Let me give you some real history of your demonic hero Luther Luther’s life and career were drawing to a close. His marriage to Catharine von Bora, was on the whole, as far as we can infer from his own confession and public appearances, a happy one. The Augustinian monastery, which was given to him after his marriage by the elector, became his homestead. Here six children were born to them: John (June 7, 1526), Elizabeth (December 10, 1527; d. August 3, 1528), Magdalen (May 4, 1529), Martin (November 9, 1531), and Paul (January 28, 1533), and Margaret (December 17, 1534). Catharine proved to be a plain, frugal, domestic housewife; her interest in her fowls, piggery, fish-pond, vegetable garden, home-brewery, were deeper and more absorbing than in the most gigantic undertakings of her husband. Occasional bickering with her neighbors and the enlistment of her husband’s intervention in personal interests and biases, were frequent enough to engage the tongue of public censure. She died at Torgau (December 20, 1552) in comparative obscurity, poverty, and neglect (Hoffmann, “Catharine von Bora”, Leipzig, 1845, 126-138; Kroker, “Katharina von Bora”, Leipzig, s. d., 117, 250-264), having found Wittenberg cold and unsympathetic to the reformer’s family. This he had predicted,—”after my death the four elements in Wittenberg will not tolerate you after all.” Luther’s rugged health began to show marks of depleting vitality and unchecked inroads of disease. Prolonged attacks of dyspepsia, nervous headaches, chronic granular kidney disease, gout, sciatic rheumatism, middle ear abscesses, above all vertigo and gall stone colic were intermittent or chronic ailments that gradually made him the typical embodiment of a super sensitively nervous, prematurely old man (Küchenmeister, “Luthers Krankengesch.”, Leipzig, 1881). These physical impairments were further aggravated by his notorious disregard of all ordinary dietetic or hygienic restrictions. Even prescinding from his congenital heritage of inflammable irascibility and uncontrollable rage, besetting infirmities that grew deeper and more acute with age, his physical condition in itself would measurably account for his increasing irritation, passionate outbreaks, and hounding suspicions, which in his closing days became a problem more of pathological or psychopathic interest, than biographic or historical importance. It was this “terrible temper” (Boehm) which brought on the tragedy of alienation, that drove from him his most devoted friends and zealous co-laborers. Every contradiction set him ablaze (Ranke, op. cit., II, 408-415).”Hardly one of us”, is the lament of one of his votaries, “can escape Luther’s anger and his public scourging” (Corp. Ref., V, 314). Carlstadt parted with him in 1522, after what threatened to be a personal encounter (Walch, op. cit., XV, 2423); Melanchthon in plaintive tones speaks of his passion-ate violence, self-will, and tyranny, and does not mince words in confessing the humiliation of his ignoble servitude (“Corp. Ref.”, III, 594; VI, 879); Bucer, prompted by political and diplomatic motives, prudently accepts the inevitable “just as the Lord bestowed him on us”; Zwingli “has become a pagan, (Ecolampadius… and the other heretics have in-devilled, through-devilled, over-devilled corrupt hearts and lying mouths, and no one should pray for them”, all of them “were brought to their death by the fiery darts and spears of the devil” (Walch, op. cit., XX, 223); Calvin and the Reformed are also the possessors of “in-devilled, over-devilled, and through-devilled hearts”; Schurf, the eminent jurist, was changed from an ally to an opponent, with a brutality that defies all explanation or apology; Agricola fell a prey to a repugnance that time did not soften; Schwenkfeld, Amsdorf, Cordatus, all incurred his ill will, forfeited his friendship, and became the butt of his stinging speech. “The Luther, who from a distance was still honored as the hero and leader of the new church, was only tolerated at its center in consideration of his past services” (Ranke,—op. cit., II, 421). The zealous band of men, who once clustered about their standard-bearer, dwindled to an insignificant few, insignificant in number, intellectuality, and personal prestige. A sense of isolation palled the days of his decline. It not alone affected his disposition, but played the most astonishing pranks with his memory. The oftener he details to his table companions, the faithful chroniclers who gave us his “Tischreden”, the horrors of the papacy, the more starless