1. from St. Elisabeth.
2. from the Christian Order.
3. from St. Anna.
4. st. georgen legend.
5. from Thecla, the virgins.
6. from St. Christopher legend.
7. from the sacred legends.
1. from St. Elisabeth.
Saint Elisabeth was born in 1207, when Emperor Otto and Philip were quarreling and tearing over the Roman Empire. She did not live over four and twenty years of her age. After her death, in the fifth year, she was canonized and proclaimed a saint by Pope Gregory the Ninth. Then she was called by many who knew her and lived during her days.
He, M. Luther, also read many other things in legends, and said with a sigh: "Oh, how the bishops have slept, and have been so negligent, and have let such errors come into the church! It has been a time of divine wrath that, because the Bible has been lost, such things have been taught. We have now, by God's grace,
the word. Our Lord God help us. For where God's Word is pure, there must also be the Holy Spirit.
Then he was asked, "Which legends are canonical, that is, according to the Scriptures, or apocryphal, not according to them? He said, "Very few are pure; the legends of martyrs are least suspect than those who have testified to their faith with their blood. The monks, especially the hermits, who live alone among the people called anachoretes, are marvelous and horrible, for they have many strange, monstrous miracles and foolish works, of wondrous temperance, mortification and discipline. It has the heartache, the flesh can nowhere be rectificiret and brought right. If one rejects the sect of the anachoretes, then desolate, wild, sodomitical
But if one praises discipline and a moderate life, then hypocrites and hopefuls become presumptuous people. So there is injustice on both sides. But it is more grievous, as Gerson the teacher says, to sin and to do too much with wasting, than with frugality. For if one does too much with food and drink, he can make up for it with fasting and sickness; but he who breaks off too much with food and drink, and keeps himself too moderate, cannot recover anywhere. I think a lot of the saints, of whom nothing special is known, live in a common way, like other people, without hypocrisy, boast nor let themselves be noticed.
2nd Christian Order.
(Contained in Cap. 26, § 13.)
3. st. anna.
They said of St. Anne that she had three husbands. How these verses read:
Anna solet dici tres concepisse Marias, Quas genuit viro Joachim, Cleophe, Salomeque.
This is:
It is said that Anna gave birth to three Marys to her husbands: Mariam, the mother of the Lord Christ, from Joachim; Mariam Salome from Salome, and Mariam Cleophe from Cleophas; since Salome is a female name. So also of the marriage of John the Evangelist it was said that he was to be the bridegroom of Magdalene; as one sings of him in the Sequence: Thou hast left the sweet breast or thy heart's beloved, and hast followed the Messiah.
Afterwards, he, D. Martinus, read in a missal of innumerable, many and various masses, which service is arranged and instituted by the pope, only for the sake of money; and said much about the common week, since soon after Michaelmas one held a whole week every day vigils and masses for the dead, sprinkled and burned incense in the charnel house, where the bones of the deceased lay. This was supposed to either alleviate their torment in purgatory or to deliver them from it. All this was believed without, even against God's word.
4. st. georgen legend.
(Contained in Cap. 52, § 4.)
5. from Thecla, the virgins.
Doctor M. Luther read the theclen of the virgin legend baptized by St. Paul, that the same should have awakened carnal lust in him. Then he laughed at such lies. Ah, he said, dear Paule, you must have had another stimulum or stake than carnal lust and desire. The monks, who lived in all security and had good days, let them dream after their temptations that St. Paul also had such temptations and was plagued with them, like them, the belly servants.
6. of St. Christopher's legends.
Doctor M. Luther preached about St. Christopher on his day, and said that it was no history, but the Greeks, as wise, learned and sensible people, had invented such, to show how a Christian should be, and how he was; namely, a very large, long, strong man, who carries a small child, the JEsulein, on the armpit or shoulder, but is so heavy that he must stoop and bend under it (as the name Christophorus, who carries Christ, indicates) through the raging, wild sea, the world, where the waves and bulges, the tyrants and hordes, together with all the devils, strike at him and persecute, would like to take him for life and limb, property and honor; But he clings to a great tree as to a stick, that is, to the word of God. On the other side of the sea stands an old man with a lantern in which is a burning light, that is, the scriptures of the prophets; he follows them and comes to the shore unharmed, where he is safe, that is, into eternal life; But he has a wetzschker on his side, in which there are fish and bread, to indicate that God also wants to feed his Christians here on earth, in such persecution, crosses and misfortunes, when they have to suffer, and to provide for the body, and not let them die of hunger, as the world would like. Is a beautiful, Christian poem. As also from the knight St. George. For George.
in Greek means a builder who builds up land and people with justice and righteousness, and controls and resists the enemies who want to attack and damage them.
7. from the sacred legends.
It has been a plague of the devil that we have no Legendam Sanctorum pure. It is the most shameful lies that it is a miracle; and it is a hard work to correct the Legendas Sanctorum. And M. Luther read the same evening the Legenda St. Catharinen and said: This is against all Roman histories: because Maxentius
has drowned in the Tiber at Rome, and has never come to Alexandria; but Maximius has been there, as one reads in the Eusebio; and since the times of Julli Caesaris, and long before, no king has been Egypt. It must have been a desperate villain who thus vexed Christendom with such mendaciis, he must certainly be deep in hell. We believed such portents and should not have rebelled against them if we had already understood them, but we did not fail to do so. Therefore thank our Lord God, you young fellows, and be pious, so that you do not have to believe such things or even more shameful things.