0:03

On the 31st of October 1517, a

0:06

tonsured monk and

0:08

academic who called himself Martin

0:10

Luther nailed or perhaps

0:12

glued a list of theological

0:14

points for disputation to

0:16

the door of the Church of Wittenberg

0:19

Castle. It was an

0:21

act that would spark a massive confrontation

0:23

with the papacy and what would subsequently

0:25

come to be called the Protestant Reformation.

0:29

2017 which became known as the Luther

0:31

Yarr was the 500th anniversary of that

0:33

occasion and in that year there

0:36

was a series of events and exhibitions to

0:38

mark the half millennium. But

0:40

the man behind all those celebrations,

0:43

the man for whom they were

0:45

all performed, was a curious mixture

0:48

of chutzpah and anxiety, of masculine

0:50

pugilism and melancholic

0:52

obscenities. And given that

0:54

I've just used a Eudys phrase, we should

0:56

also note that he was a massive anti-Semite.

0:59

So today I'm joined by a historian

1:02

who has thought deeply about Luther's character

1:04

and his legacy to

1:06

discover how we should mark the

1:08

lives and achievements of

1:10

heroes with flaws. Professor

1:21

Lindell Roper is Regis Professor at

1:23

the University of Oxford and the

1:25

first woman to hold the position

1:27

and she is an historian of

1:29

extraordinary wit and sensitivity. She

1:32

has written books about the German witchcraft

1:34

trials of the 16th and 17th centuries,

1:37

witchcraze, terror and fantasy in Baroque

1:39

Germany and Oedipus and the Devil,

1:41

witchcraft, religion and sexuality in early

1:43

modern Europe. And in

1:45

2016 she published a magisterial

1:47

biography of the reformer Martin

1:50

Luther, Renegade and Prophet. She

1:53

recently followed this up with the

1:55

intriguingly titled Living I Was Your

1:57

Plague, Martin Luther's world

2:00

and legacy in which she wrestles with

2:02

some aspects of Luther's thought and how

2:04

he's been commemorated, aspects which he felt

2:07

from reflection she needed to interrogate further.

2:10

And that's what I talk with her about today.

2:13

I should also note on a

2:15

personal level that Lindel Roper is

2:17

one of perhaps three historians who

2:20

has influenced me very greatly in

2:22

intellectual terms and also

2:25

as a personal example of what

2:27

it means to be a scholar. Lindel,

2:31

thank you for joining me today.

2:33

Maybe we can start with some

2:36

biographical outlines. So could

2:38

you perhaps tell me about Martin

2:40

Luther's formation and his journey to

2:42

perhaps posting those 95 thesis

2:44

on that church door in Brittenberg in 1517? Thank

2:48

you, Susie. It's great to be able to

2:50

talk about all this. The thing that I

2:53

think is really crucial to understanding Luther is

2:55

that he grew up in a mining town.

2:57

So we've got to imagine

2:59

Luther growing up in a world where you would

3:01

have been able to see the

3:04

flag heaps everywhere, play in them

3:06

perhaps. You would have

3:08

smelled the smells of a mining

3:10

area and seen the smoke and

3:12

seen the wagons coming down the

3:14

hills with the wood and the

3:16

coal. And you would have had a

3:18

real sense of this very

3:20

different world from the world in

3:23

which most humanists grew up. They

3:25

mainly grew up in these independent

3:27

imperial cities about which we always

3:30

knew so much more. Towns

3:32

which are full of crafts

3:35

and had their own very proud history

3:37

that stretches way back and are politically

3:39

independent. That wasn't Luther's

3:42

world. He's in this world where

3:44

you really have to stand your ground,

3:47

where even the property rights in

3:49

the mines are not secure and

3:52

you're dependent on the counts

3:55

and the counts are literally above you. You

3:57

can see them up on the hill in

3:59

their castle and they look

4:01

down on you and they're the

4:04

ones who ultimately have the power and it's

4:07

a world where you

4:10

have to stand your ground and

4:12

you have to be willing

4:14

to back your case

4:17

with your fists if need be.

4:20

It's quite a rough place, that's the

4:22

sense I got from it. Looking through

4:24

the criminal records and what

4:26

people got fined for, throwing beer

4:28

jugs at one another and it

4:30

was a different world from the

4:32

world that I was familiar with

4:34

when I worked on 16th century

4:36

Germany before. I think

4:39

that that background, that

4:42

sense of industrial

4:45

process, it's a world

4:47

of mining, of physical labour where

4:49

there are really huge workforces and

4:52

there's a lot of inequality and

4:54

I think that's the world Luther comes

4:56

from and he understands a world where

4:59

laws rule and you

5:01

obey and I think that's a

5:03

very different understanding from so many

5:06

other humanists at the time who

5:08

thought about civic independence, who

5:11

thought about citizenship, electing

5:13

your council members and your

5:16

council members ruling you.

5:18

So I think that shapes his

5:20

theology and his fundamental allegiances and

5:22

he's a bit of an outsider

5:25

and I think that's very important

5:27

in understanding him. So

5:29

you're giving a sense of a

5:31

background that would have been crucial in

5:34

terms of determining his response

5:36

to law which is so important

5:38

in his theology and also thinking

5:40

about his character and his approach

5:42

to masculinity and what that meant and those

5:44

are both things that have come out in

5:46

what you've written. How do you think that

5:48

that upbringing affected him in those ways? I

5:51

think it gives him a strong sense

5:53

of your body and the importance of

5:55

physical work. That's the

5:57

thing that's so lovely about Luther. He has a really good.

