Fatal Discord by Michael Massing

Author:Michael Massing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2018-01-23T05:00:00+00:00

30

Satan Falls upon the Flock

On December 4, 1521, Luther rode into a very tense Wittenberg. On the previous morning, a gang of students and townsmen with knives hidden under their coats had gathered at the town church and prevented some priests from entering. Other priests had managed to get in, but when they began celebrating Mass, the agitators snatched their missals and drove them from the altar. They also threw stones at some parishioners who were chanting the Magnificat. The next day, a group of students smashed the door of the Franciscan friary and disrupted the services with hoots and heckling. The town council had to deploy a guard to protect the cloister, and Frederick the Wise angrily demanded that the perpetrators be detained and a full investigation carried out.

On arriving, Luther went straight to the home of his friend Nikolaus von Amsdorf, where Philipp Melanchthon was also staying. Seeing this strange Junker with a flowing beard, red beret, and sword at his side, they wondered who it could be. Upon recognizing him, they were shocked and delighted. Luther wanted to go to the Augustinian cloister but was advised not to, so as not to give away his presence. “Everything . . . pleases me very much,” he informed Spalatin on December 5. Surprisingly, he made no mention of the recent disorders. Apparently, he considered them insignificant when measured against the great strides the reform was making.

He was, however, upset to find that no one knew anything about his manuscripts. “There is nothing that would disturb me more at this moment,” he wrote to Spalatin, than to know that the manuscripts had reached him “and you were holding them back, since I have dealt in these little books with themes that require the greatest possible haste.” In fact, Spalatin was worried about the violence of Luther’s language and so had withheld them from the printers. In the face of Luther’s fury, however, he quickly capitulated and sent off the tracts on the Mass and monastic vows. He continued to hold back the pamphlet against Albrecht’s relics, however, worried about the damage it could do to the elector’s relations with the archbishop. At Luther’s insistence, though, Spalatin agreed to post his letter to Albrecht, in which he demanded that he take down the “idol” at Halle.

While in Wittenberg, Luther had time to sit for a portrait by Lucas Cranach—the one surviving image of him as Junker Jörg. It’s easy to see why his friends failed to recognize him. With his filled-out face and full head of hair, Luther looked nothing like the gaunt friar they had seen leave Wittenberg for Worms eight months earlier. The one constant was his eyes: dark and intense, they gazed off into the distance, as if fixed on matters far beyond the earthly realm.

There was, however, one practical matter that absorbed Luther’s attention during his stay. Melanchthon and other friends pressed him to take on a project that they considered of the utmost importance: a translation of the Bible into German.

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