Probably at the beginning of November 1518. *)
Translated from Latin.
Reply of Brother Silvester Prierias, of the Holy Apostolic Palace Magister, to Brother Martin Luther of the Hermit Order.
Martin Luther wishes the gentle reader Heil!
This reply of my Silvester, dear reader, I especially recommend to you. She is in great need of such a recommendation, especially because she is pregnant, I do not know, with what kind of threats.
goes. Dear, pray for her that she does not give birth to a mistake. Be well and have pity on such theologians. 1)
1) Luther had this preface printed on the title of the edition of the replica of the Prieria that he organized, in mid-January 1519. (Weim. Ausg.)
To the Professor of the Holy Scriptures, Brother Martin Luther, Order of Hermits, Brother Silvester of Prierio, Order of Preachers, of the Holy Apostolic Palace Magister, wishes Heil!
I want to wish you well, my dearest Martin: with the explanation of your theses I also received your answer to our dialogue. Therefore, although you attack me sharply and indeed with great art, likewise also tease me and in the most hidden way possible have sought to disgrace me through oratory and violence, yet because at the first, superficial perusal I perceived with the greatest joy, that your spirit submits to the pope and that the thesis which I had called heretical is revoked, my heart was so open towards you and so taken in by sweet love that now nothing else was able to disturb me. However, when I was fully occupied with what you had written against me, I was surprised about the weapons you had used against me and my statements, as well as about the hidden art of using
I was so amazed at the way you used them that I could not get out of wondering; so much so that, while you made use of all the art and colors of an orator, you wanted to hide this art by the same art, affirming that you did not want to make use of my arts in speaking, although you could; yes, sometimes you imitated me clumsily, so that you could not be taken for a perfect imitator.
2 But let us leave that. But this I must say, that while you bite and prick me in every possible way, yet almost all your weapons are directed only against my person and want to strike me, not by the power of theology or philosophy, but of an ingratiating and cunning art of speech, which cares much for words, little for truth, if it only wins the ears of the mob.
(3) Therefore, because you hurl your arrows at me far more than at my sayings, I will now remove the projectiles that you hurl at my person, but soon also those that you hurl against my sayings.
*The date is a conjecture of the Weimar edition. This writing was printed in special editions at Leipzig and, according to a letter of Joh. Frobenius to Luther of 14 Feb. 1519, Walch, old edition, vol. XV, 1632 § 4, also in Basel. It was then included in the Basel collection of August 1519 probably after the original printing and passed with Luther's preface into the Gesammt-Ausgaben of Luther's works, namely in Latin into the Wittenberger (ürw. 1, col. 185), Jenaer (tom. I, col. 61), Erlanger (ovv. Int. vurii urs. II, p. 68), and in the Weimar critical edition (vol. II, p. 5Y); in addition, the Latin text is still printed by Löscher, vol. Ill, p. 892. German in the old Walch collection; Löscher (op. cit.) mentions an older German print. - The present translation is newly prepared according to the text of the Weimar critical edition.
I will do this as soon as I get out of those comments that you have immersed me in, and I will do this as soon as I get out of those comments that you have immersed me in. And I will tackle this soon, as soon as I am out of those commentaries again, in which you have immersed me. 1) However, I would like you to take these comments of mine in such a way that they are not spoken in a spirit of arrogance or anger, but rather as an apology and mostly only as a joke, but always without prejudice to the love that goes beyond all knowledge of Christ, which recently arose in my heart toward you when I saw your humility toward the pope, as well as your reverence (if it is not feigned). For since my will is the pope's (as it should be), if you have the same opinion and attitude with the pope, I must also have the same with you, although for the sake of scientific investigation a tremendous war has broken out between us, yet (as I said) without prejudice to love.
To begin with the matter itself, bypassing all introductions, you chastise me mainly for the fact that our dialogue to you is arrogant, and in your rambling (not to use your expression "overly verbose") treatise you reproach me almost in one go for being inflamed with bile and unbridled fury of passion.
