On April 5, 1538, Luther, in the presence of his friends, spoke of the personal “annoyance” to which the devil had subjected him while at the Wartburg by means of visible manifestations. The pastor of Sublitz, then staying at Wittenberg, had complained of being pestered at his home by noisy spooks; they flung pots and pans at his head and created other disturbances. Referring to such outward manifestations of the spirit-world, Luther remarked: “I too was tormented in my time of captivity in Patmos, in the castle perched high up in the kingdom of the birds. But I withstood Satan and answered him in the words of the Bible: God is mine, Who created man and ‘set all things under his feet’ (Ps. viii. 7). If thou hast any power over them, try what thou canst do.”[381] On another occasion he related before his friend Myconius and in the presence of Jonas and Bugenhagen, “how the devil had twice appeared at the Wartburg in the shape of a great dog and had tried to kill him.” It is Myconius who relates this, mentioning that it had been told him by Luther at Gotha in 1538,[382] “in the house of Johann Löben, the Schosser.” Of one of these two apparitions, the physician Ratzeberger, Luther’s friend, had definite information. He, however, quotes it only as an instance of the many ghostly things which Luther had experienced there: “Because the neighbourhood was lonely many ghosts appeared to him and he was much troubled by disturbances due to noisy spooks. Among other incidents, one night, when he was going to bed, he found a huge black bull-dog lying on his bed that refused to let him get in. Luther thereupon commended himself to our Lord God, recited Ps. viii. [the same as that mentioned above], and when he came to the verse ‘Thou hast set all things under his feet’ the dog at once disappeared and Luther passed a peaceful night. Many other ghosts of a like nature visited him, all of whom he drove off by prayer, but of which he refused to speak, for he said he would never tell anyone how many spectres had tormented him.”[383] According to the account of his pupil Mathesius, Luther often “called to mind how the devil had tormented him in mind and caused him a burning pain which sucked the very marrow out of his bones.”[384] Of visible apparitions Mathesius has, however, very little to say: “The Evil Spirit,” so we read in his account of Luther’s sayings, “most likely wished to affright me palpably, for on many nights I heard him making a noise in my Patmos, and saw him at the Coburg under the form of a star, and in my garden in the shape of a black pig. But my Christ strengthened me by His Spirit and Word so that I paid no heed to the devil’s spectre.”[385] Mathesius, in his enthusiasm, actually goes so far as to compare such things to Satan’s tempting of Christ in the wilderness.