Luther's Rome, Rome's Luther

How the City Shaped the Reformer

Carl P. E. Springer

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781506472027
• eBook ISBN: 9781506472034
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

This book reconsiders the question of Martin Luther's relationship with Rome in all its sixteenth-century manifestations: the early-modern city he visited as a young man, the ancient republic and empire whose language and literature he loved, the Holy Roman Empire of which he was a subject, and the sacred seat of the papacy. It will appeal to scholars as well as lay readers, especially those interested in Rome, the reception of the classics in the Reformation, Luther studies, and early-modern history.

Springer's methodology is primarily literary-critical, and he analyzes a variety of texts--prose and poetry--throughout the book. Some of these speak for themselves, while Springer examines others more closely to tease out their possible meanings. The author also situates relevant texts within their appropriate contexts, as the topics in the book are interdisciplinary.

While many of Luther's references to Rome are negative, especially in his later writings, Springer argues that his attitude to the city in general was more complicated than has often been supposed. If Rome had not once been so dear to Luther, it is unlikely that his later animosity would have been so intense. Springer shows that Luther continued to be deeply fascinated by Rome until the end of his life and contends that what is often thought of as his pure hatred of Rome is better analyzed as a kind of love-hate relationship with the venerable city.

1

“Hail, Holy Rome!”

The Pilgrim

When he was in his late twenties, Martin Luther traveled to Rome from Germany and after spending four weeks in the city returned home.1 Specific details such as the date of the trip, the precise route he followed there and back, the identity of his traveling companion, why exactly he went, and what he did and saw in the city itself have been and continue to be questions subject to vigorous dispute and frequent conjecture.

Of all the trips ever taken over the centuries, Luther’s has often been regarded as one of the most significant. It might almost be described as one of those pivotal journeys that changed not only the traveler but the world thereafter, akin to Christopher Columbus’s trip westward or Charles Darwin’s voyage on the HMS Beagle. It would be a pity, therefore, to lose sight of the larger significance of this momentous trip because the reader’s attention has become distracted by smaller and controverted issues, important as these may be. I shall try to review the relevant scholarly considerations and arguments in the first part of this chapter, but more or less briefly, referring the reader who is interested in greater detail to the primary and secondary sources indicated in the notes so that the overarching plot of the story of Luther’s trip to Rome remains relatively uncluttered.2

On the other hand, I shall resist telling this story in the categorical fashion in which it has sometimes been told not only in popular literature but also in serious historical studies.3 Vexed issues have all too often been confidently discussed as though they are quite settled, assumptions and unknown factors are not taken into full consideration, and the extensive scholarship devoted to the question (not always readily accessible, especially to the Germanless reader) remains largely unconsulted.4 In detailing Luther’s travel experiences, sympathetic biographers have been as susceptible to the siren call of the historical imagination as unsympathetic ones. Luther is a larger-than-life figure who lends himself readily to legendary treatment, both positive and negative, and too many historians in the past have simply made up “entire scenes,” as Heinrich Böhmer complains, imagining where he must have gone in Rome and what he must have seen or even how he must have felt. Projecting themselves completely onto the young Luther, these scholars have found it difficult not to represent him anachronistically, “as though he must have duly walked around the eternal city with the eyes and interests of a German professor,” consulting his trusty Baedeker as he diligently made his way “through all the galleries, churches, and ruins.”5

The fact is that we know relatively little for certain about this trip, and it behooves the careful writer to use the subjunctive mood more often than the indicative when setting forth details about Luther’s journey that are reasonable hypotheses but not established facts.6 In what follows, we shall focus less on what Luther might have seen or done on his way to and from Rome and in the city itself and more on what he said that he saw or did and, just as important, what the trip came to mean to him and to others thereafter.

