Martin Luther:Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper

Martin Luther:Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper
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Category: History
Reviewer: Neil Christie
Summary: The biographer takes us to the epicentre of one the Western world's biggest upheavals, combining historical narrative with verve and empathy.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 592	Date: June 2017
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-1784703448
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Exactly five centuries ago in October 2017, Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses against the sale of indulgences to the door of the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg. The ensuing maelstrom ripped the Christian church asunder and changed the course of history. But how was a provincial professor in a cassock able to set the Reformation in motion, despite papal and imperial authority being ranged against him? In a biography which was ten years in the making, Lyndal Roper strips away mythology to illuminate the facts underneath (for starters, it is highly unlikely that Luther actually nailed the ninety-five theses to the door). She provides a thoughtful analysis of the forces which drove the evangelical preacher and convincingly explains his contradictions – why, after decades of monastic observance did he marry a nun and develop a love of German beer and wine?

As Wittenberg was for forty years part of former East Germany, the history of how the Reformation in that region progressed has tended to be underdeveloped. Roper fills in the gaps by painting a richly detailed picture of early 16th Century Saxony and showing how his childhood in a mining town with its values and superstitions would have influenced the early Luther. As a young man he decided to abandon the study of law and enter a monastery to thank God for saving him in a thunderstorm. People still believed that witches and devils caused thunderstorms and the sights and sounds of this period are powerfully evoked, so that readers can vividly imagine Luther, scanning the sky in terror and praying to Saint Anna, the patron saint of miners.

Luther's father was a tough mine owner and from him the young cleric inherited a pugnacious and competitive streak. This proved invaluable to Luther in theological debates, some of which resembled a series of jousts over several days. Roper describes in gruelling detail the self discipline and privations Luther subjected himself to in his fifteen years as monk, almost as if to demonstrate through asceticism that he was in a higher league to those around him.

But the former monk became a passionate adversary of the clergy, later denouncing them for using ritual as the measure of holiness and seeming to relish verbal combat once he turned against the Catholic Church. Roper conveys the vehemence and foul mouthed tirades of the evangelical preacher's pamphlets and sermons in all their shocking detail. We learn how he demanded absolute intellectual obedience from those around him, calling even his fellow reformers heathens and far worse names. Yet this was the same Luther who could show compassion and generosity to others, providing accommodation for whole families and orphans and remaining in Wittenberg at a time of plague when many had fled.

Luther had a politician's grasp of successful marketing and Roper shows how crucial this was in advancing a movement which could all too easily have sunk like a stone without trace. Luther understood how the advent of printing was creating an audience eager for novel ideas with which they could identify. He formed a partnership with an etcher who skilfully portrayed him as a humble yet inspiring figure. He even changed the spelling of his surname from the original Luder, as this had associations with looseness and immorality.

Ironically, the populist appeal of Luther's theses became a liability. Emboldened by the idea that they could interpret Scripture for themselves, many rebelled against the payment of tithes to monasteries and against serfdom. This led to the Peasants' War, an uprising which threatened major cities before its eventual brutal suppression. Roper shows us how Luther skilfully trod a path which avoided himself and his movement being extinguished. Fiercely condemning the unrest, he emphasised instead his usefulness to the German princes in containing the power of the Pope and reducing financial contributions to the Church in Rome. It is difficult for a modern reader to grasp why a man of God should ally himself with the authorities against the poor and tempting to believe he simply wanted to save his own skin. Roper steers us away from such easy conclusions, helping us appreciate how radical was his redefinition of man's relationship with God and that only with the support of political masters might his doctrine form an orthodoxy of its own.

We are taken to the epicentre of how the Reformation first took shape, with Luther as its architect furiously drawing and redrawing blueprints of a new theology, quick to remonstrate with eager apprentices whom he saw as misinterpreting his teachings. Roper traces the route through which Luther borrows from St Augustine to formulate justification by faith alone as a key tenet, one over which branches of the Protestant church would argue for centuries to come. So passionately did he throw himself into polemical debate that he suffered a physical and mental breakdown in 1527, exhausted after days of heated discussion over whether Christ was literally present in the sacrament of holy communion.

In this highly readable biography, Luther's progress from pariah to venerated scholar is charted with a lightness of touch and sureness of authority, as is testified by more than one hundred pages of references. We gain a close up of the man himself, along with the fervour and determination it took to create the foundation for Protestantism, which today accounts for nearly 40% of Christians worldwide.

I must thank Vintage for sending a copy of this historical biography to the Bookbag. For an overview of the Reformation in the British Isles and its overlap with the tide that swept Western Europe, you might like to try The Reformation in 100 Facts by Kathleen Chater.

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