114 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
To this supreme object he sacrificed the fairest prospects of life. He was dead to the world and was willing to be buried out of the sight of men that he might win eternal life. His latter opponents who knew him in convent, have no charge to bring against his moral character except a certain pride and combativeness, and he himself complained of his temptations to anger and envy.’
It was not without significance that the order which he joined, bore the honored name of the greatest Latin father who, next to St. Paul, was to be Luther’s chief teacher of theology and religion ; but it is an error to suppose that this order represented the anti- Pelagian or evangelical views of the North African father; on the contrary it was intensely catholic in doctrine, and given to excessive worship of the Virgin Mary, and obedience to the papal see which conferred upon it many special privileges.
St. Augustin, after his conversion, spent several weeks with some friends in quiet seclusion on a country-seat. near Tagaste, and after his election to the priesthood, at Hippo in 391, he established in a garden a sort of convent where with like-minded brethren and students he led an ascetic life of prayer, meditation and earnest study of the Scriptures, yet engaged at the same time in all the public duties of a preacher, pastor and leader in the theological controversies and ecclesiastical affairs of his age.
His example served as an inspiration and furnished a sort of authority to several monastic associations which arose in the thirteenth century. Pope Alexander IV. (1256) gave them the so-called rule of St. Augustin. They belonged to the mendicant monks, like the Dominicans, Franciscans and Carmelites. They laid great stress on preaching. In other respects they differed little from other monastic orders. In the beginning of the sixteenth century they numbered more than a hundred settlements in Germany. | |
The Augustinian congregation in Saxony was founded in 1493, and presided over since 1503 by John von Staupitz, the Vicar-
1 Kostlin, I., 88 sq., 780.
§ 21. LUTHER AS A MONK. 115
General for Germany, and Luther’s friend. The convent at Erfurt was the largest and most important next to that at Nirnberg. The monks were respected for their zeal in preaching, pastoral care, and theological study. They lived on alms, which they collected themselves in the town and surrounding country. Applicants were received as novices for a year of probation, during which they could reconsider their resolution ; afterward they were bound by perpetual vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience to their superiors. |
_ Luther was welcomed by his brethren with hymns of joy and prayer. He was clothed with a white woollen shirt, in honor of the pure Virgin, a black cowl and frock, tied by a leathern girdle. He assumed the most menial offices to subdue his pride: he swept the floor, begged bread through the streets, and submitted without a murmur to the ascetic severities. He said twenty-five Paternosters with the Ave Maria in each of the seven appointed hours of prayer. He was devoted to the Holy Virgin and even believed, with the Augustinians and Franciscans, in her immaculate conception, or freedom from hereditary sin—a doctrine denied by the Dominicans and not made an article of faith till the year 1854. He regularly confessed his sins to the priest at least once a week. At the same time a complete copy of the — Latin Bible was put into his hands for study, as was enjoined by the new code of statutes drawn up by Staupitz.
At the end of the year of probation Luther solemnly promised to live until death in poverty and chastity according to the rules of the holy father Augustin, to render obedience to Almighty God, to the Virgin Mary, and to the prior of the monastery. He was sprinkled with holy water, as he lay prostrate on the ground in. the form of across. He was greeted as an innocent child fresh from baptism, and assigned to a separate cell with table, bedstead, and chair."
The two years which followed, he divided between pious exer-
1 The cell and furniture were destroyed by fire, March 7, 1872. The cell was reconstructed, and the convent is now an orphan-asylum (Martinsstift).