Luther Enters the Monastery: An Evaluation of Denifle's Arguments

I came across an article from The Harvard Theological Review (Vol. VII, 1914), Martin Luther In The Light Of Recent Criticism by Ephraim Emerton. Emerton outlines the Catholic attack against Luther entering the monastery, launched by Catholic historian Heinrich Denifle. I don't normally cite large sections of text, but this review has keen insight into Catholic criticism of Luther's monastic vows. One thing of particular note is the evaluation of Denifle's method of argument against Luther, which I have highlighted in black. The words ring true of many current Catholic evaluations online. After that, I posted a section from J.M. Reu's book, Thirty Five Years of Luther Research (New York: AMC Press, 1970 reprint) pertaining to the same details about Luther's entrance into the monastery.


It was natural that Father Denifle, himself a "religious " and a Dominican at that, should have directed his attack with especial venom against Luther's whole relation to the monastic system. It was not merely that Luther had abandoned his monastic profession, broken his vows, and led multitudes of others to do the same. His chief offence was that he had misrepresented the sacred idea of the regular life. Luther's own utterances on the subject would lead us to believe that he had entered the monastery in order that he might secure deliverance from the sense of sin that was oppressing him. He had given it a fair trial. He had not been in the attitude of rebellion against the minuteness of the rule, which had marked the attitude of Erasmus, for example. On the contrary, he had conformed with scrupulous exactness to every requirement, in the vain hope that thus he might acquire the peace of mind he sought.

Failing to find this relief, he had passed through a stage bordering on despair, and out of this stage he had worked himself only through persistent study of the Bible and its interpretation in the light of the theology of Paul and Augustine. In other words, he had found through the process of personal experience his solution of the problem of personal sin and sinfulness. The method of conformity to a system of prescribed practices had failed. He had gone beyond and above all prescriptions to the personal and intimate relation of the sinful soul to the God who made it. Now this is what the dominant Church could not and cannot forgive. If the individual could thus leap over all the bounds of form and ceremony which it had established, then its occupation was gone, and it was quick to perceive this inevitable conclusion.

Denifle did not waste his time in dwelling overmuch on the wickedness of breaking vows and seeking the gratification of sensual desire under the excuse of religious scruple. These things he characterizes with vicious side-thrusts which leave no doubt as to his opinion. What he chiefly dwells upon is the false-heartedness of Luther in professing any such idea of the monastic life. Luther ought to have known that the profession of the monk was not primarily a process intended for the deliverance from sin. The whole notion of the monastic vow as a "second baptism," whereby a man was sacramentally renewed in spirit, he declares to be a complete misapprehension. Not as a guarantee of spiritual perfection but only as an aid toward this end, is the regular life truly to be interpreted. All this Luther ought to have known and probably did know; so that he is guilty, not only of an overwrought hysterical motive in entering the monastery, but of deliberate lying about it when it became necessary to defend his apostasy.

The answer to this particular charge of Denifle is admirably stated by Karl Benrath in his treatise on Luther in the Monastery. It is made clear that this is only one of the countless illustrations of Denifle's controversial method. He begins always with the point he desires to make, then seeks for words of Luther which by some perverse ingenuity can be twisted into a self-condemnation, then draws his foregone conclusion, and proceeds to build upon this the foundation for a new indictment. Benrath shows by a perfectly just historical method that Luther was fully justified in the year 1505 in thinking that the monastery life would be the surest way to secure him the peace which his boy's soul craved. It is not necessary to imagine that he expected any miraculous demonstration of such a deliverance. His surrender to the requirements of the house would indicate the contrary. What he probably did expect was that through this surrender he would find himself growing daily in what he would have called the Christian character. When he did not find this, he began the course of questioning and reaction which finally carried him outside the bounds of the monastic relation.

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the foul insinuations with which Denifle pursues his victim during the years of struggle with the monastic limitations. Enough that his only material here consists of a series of scattered utterances of Luther himself, largely in personal letters, never specific in their references, and always leaving large room for interpretation, but used here with true Dominican inquisitorial cleverness in the sense most unfavorable to the defendant. Reduced to their lowest terms, they all fall back to the one simple statement that Luther was made a man and not a monk and believed that he was not singular in this respect. His unpardonable offence was that he believed a man was something better than a monk and did not hesitate to say so.

