In the pictures his imagination conjures up, the sacrifice of the Mass—the most sacred mystery of Catholic worship—occupies a special place. It is the idolatrous abomination foretold by the prophet, or rather the idol Moasim itself (above, vol. iv., p. 524). One wonders whether he really succeeded in persuading himself that his greatest sin, a sin that cried to heaven for vengeance and deserved eternal damnation (above, p. 136; cp. vol. iv., p. 509), was his having—as a monk and at a time when he knew no better—celebrated the sacrifice of the Mass? It is true that, in the solemn profession he makes of his belief in the Sacrament (1528), when resolved to confess his faith “before God and the whole world,” he says: “These were my greatest sins, that I was such a holy monk and for over fifteen years angered, plagued and martyred my dear Master so gruesomely by my many Masses.” The words occur at the close of his “Vom Abendmal Christi Bekentnis,” with the asseveration, that he would stand firm in this faith to the very end; “and were I, which God forbid, under stress of temptation or in the hour of death to say otherwise, then [what I might say] must be accounted as nought and I hereby openly proclaim it to be false and to come from the devil. So help me My Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.”[507]

According to what he once remarked in 1531 (above, p. 136 f.) it was, however, not the devil who was prompting him to despair by calling up his crying sin of having said Mass. If Luther is indeed telling the truth, and if his doings as a zealous monk really seemed to him to be his worse sins, then we can only marvel at his confusion of mind having gone so far. From other admissions we should rather gather that what disquieted his conscience was more the subversion of the olden worship, the ruin of the religious life and, in fact, the whole working of the innovations. And yet, here, we have a solemn assurance that the very contrary was the case.

It is in itself a problem how he contrives to make such frightful sins of his monastic life—into which, on his own showing, he had entered in ignorance—and of the Masses which he had said all unaware of their wickedness.

But, in his polemics, such is the force with which he is swept along, that he does not pause to consider his blatant self-contradictions, or how much he is putting himself at the mercy of his opponents, or how inadequately his rhetoric and all his playing to the gallery hides the lack of valid proofs and the deficiencies of his reading of Scripture.

As for his foes, in his mind’s eye he sees them wavering and falling, blown over, as it were, by the strength of his reasoning, even when they are not overtaken and slain by the righteous judgment of God. When need arises he has ready a list of deaths, particularly of sudden ones, by which opponents had been snatched away.[508] The “blessed upheaval,” however, which is one day to carry them all off together, is, so at least his morbid fancy tells him, still delayed by his prayers.

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As for himself personally, he stood under the spell of a train of thought displaying pathological symptoms, which, taken in the lump, must raise serious questions as to the nature of his changing mental state.

Being chosen by God for such great things, being not merely the “prophet of the Germans” but also destined to bring back the Gospel to the whole Christian world, Providence, in his opinion, has equipped him with qualities such as have hitherto rarely graced a man. This he does not tire of repeating, albeit he ever refers his gifts to God. He is fond of comparing himself not merely with the Popish doctors of his day but also with the most famous of bygone time. In the same way he is fond of measuring foes within the fold by the standard of his own greatness. He is thus betrayed into utterances such as one usually hears only from those affected with megalomania; this sort of thing pleases him so well, that, intent on his own higher mission, he fails to see the bad taste of certain of his exaggerations and how repulsive their tone is.[509]

God at all times has saved His Church “by means of individuals and for the sake of a few”; this Luther pointed out to his friends in 1540, instancing Adam, Abraham, Moses, Elias, Isaias, Augustine, Ambrose and others. “God also did something by means of Bernard and now again through me, the new Jeremias. And so the end draws nigh!”[510] The end, however, for which he has made everything ready, may now come quite peacefully and speedily, for he has not merely done “something,” but “everything that pertains to the knowledge of God has been restored”; “the Gospel has been revealed and the Last Day is at the door.”[511]

Fancying himself the passive tool of Divine Providence, it becomes lawful for him deliberately to scatter over the world his literary bomb-shells, exclaiming: God wills it, for, did He not, He could prevent it! He flings broadcast atrocious charges of a character to arouse men’s worst passions, and, at the same time, writes to his friends: If it is too much, God at our prayer must provide a remedy.[512] Hence it is God Who must bear the blame for everything, seeing that He works through Luther. God made him a Doctor of Holy Scripture, let Him therefore see to it.

