Luther: A Life by John M. Todd
Chapter 3: The New Priest
In the early evenings the friars chanted Vespers in the great church, leaning back on the misericords in the choir stalls; as each psalm came to an end they stood up and bowed in praise of the trinitarian God, Glory be to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit — through all ages of ages; per omnia saecula saeculorum.’ There was a sense timelessness further enhanced on Sundays when the Psalms were sung in one or other of the eight plain chant modes. Towards the end came the Magnficat (the song Luke put into the mouth of Mary the mother of Jesus in his version of the Gospel), with its inspiring poetry, Magnficat anima mea Dominum, ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord. . . He that is mighty hath done great things for me: and holy is his name. . .He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. . .He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek. . . He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away.’
Brother Martin’s spirit soared and remained high as the friars processed out of the church to the refectory along the other side of the cloister garth, for supper.
Later, before bed, came the final choir office, Compline completion with its brief and beautiful little ‘anthem’ to Mary at the end; it changed with the seasons, but for much of the year from late May till December it was the Salve Regina ‘Hail, Holy Queen’. And so to the communal
dormitory under the roof, hot in the middle of summer, cold in winter, but at all times providing the security of the common life.
Early in the morning, before first light during most of the year, the friars went with lanterns or candles into the church for the first office of the
day, Matins, a lengthy text, followed by Lauds, an office of praise and rejoicing. Then the friars who were priests would disperse to individual altars to say their own daily Mass, those who were not away preaching in another town or village, or who were not required for some public Mass in Erfurt. The day went on with shaking up the mattresses, other duties and more offices, eventually a meal. In Brother Martin’s mind the poetry of the Psalms jostled with Vergil’s Georgics and other classical Latin texts. Already he was becoming sharply aware of the crucial semitic dimension of the Psalms, wanting to study the Old Testament text in its original Hebrew. Again when the text of the New Testament itself was intoned, in readings from the New Testament, from John, from Paul and other writers, he began to sense the bite of the original and more intellectual Greek, standing behind the fourth-century Latin text of Jerome’s translation (the Vulgate), Latin which was now part of Luther’s natural and normal way of expressing himself.
The seasons changed: the short but hot summer, with its sultry days, the vines ripening on the lower hillsides along with nuts and other fruits, the haymaking and cattle fattening in the valleys, fields of corn for bread and beer, and all around the great rolling forests. In Erfurt itself there was a sense of civilisation over-ripe, with the tenseness which goes with too many people knowing too much about the unresolved problems, an increasing number of intellectuals opting out into the burgeoning
renaissance of human studies, the arts; others moving as ever into the law, or into banking and commerce. And everywhere were the priests to forgive the sinfulness of it all, and make amends with their frequent sacrifices in church. Finally, back behind it all was a sense of ‘the other,’ for many not much more than a fear of what they deserved, for others a deep yearning for the spiritual life. And soon Brother Martin would himself have the burden of all this on his own priestly shoulders.
Monastic communities were divided into the educated and the uneducated. The latter, lay brothers, did most of the menial tasks,
assisted by the novices; in a big community like that of the Augustinian house, these tasks might include such things as brewing beer — the Erfurt cloister was substantial, and sometimes they would be putting on a meal for as many as two hundred. The educated members of the community were priests, or aspiring priests; normally they were
ordained within two or three years of joining. When the major reforms of the Catholic Church eventually came, late in the century, they included new regulations for a six-year preparation of men for the priesthood; in Luther’s time preparation was brief. Brother Martin
studied an exposition of the Mass by Gabriel Biel – a well-written book, intellectual and inspiring; the author died only twelve years previously.
Apart from that, major emphasis was laid on learning the precise detail of the actions of the priest when celebrating Mass, as well as on
memorising the text. Then there was some training for preaching, and later for hearing confessions. But the Mass was the heart of a priest’s life. In a few months’ time Martin would be saying Mass at twenty-three years old, still so close to his contemporaries, and yet now so definitely different.
The rite of Mass arose sometime in the first years after the death of Jesus of Nazareth in Israel. It was intended as a reenactment of the supper which Jesus had with his disciple on the night before he was crucified, a supper in the context of the annual Jewish Passover. The New Testament has several descriptions of it, and records that Jesus told his disciples to do again what he then did. Almost certainly the earliest description of the ‘Last Supper’, as it came to be known, is that which reads as follows: The Lord Jesus, on the night of his arrest, took some bread, and, after giving thanks to God, broke it and said: ‘This is my body which is for you; do this in remembrance of me. In the same way he took the cup after supper and said "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me.’" The followers of Jesus, soon to be called Christians (after ‘Christ’, meaning the Anointed, a name given early on, to Jesus), began to meet together in the earliest days, to celebrate this remembrance, which they called also thanksgiving, eucharist. And from early days they set men aside to conduct the rite. They spoke of it as a sacrament and believed Jesus, crucified, risen and ascended to his Father in heaven, to be especially present in the bread and wine, which they consumed. Gradually the assemblies became more formalised. At their best these ritual meetings seem to have become great liturgical occasions, a public expression of the generically religious experience, the sense both of ultimate
dependence and of spiritual freedom. At their worst they became very like the pagan rituals which the Bible text holds not to be pleasing to God or appropriate to men, occasions for offering sacrifices in order to bribe God and buy off his anger. Even at their worst there was
something authentic about them, some recognition of man’s dependence on ‘something else’, something genuinely exciting and inspiring. But there was a grave tension between the mechanical, indeed financial approach to the divine, and authentic religion – a tension already sensed by Martin.
