Thomas Münzer in his violent “Schutzrede”[332] speaks at great length of Luther’s pride, who, he says, wished to be a new Pope while making a show of humility; he “excited and urged on the people like a hound of hell,” though protesting that he did not wish to raise a revolt, “like a serpent that glides over the rocks.” Luther, in the very title of his work, he describes, as “that dull, effeminate lump of flesh at Wittenberg.” In the course of the same work he speaks of him scornfully as “Martin, the virgin,” and exclaims, “Ah, the chaste Babylonian virgin.” He classes him, on account of his sermons on “freedom,” with those teachers “who are pleasing to the world, which likes an easy life”; he speaks of him sarcastically as a “new Christ” with a “fine subject for his preaching,” viz. “that priests may take wives.”[333] He does not accuse him of any particular moral excess, but nevertheless remarks that “the disgraced monk” was not likely to suffer very severely under the persecution of which he boasted “when enjoying good Malvasian and feasting with light women.”[334] The latter allusion probably refers merely to Luther’s love of a good dinner, and his merry ways at his meals, which, to a strict Anabaptist like Münzer, seemed as deserving of execration as feasting with dissolute women.
It has recently been asserted by an eminent Protestant controversialist that Luther’s contemporaries never accused him of moral laxity or of offences against chastity, and that it was only after his death that people ventured to bring forward such charges; so long as he lived “the Romans,” so we read, “accused him of one only deed against the sixth commandment, viz. with his marriage”; Pistorius, Ulenberg and “Jesuits like Weislinger who copied them,” were the first to enter the lists with such accusations.
To start with, we may remark that Weislinger was not a Jesuit and that Ulenberg does not mention any moral offence committed by Luther apart from his matrimony. In fact the whole statement of the controversialist just quoted must be treated as a legend. As a matter of fact, serious charges regarding this matter were brought against Luther even in his lifetime and in the years previous to his union with Catherine von Bora.