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Luther takes religious vows

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of the humanist circle, and in his student days was personally unacquainted with its leading members. He had none of the humanist enthusiasm for the language and the spirit of the past; what he cared for was the knowledge of human life which classical authors gave him. Besides, the "epicurean" life and ideas of the young humanist circle displeased him. They, on their part, would evidently have received him gladly. They called him "the philosopher," they spoke about his gifts of singing and lute-playing, and of his frank, engaging character. In later days he could make use of humanism; but he never was a humanist in spirit or in aim. He was too much in earnest about religious matters, and of too practical a turn of mind.

Luther's course of study flowed on regularly. He was a bright, sociable, hard-working student and took his various degrees in an exceptionally short time. He was Bachelor in 1502, and master in 1505, when he stood second among the seventeen successful candidates. He had attained what he had once thought the summit of earthly felicity and found himself marching in a procession of University magnates and civic dignitaries, clothed in his new robes. His father, proud of his son's success, sent him the costly present of a Corpus Juris. He may have begun to attend lectures in the faculty of Law, when he suddenly retired into a convent and became a monk.

This action was so unexpected that his student friends made all sorts of conjectures about his reasons, and these have been woven into stories which are pure legends. Little or nothing is known about Luther's religious convictions during his stay at Erfurt. This is the more surprising since Luther was the least reticent of men. His correspondence, his sermons, his commentaries, all his books are full of little autobiographical details. He tells what he felt when a child, what his religious thoughts were during his school-days; but he is silent about his thoughts and feelings during his years at Erfurt, and especially during the months which preceded his plunge into the convent. He has himself made two statements about his resolve to become a monk, and they comprise the only accurate information obtainable. He says that the resolve was sudden, and that he left the world and entered the cloister because "he doubted of himself"; that in his case the proverb was true," doubt makes a monk."

What was the doubting? The modern mind is tempted to imagine intellectual difficulties, to think of the rents in the Church's theology which the criticisms of Occam and of Biel had produced, of the complete antagonism between the whole ecclesiastical mode of thinking and the enlightenment from ancient culture that humanism was producing, and Luther's doubtings are frequently set down to the self-questioning which his contact with humanism in Erfurt had produced. But this idea, if not foreign to the age, was strange to Luther. He doubted whether he could ever do what he thought had to be done by him to save his soul

C. M. H. II.

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The Augustinian Eremites

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if he remained in the world. That was what compelled him to enter the convent. The lurid fires of Hell and the pale shades of purgatory which are the constant background of Dante's Paradise were always present to the mind of Luther from boyhood. Could he escape the one and win the other if he remained in the world? He doubted it and entered the convent.

The Order of monks which Luther selected was the Augustinian Eremites. Their history was somewhat curious. Originally they had been formed out of the numerous hermits who lived solitary religious. lives throughout Italy and Germany. Several Popes had desired to bring them together into convents; and this was at last effected by Alexander IV, who had enjoined them to frame their constitution according to the Rule of St. Augustine. No other order of monks. shared so largely in the religious revival of the fifteenth century. The convents which had reformed associated themselves together into what was called the Congregation. The reformed Augustinian Eremites strictly observed their vows of poverty and obedience; they led self-denying lives; they represented the best type of later medieval piety. Their convents were for the most part in the larger towns of Germany, and the monks were generally held in high esteem by the citizens who took them for confessors and spiritual directors. The Brethren were encouraged to study, and this was done so successfully that professorships in theology and in philosophy in most of the Universities of Germany in the fifteenth century were filled by Augustinian Eremites. They also cultivated the art of preaching; most of the larger convents had a special preacher attached; and the townspeople flocked to hear him.