6:00

You. People physicality

6:02

of bodies He doesn't have

6:04

a prudish attitude towards all

6:06

kinds of physical processes he

6:08

holds joke about desiccation he

6:10

will often or so digestion

6:13

many times I look for

6:15

a mess of for i

6:17

think you're absolutely right it

6:19

gets him are very strong

6:21

sense of being a man

6:23

is that that's a physical

6:25

thing that's about aggression really

6:27

and standing your ground. I

6:30

think it's also it's world where

6:32

his life really was set out

6:34

by his dad. It's a tiny

6:36

group, this little elite that he

6:38

comes home. He wasn't a coal

6:40

miner, quite the opposite. He comes

6:42

from the elites his father is

6:44

than mine owner effectively. And.

6:47

That little cross to people all in

6:49

to marry. Less a

6:51

very small number of the it's. And

6:54

you can see that his

6:56

siblings married. To that group and

6:58

that's where he should have married to

7:00

and so what are they do with

7:03

him? Will I sent him to do

7:05

law? because if you're a minor, not

7:07

and the lease terms are insecure or.

7:09

What? You need is a law specialist

7:12

in your family to find your corner.

7:15

So. That's what his role is in

7:17

the family and supremacists of were. So

7:19

when he's in a thunderstorm and he

7:21

praised isn't an and send an is

7:23

the patron saint of mine is when

7:25

he praised to her and says well

7:28

if you get me out of this.

7:30

I'm gonna become a month. And she

7:33

is saved. When. he does

7:35

all that he's just destroying his

7:37

father's entire family plans because instead

7:39

of coming back and marrying the

7:41

woman from one of the other

7:43

mining families and size securing the

7:45

lines in the future of everybody's

7:47

into marrying to secure their leases

7:49

instead of doing that he says

7:51

no i'm gonna be a month

7:54

or not going to get married

7:56

i'm not going to be a

7:58

lawyer on not going to do

8:00

anything for the family business and

8:02

I'm just going to dedicate myself to God

8:04

and be poor. That is

8:07

just a huge rejection of

8:09

this whole life plan that

8:12

everybody in that elite bought into.

8:15

And he changed his name which I

8:17

hadn't realised before I read your work

8:20

and that seems so important in

8:22

terms of that sense of rejection

8:25

at the time. So

8:27

instead of being Martin Luda he

8:30

calls himself Lutta but he

8:32

goes through a whole process by which he

8:34

arrived at that name and again one of

8:36

those things that I hadn't realised was so

8:38

important until I started thinking about it and

8:40

looking at well who changes their name why

8:42

did they do that and it's

8:45

so interesting because Luther is not

8:47

the only person to change his

8:49

name in that way and indeed

8:51

his famous biographer who wrote the

8:53

psychoanalytic study of Luther Eric Erickson

8:55

also invented his name. I think

8:57

it's very very interesting how this

8:59

happens and what you're saying when

9:01

you say I'm not having

9:04

my father's name. Okay

9:06

what Luther does is a sort of

9:08

reinvention of it and first

9:11

what he calls himself is

9:13

Eloiterius which sounds like Luda

9:16

but what he means is

9:19

he means that he is the freed

9:21

one so it's in Greek he

9:23

as the one who was

9:25

freed from feeling damned and

9:27

he uses that self

9:30

description around about the time that he

9:32

does the ninety-five theses and

9:34

then gradually he shortens that and

9:36

it eventually becomes Luther

9:39

and it's a great way of

9:41

saying well I'm going to establish

9:43

my own lineage my own family

9:46

line and his children aren't called

9:48

Luda they're called Luda. Every

9:50

now and again you'll see that name Luda crop

9:52

up again and in fact

9:54

Luther never gives up on the

9:56

family mind and he dies trying

9:58

to sort out a spirit

10:01

between two of the counts of

10:03

Mancefeldt where he was born, he goes right

10:05

back home to the mining

10:07

town where she came from, he tries

10:10

to make peace between the kings and

10:12

it's January, February, the weather is

10:15

terrible and he dies

10:17

in the attempt. So it

10:19

remains something that's really important to

10:21

him despite all his rejection of

10:24

it. And

10:26

that sense of liberation or freedom

10:28

that he tries to encapsulate in

10:30

his name comes out in everything

10:33

that you're saying, in his liberation from

10:35

the plan to go into law and

10:37

to marry into that family, his liberation

10:39

in the end from law

10:41

itself in terms of God and

10:44

thinking instead about grace and

10:46

his kind of liberated attitude towards the

10:48

body even. It seems to come out

10:51

again and again. Yes, that's really interesting.