Though quite full of the idea that his own doctrine was alone right, yet, as already shown, he went in early days so far as to grant to every man freedom of belief and the right to read Scripture according to his lights; for to him every Christian is a judge of Holy Scripture, a doctor and a tool of the Holy Ghost. The assumption underlying this, viz. that, in spite of all, the necessary unity of doctrine would be preserved, is not easy to explain. When, however, experience stepped in and disproved the assumption, Luther’s behaviour became even more inexplicable. He was by nature so disposed to ignore the claims of logic that the contradiction between his demand that all should bow to his doctrine, and such theories as that the Bible is, for all, the true and only fount of knowledge, and that no other outward ecclesiastical authority exists, never seems to have troubled him. Though he claimed to be the “liberator of minds and consciences,” he, nevertheless, called on the authorities to put down all other doctrines.[519]

The dignity of his chair at Wittenberg is exalted by him to giddy heights. “This university and town,” he said of Wittenberg, may vie with any others. “All the highest authorities of the day are at one with us, like Amsdorf, Brenz and Rhegius. Such men are our correspondents.” In comparison, the sects are simply ludicrous in their insignificance. Woe to those within the fold who dare to run counter to Luther, “like ‘Jeckel’ and ‘Grickel’; they imagine that they alone are clever and that they, like ‘Zwingel’ also, never learnt anything from us! Yet who knew anything 25 years ago? Who stood by me 21 years since, when God, against both my will and my knowledge, led me into the fray? Alas, what a misfortune is ambition!” This he said in 1540,[520] but already eight years before he had complained bitterly: “Each one wants to make himself out to be alone in knowing everything.… Everywhere we find the same Master Wiseacre, who is so clever that he can lead a horse by its tail.” Though one alone has received from God the mission of preaching the Gospel, yet “there are others, even among his pupils, who think they know ten times more about it than he.… Then, hey presto, another doctrine is set up.”[521] “Deadly harm” to Christianity is the result; nevertheless, according to Christ’s prophecy, “factions and sects” there must be; but their source is and remains the devil[522]—who, according to Luther, is the true God of this world in which indeed his finger can everywhere be seen. (See above, vol. v., p. 275 ff.)

Strange indeed is the frame of mind here presented to the observer. So much is Luther the plaything of his fancy and the feeling of the moment, that, at times he seems the victim of a sort of self-suggestion and to be following blindly the idea which happens to hold the field.

His judgment being seen to be so confused, it becomes easier to estimate at their right value certain of his ideas, particularly his conviction that he and his cause owed their preservation to a series of palpable miracles. He contrived to spread among his pupils the belief that “holy Luther” was the greatest prophet since the time of the Apostles.[523] Yet anyone who reflects how Luther could devote a special tract to proving that so everyday an occurrence as the “escape” of a nun from her convent was worthy of being deemed a great miracle for all time, can only marvel at the facility with which Luther could delude himself.[524]

Other Abnormal Lines of Thought and Behaviour

Luther’s action presents many other problems to the psychologist, for instance, in its waverings and contradictions. Strong in his belief in his Divine mission, he roundly abuses kings and princes in the vilest terms, and yet, at the same time, he teaches respect and obedience towards them and even sets himself up as a model in this respect, all according to his mood and as they happen to be favourable to him or the reverse. On the one hand, he presumes to incite the people to acts of violence, and, on the other, he preaches no less cogently the need of calmness and submission. He boasts of the courage with which he had dashed into the very jaws of Behemoth, and of his utter contempt for his foes; yet this same Luther is obsessed by the idea that his own life is threatened by poison and sorcery, just as his party is menaced by the hired assassins of the monks and Papists. While he extols the University of Wittenberg as the bulwark of theological unity, he is at the same time so distrustful of the doctrine of his friends that his intercourse with them suffers, and, to at least one of his intimates, Wittenberg becomes a “cave of the Cyclops.”

