10/11/2025
Happy birthday, Martin Luther!
On November 10, 1483, Martin Luther was born to Hans and Margarethe Luther (or "Luder"—Martin would go on to Latinize the spelling, as was popular among other Christian humanists in this time period, e.g.: Philipp Schwartzerdt AKA Philipp Melanchthon) in Eisleben in the county of Mansfeld (now in modern-day Saxony-Anhalt). And for those of you keeping score at home—Luther would be 542 this year. Yes, Luther was born before Christopher Columbus famously “sailed the ocean blue!”
Perhaps you have wondered why Martin Luther and Martin Chemnitz both happened to share the same first name. It was not a coincidence, and Chemnitz was not named after Luther. Instead, the two share something else: a baptism date! Both Luther and Chemnitz were baptized on St. Martin of Tours day, November 11th, and it was common during this time to name a child for the saint commemorated on their baptism day.
There is always more that can be said about Luther than there is space to print or time to read. On this commemoration of the birth of Martin, reformer and child of God, let the following quote from the man himself suffice:
"I would gladly have seen all my books forgotten and destroyed; if only for the reason that I am afraid of the example.For I see what benefit it has brought to the churches, that men have begun to collect many books and great libraries, outside and alongside of the Holy Scriptures; and have begun especially to scramble together, without any distinction, all sorts of 'Fathers,' 'Councils,' and 'Doctors.' Not only has good time been wasted, and the study of the Scriptures neglected; but the pure understanding of the divine Word is lost, until at last the Bible has come to lie forgotten in the dust under the bench...
Well, then, let it go, in God's Name. I only ask in all kindness that the man who wishes at this time to have my books will by no means let them be a hindrance to his own study of the Scriptures, but read them as I read the orders and the ordures of the pope and the books of the sophists. I look now and then to see what they have done, or learn from them the history and thought of their time, but I do not study them, or feel myself bound to conform to them. I do not treat the Fathers and the Councils very differently. In this I follow the example of St. Augustine, who is one of the first, and almost the only one of them to subject himself to the Holy Scriptures alone, uninfluenced by the books of all the Fathers and the Saints. This brought him into a hard fray with St. Jerome, who cast up to him the writings of his predecessors; but he did not care for that. If this example of St. Augustine had been followed, the pope would not have become Antichrist, the countless vermin, the swarming, parasitic mass of books would not have come into the Church, and the Bible would have kept its place in the pulpit."
[Martin Luther. "Luther's Preface to the First Part of His German Works." Works of Martin Luther, vol. 1. 1539. Henry Eyster Jacobs and Adolph Spaeth, trans. Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1915. Web. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Works_of_Martin_Luther,_with_introductions_and_notes/Volume_1/Luther%27s_Prefaces ]
