Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/27

 22 LUTHER'S CORRESPONDENCE AND Ut. i

Wherefore the fathers have set aside the Sunday Cantate [May 2] for my first mass/ God willing. That day I shall celebrate mass before God for the first time, the day being chosen for the convenience of my father.^ To this I made bold to invite you, kind friend, but certainly not as though I were doing you any favor deserving the trouble of such a journey, nor that I think my poor and humble self worthy of your coming to me, but because I learned your benevolence and willingness to oblige me when I was recently with you, as I have also at other times. Dearest father, as you are in age and in care for me, master in merit and brother in religion, if private busi- ness will permit you, deign to come and help me with your gracious presence and prayers, that my sacrifice may be ac- ceptable in God's sight. You shall have my kinsman Conrad,^ sacristan of the St. Nicholas Qiurch, or any one else you wish to accompany you on the way, if you are free from business yourself.

Finally I ask that you come right to the monastery and stay with us a little while (for I do not fear you will settle down here), and do not go to the inn at the cross-roads. For you ought to be a cellerer, that is, the inhabitant of a cell. Fare- well in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Brother Martin Luther of Mansfeld. P. S. — Those excellent men of the Schalbe* Foundation ccr-

iPrimitt: Luther had been ordained priest not long before, the exact djite being unknown.

of Eisenach. As a young man he married Margaret Ziegler, of Eisenach, and moved to the County of Mansfeld, first to the town of Mansfeld and then to Eisleben. Here he found employment in the then recently started profession of mining (c/. Cambridge Modern History, i. 506), in which he gradually won a small property, and attained a respected position in the town. He was bitterly opposed to Martin's entering the monastery, for on this son (his second) he re- lied to make a brilliant career. By this time he seems to have become reconciled, and apparently became a convinced Lutheran in later life. He died May 29, 1530.
 * John (Hans) Luther, originally of Mohra. a hamlet about fifteen miles south

The story first circulated by Luther's contemporary Wiuel that Hans was obliged to leave Eisenach because he had committed a murder, though still repeated in some quarters, is almost certainly false. It has recently become known that there was at this time another Hans Luther at Mansfeld, a rough character to whoa the anecdote may have applied. Buchwald: Lutherkalendar, 1910.

> Conrad Hutter, a relative by marriage of his mother, who came from Eisenach. O. Clemen: BeitrSge Mur Reformationsgeschichte, ii. 1.

^This was a little Franciscan convent at the foot of the Wartburg, probably near the present Barfusserstrasse. Frau Cotta, Luther's hostess while he at-

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