Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/279

 tion was cooked up by the Leipsic theologian Ochsenfart,' a man who represented that Eck was crushed, for the sake of spying on us, a man who cannot stand peace either for him- self or anyone else, always ready to hurt, wretched and yet impotent.

I was born at Eisleben, and baptized in the church of St Peter there. I do not remember this, but I believe my par- ents and compatriots. My parents had migrated thither from Eisenach hard by. Eisenach has almost all my relatives, and there I am to-day recognized and known to most of them, since I studied there four years,* nor does any city know mc better. I hope they would not be so foolish, that one should call the son of Luther nephew, another tmcle, another cousin (of whom I have many there), if they knew that my father and mother were Bohemians and other than natives of their town. The rest of my life I spent at the university and monastery of Erfurt until I came to Wittenberg, except one year, my fourteenth, when I was at Magdeburg.

You have the story of my life and family. I should pre- fer, as Christ did before Herod and Annas, to keep silence on this matter, so these furious men could imagine anything worthy of themselves about it until they blushed. For it is a generation moved neither by song nor by mourning, in whom we vainly seek a profitable man.

This same hour I have received your letter about Charles von Miltitz, who, you say, swore that he had not seen mc Why then did he confess to Andrew the barber, who ac- companied him to Pretzsch* (as the latter openly boasts here) that he both saw me and did I know not what terrible things against me? But let them lie, invent and be as wise as they please. Everything is against me, and would that something would happen quickly to free me from the duty of lecturing and teaching. For I desire nothing so much, as far as in me lies. But if I must continue teaching, I do not understand

^Ochsenfart had just written to Luther again, Enders, i. 451, placed in March, 1 5 19, but should be in Jantiary, 1520. Supra, no. 301. In this letter, however, there is nothing about Luther's family.

well known and amply attested, but this account is interesting, being, as far as I know, the earliest extant.
 * 1 497- 1 50 1. Smith, op, cii,, p. 4ff* These facts about Luther's early life are


 * A little vUlage on the Elbe near Wittenberg.

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