Luther's Lives: Two Contemporary Accounts of Martin Luther

421 Pages·2002·5.72 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Vandiver, Ralph Keen, Thomas D. Frazel

VANDIVER.cvr 29/9/03 11:44 am Page 1
HIS VOLUME brings By placing accurate new translations of these
together two important two ‘lives of Luther’ side by side, Vandiver
and her colleagues have allowed two very
Tcontemporary accounts of different perceptions of the significance of
the life of Martin Luther in a Luther to compete head to head. The result
confrontation that had ben is as entertaining as it is informative, and a Luther’s
postponed for more than four powerful reminder of the need to ensure that
secondary works about the Reformation are
hundred and fifty years. The first never displaced by the primary sources.
of these accounts was written imes iterary upplement
after Luther’s death, when it was
rumoured that demons had seized
the Reformer on his deathbed lives
and dragged him off to Hell.
In response to these rumours,
Luther’s friend and colleague,
Philip Melanchthon wrote and
published a brief encomium of
the Reformer in . A
completely new translation of this
text appears in this book.
It was in response to Melanchthon’s work that Johannes Cochlaeus
completed and published his own monumental life of Luther in , which
is translated and made available in English for the first time in this volume.
After witnessing Luther’s declaration before Charles V at the Diet of Worms,
Cochlaeus had sought out Luther and debated with him. However, the
confrontation left him convinced that Luther was an impious and
malevolent man. Consequently, over the next twenty-five years, Cochlaeus
fought vigorously against the influence of the Reformation. Such is the
detail and importance of Cochlaeus’s life of Luther that for an eyewitness
account of the Reformation – and the beginnings of the Catholic Counter-
Reformation – there is simply no other historical document to compare.
Published in collaboration with The Sohmer-Hall Foundation, this
book also supplies introductory texts to the lives of both Cochlaeus and
Melanchthon, plus compre-hensive annotation for readers who wish to
make a broader study of the period. These translations will be essential
reading for students and academics of the Reformation and all early modern
historians interested in this fascinating period of religious history.
  is Director of the Honors Humanities Program and Visiting wo contemporary accounts of
Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics, University of Maryland
  is Associate Professor of Religion, University of Iowa
artin uther
 .  is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Classical
Studies, Tulane Universit translated
annotated translated and annotated
VANDIVER by  ,
KEEN
FRAZEL   and  . 
Luther’s lives
 —Bust of Luther, Lutherhaus, Wittenberg. Photograph, Steve Sohmer
’  
for Lowell and Marla
Be thou an example of the believers,
in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit,
in faith.
1 Timothy 4: 12
Luther’s lives
Two contemporary accounts
of Martin Luther
translated and annotated
by Elizabeth Vandiver, Ralph Keen
and Thomas D. Frazel
MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS
Manchester and New York
distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave
Copyright © The Sohmer-Hall Foundation 2002
Published by Manchester University Press
Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK
and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
http: //www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
Distributed exclusively in the USA by
Palgrave, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
Distributed exclusively in Canada by
UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall,
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISBN 0 7190 6104 0 hardback
First published 2002
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Typeset in Monotype Bell by Carnegie Publishing Ltd, Lancaster
Printed in Great Britain
by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn
Contents
Scholars vi
Abbreviations vii
Introduction 1
1 Philip Melanchthon and the historical Luther
by Ralph Keen 7
2 Philip Melanchthon’s History of the Life and Acts of
Dr Martin Luther
translated by Thomas D. Frazel and annotated
by Ralph Keen 14
3 Johannes Cochlaeus: an introduction to his life and work
by Ralph Keen 40
4 The deeds and writings of Dr Martin Luther from the year
of the Lord 1517 to the year 1546 related chronologically
to all posterity by Johannes Cochlaeus
for the first time translated into English
by Elizabeth Vandiver and annotated by Ralph Keen 53
Translator’s note 352
Appendix 353
Works cited 357
Notes 368
Index 402
v
Scholars Scholars
Scholars
Elizabeth Vandiver earned her MA and PhD at the University of Texas (Austin). Her
areas of concentration are ancient historiography (Herodotus, Livy), elegy (particularly
Catullus), and ancient drama and stagecraft. She taught at Northwestern University
and the University of Maryland, where she is presently the Director of the Honors
Humanities Program. Her publications include Heroes in Herodotus: The Interaction
of Myth and History, Studien zur klassischen Philologie, 56, series editor Michael von
Albrecht (Frankfurt, 1991); ‘Hot Springs, Cool Rivers, and Hidden Fires: Heracles in
Catullus 68.51–66,’ in Classical Philology 95 (2000); ‘Millions of the Mouthless Dead:
Charles Hamilton Sorley and Wilfred Owen in Homer’s Hades’, in the International
Journal of the Classical Tradition 5.3 (1999); and ‘The Founding Mothers of Livy’s Rome:
The Sabine Women and Lucretia,’ in Richard F. Moorton, Jr, and Frances B. Titchener
(eds), The Eye Expanded: Life and the Arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Berkeley, Los
Angeles, London, 1999).
