Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume X.djvu/732

 726 LUTHER junctions to be luted, firmly adheres like a cement. White lead and oil laid on slips of cloth, and paste and paper, or glue and paper, and linseed meal made into a paste with water, milk, lime water, or weak glue, all serve as lutes for special operations. LUTHER, Martin, the leader of the German reformation, born in Eisleben, now a town of Prussian Saxony, on St. Martin's eve, Nov. 10, 1483, died in the same place, Feb. 18, 1546. His father was originally a poor peasant, but became a miner, and ultimately acquired a house and two furnaces at Mansfeld, whither he removed six months after Luther's birth, and left at his death about 1,000 florins in money. The reformer was brought up under pious but severe and rough discipline. At school he was once flogged 15 times in a single forenoon. He calls the German schools of those days purgatories, and the teachers ty- rants and taskmasters. While at school in Mansfeld he had to beg his bread with his com- panions by singing from house to house in the neighboring villages. "It is God's way," he says, " of beggars to make men of power, just as he made the world of nothing." His con- dition was not materially improved at the Franciscan school in Magdeburg, where he spent one year. From there he was sent to the Latin school at Eisenach, his favorite town. At first he had still to beg his bread by singing hymns in the street, and felt at times so dis- couraged that he nearly gave up study alto- gether. But a liberal lady, Ursula Cotta, took the poor boy, who had engaged her sympathy by his musical talent and earnest devotion in church, to her house, dispelling the gloom from his mind, and supporting him till he was pre- pared to enter the university of Erfurt in 1501 at the age of 18. Here he studied with great zeal and success the Latin classics and the scholastic (Aristotelian) philosophy, and grad- uated in 1505 as M. A. His moral conduct during all that time was unblemished. His father, who in the mean time was able to assist him, intended him for the legal profession. But the sudden death of an intimate friend in a duel, and his own narrow escape from death, first by a severe illness, and then by lightning, which struck with terrific force on the ground near his feet on the road between Erfurt and Stotterheim, so strongly excited his religious feelings and filled him with so vivid a sense of the vanity of the world, that he resolved to forsake it, and entered the Augustinian con- vent at Erfurt, July 17, 1505. Here he sub- jected himself to the severest monastic disci- pline and the humble services of sweeper, por- ter, and beggar. His deep mental conflicts, penances, and mortifications of the flesh se- riously undermined his health and brought him to the brink of despair. The ascetic exercises led him more and more to a knowledge of his own moral helplessness, and to the cross of Christ as the only source of justification and peace. In this process he was greatly assisted by the study of the Bible, complete copies of which he first found in the university library, and in the convent at Erfurt, by the writings of St. Augustine, his favorite among the fa- thers, the sermons of the German mystic Tauler, the commentaries of Nicholas de Lyra (hence the saying, Si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherus non saltasseC), and the advice of his fatherly friend Johann Staupitz, a practical mystic, and superior of the Augustinian order in Germany. The cloister of Erfurt may therefore be called the birthplace of Lutheran Protestantism and of the evangelical doctrine of justification by faith without the works of the law. "God ordered," says Luther, " that I should become a monk, that, being taught by experience, I might take up my pen against the pope." After having spent three years in the convent and taken orders (1507), Luther was called in 1508, at the instance of Staupitz, as professor of scho- lastic philosophy to the university of Witten- berg, which had been founded a few years be- fore by Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony. In 1512 he took the degree of D. D. He lec- tured on theology, especially the Psalms and the Epistles of Paul, his favorite apostle, freely expressed his dislike for the dry and stiff for- malism of the prevailing scholasticism, and led the students from ecclesiastical tradition to the fresh fountains of the Scriptures, and to the evangelical system of his favorite St. Augus- tine. But he had no idea of being in conflict with the genuine spirit of Catholicity. On the contrary, when in 1510 he made a journey to Rome in the interest of his order, he devoutly ascended on his knees the scala santa opposite the church of St. John Lateran, although an inward voice, as he declares, repeated the pas- sage, "The just shall live by faith." It re- quired, however, only the proper external occa- sion to call out the reformation as it was fully prepared, not only in the mind of Luther, but for centuries past in the Latin church at large, both negatively and positively, by the anti- Catholic sects, and the movements of Wycliffe in England, Huss in Bohemia, Savonarola in Italy, Wessel and many others in Holland and Germany. This occasion was the abuses attend- ing the promulgation of an indulgence under the authority of Pope Leo X. to all who, be- sides fulfilling other conditions, should con- tribute money for the rebuilding of St. Peter's at Rome. The person intrusted with the dis- pensation of these indulgences in Saxony was a Dominican monk named Tetzel, who seems to have discharged his functions in a manner which many devout Catholics regarded as pro- fane. He went far beyond the received doc- trine of the Roman canonists of the age, and made the granting of ecclesiastical remissions little if any better than an open sale. Against this profanation of holy things Luther raised a bold protest in the famous 95 Latin theses which he posted up on the doors of the Schloss- kirche at Wittenberg, Oct. 31, 1517. He en- closed a copy of them to the archbishop of