does the night of his monastic life appear. “The picture of his youth grows darker and darker. He finally becomes a myth to himself. Not only do dates shift themselves, but also facts. When the old man drops into telling tales, the past attains the plasticity of wax. He ascribes the same words promiscuously now to this, now to that friend or enemy” (Hausrath, op. cit., II, 432). It was this period that gave birth to the incredibilities, exaggerations, distortions, contradictions, inconsistencies, that make his later writing an inextricable web to untangle and for three hundred years have supplied uncritical historiography with the cock-and-bull fables which unfortunately have been accepted on their face value (Idem, op. cit., II, 430-449). Again the dire results of the Reformation caused him “unspeakable solicitude and grief”. The sober contemplation of the incurable inner wounds of the new Church, the ceaseless quarrels of the preachers, the galling despotism of the temporal rulers, the growing contempt for the clergy, the servility to the princes, made him fairly writhe in anguish. Above all the disintegration of moral and social life, the epidemic ravages of vice and immorality, and that in the very cradle of the Reformation, even in his very household (Köstlin-Kawerau, op. cit., II, 595), nearly drove him frantic. “We live in Sodom and Babylon, affairs are growing daily worse”, is his lament (De Wette, op. cit., V, 722). In the whole Wittenberg district, with its two cities and fifteen parochial villages, he can find “only one peasant and not more, who exhorts his domestics to the Word of God and the catechism, the rest plunge headlong to the devil” (Lauterbach, “Tagebuch”, 113, 114, 135; *Döllinger, “Die Reformation“, I, 293-438). Twice he was on the verge of deserting this “Sodom”, having commissioned his wife (July 28, 1545) to sell all their effects (De Wette, op. cit., V, 753). It required the combined efforts of the university, Bugenhagen, Melanchthon, and the burgomaster to make him change his mind (Köstlin-Kawerau, op. cit., II, 607). And again in December, only the powerful intervention of the elector prevented him carrying out his design (Burkhardt, “Luthers Briefwechsel”, 475-476; 482). Then again came those soul-torturing assaults of the Devil, which left “no rest for even a single day”. His nightly encounters “exhausted and martyred him to an intensity that he was barely able to gasp or take breath”. Of all the assaults “none were more severe or greater than about my preaching, the thought coming to me: All this confusion was caused by you” (Sämmtl. W., LIX, 296; LX, 45-46; 108-109, 111; LXII, 494). His last sermon in Wittenberg (January 17, 1546) is in a vein of despondency and despair. “Usury, drunkenness, adultery, murder, assassination, all these can be noticed, and the world understands them to be sins, but the devil’s bride, reason, that pert prostitute struts in, and will be clever and means what she says, that it is the Holy Ghost” (op. cit., XVI, 142-148). The same day he pens the pathetic lines “I am old, decrepit, indolent, weary, cold, and now have the sight of but one eye” (De Wette, op. cit., V, 778). Nevertheless peace was not his. It was while in this agony of body and torture of mind, that his unsurpassable and irreproducible coarseness attained its culminating point of virtuosity in his anti-Semitic and antipapal pamphlets. “Against the Jews and their Lies” was followed in quick succession by his even more frenzied fusillade “On the Schem lily (1542) and “Against the Papacy established by the Devil” (1545). Here, especially in the latter, all coherent thought and utterance is buried in a torrential deluge of vituperation “for which no pen, much less a printing press should have ever been found” (Menzel, op. cit., II, 352). His mastery in his chosen method of controversy remained unchallenged. His friends had “a feeling of sorrow. His scolding remained unanswered, but also unnoticed” (Ranke, op. cit., II, 421). Accompanying this last volcanic eruption, as a sort of illustrated commentary “that the common man, who is unable to read, may see and understand what he thought of the papacy” (Förstemann), were issued the nine celebrated caricatures of the pope by Lucas Cranach, with expository verses by Luther. These “the coarsest drawings that the history of caricature of all times has ever produced” (Lange, “Der Papstesel”, Göttingen, 1891, 89), were so inexpressibly vile that a common impulse of decency demanded their summary suppression by his friends.