Catholic censors were even stronger in their expression of
indignation. Dungersheim of Leipzig, in spite of his polemics an
otherwise reliable witness, though rather inclined to rhetoric, in the
fourth decade of the century reproached him in his “Thirty Articles”
for leading a “life full of scandal”; he likewise appeals to some who
had known him intimately, and was ready, if necessary, “to relate
everything, down to the circumstances and the names.”[908] As a matter
of fact, however, this theologian never defined his charges.
From the Duchy of Saxony, too, came the indignant voice of bluff Duke
George, whom Luther had attacked and slandered in so outrageous a
fashion: “Out upon you, you forsworn and sacrilegious fellow, Martin
Luther (may God pardon me), public-house keeper for all renegade
monks, nuns and apostates!”[909] He calls him “Luther, you drunken
swine,” you “most unintelligent bacchant and ten times dyed horned
beast of whom Daniel spoke in chapter viii., etc.”[910] Luther had
called this Prince a “bloodhound”; he is paid back in his own coin:
“You cursed, perjured bloodhound”; he was the “arch-murderer,” body
and soul, of the rebellious peasants, “the biggest murderer and
bloodhound ever yet seen on the surface of the globe.”[911] “You want
us to believe that no one has written more beautifully of the Emperor
and the Empire than yourself. If what you have written of his Imperial
Majesty is beautiful, then my idea of beauty is all wrong; for it
would be easy to find tipsy peasants in plenty who can write nine
times better than you.”[912]
From the theologian Ambrosius Catharinus we hear some details
concerning Luther’s private life.
On the strength of hearsay reports, picked up, so it would appear,
from some of the visitors to the Council of Trent in 1546 and 1547,
this Italian, who was often over-ardent both in attack and defence,
wrote in the latter year his work: “_De consideratione praesentium
temporum libri quattuor._” Here he says: “Quite reliable witnesses
tell me of Luther, that he frequently honoured the wedding feasts
of strangers by his presence, went to see the maidens dance and
occasionally even led the round dance himself. They declare that
he sometimes got up from the banquets so drunk and helpless that
he staggered from side to side, and had to be carried home on his
friends’ shoulders.”[913]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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