Such contradictions and many of the like combined to induce in him an abnormal state of mind. Harmony and consistency of thought and feeling was something he never knew. Hence the charge brought against him, not merely by opponents, but even by many of his own followers, viz. of being muddled, illogical and not sure of his ground.

While he is perfectly able at times to speak and write with such candour and truth that one cannot but admire the wholesome sense, and sober, witty, cheery style of his literary productions, yet their tone and character change entirely as soon as it becomes a question of his polemics or of his Evangel. Then his mind becomes overcast, his thoughts pursue one another like storm-clouds, assuming meanwhile the strangest shapes and the reader is over whelmed by a torrent of mingled abuse and paradox. His very proofs are caught up in the whirl and become so distorted that it is often impossible even to tell whether they are meant in earnest or are merely in the nature of a challenge.

Finally we have the paradox apparent in his practical instructions and the curious behaviour into which his belief in his mission occasionally led him. We may recall the means to be employed for overcoming temptations, one of the mildest of which was a good drink,[533] and the measures to be taken to induce peace of soul. “Break out into abuse,” such is his advice, and that will bring inward peace.[534] If this does not work, then coarse humour will often succeed, one of those jests, for instance, where the sacred and sublime is vulgarised simply to raise a laugh. “Against the devil Luther makes use of ‘stronger buffoonery’ and dismisses him curtly, nay, often rudely.”[535] Pointless jests often spoil the force of his words. For instance, he found himself in a difficulty about the second wife whom one of Carlstadt’s followers, acting on Luther’s own principles, wished to take in addition to his ailing spouse; whilst stipulating that the man must first “feel his conscience assured and convinced by the Word of God,” and doing his best to dissuade him from taking such a step, Luther adds in a jesting tone, that it were perhaps better to let the matter take its course, as at Orlamünde (under the rule of Carlstadt and his Old-Testament ideas) they would soon be introducing circumcision and the Mosaic Law in its entirety.[536]

His instability of mind and ever-changing feeling ended by impressing a peculiar stamp on his whole mentality.

At one time he is delighted to see all things subject to the new Evangel, and extols the gigantic success of his efforts; at another he complains bitterly that the world is turning its back on the Word and deserting the little flock of true Evangelicals. Thus the world could promptly assume in his mind quite contradictory aspects. Of his alternating moods of confidence and despair he told his friends: “My moods vary quite a hundred times a day—nevertheless I stand up to the devil.”[537] Hence he was aware of his vacillations, though on the same occasion he declares that he knows right well how Holy Scripture strengthens him against them. He also feels and acknowledges his inconsistency, in being, for all his changeableness, so rigid and obstinate in his dealings with his friends. They knew his character, he said, and called it “obstinate.”[538]

Profound depression can alone account for the step he took in 1530, when, for a while, he discontinued his sermons at Wittenberg because he was sick of the indifference of his hearers to the Word of God and disgusted with their conduct. The editor of the sermons of this year, which have only recently been published, remarks justly, that “the only possible explanation of this step is a pathological one.”[539] Luther even went so far as to declare from the pulpit that he was “not going to be a swine-herd.”[540] Yet, a little after, during the journey to the Coburg, a sudden change occurred, and we find Luther making jokes and writing in a quite optimistic vein, and, no sooner had he reached his new abode, than he plunged into new literary labours. Nevertheless, whilst at the Castle, he was again a victim of intense depression, was visited by Satan’s “embassy” and even vouchsafed a glimpse of the enemy of God. On his departure from the Coburg good humour again got the better of him, as we see from his jovial letter to Baumgärtner of Oct. 4, 1530, and on reaching Wittenberg, he was soon up to his ears in work, so that he could write: “I am not only Luther, but Pomeranus, Vicar-General, Moses, Jethro and I know not who else besides.”[541] The facility with which his moods altered is again apparent when, in his last days, he left Wittenberg in disgust only to return again forthwith in the best of spirits. (See below, xxxix., 1.)

