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Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet
This definitive biography reveals the complicated inner life of the founding father of the Protestant Reformation, whose intellectual assault on Catholicism ushered in a century of upheaval that transformed Christianity and changed the course of world history.
On October 31, 1517, so the story goes, a shy monk named Martin Luther nailed a piece of paper to the door of the Castle Church in the university town of Wittenberg. The ideas contained in these Ninety-five Theses, which boldly challenged the Catholic Church, spread like wildfire. Within two months, they were known all over Germany. So powerful were Martin Luther’s broadsides against papal authority that they polarized a continent and tore apart the very foundation of Western Christendom. Luther’s ideas inspired upheavals whose consequences we live with today.
But who was the man behind the Ninety-five Theses? Lyndal Roper’s magisterial new biography goes beyond Luther’s theology to investigate the inner life of the religious reformer who has been called “the last medieval man and the first modern one.” Here is a full-blooded portrait of a revolutionary thinker who was, at his core, deeply flawed and full of contradictions. Luther was a brilliant writer whose biblical translations had a lasting impact on the German language. Yet he was also a strident fundamentalist whose scathing rhetorical attacks threatened to alienate those he might persuade. He had a colorful, even impish personality, and when he left the monastery to get married (“to spite the Devil,” he explained), he wooed and wed an ex-nun. But he had an ugly side too. When German peasants rose up against the nobility, Luther urged the aristocracy to slaughter them. He was a ferocious anti-Semite and a virulent misogynist, even as he argued for liberated human sexuality within marriage.
A distinguished historian of early modern Europe, Lyndal Roper looks deep inside the heart of this singularly complex figure. The force of Luther’s personality, she argues, had enormous historical effects—both good and ill. By bringing us closer than ever to the man himself, she opens up a new vision of the Reformation and the world it created and draws a fully three-dimensional portrait of its founder.
On October 31, 1517, so the story goes, a shy monk named Martin Luther nailed a piece of paper to the door of the Castle Church in the university town of Wittenberg. The ideas contained in these Ninety-five Theses, which boldly challenged the Catholic Church, spread like wildfire. Within two months, they were known all over Germany. So powerful were Martin Luther’s broadsides against papal authority that they polarized a continent and tore apart the very foundation of Western Christendom. Luther’s ideas inspired upheavals whose consequences we live with today.
But who was the man behind the Ninety-five Theses? Lyndal Roper’s magisterial new biography goes beyond Luther’s theology to investigate the inner life of the religious reformer who has been called “the last medieval man and the first modern one.” Here is a full-blooded portrait of a revolutionary thinker who was, at his core, deeply flawed and full of contradictions. Luther was a brilliant writer whose biblical translations had a lasting impact on the German language. Yet he was also a strident fundamentalist whose scathing rhetorical attacks threatened to alienate those he might persuade. He had a colorful, even impish personality, and when he left the monastery to get married (“to spite the Devil,” he explained), he wooed and wed an ex-nun. But he had an ugly side too. When German peasants rose up against the nobility, Luther urged the aristocracy to slaughter them. He was a ferocious anti-Semite and a virulent misogynist, even as he argued for liberated human sexuality within marriage.
A distinguished historian of early modern Europe, Lyndal Roper looks deep inside the heart of this singularly complex figure. The force of Luther’s personality, she argues, had enormous historical effects—both good and ill. By bringing us closer than ever to the man himself, she opens up a new vision of the Reformation and the world it created and draws a fully three-dimensional portrait of its founder.
576 pages, Hardcover
First published June 16, 2016
About the author
Lyndal Roper
32 books42 followersLyndal Roper, FRHistS, FBA, is an Australian historian and academic. She was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford in 2011. She is a fellow of Oriel College, an honorary fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and the author of a variety of groundbreaking works on witchcraft.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 144 reviews
February 16, 2018
A nonfiction book that covers the life of Martin Luther and the actually nuance behind the reformation as well as the splintering of the movement with time that lead to the many sects of Christianity we see today. The book also shows that many of the things we see in the evangelic movement today has actually been around since Luther's time, specifically the doomsday rhetoric in particular.
This one took a look time to read because I read it on my commute and whenever I had a time, and the thing is I don't have the much knowledge about the 1500s or the religious thinkers of that time so I just kept forgetting who was who. I think if I had just read it in one sitting it wouldn't have been so bad but I kept forgetting the names in between reading the book and so it just took a while to get through it. The book is really well written and detailed but again as someone not familiar with this point in time or Germany's geography I had a little trouble keeping up with the politics taking place through out the book.
What I did enjoy about this book was reading about Luther's writing and thoughts, and I wish it had been more focused on that than the historical context. Like the fact that he did seem to have this idea that body and mind aren't separate or that his experience of being was more integrated than that of others. My favorite part is probably reading how happily he talked about his son learning to squat and defecate everywhere. Knowing that Luther was at times crude or tended to be stubborn and double down on his on views are things I found much more interesting.
It's just a personal preference but when I pickup biographies I'm more interested in the ideas and changes that the person left behind and their personality. Things like Luther calling reason the whore is hilarious and I wish it was more of that than details about other figures who I had trouble keeping track of, even though I guess they're relevant because of their relationship to Luther and the reformation. It just made the book a little long to go into details that way and made it hard for me as a lay person to keep track of the many people popping in and out through out Luther's life.
This one took a look time to read because I read it on my commute and whenever I had a time, and the thing is I don't have the much knowledge about the 1500s or the religious thinkers of that time so I just kept forgetting who was who. I think if I had just read it in one sitting it wouldn't have been so bad but I kept forgetting the names in between reading the book and so it just took a while to get through it. The book is really well written and detailed but again as someone not familiar with this point in time or Germany's geography I had a little trouble keeping up with the politics taking place through out the book.
What I did enjoy about this book was reading about Luther's writing and thoughts, and I wish it had been more focused on that than the historical context. Like the fact that he did seem to have this idea that body and mind aren't separate or that his experience of being was more integrated than that of others. My favorite part is probably reading how happily he talked about his son learning to squat and defecate everywhere. Knowing that Luther was at times crude or tended to be stubborn and double down on his on views are things I found much more interesting.
It's just a personal preference but when I pickup biographies I'm more interested in the ideas and changes that the person left behind and their personality. Things like Luther calling reason the whore is hilarious and I wish it was more of that than details about other figures who I had trouble keeping track of, even though I guess they're relevant because of their relationship to Luther and the reformation. It just made the book a little long to go into details that way and made it hard for me as a lay person to keep track of the many people popping in and out through out Luther's life.
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October 22, 2020I don't know. In the beginning was the word. And for the first 100 pages or so I thought the words fantastic, after that it went down hill. Is it the word or is it me? Does the book drown under the scope of the subject or does my thinking drown out the book? Is that my weariness rather than an objective criticism. I think on the whole this is a very ok biography of Martin Luther, with some good points but not enough of them to make a very good biography overall rather like a pain au chocolate that doesn't have much chocolate. Probably too detailed for a new comer to the subject, equally not really thorough enough if you are a bit familiar with Reformation history. This is a biography about a theologian that doesn't go into depth about theology, about a would be church reformer who eventually founded a new church which passes over very lightly what a profound development that must have been for Luther and his supporters. It is a history written by a woman in which women are entirely silent, except for Argula von Grumbach for two paragraphs, a couple of pages before the end of the text. Even closer to the end, Roper tells us that Luther's translation of the Bible into German was perhaps his "most lasting achievement" (p.421), so profound and important an achievement that she barely mentions it in the main course of her book. Perhaps she was spoilt for choice, or just couldn't decide what the focus of her book would be.
Above all it seems to me this is Martin Luther as seen through the story of his relationships with other men, friends, enemies, and father figures (sometimes all in the same person).
Towards the end of the book (again) Roper contrasts Luther with Albrecht Dürer, the parochial priest versus the world-open painter, a consistent and well handled theme is that Luther was (shockingly) a product of his environment. Roper argues that the key point was that the mining communities owned by the squabbling Counts of Mansfeld, three of them, sharing an odd triple castle, from whom independent mining contractors, like Luther's father, Hans Luder, held short term leases, was a peculiar place many of his attitudes Roper says, on a gendered division of labour, towards secular authority, against Capitalism and high finance, come from that highly specific environment, one which was atypical for the Germany of his age. Implicitly Luther's reformation was never going to be democratic, conciliary and egalitarian because that wasn't the world he grew up in, instead it was a macho, competitive environment in which God gave you ores in your lease, or the Devil fooled you into paying to work a dud patch. This was very different to the communal political environment which shaped the fundamental outlooks of Martin Bucer and Zwingli. The latter, and later Calvin, were leading reformations, Roper argues, which were focused on the community rather than on the individual.
Another important pattern established by his father and repeated in Luther's monastic experience was of the father figure planning the son's future and placing him in roles useful to the father, with breaches and breakdown experienced by both sides as intense and unforgivable experiences . In time Luther repeated this pattern with his friends and supporters, earmarking them for certain roles and going through emotional turmoil when the arrangements went sour.
Along related lines, Luther was a highly successful and innovative polemicist, but this was something that made coalition building and reconciliation almost impossible, indeed when once or twice Luther was reconciled with those he disagreed with it was only by the other party agreeing they had been completely wrong.
One senses that in place of the authority of the Church and it's tradition Luther placed the authority of his own opinion, he placed scripture first, although he read scripture non-literally, he believed it's meaning was self-evident and he couldn't deal with divergent readings. I wondered if Roper much liked Luther, and since she apparently spent ten years working on this book, it wouldn't be surprising if she came to hate him, yet another strength I felt was her take on Luther's physicality.
Perhaps for her the core of Luther's theology was that the body was God's creation, sexuality as much as the enjoyment of food and drink was part of God's intention, man of course was inherently sinful but this meant that everything human was equally sinful, for Luther the struggle throughout his life and one which affected him painfully with melancholy and anxiety were issues of faith - could he believe in the grace that God extended to man - particularly when his own experience with father figures was combative and unforgiving. Roper shows a sunny side of Luther; enjoying married life, the progress his children made in their toilet training, beer, games and friendship. It's moderately interesting that the views of Church father St Augustine had been strictly orthodox back in the day but by the sixteenth century inspired both Luther and Calvin and were to split the church.
There's a certain amount of psychologising which isn't to everybody's taste, but is a temptation hard to avoid when Luther's complete works run to 120 printed volumes and he returns to key experiences and significant dreams, he certainly found his own inner life compelling - his father confessor in the monastery telling Luther that he didn't understand him as Luther attempted to explain his spiritual angst. I feel though that it takes an axe to church history (and maybe that is no bad thing) and I wondered how far the author's experience of her own father's time as a presbyterian minister in Australia shaped her approach. If the history of religion is rich and varied because human psychology is rich varied, well so be it, but again that won't be an attitude that is to everybody's taste.
Less appealing, aside from the bullying, was the anti-semetism, here largely and curiously dumped in to a several page section towards the close of the book - the big question in every biography I guess is how far does a person develop and change - Roper here implies that Luther was absolutely the same all the way through, she doesn't contextualise his anti-semetism, although she cites a letter of his in which he expresses his fear of catching diseases from the breath of Jews which strikes me as unusual, peculiarly anxious, it's all a bit Martin Luther and the halitosos of Doom.