Ralph Keen was born in Philadelphia and received a BA in Greek from Columbia in
1979. He coupled graduate studies in Classics at Yale with several years as assistant
research editor of the Complete Works of St Thomas More, published by Yale University
Press. He earned his PhD in the History of Christianity at University of Chicago. He
taught at Alaska Pacific University (Anchorage), and at the University of Iowa, where
he is now Associate Professor of Religion. His publications include critical editions of
two Latin works by Cochlaeus, Responsio ad Johannem Bugenhagium Pomeranum (Nieuw-
koop, 1988) and Philippicae I-VII, 2 vols (Nieuwkoop, 1995–6), and Divine and Human
Authority in Reformation Thought (Nieuwkoop, 1997), a study of the political philosophies
of Lutheran, Catholic, and Anabaptist theologians. He lives in Iowa City with his wife
and daughter.
Thomas D. Frazel was educated at the University of Chicago and the University of
California (Los Angeles). He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department
of Classics at Tulane University. His scholarly interests focus primarily on Latin
literature of the classical period, ancient rhetoric (in particular Cicero), and Roman
intellectual history.
vi
Scholars Scholars
Abbreviations
Clemen Luthers Werke in Auswahl, ed. Otto Clemen, 8 vols (Berlin,
1930) and numerous reprints.
CR Corpus Reformatorum, ed. C. G. Bretschneider and H. E. Bind-
seil [edition of Melanchthon’s writings], 28 vols (Halle,
1834–60).
Herte, Lutherkommentare Adolf Herte, Die Lutherkommentare des Johannes Cochlaeus:
Kritische Studie zur Geschichtschreibung im Zeitalter der Glaubens-
spaltung Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte, vol. 3
(Münster, 1935).
LW Luther’s Works, American edition, ed. J. Pelikan and H. T.
Lehmann, 55 vols (Philadelphia, 1955–86).
OER Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Reformation, ed. Hans Hillerbrand,
4 vols (Oxford, 1996).
Spahn Martin Spahn, Johannes Cochläus: Ein Lebensbild aus der Zeit
der Kirchenspaltung (Berlin, 1898; rpt Nieuwkoop, 1964).
StA Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl, ed. Robert Stupperich et al.,
8 vols (Gütersloh, 1951–78).
WA D. Martin Luthers Werke, 89 vols, including separate series of
correspondence (Briefwechsel) (Weimar, 1883–1986).
In general, sources are cited in English versions whenever possible; the headnotes in
LW provide references to original texts in WA. When no English version is available,
the most authoritative modern edition is cited; when these are lacking, references are
to original editions.
vii
Introduction Introduction
Introduction
We have only two substantial eyewitness accounts of the life of Martin Luther.
Best known is a 9,000-word Latin memoir by Philip Melanchthon published
in Latin at Heidelberg in 1548, two years after the Reformer’s death.1 In 1561,
‘Henry Bennet, Callesian’ translated this pamphlet into English; the martyro-
logist John Foxe adopted Bennet’s text into his Memorials verbatim, including
a number of the Englisher’s mistranslations. For example, where Melanchthon
wrote that Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in
Wittenberg ‘pridie festi omnium Sanctorum’ – that is, ‘on the day before the feast
of All Saints’ (31 October 1517) – Bennet mistranslated pridie as ‘after’ and
wrote, ‘the morrowe after the feast of all Saynctes, the year. 1517.’ 2 Since every
English church was obliged to own a copy of Foxe, Elizabethans – including
William Shakespeare – believed Luther’s Reformation began on 2 November.
The present volume corrects this and other Bennet/Foxe errors, and provides
an authoritative English edition of Melanchthon’s Historia de Vita et Actis
Reverendiss. Viri D. Mart. Lutheri, the first new translation in English to appear
in print in many years.3
But the other substantial vita of Luther – at 175,000 words by far the longest
and most detailed eyewitness account of the Reformer – has never been
published in English. Recorded contemporaneously over the first twenty-five
years of the Reformation by Luther’s lifelong antagonist Johannes Cochlaeus,
the Commentaria de Actis et Scriptis Martini Lutheri was published in Latin at
Mainz in 1549. Perhaps because of Cochlaeus’s unabashed antagonism for the
Reformation – and his virulent attacks on Luther, his ideals, and his fellow
reformers – the Commentary has remained untranslated for more than 450 years.
In the present volume this colossal work makes its first appearance in print
in English – and its debut is timely. At a moment of rapprochement among the
divisions of Christianity, Cochlaeus’s first-person account of Luther and the
turbulent birth of Protestanism is a tale of profound and enduring interest
both to the general reader and to students of the Reformation.
Johannes Cochlaeus (1479–1552) was born Johannes Dobeneck (or Dobneck)
in Wendelstein in the region of Nuremberg, Germany. A thoroughly educated
humanist and pedagogue, Cochlaeus was also an ordained Catholic priest.
Conservative, zealous, and personally ambitious, he placed himself in the
forefront of the early Catholic reaction against Luther and the reformers. In
1520, Cochlaeus entered the fray with responses to Luther’s Address to the
Nobility of the German Nation and The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. On 18
April 1521, Cochlaeus was present in the great hall at the Diet of Worms
when Luther made his famous declaration before Emperor Charles V: ‘Here I
1