Figulus has much more content, the word Coleratur (coloratura) occurs. Any Luther scholars reading this are invited to correct me if I’m wrong, but I did extensive searching and I am led to conclude that if Luther did use this word in his draft, it was the only time he ever used it.
6. One sentence in Figulus’s version doesn’t even make sense: “Indeed, no one has yet made it to the point that he could figure out the A-B-C of music, namely that, of all the visible creatures, humans alone can express the joy in their hearts by laughing, and conversely can cry when they are grieved.” How are laughter and crying the A-B-C of music? Luther’s Latin preface is much clearer when it identifies laughter as the alphabet and primary material of the human voice, not of music.
7. The progression from the art or craft of music in general to figural music in particular, clearly present in Luther’s Latin version, is completely missing in Figulus.
8. Both references to poets are completely missing in Figulus. Perhaps this is the best point under which to see Figulus’s method at work. Luther’s Latin reads: “To those who are even but modestly affected by this type of singing, it seems that nothing more wonderful can be found in this age. But as for those who are not affected by it, they indeed are truly without taste and deserve to spend their time listening to some crap-poet or to the music of swine.” Walther translates: “Those who understand and are affected by [figural singing] just a little cannot but be overcome with amazement at it, and they must suppose that there is nothing more remarkable in the world than a song adorned with many parts like that. But whoever has neither inclination nor affection for it, and is not moved by such a lovely wonder [Wunderwerck], must truly be a thick blockhead who does not deserve to hear such lovely music, but the desolate, wild donkey-braying [Eselgeschrey] of the hymn-tune by itself, or the singing and music of dogs or sows.” Figulus, imitating and compacting Walther, reads: “Whoever reflects on [figural singing] just a little and does not consider it an inexpressible wonder [Wunderwerck] of the Lord does not deserve to be called a human, and should get to hear nothing but the donkey braying [wie der Esel schreiet] and the sow grunting.”
9. At the end of the Latin version, Luther calls the devil “the adversary of nature and of this most delightful art.” Walther translates: “an enemy of God, nature, and this lovely art.” Figulus reads: “an enemy of God, nature, and all that God has made and calls good.” On the one hand, notice the greater similarity of Figulus’s version to Walther’s translation than to Luther’s Latin. On the other hand, notice Figulus’s omission of the reference to the devil as the enemy of the art of music—highly unlikely to be Luther’s original in a preface on music.

More specifics could have been cited, but this should suffice to show that Figulus’s version, though important for its own reasons (which I’ll touch on shortly), is a reworking and compacting of Walther’s translation, and not a presentation of an original German draft by Luther or even an original translation of Luther’s Latin. One can go through Walther’s translation section by section, comparing each one to its counterpart in Figulus’s version, and one will consistently see Figulus borrowing vocabulary and phraseology from Walther, even as he reworks and condenses Walther’s material. (He even borrows language from Walther’s own concluding remarks [Beschlus] and incorporates it into his version of Luther’s preface, as I’ll touch on briefly further below.)

Error Category 3: Ignorance of Previous Versions

Another group of errors relates not so much to the preface itself, but to its presentation; these are simply errors of ignorance.

When Johann Jacob Greiff’s aforementioned translation was published in Part 22 of the Leipzig Edition of Luther’s works in 1734, it was accompanied by this byline: “Now translated into German for the first time.”¹⁸ Either he or the editor was completely unaware of both Walther’s and Figulus’s versions.

When Forkel published the second volume (1801) of his aforementioned history of music, he wrote: “It is noteworthy that this outstanding epistle is not found in any edition of Luther’s complete works”¹⁹—when in fact Greiff’s translation had been published in both the Leipzig and first Walch Editions. (Of course, Forkel wouldn’t have been looking for a potentially different German version, since he was operating under the assumption that the hybrid version at his disposal was Luther’s original.)

Hugo Holstein unfortunately put his ignorance on display right in the title of his aforementioned 1883 article, “Eine unbekannte Schrift Luthers über die Musik [An Unknown Writing of Luther on Music].” He went on to say in the article itself that this writing of Luther had “escaped all the editors of Luther’s works and [was] therefore not recorded in any edition of his works.”²⁰ (By that point, it had also been published in volume 7 [1873] of the Latin volumes of the Erlangen Edition, but Holstein, too, was convinced that Walther’s German translation was actually Luther’s original.)

Encomion Musices: The Hybrid Version

The reason that I am publishing these two posts today, on the 400th anniversary of the death of Michael Praetorius, is because Praetorius’s German reprinting of Luther’s preface became one of its most prominent versions. As I mentioned in the Brief Introduction above, though, what Praetorius reprinted was actually a third German version—a hybrid of Walther’s and Figulus’s versions.

In my translation of the hybrid version above, you can see for yourself the text that Praetorius added from Figulus’s version in four places (placed in brackets). Most notable of these additions is the extended exclamation of wonder over the birds, and the nightingale in particular. Though this exclamation was not in Luther’s original, it does, interestingly, reflect sentiments that Luther expressed in the poetic preface he wrote for Walther in 1538,²¹ and it also borrows from language Walther himself uses in the concluding remarks (Beschlus) of his 1564 work.²²

It was this hybrid version that Forkel reprinted, as did August Jakob Rambach and Karl Grell not long after Forkel (1813 and 1817, respectively).²³ All three men were of course unaware that the Encomion Musices was a hybrid.

Even though Walther’s translation and Praetorius’s hybrid are not pure Luther in content, in that Luther did not express in that particular work all the thoughts that those versions express, they are nevertheless thoroughly Lutheran. They also give us insights into the mind, life, and work of both Walther and Praetorius—prominent and important figures in their own right. As just one example, one can distinctly hear Walther’s rendering of “wild donkey-braying” and “the singing and music of dogs or sows” in Praetorius’s dedicatory epistle for Polyhymnia Caduceatrix & Panegyrica (1619).²⁴

Generally speaking, the very fact that this preface by Luther has been handled and mishandled, represented and misrepresented, so much and so often through the centuries, bespeaks all by itself the continuous, unflagging influence and impact of Luther’s musical thought, birthed from the Holy Scriptures.

Endnotes

¹ Praetorius did not include this heading in his reprinting.

² The Luther translation reads An denselben (“Along them”), not Auf denselben (“Upon them”), as Walther has it. The former makes much better sense, since the “them” refers to the streams formed by springs of water.

³ Because of the extra clause he inserted, Praetorius tweaks this sentence somewhat: “That is then why we have so many kinds of excellent songs and psalms, which move…”

⁴ Tenor in Luther’s day referred to the main voice-part or cantus firmus. Its usage implied at least three parts—a middle-range melody (tenor or “holding” or “enduring” part) accompanied by at least one alto (“high”) part and one bass (“low”) part. Incidentally, Luther’s original Latin preface was printed in the tenor part-book of Georg Rhau’s Symphoniae Iucundae collection.

⁵ Walther’s translation of the Latin et natura et arte. Luther is referring to the fact that music occurs both naturally in creation (element) and as something crafted and refined by humans (art), as already outlined.

⁶ Walther’s free translation of the Latin phrase adulterini filii. A Wechselbalg was a supposed demon-child swapped with a human child soon after childbirth—a superstitious explanation for major deformities in a newborn. In a transferred sense, the word could then be used for an illegitimate child or, as Walther uses it here, someone considered unworthy of being called human (usually for moral reasons).

⁷ Johann Franz Buddeus, ed., Supplementum Epistolarum Martini Lutheri (Halle, 1703), 327–30.

⁸ Heinrich Schmidt, ed., D. Martini Lutheri Opera Latina, vol. 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Heyder and Zimmer, 1873), 551–54.

⁹ Des Theuren Mannes Gottes, D. Martin Luthers Sämtliche…Schrifften und Wercke, part 22 (Leipzig: Johann Heinrich Zedler, 1734), appendix, 141–43.

¹⁰ Johann Georg Walch, ed., D. Martin Luthers…Sämtliche Schriften, part 14 (Halle: Johann Justinus Gebauer, 1744), cols. 407–412.

¹¹ Johann Georg Walch, ed., Dr. Martin Luthers Sämtliche Schriften, 2nd ed., vol. 14 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1898), cols. 428–31.

¹² Brecht, Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 87–89.

¹³ Weimar Edition 50:348–51; Tischreden 4:89–90, no. 4032.

¹⁴ Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, vol. 2 (Leipzig: E. B. Schwickert, 1801), 76–79.

¹⁵ Holstein, “Eine unbekannte Schrift Luthers über die Musik” in Die Grenzboten. Zeitschrift für Politik, Literatur und Kunst 42, no. 3 (Leipzig, Friedrich Ludwig Herbig, 1883) 77–83.

¹⁶ Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 12; see also p. 313.

¹⁷ Brecht, op. cit., 230.

¹⁸ Des Theuren Mannes Gottes, D. Martin Luthers Sämtliche…Schrifften und Wercke, op. cit., appendix, 141.

¹⁹ Forkel, op. cit., 76.

²⁰ Holstein, op. cit., 78.

²¹ Weimar Edition 35:483–84; Luther’s Works (American Edition), 53:319–20; cf. 21:197; 54:351.

²² Desgleichen sihet vnd höret man von den Vogeln / wie sie mit jrem einigen Helslin vnd Rörlin / jren Gesang / so wunderbarlich vnd meisterlich / erstlich ausschlahen / vnd bald darauff jren Gesang / so künstlich Figuriren / coleriren / verdrehen vnd ritzen / das ein Mensch / der bey sinnen vnd nicht gar ein stein ist / sich darob hoch verwundern mus.