5 By what right you do this, you can see from this little. For although I am, by the gracious order of our Lord, inquisitor over Rome and the whole world, and therefore, both ordinarily and by delegation of this right, a judge over everything that belongs to the faith, I have given you an answer not only for your sake, but rather for the sake of others and especially of the more unintelligent, among whom your speech gradually ate away like a cancer, not unlike against a Donatus or Faustus or Manichaeus. 2) In everyone's opinion, your words attacked the Roman Church, as well as especially the Roman bishop, as much and severely as if you had published such things in order to immediately go to the Bohemians or with some great still hidden division to the
1) Namely, the commentaries of earlier scholastics, which defended the unlimited power of the popes, which he intended to use.
2) These were three false teachers against whom Augustine argued. Prierias thus presents himself as a second Augustine, but Luther as a heretic similar to the aforementioned.
To step into the light. Therefore, for the sake of the simple and the whole Christian people, but not for your sake, I believed I had to cut off your spikes and nails. Nevertheless, since I issued a very short dialogue to you, not out of bile and fiery anger (as you assure me), but above all out of divine zeal and to protect the truth, and also to show the loyalty that I have sworn to the Roman Pontiff, I had it carefully examined, above all by the people to whom it is incumbent, so as not to attack you more harshly than would have been fair.
In addition, I concealed the name of your order, which, according to my and everyone's judgment, you were about to bring into the greatest disgrace (God willing, I was wrong!), which I certainly would not have done if I (as you write) had been fuming with anger. Finally, I published my writing only after it had been approved by respectable men. Why, then, do you so often accuse me of ill-will, or, to use your term, of incendiary anger, since I have not put forward anything that has not been thoroughly examined, approved and praised beforehand?
7. But you, who want that one should hear Christ thundering down in you, see how modestly, humbly, lovingly and reverently you wrote to the magistrate of the holy palace, using all art, craftiness and lies to bring me into disrepute with words and comparisons, and finally, since you had nothing else to iron out, you threatened not to treat me so humiliatingly the next time if I did not appear more armed on the battlefield (because, you say, you had restrained yourself). But I want to appear, because there is talk of armor, under the guidance of God and the accompaniment of truth, armed with such weapons on the battlefield, that I do not want to live, if I will not have struck you down according to all judgment and proven (what I want to have said, however, only theologically), proven, I say, that your statements contain heresy. But enough of this for now.
8 But then you make fun of me almost throughout your entire booklet, that I proved nothing, but only used mere words with my Thomas. But with what right you do this is clear to all who look at my writing; for I have both in the beginning and at the end of the dialogue expressly said that I then wanted nothing else than to publish other theses against your theses, in order to protect the simple from your falsehoods.
and to press your fundamentals out of you, who had also presented us with your bare theses, which were so ambiguous that very many could only see presumption, audacity and the like in most of them. But I have done this only in part; for there is no one who, comparing my writing with yours, would be so nonsensical as not to prefer it to yours.
(9) Likewise, you have also published the greatest possible confusion 1) as proof of your theses, in which it becomes apparent what you are really capable of and what is in you. In this you also put on a whole lot of divine sayings, but completely in the manner of a barker, and so intelligently that almost nothing fits to the matter and to what you intend. But I should not have been surprised about that either, because you also mock me and the Thomas people (Thomastros, to use your mocking expression) and Thomas himself and accuse them that they, being used to distinctions, make frequent use of them. O great shame, or rather greatest honor of the Thomists! For you, who think to renew the world with your teaching and to overthrow the monuments of the ancients, while you understand the Scriptures without distinction, as if they contained nothing ambiguous or homogeneous, can consequently understand, write and teach them only in a confused way. This has been proven by your great confusion, in which your testimonies, which you put on, coincide with your statements like a tomcat and a monkey in a sack. Therefore the sophisma fits very well for you: "Nothing and a fabulous beast are fighting in the sack", namely your confused mess.