That leads on to the issue of Luther's influence which is curiously absent from Roper's book, in his early life he is a media superstar sparking Reformations across Germany, he has, Roper shows, a close relationship with Georg Spalatin, a key adviser to Friedrich the Wise. Friedrich doesn't become a Lutheran though he protects Luther and tolerates his activities and those of his supporters, even when they go against his interests - causing disorder or undermining the income he made from allowing access to his extensive relic collection. Once Friedrich dies there is no mention of any comparable bond, but Roper occasional asserts Luther's influence without exploring it . At the same time Luther's rigid support for secular authority is an important part of his outlook, while we can see that he literally owed his life to Friedrich's protection, this is something implicit in the text - as the implications of the expectation of imminent martyrdom on the reformer's thinking and behaviour.
Cranach the Elder gets his due - a fair amount of space given over to his woodcuts and his importance in shaping Luther's image and the iconography of the Lutheran church, in the beginning was the word, but in the end is the image.
Above all it seems to me this is Martin Luther as seen through the story of his relationships with other men, friends, enemies, and father figures (sometimes all in the same person).
Towards the end of the book (again) Roper contrasts Luther with Albrecht Dürer, the parochial priest versus the world-open painter, a consistent and well handled theme is that Luther was (shockingly) a product of his environment. Roper argues that the key point was that the mining communities owned by the squabbling Counts of Mansfeld, three of them, sharing an odd triple castle, from whom independent mining contractors, like Luther's father, Hans Luder, held short term leases, was a peculiar place many of his attitudes Roper says, on a gendered division of labour, towards secular authority, against Capitalism and high finance, come from that highly specific environment, one which was atypical for the Germany of his age. Implicitly Luther's reformation was never going to be democratic, conciliary and egalitarian because that wasn't the world he grew up in, instead it was a macho, competitive environment in which God gave you ores in your lease, or the Devil fooled you into paying to work a dud patch. This was very different to the communal political environment which shaped the fundamental outlooks of Martin Bucer and Zwingli. The latter, and later Calvin, were leading reformations, Roper argues, which were focused on the community rather than on the individual.
Another important pattern established by his father and repeated in Luther's monastic experience was of the father figure planning the son's future and placing him in roles useful to the father, with breaches and breakdown experienced by both sides as intense and unforgivable experiences . In time Luther repeated this pattern with his friends and supporters, earmarking them for certain roles and going through emotional turmoil when the arrangements went sour.
Along related lines, Luther was a highly successful and innovative polemicist, but this was something that made coalition building and reconciliation almost impossible, indeed when once or twice Luther was reconciled with those he disagreed with it was only by the other party agreeing they had been completely wrong.
One senses that in place of the authority of the Church and it's tradition Luther placed the authority of his own opinion, he placed scripture first, although he read scripture non-literally, he believed it's meaning was self-evident and he couldn't deal with divergent readings. I wondered if Roper much liked Luther, and since she apparently spent ten years working on this book, it wouldn't be surprising if she came to hate him, yet another strength I felt was her take on Luther's physicality.
Perhaps for her the core of Luther's theology was that the body was God's creation, sexuality as much as the enjoyment of food and drink was part of God's intention, man of course was inherently sinful but this meant that everything human was equally sinful, for Luther the struggle throughout his life and one which affected him painfully with melancholy and anxiety were issues of faith - could he believe in the grace that God extended to man - particularly when his own experience with father figures was combative and unforgiving. Roper shows a sunny side of Luther; enjoying married life, the progress his children made in their toilet training, beer, games and friendship. It's moderately interesting that the views of Church father St Augustine had been strictly orthodox back in the day but by the sixteenth century inspired both Luther and Calvin and were to split the church.
There's a certain amount of psychologising which isn't to everybody's taste, but is a temptation hard to avoid when Luther's complete works run to 120 printed volumes and he returns to key experiences and significant dreams, he certainly found his own inner life compelling - his father confessor in the monastery telling Luther that he didn't understand him as Luther attempted to explain his spiritual angst. I feel though that it takes an axe to church history (and maybe that is no bad thing) and I wondered how far the author's experience of her own father's time as a presbyterian minister in Australia shaped her approach. If the history of religion is rich and varied because human psychology is rich varied, well so be it, but again that won't be an attitude that is to everybody's taste.
Less appealing, aside from the bullying, was the anti-semetism, here largely and curiously dumped in to a several page section towards the close of the book - the big question in every biography I guess is how far does a person develop and change - Roper here implies that Luther was absolutely the same all the way through, she doesn't contextualise his anti-semetism, although she cites a letter of his in which he expresses his fear of catching diseases from the breath of Jews which strikes me as unusual, peculiarly anxious, it's all a bit Martin Luther and the halitosos of Doom.
That leads on to the issue of Luther's influence which is curiously absent from Roper's book, in his early life he is a media superstar sparking Reformations across Germany, he has, Roper shows, a close relationship with Georg Spalatin, a key adviser to Friedrich the Wise. Friedrich doesn't become a Lutheran though he protects Luther and tolerates his activities and those of his supporters, even when they go against his interests - causing disorder or undermining the income he made from allowing access to his extensive relic collection. Once Friedrich dies there is no mention of any comparable bond, but Roper occasional asserts Luther's influence without exploring it . At the same time Luther's rigid support for secular authority is an important part of his outlook, while we can see that he literally owed his life to Friedrich's protection, this is something implicit in the text - as the implications of the expectation of imminent martyrdom on the reformer's thinking and behaviour.
Cranach the Elder gets his due - a fair amount of space given over to his woodcuts and his importance in shaping Luther's image and the iconography of the Lutheran church, in the beginning was the word, but in the end is the image.
January 28, 2023
Reads like a well-researched novel
📕 Here is a 5 star bio of Martin Luther which thoroughly delves into his life and times. We see his heroic side and we see his rough and ready and intransigent side. The book moves along like a deep, smooth, steadily-flowing stream.
📕It’s the best work I’ve read on Luther, the most honest, and the most complete. Those who crave glittering hagiography need to look elsewhere. Here is an honest portrayal of the whole man, warts and all, good will and all, human and spiritual struggles and all. He does not come out shining like a saint.
📕It reads like a novel and you can make up your own mind about him as you move swiftly and easily along.
🌎 He changed our world. For better or worse.
📕 Here is a 5 star bio of Martin Luther which thoroughly delves into his life and times. We see his heroic side and we see his rough and ready and intransigent side. The book moves along like a deep, smooth, steadily-flowing stream.
📕It’s the best work I’ve read on Luther, the most honest, and the most complete. Those who crave glittering hagiography need to look elsewhere. Here is an honest portrayal of the whole man, warts and all, good will and all, human and spiritual struggles and all. He does not come out shining like a saint.
📕It reads like a novel and you can make up your own mind about him as you move swiftly and easily along.
🌎 He changed our world. For better or worse.
June 16, 2020
Revolutions need hard men, leaders who are are focused, uncompromising, and messianic. They do not have to be right in their pronouncements, just forceful enough to pull their followers along and keep them in line. They must be ruthless with dissenters and permit no questioning of their authority. If you are going to create a new world you need to stand the old one on its head.
Luther was such a man. The audacity of his rebellion was more than foolhardy, it was suicidal, and he fully expected to end up a martyr to his beliefs, as Jan Hus had the previous century. To change the world you need absolute conviction and a willingness to follow your beliefs wherever they lead. It helps if the secular powers who can protect you see an opportunity to profit handsomely from the disruption you cause. Even better if your opponent is corrupt, incompetent, and widely reviled. Everything aligned for Luther, but it was the force of his character that lit the fires of revolution and kept them burning for the rest of his life and beyond.
He was the kind of man that a Freudian psychoanalyst could make his reputation off of. He seems to have had serious father issues, which Lyndal Roper, author of this book, explores in depth, and yet his own dealings with his followers echoed his father’s overbearing nature and insistence on always being right. Luther suffered from bouts of crippling depression, when he was certain he was so unworthy of salvation that he was doomed to be damned. He also had a weird scatological obsession that to a modern reader seems alternately comical and pathetic.
Most of all, he was absolutely, positively convinced that he was right. About everything, even the things that could not be proved at all and were just opinions. Longtime faithful disciples were angrily cast out and condemned simply for raising questions about his interpretations of certain verses of Scripture. He even weakened his own cause by refusing to cooperate with other proto-Protestants in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England, because while they believed most of what he believed, they did not believe all of it, and so were unworthy of him.
The Roman Catholic church was a ripe target for contempt. It had fallen a long way from its humble roots as a friend of the poor and dispossessed. In his book The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, Bertrand Russell succinctly summed up how it all went wrong:
The Church was by then a secular power, with only a veneer of religiosity to keep the believers in line and the tithes flowing. The princes of the Church lived sumptuously in palaces richly furnished with art, servants, and whores. The last thing they wanted was for some pissant monk from Germany to start injecting religion into their comfortable lives. They had no intention of doing any of the things they had taken consecrated vows to do.
The proximate cause of Luther’s revolt was the selling of Indulgences, a particularly cynical money grubbing scheme even by the low standards of the Church. Taking advantage of people’s simple piety, Indulgences offered a way to redeem sins – even those not yet committed – in exchange for cash. Luther, justifiably outraged, condemned them in the 95 Theses he nailed, or maybe glued, or perhaps didn’t post on the door of the church at Wittenberg at all, because the first mention of this dramatic event comes decades after it allegedly happened, and has an air of mythologizing about it. Nevertheless, they were widely reprinted and read, and reached a large audience who were ready to be convinced.
In the beginning Luther seemed to have had the naive belief that simply being right was sufficient, that once he pointed out the theological errors of indulgences the Church would recognize the truth and humbly mend its ways. How adorable. That was never going to happen, because by then the Papacy was committed to money and power, not the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Luther showed that the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Church was non-biblical, and that many of the practices that were approved or winked at were later secular accretions to the words of the Galilean. He repeatedly offered to debate his views but was always turned down, because the Church knew that its official interpretations were self-serving at best and often directly contrary to Scripture, and that if they tried to defend them their venality would be revealed for all to see. If Luther could not be reasoned with or threatened sufficiently to repent his views and return to the bosom of the Church, he would have to be silenced. Excommunication was inevitable, but by the time it appeared Luther had moved so far from orthodox Catholicism that he celebrated it and mocked the Pope as the Whore of Babylon.
As with Giordano Bruno and so many other reformers he would have been tortured and burned at the stake if the Church got its hands on him, but this is where his powerful protectors stepped in. Some of them may have been sincere in their adoption of Luther’s views, based on fasting, prayer, and reflection, but for the most part these were worldly men. Rejecting the Catholic church meant they could confiscate those vast estates, greatly increasing their wealth and power. Lutheranism had found its footing, and centuries of violence and bloodshed would follow, all in the name of the Prince of Peace. Jesus wept.
The other factor that helped Luther succeed was the printing press, which spread rapidly after its invention around 1440. He was a prolific author, constantly turning out pamphlets explaining his views or scourging those of the Church of Rome, and he wrote in German to reach a wide audience. His style was forceful and straightforward, and he often used sarcasm and jokes, convincing a great number of thoughtful readers. The Catholic church had poisoned the faith of many believers, who were now willing to take up a new creed that seemed to return Christianity to its roots in piety and good works.
And finally, Luther wrote beautiful music. He made it dramatic and participatory, allowing the entire congregation to sing their praises. The thundering solemnity of Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott is deeply moving even today, and many of his other hymns are still widely sung. Even the Vatican grudgingly acknowledged that his music was one of the main things that helped to convert the largely illiterate peasantry.
The decades that followed his death saw Protestantism rolled back in many areas through military force, and the Church, finally realizing the depths of its crapulence, made a show of piety with the Counter-Reformation, reclaiming more of its lost sheep. But Protestantism as an idea had taken hold, the belief that each of us must read and internalize Scripture for ourselves, and combine belief with charity and good works. And now, today, the Catholic church is once again viewed as contemptuously as it was in Luther’s time, seen by some as a comic institution, a gay chorus line of men in dresses and funny hats, and as a monstrous perversion by many others, an edifice more concerned with protecting its priests and itself than the children it defiled.