Likewise, one can see and hear from the birds how, with just the one little throat and pipe they have, they first knock out their song in such wonderful and masterful fashion, and then immediately figure, color, recast, and pick it apart so artfully, that a person in his right mind and who is not solid stone cannot help but be astounded by it.

Compare this language to the bracketed exclamation on birds, originating with Figulus, in the German version.

²³ Rambach, Über Dr. Martin Luther’s Verdienst um den Kirchengesang (Hamburg, 1813), appendix, 84–90; Grell, ed., D. M. Luthers geistliche Lieder (Berlin: Ferdinand Dümmler, 1817), 85–93.

²⁴ Gesamtausgabe der Musikalischen Werke von Michael Praetorius 17:viii.

Martin Luther’s Praise of Music (Latin)

Brief Introduction

Title Page for Georg Rhau’s Collection, Symphoniae Iucundae (Wittenberg, 1538)

Martin Luther composed the following preface in Latin in 1538 for a collection of fifty-two motets published by Georg Rhau (1488–1548), formerly the cantor at St. Thomas in Leipzig. The collection was titled Symphoniae Iucundae Atque Adeo Breves Quatuor Vocum (Delightful and Very Brief Four-Part Concertos¹), and it included pieces by Josquin des Prez, Ludwig Senfl, Heinrich Isaac, Pierre de la Rue, Georg Forster, Philippe Verdelot, and Johann Walther. I will trace the subsequent use and translation of this work, and the debates surrounding it, in greater detail in the Afterword below. You can find my English translation of Johann Walther’s (1496–1570) German translation in this separate post.

I produced the following original translation from the Weimar Edition. (The preface preceding the text there also lent much assistance to my Afterword.) I did not consult Ulrich Leupold’s translation in volume 53 of Luther’s Works until after I had finished, when I used it to check my translation for mistakes. A comparison of my translation to his will preclude any possible charge of plagiarism. I present these fresh translations today, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the death of the Lutheran composer and musician, Michael Praetorius (1571–1621), to the glory of the triune God, with the prayer that they will renew and increase the reader’s appreciation for God’s gift of music.

Martin Luther to Devotees of Music

First Page of Luther’s Preface in Symphoniae Iucundae (1538)

Salvation in Christ to you all. I would certainly and sincerely like it if music, that divine and most excellent gift, were praised and made appealing to everyone, but I am so overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of its virtue and excellence, that I would not know where to start or finish, or a suitable manner of speech, and I would be forced to be a poor and helpless eulogizer with such an extreme abundance of merits to eulogize. For who could capture all of them? And if you tried to capture all of them, you would seem to have captured nothing.

First, if you should consider the thing itself, you will discover that music was imparted to all creatures, individually and collectively, from the beginning of world, or was created together with them. For nothing is without sound or sonorous rhythm, so that even the air itself—though by itself invisible and impalpable, and imperceptible to all the senses, and accounted as the least musical of all things, as completely mute and nothing, in fact—nevertheless becomes sonorous and audible when it is moved, and palpable too. The Holy Spirit means to draw attention to wonderful mysteries in this, but this is not the place to talk about them. But music is even more wonderful in the animals, especially the birds, just as that most musical king and divine lyre-player, David, prophesies [praedicit]² with tremendous amazement and exultant spirit about the wonderful skill of the birds and the serenity of their singing when he says in Psalm 104[:12]:³ “Above them⁴ nest the birds of the sky; from amid the branches they give their voices.”

But compared to the human voice, everything else is all but unmusical—so great is the super-extravagant and incomprehensible generosity and wisdom of the supreme Creator in this one thing. The philosophers have tired themselves out trying to understand this wonderful artistry of the human voice—how air pushed by such a slight movement of the tongue and an even gentler movement of the throat can produce that infinite variety and articulation of sound and words, at the will of the mind that governs it, and so powerfully and forcefully between locations separated by such great distances, that it can not only be distinctly heard, but also understood by everyone in the surrounding area. But the philosophers can only tire themselves out asking; they never find the answers and must give up in astonishment, amazed that no one has yet been found who could define and decide what laughter is (to say nothing of weeping), even though that is just a hissing of the human voice, yes, its alphabet, as it were, or primary material (materia prima). They can marvel at it, but they cannot wrap their minds around it. But we should leave these observations on the infinite wisdom of God in this one creature⁵ to better men with less work to occupy them; we are barely scratching the surface.

This would have been a good place to talk about the benefits of something so great. But this aspect of music, too, far exceeds the most eloquent eloquence of all the most eloquent speakers with its infinite variety and usefulness. We are able to cite this one thing for now, because experience testifies to it: Music is the one thing that justly ought to be honored, after the word of God, as the lord and ruler [domina et gubernatrix]⁶ of the emotions of mankind (the beasts must be disregarded for now), in spite of the fact that humans themselves are ruled and, more often, seized by their emotions, as if they were their lords. No higher praise of music can be conceived than this (not by us, at any rate). For if you should wish to cheer up those who are sad, or to terrify those who are happy, to revive the despairing, to break down the proud, to calm down those in love, to pacify those filled with hate—and who can number all those lords of the human heart, namely the emotions and impulses or inclinations, the instigators of all virtues and vices?—what more effective thing could you find than music herself? The Holy Spirit himself honors her as an instrument of his own particular office by testifying in his Holy Scriptures that his gifts, that is, the affection for all virtues, flow into the prophets through her, as can be seen in Elisha [2 Kings 3:14–19]. And he testifies, on the other hand, that Satan, that is, the instigator of all vices, is driven away through her, as is shown in Saul, king of Israel [1 Sam. 16:14–23].

It was therefore for good reason that the church fathers and prophets wanted nothing to be more connected to the word of God than music. For there are so many songs and psalms from them, in which both intelligible words and sound [et sermo et vox] are at work in the soul of the hearer, while in the other animals and bodies only music is mimicked, without any intelligible words [sine sermone]. So then, speech [sermo] has been given to humans in preference to others, coupled with the voice [voci], that they may know that they have an obligation to praise God with word and music, namely with sonorous preaching and with words united with pleasant melody. Now if you should compare humans to each other, you will see how manifold and diverse the glorious Creator is in his distribution of musical gifts, how much human differs from human in sound and speech [voce et verbo], so that one is amazingly superior to another. For they say it is impossible to find two humans who are exactly alike in voice and articulation, even if some people frequently seem to imitate others, like when some people try to ape others.

Finally, where diligence and the craft of music [Musica artificialis] are added—the craft that improves, develops, and refines natural music—here we are at last permitted to sample with amazement (though not to comprehend) the absolute and perfect wisdom of God in his wonderful work of music. In this kind of music, the best is when one and the same voice proceeds with the song’s theme [tenore],⁷ while more voices play all around in a wonderful way, adorning the main part with lively and most delightful figures [gestibus],⁸ leading, as it were, a sort of divine round dance alongside it. To those who are even but modestly affected by this type of singing, it seems that nothing more wonderful can be found in this age. But as for those who are not affected by it, they indeed are truly without taste and deserve to spend their time listening to some crap-poet [aliquem Merdipoetam]⁹ or to the music of swine.

But the thing is too great for its beneficial traits to be described in this short space. You, most virtuous of young people, should let this noble, wholesome, and joyous creature be entrusted to yourselves, so that you have something with which you may sometimes remedy your emotions, in your fight against foul desires and improper relationships.¹⁰ Then, too, you should get into the habit of recognizing and praising the Creator in this creature. And you must also watch out for and avoid the depraved souls who misuse this most beautiful element and art [et natura et arte]¹¹ to serve their own inordinate lusts, as the crude poets do. For you can be certain that the devil is carrying them away and inciting them against nature, since nature is meant to and ought to use this gift solely to praise God the creator. Those illegitimate sons, having turned the gift of God into plunder, use it to worship the enemy of God and the adversary of nature and of this most delightful art. Farewell in the Lord.

Afterword

The history of the transmission of this preface through the ages is consistently marked by both admiration and errors. Since the admiration is fairly consistent, while the errors vary, I will categorize and trace the errors.

Error Category 1: Faulty Citation

Melanchthon’s Reprint of Luther’s Preface in Liber selectarum declamationum (1541)

The errors of faulty citation trace back to two facts: First, Rhau’s Symphoniae Iucundae did not enjoy particularly widespread distribution, which is the case with most printed musical collections. Second, Luther’s friend and colleague Philipp Melanchthon reprinted Luther’s preface on pages 768–71 of his Liber selectarum declamationum (Strasbourg: Crato Mylius, 1541). But he also reprinted a preface of his own immediately before it (pp. 766–68), also written in praise of music, also written for a musical collection published by Georg Rhau (Selectae Harmoniae Quatuor Vocum de Passione Domini [Select Four-Part Harmonies about the Lord’s Passion]), and also written in 1538. For his own preface in his 1541 collection, Melanchthon correctly cited the original source. But above Luther’s preface, he simply wrote, “Alia Martini Lutheri [Another Preface, by Martin Luther].” Since Melanchthon’s book experienced a wider distribution and went through reprintings, many understandably, though incorrectly, assumed that both Melanchthon’s and Luther’s prefaces had been printed back-to-back in the same work. (And since the Selectae Harmoniae also did not enjoy a wide distribution, there weren’t copies of the work handy against which to check that assumption.)