(10) But you repeat over and over again and to the point of exhaustion that I am truly a Thomist and Aristotelian and that my words suggest nothing but Thomas. Of course, when I wrote to you, I could have taken this as a suitable opportunity and sufficient for me to reply to you in vituperation. But you will soon see whether I too, and perhaps far better than you, have outgrown the rut and whether I am a true Thomist or jurist or Canonist or Paulist or Sophist. Although, if I alone were acquainted with St. Thomas in a familiar way, I would not consider the fact that you call me a Thomist, and a very proper one at that, to be a
1) By this Prierias means Luther's explanations of his 95 theses.
The man, who was blind before and then received his sight from Christ, took upon himself the abuse of the Pharisees, who, as the evangelist John testifies [9, 28], cursed him and said: "You are his disciple", that is, Jesus Christ. O, a strange curse and vituperation to be a disciple of Christ, or even of St. Thomas! Whose doctrine, thou mayest will or not, has been sifted and approved by the Roman Church, not as canonical, but as conformable to morals and the Catholic faith, and which, with the exception of the canonical Scriptures, the pope Innocent prefers to the doctrine of all the saints, saying: "This holy teacher's wisdom has above all others, with the exception of the canonical Scriptures, the true words, proper manner of speech, and true thoughts, so that no one who has adhered to him; has ever deviated from the path of truth, and whoever has opposed him has always been suspected of error."
(11) What, then, does the barking of presumptuous men and of the clever against St. Thomas accomplish? See if your order has had a more learned or holier man whom you may follow, since the great Bessarion has very much exalted St. Thomas as the most learned among the saints and the holiest among the learned, indeed, since, as the truth testifies, which is Christ, he has well written [bene]; if one does not want to hold St. Augustine against me; but your disputes must first be removed.
12. But you cast aside not only St. Thomas, but every other teacher, holy as he may be, and in order to prove that the Roman pope can err in his decisions about faith and morals, you lean on a reed that will cut your hand, namely on the Sicilian abbot, 2) a man who was once rebellious and caused division; who in Basel, where a basilisk was hatched, earned the hat of impiety; who also, just as Satan makes his old haughtiness felt in all his actions, so likewise in all his teachings he makes his division felt, for which reason he is sometimes forced to teach silliness, since he does not have the truth with him, which in this matter is also banished from you, to your and your order's shame. He says, in fact, that if a pope and a concilium have different opinions, one must hold with the side that has the better reasons.
2) Nicolaus de Tudesco or de Tudeschis, since 1434 Archbishop of Palermo, therefore usually called Panornaitanug. (Weim. Ausg.)
13 O about the irrefutable man on whom you rely with derision of St. Thomas in a matter so exceedingly important, according to whose doctrine you would say that the Church is not sufficiently informed, since there might be a dispute which the Church could not settle! For who is to decide between the pope and the Concilium which grounds are the better, unless either one of the two parties be judge in its own cause, or else the infidels, or with your Sicilian, the general Church be made judge; and accordingly let us call together from the uttermost parts of the earth all the old women, that they may not be lacking in whom is the true faith. But since such things belong to another treatise, let us break off from them.
You also add Gerson to your protection, who also, not only according to Thomas, the light of the world, but also according to the scholars of your order and according to the Canons, held and wrote very badly about the authority of the pope. These little doctors, who cause you to think arrogantly of the Roman Church, and many others who do not like to see that the Roman Church is the head of all churches, Brother Martin, are a cause of many errors for you.
15. But what wonder that you consider Thomas to be nothing, since you yourself consider Aristotle - whom (so to speak) the whole of nature admires and whose truth, as Boethius testifies, is brighter than the sun; in whose doctrine, whether in his writings concerning the laws of thought, or of nature, or of morality, no falsity has yet been found, except that he did not hold the opinion of the eternity of the world as certain, but, according to the same witness, only as doubtful - so dishonor him that you should blush at your own words. So it only remains that after you, as a second Archytas 1) or Plato or Pythagoras, we not only exchange Thomas or Aristotle for better things, but also the writings of all teachers who are celebrated, both of those who are counted among the saints and those who are not, as if they had written as ignorants without deliberation and the popes had given out indulgences uselessly.