Luther was the man of the hour, bringing together the right vision with the right allies at the right time. He was intelligent and forceful, and could be charming, but his own personal demons were always threatening to overwhelm him. In particular, his anti-Semitic writings are vile, grotesque by any standards of decency and humanity. He did not just want the Jews expelled from Christendom, he wanted them exterminated, every man, woman, and child, and his demented ranting made him sound like a madman. There is no love of God nor man in these writings; in them he becomes the devil he sought to exorcise.
There are several good biographies of Luther, and this one is well researched and well written. It is a good introduction for anyone who wants to know about a man who served as a fulcrum to change the world.
Luther was such a man. The audacity of his rebellion was more than foolhardy, it was suicidal, and he fully expected to end up a martyr to his beliefs, as Jan Hus had the previous century. To change the world you need absolute conviction and a willingness to follow your beliefs wherever they lead. It helps if the secular powers who can protect you see an opportunity to profit handsomely from the disruption you cause. Even better if your opponent is corrupt, incompetent, and widely reviled. Everything aligned for Luther, but it was the force of his character that lit the fires of revolution and kept them burning for the rest of his life and beyond.
He was the kind of man that a Freudian psychoanalyst could make his reputation off of. He seems to have had serious father issues, which Lyndal Roper, author of this book, explores in depth, and yet his own dealings with his followers echoed his father’s overbearing nature and insistence on always being right. Luther suffered from bouts of crippling depression, when he was certain he was so unworthy of salvation that he was doomed to be damned. He also had a weird scatological obsession that to a modern reader seems alternately comical and pathetic.
Most of all, he was absolutely, positively convinced that he was right. About everything, even the things that could not be proved at all and were just opinions. Longtime faithful disciples were angrily cast out and condemned simply for raising questions about his interpretations of certain verses of Scripture. He even weakened his own cause by refusing to cooperate with other proto-Protestants in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England, because while they believed most of what he believed, they did not believe all of it, and so were unworthy of him.
The Roman Catholic church was a ripe target for contempt. It had fallen a long way from its humble roots as a friend of the poor and dispossessed. In his book The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, Bertrand Russell succinctly summed up how it all went wrong:
The principles of the Sermon on the Mount are admirable, but their effect upon average human nature was very different from what was intended. Those who followed Christ did not learn to love their enemies or to turn the other cheek. They learned instead to use the Inquisition and the stake, to subject the human intellect to the yoke of an ignorant and intolerant priesthood, to degrade art and extinguish science for a thousand years. These were the inevitable results, not of the teaching, but of fanatical belief in the teaching.
The Church was by then a secular power, with only a veneer of religiosity to keep the believers in line and the tithes flowing. The princes of the Church lived sumptuously in palaces richly furnished with art, servants, and whores. The last thing they wanted was for some pissant monk from Germany to start injecting religion into their comfortable lives. They had no intention of doing any of the things they had taken consecrated vows to do.
The proximate cause of Luther’s revolt was the selling of Indulgences, a particularly cynical money grubbing scheme even by the low standards of the Church. Taking advantage of people’s simple piety, Indulgences offered a way to redeem sins – even those not yet committed – in exchange for cash. Luther, justifiably outraged, condemned them in the 95 Theses he nailed, or maybe glued, or perhaps didn’t post on the door of the church at Wittenberg at all, because the first mention of this dramatic event comes decades after it allegedly happened, and has an air of mythologizing about it. Nevertheless, they were widely reprinted and read, and reached a large audience who were ready to be convinced.
In the beginning Luther seemed to have had the naive belief that simply being right was sufficient, that once he pointed out the theological errors of indulgences the Church would recognize the truth and humbly mend its ways. How adorable. That was never going to happen, because by then the Papacy was committed to money and power, not the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Luther showed that the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Church was non-biblical, and that many of the practices that were approved or winked at were later secular accretions to the words of the Galilean. He repeatedly offered to debate his views but was always turned down, because the Church knew that its official interpretations were self-serving at best and often directly contrary to Scripture, and that if they tried to defend them their venality would be revealed for all to see. If Luther could not be reasoned with or threatened sufficiently to repent his views and return to the bosom of the Church, he would have to be silenced. Excommunication was inevitable, but by the time it appeared Luther had moved so far from orthodox Catholicism that he celebrated it and mocked the Pope as the Whore of Babylon.
As with Giordano Bruno and so many other reformers he would have been tortured and burned at the stake if the Church got its hands on him, but this is where his powerful protectors stepped in. Some of them may have been sincere in their adoption of Luther’s views, based on fasting, prayer, and reflection, but for the most part these were worldly men. Rejecting the Catholic church meant they could confiscate those vast estates, greatly increasing their wealth and power. Lutheranism had found its footing, and centuries of violence and bloodshed would follow, all in the name of the Prince of Peace. Jesus wept.
The other factor that helped Luther succeed was the printing press, which spread rapidly after its invention around 1440. He was a prolific author, constantly turning out pamphlets explaining his views or scourging those of the Church of Rome, and he wrote in German to reach a wide audience. His style was forceful and straightforward, and he often used sarcasm and jokes, convincing a great number of thoughtful readers. The Catholic church had poisoned the faith of many believers, who were now willing to take up a new creed that seemed to return Christianity to its roots in piety and good works.
And finally, Luther wrote beautiful music. He made it dramatic and participatory, allowing the entire congregation to sing their praises. The thundering solemnity of Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott is deeply moving even today, and many of his other hymns are still widely sung. Even the Vatican grudgingly acknowledged that his music was one of the main things that helped to convert the largely illiterate peasantry.
The decades that followed his death saw Protestantism rolled back in many areas through military force, and the Church, finally realizing the depths of its crapulence, made a show of piety with the Counter-Reformation, reclaiming more of its lost sheep. But Protestantism as an idea had taken hold, the belief that each of us must read and internalize Scripture for ourselves, and combine belief with charity and good works. And now, today, the Catholic church is once again viewed as contemptuously as it was in Luther’s time, seen by some as a comic institution, a gay chorus line of men in dresses and funny hats, and as a monstrous perversion by many others, an edifice more concerned with protecting its priests and itself than the children it defiled.
Luther was the man of the hour, bringing together the right vision with the right allies at the right time. He was intelligent and forceful, and could be charming, but his own personal demons were always threatening to overwhelm him. In particular, his anti-Semitic writings are vile, grotesque by any standards of decency and humanity. He did not just want the Jews expelled from Christendom, he wanted them exterminated, every man, woman, and child, and his demented ranting made him sound like a madman. There is no love of God nor man in these writings; in them he becomes the devil he sought to exorcise.
There are several good biographies of Luther, and this one is well researched and well written. It is a good introduction for anyone who wants to know about a man who served as a fulcrum to change the world.
May 27, 2017
Such a great biography (and IMO, the best cover for a book on Luther). This biography differed by really trying to focus on Luther's internal life, his emotions, and his thinking. While the book got weighed down here and there, I learned A LOT and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Due to this being Reformation 500, I recommend everyone read a book on Luther (among other reformers). I recommend this one. It's not the gold-standard. But it does have an audiobook version to it. 😀
I also chose this one for two other reasons.
1. It was written by a woman, maybe the only one of its kind. This lined up with one of my goals this year and it also brought a unique perspective to this take on Luther.
2. Carl Trueman highly reco'd it among other new bios on Luther. I'll leave you with his comments:
"Of these two, Roper’s perhaps has the edge. A feminist, she is not naturally sympathetic to Luther but has produced a remarkably nuanced and insightful work. What she does is present a Luther unaccommodated to modern sensibilities by pressing particularly on the issue of his eucharistic thought, a point which divides him decisively from strands of modern Protestantism which try to claim him as forebear. This is both theologically and methodologically important. Theologically, it presents the real Luther, the Luther who abominated Zwingli for his memorialism. Methodologically, it requires that the modern reader face Luther as he really was and not make him the comfortable companion of contemporary American evangelicalism – a move that can be made far too simply when his gospel of justification is abstracted from the doctrinal matrix within which it must be understood."
Due to this being Reformation 500, I recommend everyone read a book on Luther (among other reformers). I recommend this one. It's not the gold-standard. But it does have an audiobook version to it. 😀
I also chose this one for two other reasons.
1. It was written by a woman, maybe the only one of its kind. This lined up with one of my goals this year and it also brought a unique perspective to this take on Luther.
2. Carl Trueman highly reco'd it among other new bios on Luther. I'll leave you with his comments:
"Of these two, Roper’s perhaps has the edge. A feminist, she is not naturally sympathetic to Luther but has produced a remarkably nuanced and insightful work. What she does is present a Luther unaccommodated to modern sensibilities by pressing particularly on the issue of his eucharistic thought, a point which divides him decisively from strands of modern Protestantism which try to claim him as forebear. This is both theologically and methodologically important. Theologically, it presents the real Luther, the Luther who abominated Zwingli for his memorialism. Methodologically, it requires that the modern reader face Luther as he really was and not make him the comfortable companion of contemporary American evangelicalism – a move that can be made far too simply when his gospel of justification is abstracted from the doctrinal matrix within which it must be understood."
October 31, 2017
It's a complete coincidence that I finished this on Reformation Day, as I'm neither Lutheran nor a huge Luther fan girl (and rather less a fan after reading this), but there it is. Luther was an authoritarian and a bully, and he could be a spiteful, crude, vicious hypocrite, spewing hate at Catholics, Jews, and fellow Evangelicals who failed to accept his doctrines as “gospel,” but there's no denying the lasting significance of the religious reform movement that he so powerfully and effectively put in motion. And it seems plausible that putting reform in motion required a passionate, stubborn, even a pig-headed man.
Lyndal Roper's long research has produced a detailed, nuanced study of her complex and often contradictory subject. While I found his misogyny, social conservatism, and antisemitism repugnant, his religious insights and convictions, hard won and deeply considered, offered an emphasis that was sorely needed at the time. Roper only brushes on one of Luther's contributions which I value very highly indeed – his emphasis on hymns and congregational singing – but she spends more time on another that I think he “nails” – his insistence (in contrast and in conflict with Zwingli's followers) on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
It seemed to me that Roper did a fine job of balancing her presentation, providing a rich but not overwhelming level of detail about Luther's family and cultural background, personal history, political context, and religious controversies, and not going overboard with ideas about his “psychological” motivations. I finished this with a far better appreciation of Luther's contributions to the Reformation, both positive and negative, and to the doctrines of Anglicanism, my branch of the church, than I began with, and enjoyed Roper's ability to create an engaging study of her prickly and combative subject.
Lyndal Roper's long research has produced a detailed, nuanced study of her complex and often contradictory subject. While I found his misogyny, social conservatism, and antisemitism repugnant, his religious insights and convictions, hard won and deeply considered, offered an emphasis that was sorely needed at the time. Roper only brushes on one of Luther's contributions which I value very highly indeed – his emphasis on hymns and congregational singing – but she spends more time on another that I think he “nails” – his insistence (in contrast and in conflict with Zwingli's followers) on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
It seemed to me that Roper did a fine job of balancing her presentation, providing a rich but not overwhelming level of detail about Luther's family and cultural background, personal history, political context, and religious controversies, and not going overboard with ideas about his “psychological” motivations. I finished this with a far better appreciation of Luther's contributions to the Reformation, both positive and negative, and to the doctrines of Anglicanism, my branch of the church, than I began with, and enjoyed Roper's ability to create an engaging study of her prickly and combative subject.