Thus the 1703 Buddeus reprinting¹² and the 1873 reprinting in the Latin volumes of the Erlangen Edition¹³ (both Latin), Johann Jacob Greiff’s German translation (which appeared in Part 22 of the Leipzig Edition [1734]¹⁴ and Part 14 of the first Walch Edition [1744]¹⁵), and the 1898 German translation in the second Walch Edition (based on the Latin text of the Erlangen Edition)¹⁶ all mistakenly connect Luther’s preface either to harmonies about the Lord’s Passion or, even more incorrectly, to a supposed harmony of the accounts of the Lord’s Passion.

Error Category 2: Textual Modification

Other errors originate with one or the other of the two earliest German translations.

The Lutheran cantor Johann Walther was the first to translate Luther’s preface into German. He included his translation in his 1564 publication, Lob und preis Der Himlischen Kunst Musica (Laud and Praise for the Heavenly Art of Music), which was an enlarged, swan-song-reprint of his 1538 work, Lob und preis der löblichen Kunst Musica (Laud and Praise for the Laudable Art of Music). (It is important to note that Luther wrote a different, poetic German preface for Walther’s 1538 work.) The dead giveaway that the German preface is Walther’s translation and not original with Luther is how the German text in Walther’s work compares to the section about listening to “some crap-poet” in the Latin version.

As Martin Brecht details in the third volume of his Luther biography,¹⁷ on Pentecost Sunday of 1538, Simon Lemnius, a talented but misguided University of Wittenberg student, offered some poems for sale outside of the Wittenberg parish church that he had secretly published through Nickel Schirlentz. In them, Lemnius made subtle insinuations about public figures in the town. He was subsequently placed under house arrest, but broke his fetter and escaped before he could be called up before the university rector (Melanchthon at the time). After his sermon on Sunday, June 16, Luther issued a pronouncement against Lemnius, in which he referred to him as a “dishonorable rogue” and a “shameful would-be poet.” After Lemnius’s escape, in September of that same year, he published an enlarged collection of poems which also took shots at Luther, among others. This led Luther to compose, apparently at least somewhat spontaneously, five elegiac Latin couplets at his table on Thursday, September 30, in which he referred to Lemnius as a Merdipoeta, “crap-poet”—no doubt a label he had already been using for him.¹⁸

This context not only explains Luther’s phrase, “some crap-poet,” in his preface, as well as his reference to “the crude poets” in the final paragraph, but it also shows that the German preface in Walther’s edition was his own translation and not a Luther original. The corresponding section of the preface in Walther’s 1564 work reads: “But whoever has neither inclination nor affection for [multi-part harmonic music], and is not moved by such a lovely wonder, must truly be a thick blockhead who does not deserve to hear such lovely music, but the desolate, wild donkey-braying of the hymn-tune by itself, or the singing and music of dogs or sows.” Notice the disappearance of any reference to poets, because Luther’s original words would have been confusing in 1564 to people who knew little, if anything, about Simon Lemnius. But Walther also betrays himself in what he substitutes for Luther’s “crap-poet” reference—“the desolate, wild donkey-braying of the hymn-tune by itself.” For in his concluding remarks (Beschlus) in the back of his 1564 work, Walther not only verifies that Luther composed the preface twenty-six years earlier (1564 minus twenty-six equals 1538) but also makes it clear why he is publishing Luther’s preface in German now:

I see and experience that this art of music is being disparaged and despised by many who pride themselves in being evangelical and Lutheran. They think that it’s papistic [i.e. too Roman Catholic] when four- or five-part songs are used in Christian assembly and during divine services, and as if it would strengthen the papacy if music were promoted in figural singing.

Luther was not addressing any such problem in his own time. Thus it is clear twice-over from this one section that the Luther preface in Walther was translated and edited by Walther.

In spite of this, Johann Nicolaus Forkel in the second volume (1801) of his Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (General History of Music)¹⁹ and Hugo Holstein in his 1883 article, “Eine unbekannte Schrift Luthers über die Musik [An Unknown Writing of Luther on Music]”²⁰ push the German preface in Walther as Luther’s original. Forkel says that, “judging from the language, [the German version] must originate with Luther himself” (though I’ll show later that the German version at Forkel’s disposal was actually a hybrid), and that he had “read somewhere” (?) that Luther had nailed this preface to the church doors in Wittenberg in order to give church music the strongest possible promotion—the assumption being that, if he did so, he would have nailed up a German version. Holstein insisted that the German preface in Walther was Luther’s original and that the Latin version originated with Melanchthon, who translated it. But the idea of Melanchthon creating the concept of “some crap-poet” without it being in Luther’s original is unimaginable, not to mention that Melanchthon’s take on the Lemnius affair was different than Luther’s.

First Page of Figulus’s Version of Luther’s Preface (1575)

The second German version of Luther’s preface appeared in a musical collection published by Wolfgang Figulus (c. 1525–after 1588) in 1575. After carefully comparing this German version to both the 1538 Latin preface and Walther’s 1564 German translation, I don’t think Figulus’s version even merits being called a translation. It seems to be merely a reworking and compacting (with one glaring exception) of Walther’s translation, apparently simply for the purpose of boosting the sales of his work. (Beneath the title on the title page of the first tenor part-book, we find this “clickbait”: “With a German preface by the Reverend Father Dr. Martin Luther that has not been previously printed.”) This version would probably merit no further attention, except that the esteemed musicologist Walter Blankenburg (1903–1986) apparently went to great lengths to demonstrate “that the preface that Figulus published in 1575, rather than being an alternative German translation, was indeed Luther’s original draft that he then translated into Latin in 1538.”²¹ I am admittedly unfamiliar with Blankenburg’s work, but apart from the shorter length in Figulus and the first three words of his version of the preface more closely matching the Latin (Ich wolt warlich || Vellem certe), the evidence against such a conclusion is quite strong. Consider the following:

1. If anyone were to come into the possession of a supposed original draft in German, it would be Walther, not Figulus. Recall that Walther actually published a work in 1538, the same year Luther published a poetic preface for that work and wrote his Latin preface for Rhau’s collection. Walther was Luther’s friend and collaborator.
2. The idea of Luther possessing a draft for any preface he wrote at this time is problematic. In 1538 he dealt with the Lemnius affair and suffered from severe attacks of dysentery and gout, on top of his regular domestic duties and busy schedule of preaching, teaching, and letter writing. “Because of the great quantity of his business [at this time], his friends frequently had to be content with brief letters.”²² In reading the Latin preface, one gets the impression that Luther threw it out of his sleeve, as it were. His great genius is certainly still on display, but it does not possess the kind of organization and progression of thought that one finds in his more carefully crafted works, or that one would expect if he wrote it on the basis of a draft.
3. The preface in Figulus begins and ends the same way Walther’s translation does—word for word. (Beginning [Walther/Figulus]: Allen Liebhabern/liebhabern der freien Kunst Musica wündsch/wünsch Ich/ich Doctor Martinus Luther Gnad/Genad und Fried von Gott dem Vater und unserm HERrn/HERRN Jhesu Christ/[omit Jhesu] Christo etc. Ich wolt… Ending: Hiemit will/wil ich euch alle/allen Gott dem HERRN/HErrn befohlen/bevolen haben.) What are the odds of the beginning and ending of Walther’s translation—and I have already demonstrated that his version was indeed a translation—just so happening to match Luther’s supposed original German draft? Especially when Luther’s Latin simply begins, “Martin Luther to Devotees of Music. Salvation in Christ [to you all].”?
4. If what Figulus published was Luther’s original draft, Luther did a poor job following his draft when he converted it into Latin. In one place in particular the preface in Figulus has much more content than Luther’s Latin; in a number of other places it has less.
5. In the one place where Figulus has much more content, the word Coleratur (coloratura) occurs. Any Luther scholars reading this are invited to correct me if I’m wrong, but I did extensive searching and I am led to conclude that if Luther did use this word in his draft, it was the only time he ever used it.
6. One sentence in Figulus’s version doesn’t even make sense: “Indeed, no one has yet made it to the point that he could figure out the A-B-C of music, namely that, of all the visible creatures, humans alone can express the joy in their hearts by laughing, and conversely can cry when they are grieved.” How are laughter and crying the A-B-C of music? Luther’s Latin preface is much clearer when it identifies laughter as the alphabet and primary material of the human voice, not of music.
7. The progression from the art or craft of music in general to figural music in particular, clearly present in Luther’s Latin version, is completely missing in Figulus.
8. Both references to poets are completely missing in Figulus. Perhaps this is the best point under which to see Figulus’s method at work. Luther’s Latin reads: “To those who are even but modestly affected by this type of singing, it seems that nothing more wonderful can be found in this age. But as for those who are not affected by it, they indeed are truly without taste and deserve to spend their time listening to some crap-poet or to the music of swine.” Walther translates: “Those who understand and are affected by [figural singing] just a little cannot but be overcome with amazement at it, and they must suppose that there is nothing more remarkable in the world than a song adorned with many parts like that. But whoever has neither inclination nor affection for it, and is not moved by such a lovely wonder [Wunderwerck], must truly be a thick blockhead who does not deserve to hear such lovely music, but the desolate, wild donkey-braying [Eselgeschrey] of the hymn-tune by itself, or the singing and music of dogs or sows.” Figulus, imitating and compacting Walther, reads: “Whoever reflects on [figural singing] just a little and does not consider it an inexpressible wonder [Wunderwerck] of the Lord does not deserve to be called a human, and should get to hear nothing but the donkey braying [wie der Esel schreiet] and the sow grunting.”
9. At the end of the Latin version, Luther calls the devil “the adversary of nature and of this most delightful art.” Walther translates: “an enemy of God, nature, and this lovely art.” Figulus reads: “an enemy of God, nature, and all that God has made and calls good.” On the one hand, notice the greater similarity of Figulus’s version to Walther’s translation than to Luther’s Latin. On the other hand, notice Figulus’s omission of the reference to the devil as the enemy of the art of music—highly unlikely to be Luther’s original in a preface on music.

