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In: Biographies·Essays, Letters & Speeches·History - Ancient
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The work is a biographical survey of great speakers, and it begins with a sweeping meditation on labor, monastic life, and the tension between solitude and society. The opening pages cite Luther’s own words on work, then launch into a historical sketch that traces the “monastic impulse” from its pre‑Christian roots through early Christian hermits, the rise of communal monasteries, and the evolution of religious orders such as the Shakers and Mormonism. The narrative quickly moves to a portrait of Martin Luther, describing his humble origins, his stubborn temperament, and his ascent from a poor Augustinian novice to a celebrated university professor and preacher. By weaving together theological history, social commentary, and vivid character sketches, the author sets the stage for a series of portraits that explore how oratory shaped, and was shaped by, the lives of eminent figures.
Written in a dense, nineteenth‑century style, the text reflects the scholarly tone of its era, with long sentences, extensive digressions, and a penchant for moralizing asides. Its voice is erudite yet conversational, offering both factual detail and philosophical reflection. Readers who enjoy thorough historical analysis, enjoy the interplay of biography and cultural critique, and have a taste for the rhetorical flourishes of Victorian scholarship will find this volume rewarding. Those interested in the development of public speaking, religious reform, and the personal quirks of famous orators will be especially engaged.
The opening · free to read
We need society, and we need solitude. But it happens again and again that man gets a surfeit of society--he is thrown with those who misunderstand him, who thwart him, who contradict his nature, who bring out the worst in his disposition: he is sapped of his strength, and then he longs for solitude. He would go alone up into the mountain. What is called the "monastic impulse" comes over him--he longs to be alone--alone with God.
The monastic impulse can be traced back a thousand years before Christ: the idea is neither Christian, Jewish, Philistine nor Buddhist. Every people of which we know have had their hermits and recluses.
The communal thought is a form of monasticism--it is a getting away from the world. Monasticism does not necessarily imply celibacy, but as unrequited or misplaced love is usually the precursor of the monastic impulse, celibacy or some strange idea on the sex problem usually is in evidence.
Monasticism has many forms: College Settlements, Zionism, Deaconesses' Homes, Faith Cottages, Shakerism, Mormonism, are all manifestations of the impulse to get away from the world, and still benefit the world by standing outside of it. This desire to get away from the world and still mix in it shows that monasticism is not quite sincere--we want society no less than we want solitude. Very seldom, indeed, has a monk ever gone away and remained: he comes back to the world, occasionally, to beg, or sell things, and to "do good."
The rise of the Christian monastery begins with Paul the Hermit, who in the year Two Hundred Fifty withdrew to an oasis in the desert, and lived in a cave before which was a single palm-tree and a spring.
Other men worn with strife, tired of stupid misunderstanding, persecution and unkind fate, came to him. And there they lived in common. The necessity of discipline and order naturally presented itself, so they made rules that governed conduct. The day was divided up into periods when the inmates of this first monastery prayed, communed with the silence, worked and studied.
Within a hundred years there were similar religious communities at fifty or more places in Upper Egypt.
Women have always imitated men, and soon nunneries sprang up here and there. In fact, the nunnery has a little more excuse for being than the monastery. In a barbaric society an unattached woman needs protection, and this she gets in the nunnery. Even so radical a thinker as Max Muller regarded the nunnery as a valuable agent in giving dignity to woman's estate. If she was mistreated and desired protection, she could find refuge in this sanctuary. She became the Bride of Christ, and through the protection of the convent, man was forced to be civil, and chivalry came to take the place of force.
Most monasteries have been mendicant institutions. As early as the year Five Hundred we read of the monks going abroad a-questing, a bag on their backs. They begged as a business, and some became very expert at it, just as we have expert evangelists and expert debt-raisers. They took anything that anybody had to give. They begged in the name of the poor; and as they traveled they undertook to serve those who were poorer than themselves. They were distributing agents.
They ceased to do manual labor and scorned those who did. They traversed the towns and highways by trios and asked alms at houses or of travelers. Occasionally they carried cudgels, and if such a pair asked for alms it was usually equal to a demand. These monks made acquaintances, they had their friends among men and women, and often being far from home they were lodged and fed by the householders. In some instances the alms given took the form of a tax which the sturdy monks collected with startling regularity. We hear of their dividing the country up into districts, and each man having a route that he jealously guarded.
They came in the name of the Lord--they were supposed to have authority. They said, "He who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord." They blessed those who gave, and cursed those who refused. Some of them presumed to forgive the sins of those who paid. And soon the idea suggested itself of forgiving in advance, or granting an indulgence. They made promises of mansions in the skies to those who conformed, and threatened with the pains of hell those who declined their requests. So the monks occasionally became rich.
And when they grew rich they often became arrogant, dictatorial, selfish, gluttonous and licentious. They undertook to manage the government which they had before in their poverty renounced. They hired servants to wait upon them. The lust of power, and the lust of the flesh, and the pride of the heart all became manifest.