The best theologians were aware of the danger that ordinary folk would treat the Mass as the equivalent of a pagan sacrifice, and all the more so on account of the use made of Indulgences. It all looked like a routine, and like magic. Their explanations of the Mass often tended to sound only like super-magic. Biel taught a mysticism which said that the soul of a worthy participant was changed into the body of Christ through a most intimate union, when he or she consumed the consecrated bread (only priests took the wine as well). Three centuries earlier the western love of definition had led scholars to say that the bread and wine used at Mass were changed during the rite in a way they defined as
‘transubstantiation’. The Mass itself was a sacrificial prayer which could be applied to those for whom it was specially celebrated, even if not present. It was, however, specially for those who were present — at this point, Biel added: ‘I mean those who really participate, not those loafing around (circumgirantium).’ Biel is not entirely happy, as a theologian, with transubstantiation as a description of what happens to the bread and wine though he entirely accepted it, and often waxed lyrical about the Mass: ‘What super-excellent glory of the priest to hold and dispense his God, distributing Him to others.’ Looking back on these months of study in later years, Luther commented, ‘My heart would bleed when I read Biel’s text.’
One thing Biel emphasised, like all expositors of the Mass, was the need for purity of heart in the priest, in him who dispensed this sacrament of the divine life. And this took him straight to the question that
theologians had discussed for more than a thousand years, about the extent to which man could do something about purifying himself, and about whether he could do anything good without God’s help. ‘Grace’, gratia, was the word used for the help God gave, the divine life in each Christian. This grace, available through baptism and the other
sacraments, was it not available in any way to those who had not been baptised through no fault of their own? How did grace work? Was it necessary even before man could take any steps towards the good, even for preparing the heart for full grace to take root there? Logically and psychologically they felt they must allow for an initiative in man’s self;
for what they came to call facere quod in se est’, to do what one could.
(Some have labelled this as semi-Pelagianism — Pelagius was the fifth century British heretic of free will.) So Biel reached the point where he could say that absolute love of God for God’s sake, or above everything, even though a tough assignment, is within reach of natural man; grace is not the root but the fruit of the preparatory good works which a
Christian can do by himself.
This measuring up to God was already an anxiety to Martin. He wondered how he could be fit to perform the priestly acts. His
depressive side began to express itself theologically; how could he ever succeed in living up to the Christian ideals? Sex seems not to have been a major problem, at first anyway, in these moral worries. ‘In the
monastery I felt little sexual desire. I had nocturnal pollutions in answer to nature,’ he said in later years. It was not women, but really knotty problems that worried him. Even after the emptying of the friaries, Luther did not, like many others, marry within months. Conscious sexual drives were not dominant. In the first two years it was rather a growing concern about his relationship with God, a feeling that he was always doing something wrong, was never as good as he ought to be, a failure to love God. It was common among dedicated monks and friars.
Canon Law provided for numerous Big Brothers. Law and love provided a special tension in the Mass itself.
The first Mass was an ordeal. Although his brethren would be entirely sympathetic, Luther knew they would all be watching out for slips; and any mistake at Mass was a serious sin. The enormous importance
attached to the precise fulfilment of a very large number of rubrics about how the text should be read and what gestures should be made,
threatened one. There were sharp contradictions here. The priesthood was concerned with people’s ‘souls’, and nothing could be of a higher or more wonderful stature than the priest. At the same time all the
emphasis, in the day-to-day life, was put on the detail of how to earn merit, how to do right all the things which Canon Law said needed to be done, including the sacred ritual to be meticulously observed. As yet, however, for Martin the tension remained largely unformulated at any theological level. Worry about achievement was dominant.
First came the ordination itself. On 3 April Brother Martin ascended the steps out of Erfurt’s central Platz up to the recently built great late Gothic Cathedral of St Mary, next to its older sister church of St Severus. It was another occasion like that of the clothing and of the vows. Martin was prostrate again before the altar. The local Bishop, Johann Bonemilch von Lasphe, put the symbolic stole, a long thin scarf, and the chasuble, the vestment, on him and said, ‘Receive the power of consecrating and sacrificing for the living and the dead.’ Back in the Friary the brethren congratulated him, and there was a little celebration.
Now he had to start serious preparation for his first Mass in a few
weeks’ time. Martin was half glad and half disconcerted to hear that his
father was going to make a special occasion of this event and ride over to Erfurt with some friends. A date had to be found which would suit him, as well as the Friary. Sunday, 2 May, was decided on.