Yet in his attitude to the olden Church this same man, who otherwise shows himself so instable, knows how to display such defiant obstinacy that Protestants who look too exclusively at this side of his character have even been able to speak of his inflexible firmness. What steels him here is his ardent belief in his calling.

The idea of his vocation ever serves to help him over his difficulties. An instance of that marvellous elasticity of mind with which he seizes on his calling to pacify both himself and his friends, is to be found in an intimate conversation held after the “greatest of his temptations” in 1527, and recorded by Bugenhagen. After Luther had declared that he saw nothing to regret in his severity towards his foes he went on to speak, with tears in his eyes, of the sects that would spring up and which his friends would not be able to withstand. He proceeded to admit that “he was sorry if he had given scandal by his buffoonery and by his vituperation,[542] but that the cause could not be displeasing to the pious, for he loved mankind [this is Bugenhagen’s remark] too much and was an enemy to all hypocrisy.” “God had not ordained” that he, so Luther here declares, “should appear as a stern and austere figure. The world finds no sins (‘crimina’) wherewith to reproach me, but, because it follows its own judgment, it takes great offence at me, as I see. Possibly,” so he goes on, “God wishes to delude the blind and ungrateful world (‘mundum stultum facere’) so that it may perish in its contempt and never see what excellent gifts God has bestowed on me alone out of so many thousands, wherewith I am to minister unto those who are His friends. Thus the world, which refuses to acclaim the word of salvation which God sends through me, will find in me, according to the divine counsel, what offends it and is to it a stumbling-block. For this God is answerable; for I shall pray that I may never be to any a cause of scandal by my sins.”

“This I learnt with wondrous joy from his own lips,” adds Bugenhagen.[543] Others will, however, find Luther’s enigmatical train of thought more difficult to understand.

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The above are but a few instances of an abnormal turn of mind; of the like the present work contains others in abundance. Anyone desirous of penetrating further into the folds and windings of a mind so involved should study Luther’s letters, particularly those dating from 1517 to 1522 and from 1540 to 1546. He will there find much of the same sort, which can hardly be termed either sane or reasonable; but even the passages we have quoted suffice to reveal in him an uncanny power of self-deception such as few historic characters display. Many a great genius has betrayed psychological peculiarities, indeed it seems at times to be the fate of those endowed with eminent gifts to overstep the boundaries and to venture further than the reason and reflection of thinking men can follow.[544] That Luther carried certain mental peculiarities to their utmost limit is plain from what we have seen, nor can it be right to close one’s eyes to the fact.

Luther showed the defects of a “genius” not least in his vituperation and in the other far from commendable methods he used in his polemics. It was precisely these defects which led Erasmus to question whether he was quite in his right mind. “Had a man said this in the delirium of fever, could he have uttered anything more insane?” Thus Erasmus in his “Hyperaspistes.”[545] He often speaks of his opponent’s feverish fancies. He denies that his spirit is a “sober” one, and maliciously supposes that he was drunk. In spite of his usual moderation and reticence, the scholar, when dealing with Luther’s assertions, constantly uses such words as “delirus,” “insanus,” “lymphatus,” “sine mente,” “mera insania.” On one occasion he says of the “devils, spectres, ‘lamiæ,’ ‘megæræ’ and other more than tragic words” which Luther was addicted to flinging at his foes, that such a habit was a “sign of coming madness” (“venturæ insaniæ præsagia”); elsewhere he views with misgiving the sort of compulsion (“non agere sed agi”) which urges Luther to abuse all who differ from him.[546]

In other circles, too, the opinion prevailed that Luther was suffering from some sort of mental disease. We may recall the remarks of Boniface Amerbach, who was not unkindly disposed to Luther, in sending the latter’s tract of 1534 against Erasmus, to his brother Basil (above, vol. iv., p. 183).