This note of personal abuse is continued throughout the discussion of Luther's early years, and furnishes the foundation upon which the whole judgment of his later accomplishment is built. It has been the task of his Protestant defenders to show the falsity of the method and to illustrate this by reference to specific points. Denifle has then replied to his critics with sweeping accusations of a character quite in accordance with his assault upon Luther himself. The chief points in this rejoinder are found in the familiar charges of ignorance and falsehood. If we could accept this criticism, we should have to believe that all the vast output of German scholarship in the past two generations had been thrown away. These scholars, the most eminent in their field, are represented first as utterly incapable of understanding even the first principles of historical inquiry. Evidence means nothing to them, because they are constitutionally, or, if you please, confessionally disqualified to weigh and measure it. They cannot read the documents necessary to establish their opinion. They are ignorant of things that every Catholic child knows in its cradle. And then these ornaments of German scholarship, thus incapable of any worthy achievement, are united in a conspiracy to pervert the truth. They are worthy disciples of their master and involved in the same condemnation.

The following is from J.M. Reu's book, Thirty Five Years of Luther Research (New York: AMC Press, 1970 reprint) pertaining to the same details about Luther's entrance into the monastery.

Luther Enters the Monastery
Oergel has shed more light on the circumstances connected with Luther's entrance into the monastery, when he tells how during the year of 1505 the university was visited by quite a number of dire happenings. He tells how suddenly a classmate of Luther died of pleurisy; how just at this time the plague and spotted fever made many victims at Erfurt, so that during the summer a panic occurred among the students. All this helps to explain why just at this time the serious thoughts of death and judgment tormented the soul of Luther, even though the principal motive of his entrance into the monastery always remained the inner restlessness and desire for salvation, of which Hermelink excellently says that the western church always kept this restlessness and desire present, nurturing the same for pedagogical reasons and at the same time satisfying it. (p.40)


Since Denifle had cast so many aspersions on Luther's monastery life, it became necessary to study this period of the life of the Reformer more thoroughly. Outside of the brief answers made to Denifle by Kolde, Seeberg, Haussleiter, Brieger, Koehler, Harnack and Walther, we have here especially to consider Benrath, and even more so Braun. Because Denifle contends that since 1515, certainly since 1519, "the vow of chastity had proven itself irksome to Luther," and that the real motive for his defection from Rome is to be found in his weakness for carnal sins, Benrath takes into consideration the entire period from his entrance into the monastery up to his marriage. He discloses beyond contradiction the manipulations and distortions of facts exercised by Denifle, and permits us to see for ourselves how Luther during his monastery period outgrew the Mediaeval Church, and how the fundamentals were first laid in his own life. He shows that the position which Luther finally won over against the Roman Church can only be understood as the slowly matured result of religious development, a development, that had to pass through all stages of alleged certainty of gaining salvation and the bitter knowledge that external guarantees do not allay doubt until it found its way to the truly blessed certainty of God's paternity through Jesus Christ.

Braun visualizes the internal development of Luther up to 1521, wherefore we must return to his work later on. We must, however, in this connection, consider that Braun very definitely brings out that it was not weakness for carnal sins that contaminated Luther all these years, and brought about the end of his relation with Rome. On the contrary, it was his eminently tender conscience, the very opposite of the "Kautschuk-conscience" trained by the Church, his conscience which would not allow itself to be soothed either through the at that time customary reference to the "Monk's Baptism" (i. e., to the power of order to make up for sins) or through sacramental magic, but which would trouble itself before and after dispensation of grace because of the consciousness of inherent lusts, until the New Testament conception of grace, with its mercy of God, that reckons no sins to the faithful, came into its own, and through faith in it peace entered the heart. Braun says "the Luther personality that becomes apparent to us through his theological endeavors is none other than the one we already know from his mode of life. His unbending veracity that is never guilty of distortion of justice, that by the scholastic distinctions of sins of omission, of weaknesses, of excusable ignorance, the scholastic assertion of the validity of good intentions, and whatever the rest of softening phrases, may be called, does not allow its moral convictions to be confused, but abides by the dictum of the conscience and calls sin sin,—his excellent psychological understanding of the methods of divine pedagogy, finally the unconditional dependence on the grace of God, because of which, following in the steps of Paul and Augustine, he finds nothing of good in himself, but attributes all of holiness, all of virtue, all of good to the freely given mercy of God,—all of these constitute the spiritual seal which Luther's theology bears. They are the proof that God was with him." (pp. 42-44).

Did Luther Have a Valid Call To Monastic Life?