August 10, 2017
This biography was very interesting and remarkably detailed. Although it was somewhat long, it kept me turning pages until the very end. This book was more than a decade in the making, and that shows in the care taken with the in-depth exploration of Luther's life. This well-illustrated biography delves into Luther's childhood, his formative years, and different stages of his life's work. It focuses on Luther himself, a complex individual, and analyzes him in the context of 16th-century Germany, with its particular social customs, politics, and culture. This book shows Luther's humanity, even his faults, and it does not present a flawless image of perfection.
However, in trying to demonstrate Luther's flaws as well as his strengths, I think that Roper sacrificed objectivity. For example, when Luther was isolated from both his family and the Reformation movement, he received word that his father had died. Alone, grieving, he sent his friend Melanchthon a somewhat rude and impatient letter, which is explored in depth in this book. However, the close friendship they shared is downplayed, and even naming him godfather to his kids is mentioned only in the notes in the back of the book, after the main text is finished. Luther often reacted with strong emotion, and even over-reacted, but while I have read in other books that Luther himself admitted that "indiscretion" was "my greatest fault," neither that quote nor Luther's own self-awareness comes through in this biography. Instead, we are left with a portrait of a man who is uncontrolled, paranoid, violent . . . and completely clueless as to why this is a problem. But this image of Luther isn't borne out by history. He had his moments of extremism, to be sure, but taking a few extremes out of their larger context and avoiding the rest takes a powerful reformer and turns him into an unstable bumbler.
Last point, I promise! In this Luther biography, Roper criticizes the Lutheran composer J. S. Bach: "In The St. Matthew Passion the angular melodic line spares the listener nothing of the viciousness of the Jews' shouts of "Lass ihn kreuzigen" ("Let him be crucified"), and follows this with heartfelt individual meditations on Christ's suffering; the implicit anti-Semitism of the glorious music can be hard to take" (Roper, p. 403). Excuse me? Bach is anti-Semitic because he used strident music to portray some specific angry individuals from history? This is the same St. Matthew Passion that (1) shows that Romans, not Jews, killed Jesus (2) shows that Jesus and all his disciples WERE Jews (3) that uses beautiful instrumentation and choir to show the suffering of Jesus (4) showed the human conflict in Peter as he denied him, and (5) used a variety of melodic lines, vocal recitatives, choral harmony, and instrumentation to depict all sorts of emotions from all sorts of people. Arguably the strongest angriest music from the entire production is directed not at the Jewish high priests, but at Judas Iscariot; this passage features an adult choir, a children's choir, rapid angry orchestration, and an echoy grand pause. The words are equally chilling: "Are lightning and thunder vanished in clouds? Open up the fiery bottomless pit, oh hell! Smash, ruin, swallow up, break to pieces with sudden fury this false betrayer, this murderous blood." And Roper ignores all this human drama to say a few individuals in a different section prove Bach is prejudiced? Why is a Luther biography even so concerned with music of the Baroque period, 200 years later? One line in one song that directly quotes another source anyway doesn't prove a thing about Bach. But the fact that Roper would try to build this up into an argument makes me question her reliability as an objective witness to history.
It's really too bad because there is so much in this book that is valid, and interesting, and important to know, for both positive and negative. As you read it, be aware of what's in it, but also be aware of what is left out.
However, in trying to demonstrate Luther's flaws as well as his strengths, I think that Roper sacrificed objectivity. For example, when Luther was isolated from both his family and the Reformation movement, he received word that his father had died. Alone, grieving, he sent his friend Melanchthon a somewhat rude and impatient letter, which is explored in depth in this book. However, the close friendship they shared is downplayed, and even naming him godfather to his kids is mentioned only in the notes in the back of the book, after the main text is finished. Luther often reacted with strong emotion, and even over-reacted, but while I have read in other books that Luther himself admitted that "indiscretion" was "my greatest fault," neither that quote nor Luther's own self-awareness comes through in this biography. Instead, we are left with a portrait of a man who is uncontrolled, paranoid, violent . . . and completely clueless as to why this is a problem. But this image of Luther isn't borne out by history. He had his moments of extremism, to be sure, but taking a few extremes out of their larger context and avoiding the rest takes a powerful reformer and turns him into an unstable bumbler.
Last point, I promise! In this Luther biography, Roper criticizes the Lutheran composer J. S. Bach: "In The St. Matthew Passion the angular melodic line spares the listener nothing of the viciousness of the Jews' shouts of "Lass ihn kreuzigen" ("Let him be crucified"), and follows this with heartfelt individual meditations on Christ's suffering; the implicit anti-Semitism of the glorious music can be hard to take" (Roper, p. 403). Excuse me? Bach is anti-Semitic because he used strident music to portray some specific angry individuals from history? This is the same St. Matthew Passion that (1) shows that Romans, not Jews, killed Jesus (2) shows that Jesus and all his disciples WERE Jews (3) that uses beautiful instrumentation and choir to show the suffering of Jesus (4) showed the human conflict in Peter as he denied him, and (5) used a variety of melodic lines, vocal recitatives, choral harmony, and instrumentation to depict all sorts of emotions from all sorts of people. Arguably the strongest angriest music from the entire production is directed not at the Jewish high priests, but at Judas Iscariot; this passage features an adult choir, a children's choir, rapid angry orchestration, and an echoy grand pause. The words are equally chilling: "Are lightning and thunder vanished in clouds? Open up the fiery bottomless pit, oh hell! Smash, ruin, swallow up, break to pieces with sudden fury this false betrayer, this murderous blood." And Roper ignores all this human drama to say a few individuals in a different section prove Bach is prejudiced? Why is a Luther biography even so concerned with music of the Baroque period, 200 years later? One line in one song that directly quotes another source anyway doesn't prove a thing about Bach. But the fact that Roper would try to build this up into an argument makes me question her reliability as an objective witness to history.
It's really too bad because there is so much in this book that is valid, and interesting, and important to know, for both positive and negative. As you read it, be aware of what's in it, but also be aware of what is left out.
May 8, 2017
Anniversaries attract histories and biographies like, uh, cold pizzas attract cockroaches, hm, note to self, practice generating more appealing similes.
Anyway, Luther might have glued (or nailed, which seems more dramatic somehow) his Theses to the church door in October 1517, so I guess we can anticipate self-styled opinion makers speculating in a few short months on what it all means, even if they (the opinion makers) haven't attended a house of worship in earnest since before they got their second teeth.
I certainly don't know what it all means, which is why I took this opportunity to get to know more about Luther. But this is not a book for people who have achieved adulthood mostly in ignorance of the life of Luther, as I have. I don't feel tremendously at fault: if the Catholic weekend-school teachers had their way, our classes would have been complete uncontaminated by ideas of any type, and of course US public schools gave religion a great big letting-alone, too, because they already had their hands full with all the other stuff we were supposed to learn.
In any event, this book requires a lot of background knowledge that I didn't have. Maybe if I had been an American of German Lutheran descent, I would have had more of the knowledge necessary to enjoy this book. As it was, I scratched my head some over the crazy quilt of princes, electors, landgraves, margraves, bishops, and other aristos that somehow miraculously coalesced into modern-day Germany. Furthermore, even though the author struggled heroically to explain them all, I had trouble keeping the competing philosophies that did battle in this period, which include:
Fuggers (Kindle location 638), nominalists (l. 903), Ockhamists (l. 913), followers of Duns Scotus (l. 1594), antinomians (l. 2380), Aristotelians and anti-Aristotelians (l. 2830), scholastists (l. 3701), Thomists (l. 3743), humanists (l. 3746), followers of the Free Spirit heresy (l. 4212), Anabaptists (l. 4425), sacramentarians (l. 4840), irenicists (l. 5747), practitioners of the Nestorian heresy (l. 5948), conciliarism (l. 6093), Sabbatarians (l. 6530), and Pietists (l. 6848)
If you can explain to yourself what most of these are, you are ready for this book. As for me, O.K., I know Ockham's Razor, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas are, and can take an educated guess what the important points of contention were for Anabaptists and Sabbatarians, but sometimes the exact nature of the squabbles among these groups were difficult to follow.
Again, this is not the author's fault – this is just not the right book for the uninformed general reader. There's some compelling bits where the nature of Luther's achievements (e.g., his translation of the New Testament into vernacular German) are stated clearly and memorably. But a lot of this book chronicles Luther's unending quarrels with his peers. I understand that this took up a lot of his time, but I wasn't really convinced that the quarrels were so important.
To summarize, if you know something about Luther or learned about him in your youth, this may be a good long serious book to refresh your knowledge of this complex revolutionary. But if you are coming at this from a state of fairly comprehensive ignorance, as I was, it may be a little hard sledding.
I received an free unfinished galley of the ebook for review. Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for their generosity.
Anyway, Luther might have glued (or nailed, which seems more dramatic somehow) his Theses to the church door in October 1517, so I guess we can anticipate self-styled opinion makers speculating in a few short months on what it all means, even if they (the opinion makers) haven't attended a house of worship in earnest since before they got their second teeth.
I certainly don't know what it all means, which is why I took this opportunity to get to know more about Luther. But this is not a book for people who have achieved adulthood mostly in ignorance of the life of Luther, as I have. I don't feel tremendously at fault: if the Catholic weekend-school teachers had their way, our classes would have been complete uncontaminated by ideas of any type, and of course US public schools gave religion a great big letting-alone, too, because they already had their hands full with all the other stuff we were supposed to learn.
In any event, this book requires a lot of background knowledge that I didn't have. Maybe if I had been an American of German Lutheran descent, I would have had more of the knowledge necessary to enjoy this book. As it was, I scratched my head some over the crazy quilt of princes, electors, landgraves, margraves, bishops, and other aristos that somehow miraculously coalesced into modern-day Germany. Furthermore, even though the author struggled heroically to explain them all, I had trouble keeping the competing philosophies that did battle in this period, which include:
Fuggers (Kindle location 638), nominalists (l. 903), Ockhamists (l. 913), followers of Duns Scotus (l. 1594), antinomians (l. 2380), Aristotelians and anti-Aristotelians (l. 2830), scholastists (l. 3701), Thomists (l. 3743), humanists (l. 3746), followers of the Free Spirit heresy (l. 4212), Anabaptists (l. 4425), sacramentarians (l. 4840), irenicists (l. 5747), practitioners of the Nestorian heresy (l. 5948), conciliarism (l. 6093), Sabbatarians (l. 6530), and Pietists (l. 6848)
If you can explain to yourself what most of these are, you are ready for this book. As for me, O.K., I know Ockham's Razor, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas are, and can take an educated guess what the important points of contention were for Anabaptists and Sabbatarians, but sometimes the exact nature of the squabbles among these groups were difficult to follow.
Again, this is not the author's fault – this is just not the right book for the uninformed general reader. There's some compelling bits where the nature of Luther's achievements (e.g., his translation of the New Testament into vernacular German) are stated clearly and memorably. But a lot of this book chronicles Luther's unending quarrels with his peers. I understand that this took up a lot of his time, but I wasn't really convinced that the quarrels were so important.
To summarize, if you know something about Luther or learned about him in your youth, this may be a good long serious book to refresh your knowledge of this complex revolutionary. But if you are coming at this from a state of fairly comprehensive ignorance, as I was, it may be a little hard sledding.
I received an free unfinished galley of the ebook for review. Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for their generosity.
December 21, 2018
A detailed and sometimes critical biography of Martin Luther that gave a fairly clear picture of the man and the period. It dealt well with the opposing poles of the reformer and the historical conditions that begged reform, and although I would have liked a little more of his theology, there was enough within to whet my appetite for further study.
