Luther's Visit to Rome Influenced the Coming Reformation
Dec 7, 2010 Michael Streich
Six years before penning his Ninety-Five Theses, Martin Luther journeyed to Rome from Erfurt, accompanying an older monk on official business for the Augustinian order. For Luther, visiting Rome represented a personal pilgrimage few Christians would ever experience. Rome was the eternal city, the city of the pope. It was a treasure house of relics, watched over by the thousands of martyrs buried in the catacombs. What Luther found, however, was, as one writer commented, a “wasteland of rubble.” Some historical scholarship suggests that Luther’s eventual conclusion that the just shall live by faith began here, in the Rome he saw in 1510/1511.
Luther’s Rome was a City of Beggars, Prostitutes, and Irreligious Behavior
The Renaissance had not yet reached Rome, excepting behind the closed doors of aristocratic palaces, many owned by high ranking members of the curia. Both Michelangelo and Raphael were toiling with works of art that would come to represent the zenith of Renaissance expression. Pope Julius II, the “warrior pope,” was waging war elsewhere in Italy.
In this city, “…the proverbial cesspool of vice,” according to Luther historian Heiko Oberman, Luther and his colleague would seek a spiritual experience when not pursuing their official business. At 27, Luther was the junior representative, a chaperon of sorts who sat in antechambers while his elder companion strove to negotiate among the men of power and influence.
What Luther saw as he meandered through the dirty streets was a population of brigands, beggars, prostitutes, homosexual priests, and members of the clergy that openly mocked the Eucharist during Mass. The city itself was rundown. St. Peter’s basilica was in the earliest stages of reconstruction. It rained every day and most wealthy Romans had left the city.
Luther’s Piety and the Beginning of Doubt
Luther visited all of the principal basilicas in the city as well as particular churches that housed rare and costly relics. He prayed for his family and especially his grandfather, hoping to lessen the man’s stay in purgatory by climbing the “Holy Staircase” at the Lateran Palace on his knees, saying an “Our Father” with each step.
The staircase had been transported to Rome from Jerusalem during the days of the early church. According to tradition, these were the steps Jesus had taken to be judged by Pilate. Oberman, in his biography of Luther, cites a conversation Luther had with his son Paul much later in life. In that conversation, Luther related his first doubts, mentioned earlier by Luther to his students, and his recollection of Paul’s epistle to the Romans in which the Apostle stated that “the just shall live by faith.”
Luther’s Visit to Rome and the Coming Reformation
Harvard historian Richard Marius states that Luther never spoke of the negative observations relevant to his journey to Rome. Oberman pointedly rejects the notion that Rome itself or the pope led to Luther’s theological questions, arguing, in fact, that Luther was still a “fierce papist.”
But the shame and abuse of indulgences caused Luther to doubt, a doubt that would culminate in the Ninety-Five Theses and the eventual break with Rome. In his last years, the “fierce papist” came to see the pope as the Antichrist, describing the Vicar of Christ in crude, scatological language.
Erik H. Erikson, whose psychoanalytical biography of Luther addressed, among other things, Luther’s self-identity crisis, writes that “His attempt to devote himself…to some highly promoted observances in Rome seems to indicate a last endeavor on his part to settle his inner unrest with ceremonial fervor, by the accomplishment of works.”
Impressions run deep and can be lasting. When Luther first saw Rome, he fell on his knees and exclaimed, “salve sancta Roma!” Much later, however, as Richard Marius writes, “Rome was the head of all crimes and the seat of the devil.” The city of God, it seemed to Luther, was built over hell.
Impact of Rome on Luther after Returning to Erfurt
Shortly after his return, Luther abandoned the position of the Erfurt monastery which favored a less stringent application of community living for monks, and supported the more conservative Johannes Staupitz. Luther moved to the University at Wittenberg. To what extent might his observations in Rome have contributed to this decision?
After 1517, a theologically enlightened Luther rejected Church tradition, indulgences, relics, and those many trappings of the Medieval Church that he saw degraded by even the highest ranking members of the curia while visiting Rome.
It was rumored that Pope Julius II suffered from syphilis and had engaged in homosexual acts. At least one prior pope had been linked to incest. In Rome itself, priests mocked the Eucharist, mumbling in Latin, “Bread thou art and bread thou shalt remain…” For a man as sensitive as Luther, these impressions must have been shocking.
Any objective impacts Luther’s visit to Rome had remain speculative, since there are no written records linking that visit to his immediate years back in Saxony. Luther did refer to Rome in his later years, but by then he had already concluded that Rome, as symbolic of the Church, was of the devil. The Roman experience was a step, a seed planted for future fruit. Luther’s memories of that journey may have added to his eventual conclusions.
Sources:
- Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study In Psychoanalysis and History (W. W. Norton & Company, 1962)
- Ross King, Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (Penguin Books, 3003)
- Richard Marius, Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999)
- Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil (Yale University Press, 1989)
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