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Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet Kindle Edition

by Lyndal Roper (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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From “one of the best of the new [Martin Luther] biographers” (The New Yorker), a portrait of the complicated founding father of the Protestant Reformation, whose intellectual assault on Catholicism transformed Christianity and changed the course of world history.

“Magnificent.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Penetrating.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Smart, accessible, authoritative.”—Hilary Mantel

On October 31, 1517, so the story goes, a shy monk named Martin Luther nailed a piece of paper to the door of the Castle Church in the university town of Wittenberg. The ideas contained in these Ninety-five Theses, which boldly challenged the Catholic Church, spread like wildfire. Within two months, they were known all over Germany. So powerful were Martin Luther’s broadsides against papal authority that they polarized a continent and tore apart the very foundation of Western Christendom. Luther’s ideas inspired upheavals whose consequences we live with today.

But who was the man behind the Ninety-five Theses? Lyndal Roper’s magisterial new biography goes beyond Luther’s theology to investigate the inner life of the religious reformer who has been called “the last medieval man and the first modern one.” Here is a full-blooded portrait of a revolutionary thinker who was, at his core, deeply flawed and full of contradictions. Luther was a brilliant writer whose biblical translations had a lasting impact on the German language. Yet he was also a strident fundamentalist whose scathing rhetorical attacks threatened to alienate those he might persuade. He had a colorful, even impish personality, and when he left the monastery to get married (“to spite the Devil,” he explained), he wooed and wed an ex-nun. But he had an ugly side too. When German peasants rose up against the nobility, Luther urged the aristocracy to slaughter them. He was a ferocious anti-Semite and a virulent misogynist, even as he argued for liberated human sexuality within marriage.

A distinguished historian of early modern Europe, Lyndal Roper looks deep inside the heart of this singularly complex figure. The force of Luther’s personality, she argues, had enormous historical effects—both good and ill. By bringing us closer than ever to the man himself, she opens up a new vision of the Reformation and the world it created and draws a fully three-dimensional portrait of its founder.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This is a smart, accessible, authoritative biography of one of the most dynamic figures in European history. Lyndal Roper writes with clarity and discernment, so that nothing stands between the reader and her grimly fascinating subject; she grounds the reformer, situating him psychically as well as geographically in a Germany she describes as vividly as if we lived there: mining towns as well as lecture halls, courts as well as cathedrals. She creates a context for a man who arouses both admiration and horror in the modern reader. Here he stands: never more vocal, more controversial, more compelling.”—Hilary Mantel

“It is inevitable that the anniversary of the Reformation would bring forth a flood of new publications. Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet is undoubtedly one of the best and most substantial. . . . This biography offers a fresh and deeply illuminating study of the man who somewhat reluctantly divided a continent. What emerges is a work of impeccable scholarship and painstaking fairmindedness. . . . A richly satisfying book [that] offers some penetrating insights.”—Andrew Pettegree, The New York Times Book Review

“One of the best of the new [Martin Luther] biographers.”—Joan Acocella, The New Yorker

“A fine achievement, deeply researched and fluently written, and it brings its difficult and cantankerous subject to life as no other biography has. . . . A fine account of the man, both his good and bad sides, rooted in a profound knowledge of the social milieu from which he came and through which he worked: a magnificent study of one of history’s most compelling and divisive figures.”—Richard Evans, The Wall Street Journal

“Roper’s biography is a demonstration not only of her skill as a historian but also as a storyteller. . . . Extremely readable and will find a welcome audience among history enthusiasts.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Rich with detail, scholarly but accessible, Roper’s great biography of this critical, courageous, confrontational, and controversial figure provides a perfect work for the five-hundredth anniversary of his Ninety-Five Theses.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Arguably the most consequential figure in Western history between Jesus and Napoleon, Luther fully merits the grace and perceptiveness of Roper’s fine book.”—Booklist (starred review)

“[Luther] leaps off the page in a vivid array of colours. . . . The work of one of the most imaginative and pioneering historians of our generation.”—The Guardian

“Roper, Regius professor of history at Oxford University, has an extraordinary talent for making complex theological issues not just clear but entertaining. Luther jumps from these pages with immense vitality, as if his exploits occurred last week. Theological history often seems monochrome. This is Luther in colour.”—The Times

“Enlightening . . . [a] formidably learned biography . . . [Roper’s] approach is avowedly new.”—The Sunday Times

About the Author

Lyndal Roper is the Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford. Her books include Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet and Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany. She lives in Oxford, England.