June 13, 2017
This is not my regular "Luther-Diet". It was exotic reading and not only because of Lyndal Roper's Australian roots in Melbourne or references to Oberman and Küng in Tübingen or finally her current position in Oxford. She did not try to summarize Luther's theology or even attempt at writing it's evolution and development over some 5 decades or so. Neither did she concentrate in the normal way on the "cities of the south" for her biography, but took into account the very crucial surroundings of Luther caught up in the previous German Democratic Republic (DDR) and undertook very successfully to give us an insight into the social history of the reformer and his time. She explains: "We lack a proper assessment of Lutheranism in its home social and cultural context, which was so unlike that of the southern cities." (xxviii) In contrast to the rather parochial Luther, Roper is very much into the original sources and even the latest hit by the secular historian Heinz Schilling is taken up most positively as she goes about in a very casual style to inform, consider and evaluate psychogical, biological and biographical aspects of her protagonist. Aspects which normally did not feature in my education at least although it does really do a lot to explain the erratic and rather volcanic reformer.
If you're pressed for time, you should at least read Roper's brilliant introduction to her book - only about 16 pages if I've got the roman numerals right. They already convinced me, that I should read the entire opus, because it was bound to be fun. Well, it's a sorry truth about Luther's life, but it doesn't end that very well. Rather after the initial upsurge of the reformation in the 1520's it really has some serious setbacks - on the personal, communal and national levels. It's just so astonishing, that this legacy did not stop with Luther's passing in 1546. It really is a miracle and divine wonder! Obviously Robert Kolb in his memorable "ML and the enduring Word of God" (2016), who is not mentioned in this book, has got a point, when he points to the excellent team around Luther and most importantly also the "enduring Word of God" in the 2nd part of his book.
Roper does go to some lenghts explaining Luther's complex relationships with parents, siblings, teachers, sponsors, colleagues, lords and masters. Some are friends even though their number continually deminishes, others are antagonists, enemies and in cohorts with the devils, therefore these latter opposing forces weighing heavily on Luther is hated most assiduously despite its constantly growing number. Roper explains: "For Luther's personality had huge historical effects - for good and ill. It was his remarkable courage and sense of purpose that created the reformation, and it was his stubbornness and capacity to demonize his opponents that nearly destroyed it." (xxvi)
Roper explains her goal: "Where many historians have used this abundance of material to trace his theological development in detail, and to date specific events with greater accuracy, I want to understand Luther himself. I want to know how a sixteenth-century individual perceived the world around him, and why he viewed it in this way. I want to explore his inner landscapes so as to better understand his ideas about flesh and spirit, formed in a time before our modern separation of mind and body. In particular, I am interested in Luther's contradictions. Here was a man who made some of the most misogynistic remarks of any thinker, yet who was in favour not only of sex within marriage but crucially that it should also give bodily pleasure to both women and men. Trying to understand this apparent paradox is a challenge I have not been able to resist. A man of immense charisma, Luther's passionate friendships were matched by equally unrelenting rejections of those he believed to be wrong or disloyal. His theology sprang from his character, a connection that Melanchton... insisted upon: "His character, was, almost, so to speak, the greatest proof" of his doctrine." (xxvii-xxviii)
She sums up some of the difficulties faced by those looking at Luther and back at the Reformation in the 16th century in the last paragraph of her introduction: "It is hard for historians and theologians to tackle what now seems so alien, his disturbing obsession with the Devil, virulent anti-Semitism, and crude polemic. Exploring his inner world, however, and the context into which his ideas and passions flooded, opens up a new vision of the Reformation." (xxxiii)
Allow me another lenghty quote to finish off my strong recommendation to read this book if you are interested in Reformation History, the whole bunch of reformers and Luther specifically. The final word together with a big load of accolades goes to the brilliant writer and excellent biographer Lyndal Roper, who concludes her biography with these paragraphs: "Luther is a difficult hero, nonetheless. His writings can be full of hatred, and his predilection for scatological rhetoric and humor is not to modern taste. He could be authoritatiran, bullyiing, overconfident; his domineering ways overshadowed his children's lives and alienated many of his followers. His intransigent capacity to demonize his opponents was more than a psychological flaw because it meant that Protestantism split very early, weakening it permanently and leading to centuries of war. His anti-Semitism was more visceral than that of many of his contemporaries, and it was also intrinsic to his religiosity and his understanding of the relation between the Old and the New Testament. It cannot just be excused as the prejudice of his day. His greatest intellectual gift was his ability to simplify, to cut to the heart of an issue - but this also made it difficult for him to compromise or see nuance. And yet only someone with an utter inability to see anyones else's point of view could have had the courage to take on the papacy, to act like a 'blinkered horse' looking neither to right nor left, but treading relentlessly onward regardless of the consequences. And only someone with a sense of humor, a stubborn realism, and a remarkable ability to engage the deepest loyalties of others could have avoided the martyrdom that threatend.
The Reformation is often lauded as heralding the arrival of modernity, the freedom of the individual, or, alternatively, the growth of a confessional world that yoked religious to political identity. I hope to have shown that none of these views do justice to Luther or to the movement he started. Luther was not "modern", and unless we appreciate his thought in its own unfamiliar and often uncomfortable terms, we will not see what it might have to offer us today. What Luther meant by "freedom" and by "conscience" were not what we mean by these words now. It had nothing to do with allowing people to follow their conscience; it meant our capacity to know with God, a knowledge he believed to be objective truth. Luther split the Church and ushered in the denominational era, but he was always a maverick thinker who did not believe in following rules or in devising courts to impose morality. He was a man who retained a healthy mistrust of Reason, "the whore". (410f)
My suggestion: Tolle lege!
If you're pressed for time, you should at least read Roper's brilliant introduction to her book - only about 16 pages if I've got the roman numerals right. They already convinced me, that I should read the entire opus, because it was bound to be fun. Well, it's a sorry truth about Luther's life, but it doesn't end that very well. Rather after the initial upsurge of the reformation in the 1520's it really has some serious setbacks - on the personal, communal and national levels. It's just so astonishing, that this legacy did not stop with Luther's passing in 1546. It really is a miracle and divine wonder! Obviously Robert Kolb in his memorable "ML and the enduring Word of God" (2016), who is not mentioned in this book, has got a point, when he points to the excellent team around Luther and most importantly also the "enduring Word of God" in the 2nd part of his book.
Roper does go to some lenghts explaining Luther's complex relationships with parents, siblings, teachers, sponsors, colleagues, lords and masters. Some are friends even though their number continually deminishes, others are antagonists, enemies and in cohorts with the devils, therefore these latter opposing forces weighing heavily on Luther is hated most assiduously despite its constantly growing number. Roper explains: "For Luther's personality had huge historical effects - for good and ill. It was his remarkable courage and sense of purpose that created the reformation, and it was his stubbornness and capacity to demonize his opponents that nearly destroyed it." (xxvi)
Roper explains her goal: "Where many historians have used this abundance of material to trace his theological development in detail, and to date specific events with greater accuracy, I want to understand Luther himself. I want to know how a sixteenth-century individual perceived the world around him, and why he viewed it in this way. I want to explore his inner landscapes so as to better understand his ideas about flesh and spirit, formed in a time before our modern separation of mind and body. In particular, I am interested in Luther's contradictions. Here was a man who made some of the most misogynistic remarks of any thinker, yet who was in favour not only of sex within marriage but crucially that it should also give bodily pleasure to both women and men. Trying to understand this apparent paradox is a challenge I have not been able to resist. A man of immense charisma, Luther's passionate friendships were matched by equally unrelenting rejections of those he believed to be wrong or disloyal. His theology sprang from his character, a connection that Melanchton... insisted upon: "His character, was, almost, so to speak, the greatest proof" of his doctrine." (xxvii-xxviii)
She sums up some of the difficulties faced by those looking at Luther and back at the Reformation in the 16th century in the last paragraph of her introduction: "It is hard for historians and theologians to tackle what now seems so alien, his disturbing obsession with the Devil, virulent anti-Semitism, and crude polemic. Exploring his inner world, however, and the context into which his ideas and passions flooded, opens up a new vision of the Reformation." (xxxiii)
Allow me another lenghty quote to finish off my strong recommendation to read this book if you are interested in Reformation History, the whole bunch of reformers and Luther specifically. The final word together with a big load of accolades goes to the brilliant writer and excellent biographer Lyndal Roper, who concludes her biography with these paragraphs: "Luther is a difficult hero, nonetheless. His writings can be full of hatred, and his predilection for scatological rhetoric and humor is not to modern taste. He could be authoritatiran, bullyiing, overconfident; his domineering ways overshadowed his children's lives and alienated many of his followers. His intransigent capacity to demonize his opponents was more than a psychological flaw because it meant that Protestantism split very early, weakening it permanently and leading to centuries of war. His anti-Semitism was more visceral than that of many of his contemporaries, and it was also intrinsic to his religiosity and his understanding of the relation between the Old and the New Testament. It cannot just be excused as the prejudice of his day. His greatest intellectual gift was his ability to simplify, to cut to the heart of an issue - but this also made it difficult for him to compromise or see nuance. And yet only someone with an utter inability to see anyones else's point of view could have had the courage to take on the papacy, to act like a 'blinkered horse' looking neither to right nor left, but treading relentlessly onward regardless of the consequences. And only someone with a sense of humor, a stubborn realism, and a remarkable ability to engage the deepest loyalties of others could have avoided the martyrdom that threatend.
The Reformation is often lauded as heralding the arrival of modernity, the freedom of the individual, or, alternatively, the growth of a confessional world that yoked religious to political identity. I hope to have shown that none of these views do justice to Luther or to the movement he started. Luther was not "modern", and unless we appreciate his thought in its own unfamiliar and often uncomfortable terms, we will not see what it might have to offer us today. What Luther meant by "freedom" and by "conscience" were not what we mean by these words now. It had nothing to do with allowing people to follow their conscience; it meant our capacity to know with God, a knowledge he believed to be objective truth. Luther split the Church and ushered in the denominational era, but he was always a maverick thinker who did not believe in following rules or in devising courts to impose morality. He was a man who retained a healthy mistrust of Reason, "the whore". (410f)
My suggestion: Tolle lege!
July 3, 2017
In terms of Reformation books to come out this year, I have been very much looking forward to this one. While early reviews had highlighted it to be extremely learned and critical, I wasn't expecting to find so much sympathy and care for the subject. Roper, who worked on this book for over a decade, has written one of the most fascinating accounts of Luther's life to date. She tells familiar stories but highlights often overlooked aspects, especially dealing with the relational context of many disputes. Her understanding of early modern Germany also makes this book such a treat. And while she wants to replace the Erickson model of "psychological interpretation" ala Freud, she never veers to far off the course in ungrounded speculation.
I would not recommend this as the first book on Luther for new readers looking for an introduction. But for those of us who have waded through many waters of Luther studies, this work stands at the top for its erudition, lucidity, and engagement with the subject. A wonderful read!
I would not recommend this as the first book on Luther for new readers looking for an introduction. But for those of us who have waded through many waters of Luther studies, this work stands at the top for its erudition, lucidity, and engagement with the subject. A wonderful read!