16 I just remembered your words, in which you divine me with the tombs of St. Pudentiana or the glorious martyr Sebastian, as if I wanted to prove with these opinions of the rabble that the Church gives souls deliverance from purgatory through indulgences. I
1) Archytas, a Pythagorean philosopher, lived around 400 BC.
I will not cite caves or tombs, but guarantees of the kind that if you deny them, you too will be denied and condemned. But how sharply you have proved your things by the attracted Clementine, you shall see next. But this I will not conceal now, that you have indeed shown yourself to be an excellent canonist, and since you despise the teachings of all the saints, you have built an immense and tremendous burden on a little gloss, which you have misunderstood to boot.
(17) But to leave Thomas and come to my own cause, you often call me a flatterer, an accusation of which I am almost ashamed to clear myself; but I will answer you for the sake of others, that what I have written about the pope is less than his personal virtues. But since I have spoken the truth (as the clergy and the people of Rome, and almost the whole world, can testify), with what sacrilege do you presume to judge my disposition? Yes, I rather defended my own cause and party when I attacked you, but pushed back the pope, to whom I owe allegiance according to Christian conscience and according to my special oath. Or am I not just as well allowed to defend myself by praising the pope with truth, whom you, as far as you are concerned, have badly defiled, as you are to rightly revile him with untruth? In this you carry the palm and the victory before all, which I have read up to now.
18 But that you say that in your Germany they say this, namely that I teach flattery, I answer that I do not believe you, but rather that my writings, both in this and in other matters, are held in greater esteem and honor in Germany than yours, and perhaps than yours can ever be. I could very easily prove this both by my commentaries on the sphere and theory, as well as by the "Golden Rose", by the "Silvestrina" and by the Grundriß of Capreolus, 2) which is being read publicly at Leipzig because of a bequest, as I have heard, and by others, if I did not fear that you would call me proud and vain.
2) The following writings of Prierias are meant here: Commentaries on the Sphere of John de sacro Bosco (Venice 1513); Commentaries on the Theory of the Planets (Milan 1514); Golden Rose, a Gospel Postilla, compiled from the Fathers of the Church; Detailed Textbook of Sins, called KUvsstriua or Lumina Lurumaruru; Outline of Capreolus (a Dominican, d. 1497). 1444) on the (4 books of) Sentences (Cremona 1497).
19 But I see that you are now complaining again that I am making you hateful to the pope. But would God that your writings and something about you, which I conceal, had made you hateful not only to the pope, but to the whole Christian world! For, according to my custom, I will assist you with all my strength, if you are sincere and humble-minded, and I do not speak lies. You have lit a great fire with straws, and now you say that you cannot get out of it by silence. Would to God that you understood how to get out of it by good and sweet words!
(20) But what I would call even worse, in order to excuse your former statements, you are drooling out new ones, which are both false and annoying, and you are only holding up a shield of snow to them, as if you were not speaking in an assertive but in a disputing manner, as if it were an easy and not a grave sin to discuss such things out of doubt and then to withdraw to a future council, as to a special castle, which perhaps that spirit of yours [Panormitanus] has taught you. However, I do not want to be called a protector of Roman vices, as you threaten, but rather, if it pleases you, not a protector, but rather a confessor and a defender of Roman doctrine to the best of my ability.
21 However, to continue with our dialogue, you cry out that you do not know whether we have a different Thomas in Italy than in Germany, because I differ from my own in Germany. But in this I do not want to believe you, because I think that you mislead others just as much as you mislead me, and that you misunderstand our things as well as foreign things, which I would like to blame on reason or will; and what you cannot deny that you understand correctly, you twist into the wrong.