10:54

But I don't think it was a sort

10:56

of one-off experience. And

10:58

when Luther is doing his own

11:00

life history, he really wants to

11:03

model himself on St Paul's with whom

11:05

he identifies so much and whose writings

11:07

he keeps turning to again and again

11:09

and again. And I

11:11

think he wants to present himself

11:13

as having a conversion experience and

11:16

suddenly the door is being thrown

11:18

open as he puts it and entering the

11:20

gates of paradise. It's

11:22

a wonderful passage. But when

11:25

you try and think, well, when this is

11:27

happening, if you look at the order that he's

11:29

describing his life, it's in the wrong place because

11:32

it happens as he describes

11:35

it in 1519. So it's two years

11:37

after the 95 Theses. That can't be

11:39

right. And I think there's a way

11:41

in which, well, we all

11:43

do it, don't we? We go back to

11:45

a turning point to

11:47

imagining that our lives changed dramatically

11:49

in a different direction in a

11:52

single moment. But for

11:54

Luther too, there wasn't a single

11:56

moment and there wasn't a sudden

11:58

conversion. the way

12:01

that he imagines it, he

12:04

does it in terms of St

12:06

Paul and St Paul's experience of

12:08

becoming not Saul but Paul, changing

12:10

your name interestingly enough and a

12:12

road to Damascus experience. I

12:15

think actually Luther's theology develops

12:17

in leaps and bounds after

12:19

1517, but

12:22

it never loses its Augustinianism. He

12:24

really is formed as an Augustinian

12:27

monk when he dedicates himself to

12:29

St Anne and goes into the

12:31

monastery and airports. Many

12:34

of the ideas and

12:36

the fundamental tension that

12:38

he has between this

12:41

feeling of unfeshed or

12:43

tribulation, that's something that

12:45

he has all his life right

12:48

until the very end. And actually that's

12:50

one of the things why I find

12:52

him so compelling and interesting because he's

12:54

not someone who then has a sort

12:57

of land religion where there's no doubt,

12:59

where there's no emotion, where there's no

13:01

developmental change. He's someone

13:03

who is in

13:06

struggle with God and

13:09

with his own sense

13:12

of sinfulness and with his

13:14

own fear about not being

13:16

saved and his inability to

13:18

trust totally in God's grace. That's

13:21

there throughout his life, that

13:23

sort of fundamental emotional tension.

13:25

Yes, I found it really interesting when

13:27

I was reading your latest book

13:30

when you talked about his temptations

13:32

and his anxieties and

13:34

that he had this fear

13:37

that if he'd got it wrong he would

13:40

have damned thousands of people and that

13:43

had never occurred to me before. But of

13:45

course to have made such major change, to

13:47

have broken with the papacy in

13:49

quite such a way was to take

13:51

huge responsibility in theological terms. Yes,

13:54

that one is such a wonderful story, it's

13:56

really late in his life and

13:58

he goes back to a past... that he's read

14:01

a million times. He looks at it

14:03

again, he thinks, oh, I think I've

14:05

got it wrong. And the whole night

14:07

he can't sleep, he's convinced that he's

14:09

damned all these people. And he's

14:12

convinced because he goes to his own

14:15

father confessor. And interestingly, he kept a

14:17

father confessor all his life. And

14:20

this was Johannes Bügenhagen. And he

14:22

went to Bügenhagen before the

14:24

nightfall and said to Bügenheim, how

14:26

do you understand doesn't mean

14:29

this. And Bügenhagen says, yeah, probably

14:31

does. And then that's the interpretation

14:33

that for Luther is the wrong

14:35

one. So he goes to

14:38

bed convinced that he's damned so

14:40

many souls to death. And

14:42

then in the morning, he gets up and

14:44

goes to Bügenhagen again, and Bügenhagen

14:46

says, you idiot, of course it doesn't mean that.

14:50

And only then is he relieved.

14:54

And it's that ability that he

14:56

has as a theologian to

14:58

rethink and to realise the

15:00

enormity of his position that

15:03

I find very attractive, despite all the

15:05

other things about Luther that are much

15:07

more difficult to deal with. Well,

15:12

let's talk about one or two

15:14

of those difficult things. One thing

15:16

you're deeply observant about is Luther's chauvinism,

15:18

I suppose, and the way

15:21

in which his jolliness,

15:23

which we hear so much about

15:25

from the table talk and hear about

15:27

how he was in person, was a

15:29

kind of bullying at times towards women

15:31

around him. And you have this lovely

15:33

phrase where you talk about this kind

15:35

of bullying manhood may mesmerise even though

15:37

it grinds down, which seems to me

15:39

an observation with lots of parallels today.

15:42

So I was thinking about how you

15:44

think Luther used that sense of his

15:46

manhood to gain power to mesmerise. That's

15:49

a really interesting observation. But I think

15:52

one of the other absolutely fascinating things

15:54

about Luther is that what he is

15:56

actually doing in bringing about the rest

15:58

of the world. reformation is

16:01

probably one of the greatest changes in

16:05

masculinity as a social role. So

16:07

that at the same time as

16:09

he's creating and presenting a

16:11

certain kind of masculinity, he is also

16:13

doing certain kind of

16:15

masculinity, which is one of the very rare

16:18

moments. I think we think of masculinity as

16:20

pretty unchanging, but actually

16:22

it does take different forms.

16:24

And I think the reformation is one moment

16:26

where you can really see that. And the

16:28

reason to that is that before

16:32

the reformation, you do have

16:34

an ideal of masculinity that

16:36

can apply to monks. A

16:38

monk can epitomise a certain

16:40

kind of masculinity. That's

16:42

a masculinity that's about bodily

16:44

control, about being chased, not

16:46

having sex, and yet

16:49

not being any less of a

16:51

man for that. Being

16:53

a man who

16:55

can do intellectual work

16:57

without imperiling manhood, it's

16:59

a whole vision of

17:01

masculinity, which is not

17:03

about being the head of

17:06

a household. Whereas

17:08

in the lay world of which

17:10

Luther was part, apart from monks

17:12

and then priests who have a

17:15

different kind of masculinity again, secular

17:18

manhood is very much about

17:20

being a father, having authority,

17:23

and your masculinity being about

17:25

heading a household. So

17:28

what Luther's doing is attacking

17:30

monks and saying monks

17:33

are not real men. Monks

17:35

are just engaged in lecturing.

17:39

Monks are really obsessed

17:41

with physicality, and

17:43

I'm a real man, and they're not.

17:45

And it's very interesting that a lot

17:47

of the insults that he uses against

17:50

the clergy are sexual. So when he's

17:52

attacking the pope, he calls

17:54

her, as he puts it, she is

17:56

Pope Paul or last, the third, she's

17:58

not Pope Paul. all that fluff,

18:01

fluff. And she's a

18:04

creature who is both male

18:06

and female. And he'd go on and on

18:08

and on for pages about all of this.

