How did Luther Die?
P. Javier Olivera Ravasi
The
official Protestant version narrates that the greatest architect of the
Christian rupture died of a natural death on February 15, 1546, after a
trip to Eisleben and suffering from angina pectoris; Was it really like
this?
A
contemporary German scholar, Dietrich Emme, offers a very different
version in a review of events. In his book "Martin Luther, Seine Jugend
und Studienzeit 1483-1505. Eine dokumentarische Darstelleng "[1]
("Martin Luther: Youth and Years of Study from 1483 to 1505. Bonn 1983")
points out that Luther committed suicide, and he is not alone in
pointing this out.
Likewise,
a Freudian psychoanalyst, M. Roland Dalbiez, in his study Luther's
Anguish [2], attributes him "... a very serious neurosis of anguish, so
grave that one may wonder whether it has not been due to a border-state
between neurosis on the one hand and “suicide raptus” on the other, a
teleological anti-suicidal automatism"[3].
Indeed,
Luther had suicidal tendencies, as it can be corroborated in his own
"Tischreden" ("Table Talk"), where one of his conversations with Pastor
Güben Leonhard Beyer, in 1551 is documented:
"He
told us that when he was a prisoner the devil had wickedly tormented
him and that he had laughed heartily when he (Luther) took a knife in
his hand, saying:" Go ahead! Kill yourself! "(...). This has happened to
me very often, so much as to put a knife in my hand ... and what evil
thoughts came to mind in this way, so evil that I could no longer pray
"[4].
In
1606, Franciscan Heinrich Sedulius in his "Preaescriptiones adversus
haereses", narrates something analogous bringing up the valuable
testimony of Ambrosio Kudtfeld, a witness and man of confidence of the
"reformer" who, far from accounting a death from angina , says:
"On
the night before his death, Martin Luther let himself be overcome by
his habitual intemperance and in such excess that we were obliged to
take him, completely drunk, and place him in his bed. Then, we retired
to our bedroom, without sensing anything unpleasant! The next morning,
we went back to our lord to help him get dressed, as usual. Then - oh,
what a pain! - we saw our master Martin hanging from the bed and
strangled miserably! His mouth was crooked, th right part of his face
was black, his neck was red and deformed."[5]
"In
the face of this horrible spectacle, we felt great fear! We ran,
without delay, to the princes, his guests of the day before, to announce
to them the execrable end of Luther! They, full of terror like us,
immediately promised us, with a thousand promises and the most solemn
oaths, to observe, with respect to that event, an eternal silence. Then
they ordered us to remove the rope from Luther's hideous corpse, lay him
on his bed, and then report to the people that "Master Luther" had
suddenly abandoned this life!"[6]
Maritain
himself points out that Dr. De Coster, who examined Luther, explained
that the deceased's mouth was crooked with the face black and the neck
red and deformed [7].Likewise,
Oratorian priest Bozio, in his book "De Signis Ecclesiae", published in
1592 [8], points out that one of the reformer's household indicated that his lord was found hanged from the columns of his bed; Dr. Géorges
Claudin says the same: [9].
As
Villa points out, "Luther, then, did not die a natural death, as has
been falsely written in all the history books of Protestantism, but died as a
as suicidal, hanged from his bed after a splendid dinner, in
which, as usual, he had drunk too much and was satisfied with food
beyond all bounds!"[10].
Paradoxically, that February 15, 1546, feast of the Chair of St. Peter, he, who
had railed against the Church, the Papacy, and the Catholic doctrine, voluntarily abandoned his mortal life at three in the morning, the
anti-hour of Redemption that Our Lord Jesus Christ brought to us on
Calvary.
It's sad: but that's the end of those who live in a bad way. Don’t let them deceive you…
Luther's
Death Mask
1] It
is worth saying that the two most competent historians in Germany on
Luther’s life: Dr. Theobald Beer and Prof. Remigius Baumer, have
corroborated both the material and the documents cited by Emme.
[2] Roland Dalbiez, L’angoisse de Luther, Tequi, Paris 1974.
[4] Luigi Villa, op. cit., 12 13.
[6] Ibídem. An
interesting coincidence is that Maritain narrates in his book “Three
Reformers” that several friends, companions and first disciples of
Luther also committed suicide.
[7] Maritain’s information is contained in the French edition, not the Spanish one.
[8] Tomás Bozio, De signis Ecclesiae, Pedro Landry, Lyon 1593-1594, 3 vols.
[10] Luigi Villa, op. Cit., 17.