22 And lest you think that I am speaking into the wind, I will pick out an arbitrary example. Please consider my words more carefully, I beg you, and see carefully whether one can infer from them that one may not refuse alms to a poor person without venial sin, as you falsely accuse me of doing. In this matter, you are attacking me with such a great torrent of words, while it was not Silvester, but Martin who dreamt it. Have you understood me, who did not even think of such a thing, why do you roll so many lies on me? But if you didn't understand me, then read and study with a more sober mind.
23. you also move up to me extraordinarily, i
I would only do it out of addiction to money and dignity that I applaud with flattering words for their sake, on which I have nothing more to say than that you perhaps know the secrets of my heart better than I do. If, however, there is talk of dignities, then I know that as a young man I rejected a bishopric with six hundred gold florins. Perhaps, however, I could once again, stupid with age, be turned away by softness from my position, which I have now held with manliness for 47 years and more in monastic life. But even the office which I hold by the grace of our Lord, I have, that you may know, neither sought nor desired, but only gratefully accepted. In a short time, however, if I live to see it, I will be able to say that I will show you and the world that I have neither been touched nor blown away in the midst of the sea of flames of lust and wealth as well as of dignities and enticements.
024 But thou sayest thou hearest not Christ speaking in me: neither do I hear his voice in thee, save when thou hast cast thyself at the pope's feet. But something else speaks to me in you: therefore either Christ does not speak in any of us, or else one is deaf or hard of hearing. Let us ask Christ to make his words resound!
(25) But you write that I speak as the preachers of indulgences would have me speak, and that I would set myself up as their protector. But how far you are from the truth in this, too, is known to the omniscient God, since I have not said with a word, not even with a tittle of any of them, what I have heard (as the Lord lives), yes, I thought at first that they were Minorites [Franciscans]. But in that you blame me for Donatist heresy, you can only make a true judgment when I have said from whom a preparation for the grace of God is required. But now you have (as they say) called yourself with the cross before the end of the gospel.
(26) Likewise, do you ask with which church I hold concerning the conception of the Virgin? But I say: I do not know with which one; but I believe with the Roman one, because my opinion comes to me from its writings. But when the matter will be decided, then I will know with which one. In the meantime, however, I will believe with 266 teachers, some of whom also belong to your order; but I will leave it up to you, together with your old red spirit [Panormitanus], to believe what you like.
27 You add, so as not to omit anything hateful, something concerning Reuchlin, as if the Order of Preachers were persecuting him, and not the Pari-
,422 D. V. a. II, 77 f. III Luther's dispute with Silvester Prierias. W. XVIII, 211 f. 423
ser, Cologne and other universities. But who may protect him, the truth or the Hebrews or Chrysostom or both, I don't know; one thing I do know is that you completely misjudge my duties, which are those of a just and merciful man.
28 You also ascribe to me that I have claimed to be an Entellus, while I have named only Dares and only because of the boasting of his powers and the challenge to fight. But now I hold up to you the words of Jerome to Augustine: Think of Dares and Entellus: Entellus, who was serious in his old age, was mocked by the youthful and light-minded Dares, but in vain; for he immediately had to pay for it.
29 Finally, you write that I take the liberty to baptize you at will and to give you all the names that come to my mind.
But in truth, I have never mentioned your real name. However, the fathers of your order call it now and then. There are many other arrows, Martin, that you shoot at me; but my mind is disgusted by treading on these dirty things, especially since I have not brought them up in a bitter heart, but most of them in jest, and very much also in apology. In the meantime, I want to pucker up to send home your so numerous allegations.
30 But I beg you, if you love Christ, not to climb higher than necessary, but to walk steadily and perseveringly in sobriety on the path you have taken. If you do this, I believe that you will also hear Christ speaking in me, and perhaps then you will have no more faithful friend than Silvester, of whom you are now so afraid. Farewell.