More specifics could have been cited, but this should suffice to show that Figulus’s version, though important for its own reasons (which I’ll touch on shortly), is a reworking and compacting of Walther’s translation, and not a presentation of an original German draft by Luther or even an original translation of Luther’s Latin. One can go through Walther’s translation section by section, comparing each one to its counterpart in Figulus’s version, and one will consistently see Figulus borrowing vocabulary and phraseology from Walther, even as he reworks and condenses Walther’s material. (He even borrows language from Walther’s own concluding remarks [Beschlus] and incorporates it into his version of Luther’s preface, as I’ll touch on briefly further below.)

Error Category 3: Ignorance of Previous Versions

Another group of errors relates not so much to the preface itself, but to its presentation; these are simply errors of ignorance.

When Johann Jacob Greiff’s aforementioned translation was published in Part 22 of the Leipzig Edition of Luther’s works in 1734, it was accompanied by this byline: “Now translated into German for the first time.”²³ Either he or the editor was completely unaware of both Walther’s and Figulus’s versions.

When Forkel published the second volume (1801) of his aforementioned history of music, he wrote: “It is noteworthy that this outstanding epistle is not found in any edition of Luther’s complete works”²⁴—when in fact Greiff’s translation had been published in both the Leipzig and first Walch Editions. (Of course, Forkel wouldn’t have been looking for a potentially different German version, since he was operating under the assumption that the hybrid version at his disposal was Luther’s original.)

Hugo Holstein unfortunately put his ignorance on display right in the title of his aforementioned 1883 article, “Eine unbekannte Schrift Luthers über die Musik [An Unknown Writing of Luther on Music].” He went on to say in the article itself that this writing of Luther had “escaped all the editors of Luther’s works and [was] therefore not recorded in any edition of his works.”²⁵ (By that point, it had also been published in volume 7 [1873] of the Latin volumes of the Erlangen Edition, but Holstein, too, was convinced that Walther’s German translation was actually Luther’s original.)

Encomion Musices: The Hybrid Version

The reason that I am publishing these two posts today, on the 400th anniversary of the death of Michael Praetorius, is because Praetorius’s German reprinting of Luther’s preface became one of its most prominent versions. What Praetorius reprinted, though, was actually a third German version—a hybrid of Walther’s and Figulus’s versions.

First Page of Praetorius’s 1607 Reprint of Luther’s Preface, Entitled Encomion Musices

In 1607, Praetorius had Installments 1–4 of his Musae Sioniae (Muses of Zion) series published together in Wolfenbüttel. He had his woodcut portrait printed on the back of the special title page, and immediately opposite his portrait was Luther’s Encomion Musices (Praise of Music)—the title Praetorius gave to Luther’s preface—printed on four pages. Praetorius used Walther’s translation as his base text, but he also added text from Figulus’s version in four places—additions which he felt contributed something that was missing in Walther’s version. Most notable of these additions is the extended exclamation of wonder over the birds, and the nightingale in particular. Though this exclamation was not in Luther’s original, it does, interestingly, reflect sentiments that Luther expressed in the poetic preface he wrote for Walther in 1538,²⁶ and it also borrows from language Walther himself uses in the concluding remarks (Beschlus) of his 1564 work.²⁷ I document all four of Praetorius’s additions from Figulus, and the parts Praetorius put in bold typeface, in the companion post.

It was this hybrid version that Forkel reprinted, as did August Jakob Rambach and Karl Grell not long after Forkel (1813 and 1817, respectively).²⁸ All three men were of course unaware that the Encomion Musices was a hybrid.

Even though Walther’s translation and Praetorius’s hybrid are not pure Luther in content, in that Luther did not express in that particular work all the thoughts that those versions express, they are nevertheless thoroughly Lutheran. They also give us insights into the mind, life, and work of both Walther and Praetorius—prominent and important figures in their own right. As just one example, one can distinctly hear Walther’s rendering of “wild donkey-braying” and “the singing and music of dogs or sows” in Praetorius’s dedicatory epistle for Polyhymnia Caduceatrix & Panegyrica (1619).²⁹

Generally speaking, the very fact that this preface by Luther has been handled and mishandled, represented and misrepresented, so much and so often through the centuries, bespeaks all by itself the continuous, unflagging influence and impact of Luther’s musical thought, birthed from the Holy Scriptures.

Endnotes

¹ Symphony did not have the more technical definition it does today. It was used as a synonym for harmony, and it also denoted any composition in which multiple vocal parts were harmonized, which was also the original definition of concerto (thus my translation). It was also the name given to various instruments, especially to stringed instruments equipped with a keyboard.

² Here Luther uses praedico not in its technical sense of foretelling the future, but in its more general sense of the speaking done by the prophets.

³ Luther cites Psalm 103, the numbering in the Vulgate.

⁴ In the context, “them” refers to the streams formed by springs of water.

⁵ Namely the voice

⁶ Luther uses the feminine forms of “lord” and “governor,” which could yield a translation such as, “mistress and governess,” but he appears to do so simply because in Latin and German music is a feminine word and concept. Since he is here comparing the regulating influence of music to that of God’s word, it seemed best to use words that would apply equally well to both.

⁷ Tenor in Luther’s day referred to the main voice-part or cantus firmus. Its usage implied at least three parts—a middle-range melody (tenor or “holding” or “enduring” part) accompanied by at least one alto (“high”) part and one bass (“low”) part. Incidentally, Luther’s preface was printed in the tenor part-book of Rhau’s Symphoniae Iucundae collection.

⁸ Gestus corresponds to the Greek σχήματα. The idea of gestures or figures in music appears to be carried over from the use of those concepts in oratory, where a figure refers to “that which is poetically or rhetorically altered from the simple and straightforward method of expression” (Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory 9.1.13). The figures in music, then, are the harmonic notes and rhythms added to the melody or cantus firmus (“the simple and straightforward method of expression”), in order to beautify and embellish it and to enhance its manner of expression. Thus the German phrase Choral and Figural contrasts the singing of a melody in unison (Choral) with the singing of that same melody along with harmonic parts (Figural).

⁹ Luther is alluding to Simon Lemnius, though with the aliquem he avoids referring to him directly. (Ulrich Leupold renders this phrase, “a certain filth poet,” in Luther’s Works [American Edition, 53:324], but that more direct reference would have been quemdam Merdipoetam.) I talk more about this reference in the Afterword. See Weimar Edition, Tischreden 4:89–90, no. 4032, for the five elegiac couplets Luther composed “against the crap-poet Lemchen” on September 30, 1538. (The nickname Lemchen is both a crass diminutive of Lemnius and pronounced exactly the same as Lämmchen, “little lamb,” yielding the same effect as if he had called Lemnius, “dumb little Lemmy-lamb.”)

¹⁰ Alternate translation: “…foul desires and associations with corrupt characters.” Johann Walther rendered pravas societates as “bad company and other vice.”

¹¹ Luther is referring to the fact that music occurs both naturally in creation (element) and as something crafted and refined by humans (art), as he has already outlined.

¹² Johann Franz Buddeus, ed., Supplementum Epistolarum Martini Lutheri (Halle, 1703), 327–30.

¹³ Heinrich Schmidt, ed., D. Martini Lutheri Opera Latina, vol. 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Heyder and Zimmer, 1873), 551–54.

¹⁴ Des Theuren Mannes Gottes, D. Martin Luthers Sämtliche…Schrifften und Wercke, part 22 (Leipzig: Johann Heinrich Zedler, 1734), appendix, 141–43.

¹⁵ Johann Georg Walch, ed., D. Martin Luthers…Sämtliche Schriften, part 14 (Halle: Johann Justinus Gebauer, 1744), cols. 407–412.

¹⁶ Johann Georg Walch, ed., Dr. Martin Luthers Sämtliche Schriften, 2nd ed., vol. 14 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1898), cols. 428–31.

¹⁷ Brecht, Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 87–89.

¹⁸ Weimar Edition 50:348–51; Tischreden 4:89–90, no. 4032.

¹⁹ Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, vol. 2 (Leipzig: E. B. Schwickert, 1801), 76–79.

²⁰ Holstein, “Eine unbekannte Schrift Luthers über die Musik” in Die Grenzboten. Zeitschrift für Politik, Literatur und Kunst 42, no. 3 (Leipzig, Friedrich Ludwig Herbig, 1883) 77–83.

²¹ Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 12; see also p. 313.

²² Brecht, op. cit., 230.

²³ Des Theuren Mannes Gottes, D. Martin Luthers Sämtliche…Schrifften und Wercke, op. cit., appendix, 141.

²⁴ Forkel, op. cit., 76.

²⁵ Holstein, op. cit., 78.

²⁶ Weimar Edition 35:483–84; Luther’s Works (American Edition), 53:319–20; cf. 21:197; 54:351.

²⁷ Desgleichen sihet vnd höret man von den Vogeln / wie sie mit jrem einigen Helslin vnd Rörlin / jren Gesang / so wunderbarlich vnd meisterlich / erstlich ausschlahen / vnd bald darauff jren Gesang / so künstlich Figuriren / coleriren / verdrehen vnd ritzen / das ein Mensch / der bey sinnen vnd nicht gar ein stein ist / sich darob hoch verwundern mus.

