“The present writer,” continues Möbius, “does not in the least believe
that Luther suffered from hallucinations. It seems always to have been
a case of placing a superstitious interpretation on real phenomena.
The black pig in the garden and the black dog on his bed, were, most
likely, of flesh and blood. In many instances (the wrestling with
the demon, and so forth) the language is simply figurative. With
Luther the pathological element made history. His morbid fear led
him to brood over justification; the sense of his own utter weakness
convinced him that man can do nothing of his own strength and by
his own works, and that the only possible course is to stretch out
yearning hands and seize on Grace. In his melancholic state he fell
in with the doctrine of justification by faith alone of St. Paul (who
himself suffered from the same ailment [!]), and, around this centre,
his theological ideas grouped themselves, and, with ‘_sola fides_’ as
his war-cry, he proceeded to do battle with the ancient Church. Thus,
from the monk’s melancholia, sprang the Reformation.”
Proceeding on similar lines, Professor Willy Hellpach, of Carlsruhe,
observed in the Berlin “Tag” (“Psychologische Rundschau,” Jan. 18,
1912): “Several years ago the Jesuit scholar, Pater Grisar, published
in the ‘Kölnische Volkszeitung’ an article entitled ‘Ein Grundproblem
aus Luthers Seelenleben.’ Of this work Möbius said, and quite rightly,
that it was the best account so far given of the pathology of Luther’s
mind. That Luther’s mind was at times morbidly depressed without any
reasonable cause has never been doubted by any who knew him, even when
they happened to be Evangelicals. Hausrath, in his biography, had
spoken of ‘recurrent psychosis’ a statement, which, it is true, he
modified later on account of the storm of indignation which broke out
among those queer folk who seem to look upon a gifted man’s malady as
a worse blot than the greatest crime.” Hellpach points out that laymen
are wrong when they imagine that “psychosis” involves “an absolute
derangement of the power of thought.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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