Michael Page has been recording audiobooks since the mid-1980s and now has nearly 500 titles to his credit. He has won two Audie Awards and several AudioFile Earphones Awards. A PhD and a professional actor, Michael is also a retired professor of theater.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1. Mansfeld and Mining

“I am the son of a peasant,” Luther averred, “my great-grandfather, grandfather and my father were all true peasants.”1 This was only half the truth. If he came from peasant stock, Luther grew up in a mining town, and his upbringing was to have a profound influence on him. Martin’s childhood was spent in Mansfeld, a small mining town in the territory of the same name, where wagonloads of charcoal would file along the muddy roads, and where the smell of the fires of the smelters hung on the air. He would remain loyal to Mansfeld throughout his life, referring to himself as “from Mansfeld,” enrolling at the University of Erfurt as “Martinus ludher ex mansfelt,” and corresponding with the counts of Mansfeld until he died.2 In 1546, he set out, ill, on what was to be his final journey to Eisleben, trying to settle yet another dispute between the counts. He knew that the trip could cost him his life, and it did: He died still trying to put matters right in Mansfeld. Yet this deep connection has been almost completely obliterated in the image of Luther we have today.3 Most biographies have little to say about Luther’s childhood. Unlike his birthplace Eisleben, and unlike Wittenberg, where he spent most of his life, Mansfeld never became a site of Lutheran pilgrimage. But to make sense of Luther, one has to understand the world from which he came.

There had been mining in the Mansfeld area since about 1200 but in the mid-fifteenth century a new process of refining allowed silver and pure copper to be separated after the initial process of smelting.4 Highly capital-intensive, this technological innovation led to the involvement of the big financiers of Leipzig and Nuremberg, and it brought an economic boom to the area. Mansfeld was soon among the biggest European producers of silver and it produced a quarter of the continent’s copper.5 Copper was used in combination with tin or zinc, as bronze or brass, in the hundreds of household items produced in towns like Nuremberg, and it played a large part in the lifestyle revolution in this period, as people began to acquire not only glass and crockery but also metal dishes, pans, and other implements for use at home. Luther’s father, Hans Luder, probably through connections of his mother’s family, heard of the new mining leases that were up for sale in the 1480s, and moved first to Eisleben, where Luther was born in 1483, and then to Mansfeld.

Luther himself later described his father as “a metal worker, a miner”; but the story told by his early biographers of Hans Luder’s rise from rags to riches is not true.6 Although his family were clearly not educated people, Hans was certainly never one of those hooded, squat men who toiled lying down in the low mine tunnels with their pickaxes.7 The Luder family had been peasants, yet even though he was the eldest son, Hans did not inherit: According to local custom at Möhra, where his parents lived, it was the youngest son who took over the farm. The value of the property was probably equally divided between the children, and this may have given the oldest son some capital. Recent research also suggests that the Luder family may have owned a rudimentary copper-smelting works near Möhra, where Hans might have gained some experience.8 He must have had serious prospects, however, for it is otherwise hard to explain why the Lindemanns, an established urban family in Eisenach—whose members included Anthonius Lindemann, the highest-ranking official in the county of Mansfeld and himself a smelter-master—should in 1479 have betrothed their daughter to a young man without a trade and with no promise of an inheritance.9 It turned out to be a wise decision. Within a short period of time Luder was not only running mines, but by 1491 at the latest had become one of the Vierer, an adjunct to the town council representing the four quarters of Mansfeld, and would eventually become a mining inspector (Schauherr), which made him one of the five most senior mining officials in the area.10 By the early sixteenth century, he was operating seven smelters in joint ventures with others, placing him among the bigger operators in Mansfeld.

In 1500 the town had a population of around 2,000–3,000 people, with five “hospitals” to care for the poor and houses for the sick; more unusually, it also boasted a Latin school for boys. Mansfeld nestled in a valley, with four gates and two portals allowing entry. Its “quarters” had mushroomed out from a much smaller initial settlement.11 One of its two main streets wound steeply up the hill to the church on the main square, and it was on this street that the smelter-masters and the officials of the counts had their houses. The church, dedicated to St. George, the patron saint of Mansfeld, had been erected in the thirteenth century but burned down when Luther was in his early teens (thanks to an absent-minded organist who forgot to put out the fire that heated the bellows). It was rebuilt between 1497 and 1502, with a choir finally finished in 1518–20.12 The sword-wielding knight St. George was locally believed to have been a count of Mansfeld, who had fought the dragon on the nearby Lindberg hill. The counts certainly made capital out of this fictional connection, and the saint was depicted on their coins and fountains and above doors; there were even St. George weathercocks.13

