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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Outlaw
This is a big book. The story of Martin Luther is 418 pages, with another 100 devoted to Notes and Bibliography. It took author Lyndal Roper10 years to research and write. It is published to mark the 500th anniversary of Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses - questioning Catholic dogma and indulgences - on the church in Wittenberg, Germany.So, who is the audience for this massive and massively researched tome that took me more than a month to thoughtfully read? No doubt Luther scholars will love this work, as will theologians and religious educators. It has a high-priest style that will find a niche in the academic setting. Which is sadly ironic given that the man who inspired this work is famous for his down-to-earth sensibilities (challenging indulgences as a con of the lower classes), his straightforward writing (translating the Bible into everyday German), and his common-man touch (a Catholic monk who married a nun and raised 6 children).This work may not grow the general Luther audience, another irony given that his 95 Theses sparked the Protestant Reformation which eventually grew into a worldwide movement that splintered Catholic hegemony over the Christian flock. When read for its smaller insights – his prolific letter writing, for instance – this book offers a rewarding look at a specific time and place in history. But in a story where the Gutenberg printing press isn’t even mentioned, and the English Reformation gets only a one-page mention, the larger importance of Luther’s life is lost in translation.This is an interesting but thickly written account of a norm-busting theologian.
Top reviews from other countries
Ralph Blumenau
A very fine and balanced biography
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2017Amazons Customers
Martin Luther by Lyndal Roper
Reviewed in Germany on March 3, 2017
Phillipwh
A great Book with understanding of a troubled time
Reviewed in Australia on June 3, 2017