Luther goes on to allude to another ghostly visitation, possibly a
new one. He says: “On such occasions we must always say to the devil
contemptuously: “If you are Christ’s Master, so be it!” For this is
what I said at Eisenach.”[390] Nothing further is known, however, of
any such occurrence having taken place at Eisenach. He may quite well
have taken Eisenach as synonymous with the Wartburg.
* * * * *
To pass in review the other ghostly apparitions which occurred during
his lifetime, we must begin with his early years.
When still a young monk at Wittenberg Luther already fancied he heard
the devil making a din. “When I began to lecture on the Psalter, and,
after we had sung Matins, was seated in the refectory studying and
writing up my lecture, the devil came and rattled in the chimney three
times, just as though someone were heaving a sack of coal down the
chimney. At last, as it did not cease, I gathered up my books and went
to bed.”[391] “Once, too, I heard him over my head in the monastery,
but, when I noticed who it was, I paid no attention, turned over and
went to sleep again.”[392]
Luther can tell some far more exciting stories of ghosts and
“Poltergeists,” of which others, with whom he had come in contact in
youth or manhood, had been the victims. Since, however, he seems to
have had them merely on hearsay, they may be passed over. Of himself,
however, he says: “I have learnt by experience that ghosts go about
affrightening people, preventing them from sleeping and so making them
ill.”[393]
We find also the following statement: “The devil has often had me by
the hair of my head, yet was ever forced to let me go”;[394] from the
context this, however, may refer to mental temptations.
He says, however, quite definitely of certain experiences he himself
had gone through in the monastery: “Oh, I saw gruesome ghosts and
visions.” This was probably at the time when “no one was able
to comfort” him.[395] He was referring to incidents to which no
definite date can be assigned, when, anxious to refute their claim to
illumination by the spirits, he told the fanatics: “Ah, bah, spirits …
I too have seen spirits!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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