Hans Luder’s house was located opposite the Golden Ring tavern, one of two hostelries where travelers might stop. The town lay on the trade route from Hamburg to Nuremberg via Erfurt, but there were few reasons why travelers would have broken their journey in Mansfeld, unless they were going to visit the counts or were involved in mining.14 Luder’s house still stands, and it is now believed to have been twice as big as previously thought. (We do not know for certain when Hans Luder acquired the house; he certainly owned it in 1507.15) There is a wide entrance through which a horse and cart could pass, and a big barn and stables for horses.16 From the house the effects of mining would have been visible everywhere: Slag heaps pockmarked the landscape and the large pond below the town was polluted with the slag water from the two smelters outside the town walls. Farther up the street, toward the square in front of the Church of St. George, stood the large house of Luther’s best friend, Hans Reinicke, whose father was also a mine owner and one of the most prosperous men in Mansfeld. Next door, between Luther’s house and the school, lived another friend, Nickel Öhmler, who would later become related by marriage.

Above the town loomed the castles of the Mansfeld counts. It is hard to imagine a setup more likely to impress on a young lad like Luther the power of the town’s rulers. There was no primogeniture among the counts. Instead, all sons inherited, and when Luther was a boy there were three lines of Mansfeld counts; in 1501, when a formal pact was made dividing the territory, the ruling collective consisted of no fewer than five counts.17 Not surprisingly, they did not always get along, and one of the points of tension between them was the castle. In Luther’s childhood, two castles stood on the site along with two other dwellings, two bakeries, two breweries, stables, and a dividing wall with a shared path. It must have been an impressive set of structures, for in 1474 the counts had been able to host the king of Denmark and 150 of his knights for three nights.18 In 1501, when Count Albrecht decided to build a third castle on the site, he met with opposition from the other counts. The dispute was eventually settled, and Albrecht was allowed to realize his ambitions. With the wealth from the mines, three pocket-handkerchief-sized Renaissance castles—one painted red, one yellow, and one blue, with shared access to the chapel—were now rebuilt and restructured to form one of the best-fortified castle complexes in Germany. It was popularly believed that when one of the counts commissioned an altarpiece for the chapel depicting the Crucifixion, he had the thief on Christ’s right painted as his most hated co-ruler. True or not, the thief has the individualized features of a portrait and is unusually not naked but sports the outfit of an executioner, with garish parti-colored hose. Since executioners were shunned as dishonorable, this would have been a delicious insult.19

The Luder family lived well.20 They particularly relished the tender meat of suckling pigs, a comparatively expensive food at a time when beef imported from central Europe was starting to become more common. They also ate songbirds that they trapped. At least one member of the family was a passionate bird-catcher, because several of the goose-bone whistles used to attract birds have survived in the midden outside the house. There was a well-stocked kitchen, amply furnished with simple green and yellow plates and crockery; there were drinking glasses, too, still a luxury in this period.21 This was certainly a family who liked their food, enjoyed the pleasures of life, and did not have to watch the pennies.

In most sixteenth-century urban households, the master’s wife shared in the business of the workshop, bustling over the apprentices and journeymen, sometimes even doing the bookkeeping. But among the mine-owning class the realms of husband and wife were sharply distinct. The miners lived in their own cottages with their families and the smelter-master’s wife was not responsible for their food or upkeep. Hans Luder himself went out to work each day beyond the town walls, where he was immersed in that strange world of smoke, shafts, and tunnels, while Luther’s mother stayed at home with the servants and children. This was a separation of spheres much more like that of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie, and very different from what was then the norm in early-modern German towns and farmsteads where women raised the poultry, grew the herbs, undertook the dairy work, and trekked to market. Here women had to be able to take over the farm or business should they become widows. The strict demarcation between the sexes in the Luder household was therefore rather unusual, and it may help explain why Luther’s later ideas about gender roles exaggerate the differences between the sexes: “Men have broad shoulders and narrow hips, and accordingly they possess intelligence. Women have narrow shoulders and broad hips. Women ought to stay at home; the way they were created indicates this, for they have broad hips and a wide fundament to sit upon.”23

Women were not entirely absent from mining lower down the social scale. In account books from the early sixteenth century, the miners’ wives are listed as well as their menfolk with the amounts they earned per week, testimony to their importance in the industry.24 Alongside the men, they turned the winding handles to haul weights in and out of the shafts, and with their children, they helped break up the ore according to quality. They did the backbreaking work of sieving the charcoal, to make the fine powder for the lime needed to line the smelters; they washed the miners’ clothes, heavy with dust; and they used the slag the men brought home as heating.

