the blood came. It was her severe and earnest life that was the cause of my entering the monastery. However, at heart she meant well, sed non potuerunt discernere ingenia, secundum quae essent temperandae correctiones. Quia people should so punish that the apple go with the rod." "She had (says Mathesius) many virtues befitting an honorable matron, and in especial she was of notable modesty and piety, and given to earnest prayer, so that other honorable women looked upon her as an ensample of virtue and propriety." From the first Hans Luther seems to have designed his son for one of the learned professions, and with this view cultivated the acquaintance of such "clerks" as Mansfeld could boast, and welcomed them to his frugal table, that little Martin might profit by their talk. It was traditional that school-going should begin not later than the seventh year, and it must have been at a still earlier age that Martin began to attend the Latin school of Mansfeld. In an inscription in a Bible, written 1544, he says: "To my good old friend, Nicholas Omeler, who more than once, when I was a weakling and a child, has carried me to and from school in his arms, when neither of us knew that one brother-in-law was carrying the other."2 From the first he was a hard student, spurred on by the severity of parents and teachers, and the hard, yet beneficent, necessities of poverty. He says: "Rich folks' children are seldom worth much; they are careless, arrogant, proud, and suppose that they need not learn, when they have enough without to keep them. But on the other hand poor folks' sons must needs work their way up in the world, and have much to endure. And, albeit, they have nothing whereof to be proud or boast, yet do they learn to trust God, to restrain themselves and hold their peace. The poor fear God; therefore God giveth them good heads, wherewith to study and learn to some purpose, and become men of learning and of understanding, and able to instruct princes, and kings and Kaisers by their wisdom."' He needed to be a zealous student if he would profit by such schools as Germany then had, and that in an out of the way place like Mansfeld was more likely to be worse than better than most. They were, as he says, founded in the interests of the clerical class, 1 Tischreden xliii. 155. 2De Wette, v. 709. 3House-postil (Rorer's); Sermon on Luke i. 39–56 (1535.) and no pains were spared to draw the more likely lads into the religious orders. "Was it not a most wretched affair that heretofore a lad had to study twenty years or more, just to learn so much bad Latin as he needed to become a parson and say mass, and happy was the man that got so far; happy the mother that bore such a son. And withal he was and remained his life-long a poor unlearned man, that was good for nothing- 'neither to hatch nor to lay eggs. Such teachers and masters they must needs be everywhere, that knew nothing good and right to teach; yea! even the wise ones of them knew not how one should learn or teach anything. Whose fault was it? There were no books to be had, save such silly ones as the monks and sophists [the school-men] made. What could be the outcome thereof, but scholars and teachers as silly as the books they had in use? A daw hatches no doves,' and a fool makes none wise.'' "Not a single science was at that time rightly taught. Of which of them did any one rightly point out or know the right profit and use, even if we regard only the little that was taught in the lads' schools. So much was there lacking ere they could be rightly taught." "Is it not before your very eyes that one can now teach a lad in three years, so that he knows more in his fifteenth or eighteenth year, than aforetime all the High Schools [Univerrities] and cloisters knew? Yea! what did they used to learn in High Schools and cloisters, save to turn out asses, and wooden blockheads? Twenty, forty years some of them studied, and yet knew neither Latin nor German."'2 He had no opinion of the services of the religious orders and the secular clergy in promoting popular education; they had even, he declared, perverted the old educational foundations, like that of Karl the Great at Fulda : "The drones have driven the bees from this bee-hive, and the monks and canons have shared with the poor school-masters, as did that boor with Mercury, that at the god's suit and his own promise that he would give to the Church half of whatever fell to his lot, did give ad pios usus the outside of the nuts and the inside of the dates, and ate the rest himself." The ordinary text-books in these clerical schools were the Latin grammar of that Donatus under whom Jerome studied in the 1 To the Councillors of all the Cities of German land, that they set up and sus tain Christian schools (1524.) 2 Ibidem. 3 Matthesius, xii. Predigt. 1 fourth century, and the Doctrinale of Alexander, a Franciscan of the thirteenth century, another grammatical treatise. When the children got to reading (if they ever did), it was in the Moral Distichs of Dionysius Cato, the Eclogues of Theodulus, the Regula Pueriles and the wretched productions of Mancinus or Cardinal Hugo. The very highest text-books were the De Consolatione of Boethius, the Fables of Esop and the Comedies of Terence, or those of his Christian imitator Hrotswitha. At Mansfeld, Mathesius tells us, our Martin learnt "his Ten Commandments, Apostles' Creed, Pater Noster, Donatus, Child's Grammar, Cisio Janus and Church Music." The first three formed the basis of the Mediaeval Catechisms as also of Luther's own and that of the Church of England. In the twelfth century it was the rule to begin to teach these and the Ave Maria when a lad was seven years old. "Catechism means an instruction whereby they used to teach and