Luther’s later years

Martin Luther’s later years have not generally been regarded by his biographers as his best. Increasing narrowness and intolerance have been identified by admirers such as Gerhard Ritter, who described it as ‘disappointing, almost tragic, to see how the stormy, openhearted enthusiasm of the early years gradually changes into dogmatic rigidity’. Luther’s anti-Catholic writings, and in particular his unrestrained attack on the pope and the papacy in 1545, firmly shut the door on any reconciliation with Rome. In the second section of the present chapter, we shall consider his response to the bigamous marriage of a leading Lutheran prince, Philip of Hesse. His devious behaviour over that issue was described by Preserved Smith (who called the older Luther ‘an embittered, almost a disappointed man’) as ‘a terrible scandal’. Above all, Luther’s appalling anti-Jewish works of 1543 have been deplored by some of his keenest supporters among historians: Roland Bainton, in Here I Stand, wished that Luther had died before he wrote ‘Concerning the Jews and their Lies’ of that year, and the American editors of Luther’s works in the 1971 volume of the great series weighed up the pros and cons of what would have been a grave editorial decision – to delete from their edition a major item in the Luther oeuvre, for fear it would legitimate new waves of modern antisemitism. In this chapter, though, while not flinching from a realisation of the distasteful side of ageing Luther, we shall also evaluate his positive achievements of the 1530s and 40s before his death in 1546, focusing on scriptural translation and continuing doctrinal creativity.