Martin wanted his friends and patrons to be there — one had remained strongly supporting him and specially close since the Eisenach days, Father Johann Braun, of the Franciscan house there. Martin wrote and invited him. The letter is the earliest surviving example of Luther’s words. Though not of outstanding importance, it introduces the
ipsissima verba for the first time; one can see what sort of an impact the young man makes on paper. It was a rather florid sort of letter, in the obsequious style considered right to be adopted by a junior to a Senior with, however, a certain personal and affectionate character to it, typical of Luther. Written in Latin it was addressed: ‘To the pious and
venerable Johann Braun, a priest of Christ and Mary, Superior at Eisenach, my dearest friend in Christ.’ The text then starts:
Greetings in Christ Jesus, our Lord. I would be afraid, kindest Sir, to disturb your loving self with my
burdensome letters and wishes, if I did not know (on the basis of your gracious heart, so generously inclined towards me) of the sincere friendship I have experienced in so many ways and favours. So I do not hesitate to write this letter to you, trusting that in the closeness of our mutual friendship you will listen, and that it might find you easily approachable.
God, who is glorious and holy in all his works, has deigned to exalt me magnificently — a miserable and totally unworthy sinner — by calling me into his supreme ministry solely on the basis of his bounteous mercy.
Therefore I have to fulfill completely the office entrusted to me so that I may be acceptable (as much as dust can be acceptable to God) to such great splendour of divine goodness.
Though not so far removed from the language, for instance, of the fifteenth-century Of the Imitation of Christ, there was a certain vehemence about the language which was a presage of things to come: ‘According to the decision of the fathers here, it is settled that I should start, with the help of God’s grace, on the fourth Sunday
following Easter, which we call Cant ate. This is the day appointed for my first Mass before God, because it is convenient to my father. To this then, kind friend I invite you humbly, perhaps even boldly.’ But it was not really so bold, because Father Braun had evidently always seen in Luther someone he would like to help and had
entertained Martin quite recently, when the latter was on a visit for the Friars to Eisenach:
I do this certainly not because I consider myself in a position. . . to request you to inconvenience yourself with the trouble of such a journey to visit me, a poor and humble man; but do so because I experienced your good will and your obvious kindness toward me when I visited you the other day, and in great abundance on many other occasions.
Therefore, dearest Father, Sir and Friar (the first title is due to your age and office, the second due to your merits, the third due to your Order), please honour me with your presence if time and your clerical or domestic duties permit and support me with your valuable presence and prayers, that my sacrifice may be acceptable to God . . . Perhaps you will bring along my relation Conrad, who was once sacristan at St Nicholas Church, and anyone you may wish as a travelling companion so long as he has freed himself from domestic obligations and will enjoy coming.
Luther was always keen about domestic duties, and the social order generally — these had to be satisfied before an outing was to be undertaken. Finally, there is a brief paragraph about Father Braun’s sleeping and boarding arrangements for the visit. It would be appropriate for him to stay not in the noisy guest house but in an unoccupied cell in the friary.
Finally I urge you to come right into the monastery to stay with us this little while (I am not afraid that you will settle down here!) and not look for quarters elsewhere. You will have to become a cellarius, that is an inhabitant of a
monastic cell.
Farewell in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Written at our cloister in Erfurt on 22 April, the year of our Lord, 1507.
Then Martin suddenly remembers the Schalbes. Until then, apparently, it had not occurred to him that these superior people might like to come;
but of course they might hear about the event from Father Braun, so he added after the signature a further note which speaks volumes about the social stratification in little Eisenach:
I do not dare to importune or burden those excellent people of the
Schalbe Foundation, who certainly have done so much for me. I am sure that it would not befit their social position and prestige to be invited to such an unimportant and humble affair, or to be bothered by the wishes of a monk who is now dead to the world. In addition I am uncertain and somewhat dubious whether an invitation would please or annoy them.
Therefore I have decided to be silent; but if there should be an
opportunity, I wish you would express my gratitude to them. Farewell.
The messages went off, and above all arrangements were made for Martin’s father’s party to come. Big Hans was bringing a cash gift of about £200, and coming with twenty friends on horseback. Martin toiled away at the rite, the gestures and the text; and kept up his prayers, and tried ever to be in that good disposition in which a monk or friar is supposed to be.
Martin’s nervousness did not abate as the day drew nearer. The day of the first Mass shared some of the tensions of a wedding. being the intensely public celebration of something which in some ways was a matter that made one wish to withdraw from the public eye. The new priest wanted to keep himself very collected in his mind, detached, ‘ recollected’ as the jargon goes in church circles. Yet it was impossibly difficult to keep out the ‘distractions’ of the world. Friends and relations and all Martin’s brethren would be present for the first public liturgy that he would conduct. There would be torches, again. Possibly his mother would be present for him to bless after the Mass, and she would kiss his newly appointed hands.
The day itself proved to be, if not exactly a disaster, a day which Luther could not remember without quaking, and he often returned to the topic in later years. The ‘Table Talk’ has a number of references to it. Taken