In Luther’s immediate surroundings we also find traces of a fear that the Master stood in some danger of losing his mind.

A thoroughgoing investigation of the matter by some unbiassed expert in mental diseases would, however, be of immeasurably greater value than the mere opinions of contemporary admirers and opponents. But the difficulty is to find an impartial expert. Protestant theologians will not easily be found ready to agree with Catholic writers regarding the process which made of a quondam monk the founder of the Protestant faith, or to see Luther’s scruples in quite the same light. Entire agreement would seem for ever excluded, owing to differences of outlook so deep-seated. If, to some, Luther appears as a “new Paul,” and as one who removed every obstacle to free religious research, then the view they take of his inward change and later spiritual life must perforce be coloured to some extent by this idea.

Nor must the fact be lost to sight that many of the apparently suspicious symptoms were, in Luther’s case, quite wilful. Thus his outbreaks of fury against Popery, the psychological origin of which we have already described (vol. iv., p. 306 ff.), are largely an outcome of the feelings of hatred he deliberately encouraged, and a reaction against his earlier and better convictions. Again, self-deception and lack of self-control, i.e. moral elements, played a great part in him. Since, however, even at the outset of his career he already displayed these moral defects, they must be carefully distinguished from his morbid states and no less from his doubts and remorse of conscience.

At the very least, however, we should give to the purely historical facts such unbiassed, broadminded recognition as that editor of the great Weimar Edition of Luther’s works (see above, p. 168), who, as we heard, spoke of the “pathological” explanation of certain acts and statements of Luther’s as the only one possible. The word “pathological,” and other similar ones, had, however, been used even earlier, and, that, even by non-Catholics, as descriptive of certain of Luther’s states, nor was the remark entirely new, that in many a great genius we find something pathological.[547]

5. Luther’s Psychology according to Physicians and Historians

It is not our intention in the following to criticise the opinions quoted; they have been collected chiefly with the object in view of providing those qualified to judge with matter on which to exercise their wits. Nevertheless, we have no intention of depriving ourselves of the right of making occasional observations. Thus Hausrath’s opinion, to be given immediately, calls for some revision, as will be clear even to the lay mind. No disturbance of Luther’s intellectual functions or mental malady amounting to actual “psychosis” can be assumed at any period of his life. This, however, is a quite different thing from admitting that his case was not entirely normal.

“The psychology of men, who, like him, are engaged in such a struggle,” rightly remarks a Protestant theologian, “is exceedingly complicated. Discrepancies are to be met with side by side, and, according to the circumstances, now one element now another comes to the fore.”[548] In Luther’s case the co-existence of bouts of illness with the unfettered use of his powers, of fundamental delusions with true though misapplied ideas, of frivolity, sensuality and temptations to despair, and, on the top of all this, the contradictory statements he himself makes about himself, i.e.—he, the only man who could have told us how the facts really stood—all these circumstances render any sure conclusion extremely difficult.