Luther’s father was one of the Hüttenmeister, the smelter-masters who oversaw the highly skilled operation of the copper-smelting process and who effectively ran the mines. Each shaft was allocated to a smelter or “fire,” and the Hütten (huts) were situated near streams, because water power drove the bellows that fanned the flames of the smelters. One hut might have several ovens, and in 1508 there were some ninety-five “fires” in Mansfeld, which were run by about forty smelter-masters.25 These contracted with gang masters who provided the miners, and who worked alongside them underground. Labor relations were therefore mediated, and when the miners rose up in protest against their conditions, as they did in 1507, they put their complaints to the counts in writing. The counts, for their part, knew not to try the patience of the miners too far: While they might have executed rebellious peasants, on this occasion they imposed whopping fines of a hundred guilders on the dozen or so ringleaders, but allowed them to pay by installment.26 The authorities had to exert their power, but the highly skilled labor force was too precious to waste. Proud men who were aware of their skills, the miners did not give up and in 1511 they formed a brotherhood to advance their interests.27

Court books from the period give some rare insight into what life was like in the world of mining. There were constant thefts of wood, ladders, and equipment from the shafts, and violence was never far away.28 A man killed a prostitute in a brothel in nearby Hettstedt and was executed for it. Another slew a man and threw the body down a mine shaft—he too paid with his life—while a third attacked his own father, damaging his fist so seriously that he was unable to work.29 Criminal law at the time mixed Roman law with older traditions that placed the emphasis on mediation. Thus murder could still be settled by paying the victim’s family compensation, though even so, between 1507 and 1509, at least three criminals were executed for murder.30

There were constant quarrels between different groups of miners. The Haspeler, who wound the winches, hated the Sinker, who sank the shafts. The Sinker were mostly from Silesia and, scorning marriage, lived with girlfriends in houses near the mines where they also kept chickens and other livestock.31 Mining was dangerous work. The tunnels that led off from the shafts were narrow, and miners had to work lying down on their bellies. There was little light. If the weather turned bad, the lamps would suddenly go out as sulfur gas accumulated in the mine shaft, poisoning any miners still below. It was believed that the gas was a product of the evil airs drawn from the brimstone and metals, rising in the tunnels and chilling men to death.32

Mining was thirsty work, and as water was not drinkable, brewing was the town’s other major industry. Alcohol fueled quarrels, and since just about all men carried knives, fights tended to become bloody. Most brawls took place in taverns or drinking shops.33 Luther’s own uncle, “Little Hans,” a wastrel who went from one pub brawl to another, would meet his death in a fracas at a drinking house in 1536.34 People used whatever was to hand, grabbing the tavern lamps to bash an opponent, or hoisting the beer jugs to buffet an opponent about the head. Representing comradeship, these jugs also had symbolic significance: One man would insult another as not worthy to share a jug with a respectable man.35 Drinking was surrounded with bonding rituals and there were competitive drinking games where a man had to stand his ground. One favorite required the use of the “pass glass,” ridged with bands separated by different widths, from which the drinker had to down his tipple exactly to the next ridge; the Luder family owned at least one of these.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01G0GFQE2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House (March 14, 2017)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 14, 2017
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 92166 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 545 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0812996194

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jgmegill

A Luther for Today

Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2017

Verified Purchase

Lyndal Roper’s "Martin Luther Prophet and Renegade" is a superb study of an extraordinary remarkable and complex man whose actions in 1517 sundered the unity of the Catholic Church and set in motion a religious revolution. After his death in 1546, Luther's chief disciple, Phillip Melanchthon, summed up Luther's theology simply as, "sola gratia justificamus et sola fide justificamur " or "only scripture only grace'.
Luther's stubborn insistence that ordinary men and women could and should read the Bible and must look to God for their salvation, and not the Church; changed Western history.

Dr. Roper is Regius Chair at Oxford University and a respected scholar. Her previous work has concentrated on the witch craze, women and Reformation Germany. As someone who has worked and traveled in Germany, I very much enjoyed the care Roper takes to place Luther in the context of German history and social geography. Her Luther adds valuable insights to our knowledge of the early Germany. I learned a lot from her descriptions of Eisleben where Luther was born and died, Mansfield the mining town where he was brought up and Wittenberg where he studied, lived and worked most of his adult life. This volume is not a general history of the Reformation or Lutheranism but her interpretation of Luther and his era, her work, clarified and enhanced my understanding of both. I found her Luther a fascinating, well written and fresh account which hopefully will reach a wide audience. Martin Luther Renegade and Prophet tells the extraordinary story of a sixteenth monk with the courage to stand alone at Wittenberg and the Diet of Worms. While Roper focuses on Luther she never loses sight of his contemporaries’ both friends and enemies and is scrupulously fair to all including his opponents Andreas Karlstad, Johannes Maier von Eck, and Thomas Munzer.