Their theology had little to do with Augustine; nor does Luther appear to have studied Augustine until he had removed to Wittenberg. Their views belonged to the opposite pole of medieval thought and closely resembled those of the Franciscans. No Order paid more reverence to the Blessed Virgin. Her image stood in the Chapter-house of every convent; their theologians were strenuous defenders of the Immaculate Conception; they aided to spread the "cult of the Blessed Anna." They were strong advocates of papal supremacy. In the person of John von Palz, the professor of theology in the Erfurt convent and the teacher of Luther himself, they furnished the most outspoken defender of papal Indulgences. This was the Order into which Luther so suddenly threw himself in 1505.

He spent the usual year as a novice, then took the vows, and was set to study theology. His text-books were the writings of Occam, Biel, and D'Ailly. His aptness for study, his vigour and precision in debate, his acumen, excited the admiration of his teachers. But Luther had not come to the convent to study theology; he had entered to save his soul. These studies were but pastime; his serious and dominating

1505-8]

Influence of Staupitz

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task was to win the sense of pardon of sin and to see his body a temple of the Holy Ghost. He fasted and prayed and scourged himself according to rule, and invented additional methods of maceration. He edified his brethren; they spoke of him as a model of monastic piety; but the young man - he was only twenty-three-felt no relief and was no nearer God. He was still tormented by the sense of sin which urged him to repeated confession. God was always the implacable judge inexorably threatening punishment for the guilt of breaking a law which it seemed impossible to keep. For it was the righteousness of God that terrified him; the thought that all his actions were tested by the standard of that righteousness of God. His superiors could not understand him. Staupitz, Vicar-General of the Order, saw him on one of his visitations and was attracted by him. He saw his sincerity, his deep trouble, his hopeless despair. He advised him to study the Bible, St Augustine, and Tauler. An old monk helped him for a short time by explaining that the Creed taught the forgiveness of sin as a promise of God, and that what the sinner had to do was to trust in the promise. But the thought would come : Pardon follows contrition and confession; how can I know that my contrition has gone deep enough; how can I be sure that my confession has been complete? At last Staupitz began to see where the difficulty lay, and made suggestions which helped him. The true mission of the medieval Church had been to be a stern preacher of righteousness. It taught, and elevated its rude converts, by placing before them ideals of saintly piety and of ineffable purity, and by teaching them that sin was sin in spite of extenuating circumstances. Luther was a true son of that medieval Church. Her message had sunk deeply into his soul; it had been enforced by his experience of the popular revival of the decades which had preceded and followed his birth. He felt more deeply than most the point where it failed. It contrasted the Divine righteousness and man's sin and weakness. It insisted on the inexorable demands of the law of God and at the same time pronounced despairingly that man could never fulfil them. Staupitz showed Luther that the antinomy had been created by setting over against each other the righteousness of God and the sin and helplessness of man, and by keeping these two thoughts in opposition; then he explained that the righteousness of God, according to God's promise, might become the possession of man in and through Christ. Fellowship of man with God solved the antinomy; all fellowship is founded on personal trust; and faith gives man that fellowship with God through which all things that belong to God can become his. These thoughts, acted upon, helped Luther gradually to win his way to peace of heart. Penitence and confession, which had been the occasions of despair when extorted by fear, became natural and spontaneous when suggested by a sense of the greatness and intimacy of the redeeming love of God in Christ.

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Religious views.

Ordination

[1505-8

The intensity and sincerity of this protracted struggle marked Luther for life. It gave him a strength of character and a living power which never left him. The end of the long inner fight had freed him from the burden which had oppressed him, and his naturally frank, joyous nature found a free outlet. It gave him a sense of freedom, and the feeling that life was something given by God to be enjoyed, the same feeling that humanism, from its lower level, had given to so many of its disciples. For the moment however nothing seemed questionable. He was a faithful son of the Medieval Church, "the Pope's house," with its Cardinals and its Bishops, its priests, monks, and nuns, its masses and its relics, its Indulgences and its pilgrimages. All these external things remained unchanged. The one thing that was changed was the relation in which one human soul stood to God. He was still a monk who believed in his vocation. The very fact that his conversion had come to him within the convent made him the more sure that he had done right to take the monastic vow.

son.