No Protestant hitherto has used terms so strong to describe Luther’s overwrought nerves as his most recent biographer, Hausrath, the Heidelberg theologian, in his first edition of his “Life of Luther.” His assertions do undoubtedly err on the side of exaggeration.[549] For instance, when he says, that, owing to his illness in the monastery Luther had more than once been in danger of sinking into “the abyss of religious melancholia.”[550] Erroneously regarding the “temptations”—in reality mere remorse of conscience—from which Luther suffered, as the outcome of his morbid bodily and mental state, he even ventures to hint expressly at the nature of the malady: “The regularity with which the attacks return during all the years spent in the monastery and after he had commenced his public career, leads us to infer a recurrent psychosis, the attacks of which became less frequent after his marriage, but never altogether ceased.”[551]

In recent times, apart from Hausrath, two other writers, both of them non-Catholics, have looked more closely into Luther’s pathology. Dr. Berkhan in an article in the “Archiv für Psychiatrie” entitled “Die nervösen Beschwerden Luthers,” and Gustav Kawerau in the study “Etwas vom kranken Luther,” printed in the “Deutsch-evangelische Blätter.” The two Protestants, Küchenmeister and Ebstein, who also dealt with Luther’s maladies,[552] failed to discuss the psychological phenomena here under consideration; what interested them was more Luther’s ordinary illnesses though, it is true, they bring forward various data which may prove of interest here; these, nevertheless, must be cautiously used, as the authors are somewhat deficient in historical criticism. Older writers who treated of Luther’s illnesses, e.g. the Protestant pastor Friedrich Siegmund Keil, Garmann, the Chemnitz physician and an anonymous writer in the “Neues Hannöversche Magazin” are even less satisfactory.

Of the two first mentioned, Kawerau supplies a careful review of those statements of Luther’s which concern his nervous maladies, not, however, carrying them back to his earliest years. He gives us the picture “of a man occupying a most responsible position, ever in friction with his surroundings” and “in a state of nervous overstrain due to too much work of body and mind.”[553] With these words he seeks to pave the way for a psychological appreciation of all that, as he says, “so often appears repulsive or regrettable in Luther, for instance, his waxing irritability, his unbridled anger, the excesses he commits by word and pen, and his sudden changes of mood.” He even opines that “the spiritual temptations may be accounted for by his all-too-great labours and anxieties, and their effect upon his constitution”;[554] his conclusion is that a fuller knowledge of Luther’s ailments “helps us to understand him aright and better to appreciate his greatness.”[555]

The other writer, Dr. Berkhan, a Brunswick physician, had, previous to Kawerau, attempted to lift the veil which shrouds the “anomalies” presented by Luther; he did not, however, properly sift his materials, nor did he consider the various symptoms in their complexus.[556] He comes to the conclusion that some of Luther’s troubles, for instance, his “hallucinations,” “must be ascribed to an affection of the nerve centres.” These “hallucinations” he attributes to “fluxions” due to overwork. Such hallucinations, according to him, were, in Luther’s case, of two kinds; some optical and some auditory. They were induced, so he thinks, not only by the permanent excitement of Luther’s life, but also by “his doubts and controversies.” What Luther terms temptations Berkhan also regards as, in the main, mere psychic depression bound up with nerve disturbance. In view of certain other symptoms he diagnoses a case of præcordial trouble.[557]

After Kawerau and Berkhan we must refer to P. J. Möbius, the Leipzig expert in mental ailments. He is known in connection with his highly original studies on Rousseau, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche; on Luther he has not expressed his views at any great length, but, such as they are, they are drastic enough.[558]

Wilhelm Ebstein, a Professor of Medicine,[562] recently, and not without reason, registered a protest against the view of those who maintain that Luther was actually out of his mind. Himself interested in the treatment of cases of gout and calculus, he comes to the conclusion that Luther’s chief sufferings were caused by uric acid and faulty digestion, the two together constituting the principal trouble, and being accompanied, as is so often the case with gout, by “neurasthenic symptoms which at times recall psychosis”;[563] his “hypochondriacal depression which passed all bounds” was entirely due to these ailments. Not only these “nervous symptoms,” but also the other ailments of which Luther had to complain, his palpitations, headaches, dizziness, sore-throat, defective hearing, impaired digestion, fainting fits, and particularly his oppression in the region of the heart and the feelings of fear which accompanied it, all these were, according to Ebstein, due more or less to gout and the other troubles resulting from the presence of uric acid.[564]