show heathens that would become Christians what they should believe, do, cease doing and know in Christendom.........Fort his instruction or teaching I know no simpler or better order than that which hath held since Christendom began, and still holdeth, to wit, the three chapters: the Ten Commandments, the Belief and the Pater Noster. In these three chapters standeth simply and shortly almost all that a Christian hath need to know." Of Donatus we have spoken already; the Child's Grammar was a simpler version of Priscian, treated by the scholastic met hod The Cisio Janus was a wonderful piece of manufacture, that had doubtless been the torment of lads without number. It was a Latin Calendar of the Church year, embodied in mnemonic verses, made up of the first syllable of the name of the month and of the saints to whom its days were dedicated, and some portion of the names of each of the immovable feasts. Hence its name from its opening words, which mark that the first feast in January was that of the Circumcision. Here is a specimen: Cisio Janus Epy sibi vendicat Oc Feli Mar An. Prisca Fab Ag Vincenti Pan Pol car nobile lumen. Of all his studies the last or Church music (Christliche gesange, Christian airs or tunes in contrast to secular music) made the deepest impression upon the lad's mind. This branch of his education it was that gave to his naturally devout mind its power 1 German Mass and Ordering of Divine Service. (1526) of poetical and musical expression, which contributed so mightily to his success as a reformer. Thousands who knew nothing of the assailant of Indulgences were stirred to the depths of their being by his Ein feste Burg, which still secures him a hearing with those who know nothing of his writings and little of his history. The Church's music was one of the attractive sides that the old Church presented to the lad, and very firm and fast was the hold that it took of him. He mentions among "the good things in popedom" (i. e., of the pre-Reformation times) that "they used to sing fine hymns. Fine and beautiful songs, Latin and German, were made by the old Christians, as we sing : And in the Christ is risen again Out of all that pain; sequence: Agnus redemit oves; "He that made that song, be he who ne may, must have had a high and Christian understanding, that he paints this picture so finely and killfully." He complains that hese things were not heeded in old times as they ought to be; they were sung "from the heart, but there were no preachers then that could tell us what it meant. At Christmas they sang : A little child so lovely Is born to us to-day. "At Whitsuntide, in the mass, they sang that good song: God be praised and blessed, Who Himself hath fed us, and so forth. But of it all they understood never a letter nor a tittle of it, but presently betook themselves to something else and forgot the beautiful words." Of the Christmas hymn, just quoted, he says: "Who ever made it hath hit off the matter well, to wit: that the little child, Christ, is our only cheer; great and excellent words, to the which we ought to give heed with all earnestness. The Holy Ghost himself must have taught the poet to sing them." At the same time, we find him lamenting the scarcity of good Christian hymns, and setting himself to supply the want. But his work bears the same testimony as his words to the deep root that the old Church music had taken in his mind. Of his thirty-five grand hymns, eleven are either translations or expansions of Latin hymns or sequences, and four are based on earlier German hymns, that were used on pilgrimages. Several of those that are from Latin came to him through the German. So again with Church music; he was a thorough conservative, even in his bold adaptations. Old Church tunes and Gregorian chaunts were the basis upon which he built, and much that the monks had composed in honor of Our Lady was transferred by Luther to new uses. He indicates at once his views of policy and his personal feeling in his preface to a collection of funeral music (Latin and German), which was published only three years before his death: "We have taken as a good example the beautiful music or airs -gesange-that even in popedom were used in their vigils, masses for the dead, and burials, some of which we have had printed in this book; and with time either we ourselves will add to the number, or some one that can do it better than we. But we have set the music to other words, that we may bravely set off our article of the resurrection, not purgatory with its pain and satisfaction, because of which their dead cannot sleep or rest. The airs and the notes are precious; it were a pity that they should be lost to us ; but if the text be un-Christian or out of keeping with them, let it go. 66 They have also, in good sooth, many masterly and beautiful pieces of music or airs, especially in their foundations and parsonages, albeit the text that they set off therewith is by far too nasty and idolatrous. Therefore we unclothe such idolatrous, dead and stupid text, and strip from it the fair music, and set it to the living, holy Word of God, that it may be sung to His praise and honor; that this fair adornment of music may in its right use serve its dear Creator and His Christians. “......... Yet it is not our meaning that these notes be sung in this wise in all churches; let each several church hold to their own notes according to their book and their use. For I myself, also, like not to hear it when, in a response or an air, the notes are displaced-sung otherwise in our church than I was used to hear them in my youth. It is alteration of the text, not of the notes, that must be seen to."1 So scarce were school-books that a single copy-the property Begrabniss-gesange (1543.) |