18:11

So he's attacking the

18:14

masculinity of the clergy. And

18:16

he's saying, there is no

18:18

clerical estate. Clergy are

18:20

not different from other men. They

18:23

should get married. And so what

18:25

he's doing in another way is saying there is

18:27

only one way to be a real man.

18:30

So he's doing all of that. And

18:32

I mean, if you think about his own life, he

18:35

would not have expected to get married. And

18:37

suddenly, there he is, as he puts it,

18:40

waking up with a pair of pigtail on a

18:42

pillow next to him. And how do you deal

18:44

with it if that's not what you

18:46

thought your life would be? So

18:49

he himself is working out

18:51

his own masculinity. And

18:54

what he does is develop a

18:57

kind of manhood, which is

18:59

large in every sense. About

19:02

the point where his father

19:04

dies, he starts filling

19:06

out, becoming large. And people remark

19:08

on this. And he

19:10

has a very confident four-square

19:13

masculinity. It does

19:15

go with a very bullying rhetoric very

19:17

often. It's really interesting

19:19

to compare Luther and Melanchthon. Melanchthon's

19:21

probably the guy we haven't heard

19:24

about as much. But

19:26

you couldn't have Luther without Melanchthon. You

19:28

need both of them for the Reformation.

19:30

Melanchthon is the

19:32

brilliant Greek scholar. He

19:35

got more audience in his lectures in

19:37

Wittenberg than Luther did. So

19:39

I'm sure there's a tension between the two

19:41

of them. Melanchthon

19:44

represents a very different

19:46

style within this male

19:48

model. He's married.

19:51

He has children. But

19:53

his slightest stature, he's not tall.

19:55

And Luther always worries about his

19:58

health and makes sure he's gets

20:00

married early on so that someone

20:02

will be looking after him if he's

20:04

not a happy marriage. So

20:07

there's a lot of tension between the two

20:09

of them and

20:11

what you can see at moments of

20:13

tension and especially around about the time

20:15

of the Diet of Alksburg in 1530

20:18

which is the moment at which Lutheranism

20:22

starts to really establish itself

20:24

as a separate church and

20:27

where the Lutherans come up with their

20:29

confession of faith which they present to

20:31

John the V and become clearly and

20:34

separately different from the Catholic Church

20:36

and at that point Luther

20:39

can't be there, he can't be

20:41

in Alksburg doing the negotiations because

20:43

he's an outlaw so Melanchthon

20:45

is doing it and

20:47

what you see there in the letters

20:49

that Luther writes to Melanchthon is

20:52

the way that he teases him

20:54

for crying too much, for

20:56

being too emotional, for not

20:58

being a man and he says be a

21:01

man and he really

21:03

attacks Melanchthon's masculinity

21:05

in a way that I

21:07

found quite disturbing. The

21:09

other parallel that came to mind for

21:12

me was between him and

21:14

Henry VIII, two men who well Henry at

21:16

least hates Martin Luther, I don't know how

21:18

Luther feels about Henry, but who both also

21:20

prompt the schism with the Roman Catholic Church

21:22

in different ways and also

21:24

that both men have these as

21:27

you say four square masculine

21:29

faces and figures that are familiar

21:31

to us because of the work

21:33

of two great artists and

21:36

you've talked about in your book

21:38

how Lucas Cranach's portraits made

21:40

Luther's face into a brand.

21:43

Why do you think the dissemination of his appearance was so

21:45

critical to the success of

21:47

the Reformation? Well it's an accident.

21:49

I think if you want to start a Reformation

21:52

it's a really good idea to have a world

21:54

leading artist living just around

21:56

the corner and that's what happened.

21:59

But A lot of it is

22:01

to do with Bittenberg as a place. It's

22:04

in the back of the Yond. It's

22:06

a tiny town, 2000

22:08

inhabitants maybe, except backwater.

22:11

There's only one artist there and that's

22:13

Cranach and so he has to import

22:15

absolutely everything. If you're

22:18

in Nuremberg, I mean goodness, Nuremberg's

22:20

packed with artists, you've got what?

22:23

50, 100 artists, same in Augsburg.

22:26

So all the materials that

22:28

you need, like the wooden panels,

22:30

like the pigments, that's kind

22:32

of not a problem for you to get.

22:35

But it's different for Cranach in Wittenberg.

22:37

He has to set up the

22:40

whole trade framework to get the

22:42

things that he needs in order

22:44

to paint. And the

22:47

other thing I think about Cranach is

22:49

that I think thinking of him as

22:51

an artist is almost misleading. I don't

22:54

see him as an artist primarily and

22:56

whenever you have exhibitions of Cranach, the

22:58

catalogue ensues nearly always explain, this is

23:00

early Cranach, this is very good. But

23:03

as time went on, Cranach produced more

23:05

and more formulaic stuff and indeed as

23:07

you go through the exhibition and

23:10

you go past those espen-nude women

23:12

and there's one after another and they're all the

23:15

same, you start feeling

23:17

cloyed, you have too much of

23:19

it and it becomes very

23:21

repetitive. I started

23:23

counting how many dresses the Cranach

23:26

women have and I think

23:28

there are three and I share them between

23:30

them. Trying

23:32

to treat him as a grandmaster in

23:34

the European tradition really misses

23:36

what Cranach is doing. He's about

23:38

image creation I think and

23:41

he's about how you create

23:43

a recognisable look out

23:45

of a set of components and

23:48

you can see because we've got the tracings

23:50

that the workshop used so

23:52

that even people who were

23:55

not terribly skilled could reproduce these

23:57

images from the elements that the workshop used.