Dr. Roper does a fantastic job charting Luther's rise in the world especially, his inter development; and the growth of his personality for as she notes this had " huge historical effects - for good and ill". While paying tribute to Erik Erikson and Erich Fromm for their psychobiography's of Luther's relationship to his father, for Roper this was only part of what shaped Luther pp xxvi. For me one of Roper’s strengths is her enlightening discussion of Luther’s unique ability to recognize and channel the emerging media of his age to the service of his cause, most especially printing and printmaking. In Luther's time German cities such as Wittenberg were renown for their print shops, many of whom allied with Luther. "His use of print was tactically brilliant: He knew how to forestall censorship and protect his ideas by spreading them as widely as possible" pp.108 -109. Luther was quick to note that to reach a wider audience he needed to be in print early and often. Consequently we know far more about Martin Luther, through his books and letters (over 120 volumes) than almost any other figure. Although Luther like other churchmen wrote in Latin, he was careful to insure his works were rapidly published in German. In a flash of inspiration Luther had a notary record his debates with churchmen. He did this both to convey a sense of objectivity but also to grab readers attention and heighten the drama. The notarized debate transcriptions were then speedily sent to his printers, consequently it was Luther's version and interpretations of events available "on the street" while his opponents were still trying to gather their notes. His German shaped and molded the language. In German he proved himself a brilliant polemicist ,who freely mixed the elite speech with the rich vocabulary, pungent metaphors and invective of the German peasant. Luther’s translation of the Bible from the Koine Greek into the German vernacular is a work of real scholarship. His Bible became the Bible for German speaking peoples and a best seller in his lifetime and is considered a classic of German literature. His German Bible was faithful to the language spoken by the common people and was to produce a work which they could relate to. Luther himself noted in his introduction “In my translation of the Bible I strove to use pure and intelligible German. “ In spreading his evolving ideas and theology Roper shows Luther was fortunate to have allied with the gifted Lucas Cranach the Elder and Lucas Cranach the Younger who also lived in Wittenberg as his illustrator and the extraordinary and brilliant Albrecht Durer.

Some surprises, Luther wrote two prefaces to German translations of the Quran. While far from sympathetic, Luther believed Christians needed to know about this new faith in order to combat it. Luther’s attitude toward sex and women, while patriarchal was far more sympathetic than Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin or most clergy of his era. At age 34, the former priest and monk married the former nun Katherina von Bora (1525). The couple had five children. The marriage of Katharina von Bora to Martin Luther was extremely important to the development of the Protestant Church, specifically in regards to its stance on marriage and the roles each spouse should concern themselves, with. Luther often joked about sex and saw women's roles largely in the realm of "Kinder, Küche and Kirche " yet he recognized that marriage and love were compatible. He was "in favor not only of sex within marriage but crucially that it should also give bodily pleasure to both women and men", p.xxvii. The man who once stated he determined to marry "to spite the devil", would later write “Before I was alone now there are two .”p.xxv.

Luther had a wide circle of friends to whom he wrote many moving letters offering both spiritual comfort and sympathy especially to those dealing with death or protracted illness. When in 1527 the plague struck Wittenberg Luther instead of departing as ordered to do, stayed and nursed the sick, in a reckless but heroic disregard of his own safety and that of his family to fulfill his pastoral responsibility, pp.307-308. Luther's home was always crowded with family friends and distinguished visitors here he loved to hold a daily Stammtisch (regulars table). At his table, he would discuss the events of the day, laugh joke and banter His wife Katherina was famed for her skill brewing beer. Perhaps as a result of his love for the table, Luther suffered a variety of maladies, we know from his many letters that he was often afflicted with constipation and gall stones. Fortunately his disciples often recorded his "table talk" so today historians have something approaching a verbatim record of thoughts on a wide variety of subjects including, his health and fitness.

Luther, Roper writes, “ was a grand hater” yet he was not alone for he lived in an age that set no value on either compromise or objectivity. Luther appears to have enjoyed a fight; as he spent an inordinate amount of time and energy attacking both friends and enemies. His invective occasionally swamped rationale argument. In his later works Roper states, Luther became so vehement in castigating his opponents , he “preached only to the converted.” In his last two decades Luther was passionate in his attacks on Anabaptist and Catholics and sought to halt any attempt at compromise but again here too, he was not alone. Where Luther really stands out according to Roper, is his vicious anti-Semitism. Earlier scholars such as Roland H. Bainton have asserted Luther's antisemitism as expressed in "On the Jews and Their Lies" is based solely on religion. Roper however, will have none of that ,she states his anti-Semitism was both "’ integral to his thought” and “a central plank “of his understanding. Even in 1546 in his last few weeks of life, as he became increasingly ill he focused his hatred on the Jews . Roper reveals in one of his last letters Luther took care to mention the one major task to which he would turn next - the Jewish question. "After the main issues [in Mansfield] have been settled I have to start expelling the Jews." In the last three sermons that Luther preached in January and February 1546 he added admonitions against the Jews, stating that they "like the Italians knew the art of poisoning that they were evil people and would never stop blaspheming and those who protected them shared their sin". p.388.