To the Left: The Augustinian Church and Monastery in Erfurt, where Martin Luther lived


Over the years, I've found that Roman Catholics will sometimes argue Luther made a grave mistake when he became a monk, and this is just one more reason why he could not have been any sort of reformer of Christ's church. Consider Father Patrick O'Hare's summation found in the book, The Facts About Luther:

When we consider the motives that prompted Luther to abandon the world, we fear he knew little about the ways of God and was not well informed of the gravity and responsibilities of the step he was taking. The calling he aspired to is the highest given to man on earth and because it is a ministry of salvation, replete with solemn and sacred obligations, it should not be embraced without prayerful consideration and wise and prudent counsel. It is only when vocation is sufficiently pronounced and when one by one the different stages of the journey in which are acquired continually increasing helps towards reaching the appointed goal, are passed, that one should enter the sanctuary. "No man," says St. Paul, "takes the honor to himself, but he that is called by God." That Luther was not called by God to conventual life seems evident enough from all the circumstances. Every sign and mark one looks for in aspirants to the monastic life were apparently lacking in him. Parent and friend alike knew this and opposed his course, feeling it was merely the expression of a temporary attitude of mind and not a real vocation. Luther himself admits that he was driven by despair, rather than the love of higher perfection, into a religious career. He says: "I entered the monastery and renounced the world because I despaired of myself all the while." From his earliest days he was subject to fits of depression and melancholy. Emotional by temperament, he would pass suddenly from mirth and cheerfulness to a gloomy, despondent state of mind in which he was tormented by frightful searchings of conscience. The fear of God's judgments and the recollection of his own sins sorely tried him and caused unnecessary anxiety and dread as to his fate. He saw in himself nothing but sin and in God nothing but anger and revenge. He fell a victim to excessive scrupulousness, and, as he was self- opinionated and stubborn-minded, he relied altogether too much on his own righteousness and disregarded the remedies most effectual for his spiritual condition. Like all those who trust in themselves, he rushed from extreme timidity to excessive rashness. Had he consulted those who were skilled in the direction of conventual religious and made known the troubled waters beneath the smooth surface of his daily life, he might have been made to understand that, owing to his abnormal state of mind and his natural disposition, he was not fitted for the carrying out of the evangelical counsels and thus have been prevented from forcing himself into a mould for which he was manifestly unsuited. In the uneasy and serious state of his conscience the advice and counsel of the wise and prudent were ignored. Moved by his own feelings and relying on his own powers, he suddenly and secretly decided for himself a career in life which, as events proved, was not only a mistake as far as he was concerned, but one fraught with disaster to innumerable others, whom he afterwards influenced to join in his revolt against the Mother Church[source].

Before we castigate all Roman Catholics for holding an opinion similar to Father O'Hare, consider the words of a more recent Roman Catholic source: The New Catholic Encyclopedia-

The Call to Religion. In the summer of 1505 Luther influenced no doubt by his father, began the study of law. Sometime in July of the same year, while returning to Erfurt from a visit to Mansfield, he encountered a severe- thunderstorm near the village of Stotternheim; as a lightning bolt threw him to the ground, he vowed to St. Anne in a sudden panic that he would become a monk. To assume that the decision to enter the monastery was as impromptu as it is often depicted does Luther an injustice. His strict religious upbringing his natural bent toward piety, and above all the experiences of the last few years at the university were unquestionably factors of his move. In 1503 he had severely wounded himself by accidentally cutting the artery in his thigh and had spent many weeks in meditative recuperation. In the same year one of his closest friends, a fellow student, had died suddenly. The plague that struck the city of Erfurt in 1505 had made him keenly aware of the preeminence of death. All of this indicates that a call to religion was -something that had been in his mind for a long period.

Nor is it without significance that he chose to enter the monastery of the Hermits of St. Augustine. The city of Erfurt boasted a Dominican, a Franciscan and a Servite monastery in addition to the Black Cloister, a member of the Observant, or stricter Augustinian, congregation of Saxony, which was by far the most severe religious house in the city. On July 16 1505, much to the chagrin of his parents, who were already selecting a bride for the student of law, Luther entered the novitiate. Soon after his profession, the exact date of which is not known, he was told to prepare himself for the reception of Holy Orders. He was ordained a deacon by the suffragan bishop, Johann von Laasphe of Erfurt, on Feb. 27, 1507; he received the priesthood in the Erfurt cathedral on the following April 4th. [Luther entry, The New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, p. 1086].

How does one decide between Father O'Hare or The New Catholic Encyclopedia? Both say very different things, creating two very different pictures of Martin Luther. The answer is that Father O'Hare's view is usually classified as the outdated approach to Martin Luther. O'Hare belonged to the tradition of destructive criticism that lasted in Catholic scholarship until the early 20th century.