Likewise, one can see and hear from the birds how, with just the one little throat and pipe they have, they first knock out their song in such wonderful and masterful fashion, and then immediately figure, color, recast, and pick it apart so artfully, that a person in his right mind and who is not solid stone cannot help but be astounded by it.

Compare this language to the bracketed exclamation on birds, originating with Figulus, in the German version.

²⁸ Rambach, Über Dr. Martin Luther’s Verdienst um den Kirchengesang (Hamburg, 1813), appendix, 84–90; Grell, ed., D. M. Luthers geistliche Lieder (Berlin: Ferdinand Dümmler, 1817), 85–93.

²⁹ Gesamtausgabe der Musikalischen Werke von Michael Praetorius 17:viii.

Early Editions of Luther’s Works

It has bothered me for a while that there isn’t a convenient place (that I know of, anyway) where one can look up the individual volumes of past editions of Luther’s works. Furthermore, citations in scholarly works often simply refer to the shorthand abbreviation of the edition of Luther’s works (e.g. Wittenberg Edition, Jena Edition), without referencing the actual titles so that a person can look up their references. This post is meant to get a good start at remedying this. (UPDATE [2/9/21]: Click here to see the second post in this series, with links to the volumes of the Altenburg Edition, Buddeus volumes, Leipzig Edition, and first Walch Edition.) (UPDATE [3/7/24]: Click here to see the third post in this series, with links to the volumes of the Erlangen Edition.)

This index, any others that may follow it, and the new category “Editions of Luther’s Works” in my collection of links in the sidebar were inspired by this post in the blog “Beggars All.”

Wittenberg Edition (German)

Parts 1–4 were edited by Georg Rörer and Kaspar Cruciger. Parts 5–12 were edited by Georg Major and Christoph Walther.

Title Woodcut for Part 1 of the Wittenberg Edition (German Volumes)

• Part 1 (1539)
• Part 2 (1548)
• Part 3 (1550)
• Part 4 (1551)
• Part 5 (1552)
• Part 6 (1553)
• Part 7 (1554)
• Part 8 (1556)
• Part 9 (1557)
• Part 10 (1558)
• Part 11 (1558)
• Index (1558) (covers both German and Latin volumes, but only gives a preview of Part 12)
• Part 12 (1559)

Wittenberg Edition (Latin)

• Tome 1 (1545) (contains Luther’s famous description of his “righteousness of God” epiphany)
• Tome 2 (1546) (contains Melanchthon’s biography of Luther)
• Tome 3 (1549)
• Tome 4 (1552)
• Tome 5 (1554)
• Tome 6 (1556)
• Tome 7 (1557)

House Postil

For more on the editions of Luther’s House Postil, see here.

• Veit Dietrich original edition (1544)
• Veit Dietrich corrected and enlarged edition (1545) (includes thirteen Passion sermons by Dietrich; 1548 edition if main link is not working)
• Andreas Poach edition (1559) (also called the Rörer edition)

Jena Edition (German)

The chief editor of the Jena Edition was Nikolaus von Amsdorf, who was assisted by Georg Rörer, Joannes Aurifaber, and Matthäus Ratzenberger. Aurifaber was responsible for the Letters tomes, and all the volumes published in Eisleben. Both the German and the Latin volumes, unlike the Wittenberg Edition, follow a strictly chronological arrangement.

Title Page of Part 1 of the Jena Edition (German Volumes)

• Part 1 (1555)
• Part 2 (1555)
• Part 3 (1556)
• Part 4 (1556)
• Part 5 (1557)
• Part 6 (1557)
• Part 7 (1558)
• Part 8 (1558)
• Supplement Part 1 (1564) (published in Eisleben)
• Supplement Part 2 (1565) (published in Eisleben)
• Table Talk (1566) (published in Eisleben)

Jena Edition (Latin)

• Tome 1 (1556)
• Tome 2 (1557)
• Tome 3 (1557)
• Tome 4 (1558)
• Letters Tome 1 (1556)
• Letters Tome 2 (1565) (published in Eisleben)

Luther Visualized 18 – Physical Appearance

Martin Luther’s Physical Appearance

Luther historian E. G. Schwiebert wrote that Lucas Cranach’s “zeal in reproducing the Reformer outstripped his talent,” and called it “most regrettable” that Luther was never sketched or painted by a more talented artist like Albrecht Dürer or Hans Holbein the Younger (p. 571). However, while Cranach’s reproductions are not exactly photographic, he and the members of his studio were certainly not lacking in skill.

Apart from Cranach’s reproductions of the man, which began in 1520, there was, to our knowledge, only one earlier depiction of him, an anonymous woodcut (#9 below) on the title page of Ein Sermon geprediget tzu Leipßgk uffm Schloß am tag Petri un pauli ym .xviiij. Jar / durch den wirdigen vater Doctorem Martinum Luther augustiner zu Wittenburgk (A Sermon Preached at the Castle in Leipzig on the Day of Sts. Peter and Paul in the Year [15]19 by the Worthy Father, Doctor Martin Luther, Augustinian in Wittenberg), printed by Wolfgang Stöckel in Leipzig. Both this woodcut, originally printed in reverse, and another anonymous woodcut, not included in this post, are consistent with Schwiebert’s assertion that for “the first thirty-eight years of his life [up until 1521] he was extremely thin” (p. 573). The latter woodcut is consistently depicted but erroneously cited in Luther biographies (e.g. Schwiebert, p. 574, where he calls it the “earliest known likeness” without citation or proof, and Brecht, vol. 1, p. 412, where he gives an erroneous source, as evidenced from the actual source he cites, whose woodcut is based on #1 below).

As for the reproductions originating with Cranach and his studio in Wittenberg during Luther’s lifetime (#8 excepted), they can be classified into 8 groups (medium and year[s] that the depictions originated and flourished in parentheses):

1. Luther the Monk (copper engraving, 1520; variously copied and embellished by a number of artists)
2. Luther the Doctor of Theology (paintings, c. 1520; copper engraving, 1521)
3. Luther as Junker Jörg (paintings and woodcut, 1521-1522)
4. Luther the Husband (paintings, 1525 & 1526)
5. The Classic Luther (paintings, 1528-1529)
6. Luther the Professor (paintings, 1532-1533)
7. Luther the Aging Man (paintings, 1540-1541)
8. Luther on His Deathbed (painting based on Lukas Fortennagel’s sketch of the dead Luther, 1546)

The other three visual depictions included below are the already mentioned anonymous woodcut (#9), a sketch of Luther lecturing by Johann Reifenstein (#10), and Fortennagel’s already mentioned painting (#11). Scroll down beneath the engravings, woodcuts, and paintings for more on Luther’s appearance.

1. Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther as an Augustinian Monk, copper engraving, 1520. The caption reads: “The eternal images of his mind Luther himself expresses, while the wax of Lucas expresses the perishable looks.”

2. Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther with Doctor’s Cap, copper engraving, 1521. The caption reads: “The work of Lucas. This is a transient depiction of Luther; the eternal depiction of his mind he himself expresses.”

2. Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther as an Augustinian Monk with Doctor’s Cap, oil on panel, c. 1520 (erroneous “1517” in the upper left-hand corner); housed in a private collection. These paintings circa 1520 are lesser known and therefore both are included here.

2. Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther, oil on panel, c. 1520, since transferred to canvas; housed in the Lutherhaus Museum in Wittenberg.

3. Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther as Junker Jörg [Squire George], oil on beechwood, 1521-1522; housed in the Weimar Classics Foundation. Martin Luther likely posed for this painting during his secret trip to Wittenberg in the first half of December 1521, but cf. next image.

3. Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther as Junker Jörg, woodcut, 1522. The Latin superscription accompanying this woodcut read: “The image of Martin Luther, portrayed as he appeared when he returned from Patmos [Luther’s own biblical nickname for the Wartburg Castle] to Wittenberg.”

4. Lucas Cranach, Portraits of Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora, oil on beechwood, 1525; housed in the Basel Art Museum.

4. Lucas Cranach’s Studio, Portraits of Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora, oil on beechwood, 1525-1526; housed in the LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster.

5. Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther, oil on panel, 1528; housed in the Art Collections of the Veste Coburg. Cf. the similar painting in the Lutherhaus Museum.

6. Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther, oil on beechwood, 1533; housed in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. The prototype for this painting, done on parchment in 1532 and housed in Drumlanrig Castle in Thornhill, Scotland, is one of Cranach’s boldest and finest depictions of Luther.

7. Lucas Cranach’s Studio, Martin Luther, oil on panel, c. 1541; housed in the Lutherhaus Museum, Wittenberg.

8. Lucas Cranach’s Studio, Martin Luther on His Deathbed, oil on oak, 1546; housed in the Lower Saxony State Museum, Hanover. See commentary above.

9. Anonymous, Doctor Martin Lutter [sic] Augustinian, woodcut, 1519. See commentary above.

10. Johann Reifenstein, Luther lecturing in the classroom, sketch, 1545. The inscription was added in 1546 by Melanchthon. It begins with oft-quoted words of Luther: “While alive, I was your plague; when I die, I will be your death, O pope.” After some obituary-esque information, it concludes: “Even dead, he lives.”

