Page:Thirty-five years of Luther research.djvu/72

40 the lectures Luther attended as a student and baccalaureus artium at Erfurt, so that at last a much more trustworthy and plastic conception of his university work can be arrived at than before.

Kolde has shed light upon all the different phases of the religious life in Erfurt. Especially did he throw the searchlight on the preaching at Erfurt when he made us better acquainted with the sermons on indulgences and other subjects by the Augustinian Genser (or Jenser) of Paltz, and when he published from a manuscript a sermon Genser preached at the beginning of a semester at the university in October, 1482. We are now able to appreciate what Luther said later on, although sermons were regularly and often heard in Erfurt, that during his stay he had never heard a Christian sermon.

Oergel has shed more light on the circumstances connected with Luther's entrance into the monastery, when he tells how during the year of 1505 the university was visited by quite a number of dire happenings. He tells how suddenly a classmate of Luther died of pleurisy; how just at this time the plague and spotted fever made many victims at Erfurt, so that during the summer a panic occurred among the students. All this helps to explain why just at this time the serious thoughts of death and judgment tormented the soul of Luther, even though the principal motive of his entrance into the monastery always remained the inner restlessness and desire for salvation, of which Hermelink excellently says that the western church always kept this restlessness and desire present, nurturing the same for pedagogical reasons and at the same time satisfying it.

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