“To Rome and Back Again”

Luther would have set out for Rome either from his monastery in Erfurt or from the newly founded university in Wittenberg.7 His location at the time of his departure depends on whether the trip began in the late fall of 1510, as Heinrich Böhmer argued in 1914 in his influential Luthers Romfahrt, or a year later. For many decades after his study appeared, Böhmer’s conclusions about the timing of the trip were widely accepted, and only in recent years have they begun to be seriously challenged. In 2011, Hans Schneider made a compelling case for a later date. According to Schneider’s Martin Luthers Reise nach Rom—neu datiert und neu gedeutet, Luther arrived in Rome in the late fall of 1511.8

There are difficulties with both sets of dates. Luther himself is not always clear (or perhaps even sure) exactly what year it was that he went to Rome, contributing to the long-standing confusion on the subject.9 Near the end of his life, Luther seems to question his own memory of the date: “It was in the year 1510 anno domini, if I remember correctly (ist mir recht), that I was in Rome.”10 Philipp Melanchthon, Luther’s colleague at the University of Wittenberg, puts the trip a year later.11 One solution has been to posit more than one trip to Rome, although this seems most unlikely given the failure of Luther or any of his early biographers to mention such an important fact.12

What was Luther going to do in Rome? The usual explanation is that he was sent there in connection with a serious problem that had arisen within the Augustinian order in Germany at the time.13 The Augustinian monastery in Erfurt that Luther had joined in 1505 was one of many such houses in Germany, of which twenty-nine were reformed (sometimes called “observant” or “renitent”), with the remainder (“conventuals”) following less rigorous practices. The vicar-general of the observant German Augustinians, Johann von Staupitz, was trying to forge a union between the two factions and had already personally traveled to Italy in search of a solution. His efforts, however, had been vigorously opposed by Luther’s own house in Erfurt and six others, including those in Nuremberg and Kulmbach, whose members feared that such a union might lead to a relaxation of their own strict religiosity.

If Luther’s trip to Rome took place in 1510/11, as Böhmer argued, the young friar in the monastery in Erfurt was most likely chosen by the resistant members of the congregatio reformata to represent their cause in Rome because it was thought that he supported their rigorist views and opposed Staupitz’s ideas about union.14 Given the rigid hierarchical structures of the Roman church and the strict expectations for obedience within the Augustinian order, if this was indeed an embassy undertaken to represent the case of the recalcitrant monasteries to the ecclesiastical authorities in Rome “without the express permission of their vicar” (sine vicarii licentia speciali), the chances for its success were slim.15 In the register of the general of the Augustinian order, we find a statement dated to January 1511: “According to the laws, the Germans are forbidden to appeal.”16

If the journey was made a year later in 1511/12, it is more likely that Luther—now in Wittenberg, where he was being groomed to become a professor—would have been personally handpicked by Staupitz himself. Presumably, he considered his protégé to be amenable to his efforts to unify the order. Perhaps he even hoped that Luther would be able to interact productively with the Augustinian authorities in Rome, consulting with them about the current situation in Germany and seeking their advice.

The date matters. If we opt for 1511/12, the need to explain how Luther could have so quickly switched sides upon returning from Rome in order to support Staupitz, as he did, is eliminated.17 Indeed, once he was back in Germany, Luther traveled with Staupitz to Cologne—quite amicably, it would seem—to attend a gathering of Augustinians there in May 1512. Luther’s faculty position at the University of Wittenberg, Lectura in Biblia, Staupitz’s former chair, was approved on this occasion. Luther was awarded his doctoral degree on October 19 of the same year and three days later was “accepted into the university senate.”18

Heiko Oberman argues that even if Luther did go to Rome in 1510 to represent Erfurt’s case against his superior, he was not being rebellious in so doing. Rather, he “had dared to stand and be counted against the vicar general’s policies, although this was the man who had offered him an academic future.” Oberman admits that Luther’s sudden reversal of positions once he returned home might make him appear “servile and career-minded,” but he defends Luther’s character as follows: “Throughout his life he was incorruptible and prepared to place principles before friendships. At such moments he counted neither his interests nor his inclinations.”19 But if Luther went to Rome at the behest of Staupitz and not in opposition to him, a year later than Böhmer and Oberman suppose, such a convoluted explanation becomes unnecessary.

