we were made timid by daily threats and cruelty, such as the school-masters were wont to use upon the poor scholars, and so took fright the readier at any sudden alarm. But at last the boor called us back from our flight, and we laid aside our fear and ran to him and had of him the sausages that he was holding out to us." For all this he was no advocate of coddling children; he thought that ".... young folk should learn to endure suffering and hardship, for it will do them no harm.'

He

We have seen him ascribe the superior ability of poor folk's children to the privations to which they were subjected. says that such children

...... grew up on bread and water handsome, fuller and stronger in body than those of the rich, that had every day their fill of sodden and roast, and of everything that is good.'

12

"Were we to use simple food without the outlandish condiments that tickle the palate, then would we, doubtless, enjoy longer life. When I was a lad, the more part even of the rich drank water, and ate the simplest food, and the easiest to get. Some scarcely ever tasted wine up to their thirtieth year. Nowadays the very lads are used to wine, and to those foreign and highly spiced dishes. . . ..... What wonder is it, then, if they do not live out half their days, and very few of them reach their fiftieth year? As the eating of an apple brought in death, so we are giving up what was left us of life for the sake of luxury and variety in eating.3 311 "To me our Lord God hath given a sound body up to my fiftieth year."

This last statement is to be taken with some allowance, as meaning that he was kept free from illness of a chronic or malignant type. Ratzenberger, who was court physician to the Elector of Saxony and attended Luther's own family, tells us that Luther was ill of a violent fever during this stay in Magdeburg, and that one day when the people of the house were all at church, he crept on his hands and knees to the kitchen, and took a gulp of cold water, which, according to the medical ideas current at that time, and even as late as the present century, ought to have been the end of him; but nobody in our days will think it due to miraculous interposition that he was fully cured. He could hardly have maintained unimpaired health while leading a life of such hardship, unless he had possessed a constitution of remarkable strength. He evidently desired to save other lads from such Enarrationes in Genesin xliii. 23 (1546).

2 Enarrationes in xv. Psalmos Graduum (1540). 3 Enarrationes in Genesin; xi. 10 (1546).

experiences, for he proposes to the burghers to set up schools that should make it needless:

"Mayhap you will say: 'Yes; but who can make shift to spare his children and bring them up like lords? They must stay at home and work.' I answer: It is not my meaning that you should set up such schools as we have had heretofore, where a lad was learning his Donatus and his Alexander for twenty or it may be thirty years, and never learned them at that. It is another world now, and goes on after another sort. My meaning is that one let his lads go to such schools [as ye see I would have] one or two hours a day, and be none the less busy at home the rest of the time, learning a craft or what ye will, that thus the two may go together while these folks are young and can wait."

What sort of a school this of the Franciscans at Eisenach was, we can guess from his unvaried style of contemptuous allusion to the schools that were carried on by the religious orders, where (as he said) the children learnt nothing but to read, sing and pray. We have some direct and specific evidence in the fact that he calls them nullities-null-brothers, -and also in the brevity of his stay at Magdeburg; he calls it a year, but it must have been something less. It was of course a trivial school, one where the trivium or lower three of the seven liberal arts were taught, to wit: grammar, logic and rhetoric. The discipline was modeled upon that of the cloister, and was exceedingly severe in the wrong direction:

"Solomon [in Ecclesiastes xi. 9] is a right kingly schoolmaster. He forbids not the youth to consort with the people or to make merry, as the monks do with their scholars, whereby these become mere wooden blockheads, as even Anselm, the mother of all monks, [!] has said: "For a young man to be thus enervated and withdrawn from fellowship with the people, is as if a fine young tree, that is able to bear fruit, were to be planted in a narrow pot.' For in this case the Monks played the gaoler with the youths that they taught (as people put birds in cages) that they might 1 Exhortation to the Councilors of the German cities (1524). 2Luther's memory for dates and numbers we believe was not his strongest point. He entered the University of Eufurt in 1501 in his eighteenth year; he says he spent his previous four years at Eisenach, and the year before that, his fourteenth, at Magdeburg. These last data must be taken as spoken loosely to avoid regarding them as innaccurate. Ericeus-a dubious authority—(following Rörer?) makes Luther say that he was certainly born in 1484, which he certainly was not; but probably he did say so. He could not recal with certainty in later years the date of his visit to Rome.

not see nor hear people, nor consort with any. But it is perilous for the young to be thus alone, thus disparted from every one. Therefore should young people be let see and hear and gain all sorts of experience, that they may attain to good breeding and acquit themselves with credit. Nothing good is effected by such overbearing, monkish constraint, which is altogether hurtful to young people. Frolick and delight are as highly needful to them as is their eating and drinking, for they make them so much the better in health."1

It is noteworthy that his allusions to Magdeburg are exceedingly few, although it was, at the time of his stay, the home of quite a number of churchmen, who were characterized by the boldest reformatory spirit. The Archbishop Ernest was one of these, but the greatest was Andreas Proles, an Augustinian who nearly anticipated our Martin by beginning the Reformation himself, and who prophesied that it was close at hand. So too Dr. John Scheyring and Andrew Kaugisdorf were preaching in the Cathedral, and Ludolph Kastrik in the Southwark, of Magdeburg; all of them notable for their free and bold censures of faults of the clergy. But the lad seems to have come into contact with none of them; in later years he speaks of Proles as one of whom he had heard, but had never known at first hand. Here, however, is one very distinct recollection that he did carry away from the city:

"I have seen with these eyes, as I in my fourteenth year was going to school at Magdeburg, a prince of Anhalt, to wit the brother of the prebendary that was afterward Bishop Adolph of Merseburg, going about the wide streets in the cowl of the barefooted monks and begging bread, yea! and carrying the sack like an ass, and bending under its weight to the ground, while his comrade brother walked beside him at his ease. They had so stunned him that he did all the other work of the Convent like any brother of them all, and had so worn himself with fastings, vigils and scourgings that he looked the image of death, mere skin and bone in sooth. He died also very soon after, for he could not long endure such a life. I believe that there are many still alive in Magdeburg that have seen it also. 2

Ecclesiastes Salomonis cum Annotationibus (1532)

2Kaugisdorf was driven out by the cardinal archbishop in 1522 as a Lutheran, and through Luther's good offices became pastor of Eulenberg. Luther says that the cardinal had not his like left in the whole see, but we infer from several graceful and delicate letters of intercession that the Reformer wrote to him, that he was a man of uneasy, impatient and exacting disposition, soured by the long course of annoyance and persecution that had culminated in his banishment from Magdeburg when he was quite an old man.

2 Answer to Duke George's Allegation (1532). Cf. Tischreden xxix, 8 38.

Somewhere before the close of 1497 he began to attend the Latin school of St. George's parish in Eisenach, "my own dear city," which contains nearly all my kindred" and where "I was at school four years" (1497-1501). He was still a poor scholar, dependent upon the charity of strangers, and leading the life that still excites the compassion of those who visit Berlin. We are told of them:

"When in winter the icy December storm roared through the streets and the chill wind whirled in eddying gusts about the wide, deserted squares, bearing with it flakes of snow and drops of still colder rain, and the passengers, shivering and blue, hastened rapidly by, there was something sad in the sight of the little troop of children making their way through the bustle and noise of the streets, and singing their hymns with trembling voices (changed by the cold into a plaintive tremolo), in front of houses from whose windows the bright lights of warm and cosy rooms threw their rays upon the wet, dirty, cold streets without. The little lads, with their grotesque hats and plaited coats, could not but excite a smile of sympathy. When they have sung one of their choral songs, or the well-known school-song,

Glad praises to the Lord,

Ye youthful choirs sing,

then one of the poor children draws forth from under his mantle a dark lantern, mounts the narrow steps of the house, and rings or knocks.—'Who is there?' asks a voice. The choristers -currende-schuler or currendaner-beg for a little gift.' Often the answer is a surly 'No;' often the voice of a shrewish, stingy old woman croaks forth some abuse of the petitioner, and even when a more generous hand opens to meet him, it opens only— in most cases-to bestow upon the needy scholars a few groschen."

Traditions tells how Luther's company sang before house after house one winter's day and received only harshness and rebuff, until they had lost nearly all hopefulness. Martin was utterly downhearted, full of thoughts of giving up school-going and his hope to be one day a great clerk. At last they came to the house of Conrad Cotta, in St. George's street, where his good wife Ursula received them with cheery welcome and such substantial kindness that all hearts grew light again. Certain it is that this

1 Translated from Der Hausfreund for Every Saturday. The writer adds that since 1851 efforts have been made to put the currende-jugend on a better footing. Every citizen who subscribes two thalers a year receives a monthly visit from the choristers, who sing their chorals in doors during the visit. The quality of the singing has been much improved by the change, and the exposure to all weathers, that ruined many fine voices, has ceased,

Frau Cotta of St. George's street was drawn to our Martin by his devout and earnest manner and his fine singing in their parish church-from which that street took its name-and welcomed him to her home and table. From that day she was his hostess, and taught him lessons that were to stand him in as good stead as any that he was learning at the parish school:

"Well said my hostess at Eisenach, that there is no dearer thing on earth than the love of woman-Frauen-liebe-to whose lot soever it may fall in the fear of God."

The state of mind and the drift of thought that made this womanly lesson important and useful to the lad he has himself described.

"When I was a young lad wedlock and the married state were looked upon as something sinful and dishonorable. Whoever

had a mind to the life of married people committed sin thereby, but whoever would lead a life holy and well-pleasing to God, let him not take a wife, but live chastely,' or take the vow of 'chastity.' Therefore many were to be found that when their wives died became monks or parsons."

"When I was a lad I knew that the married state was to that degree evil spoken of by reason of the godless and unclean life of them that were in wedlock, that I held it for truth that I could well think upon the married life without sin, for it had been beaten into everybody, and all held it for truth, that whoever would live in a state holy and well-pleasing to God must live unwed and take the vows of the single life."2

This Eisenach school was in so far better than that of the Franciscans at Magdeburg in that its master-John Trebonius-was ranked for his love of learning and his Latin poetry among the humanists. He was therefore the better fitted to excite a fondness for study in his pupils. He was also noted in that closelycapped and punctilious age for uncovering to his scholars, as he entered the class, out of respect to the possible chancellors, doctors and burgomasters who stood before him. He taught his boys 1Tischreden xliii. § 182.

2Enarrationes in Genesin xx. 2. (1546).

Our forefathers wore hats and caps at home and out of doors, and even at their meals. That Hadrian went round the Roman world bare-headed was in their eyes one of the hardly credible things of history. The High churchparty gibed at the Puritans that they would next be for coming to the Sacrament with their hats on as they did at their own tables. One or two ultraPuritans-Baptists, we think-did at last go to that length.

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