August 15, 2020
When Lyndal Roper noted in the introduction that that her biography would seek to understand Luther as an individual, referencing Erik Erikson’s psychoanalytic biography Young Man Luther as an example, I was admittedly less than excited about what lay in store. I was pleasantly surprised. Roper’s biography is thoroughly researched—the product of more than a decade—offering insights about Luther I’ve not encountered elsewhere. Her Luther is complex and dynamic as Roper is particularly careful to note changes in Luther’s thinking and temperament over the course of his life. Roper’s prose is easy to read and her analysis is both historically and theologically astute. Probably my most significant critique is that Roper is so focused on Luther’s psychology at times that it is difficult to understand his place in the larger events that make up his context. Nevertheless, highly recommended.
February 7, 2017
I really liked, but didn't quite love, this biography of the great Reformer. When Martin Luther nailed (or possibly glued) his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, he was challenging both the whole system of the medieval church and the authority of the papacy. It was a pivotal moment in the history of the church, and of Western civilisation. Luther is a hugely significant individual, as he achieved a decisive split with the Roman Catholic church, his theology has remained central to Protestantism, and his translation of the Bible shaped modern vernacular German.
As an overview and analysis of Luther's life, this is an excellent book. All the major events (Worms, Augsburg etc.) and personalities (Melanchthon, Spalatin, Staupitz etc.) are explored in detail, and Ropers writing style makes it very pleasant to read. Her analysis of and conclusions on Luther's life and wider context are insightful, penetrating and solidly argued.
Luther himself is a complex and fascinating character, and generally I appreciated Ropers insights. One exception is the level of significance placed on his early relationship with his father. No doubt his father was an important and influential figure in his life, but at times this line of thought seems a bit trite. More positively, she concludes that his extraordinary openness, honest willingness to put everything on the line, and his capacity to accept God's grace as a gift he did not merit are among his most attractive characteristics. He was certainly a man of courage and conviction, and admirably so. On the other hand she sees him as a difficult hero, with writing that was often full of hatred, and a tendency to be authoritarian, bullying, over confident and domineering. I think she is spot on when she describes his interactions with others as a contradictory mixture of warmth, holiness and condescension, even cruelty. Other aspects of Luther's character such as his frequent scatology and Antisemitism are somewhere between odd and extremely distasteful. Ultimately, despite his giant stature he is a flawed sinner, just like the rest of us. It also doesn't excuse him to point out that he's inherently difficult for a modern person to understand, because he lived in a time so unlike ours. I think that it's incredibly helpful to be reminded that our heroes have feet of clay, and this book feels like it gets much closer to the man than the idealised hagiographies we are often presented with.
As this is primarily a historical biography, there isn't as much engagement with Luther's theology, apart from as it relates to his life and historical context. Particularly, there is very little on how his theology developed over time, but really that's outside the scope of this book and is accessible in any number of books written by church historians and theologians. I also got the sense that Roper has a real distaste for Calvinism, and I would have liked to have seen more on the links between the different magisterial Reformers. But again, this is a biography of Luther and not a history of the Reformation, so it lies outside her scope. I think what I'm really saying is that I would have enjoyed reading Ropers opinion and analysis of these broader themes, even if I wouldn't agree with some of what she says.
One interesting insight was the importance to Luther's theology of his integrated view of human nature. An interesting manifestation of this was his insistence on the real presence in the Lord's Supper. He seems to have realised that there is no rational or real scriptural basis for this, and presents it as a matter for pure faith. I'm convinced he's wrong, but I can see how his view kind of makes sense in the wider context of his thinking on the integration of mind and body, flesh and spirit. Roper sees much of the rest of Christianity as characterised by unbending moralism and a suspicion of sexuality, and concludes that this is avoided by Luther's view of human nature, which doesn't emphasise the spiritual at the expense of the physical. I'm not sure about either the premise or the conclusion in this case, but it's an interesting argument to consider nonetheless. I can also see how it probably grew out of a reaction against the ascetic monasticism he rejected as he began to understand and appreciate God's grace.
Another important aspect of his legacy is political, due to his distinction between the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of God. So, the church should not enjoy temporal power while Christians should obey their temporal rulers, who should in turn protect their people from the godless. He was essentially conservative, coming down on the side of the authorities, and doesn't seem to have conceived of an occasion when a Christian or Christian ruler might rebel against a higher temporal authority. The Reformation is often lauded as heralding the modern era, with its emphases on freedom of conscience and of the individual. However, Luther meant different things by these concepts than we often do today, as he wasn't interested in everyone being able to do what they think is right, but rather in individuals becoming aligned with objective, God revealed truth.
All in all, this was an incredibly enjoyable and engaging study of a fascinating man who lived at a very significant point in history.
As an overview and analysis of Luther's life, this is an excellent book. All the major events (Worms, Augsburg etc.) and personalities (Melanchthon, Spalatin, Staupitz etc.) are explored in detail, and Ropers writing style makes it very pleasant to read. Her analysis of and conclusions on Luther's life and wider context are insightful, penetrating and solidly argued.
Luther himself is a complex and fascinating character, and generally I appreciated Ropers insights. One exception is the level of significance placed on his early relationship with his father. No doubt his father was an important and influential figure in his life, but at times this line of thought seems a bit trite. More positively, she concludes that his extraordinary openness, honest willingness to put everything on the line, and his capacity to accept God's grace as a gift he did not merit are among his most attractive characteristics. He was certainly a man of courage and conviction, and admirably so. On the other hand she sees him as a difficult hero, with writing that was often full of hatred, and a tendency to be authoritarian, bullying, over confident and domineering. I think she is spot on when she describes his interactions with others as a contradictory mixture of warmth, holiness and condescension, even cruelty. Other aspects of Luther's character such as his frequent scatology and Antisemitism are somewhere between odd and extremely distasteful. Ultimately, despite his giant stature he is a flawed sinner, just like the rest of us. It also doesn't excuse him to point out that he's inherently difficult for a modern person to understand, because he lived in a time so unlike ours. I think that it's incredibly helpful to be reminded that our heroes have feet of clay, and this book feels like it gets much closer to the man than the idealised hagiographies we are often presented with.
As this is primarily a historical biography, there isn't as much engagement with Luther's theology, apart from as it relates to his life and historical context. Particularly, there is very little on how his theology developed over time, but really that's outside the scope of this book and is accessible in any number of books written by church historians and theologians. I also got the sense that Roper has a real distaste for Calvinism, and I would have liked to have seen more on the links between the different magisterial Reformers. But again, this is a biography of Luther and not a history of the Reformation, so it lies outside her scope. I think what I'm really saying is that I would have enjoyed reading Ropers opinion and analysis of these broader themes, even if I wouldn't agree with some of what she says.
One interesting insight was the importance to Luther's theology of his integrated view of human nature. An interesting manifestation of this was his insistence on the real presence in the Lord's Supper. He seems to have realised that there is no rational or real scriptural basis for this, and presents it as a matter for pure faith. I'm convinced he's wrong, but I can see how his view kind of makes sense in the wider context of his thinking on the integration of mind and body, flesh and spirit. Roper sees much of the rest of Christianity as characterised by unbending moralism and a suspicion of sexuality, and concludes that this is avoided by Luther's view of human nature, which doesn't emphasise the spiritual at the expense of the physical. I'm not sure about either the premise or the conclusion in this case, but it's an interesting argument to consider nonetheless. I can also see how it probably grew out of a reaction against the ascetic monasticism he rejected as he began to understand and appreciate God's grace.
Another important aspect of his legacy is political, due to his distinction between the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of God. So, the church should not enjoy temporal power while Christians should obey their temporal rulers, who should in turn protect their people from the godless. He was essentially conservative, coming down on the side of the authorities, and doesn't seem to have conceived of an occasion when a Christian or Christian ruler might rebel against a higher temporal authority. The Reformation is often lauded as heralding the modern era, with its emphases on freedom of conscience and of the individual. However, Luther meant different things by these concepts than we often do today, as he wasn't interested in everyone being able to do what they think is right, but rather in individuals becoming aligned with objective, God revealed truth.
All in all, this was an incredibly enjoyable and engaging study of a fascinating man who lived at a very significant point in history.
January 29, 2023
Diese Biografie war sehr spannend. Ich wusste recht wenig über Luther als Person und wie er die christliche Religion gespalten hat.
Es entmystifiziert seine Persona und man merkt, dass am Ende auch Luther ein Mensch mit großen Makeln und riesigen Ego war.
Luther wurde Mönch weil er gegen seinen Vater rebellieren wollte. Er brach sein Studium im Recht und war nun der erste „Geistliche“ in seiner intellektuellen Familie, die ihre Berufung im Recht sah.
Die rebellischen Züge endeten hier nicht. Seine 95 Thesen schlugen Wellen. Er konnte seine Sexualität nicht zügeln also argumentierte er gegen frommes Leben und heiratete sogar eine Nonne. Was auch ein rebellisches Verhalten war.
Wenn Luther eine Sache war, dann ein negativer, der gegen alles war. Gegen Juden, gegen das osmanische Reich, gegen den Papst, gegen seinen Vater, gegen Kritik. Dieses Buch muss man einfach lesen, denn es zeigt auch wie sich Religionen und ihre fragwürdigen Praktiken entwickelt haben.
Es entmystifiziert seine Persona und man merkt, dass am Ende auch Luther ein Mensch mit großen Makeln und riesigen Ego war.
Luther wurde Mönch weil er gegen seinen Vater rebellieren wollte. Er brach sein Studium im Recht und war nun der erste „Geistliche“ in seiner intellektuellen Familie, die ihre Berufung im Recht sah.
Die rebellischen Züge endeten hier nicht. Seine 95 Thesen schlugen Wellen. Er konnte seine Sexualität nicht zügeln also argumentierte er gegen frommes Leben und heiratete sogar eine Nonne. Was auch ein rebellisches Verhalten war.
Wenn Luther eine Sache war, dann ein negativer, der gegen alles war. Gegen Juden, gegen das osmanische Reich, gegen den Papst, gegen seinen Vater, gegen Kritik. Dieses Buch muss man einfach lesen, denn es zeigt auch wie sich Religionen und ihre fragwürdigen Praktiken entwickelt haben.
February 7, 2017
This year, 2017, is the 500th anniversary of the posting - in whatever manner - by Augustinian monk Martin Luther, of his "Ninety-five Theses" on the All Souls Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Historians aren't too sure how these Theses was actually mounted on the door, a fact explored in Lyndal Roper's new bio of Luther, "Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet". Luther's grievances were mainly about the selling of indulgences by agents of the Roman Catholic Church. The purchase of these indulgences were supposed to lessen the time a soul spent in purgatory. The sale of the indulgences were supposed to help with the cost of the new St Peter's Church in Rome. The "middlemen" in the deal also made a profit. Luther's denounciation of the sales was heard in Rome - along with his other complaints about the Church - and Luther was called to defend his ideas at the Diet of Worms in 1521. He eventually left the priesthood, married, translated the bible into the German vernacular, and was excommunicated by the Church.
Lyndal Roper, who has written previously about witchcraft in western Europe, as well as the lives and places of women in Reformation-era Germany, turns her eye on Martin Luther and his life, work, and, most importantly, his mighty influence on the times. Her writing is very, very smooth and she makes a complicated subject interesting to the armchair historian. I enjoyed this book so much, that I stopped in the middle and preordered the Audible version. It's one of those books that I think will make great listening and that will be how I finish it.
By the way, another book - historical fiction - that readers of this book might enjoy is Christopher Buckley's "The Relic Master". Published in 2015, I wrote in my review: "Christopher Buckley's book can be both a fun read and a chance to look at the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation. Luther doesn't play a large part in the book, but his ideas and influences on others is always in the background."
Lyndal Roper, who has written previously about witchcraft in western Europe, as well as the lives and places of women in Reformation-era Germany, turns her eye on Martin Luther and his life, work, and, most importantly, his mighty influence on the times. Her writing is very, very smooth and she makes a complicated subject interesting to the armchair historian. I enjoyed this book so much, that I stopped in the middle and preordered the Audible version. It's one of those books that I think will make great listening and that will be how I finish it.