In fact, it is not at all clear that Luther himself was ever especially concerned with restoring or strengthening his order’s commitment to poverty, however seriously he may have taken specific ascetic directives for himself while in the monastery.20 Indeed, later on he could be very critical of his former fellow monks in Erfurt and their strict piety. He called them “little saints” and criticized their “selfish striving for saintliness without regard for the obedience they had pledged in their vows.”21 Nor, at this early stage in his life, was Luther necessarily as inclined to challenge ecclesiastical authority as later. Staupitz was beginning to assume an increasingly important position in Luther’s life as a spiritual mentor and his “father in Christ,” who not only helped advance his academic career but also led him to a fuller appreciation of the depth of God’s mercy (as opposed to the severity of his justice).22 Perhaps it was not only finding a solution to the Augustinian order’s problems that was on Staupitz’s mind when he decided to send Luther to Rome, if it was he who did so, but a fond hope that such a journey to such a holy place might be just the thing to help satisfy the troubled young man’s spiritual needs—or simply serve to distract him from his pressing theological worries.23

We can be quite sure that Luther did not travel alone. According to the Regula Augustini and the order’s tradition, the friars were not supposed to go out of the monastery alone; they traveled in pairs on long journeys such as this, one walking behind the other, chanting and praying as they proceeded. Given his relative youth, Luther may well have been joined by a more senior litis procurator, responsible for arguing the case, for whom he would then have served as a junior “travel companion” (socius itinerarius).24 We do not know this latter detail for certain, because we are not sure of the identity of Luther’s companion. Luther describes him simply as a “brother” but never mentions his name. It could have been Anton Kress, a doctor of civil and canon law who served as provost of the church of Saint Lorenz in Nuremberg, where one of the Augustinian houses critical of Staupitz was located.25 Or if the journey took place in 1510/11, his companion might have been Johann Nathin, a former professor of Luther’s at the University of Erfurt.26 Another possibility, which makes more sense if the visit is dated to 1511/12, is Jan van Mechelen, who had recently received his doctorate at the University of Wittenberg and who we know made a trip to Rome before February 1512.27

What itinerary might Luther and his unnamed companion have followed as they made their long trek to Rome?28 Whether they left from Erfurt or Wittenberg, they probably passed through Nuremberg, a “most wealthy city and very well situated” although “not well fortified,” whose impressive mechanical clock, the Männleinlaufen (installed between 1506 and 1509 on the Frauenkirche), Luther later mentions.29 From there they may well have followed one of the routes that merchants regularly took as they made their way from Nuremberg to Milan. If so, the city of Ulm would not have been far out of their way. According to one of the Tischreden from 1538, Luther comments on the size of the cathedral there. He describes it as impressively large, like Saint Peter’s in Rome and the cathedral in Cologne, but not well suited acoustically for preaching.30 From Ulm they would likely have proceeded south via Memmingen to the Bodensee.31 They would have then gone on to the Swiss town of Chur as they made their way south across the Alps, most likely by way of either the Septimer or the Splügen Pass.32 Without offering specifics, Luther speaks of the “safest path” (tutissima via) through the Swiss Alps in one of the Tischreden from 1539.33 He praises the Swiss people for their courage and candor (animosi, candidi), but it is not clear from the context of these remarks whether his judgments of them were based on firsthand experience or the reports of others.34 He also observes that when the Swiss men were not fighting, they did the milking and made cheese, activities usually considered to be women’s work.35

From Switzerland, Luther and his companion would have made their way into Italy, very likely through the strategically located town of Chiavenna and then down along the west side of Lake Como via Gravedona to Como itself.36 In each of these last two towns, there was an observant Augustinian monastery where Luther and his companion could have stayed.37 From Como they would have then proceeded to nearby Milan. In this city, Luther remembers that he was not allowed to say Mass, since he and his companion were unfamiliar with the Ambrosian rite, in which “the canon of the Mass, the elevation of the host, and the exchange of the Dominus vobiscum with the people” were omitted: “When I, Martin Luther, along with my brother, wanted to celebrate Mass there, I was prevented from doing so b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Prolegomena
• 1. “Hail, Holy Rome!”: The Pilgrim
• 2. “I Love Cicero”: The Latinist
• 3. “The Kingdom Ours Remaineth”: The Citizen
• 4. “If There Is a Hell, Rome Is Built on It”: The Catholic
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Authors and Subjects