11. Lukas Fortennagel, The Dead Luther, sketch, February 19, 1546.

While Cranach did have a virtual monopoly on Luther with regard to visual depictions, there are also written depictions that help us to complete our image of the man. Schwiebert gives the most complete treatment on the subject that I have read:

Vergerio, the papal nuncio, noted that Luther had a heavy, well-developed bone structure and strong shoulders… The Swiss student Kessler accidentally met Luther at the Hotel of the Black Bear in Jena when Luther was returning to Wittenberg from the Wartburg, still dressed as a knight. Kessler wrote in his Sabbata that Luther walked very “erect, bending backwards rather than forwards, with face raised toward heaven.” Erasmus Alber, the table companion, described Luther as well-proportioned and spoke of his general appearance in highest praise. …

One important aspect of his general appearance, noted by every observer, was Luther’s unusual eyes. Melanchthon made a casual remark that Luther’s eyes were brown and compared them to the eyes of a lion or falcon. Kessler, when he became Luther’s pupil, observed that his professor had “deep black eyes and brows, sparkling and burning like stars, so that one could hardly bear looking at them.” Erasmus Alber also likened them to falcon’s eyes. Melanchthon added the observation that the eyes were brown, with golden rings around the edges, as in the case of eagles or men of genius. Nikolaus Selnecker also compared Luther’s eyes to those of a hawk, falcon, fox, and eagle, having a fiery, burning sparkle. …

[Roman] Catholics, on the other hand, saw in these eyes diabolic powers. After the first meeting with Luther at Augsburg, [Cardinal] Cajetan would have no more to do with this man, the “beast with the deep-seated eyes,” because “strange ideas were flitting through his head.” Aleander wrote in his dispatches to the Pope that when Luther left his carriage at Worms, he looked over the crowd with “demoniac eyes.” Johannes Dantiscus, later a [Roman] Catholic bishop, visited Wittenberg in 1523 and noticed that Luther’s eyes were “unusually penetrating and unbelievably sparkling as one finds them now and then in those that are possessed.” His enemies also commonly compared him to a basilisk, that fabulous reptile which hypnotizes and slowly crawls upon its helpless prey. …

Another attribute which greatly enhanced Luther’s physical qualifications as a preacher and professor was his voice. It was clear, penetrating, and of pleasing timbre, which, added to its sonorous, baritone resonance, contributed much to his effectiveness as a public speaker. … Luther’s students enjoyed his classroom lectures because of the pleasing qualities of his delivery. Erasmus Alber added that he never shouted, yet his clear, ringing voice could easily be heard.

Sources
Cranach Digital Archive, combined with the power of Google

E. G. Schwiebert, Luther and His Times: The Reformation from a New Perspective (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950), pp. 571-576

Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985), pp. 318,412

Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), Plates between pp. 14 & 15, and p. 378

Luther Visualized 17 – Smalcald Articles

The Smalcald Articles

MS (employed in Lucas Cranach’s studio), The Eighteenth Figure, woodcut, 1534.

This figure was printed immediately above Revelation 13 in the first edition of Luther’s translation of the entire Bible (1534). That chapter first describes a seven-headed beast coming out of the sea, representing civil government in its antichristian aspect, and then a beast coming out of the earth with two horns like the Lamb but speaking like the Dragon, representing the Antichrist himself. About the second beast, the apostle John says, “He exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence. And he makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast… And he performs great signs so that he even makes fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of men” (Rev 13:12,13). Notice that the artist portrayed the beast out of the earth wearing a monk’s cowl and cloak, as Lucas Cranach had in the 1522 New Testament.

At first Martin Luther was befuddled and frustrated about the refusal of the pope and his legates to hear him out and to join him in reforming the church on the basis of clear testimonies of Holy Scripture. But as he continued to study Scripture, he gradually came to a realization of what or whom he was actually up against. This growing suspicion was confirmed for him when on October 10, 1520, he received the pope’s bull (official decree) threatening his excommunication if he did not retract his teachings. The next day he wrote to his friend Georg Spalatin, the elector’s court secretary: “I feel much more free now that I am made certain that the pope is the Antichrist.”

Luther most clearly articulated his views on the Antichrist in the articles of faith he prepared in 1536 in preparation for a council that Pope Paul III had convoked, to be held in Mantua, Italy, in May 1537. Elector John Frederick had asked Luther to compose the articles on the Lutherans’ behalf. He wanted Luther to distinguish between articles of faith in which they could not yield anything without committing treason against God and his Word and articles in which they could perhaps yield something for the sake of Christian love without violating God’s word. But he also asked Luther for a confession that was clearer than the Augsburg Confession with respect to the pope.

Luther finished the rough draft in December 1536 and submitted it to seven other theologians. With very few changes it was unanimously adopted (though Melanchthon gave it a somewhat qualified subscription), and the elector was also pleased with it. The council never took place during Luther’s lifetime, but the confession Luther composed still gained widespread acceptance among Lutheran theologians in the following years. It became known as the Smalcald Articles because it was circulated and read at Schmalkalden by the large number of theologians and scholars that assembled there in February 1537. Even though it was never officially discussed or accepted there due to Melanchthon’s intrigues and Luther’s illness, Johannes Bugenhagen did present it to them for their voluntary, personal subscription after official business had been concluded, and 44 men signed it in all. It received official confessional status when it was included in the Book of Concord of 1580. (You can read it online here.)

MS (employed in Cranach’s studio), The Twenty-First Figure, woodcut, 1534. This image is based on Revelation 17. The great prostitute of Babylon, representing the unfaithful element within the visible Christian church, sits upon the seven-headed, ten-horned beast (Rev 13:1-10). In her left hand she holds “a golden cup…full of abominations and the filth of her adulteries” (17:4). Note also the triple-tiered papal tiara on her head.

The Smalcald Articles stand out in at least three ways. First, Luther presents the doctrine of justification by God’s grace alone through faith in Christ alone as the core of Scripture from which all other scriptural doctrine emanates and radiates. Second, he also gave a clearer confession about the Lord’s Supper than even the Augsburg Confession did. And third, he also gave a clear confession about the bishop of Rome. He wrote:

[T]here stand all [the pope’s] bulls and books, in which he roars like a lion…that no Christian can be saved without being obedient and subject to him in all that he wishes, all that he says, all that he does. … All of this powerfully demonstrates that he is the true christ of the end times or Antichrist, who has opposed and exalted himself over Christ [cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:4]. For he will not permit Christians to be saved apart from his power, even though his power is nothing, neither established nor commanded by God. … Finally, it is nothing but the devil himself at work when [the pope] pushes his lies about masses, purgatory, the monastic life, and human works and worship [cf. Mark 7:6-8] (which is in fact the essence of the papacy) over and against God, and condemns, kills, and harasses all Christians who do not exalt and honor this abomination of his above all things.

Lucas Cranach’s Studio, woodcut opposite Chapter 11 of Revelation in the September 1522 edition of Luther’s translation of the New Testament (left) and the December 1522 edition (right). Note the difference between the beast’s crown in each.

Once Luther was convinced that the Roman papacy was the Antichrist, he wasted no time making it known in his writings and using the artist at his disposal, Lucas Cranach, to reinforce it visually. He had Cranach portray “the beast that comes up from the Abyss” with the triple-tiered papal tiara to accompany Revelation 11 in the first edition (September 1522) of his translation of the New Testament. Probably at the complaint of the Imperial Council of Regency (Reichsregiment), the papal tiara had to be replaced in the second edition (December 1522) by a simple crown.

MS (employed in Cranach’s studio), The Fifteenth Figure, woodcut, 1534. This image corresponds to Cranach’s images from 1522 above.

However, when Luther’s translation of the entire Bible was being prepared for publication in 1534, and the as-yet-unidentified MS from Cranach’s workshop was preparing woodcuts for it based in large part on Cranach’s previous woodcuts, the triple-tiered papal tiara was restored. (See image on the right.)

Christoph Walther, a proofreader and typesetter in Hans Lufft’s print shop in Wittenberg, confirmed that Luther wasn’t just responsible for the translation, but also for much of the artwork:

Luther himself dictated to some extent how the figures in the Wittenberg Bible were supposed to be depicted and portrayed, and demanded that the content of the text be portrayed and depicted in the simplest way, and he would not tolerate anything superfluous or useless that did not benefit the text getting smeared in with the rest.

Lucas Cranach’s Studio, woodcut opposite Chapter 17 of Revelation in the September 1522 edition of Luther’s translation of the New Testament (left) and the December 1522 edition (right). Note the difference between the prostitute’s crown in each. These images were the basis for MS’s The Twenty-First Figure above.

Sources
Dr. Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette, ed., Dr. Martin Luthers Briefe, Sendschreiben und Bedenken, erster Theil (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1825), pp. 238ff (no. 127), 419f (no. 204), 494f (no. 262)

Friedrich Bente, Historical Introductions to the Lutheran Confessions (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2005), pp. 109-138

Hans Lietzmann, Heinrich Bornkamm, et al., eds., Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1955), pp. xxiv-xxvii

Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), pp. 46-56

Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), pp. 95-102,178-185

Stephan Füssel, Die Luther-Bibel von 1534: Ein kulturhistorische Einführung (Cologne: Taschen, 2012), pp. 43-44,61

The September (New) Testament (1522)

The December (New) Testament (1522)

Biblia / das ist / die gantze Heilige Schrifft Deudsch: Das Newe Testament (Wittenberg: Hans Lufft, 1534)

“Die Schmalkaldischen Artikel” in the Weimarer Ausgabe, vol. 50, pp. 160ff, esp. pp. 213ff

Luther Visualized 15 – Treasures of the Reformation

The Law and the Gospel

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Allegory of Law and Grace, oil on panel, after 1529; housed in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

I am posting this out of order; it was originally intended to be the last post in this series. However, it is fitting to post it on this day commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation.

