386 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 15380.
skies as a great reformer; others, especially the priests, denounced him as an intolerable heretic. During the conversation two traders came in; one took from his pocket Luther’s sermons on the Gospels and Epistles, and remarked that the writer must be either an angel from heaven or a devil from hell. At dinner Luther gave them a rare feast of reason and flow of soul. The astonished students suspected that the mysterious knight was Ulrich von Hutten, when Luther, turning to the host, smilingly remarked, *“ Behold, I have become a nobleman over the night: these Swiss think that I am Hutten; you take me for Luther. The next thing will be that Iam Marcolfus.” He gave his young friends good advice to study the biblical languages with Melanchthon, paid their bill, offered them first a glass of beer, but substituted for it a glass of wine, since the Swiss were not used to beer, and with a shake of the hand he begged them to remember him to Doctor Jerome Schurf, their countryman, at Wittenberg. When they wished to know the name of the sender of the salutation, he replied, “Simply tell him that he who is coming sends greeting, and he will understand it.”
When the students a few days afterwards arrived at Wittenberg, and called on Dr. Schurf to deliver the message from “him who is coming,” they were agreeably surprised to find Luther there with Melanchthon, Jonas, and Amsdorf. Luther greeted them heartily, and introduced them to Melanchthon, of whom he had spoken at Jena.
The same student has left us a description of Luther’s appearance at that time. He was no more the meager, emaciated monk as at the Leipzig disputation three years previously,! but, as Kessler says, “somewhat stout, yet upright, bending backwards rather than stooping, with a face upturned to heaven, with deep dark eyes and eyebrows, twinkling and sparkling like stars, so that one could hardly look steadily at
1 See the description of Mosellanus, p. 180.
§ 68. LUTHER RESTORES ORDER IN WITTENBERG. 387
them.” ! These deep, dark eyes, full of strange fire, had struck Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, and Cardinal Aleander at Worms, as the eyes of a demon. They made the same impression on John Dantiscus, afterwards bishop of Culm and Ermeland, who on his return from Spain to Poland in 1523 saw Luther in Wittenberg; he reported that his “eyes were sharp, and had a certain terrible coruscation of lightning such as was seen now and then in demoniacs,” and adds that “his features were like his books,” and “his speech violent and full. of scorn.” But friends judged differently. Another student, Albert Burrer, who saw him after his return from the Wartburg, praises his mild, kindly countenance, his pleasant sonorous voice, his charming address, the piety of his words and acts, the power of his eloquence which moved every hearer not made of stone, and created a desire to hear him again and again.’
δ 68. Luther restores Order in Wittenberg.— The End of Carlstadt.
I. Hight Sermons of LUTHER preached from Sunday, March 7 (Invocavit) to the next Sunday (Reminiscere), after his return to Wittenberg. The oldest editions, slightly varying in length, appeared 1523. Altenb. ed., IT. 99 sqq.; WALCH, XV. 2423 sqq.: XX. 1-101; Erl. ed., X XVIII. 202- 285 (both recensions). LUTHER’S Letters to Spalatin, the Elector, and others from March, 1522, in DE WETTE, IT. 144 sqq.
II. Of modern historians, MARHEINCKE, MERLE D’AUBIGNE, RANKE, HAGENBACH, and KOSTLIN (I. 537-549) may be compared.
On the Sunday after his arrival, Luther ascended his old pulpit, and re-appeared before his congregation of citizens and students, Wittenberg was a small place; but what he said and did there, and what Calvin did afterwards in Geneva, had the significance of a world-historical fact, more influential at that time than an encyclical from Rome.
1“ Mit tiefen, schwarzen Augen und Braunen blinzend und zwitzerlnd wie ein Stern, dass die nit wohl mégen angesehen werden.’ 2 KOstlin, I. 536, with references, p. 805.