There was need, then, of reform in education as well as in religion, and Luther took the burden of both upon his shoulders. As an educational reformer, he has earned for himself the world's gratitude. It must be admitted that Luther's main purpose was the reformation of the Church, and that his educational work merely grew out of the need of general intelligence as a necessary adjunct to that work. Of the existing conditions, Compayré well says, "With La Salle and the foundation of the Institute of the Brethren of the Christian Schools, the historian of education recognizes the Catholic origin of primary instruction; in the decrees and laws of the French Revolution, its lay and philosophical origin; but it is to the Protestant Reformation,--to Luther in the sixteenth century, and to Comenius in the seventeenth,--that must be ascribed the honor of having first organized schools for the people. In its origin, the primary school is the child of Protestantism, and its cradle was the Reformation."[53]
Martin Luther was born at Eisleben, Germany, of poor and humble parents. He was brought up under the rigid discipline of the typical German home, in which the rod was not spared. Upon this point he writes, "My parents' severity made me timid; their sternness and the strict life they led me made me afterward go into a monastery and become a monk. They meant well, but they did not understand the art of adjusting their punishments."
When he was fourteen years of age, his parents, then in better circumstances, sent him to Magdeburg to prepare for the university. But the expense being too great, he was withdrawn from this school and sent to Eisenach, where he could live with relatives. Here he sang in the street for alms, and his sweet voice attracted the attention of Ursula Cotta, a wealthy lady, who took him to her own home and gave him an excellent teacher.
When eighteen years of age he entered the university of Erfurt, then a center of humanistic learning. He made marvelous progress in his studies until he took his degree. His father had intended him for the law, but Luther determined to devote himself to the Church, much to his father's disappointment. Accordingly he became an Augustinian monk when twenty-two years of age. Unlike many of his brethren, he kept up his studies while in the monastery, and was called to a professorship in the new university at Wittenberg in 1508, where he found an ample field for his remarkable powers. Two years later, he went as a delegate to the papal court at Rome, where his eyes were opened to the condition of the Church in her holiest sanctuaries. Returning to Wittenberg, he continued his studies and his lectures, and drew about him a great number of students. His lectures and his writings against the practices of the Church became so pronounced that he was summoned before the Diet of Worms and commanded to retract. This he refused to do in the memorable words: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise. God help me! Amen." On his return from Worms, fearing for his safety, his friends took him prisoner and confined him in the Wartburg castle at Eisenach. During the nine months of his confinement he translated the Bible into German.[54] Luther took great pains to make the language so pure and plain that it could be understood by the common people, to whom he appealed. He was never ashamed of his humble origin. When he came to be the honored friend and trusted adviser of princes and kings, he was wont to say, "I am a peasant's son; my father, grandfather, and remote ancestors were nothing but veritable peasants."