Passional. *)
1. I have considered it good to add the old Passion Booklet to the Prayer Booklet, mostly for the sake of children and the simple, who are better moved to retain the divine stories through images and similes than through mere words or teachings, as St. Marcus testifies that Christ also preached vain parables to them for the sake of the simple.
2. but I have added some more stories from the Biblia, and put sayings from the text with them, so that both will be remembered the more securely and firmly; and all this for good reference and example, if anyone would follow it, and, if he were skilled in it, improve it.
3 For I do not consider it evil if such stories are told even in parlors and bedrooms.
The people painted the walls with the sayings, so that God's work and word would always be before their eyes in all places, and so that they would exercise fear and faith in God.
4 And what harm would it do if someone had all the main stories of the entire Bible painted one after the other in a booklet, so that such a booklet would be and be called a layman's Bible. Truly, one cannot hold the word and work of God against the common man too much or too often.
(5) Though we sing and say, sound and preach, write and read, paint and draw, yet Satan is always too strong and valiant to hinder and suppress the same with his angels and members, that such our endeavor and diligence is not only good, but also well needed and most necessary.
*The book to which Luther wrote this preface is entitled: "Betbüchlin, mit dem Calender vnd Passional, auffs new corrigirt vnd gemehret. D. Mar. Luther. LI.I).XI,V." 285 leaves in 12. At the end: "Gedruckt in der Churfürstlichen Stad, Wittemberg durch Hans Lufft, XXX0 H).XH" The preface is in the Hallische Theile, p. 465; in the Leipzig edition, vol. XXII, appendix, p. 139 and in the Erlangen edition, vol. 63, p. 391. Walch was under the misapprehension that the Passional here is the same writing as that which has been included in this volume Col. 198, and therefore placed the misleading title above it: "Vorrede über das Passionalbüchlein," which the Erlangen edition 1. e. has retained. Walch later noticed his error and improved it in the 23rd volume under the additions, p. 16. A single edition of the "old Passionals", however, did not occur to him.
6 But whether the iconoclasts will condemn and despise this is not my concern; they have no need of our teaching, so we do not want their teaching, and so we are soon separated. Abuse and false confidence in images I have always condemned and punished, as in all other matters. But what is not
Abuse is, I have always let it remain and be called, so that one brings it to useful and blessed custom. So we teach ours and the foolish; the clever shall not be our pupils nor masters. Christ be with all who believe and love him, amen.
Two prefaces to the booklet: What was sought at the Imperial Diet of Nuremberg in 1522 to 1523 by Papal Holiness from the Imperial Majesty Governor and Estates for Lutheran matters, and what was answered. *)
a. Preface to the message of Pope Hadrian VI sent to the Diet of Nuremberg in 1522.
Moses commands his people with great diligence that they should never forget the misery in Egypt from which God had delivered them, so that he also puts it first in the first commandment, saying: "I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of misery. As our Lord Christ also in his testament sets it forth, that we should remember him, that he saved us from death and sins.
by his body and blood etc. So we must also do now with the papacy, and always remember in what cruel tyranny we have been under it, and never forget from what sorrow and misery of our conscience the Lord has redeemed us again through his holy word.
That is why we should read these and similar books
and preserve them diligently, so that un-
*The book, to which these two prefaces are attached, contains quite a number of documents concerning the demands of the pope on the German imperial estates and their response to them. Most of these are found in the ninth volume of the Wittenberg German edition and in Walch, vol. XV, col. 2504 ff, and have been printed very frequently in German and Latin. In 1538, Luther himself arranged for a new edition, both in German and in Latin, to which he added two prefaces, one of which precedes the book, the other within it at the response of the imperial estates and the complaints against the papal see. The title of the German edition is: "Was aufs dem Reichstag zu Nuremberg, von wegen Bepstlicher Heiligkeit, an Keiserlicher Maiestat Stathalter vnd Stende, Lutherischer suchen halben belangt, vnd darauff geantwort worden ist, Auch etliche ding, wie die folgende verkürzze Vorrede vnd Register anzeigt. With a preface by D. Mart. Luth. Wittemberg. 1538." 18 quarto sheets. At the end: "Printed at Wittemberg, by Hans Frischmut." On the back of the title page is an index. The following five pages contain Luther's preface, namely the one that we bring here as the first. It is found in the Wittenberg edition (1569), vol. IX, p. I56b, where it is followed by a number of writings that indicate the pope's demands, e.g. the breve of Pope Hadrian VI to the imperial estates at Nuremberg, the pope's instruction for his legate, what he "werben" sals Botschaft ausrichten" foll etc. This is followed in 1. 6. p. 164p by the note: "You will find the answer of the imperial mayor, the governor, and the common imperial estates, to the advertising of the papal legate, item of the secular imperial estates' complaint, etc." Christian readers can find this in the same book fol. 18. and 27. with a preface by D. Mart. Luther." On the basis of this remark, we believed we were justified in making the above statement (which also receives further confirmation below) that the second preface is within the book. Moreover, the German preface alone is found in the Wittenberg (1559), vol. XII, p. 366; in the Jena (1568), vol. VI, p. 535; in the Altenburg, vol. VI, p. 1234; in the Leipzig, twice, namely vol. XVIII, p. 323 and vol. XXI, p. 239; in Walch (in the Nachlese) vol. XXI, Col. 181* ünd in the Erlanger, vol. 63, p. 393. Because both prefaces undoubtedly belong together and to the same writing, we have brought the first preface from the 21st volume here. About the second preface, which we had to translate from Latin, we give information in the following number (53b).
