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Two Biographies of Martin Luther

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

John Winthrop Platner
Affiliation:
Andover Theological Seminary

Extract

Luther is a fascinating subject for the historian. Not only does the personality of the man himself offer exceptional attractions, but so too does the age in which he lived, for then society, politics, and religion were all in the melting-pot, out of which in time was to issue the modern world. Luther was a product of the old, but he was also in a very true sense the exponent of the new. “The world is not what it once was,” said he to the German nobles,—knowing that again the fulness of the times had come. The favorite assertion of many German writers that Luther was the Reformation is often disputed, yet the statement is not half so exaggerated as it sounds, for if ever the spirit of a great movement which permanently affected the welfare of mankind got itself embodied in the person of one man, that movement was the Protestant revolution, and that man was Friar Martin.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1912

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References

1 Luther, Martin, the Man and his Work, by McGiffert, Arthur Cushman. pp. xi 397. New York, The Century Co., 1911. $3 net.Google Scholar

The Life and Letters of Martin Luther, by Smith, Preserved, pp. xvi 490. Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911. $3.50 net.Google Scholar