332 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
away with him in full speed, and brought him about midnight to the Wartburg, where he was to be detained as a noble prisoner of state in charge of Captain von Berlepsch, the governor of the castle.
The scheme had been wisely arranged in Worms by the Elector Frederick, whom Aleander calls “the fox of Saxony.” He wavered between attachment to the old faith and inclination to the new. He could not be sure of Luther’s safety beyond the term of three weeks when the Emperor’s. safeconduct expired; he did not wish to disobey the Emperor, nor, on the other hand, to sacrifice the reformer, his own subject, and the pride of his university. He therefore deemed it best to withdraw him for a season from the public eye. Melanchthon characterizes him truly when he says of Frederick: “ He was not one of those who would stifle changes in their very birth. He was subject to the will of God. He read the writings which were put forth, and would not permit any power to crush what he believed to be true.”
The secret was strictly kept. For several months even John, the Elector’s brother, did not know Luther’s abode, and thought that he was in one of Sickingen’s castles. Conflicting rumors went abroad, and found credence among the crowds who gathered in public places to hear the latest news. Some said, He is dead; others, He is imprisoned, and cruelly treated. Albrecht Durer, the famous painter, who was at that time at Antwerp, and esteemed Luther as “a man enlightened by the Holy Spirit and a confessor of the true Christian faith,” entered in his diary on Pentecost, 1521, the prayer that God may raise up another man in his place, and fill him with the Holy Spirit to heal the wounds of the Church. mesa
The Wartburg is a stately castle on a hill above Eisenach, in the finest part of the Thuringian forest. It combines reminiscences of medieval poetry and piety with those of the Reformation. It was the residence of the Landgraves
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§ 61. LUTHER AT THE WARTBURG. 1521-1522. 333
of Thuringia from 1073 to 1440. There the most famous Minnesiingers, Walther von der Vogelweide, and Wolfram von Eschenbach, graced the court of Hermann I. (1190- 1217); there St. Elizabeth (1207-1281), wife of Landgrave Ludwig, developed her extraordinary virtues of humility and charity, and began those ascetic self-mortifications which her heartless and barbarous confessor, Conrad of Marburg, imposed upon her. But the most interesting relics of the past
are the Lutherstube and the adjoining Reformationszimmer.
The plain furniture of the small room which the Reformer occupied, is still preserved: a table, a chair, a bedstead, a small bookcase, a drinking-tankard, and the knightly armor of Junker Georg, his assumed name. The famous ink-spot is seen no more, and the story is not authentic.1 In the Wartburg the German students celebrated, in October, 1817, the third jubilee of the Reformation; in the Wartburg Dr. Merle d’Aubigné of Geneva received the inspiration for his eloquent history of the Reformation, which had a wider circulation, at least in the English translation, than any other book on church history; in the Wartburg the Eisenach Conference of the various Lutheran church-governments of Germany inaugurates its periodical sessions for the consultative discussion of matters of common interest, as the revision of the Luther-Bible. The castle was handsomely restored and decorated in medizval style, in 1847.
Luther’s sojourn in this romantic solitude extended through nearly eleven months, and alternated between recreation and work, health and sickness, high courage and deep despondency. Considering that he there translated the New Testament, it was the most useful year of his life. He gives a full
1 On my last visit, July 31, 1886, I saw only scratches and disfigurements on the wall where the ink-spot was formerly pointed out. ‘‘ No old reporter,’’ says Kostlin, I. 472 sq., “‘ knows any thing about the spot of the inkstand on the wall; the story arose probably from a spot of a different sort.’’ Semler saw such an ink-spot at Coburg. The legend, however, embodies a true idea,