Our descendants will also see what evil and tyranny the pope has done and practiced in Christendom, and help us praise and glorify God to learn to beware of popery and other errors 1). For the papists now began to adorn themselves, as one sings of the old man, that he put on his long cloak, and turned out the best end, as he went to the bogeyman. They steal from our books, which they never knew nor taught before, whether they could cover their previous disgrace with it, and smear the people's mouths as if they had never been without water. But it will not and shall not help. There are too many books and other landmarks, even their own decrees and bulls; they cannot be decorated nor covered. So they do not stop with impudent, stinking lies, pretending to reform the Roman court and the whole church, even to hold a concilium; thus, they are making fun of the whole of Christendom as if they were vain jugglers or puppets, who could hardly notice anything, how false false they pretend to be.
But they meet the right time and arrive in good shape, because God has attacked them and exposed their shame, so that they now have to mend and patch themselves first, when the leather has become too short for them, so that the Roman whore is publicly seen behind and in front. If she wants to adorn herself in front, she unveils herself behind; if she wants to cover herself behind, she stands naked in front. They are a lot of scribblers, and would like to make something stinky, but have nothing in the belly. Their hour has come, as it says in Apocalypse. Therefore let them only work and write confidently; they are not worthy of better work than that they work in vain, and make their own things worse and worse. They are like Virgilii, where one milks a goat and the other holds a sieve under it. As the goat gives milk, so the butter is found in the sieve. Her scribes teach nothing, and can teach nothing; so her disciples can learn nothing. The milked goat and the sieve full of holes remain.
But read, my dear reader, this little book,
1) So reads the Wittenberg edition, vol. IX, p. I56d; in the other editions: und andere Irrthum lehren etc.
2) Erlanger: not.
and keep it, in which you can see how faithfully and truly the pope and his own boast of the holy church shepherds and bishops; you will also understand what St. Peter means 2 Petr. 2, 13. 14. when he says: "They splurge on your own and have a heart driven by avarice". Is the Roman court nothing but such avarice that all men's hearts cannot comprehend. I still remember the Imperial Diet at Augsburg in 1518 (twenty years have passed), that Pope Leo and his chamberlain Clemens Septimus devised this mischievousness, how they exhausted the whole of Germany through the annals and other money grabs reported in this booklet, and pretended with outrageous, impudent lies that they wanted to collect a treasure against the Turks, so that the clergy should give a tithe of their goods, the rich laymen a twentieth, the poor a fiftieth; thought that the German beasts should provide such an account. But God gave mercy, that it was rejected. For there were people who thought about it, and thought about it according to arithmetic, who said: Where this estimate would have stood three years in the German land, it would have been completely exhausted, and yet the money would not have perished against the Turks, but, like the annatas, also shamefully.
After that, Pope Clement sent out a bulla, called Mons fidei, in which he grabbed the money of all kings and princes, even under the pretense of opposing the Turks. But he also lacked it by God's grace. When will we Germans wake up and realize (where we cannot see it) how shamefully the popes, cardinals and Roman villains have cheated us, robbed us, robbed us and cheated us, how miserably they have cheated us of body and soul, and how they are still unwilling and unable to stop inflicting on us all plagues on body, goods and soul? Well, God will do it; He has begun to reach into their entrenchment. And even if we drunken Germans do not want to feel it, He still feels what the Roman devil's bride has done against Him, and He will not forget it nor let it go, amen.
3) Thus the Wittenbergers, vol. IX; in the other editions: by.
4) Thus the Wittenberg, Vol. IX. The other editions: could.
Short historical news from the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg. 1)
When at the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg, begun in the fifteen hundred and twenty-second year, but ended in the twenty-third year, a papal message appeared, the same orator delivered to Imperial Majesty governors, princes, princes and other estates a papal decree, Princes and other Estates, advertised it and subsequently handed over his instruction concerning the Lutheran trade, and received an answer to all of this from the Imperial Majesty's Governors, Princes, Princes and other common Estates. And in addition to the same common response, the secular estates in particular have put their noticeably high and unpleasant complaints, which they encounter from the See of Rome and other ecclesiastical estates, in writings and have had them submitted to papal sanctity, as all this follows in different ways.
And after the above-mentioned imperial majesty's governor's and imperial estates' answer, given to the papal orator, among other things the annata, which the newly elected archbishops, bishops and prelates, against the concordata and treaties, urge to give to Rome, as a great unrighteous
1) The following is added to the preceding preface in Walch's old edition. It seems to be taken from the book itself.
They are attracted to the same burdens, and desire the same annotations, which please the German lands, as necessary for the maintenance of their common benefit. And the more it is understood how a considerable sum of money these annals all cost, some special persons of good opinion have inquired how the archbishoprics, bishoprics and prelatures, not only in German lands, but also in other nations are called, which give the annals to Rome, also how much each such archbishop and prelate has to pay for these annals. And what has therefore been explored and recorded in a hurry is also found here after the end of the above-mentioned secular state afflictions, with a special preface 2) for this purpose, from which the other bishoprics and prelatures, if such a list does not attack, and what they give for annals to Rome, can also be found out in greater detail, and everything is printed for the sake of the common good.
2) This will refer to the following preface, which, as we see here, has its place in the book "after the end of the hundred complaints, which the princes and imperial estates have indicated as such, which should not be tolerated any longer by the popes", and before the enumeration of the annotations. Compare the Latin title of the book, which is given in the first note to the next preface. - The list of annotations, which some German bishoprics and abbeys give to Rome, is in the old edition of Walch, vol.