Luther Was Not a Monk: Here I Walk, 23 Aug

Luther Was Not a Monk

 Here I Walk

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Luther Was Not a Monk



The decid­edly urban char­ac­ter of Erfurt meant another impor­tant thing for our story: the pres­ence of fri­ars. Luther was not a monk, prop­erly speak­ing, but a friar or bet­ter a her­mit of Saint Augus­tine. He’s respon­si­ble for this error, as he fre­quently referred to him­self as a monk. But he was a friar nonethe­less and shared more with the Mid­dle Ages’ new form of reli­gious life defined by the Domini­cans and Fran­cis­cans than he did with the true clois­tered monks of the Bene­dic­tine Rule.

For var­i­ous rea­sons, mete­o­ro­log­i­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal, the pop­u­la­tion of Europe exploded after 1050, and an agri­cul­tural sur­plus fed the growth of urban life. Fri­ars were made to order for this new envi­ron­ment and the chal­lenges it placed upon the faith of the pop­u­lace at large. Unlike their landed, Bene­dic­tine brethren, who were ded­i­cated to ora et lab­ora (prayer and work) within the con­fines of a monastery (and its often vast estates), urban fri­ars worked out­side their quar­ters in the cities doing ser­vice and teach­ing. Many were preachers—an art not often prac­ticed by parish priests—or cat­e­chists, while oth­ers taught in the rapidly grow­ing uni­ver­sity sys­tem. Still oth­ers did works of charity.

Fri­ars were not allowed, at least ini­tially, to own property—the tra­di­tional sup­port for monas­tic exis­tence. Because of this stip­u­la­tion of strict poverty, they were called men­di­cant or “beg­ging orders.” This was a mat­ter of some divi­sive­ness. Luther’s own pri­ory had accu­mu­lated quite large hold­ings from alms and bequests. He and his broth­ers said many masses in pay­ment for these gifts. Indi­vid­ual fri­ars, though, were for­bid­den possessions.

Because of its name you may be tempted to think that the Augus­tin­ian order was a very old one, but it wasn’t. The Order of Augus­tin­ian Her­mits can be traced only to 1244 (while St. Augus­tine him­self lived from 354–430), when a loose group of reform-minded reli­gious banded together under the so-called rule of St. Augustine—a set of pre­cepts laid out by the church father him­self in the fourth century.

In Erfurt, the her­mits prayed the hours, stud­ied, taught in the Uni­ver­sity, preached in local churches, heard con­fes­sion, and said mass. It was a busy life, full of reli­gious respon­si­bil­i­ties and not so full of com­forts. The day began the mid­dle of the night, with matins; then there was 6 a.m. prime, 9 a.m. terce, sexte at 12 noon, and after the noon­day meal and rest the 3 p.m. nones, 6 p.m. ves­pers, and at last com­pline just before bed. And mass some­time before mid­day. Miss­ing any ser­vice required a good excuse and had to be com­pen­sated for. After he moved to Wit­ten­berg and assumed the duties of a pro­fes­sor, Luther would have had exemp­tions from cer­tain hours. He kept care­ful track of what he had missed, though, and by the time he finally stopped pray­ing the canon­i­cal hours alto­gether in 1520 he had accu­mu­lated over three months of prayer debt.

The later Luther had lit­tle good to say about monas­ti­cism. But he only stopped wear­ing his cowl in 1523 and was ever loathe to give up the mass. Dur­ing his years in the clois­ter, he would have recited three psalms at every office (which means that it he prayed the Psalms through nearly once a week). It was monas­ti­cism that gave him the Bible.