Luther lived long enough to find when ordinary people read or heard the Bible for themselves they sometimes came to different understandings. He also found to his horror, interpretations could differ from his or even lead to new kinds of evangelical movements, such as "Zwickau prophets" who in 1521 preached an apocalyptic, radical 'Peasants' War in southern Germany in 1525. Luther ever a lover of order, was appalled and issued a harsh (1525) denunciation "Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants" as his response to the peasants and their leaders. The peasant saw in their Bibles and Luther writings justification for taking up arms against their lords and masters. In this publication, he upbraided the peasants on three charges: that they had violated oaths of loyalty, which makes them subject to secular punishment; they had committed crimes that went against their faith; and that their crimes were committed using Christ’s name which was blasphemy. He wrote "The peasants have taken upon themselves the burden of three terrible sins against God and man; by this they have merited death in body and soul... they have sworn to be true and faithful, submissive and obedient, to their rulers... now deliberately and violently breaking this oath... they are starting a rebellion, and are violently robbing and plundering monasteries and castles which are not theirs... they have doubly deserved death in body and soul as highwaymen and murderers... they cloak this terrible and horrible sin with the gospel... thus they become the worst blasphemers of God and slanderers of his holy name " pp.249 -253 . Modern historian's estimate about 100,000 to 300,000 peasants in Germany and Moravia were killed or slaughtered during this communal blood bath. While Luther criticized both the injustices imposed on the peasants, and the rashness of the peasants in fighting back, he almost in all cases (except the pope) sided with those in power. Ironically his writings were utilized by both sides.

Luther's hatred of the Jews grew over time. As a boy Luther must have gazed on the "Judensau' (A crude 13th century depiction of Jews feeding on a female pig.) on the wall of Wittenberg Parish Church, he would later recall this vile anti-Semitic image in his sermons and in "Von Shem Hamporas' a virtual compendium of anti Semitism. Luther grew up in the German countryside where anti-Semitism was commonplace. For much of his early years, as a friar in the Augustinian order, he heard and read anti Jewish works by church leaders. Later as a church leader, himself he attributed much of the world's and his own misfortune to Jews. His 1543 "On the Jews and Their Lies " is painful reading, yet a necessary corrective to Luther hagiography. A sample “First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools … This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians …" "Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed." "Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them." "Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb …"

Poet W.H. Auden (September 1 1939) in a warning of a world on the brink of war, proposed “Accurate scholarship can. Unearth the whole offense, From Luther until now. That has driven a culture mad…” Auden had lived in Germany and knew well the linkage of the Christian churches of Europe to the Third Reich. Hitler’s celebration of “Luther Tag” and republication of Luther’s works against the Jews was no mere coincidence. Since the 1980s, Lutheran church bodies in the USA and Europe have formally denounced and dissociated themselves from Luther's writings on the Jews. Sadly his work is still utilized by anti-Semite's worldwide.

Luther's political legacy too has long troubled Germany. His political theory first developed in "On Secular Authority" was via Saint Paul's injunction "as slaves should obey their masters", transformed by Martin Luther, into the even more troubling, Christians should "obey secular authorities". pp. 408-409.

Luther has been called "the last medieval man and the first modern one.” Similarly in her powerful summation, Roper states "Luther is a difficult hero.' She openly acknowledges many of Luther's s writing are full of hatred and he has predilection for scatological rhetoric and crude humor, not to our modern taste, She emphases his Anti-Semitism was far more visceral than many of his contemporaries Catholic, Lutheran or Evangelical and find this animus toward Jews intrinsic to his religiosity ...pp.378-385. Yet she concludes "only someone [such as Luther ] with utter inability to see anyone else's point of view can have had the courage to take on the papacy, to act like a "blinkered horse" looking neither right no left but treading relentlessly onward regardless of the consequences." p.411.

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Gerald

Intimate portrait of Martin Luther

Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2018

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A thorough and thoughtful biography of Martin Luther, with all his flaws and faults. It accurately conveys the currents and theologies prevalent in the heart of Europe in the early sixteenth century. Recommended.

Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2023

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This is a thicker tome than I was expecting (check # of pages), but that's because the print is actually a readable font. Very exhaustive and a great read!