While Catholic laymen seem to champion O'Hare's view, they're quite out of step with their scholars. Many Twentieth Century Catholics scholars studied Luther as a sincere religious man and an honest theologian. Here are some excerpts from my paper, The Roman Catholic Perspective of Martin Luther (Part Two)

Kiefl appreciated Luther’s profound piety. He held Luther’s starting point and his main interest were religious.

Merkle held Luther was searching for a religion for the heart, and he also saw the religious depth evident in the young Luther.

Fischer saw Luther as a man of prayer: "However rich a Church may be in truly great Christian men of prayer, it would still have room for the distinctives of the praying Luther; it should not pass carelessly over this great man of prayer and his precious utterances on prayer and his excellent instruction on prayer."

Jedin defended Luther's moral character against such scholars as Denifle.

Lortz saw Luther as a deeply religious man: he entered a strict monastery and gave up care for himself to truly come face to face with a gracious God. Lortz states, "there is no doubt that he was a profoundly religious man, a true Christian, who lived by a deep faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified and risen to save us. We must also remember that all his life Luther was a man of prayer and a zealous preacher of the Word of God."

Herte spent a fair amount of time refuting previous Catholic scholarship's vilification of Luther's character, as did Swidler.

Hessen saw Luther as having a great experience with God, encountering him in Christ and his Gospel.

Adam saw Luther as a man whose convictions were fed by an irresistible religious experience.

Congar saw Luther as a profoundly religious man who had a deeply sensitive conscience.

Sartory held love inspired Luther. Luther was was a homo religiosus, a genuine religious personality.

Tavard says Luther was not the odd man out, but embodied the religious disquiet of many of his contemporaries.

McDonough saw Luther as a man with a desire to be at peace with God. Luther had a real experience with God driven by the Scriptures.

Todd saw Luther as a pious and intelligent monk.

Wicks says Luther can be a forceful teacher of lived religion.

Now I don’t believe in the validity of Roman Catholic monasticism, nor do I believe God calls anyone to such. However, how is it possible that Internet Catholic layman overlook their own scholarship? Many of Rome's writers see Luther as an honest religious man. I've read though, countless web pages or comments from Catholics that Luther did not have valid reasons for entering the monastery, nor did he have the right psyche to be in the monastery. He was not a sincere religious man. Given all we know though about Luther, I would say he was indeed a genuine religious personality.

For the sake of argument, let's play on the field of Internet Catholic laymen for a moment. Suppose they argue that Luther's thunderstorm experience proves his was not a genuine calling to the monastery. I would ask, why would a fear of death invalidate a genuine religious call? Could not a person have both a serious call, and a fear of death? Does not the vow being kept point to a person deeply committed to their "spirituality"? Recall the old Burt Reynolds movie, "The End" (I think that's what it was called). He makes a vow to God at the end of the movie while swimming to the beach from far off in the ocean. By the time he's reached the shore, he has ignored the vow. While a movie isn't reality, isn't its message typical of human nature? We often ask God to get us out of something, only to eventually ignore whatever vows we've made in our silly attempts at bargaining with deity. Not so for Luther.

One wonders if the same type of scrutiny is applied to such people like Ignatius of Loyola. He lay recuperating from severe wounds and made a decision for monasticism. Of course, had he been deemed a heretic, one could see Father O'Hare writing The Facts About Loyola, and how his calling to monasticism was not valid.

Compare and Contrast: Denifle vs O'Hare on Luther Joining the Monastery

Most of you know my interest in the Catholic understanding of Martin Luther, and the way the "facts" are interpreted. One of the books I've been looking for for quite a while is Heinrich Denifle's work on Luther in English. It is available online in German, but as far as I've been able to search, an English translation is not yet on-line (though does exist). I'm trying to hold out buying this text. Typically, I find used copies of it on-line over $100 (yes, I've come close to buying it). I'm hoping Google Books or some other website saves me the money by posting it (If anyone finds it on-line, please let me know). It is funny how Google Books seems to know which books I'm looking for, and makes sure not to have them available!

Heinrich Denifle was an Austrian Catholic scholar in the 1880’s, and held in high esteem by Leo XIII and Pius X. He was also an accomplished scholar, with groundbreaking work on the relationship between scholastic theology and medieval mysticism. In the course of his research on medieval theology and the corruption of the Church, Denifle developed an interest in understanding Luther.