However, there were always a few men, pure of heart and earnest in purpose, who sought to stem the evil tendencies. And so the history of monasticism and the history of the Church is the record of a struggle against idleness and corruption. To shave a man's head, give him a new name, and clothe him in strange garments, does not change his nature. Monks grown rich and powerful will become idle, and the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are then mere jokes and jests.
No man knew this better than Benedict, who lived in the Sixth Century. The profligacy, ignorance and selfishness of the fat and idle monks appalled him. With the aid of Cassiodorus he set to work to reform the monasteries by interesting the inmates in beautiful work. Cassiodorus taught men to write, illumine and bind books. Through Italy, France and Germany he traveled and preached the necessity of manual labor, and the excellence of working for beauty. The art impulse in the nunneries and monasteries began with Benedict and Cassiodorus, who worked hand in hand for beauty, purity and truth. Benedict had the greater executive ability, but Cassiodorus had the more far-reaching and subtle intellect. He anticipated all that we have to say today on the New Education--the necessity of playing off one faculty of the mind against another through manual labor, play and art creation. He even anticipated the primal idea of the Kindergarten, for he said, "The pleasurable emotion that follows the making of beautiful forms with one's hands is not a sin, like unto the pleasure that is gained for the sake of pleasure--rather to do good and beautiful work is incense to the nostrils of God."
In all Benedictine monasteries flagellations ceased, discipline was relaxed, and the inmates were enjoined to use their energies in their work, and find peace by imitating God, and like Him creating beautiful things.
Beautiful bookmaking traces its genesis almost directly to Benedict and Cassiodorus.
But a hundred years after the death of these great men, the necessity of reform was as great as ever, and other men took up the herculean task.
And so it has happened that every century men have arisen who protested against the abuses inside the Church. The Church has tried to keep religion pure, but when she has failed and scandalized society at large, monasteries were wiped out of existence and their property confiscated. Since the Fifteenth Century, regularly once every hundred years, France has driven the monks from her borders, and in this year of our Lord Nineteen Hundred Three she is doing what Napoleon did a hundred years ago; what Cromwell did in England in Sixteen Hundred Forty-five; what has been done time and again in every corner of Christendom.
Martin Luther's quarrel with the Church began simply as a protest against certain practises of the monks, and that his protests should develop into a something called "Protestantism" was a thing he never for a moment anticipated or desired. He had no thought of building an institution on negation; and that he should be driven from the Church, because he loved the Church and was trying to purify and benefit it, was a source to him of deepest grief.
Martin Luther was thirty-five years old. He was short in stature, inclining to be stout, strenuous and bold. His faults and his virtues were all on the surface. He neither deceived nor desired to deceive--the distinguishing feature of his character was frankness. He was an Augustinian monk, serving as a teacher in the University of Wittenberg.
Up to this time his life had been uneventful. His parents had been very poor people--his father a day-laborer, working in the copper-mines. In his boyhood Martin was "stubborn and intractable," which means that he had life plus. His teachers had tried to repress him by flogging him "fifteen times in a forenoon," as he himself has told us.
In childhood he used to beg upon the streets, and so he could the better beg he was taught to sing. This rough, early experience wore off all timidity, and put "stage-fright" forever behind. He could not remember a time when he could not sing a song or make a speech.
That he developed all the alertness and readiness of tongue and fist of the street-urchin there is no doubt.
When he was taken into a monastery at eighteen years of age, the fact that he was a good singer and a most successful beggar were points of excellence that were not overlooked.
That the young man was stubbornly honest in his religious faith, there is not a particle of doubt. The strength of his nature and the extent of his passion made his life in the monastery most miserable. He had not yet reached the point that many of the older monks had, and learned how to overcome temptation by succumbing to it, so he fasted for days until he became too weak to walk, watched the night away in vigils, and whipped his poor body with straps until the blood flowed.
We now think it is man's duty to eat proper food, to sleep at night, and to care for his body, so as to bring it to the most perfect condition possible--all this that he may use his life to its highest and best. Life is a privilege and not a crime.
But Martin Luther never knew of these things and there was none to teach him, and probably he would have rejected them stoutly if they had been presented--arguing the question six nights and days together.
The result of all that absurd flying in the face of Nature was indigestion and its concomitant, nervous irritability. These demons fastened upon him for life; and we have his word for it in a thousand places that he regarded them as veritable devils--thus does man create his devil in his own image. Luther had visions--he "saw things," and devils, witches and spirits were common callers to the day of his death.
In those early monastery days he used to have fits of depression when he was sure that he had committed the "unpardonable sin," and over and over in his mind he would recount his shortcomings. He went to confession so often that he wore out the patience of at least one confessor, who once said to him, "Brother Martin, you are not so much a sinner as a fool." Still another gave him this good advice, "God is not angry with you, but He will be if you keep on, for you are surely angry with Him--you had better think less about yourself and more of others: go to work!"
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