It will be no matter for surprise to the dispassionate observer that the memory of the vows Luther had broken and the thought of his early days in the monastery—which presented so striking a contrast with his later life—were subject-matters of warped and distorted images. Particularly is this true of his monastic years which he insists on depicting as one long night of sadness and despair. Not merely in the fictions in which he came to shroud the more fervent days of his life as a monk, but also in his explanations of the various stages of his apostasy, Luther affords us fresh data for the psychological study of his personality, and thus the present chapter may serve to supplement the previous one. Only after having studied the legend he wove around himself and compared it with the truth as otherwise known, will it be possible to arrive at a considered judgment concerning Luther’s mental states. 1. Luther’s later Picture of his Convent Life and Apostasy What Luther says of his life as a monk is what will chiefly interest us, but, before proceeding to consider his words and the strange problems they present, we must first refer to the legendary traits comprised in his statements on the first period of his struggle; how false they are to the facts will be clearly perceived by whoever has read the detailed accounts already given. _The Legend about his First Public Appearance_ “Not only have the dates been altered,” says Hausrath, of Luther’s later statements concerning his first public appearance, “but even the facts. No sooner does the elderly man begin to tell his tale than the past becomes as soft wax in his hands. The same words are placed on the lips, now of this, now of that, friend or foe. The opponents of his riper years are depicted as his persecutors even in his youth. Albert of Mayence had never acted otherwise towards him than as a liar and deceiver. Even previous to the Worms visit he had sought to annul his safe-conduct.… Of Tetzel he now asserts, that, unless Duke Frederick had pleaded for him to the Emperor Max, he would have been put in a sack and drowned in the Inn on account of his dissolute life.… The same holds good of the [equally untrue] statement that Tetzel had sold indulgences for sins yet to be committed.… It is also an exaggeration of his old age when Luther asserts that, in his youth, the Bible had been a closed book to all.… To the old Reformer almost everything in the monastery appears in the blackest of hues.”[592]