Denifle was no fan of Luther, and by and large, his writings on Luther have been disregarded by Catholics and Protestants. For him, Luther was a fallen-away monk with unbridled lust, a theological ignoramus, an evil man, and used immorality to begin the Reformation. Denifle accuses Luther of buffoonery, hypocrisy, pride, ignorance, forgery, slander, pornography, vice, debauchery, drunkenness, seduction, corruption, and more: he is a lecher, knave, liar, blackguard, sot, and worse: he was infected with the venereal disease syphilis. To read more about Denifle's approach to Luther, see my article, The Roman Catholic Perspective of Martin Luther (Part One). Now this is a book I want!

Recently I found an interesting old Catholic review of Denifle's work. The author gives a summary of Denifle's work, and one particular statement caught my attention. Above, note Denifle considered Luther a "fallen-away monk." The article summarizes Denifle's position on the early Luther, and I think those interested in this topic will be surprised at the position taken:

"The first general impression we get of Martin Luther by reading Denifle's book is that during the first decade of his monastic life from 1505 to 1515, he was a good, brilliant, zealous religious. When he joined the Augustinian Order he was not an ignorant, inexperienced youth ; he was twenty-two years old and was a doctor of philosophy. His intentions were unquestionably sincere and holy. Two years he remained in the novitiate to probe himself and to study the profound meaning and the sacred obligations of religious life. When the young doctor, therefore, made his profession at the age of twenty-four, we have all reasons to believe that he gave himself to God with his whole heart, of his own free will, with no other motive than to strive after perfection and work for the glory of God. We may even suppose that he excelled among his brethren in piety and learning. He was made superior, placed in authority over eleven convents, and as master of arts and theology he was sent to Wittenberg to teach at the university."

Granted, I don't have Denifle's book to check to see if he's been summarized correctly, but other reviews of Denifle's work state as much. Here we find Denifle describing Luther as an honest and sincere fellow with holy intentions. But, despite this, Denifle will argue Luther "fell away" from his calling, and became the awful person described above.

Now, compare this to Father O'Hare's opinion in his book, The Facts About Luther. Father O'Hare presents quite a different picture:

When we consider the motives that prompted Luther to abandon the world, we fear he knew little about the ways of God and was not well informed of the gravity and responsibilities of the step he was taking. The calling he aspired to is the highest given to man on earth and because it is a ministry of salvation, replete with solemn and sacred obligations, it should not be embraced without prayerful consideration and wise and prudent counsel. It is only when vocation is sufficiently pronounced and when one by one the different stages of the journey in which are acquired continually increasing helps towards reaching the appointed goal, are passed, that one should enter the sanctuary. "No man," says St. Paul, "takes the honor to himself, but he that is called by God." That Luther was not called by God to conventual life seems evident enough from all the circumstances. Every sign and mark one looks for in aspirants to the monastic life were apparently lacking in him. Parent and friend alike knew this and opposed his course, feeling it was merely the expression of a temporary attitude of mind and not a real vocation. Luther himself admits that he was driven by despair, rather than the love of higher perfection, into a religious career. He says: "I entered the monastery and renounced the world because I despaired of myself all the while." From his earliest days he was subject to fits of depression and melancholy. Emotional by temperament, he would pass suddenly from mirth and cheerfulness to a gloomy, despondent state of mind in which he was tormented by frightful searchings of conscience. The fear of God's judgments and the recollection of his own sins sorely tried him and caused unnecessary anxiety and dread as to his fate. He saw in himself nothing but sin and in God nothing but anger and revenge. He fell a victim to excessive scrupulousness, and, as he was self- opinionated and stubborn-minded, he relied altogether too much on his own righteousness and disregarded the remedies most effectual for his spiritual condition. Like all those who trust in themselves, he rushed from extreme timidity to excessive rashness. Had he consulted those who were skilled in the direction of conventual religious and made known the troubled waters beneath the smooth surface of his daily life, he might have been made to understand that, owing to his abnormal state of mind and his natural disposition, he was not fitted for the carrying out of the evangelical counsels and thus have been prevented from forcing himself into a mould for which he was manifestly un-suited. In the uneasy and serious state of his conscience the advice and counsel of the wise and prudent were ignored. Moved by his own feelings and relying on his own powers, he suddenly and secretly decided for himself a career in life vhich, as events proved, was not only a mistake as far as he was concerned, but one fraught with disaster to innumerable others, whom he afterwards influenced to join in his revolt against the Mother Church. Without advice and without full deliberation, even in spite of the opposition of those who knew him best, he determined to become a friar [The Facts About Luther (Tan Edition) pp.37-39].

Well, these are two very different approaches- I think it shows quite clearly that even Catholic interpreters of Luther can be quite at odds with each other, and this is yet another reason why I find this an interesting topic of study.