[Born at Eisleben, in Saxony, 1483. Died there, 1546. Aged 63.]
The Lion of the Reformation. One of the men who, by coming to their
time, have made an epoch in the world’s history. Assuredly the abuses of
Rome,--in her second supremacy, as the spiritual mistress of the
world,--must have aroused their effectual remedy; for partial
resistances, before Luther rose, showed how deeply the mind of mankind
resented and resisted the oppression and the spiritual malversation, and
how fast the time was ripening for general revolt. Europe, since the
overthrow of the Roman Empire, had been gradually rising with the inward
vigour of her renewed life. The restored study of classical letters came
as a powerful external impulse. Rome had but slowly established her
domination, and only then securely given herself up to licence. Thus the
strengthening of the evil on the one hand, and of the resisting life on
the other, met: and then Luther came. He was fit for his Herculean
labour. He had stepped from the very heart of the people, and his strong
nature bespoke his hardy origin. He was fearless as one who could not
feel fear in the midst of the most terrible danger; he was zealous as
one who labours under the sense of Divine appointment, who knows that to
die may be to live, to live may be to suffer worse than death: and who
rejoices equally at every turn of fortune. He was threatened with the
stake: he persisted in his crusade all the more for the menace. The Pope
excommunicated him in the face of all the world. He denounced the Pope
before as large an audience. The Pope publicly burned all his writings:
he publicly burned the Bull of excommunication, the Canon Law, and the
Pope’s Decretals. Before Luther died,--and he fell asleep tranquilly,
worn out with labour, not with age,--his doctrines had already taken
deep root in the wide world. We are all the debtors of his work; and we
may remember with gratitude the generous protection of the Elector of
Saxony, who again and again refused to give the Lion up, when the
hunters loudly demanded his blood at the gate.
[By G. Schadow. Marble. The original placed in the Walhalla by order
of King Louis. Luther was excluded from the Walhalla till 1848, when
he was admitted, and inscribed as Dr. Martin Luther. In the Berlin
Museum there is a portrait of him from the life, by L. Cranach, as the
Junker Georg, with moustaches, painted when he was concealed in the
Castle of Wartburg.]