There are any number of treasures or hallmarks of the Reformation that could be highlighted on this day—the three solas, as just one example. But in 1549, three years after Luther’s death, when a young Martin Chemnitz accompanied his relative Georg Sabinus on a trip to Wittenberg and “in a letter written in Greek” asked Philipp Melanchthon “to show [him] a method of properly instituting and shaping the study of theology,” Melanchthon gave a response that bespoke Luther’s lasting influence on him. He “replied that the chief light and best method in theological study was to observe the distinction between the Law and the Gospel.”

If a person could only be given one piece of advice before opening and reading the Bible on his own, this would indeed be the best. There are two main teachings in the Bible, the Law and the Gospel. The Law shows us our sin and how we should live. It shows us that we can never measure up to God on our own, and therefore it threatens, terrifies, and condemns us and thereby prepares us for the Gospel. The Gospel shows us our Savior Jesus and how he has lived and died for us. It showcases God’s gracious promises to us, and so it comforts, assures, and saves us. This distinction is the single greatest aid for reading and understanding the Bible. As the apostle John wrote, “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). And if there is one piece of artwork that correctly and beautifully captures that distinction, yes, encapsulates all of the Reformation’s and confessional Lutheranism’s theology, this painting by Cranach is it.

The left half of the painting depicts the Law. The defenseless sinner is driven by death and the devil towards eternal destruction in hell, having been judged guilty by Jesus, enthroned in heaven above as Judge of the world. The man was unable to keep God’s law and earn God’s favor because of original sin, inherited as a result of Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, portrayed in the background. In the foreground on the right, the chief prophet Moses, holding the two tables of God’s law, explains to the other Old Testament prophets that the Law can only condemn and hope must be sought elsewhere. The tree on the right is bare, representing how the Tree of Life is not accessible to fallen mankind by his own powers, or how fallen mankind is spiritually dead and can produce no good fruits (works pleasing to God).

The right half of the painting depicts the Gospel. Jesus is portrayed not as Judge of the world, but as the Savior of the world. John the Baptist points the defenseless sinner to Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) through the atoning sacrifice of his life on behalf of sinners. Through this good news, the Holy Spirit, represented by a dove, instills faith in the sinner’s heart, and thus the sinner receives the benefits of Jesus’ sacrifice; the sinfulness of his heart is covered by Jesus’ blood. The rest of the panel depicts, for the most part, scenes from Jesus’ life. In the background, instead of judging from heaven, he comes down from heaven to share in our humanity and suffer our condemnation in our place (the incarnation in the womb of the virgin Mary). In the foreground, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is portrayed as the ultimate proof of his victory over death, the skeleton under his left foot, and the devil, the dragon under his right foot. In the upper right hand corner, Jesus ascends into heaven, the nail-marks in his feet still showing. The counterpart to the serpent’s tempting and mankind’s fall into sin in the left half is the prefiguring or foreshadowing of Jesus’ redeeming work through the bronze serpent on the pole (Numbers 21:4-9) in the right half. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14,15). The tree in this panel is leafy, representing how the Tree of Life is accessible to fallen mankind through faith in Jesus, or how the one who believes in Jesus has spiritual life and produces good fruits.

What God does in his law demand
And none to him can render
Brings wrath and woe on every hand
For man, the vile offender.
Our flesh has not those pure desires
The spirit of the law requires,
And lost is our condition.

Yet as the law must be fulfilled
Or we must die despairing,
Christ came and has God’s anger stilled,
Our human nature sharing.
He has for us the law obeyed
And thus the Father’s vengeance stayed
Which over us impended.

Since Christ has full atonement made
And brought to us salvation,
Each Christian therefore may be glad
And build on this foundation.
Your grace alone, dear Lord, I plead;
Your death is now my life indeed,
For you have paid my ransom. – Paul Speratus, 1523

Today is an anniversary celebration like none other. Happy Reformation Day, dear readers!

Sources
August L. Graebner, “An Autobiography of Martin Kemnitz” in Theological Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 4 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, October 1899), p. 480

Cranach Digital Archive here and here

Christian Worship: A Lutheran Hymnal (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1993), #390

Quote of the Week – Commands and Promises

Similar Paintings

Hans Holbein the Younger, Allegory on Law and Grace, oil on oak panel, early 1530s; housed in the Scottish National Gallery

Hans Holbein the Younger (c. 1497-1543) was a renowned artist and contemporary and sympathizer of Luther. This painting, clearly influenced by Cranach’s above, is usually titled An Allegory of the Old and New Testaments or even The Old and the New Law, but the painting itself clearly identifies its contrast between the law (lex) and grace (gratia). (The painting correctly shows that both the Old and the New Testaments proclaim grace in Christ.) On the left the two tables of the law are given from heaven to Moses. The law makes us conscious of our sin (peccatum; Romans 3:20; 7:7-13), inherited from Adam as a result of the fall into sin (Romans 5:12-19). The wages of sin is death (mors; Romans 6:23). Nevertheless our justification was foreshadowed (mysterium justificationis) through the bronze serpent erected on the pole (Numbers 21:4-9), and Isaiah the prophet (Esayas propheta) foretold of salvation through the coming Christ (“Behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son [Ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium]” – Isaiah 7:14).

At the center of the painting is man (homo). “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body subject to death [Miser ego homo, quis me eripiet ex hoc corpore morti obnoxio]?” – Romans 7:24.

On the right, John the Baptist (Ioannes Baptista) points sinful man to Jesus, the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei), who takes away the sin of the world (Ecce agnus ille Dei, qui tollit peccatum mundi – John 1:29). His coming down from heaven to take on human flesh in the womb of the virgin Mary is the token of God’s grace. An angel announces Jesus’ birth to the shepherds in the valley below. Jesus as the living bread who came down from heaven (John 6:51) on the right side is the antitype to the bread that was rained down from heaven on the Israelite camp in the wilderness, depicted on the left side (Psalm 78:23-25). As an adult, Jesus is explaining to his disciples that he came to seek and to save what was lost and that he must suffer, die, and rise again in order to do so (Mark 8:31; Luke 19:10). His crucifixion is pictured as our justification or acquittal from sin (justificatio nostra) and his resurrection from the dead as our victory (victoria nostra) over death and the devil (Romans 4:25; 1 Corinthians 15:54-57).

Lucas Cranach the Younger, Middle Panel of the Epitaph Altar for John Frederick the Magnanimous in the Parish Church of St. Peter and Paul in Weimar, oil on lindenwood panel, 1555.

Duke John Frederick I of Saxony commissioned the work to the left a couple years before his death. Lucas Cranach himself died the following year, so the project was taken up and completed by his son. 1 John 1:7; Hebrews 4:16; and John 3:14,15 are printed on the pages of Martin Luther’s open Bible. John the Baptist points to Christ with his finger; Luther points to him with his gaze. Cranach the Elder painted himself in between the two, with Christ’s blood spilling onto his head. (He has made himself the counterpart to “the defenseless sinner” of his earlier painting.) His gaze is directed at the viewer, inviting him or her to worship Christ as Savior with him. The other unique detail is the angel flying in midair in the background over the shepherds, which has a double allusion. The first allusion is to the angel who announced the birth of Christ. This second allusion, indicated by the scroll he holds, is to Revelation 14:6,7. Johannes Bugenhagen, the pastor of the parish church in Wittenberg, preached on those verses for Luther’s funeral and identified Luther as the angel or messenger mentioned there. (Subsequent Lutheran preachers have also not shied away from that identification, though they also apply it to any Christian who faithfully proclaims the gospel.) The words printed on the victory banner borne by the lamb beneath the cross are those of John 1:29. The other details correspond exactly to Cranach’s earlier painting above.

Luther Visualized 14 – Augsburg Confession

The Augsburg Confession

Left: Lucas Cranach the Elder, Elector John the Steadfast of Saxony, oil on panel, c. 1533; housed in the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen. Right: Lucas Cranach’s Studio, Philipp Melanchthon, oil on panel, 1532; housed in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

Around 3 p.m. on Saturday, June 25, 1530, Ferdinand, King of Hungary and Bohemia, and all the other electors, princes, and imperial estates assembled before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V “in the large downstairs room” or chapter hall of the episcopal palace in Augsburg, where the emperor was lodging for the duration of the diet he had convened that year. The Saxon chancellor Christian Beyer stepped forward with the German copy of the confession that Philipp Melanchthon (pictured above right) had prepared and that seven princes and representatives of two free imperial cities had signed. The chancellor read it “so clearly, distinctly, deliberately, and with a voice so very strong and rich that he could be clearly heard not only in that very large hall, but also in the courtyard below and the surrounding area.” It took him two hours to finish, and his copy and a Latin copy were then handed over to the emperor.

Because of how the Romanists received the confession, its presentation subsequently came to represent the birthday of the Lutheran Church and the official split from the Roman Catholic Church. Confessional Lutheran churches and church bodies still subscribe to its doctrine without qualification today. It covers a wide range of subjects from God to original sin to justification to the sacraments to free will to monastic vows. (You can read it online here.) Martin Luther, writing from the Coburg Fortress, where he stayed for the duration of the diet since he was still an outlaw, commented on an early draft of the confession, “It pleases me quite well and I know nothing to improve or change in it, nor would it work if I did, since I cannot step so gently and softly.”