24:00

shop had. We know for instance

24:02

that he did over 60

24:04

Lucretius. You just go

24:06

in there and say, I like Lucretius

24:08

please and I'd like this landscape and

24:11

Crowner's your man. He'll produce that because

24:14

it's about how you

24:16

generate an image multiple

24:19

times and if you think that

24:21

this is the point at which

24:23

printing is happening, no wonder that's

24:25

what Crowner was interested in. It

24:27

was how you take something

24:29

and multiply it. How do

24:31

you reproduce something hundreds and

24:34

hundreds of times and how

24:36

can an artist do that

24:38

with the visual so that

24:40

the visual style of someone

24:42

becomes universal and just

24:44

seen in a whole host of different

24:46

contexts and I think that's what he

24:48

did with Luther's face.

24:51

Produced it as something that you could

24:53

have on book findings, you could have

24:55

it on theamugs, you could have it

24:58

on glass, you could

25:00

have it as a print that you could

25:02

stick up on your wall, you

25:04

could have it as something in a page

25:07

and I think that's what

25:09

he's doing and I think

25:11

that that is a

25:14

really important way in which

25:16

Lutheranism spread because it became

25:19

visually recognizable. It's

25:21

visually recognizable and of

25:24

course it's also orally recognizable

25:26

because of the importance

25:28

of music and hymns in the

25:30

Lutheran Reformation. Ah

25:33

yes, that's right. Of course, so actually

25:35

in two very important ways, people humming

25:37

to themselves, singing these hymns and seeing

25:39

these pictures, it's borrowing

25:41

two very catchy ways of passing

25:44

messages on. Yes, yes.

25:46

So it's very, very different from

25:48

Calvin and from what I

25:50

think we often assume that Protestantism does.

25:53

We think that Protestantism is hostile

25:55

to the image, we think

25:58

that Protestantism is hostile to physical

26:01

and we think that it reaches a

26:03

sort of dodgy accommodation with music. Luther

26:05

is the opposite of all of those

26:07

things. He loves music, he

26:09

loves and understands the visual and

26:12

he doesn't have a negative attitude

26:14

towards the body at all. He's

26:16

not a sexual purism. He

26:18

does seem at times to be

26:21

completely obsessed with shit basically, with

26:23

obscenities, with scatology, if I would

26:25

put it in slightly more academic

26:27

terms, with corporality. Why is

26:30

he mostly so crude and coarse? Well,

26:33

because I think that

26:35

what is really interesting about Luther

26:38

is that most Christian thinkers make

26:40

a big division between flesh and

26:42

spirit. And most of

26:44

them try to say, spirit is

26:47

good and flesh is bad. You need

26:49

to mortify the flesh, you need to get rid of

26:51

it, you need not to talk about it. But

26:56

the thing about Luther is he doesn't split

26:58

like that, he integrates. I

27:00

mean, for a Christian thinker, he

27:02

is extraordinarily positive about the

27:05

body. So he says things

27:07

like asking a monk to

27:09

keep a vow of chastity is

27:12

like telling you not to

27:14

bite your own nose. It's

27:17

just something that can't be done.

27:19

And that is

27:21

at the heart of his theology. And also

27:23

one of the things that I found most

27:26

hard to understand, but was actually

27:28

crucial to understanding what I

27:30

think he's doing as a theologian. We

27:33

all think about Luther as being

27:35

the person who insists on grace

27:38

and on salvation through

27:41

faith alone. But I

27:43

think what he actually spent more time

27:45

on is on the

27:48

idea that Christ is really present

27:50

in the elements of bread and

27:52

wine in the Eucharist.

27:55

And that I think is a very

27:58

hard thing for people

28:00

to understand because it's not

28:02

rational and it's not

28:05

the line that Calvin takes. He takes

28:07

the line that you would expect. He separates

28:10

flesh and spirit and says of course

28:12

Christ isn't really present in the bread

28:15

and wine but he's

28:17

present to the believer through faith and

28:20

it's a memorial meal. It's

28:22

not an actual meal. Whereas

28:24

Luther says no Christ really

28:27

is present in the bread

28:29

and the wine and

28:31

he takes a different position

28:33

from the Catholic Church which

28:36

explains it in terms of the miracle

28:38

of the accidents and the essence. So

28:40

what happens is that the bread and

28:42

wine look exactly the same. They taste

28:45

the same. They smell the same but

28:47

their essence has been changed and it's

28:49

become the bread and body of Christ.

28:52

That's kind of a rational explanation

28:54

which you can understand and Luther

28:56

says no. They are at one

28:58

and the same time both bread

29:01

and wine and the

29:03

body and blood of Christ and this is a miracle.

29:05

We can't understand it

29:07

but that's what we

29:09

believe. That is what faith is

29:11

about and I think that

29:14

insistence on the importance of the

29:16

real presence it's something

29:18

that comes from this positive

29:20

attitude towards the physical world

29:23

and towards bodies and

29:25

I think it's very very deep in Luther

29:27

and it's why he's also a bit of

29:29

an anarchist. He was destined

29:31

for the law but he really doesn't like

29:34

laws and rules and regulations. He

29:36

likes to work on a case-by-case basis

29:39

and it interested driven people at the

29:41

time nuts because if you're redivising marriage

29:44

law because you chuck the idea that marriage

29:46

is in sacrament and you've got someone like

29:48

Luther saying well in this case I think

29:50

this and then in another case I think

29:52

this and you're trying to devise

29:54

a set of law when you've thrown over

29:57

canon law that must have

29:59

been terribly frustrating. Calvin is

30:01

the system builder, Luther is

30:04

fundamentally opposed to

30:07

laws and institutions in some

30:10

deep way. Have

30:24

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30:26

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31:00

week on the Ancients from History hits,

31:02

wherever you get your podcasts. The

31:14

title of your book is Living I

31:17

Was Your Plague, which seems curious

31:19

at first sight. Could you explain where it comes from,

31:21

what it means? Where it comes from is when

31:24

Luther was dying, he

31:26

reportedly said, Living I

31:28

Was Your Plague, Dead

31:30

I Will Be Your Death, O Pope.