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2021

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This biography exceeds 400 dense pages and seems to tell us everything one can know about Martin Luther, the man, his life, his associates and his beliefs. I found it to be an admirable, honest, carefully balanced work, not an easy task for a biographer whose subject can still generate great admiration and deep anger almost five hundred years following his death. Luther was obsessed by the devil, prayed often and long, possessed stunning courage and energy, wrote skillfully and used his wicked sense of humor with the skill of a swordsman. He seemed to have a cunning political instinct and a gift for using the press to his advantage. He was also in Roper’s words “a grand hater,” who ruthlessly attacked those he disagreed with. He was certain of his beliefs and equally certain that those who disagreed with him were diabolical. He was crude, lusty and earthy, possessed a fascination with human and animal waste, but was also generous and loving toward his wife and children, his friends and colleagues. In short, Luther was a remarkably complex fellow and this biography gives us a chance to know him from a safe distance. I would have appreciated a timeline and a map of Saxony for reference.

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R socal

virtue signaling and bias mar a good biography

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2017

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The dust jacket described Luther as a “ferocious anti-semite and virulent misogynist.” Perhaps these harsh words were merely intended to placate modern sensibilities before delving into the true Luther? Yet, what a tragedy that on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, it is almost mandatory to denounce Luther whenever mentioning his name.

Roper describes herself as “shaped by the social and cultural history of the last decades, and by the feminist movement in particular.” While she may now be fully oriented to the politically correct left, she was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and student of Oberman. I really didn't know what to expect.

Roper does write with clarity and a definite narrative skill. In some ways it is an excellent biography, but it is diminished by the insertion of her psychological/sociological observations. She throws in comments about matriarchy, patriarchy, Oedipal struggles, or Luther's issues with his father which are far too speculative. In one instance Roper even conjectures that the 38 year old Luther's improved relationship with his father might have cured his constipation!

Roper is reluctant to say anything positive about Luther, but very quick to be critical of him. Her favorite targets are the “darker side” of his personality, hinting at psychological issues, and above all else the Jews. Concerning the latter, she does little to contextualize these remarks, making it seem that Luther stood out as an anti-semite. Nothing could be further from the truth, at least until near the end of his life Luther was perceived to be a friend of the Jews. Luther's tracts against the Jews should, of course, be dealt with by his biographers, but to allow it to become a dominant theme prevents doing justice to the overall man. I think it is fair to say she over emphasizes this aspect of Luther. When Luther uses the word “usury” to describe the Church's shady financial schemes, Roper apparently sees this as a denigration of the Jews.

This is not to say that Roper doesn't occasionally offer praise for Luther. She does, but just not often. I couldn't escape the feeling that Roper is largely unsympathetic towards the man. At times, she even changes what are clearly positives into negatives. For example, she recasts Luther's courage to fight the power of the Church into a self-indulgent desire for martyrdom. Nor is much credit is given to Luther for his key role in advancing religious freedom in Europe and for future generations in the West.

This book is not hagiography. It is actually a plus that she takes such an in depth look at the personal rivalries which created a dynamic within the reform movement. It is a bit uncomfortable to look at this “sausage making” up close, but that is the reality of how human beings interact with each other and the end result was that we did get a Reformation. Roper does a good job of telling the story of how the Reformation survived its infancy. Although she emphasizes the personal nature of Luther's conflicts with fellow reformers a bit too much. The qualities which allowed Luther to endure and overcome so many obstacles, however, are seldom portrayed in a positive light. The story of these conflicts is mostly just sad, but there's also a humorous side. Luther and his adversaries would attack each other in satirical pamphlets – often hilarious, outrageous, vulgar, and childish.

Roper extensively illustrates the change in Luther as he aged and his health deteriorated. The reformer became cantankerous and started acting somewhat irrationally. At this point he was essentially being managed by the younger defacto leader Melanchthon. It is during this time that Luther published his anti-Jewish tracts. These are indefensible, but Roper has already provided many examples of this crude, vulgar imagery in Luther's attacks on his other opponents. My only criticism of her portrayal is that she does not place Luther in proper historical context. Specifically, she makes it seem that Luther is advocating shocking new measures against the Jews. What she calls “cultural annihilation” (a harsh forced assimilation) was actually a step short of expulsion which was already the policy in much of Europe (e.g. England, Spain, etc.). She notes these pamphlets were republished after Luther's lifetime, but doesn't offer any indication that their policies were ever implemented. Finally, she makes the gross error of portraying the historic christian doctrine of supersessionism as a Lutheran innovation (p 385).

In spite of these drawbacks, this is actually a pretty good narrative biography. It may not be uplifting or inspiring, but it is informative, especially as to Luther's many relationships with fellow reformers and rivals. Also, there are a great many wonderful historical illustrations.