The princes and representatives who signed the confession are as follows:

• John, Duke of Saxony, Elector (pictured above left)
• George, Margrave of Brandenburg
• Ernest, Duke of Lueneberg
• Philip, Landgrave of Hesse
• John Frederick, Duke of Saxony (the son of Elector John; regarding the high esteem in which he held the confession, see here)
• Francis, Duke of Lueneberg
• Wolfgang, Prince of Anhalt
• The City of Nuremberg
• The City of Reutlingen

Sources
Georg Coelestin, Historia Comitiorum Anno M. D. XXX. Augustae Celebratorum (Frankfurt an der Oder: Johannes Eichorn, 1577), fol. 141

Dr. Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette, ed., Dr. Martin Luthers Briefe, Sendschreiben und Bedenken, vierter Theil (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1827), p. 17

Carolus Gottlieb Bretschneider, ed., Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 2 (Halle: C. A. Schwetschke and Son, 1835), cols. 139ff, esp. col. 142

Theodor Kolde, Historische Einleitung in die Symbolischen Bücher der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche (Gütersloh: Druck und Verlag von C. Bertelsmann, 1907), pp. xix-xx

Hans Lietzmann, Heinrich Bornkamm, et al., eds., Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 2nd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1955)

Augusta iuxta figuram quam hisce temporibus habet delineata, woodcut, 1575 (coloring subsequent), based on Hans Rogel, Des Heiligen Römischen Reichs Statt Augspurg, woodcut, 1563

This famous bird’s-eye view woodcut of Augsburg by Hans Rogel was published in Georg Braun’s Civitates Orbis Terrarum (Antwerp: Aegidius Radeus, 1575). It is oriented with west on top. #105 marks the palace of the prince-bishop, where the Augsburg Confession was presented, just west of the Cathedral of Our Lady (#32). Only the tower from the original palace remains today, attached to a late-Baroque style building that now houses government offices for the district of Swabia. A single plaque on the outside of this building is the only tribute to the presentation of the Augsburg Confession. It reads:

Hier stand vordem die bischöfliche Pfalz in deren Kapitelsaal am 25. Juni 1530 die CONFESSIO AUGUSTANA verkündet wurde.

This is where the episcopal palace once stood, in whose chapter hall the AUGSBURG CONFESSION was delivered on June 25, 1530.

District Government of Swabia, Augsburg (© Red Brick Parsonage, 2018). Note the small, gray, rectangular plaque near the bottom of the building.

The plaque commemorating the reading of the Augsburg Confession (© Red Brick Parsonage, 2018).

Luther Visualized 7 – Trial and Excommunication

The Papal Bull Threatening Luther’s Excommunication

Manuscript of the papal bull Exsurge Domine in which Luther is threatened with excommunication (Vatican Secret Archives, Reg. Vat., 1160, f. 251r)

This is a manuscript of the infamous papal bull (edict) threatening to excommunicate Martin Luther, proclaimed on July 24, 1520. It begins:

Leo etc. For future memory of the matter. Arise, O Lord, and judge your cause. Recall to memory your reproaches of those things that are perpetrated by senseless men all day long. Bend your ear to our prayers, for foxes have arisen seeking to demolish the vineyard whose winepress you alone have trodden. … A wild boar from the forest is endeavoring to destroy it…

Luther had sixty days from September 29 to send a certified retraction of his errors to Rome. Instead, on December 10, Luther appeared with the bull, trembling and praying, before a pyre lit in the carrion pit at Holy Cross Chapel outside the eastern gate of Wittenberg. He cast the bull into the fire with the words, “Because you have confounded the Holy Place [or truth] of God, today he confounds you in this fire [or may eternal fire also confound you]. Amen.”

Pope Leo X issued the actual bull of excommunication, Decet Romanum Pontificem (It Is Proper for the Roman Pontiff), on January 3, 1521.

Sources
Vatican Secret Archives, “The Bull Exsurge Domine by Leo X with Which He Threatens to Excommunicate Martin Luther”

Weimarer Ausgabe 7:183ff

Max Perlbach and Johannes Luther, “Ein neuer Bericht über Luthers Verbrennung der Bannbulle,” in Sitzungsberichte der königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1907), 1:95ff

Luther’s Works 48:192

The Vineyard of the Lord

Lucas Cranach the Younger, The Vineyard of the Lord, oil on panel, 1569, on the grave slab for Paul Eber in the Wittenberg Parish Church (photo by the Stiftung Luthergedenkstätten in Sachsen-Anhalt).

(Updated on 1/22/21:) When Paul Eber (8 Nov 1511—10 Dec 1569) was thirteen, his horse bolted, throwing him from the saddle and dragging him along on the ground for half an hour, leaving him somewhat crooked for the rest of his life. He went on to be professor of Latin at the University of Wittenberg (1541), head preacher at the Castle Church (1557), head pastor of the City Church and general superintendent of the district (1558), and the most influential hymn writer of the Reformation after Luther. When he died, his children commissioned an epitaph from Lucas Cranach the Younger, who chose a vineyard as the theme of the accompanying painting (pictured), which is still on display in the City Church (St. Mary’s) in Wittenberg. In the right-hand foreground of the painting, Eber and his family, including thirteen children, are kneeling at the fence on the right hand side. Eber, whose name means “wild boar” (from the Latin aper meaning the same), is holding an open Bible; he had been responsible for revising the translation of the Old Testament in the Latin Bible, since he was also an Old Testament professor. In the vineyard itself, the following figures can be identified (Rhein, 193):

In the foreground, Luther, Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen form a prominent triangle, which is extended by the vine-pruning Eber in front of them [thus Eber is depicted twice in the painting]. … Melanchthon is drawing water from a well to irrigate the soil, that is to say, he goes ad fontes, to the sources, the three holy languages of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin… Bugenhagen, finally, is hoeing the soil, thus establishing order in a way similar to his church orders… Other historical figures can be recognized next to those mentioned: Johannes Forster, who is watering the soil; Georg Major, who is tying the vines; Paul Krell, who is carrying the grapes away in a tub; Caspar Cruciger, who is driving a rod into the ground; Justus Jonas, who is digging the soil with a spade; Georg Spalatin, with a muck shovel; Georg Rörer, who is picking up stones; and Sebastian Fröschel, who empties the stones from a trough.

These men labor faithfully in the Lord’s vineyard, while the pope and his cardinals, bishops, monks, and nuns do their best to ruin the vineyard.

For more on this painting, read here. See also Stefan Rhein, “Friends and Colleagues: Martin Luther and His Fellow Reformers in Wittenberg,” in Martin Luther and the Reformation (Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2016), 192–98.

Luther Visualized 4 – The 95 Theses

Luther Posts the Ninety-Five Theses on Indulgences

Anonymous, Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony’s Dream in Schweinitz on October 31, 1517, 1717, woodcut.

This scene, itself a recasting of an earlier one from 1617, depicts a later tradition (dating to 1591), supposedly related thirdhand, that, on the night before Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Elector Frederick the Wise had a dream which he related to his brother John the following morning. In the dream, a monk wrote something on the door of his Castle Church with a pen whose quill stretched all the way to Rome and threatened to knock the tiara from the pope’s head. (UPDATE: See this post for more on Elector Frederick’s dream.)

Source
Johann Georg Theodor Gräße, Der Sagenschatz des Königreichs Sachsen (Dresden: Verlag von G. Schönfeld’s Buchhandlung, 1855), pp. 29-32

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Church of the Foundation of All Saints (Castle Church), woodcut, 1509 (coloring subsequent)

On the evening of October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Or did he? Philipp Melanchthon was the first to report on the posting of the theses as we commonly depict it, but he was not in Wittenberg in 1517 and he didn’t report on the posting of the theses until after Luther’s death. The closest report we get that may have been recorded during Luther’s lifetime is a handwritten note by Georg Rörer in a 1540 copy of the New Testament that was also used by Luther for making translation revisions, but that note says that Luther posted his theses on October 31 on the doors of both churches in Wittenberg. Plus, Rörer later wrote another note that matched Melanchthon’s information, apparently after he had read Melanchthon’s account. We do know that Luther included a copy of the theses with a letter to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz on October 31, and that he himself reckoned the “treading underfoot” of indulgences from that day, but his own correspondence from 1518 seems to imply that he did not immediately make the theses public. Historian Martin Brecht suggests that Luther did not post the theses until perhaps the middle of November 1517. (UPDATE [4/25/20]: Andrew Pettegree makes a good case that Luther did in fact post the theses on October 31 based on publishing evidence [Brand Luther, 12–13, 70–72, 76].) This woodcut of the Castle Church appeared in Das Wittenberger Heiltumsbuch of 1509, which depicted Elector Frederick the Wise’s extensive relic collection and was illustrated with numerous woodcuts by Lucas Cranach. In 1760 the Castle Church, including the wooden doors on which Luther had allegedly posted the theses, was destroyed by fire. In 1858 commemorative bronze doors inscribed with the original Latin theses were mounted where the old wooden doors stood.

Sources
Philipp Melanchthon’s preface to Tomus Secundus Omnium Operum Reverendi Domini Martini Lutheri, Doctoris Theologiae, etc. (Wittenberg: Hans Lufft, 1546), par. 24 (third par. on the linked page)

Volker Leppin and Timothy J. Wengert, “Sources for and against the Posting of the Ninety-Five Theses,” Lutheran Quarterly, vol. 29 (Winter 2015), pp. 373-398

Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985), pp. 190-202