Soon after he had attained inward peace Luther was ordained, and Hans Luther came from Mansfeld for the ceremony, not that he took any pleasure in it, but because he did not wish to shame his eldest The sturdy peasant adhered to his anti-clerical Christianity, and when his son told him that he had a clear call from God to the monastic life, the father suggested that it might have been a prompting from the devil. Once ordained, it was Luther's duty to say mass and to hear confessions, impose penance and pronounce absolution. He had no difficulties about the doctrines and usages of the Church; but he put his own meaning into the duties and position of a confessor. His own experience had taught him that man could never forgive sin; that belonged to God alone. But the human confessor could be the spiritual guide of those who came to confess to him; he could warn them against false grounds of confidence, and show them the pardoning grace of God.

Luther's theological studies were continued. He devoted himself to Augustine, to Bernard, to men who might be called "experimental" theologians. He began to show himself a good man of business, with an eye for the heart of things. Staupitz and his chiefs entrusted him with some delicate commissions on behalf of the Order, and made quiet preparation for his advancement. In 1508 he, with a few other brother monks, was transferred from the convent at Erfurt to that at Wittenberg, to assist the small University there.

Some years before this the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, the head of the Ernestine branch of his House, had resolved to provide a university for his own dominions. He had been much drawn to the Augustinian Eremites since his first acquaintance with them at Grimma when he was a boy at school. Naturally Staupitz became his chief adviser in his new scheme; indeed the University from the first might almost be called an educational establishment belonging to the

1508]

The University of Wittenberg

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Augustinian Eremites. There was not much money to spare at the Electoral Court. A sum got from the sale of Indulgences some years before, which Frederick had not allowed to leave the country, served to make a beginning. Prebends attached to the Castle Church — the Church of All Saints was its ecclesiastical name furnished the salaries of some of the professors; the other teachers were to be supplied from the monks of the convent of the Augustinian Eremites in the town. The Emperor Maximilian granted the usual imperial privileges, and the University was opened October 18, 1502. Staupitz himself was one of the professors and dean of the faculty of Theology; another Augustinian Eremite was dean of the faculty of Arts. The patron Saints of the Order, the Blessed Virgin and St Augustine, were the patron Saints of the University. Some distinguished teachers, outside the Augustinian Eremites, were induced to come, among others Jerome Schurf from Tübingen; Staupitz collected promising young monks from convents of his Order and enrolled them as students; other youths were attracted by the teachers and came from various parts of Germany. The University enrolled 416 students during its first year. This success, however, appears to have been artificial; the numbers gradually declined to 56 in the summer session of 1505. The first teachers left it for more promising places. Still Staupitz encouraged Frederick to persevere. New teachers were secured-among them Nicholas Amsdorf, who had then a great reputation as a teacher of the old-fashioned scholasticism, and Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt. The University began to grow slowly.

Luther was sent to Wittenberg in 1508. He was made to teach the Dialectic and Physics of Aristotle, a task which he disliked, but whether in the University or to the young monks in the convent it is impossible to say. He also began to preach. His work was interrupted by a command to go to Rome on the business of his Order. The Augustinian Eremites, as has been already said, were divided into the unreformed and the reformed convents - the latter being united in an association which was called the Congregation. Staupitz was anxious to heal this schism and to bring all the convents in Germany within the reformation. Difficulties arose, and the interests of peace demanded that both the General of the Order and the Curia should be informed on all the circumstances. A messenger was needed, one whom he could trust and who would also be trusted by the stricter party among his monks. No one seemed more suitable than the young monk Martin Luther.

Luther saw Rome, and the impressions made upon him by his visit remained with him all his life. He and his companion approached the imperial city with the liveliest expectations; but they were the longings of the pious pilgrim, not those of the scholar of the Renaissance-so little impression had humanism made upon him. When he first caught