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Greg Tatchell

Making the Old New

Reviewed in Canada on October 27, 2017

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Compulsively readable, making an old subject new. Roper's use of letters, sermons, writings and art makes it multi-dimensional. It was especially edifying to have Melanchton and Kathe such an integral part of the story. A remarkable companion with which to celebrate the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation.

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carlo

entertaining soundness

Reviewed in Italy on August 30, 2017

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I started reading this book as a matter of filling a knowledge gap, I finished it completely enthralled. The themes of this biography are serious and complicated: it's a biography, it's also a thoroughful history book, it's a pernsonality study and its an unforgettable chronicle of people and places. I understood an learnt much more than I had expected.

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Ralph Blumenau

A very fine and balanced biography

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2017

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There is much in this fine biography which will be new to most readers. Lyndal Roper has read extensively in Luther’s correspondence (eleven of the 120 volumes of his collected works), because she is particularly interested in Luther’s psychology and temperament of which she gives a full and rounded description, showing both the admirable and the repellant sides of his character (just as she is judicious in praising and criticizing Luther’s contribution to the Reformation). Luther was of course extremely combative and resorted readily to the grossest scatology; but she also brings out his remarkable courage and readiness to embrace martyrdom in the early years of his defiance of Rome. She also gives a detailed background of the many places connected with Luther: Mansfeld where he grew up, Eisleben where he went to school, Erfurt where he first became a monk (technically a friar), Wittenberg where he taught, etc.

I was only slightly put off by the number of occasions on which she uses phrases like “he must have”, “probably” etc, though these suppositions are reasonable enough.

She goes into great detail about Luther’s intemperate dispute with his former supporter, Andreas Karlstadt, whose theology was becoming more radical and more democratic than his. Luther had powerful allies; Karlstadt did not, was broken by the dispute and even had to submit to Luther, who in the end probably saved him from being put to death and in 1525 even gave him shelter in his own house. All the same, he was deeply upset by Karlstadt’s sacramentarianism, which made many converts among Luther’s followers. Sacramentarianism was the denial that Christ was present in any form in the Eucharist, whereas Luther clung to the idea of consubstantiation, the idea that Christ was present, even though the bread remained bread and the wine remained wine. This disagreement exercised him so much that in 1527 he had a for a time a complete physical and spiritual breakdown. Throughout his life he suffered psychosomatic symptoms – constipation, piles, bad headaches - during mental crises. He had another breakdown in 1529 after the Marburg Conference with Zwingli, the most important of the sacramentarians, at which he failed to win Zwingli over.

Roper is of course always very good on explaining Luther’s theology. In one place Luther wrote, “I would not wish to be given free will”, and she is particularly good on explaining his attitude to Predestination.

Because he was dependent on the Elector of Saxony for his protection, Luther developed Erastianism – that is the teaching of obedience to the ruler and the acknowledgment of his right to control the church. This was of course at odds with his refusal to acknowledge the authority of the Pope and that of the Emperor Charles V, and he did not advocate war against the Emperor, and in fact war between the Protestant and Catholic states in Germany did not break out until shortly after Luther’s death in 1546. The Protestants had in any case been in a weak position against the Emperor, because they were so bitterly divided among themselves: Luther saw Satan at work among all those with whom he disagreed, and he always rejected any compromise, not only those offered by the Catholics (at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, which his deputy Melanchthon wanted to accept), but also with old friends among the Lutherans whenever they diverged in the slightest from his ideas, with Zwinglians and with Anabaptists (who did not believe in infant, but only in adult, baptism).

His vicious hatred of the Jews, once he knew they would never convert, is well-known; but toward the Turks he showed remarkable tolerance. (A minor niggle I have is that Roper refers to Luther’s “antisemitism” instead of “anti-Judaism”. The word “antisemitism” was coined only in the 19th century and it means hostility to the Jews as a “race”, whether they were converts to Christianity or not, whereas Luther was hostile to their religion and had hoped to convert them. Admittedly he once wrote that it was vain to baptize Jews because they were rascals.)

There are over 100 pages of footnotes and the bibliography runs to over 20 pages. Between them they make up a fifth of the book. There are eight pages of fine colour plates, but the numerous black and white illustrations in the text of the paperback are often rather muddy. (Perhaps they were in the original?)

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Martin Luther by Lyndal Roper

Reviewed in Germany on March 3, 2017

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A very well-researched and very readable book about a man whom it is sometimes difficult to understand but who made a tremendous difference to the way of life in Germany and in Europe. A very good read.

Phillipwh

A great Book with understanding of a troubled time

Reviewed in Australia on June 3, 2017

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a wonderful book, great scholarly contribution, Being Catholic I enjoyed it especially and think it required reading

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