It's the 500th anniversary of Luther's defiance at the Diet of Worms, at the end of which he almost certainly did NOT say what is imputed to him, that is, "here I stand, I can do no other," but rather, just ended. More here. (I tackled the even bigger Luther legend, that he nailed 95 Theses to the door [or even to the side on a bulletin board] of the Wittenberg Castle Church, in this blog post.)
Update, March 22, 2024: American Lutheran fascist, or "Lutefash," Corey Mahler, on his Twitter bio, believes this Luther urban legend. (Oh, he's also blocked me there for calling him out on other bullshit.)
WHY the pietistic ending was added at first seemed to me to be a puzzler itself. Luther's actual ending, "to go against conscience is neither right nor safe," is plenty powerful.
But, I have a guess.
Some later Lutheran, familiar with Brother Martin's "sola fide," and the core theme of his book, "On the Bondage of the Will," may have thought his actual ending was too humanistic. That's also because Luther said elsewhere that "my conscience is captive to god," but ... didn't want Karlstadt, Muentzer, et al, claiming that THEIR conscience had insights his didn't.
This should also be a note to fundamentalist Lutherans who are biblical literalists and reject historical-critical methodology, and specifically in the development of traditions about Jesus and claims of what he said. This is exactly how they develop.
And, speaking of, if you're Lutheran and think his German Bible was the first? Far from it. Now, it DOES appear to be the first translation from the Greek and the Hebrew (how much Luther translated direct from the Hebrew rather than cribbing off the Septuagint, a la Jerome, "King James" and others is still debatable) of any German bible, of which at least 18 complete versions in German existed before Luther wrote. Also, Meister Eckhart wrote his theology in German, and Johannes Tauler preached and wrote in German. See here.
Back to what Luther did and didn't say. Sadly, not just one but two of the three new-ish Luther bios I've recently read reports the legend as truth. (They're the two European-authored ones, both with authors with Lutheran connections, interestingly, even though many Lutherans elsewhere have led the charge against Luther legend.)
In addition, one of the links above notes that Charles V could just as well have said "to go against conscience is neither right nor safe." Good pious Catholic, he felt he had no choice but to eventually act against Luther. BUT, after the Schmalkaldic War, he did NOT have Luther's grave desecrated. He also remained a good, dedicated Holy Roman Emperor wanting to keep the Empire unified without a degree of coercion that might crack it apart.
Since he surely knew nothing but schoolbook/court Latin, and in everyday languages, his knowledge of German trailed that of Flemish and Spanish, how much Luther's speech — and Luther's broader ideas — were translated for him is a big deal. Because, with translation would have come interpretation.
On the other hand, he brought the Inquisition to the Netherlands. On the third hand, those were family lands, not imperial lands in a confederation.
In short, Charles V knew his pragmatic imperial politics. Sadly, a descendant of his brother didn't, 97 years later, contributing to the start of the Thirty Years War.
NOTE: This is part of an ongoing series of posts on the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, Lutheran portion of the 16th Century Reformation, or whatever we should call it. Click the Reformation tag below for more. For both Reformation and non-Reformation takes on issues in Lutheranism, click that tag.
No comments:
Post a Comment