By the way, another book - historical fiction - that readers of this book might enjoy is Christopher Buckley's "The Relic Master". Published in 2015, I wrote in my review: "Christopher Buckley's book can be both a fun read and a chance to look at the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation. Luther doesn't play a large part in the book, but his ideas and influences on others is always in the background."
November 12, 2017
This was a very dry read, even for someone who is interested in the topic. There are a lot of names, dates, facts, and jargon.
It certainly does not paint Luther in the most flattering light. How truthful it is to his character is hard to say, although it does appear to be highly researched and it feels very honest. All too often, Luther is practically held to the level of sainthood (ironically enough) by Protestants, but his temperament and manner of dealing with others, let alone his apparent misogyny and antisemitism, certainly don't make him sound like someone you would want to be friends with, let alone who you would want as your religious leader.
Roper does make the point that some of his actions are indicative of the times, and of the type of person one would need to be to stand up to the overreach of the papacy at the time, but that his personality tended to make him a lot of enemies and probably caused more rifts in the early days of the separation of denominations than was really necessary. Based on his letters and works, this is very likely true.
The psychological profile Roper makes of Luther as having so much to do with animosity with his father felt like a bit of a Freudian stretch to me. I hardly think all of his life and theology can be traced back to "daddy issues." However, I am sure his relationship with his family shaped how he approached life and certainly impacted his study of Scripture.
I have to admit, I had no idea that the writers of the day were so crude and enjoyed talking about excrement and other bodily functions quite so much!
I don't think this is the "definitive biography" of Luther, but it's very enlightening and gives insight into the "other side" of this man who sparked so much debate and controversy in the early days of the Protestant Reformation.
2.5/5 (for pure dryness, not for lack of research)
It certainly does not paint Luther in the most flattering light. How truthful it is to his character is hard to say, although it does appear to be highly researched and it feels very honest. All too often, Luther is practically held to the level of sainthood (ironically enough) by Protestants, but his temperament and manner of dealing with others, let alone his apparent misogyny and antisemitism, certainly don't make him sound like someone you would want to be friends with, let alone who you would want as your religious leader.
Roper does make the point that some of his actions are indicative of the times, and of the type of person one would need to be to stand up to the overreach of the papacy at the time, but that his personality tended to make him a lot of enemies and probably caused more rifts in the early days of the separation of denominations than was really necessary. Based on his letters and works, this is very likely true.
The psychological profile Roper makes of Luther as having so much to do with animosity with his father felt like a bit of a Freudian stretch to me. I hardly think all of his life and theology can be traced back to "daddy issues." However, I am sure his relationship with his family shaped how he approached life and certainly impacted his study of Scripture.
I have to admit, I had no idea that the writers of the day were so crude and enjoyed talking about excrement and other bodily functions quite so much!
I don't think this is the "definitive biography" of Luther, but it's very enlightening and gives insight into the "other side" of this man who sparked so much debate and controversy in the early days of the Protestant Reformation.
2.5/5 (for pure dryness, not for lack of research)
January 12, 2020
Excellent biography of reformer Martin Luther, which does not only paint a good picture of who Luther was, with his strengths and weaknesses, but also it gives a good image of the reformation in general. For me it explains a lot about what was happening in the 16th century. You also get an idea about some of Luthers contemporaries, like Melanchton, Zwingli and Karlstadt.
September 21, 2022
An excellent biography, even while I found the "Freudianism" that Lyndal Roper uses to explain the motivation of Martin Luther extremely inadequate. It isn't enough to explain Luther's ideas and actions and certainly not why the Reformation began. Nevertheless this is remarkably well written, detailed and a good read. A useful entry point into the German Reformation and Martin Luther.
October 31, 2017
First surprise is the fact that Lyndal Roper is a woman. Her psycho-hystorical biography is based on documents including Luther’s letters inaccessible until recently behind the Iron Curtain. The bibliography shows why research began in 2006 and publication in January, 2016. The book is footnoted like a scholarly doctoral dissertation.
Second revelation for me is the humbling realization as to how little I actually know about the founder of my denomination. If knowing how little one knows be the mark of an educated man....
Third the many details it had never occurred to me to ask and I expect them to keep coming. On October 31, 1517 Luther sent copies of his 95 theses with a covering letter to two Catholic Church authorities. The two men who document their being nailed or glued to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg were not in town when the deed would have taken place. Since this was a scholarly document it was written in Latin which few outside the scholarly world would have been able to read even were they literate.
More details:
The family name was Ludor.
Luther was virulently antisemitic. Indeed the sentiment was general in Germany at the time. Hitler obviously didn’t invent it, he simply capitalized on an existing feeling to focus his rage and people’s discontent.
At the elevation does the host become the true body and blood. Real presence.
Charging interest on borrowed money was still considered the sin of usury and an impediment to trade and commerce. Here we have yet another consideration where economic necessity changed social mores and moral ethics.
The degree to which theology and churchly matters were influenced by politics and personalities should not surprise but to see it all spelled out chapter after chapter....
Luther initiated the burning of books before his own were burned as a prologue to his possible burning for heresy.
Luther was a shit disturber and probably would have identified with the appellation.
The Reformation led to the destruction of thousands of sacred art works and statuary.
As the possibility of martyrdom seemed more and more likely the urge for reforms got more strident and impassioned, the changes demanded more extreme; the accusations against supposed enemies more vitriolic.
The author makes no effort to paint her subject in a positive light highlighting his inconsistencies, his vendettas, his contradictions. His handling of the Peasant Revolt rankles making one wonder what he hoped to gain by appealing to authority over the rights of working people. Maintaining a divide between temporal rulers and religious faith in part to remain in good favour with his political supporters.
The debate over the elements of Holy Communion is ongoing to this day.
What constitutes the relationship between a married couple and who should marry continues to be hotly debated especially in light of same-sex ‘marriage’ today. Whether or not sexual acts are sinful and the lawfulness of non-standard interactions such as oral and anal.... On a pragmatic level it seems obvious that total abstinence would lead to extinction.
This book was a decade in the writing and makes heavy reading. The author was interviewed on Sunday, October 29 on CBC’s Sunday Edition from BBC Oxford:
http://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/sunday...
Second revelation for me is the humbling realization as to how little I actually know about the founder of my denomination. If knowing how little one knows be the mark of an educated man....
Third the many details it had never occurred to me to ask and I expect them to keep coming. On October 31, 1517 Luther sent copies of his 95 theses with a covering letter to two Catholic Church authorities. The two men who document their being nailed or glued to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg were not in town when the deed would have taken place. Since this was a scholarly document it was written in Latin which few outside the scholarly world would have been able to read even were they literate.
More details:
The family name was Ludor.
Luther was virulently antisemitic. Indeed the sentiment was general in Germany at the time. Hitler obviously didn’t invent it, he simply capitalized on an existing feeling to focus his rage and people’s discontent.
At the elevation does the host become the true body and blood. Real presence.
Charging interest on borrowed money was still considered the sin of usury and an impediment to trade and commerce. Here we have yet another consideration where economic necessity changed social mores and moral ethics.
The degree to which theology and churchly matters were influenced by politics and personalities should not surprise but to see it all spelled out chapter after chapter....
Luther initiated the burning of books before his own were burned as a prologue to his possible burning for heresy.
Luther was a shit disturber and probably would have identified with the appellation.
The Reformation led to the destruction of thousands of sacred art works and statuary.
As the possibility of martyrdom seemed more and more likely the urge for reforms got more strident and impassioned, the changes demanded more extreme; the accusations against supposed enemies more vitriolic.
The author makes no effort to paint her subject in a positive light highlighting his inconsistencies, his vendettas, his contradictions. His handling of the Peasant Revolt rankles making one wonder what he hoped to gain by appealing to authority over the rights of working people. Maintaining a divide between temporal rulers and religious faith in part to remain in good favour with his political supporters.
The debate over the elements of Holy Communion is ongoing to this day.
What constitutes the relationship between a married couple and who should marry continues to be hotly debated especially in light of same-sex ‘marriage’ today. Whether or not sexual acts are sinful and the lawfulness of non-standard interactions such as oral and anal.... On a pragmatic level it seems obvious that total abstinence would lead to extinction.
This book was a decade in the writing and makes heavy reading. The author was interviewed on Sunday, October 29 on CBC’s Sunday Edition from BBC Oxford:
http://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/sunday...
September 8, 2017
This is the third Luther biography I've read and I think will be the last for a time anyway. Yes it's good, and probably justifiably won all the awards that it did. It is, thankfully, very readable which is not always the case with biographies of sixteenth century notables.
Martin Luther is an enigmatic character. We pull him into our own age as though he were the first modern man, the herald of individualism, the triumph of the will and freedom of choice. And yet, as Roper makes clear, he is none of those things. He left voluminous letters which are remarkably open and detailed and yet the man himself still remains impossibly distant from us. Unlike Calvin, he left no systematic theology and yet his writings left an indelible imprint on the future shape of the Reformation. We also know possibly more about his bowel movements than any other figure in history. He was a devout man of God, made deep and lasting friendships and yet was hate-filled and deeply unpleasant. His deep-seated and vicious anti-semitism is one reason why this year's Reformation anniversary is not being celebrated in Germany with quite the gusto we might expect.
Lyndal Roper deals with these contradictions very well. I have some doubts over her attempts to pin so much of his life on unresolved father issues. Is it really credible to say that Luther deferred having children until after Stauritz's death because only once his surrogate father had died could he become a father himself? And surprisingly, in the light of this, Roper hardly deals with Luther's childhood at all.
Roper is a historian and not a theologian and some readers might feel that the theology is dealt with rather lightly. In particular the importance of Luther's Eucharistic theology is highlighted but the precise way in which he maintained a belief in the Real Presence whilst rejecting the transubstantiation is skated over. I suspect Luther himself didn't really know the answer to that one. At heart Luther was a Catholic who grew to despise Catholicism. The extent to which this was based on intellectual or emotional foundations is a moot point. Perhaps it was, after all, down to his dad.
Martin Luther is an enigmatic character. We pull him into our own age as though he were the first modern man, the herald of individualism, the triumph of the will and freedom of choice. And yet, as Roper makes clear, he is none of those things. He left voluminous letters which are remarkably open and detailed and yet the man himself still remains impossibly distant from us. Unlike Calvin, he left no systematic theology and yet his writings left an indelible imprint on the future shape of the Reformation. We also know possibly more about his bowel movements than any other figure in history. He was a devout man of God, made deep and lasting friendships and yet was hate-filled and deeply unpleasant. His deep-seated and vicious anti-semitism is one reason why this year's Reformation anniversary is not being celebrated in Germany with quite the gusto we might expect.
Lyndal Roper deals with these contradictions very well. I have some doubts over her attempts to pin so much of his life on unresolved father issues. Is it really credible to say that Luther deferred having children until after Stauritz's death because only once his surrogate father had died could he become a father himself? And surprisingly, in the light of this, Roper hardly deals with Luther's childhood at all.
Roper is a historian and not a theologian and some readers might feel that the theology is dealt with rather lightly. In particular the importance of Luther's Eucharistic theology is highlighted but the precise way in which he maintained a belief in the Real Presence whilst rejecting the transubstantiation is skated over. I suspect Luther himself didn't really know the answer to that one. At heart Luther was a Catholic who grew to despise Catholicism. The extent to which this was based on intellectual or emotional foundations is a moot point. Perhaps it was, after all, down to his dad.