31:33

And this little saying, I

31:36

started to notice within

31:38

a whole lot of places where I

31:40

hadn't noticed that it was appearing. So

31:43

with a lot of the

31:46

paintings of Luther on his deathbed, if

31:48

you look closely, you'll see, Living

31:51

I Was Your Plague, Dead I Will Be

31:53

Your Death, O Pope. And I started thinking

31:55

about, what is this? And

31:57

of course, what it is, is a curse. It's a

31:59

magic. curse. It's saying, while

32:02

I was alive, I plagued you,

32:04

Pope, and when I

32:06

die, my death is going to

32:09

bring about your death, Pope.

32:11

And it's addressed to the Pope,

32:14

but he means the papacy, doesn't

32:16

mean this particular Pope. And

32:19

then I started noticing that it was

32:21

even on some of the images of

32:23

Luther I'd seen in churches. It's sort

32:25

of written around the edge. Sometimes

32:27

it's actually being painted out, but

32:30

it is such an aggressive

32:34

phrase and it's a deliberate

32:36

one too because Luther came up with

32:38

the same phrase when he

32:40

nearly died at Schmalkalden and

32:43

it's associated with his death,

32:45

this very aggressive phrase. And

32:47

I found it also

32:49

very interesting because when someone's

32:52

died, when you're dealing with

32:54

mourning, you don't expect that

32:56

kind of aggressive thing, I'm

32:58

going to kill you. And that's

33:00

what this phrase is. Your

33:03

question actually, Suzy makes me understanding in

33:05

a different way because I think you're

33:07

absolutely right. It's a kind of magical

33:09

thinking. And he

33:12

comes up with a magical curse at

33:15

the point at which he knows that

33:17

his own death is

33:19

going to create a problem for the movement

33:21

because it is all held together by him.

33:24

So he's using that death

33:27

as a magical thing to

33:29

destroy the papacy. And

33:31

yet, of course, he can't do that. And

33:33

it isn't literally true. Luther's death does not

33:35

make the Pope die. It does not mean

33:37

the end of the papacy. And

33:40

I think it goes to something at

33:42

the heart of this problem about succession

33:45

if you don't have a clearly institutionalized church

33:47

with a formal structure

33:50

and a hierarchy. That also

33:52

then means that it all rests on

33:54

him. He's thinking about what

33:56

happens after him, but actually, if he's

33:58

been the arborist, traitor and

34:00

there is no system then it all

34:03

becomes very personal. You're

34:05

exactly right and

34:07

that is the problem with a movement that

34:09

is based around someone who is

34:11

charismatic because once that

34:13

person dies and there

34:16

is no institutional system, no

34:18

whole system of rules

34:21

and organizations, it is very

34:23

hard for it to continue and

34:26

especially if that person

34:28

is someone who deals

34:31

with anyone who takes a

34:33

different view from him

34:36

by attacking them and

34:38

expelling them that

34:40

sets a situation in

34:42

which there is no inheritance. There's no

34:45

one who's able to take over and

34:47

you see that in a very

34:49

major way with Luther. He doesn't completely

34:51

choose to Malankton. Malankton's

34:53

position on this

34:56

whole flesh and spirit issue is not quite

34:58

the same as Luther's and

35:00

what it sets up is decades of

35:03

argument within Lutherism which nearly

35:05

collapses as a movement. And

35:09

I'm really interested in the

35:11

point that you raised about his capacity

35:13

for aggression towards others, his

35:16

gift for naming people and you've talked about

35:18

descriptions of the Pope but you've

35:20

said about the things you like about

35:22

him but in the end was he just nasty? I

35:25

mean what do you make of this sort of capacity

35:27

for hate speech? It's

35:29

very difficult isn't it? Aggression and creativity

35:31

can be quite closely linked. You

35:34

need some anger, you need

35:37

a sense of the

35:39

ringness of something to have

35:41

the kind of courage that someone

35:43

might lose their head and that

35:45

courage is remarkable and really admirable

35:47

to be able to stand up in

35:50

front of the emperor and

35:52

all the assembled princes and

35:54

dignitaries of the empire and say I'm

35:56

not going to recur and that takes

36:02

We. Should Absolutely extraordinary.

36:05

Age and that, of course, requires

36:07

quite a lot of aggression, so.

36:10

Are you think well with all

36:12

heroes? Everyone is complex,

36:15

everyone has other dimensions

36:17

and that aggression and

36:19

turn to become something

36:21

that destroys also God's

36:23

hands. And. I think and

36:25

latest case. I. See

36:28

his life as in some

36:30

way as a tragedy that

36:32

someone who was so extraordinarily

36:34

theologically created between about Fifteen

36:36

Seventeen and Fifteen Twenty Five

36:38

with all. his of it

36:40

is tumble hours and to here.

36:43

And. Are just wonderfully

36:45

original and simple at the

36:48

same time and immensely emotionally

36:50

for hand in the way

36:52

that he understands. People's.

36:55

Relationship with God. Saucer

36:57

All that. To. Then

37:00

see what happens is someone

37:02

agents and how other developments

37:04

within that stop coming. You

37:07

the anti semitism. Are

37:09

feeling. Really disturbing.

37:11

And offensive. Because it's not

37:13

anti semitism of the time that you

37:16

say in the sixteenth century, it's much.

37:18

More extreme. It's really

37:20

crude and it's very physical.

37:23

He right about choose gunslinger

37:25

Judas pissed when Jesus. Was.

37:28

Hanged and looking up the

37:30

contents of his intestines. And

37:32

that's where jews get their

37:34

shop site from mean rarely

37:37

and grossly offensive songs, which

37:39

in the sense I think

37:41

the English speaking world has

37:43

been shielded from because that

37:45

particular text wasn't translated into

37:48

English. So that's dimension that

37:50

his anti semitism is not

37:52

really confronted with him. Look

37:54

at a scholarship I think

37:57

by saying. Well this is just how people

37:59

thought in the same. 16th century,

38:01

that's a way of not

38:03

actually reading what Luther wrote and

38:05

not seeing that it is much

38:07

more extreme than what other people

38:09

say at the same time. And

38:14

realizing that there's that

38:16

level within Luther is

38:18

something that isn't just to do

38:21

with his psychology because

38:23

the Lutheran Church, from

38:26

its foundation, saw itself

38:28

as the true people

38:30

of God. And in Luther's case, that

38:33

meant saying the Jews say

38:35

they are the true people of God, but

38:37

they're not. They're just as he

38:39

puts it, a watery race. We

38:42

are the true people of God.

38:44

So he's usurping the role

38:46

of the Jews. And that's

38:48

the foundational myth of the Lutheran

38:50

Church. And actually, I

38:52

think what made me realize

38:54

it too was when I

38:56

had to speak from Luther's pulpit,

38:58

which was an amazing and emotional experience

39:01

for me, but I was speaking in a

39:03

church where on the outside of that church,

39:06

there is a sculpture of a Jewish sow.

39:09

And Jewish sows are medieval sculptures that

39:11

you get on a number of churches,

39:14

but this particular one is the worst

39:16

I know. It has

39:18

a sow, which represents the Jews, and

39:20

it has Jews suckling from

39:22

the South Pete's. And

39:25

since Jews are not allowed to

39:27

eat pork, this is just so

39:29

offensive. And the thing is

39:31

called the ineffable name of God,

39:34

and you're not allowed to utter the name

39:36

of God. And then

39:38

it has a rabbi looking

39:40

into the backside of the

39:42

pig. And this is

39:44

where the Jews are meant to get

39:46

what Luther calls their sharp sight to

39:49

interpret scripture in a way different from

39:51

him. That

39:53

is offensive at so many levels.

39:55

It's just utterly gross. And

39:58

it's a way also of not... allowing

40:00

Jews to speak, saying that they have

40:02

no understanding of Hebrew. He's saying, my

40:04

Hebrew is better than your Hebrew. I'm

40:07

not going to take your advice in

40:09

understanding the Old Testament. We

40:11

are the true people of God and you

40:13

are not. And I'm going to equate you

40:15

with filth, with pigs. It's

40:18

just very deeply offensive. And

40:20

that's the foundation of the

40:22

Lutheran church. And in this

40:24

awful polemic against the Jews,

40:26

he refers to the statue

40:28

on the outside of the church

40:31

and says, what a great statue it

40:33

is. And this is the church in

40:35

which Luther preached that was

40:37

his church. Yes,

40:39

I think it's so interesting that

40:42

you've drawn attention to the virulence

40:44

and the violence of his anti-Semitism

40:46

and how integral that

40:48

is to the church that

40:51

he formed. I certainly would not want to

40:53

say that the Lutheran church is fundamentally anti-Semitic.

40:55

There are many others within the Lutheran church,

40:57

even at the time, who did not take

41:00

that attitude towards the Jews at all.

41:02

But I think it is really important to

41:05

see that it's in Luther's foundational myth

41:07

of the church. And I

41:09

think that we have to think about some of

41:12

the lyrics in Bach. We

41:14

need to think about the possibility

41:17

that the church's own understanding of

41:19

itself, where it is that

41:21

kind of understanding that says we are the

41:23

true people of God and you're not. We

41:26

have Hebrew and you don't. That

41:28

possibility within Lutheranism, we need to be

41:31

aware of it. And it needs to

41:33

be part of the understanding of the

41:35

history of Lutheranism. Okay,

41:37

that's a very helpful corrective. It's

41:40

very interesting. You must have developed

41:42

really a kind of methodology of

41:45

how to handle a

41:47

hero with flaws, how to handle these difficult

41:49

heroes. How do you go about approaching somebody

41:51

like this in the round as you have

41:53

done? What do you do with statues? And

41:56

there have been calls for that statue to be

41:58

taken down. And the

42:00

pastor himself said that he did

42:02

not feel comfortable preaching in

42:05

a church, which

42:07

insults another religion on

42:09

the outside of the church. When

42:13

I first was in Ditenberg and at

42:15

the time I thought it was actually

42:17

important that that statue stayed out because

42:20

it was important that Lutherans

42:22

understood their own legacy and

42:24

that they didn't pretend that it wasn't

42:26

there. Now I'm not so

42:29

sure and I think

42:31

maybe it would be a good thing

42:34

for that statue to be put into

42:36

a museum. I think

42:38

how we deal with heroes is difficult.

42:43

I don't think that that should

42:45

mean that we condemn Luther as

42:47

a theologian, that we throw everything

42:49

that Luther did away. But

42:52

I do think it's important to

42:54

be clear about ambivalence, about

42:58

how people through whom we learn a

43:00

lot who are in

43:02

some ways exemplars of

43:04

what it is to have courage.