January 30, 2018
Having listened to this (see review below) I decided to read it. It is in many ways very good. You do learn things here about Luther that I have not seen elsewhere. But this could also be entitled "The Dark Side of Luther." Roper paints a somewhat dark picture. However she does marshall evidence for her portrait. Our greatest strengths can become weakenesses and this was Luther's case. His stubborness enabled him to stand up to Rome and not back down. But his stubborness also caused him to almost never admit any of the other Reformers could have figured something out better than him. Despite all of his criticisms of the Papacy (with which I agree) and his belief in the priesthood of all believers, he basically became the Pope of the Lutherans. He would never claim infallibility but he almost practiced it. His weakenesses were most evident in his latter years. However despite all of the disappointing things in this biography Luther remains one of my top three favorites in church history. I love the man "warts and all." He illustrates how much God can do with a single individual who will trust Him. We are all deeply indebted to God for creating him and to him for his courage.
1st review:
This has been advertized as the definitive biography of Luther but its really a mixed bag. Some of it is excellent, some of it is distressing. Like all humans, Luther had his strengths and weaknesses. But Roper has painted the darkest picture of Luther I have thus far read.
(Note: I'm stingy with stars. For me 2 stars means a good book. 3 = Very good; 4 = Outstanding {only about 5% of the books I read merit this}; 5 = All time favorites {one of these may come along every 400-500 books})
Good review here: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/ar...
1st review:
This has been advertized as the definitive biography of Luther but its really a mixed bag. Some of it is excellent, some of it is distressing. Like all humans, Luther had his strengths and weaknesses. But Roper has painted the darkest picture of Luther I have thus far read.
(Note: I'm stingy with stars. For me 2 stars means a good book. 3 = Very good; 4 = Outstanding {only about 5% of the books I read merit this}; 5 = All time favorites {one of these may come along every 400-500 books})
Good review here: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/ar...
January 3, 2018
Too much of this well researched book is taken up with the hate-filled, anger motivated Luther. While the author acknowledges that he inspired many, she doesn't spend enough time focusing on what exactly it was in Luther's thought that captivated so many followers. Perhaps this is understandable since Roper is a historian and, to her credit, does not pretend to be a theologian. There are some odd omissions, too. As I was nearing the end of the book I wondered why she hadn't said anything about the place of music in Luther's life. Finally, in what amounts to little more than a footnote on page 402, Roper states that Luther was a "brilliant" hymn writer. He certainly was, but it can be argued further that it was through hymnody that the message of the Reformation was transmitted to ordinary folk. While this book has its strengths, I would not recommend it unless one has previously read one of the standard biographies such as Kittelson's "Luther the Reformer."
August 23, 2021
Luther was a very complicated man, but Roper does a great job of plumbing his psyche and explaining how he fit in -- or didn't -- with other religious leaders of his time.
May 30, 2017
There are so many bios of the Reformer that one must ask, "why another?" But this new bio is worth it. Roper, the Regius Chair of Theology at Oxford, gives an insightful, well researched, and balanced telling of Martin Luther's life, trials, theology, and significance. It is well worth it, one of the better Luther bios written. Not fawning, not looking askance, this is a good, historically accurate portrayal.
June 25, 2017
This was my one 'Luther's 500th' indulgence, a new big book on Luther. But like so many over-hyped and anticipated events, it failed to meet expectations or even keep my interest. So many problems with Roper's work, which reads like an over-wrought WIKI article made up exclusively by snippets from Luther's writing, with the occasional description of a woodcut thrown in for good measure. Not a good biography, and not, as the author claims, a good social history. So disappointing.
November 28, 2017
Excellent treatment of Luther’s life. While Roper doesn’t address Luther’s theology as much as I had hoped, her analysis of his cultural context is brilliant, informative, and riveting. This is one of my favorite books of 2017.
January 1, 2020
In 1517, a young German monk named Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses disputing the Roman Catholic tradition of indulgence-selling to the Castle Church door in the town of Wittenberg. This ignited an age of religious debate, tension and reform that we know today as the Protestant Reformation…or so the story goes. To mark the 500-year anniversary of this date, people across the globe have been commemorating this dramatic act, and historians have worked diligently to publish books which teach us more about what it meant. Lyndal Roper, regius professor of History at Oriel College in Oxford and distinguished gender and Early Modern historian, lends a unique voice to the discussion. Roper aims from the outset to debunk the myths which surround this event, (including the immediate querying of whether this dramatic theses posting even happened) insisting that true historical insight into this period can be gleaned from focusing on the life of Luther himself, his family, relationships, struggles and fears.
Who exactly was Martin Luther? And how did he transform from a once chaste, devout Catholic monk into a man who viewed the Pope as the living embodiment of the Devil, actively enjoyed sex with his wife (a former nun) and held a particular thirst for German beer? Roper invites her readers on a journey to answer these questions, beginning with an extensive analysis of Luther’s early years, relationship with his father and life as a young monk who suffered from extreme melancholy and Anfechtungen (spiritual doubts and temptations like those faced by Christ in the wilderness). Following this, she skillfully charts the various relationships, debates, and deep emotions that gradually guided Luther towards his mature theology, concluding her biography with reflections on the legacy left by the reformer after his death in 1546. The 95 Theses were just the beginning, and Roper has an extraordinary ability to make some of the most complex aspects of Lutheran theology both straightforward and amusing to readers of all backgrounds.
However, Roper also takes careful steps to ensure that her readers are presented with an all-encompassing and uncensored picture of her subject. The Luther presented in Roper’s account is certainly not the almighty, honourable, lone hero of the Reformation that some accounts or celebrations may portray. Rather, Roper’s Luther is profoundly human - he has flaws, enemies, deep hatreds and a peculiar obsession with the Devil which may seem alien to modern readers. Luther’s writing against the Jews are examined in detail and represent some of the most vulgar polemic imaginable. Yet instead of making excuses for the reformer or trying to evade this difficult side of his character, Roper believes they are vital for a true understanding of his theology, navigating us carefully through his beliefs. Not even Luther’s friends or colleagues were exempt from his wrath; some of the most engaging sections of this book depict Luther as a bully and authoritarian who cracked the whip against those who he believed had stepped out of line.
Roper’s biography of Luther has the remarkable ability to make this figure come alive, encouraging readers to step into his shoes. Extremely accessible and thoroughly entertaining, this book provides an impressive introduction into the theology, trials and tribulations of the man who would provoke the splintering of the Catholic Church forevermore.
Who exactly was Martin Luther? And how did he transform from a once chaste, devout Catholic monk into a man who viewed the Pope as the living embodiment of the Devil, actively enjoyed sex with his wife (a former nun) and held a particular thirst for German beer? Roper invites her readers on a journey to answer these questions, beginning with an extensive analysis of Luther’s early years, relationship with his father and life as a young monk who suffered from extreme melancholy and Anfechtungen (spiritual doubts and temptations like those faced by Christ in the wilderness). Following this, she skillfully charts the various relationships, debates, and deep emotions that gradually guided Luther towards his mature theology, concluding her biography with reflections on the legacy left by the reformer after his death in 1546. The 95 Theses were just the beginning, and Roper has an extraordinary ability to make some of the most complex aspects of Lutheran theology both straightforward and amusing to readers of all backgrounds.
However, Roper also takes careful steps to ensure that her readers are presented with an all-encompassing and uncensored picture of her subject. The Luther presented in Roper’s account is certainly not the almighty, honourable, lone hero of the Reformation that some accounts or celebrations may portray. Rather, Roper’s Luther is profoundly human - he has flaws, enemies, deep hatreds and a peculiar obsession with the Devil which may seem alien to modern readers. Luther’s writing against the Jews are examined in detail and represent some of the most vulgar polemic imaginable. Yet instead of making excuses for the reformer or trying to evade this difficult side of his character, Roper believes they are vital for a true understanding of his theology, navigating us carefully through his beliefs. Not even Luther’s friends or colleagues were exempt from his wrath; some of the most engaging sections of this book depict Luther as a bully and authoritarian who cracked the whip against those who he believed had stepped out of line.
Roper’s biography of Luther has the remarkable ability to make this figure come alive, encouraging readers to step into his shoes. Extremely accessible and thoroughly entertaining, this book provides an impressive introduction into the theology, trials and tribulations of the man who would provoke the splintering of the Catholic Church forevermore.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 8, 2017
A serviceable, though at some moments fairly dense, biography. My interest in Martin Luther was primarily spurred by recently learning that he, Henry VIII and Michelangelo were all alive at the same time. I had no idea all of these important people and their associated revolutions were happening simultaneously and I wanted to learn more about how the conditions that enabled Michelangelo's extravagant art were related to the conditions that spurred Martin Luther's Reformation. This book, however, rarely addresses any of those topics. Instead, as mentioned in the introduction, the novel conveys the author's reading of Luther's inner space: his interpretations of scripture, his relationships with others, his method of finding spiritual truths, his fears, hatreds, and ambitions.
To Roper's credit, I came away feeling like i could predict Luther's moods as well as spot him in a crowd, which really is remarkable for a biography of a man dead for 500 years. Though I have no way of knowing if this portrayal is accurate, the portrait is certainly thorough and meticulously researched. Roper exercises a great deal of discipline within this book. Every observation of Luther's character is rooted in some source material.
I suppose another biography will tell me about the wider world during the Reformation.
To Roper's credit, I came away feeling like i could predict Luther's moods as well as spot him in a crowd, which really is remarkable for a biography of a man dead for 500 years. Though I have no way of knowing if this portrayal is accurate, the portrait is certainly thorough and meticulously researched. Roper exercises a great deal of discipline within this book. Every observation of Luther's character is rooted in some source material.
I suppose another biography will tell me about the wider world during the Reformation.
November 29, 2019
I started this book not knowing much about the Reformation, other than the fact that Luther started the Reformation by nailing 95 theses to the church door on October 31, 1517. I had hoped that this book would talk a lot about the theses and the Reformation; it mentioned these but also seemed to assume readers would have prior knowledge of various sects and religious leaders and German history. I really needed some table to keep track of every person in this book, and there were some chapters in which I was so lost on the religious debate at hand that I just pushed through without comprehending. Luther was an interesting character full of discrepancies in his mannerisms. He had a revelation that faith alone was needed for salvation but also held fast to beliefs about performing church sacraments in certain ways. He spoke scathingly about anyone who disagreed with him. He lived frequently isolated and with passionate opinions that sometimes edified the political leaders of the day. The last chapter dealt with the difficulty of defining his legacy, but accepting that he was the catalyst behind a split between Catholicism and the new modern age of denominations and Protestant churches and should be appreciated as such.
August 8, 2021
This biography exceeds 400 dense pages and seems to tell us everything one can know about Martin Luther, the man, his life, his associates and his beliefs. I found it to be an admirable, honest, carefully balanced work, not an easy task for a biographer whose subject can still generate great admiration and deep anger almost five hundred years following his death. Luther was obsessed by the devil, prayed often and long, possessed stunning courage and energy, wrote skillfully and used his wicked sense of humor with the skill of a swordsman. He seemed to have a cunning political instinct and a gift for using the press to his advantage. He was also in Roper’s words “a grand hater,” who ruthlessly attacked those he disagreed with. He was certain of his beliefs and equally certain that those who disagreed with him were diabolical. He was crude, lusty and earthy, possessed a fascination with human and animal waste, but was also generous and loving toward his wife and children, his friends and colleagues. In short, Luther was a remarkably complex fellow and this biography gives us a chance to know him from a safe distance. I would have appreciated a timeline and a map of Saxony for reference.
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