43:07

Well as Luther himself would say, they're

43:09

not saints. That's one of the

43:11

wonderful things that Luther does. He does

43:13

not let himself get turned into a

43:16

saint. We

43:18

have to recognise people's

43:20

flaws and we

43:22

have to think about that

43:24

as part of their creative legacy. And I

43:26

actually think that leads to a much more

43:28

interesting kind of celebration of

43:31

someone like Luther than

43:33

just a completely uncritical

43:35

admiration. Because that also

43:37

means no real engagement, no real

43:39

independent thought on our part.

43:43

I think it might speak to

43:46

a broader problem in that we always want

43:48

to put things into black and white and

43:51

choose our goodies and our baddies and we

43:53

find it very difficult to have people who

43:55

are complicated. Yes. That's

43:58

Luther's fundamental problem. He

44:00

is someone who thinks in black and

44:02

white and who can't tolerate any

44:05

ambiguity. But I think

44:07

ambiguity and complexity are

44:10

really, really important. And I

44:12

think we have to get away from thinking

44:14

in terms of black and white.

44:17

We do need to think

44:19

in terms of complication and just

44:22

the richness of human life. Creativity

44:24

also comes with a bit of

44:26

aggression and destruction as well. And

44:29

that's part of it. I

44:31

have one final question I wanted to

44:33

ask you, which is, I wonder what

44:35

sort of sources and things that you've

44:37

used to have this really creative, I

44:40

don't think destructive, but creative approach

44:43

to examining past

44:45

lives. I

44:47

think at heart I'm not

44:50

really a historian at some basic level.

44:52

I understand why novelists write historical novels.

44:55

And to me, it's the encounter with

44:57

the person in the past. It's

45:00

the surprise that you get when you

45:02

read the words of someone in the

45:05

past and then they don't say what

45:07

you expect. This is a wonderfully funny

45:09

writer. So reading him is

45:11

great fun because he has such a

45:13

wonderful sense of humor. But

45:16

he's also very open about his emotions.

45:19

And when you recognize an

45:21

emotion in what he is

45:23

writing or even things like

45:26

when you recount a dream, I mean,

45:28

how often do you get a window

45:30

into someone's dreams in the past? That's

45:33

just extraordinarily fascinating. And I

45:35

suppose at a really basic level, the

45:38

question that's driven me is, were

45:40

people in the past different from

45:42

us? How different are

45:44

they? What did they

45:46

really care about? What drove

45:48

them? How did they see

45:50

the world? That's what's always

45:53

fascinated me. I've wanted to get to

45:55

know them as individuals. And so I worked

45:57

on witches for many years. their

46:00

confessions which are terrible documents to

46:02

read. Working on Luther

46:05

was much more fun and the

46:07

kinds of source material that you have

46:10

for someone like Luther are

46:12

just amazing because you have loads

46:15

and loads of letters and you have

46:17

the letters back in some cases. Sometimes

46:20

you even have the handwritten

46:22

thing itself and the object

46:24

is fascinating because it's

46:27

turned over and folded

46:29

so on the outside he writes

46:32

the address as it were but in

46:35

that address he will say something

46:37

like to my dear

46:39

friend or to

46:41

the most honorable secretary

46:44

to the elector Frederick

46:46

the Wise. It might be the same

46:48

person but he'll vary the address in

46:51

line with how he's wanting to tease them.

46:53

How often do you get something like

46:55

this or you can see

46:57

in the handwriting itself what he's crossed

47:00

out, what he's not happy with

47:02

and having access to

47:04

that is just really remarkable.

47:06

You come much closer to

47:08

someone and of course we have notes

47:11

that the students talk on his dinner discussions as

47:13

he said and you can

47:15

see him conversing in a group.

47:17

Of course it's mediated by the

47:19

person that wrote it down and

47:22

they wrote it in Latin shorthand and

47:24

not always in the German in which

47:26

he was credibly speaking and

47:28

there's a whole tradition which

47:31

passes this on. It's a very,

47:33

very mediated text and yet

47:36

that's what I love as a historian when

47:38

I get a sense of a connection, when

47:40

I think I hear the person in the

47:43

past speak, that's what I love

47:45

as a historian. So not

47:47

a very academic answer but that's

47:49

what drives me. I think that might be

47:51

pretty much my answer as well and certainly hearing

47:54

you saying that has made me fall in love

47:56

with it all over again. Linda I think it's

47:58

actually a great honour to lose the so that

48:00

you have turned your attention to him because

48:02

of the depth of thought that you have

48:04

displayed. And it's certainly, much more certainly,

48:07

been an honor for me that you have

48:09

come on not just the tutors to talk

48:11

about him for us. So

48:13

thank you so much for talking to

48:15

us today. Oh, thank you,

48:17

Susie, and thank you for asking such wonderful

48:20

questions. Thank you. And

48:28

thanks to you for listening to Not Just

48:30

the Tutors from History Hit, and also to

48:32

my researcher Alice Smith and my producer Rob

48:35

Weinberg. We're always eager to

48:37

hear from you, so do drop us a

48:39

line at notjustthetutors at historyhit.com

48:42

or on X, formerly known as

48:44

Twitter, at notjusttutors.

48:48

And please remember to follow Not Just the Tutors

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wherever you get your podcasts so you get new

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episodes as soon as they're released. My

48:55

new online course, Henry VIII, The

48:57

Making of the Tyrant, starts

49:00

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learn.susannalipscomb.com to find out more.

49:05

And as a listener to Not Just the Tutors, I'd

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