He threw an inkwell at the Devil. That’s the legend, anyway. Martin Luther, the monk who split Western Christianity in half, claimed the Devil visited him regularly. His response was not prayer. His response was to throw things and shout insults. And the insults were not subtle. Luther’s theology included the firm belief that the Devil could be defeated by flatulence. He wrote about this. In detail.
No recording exists. He died in 1546, three centuries before the phonograph. But his voice is one of the best-documented in pre-recording history, because his students wrote down everything he said at dinner. Six thousand five hundred ninety-six entries. The Tischreden — Table Talk — is six volumes of Luther holding forth while eating and drinking, mixing sublime theology with crude humor about bodily functions, the Devil, his wife, his enemies, and whatever else crossed his mind.
The voice was powerful. Built for packed churches and the Wittenberg pulpit. But it had two registers. At the Diet of Worms, standing before Emperor Charles V to defend his writings, he spoke first in a barely audible voice and asked for a night to think. The next day he came back and thundered: “Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me God.” Whether he said exactly those words is debated. What isn’t debated is the effect. He walked in a monk. He walked out a revolutionary.
The accent was Saxon German — East Central German, distinct from both Northern Low German and Southern Bavarian. Luther didn’t just speak Saxon German. He essentially created modern German by using it to translate the Bible. He deliberately chose the Saxon chancellery language because it could be understood across regions. “I use the language of the Saxon chancellery,” he wrote, “which is understood by all German princes and kings.” He translated the Bible by listening to “the mother in the home, the children on the street, the common man in the marketplace.” The German language itself is partly his invention.
“I am born to fight innumerable monsters and devils.” He said that about himself, and he meant it literally. The Devil was not a metaphor for Luther. The Devil was in the room. The Pope was the Antichrist — also not a metaphor. Luther operated at a level of conviction that made everyone around him either a disciple or an enemy. There was no neutral ground.
His hymns are the other voice. “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” — A Mighty Fortress Is Our God — was called the Marseillaise of the Reformation. Luther composed it. He composed 37 hymns total. The man who screamed at the Devil and joked about constipation at dinner also wrote music that congregations have sung for five hundred years. The tenderness in the hymns is real. So is the rage in the polemics. Luther contained both without apparent contradiction.
He married Katharina von Bora, a former nun. Had six children. The Table Talk dinners were family affairs — students scribbling at the table while Luther ate, drank, preached, joked, and occasionally said something that would reshape European civilization. His voice — thundering from the pulpit, roaring at the Devil, laughing at the table, singing in the church — was the voice that cracked the Catholic monopoly on Western Christianity. One monk. Ninety-five theses. And a vocabulary that could move from God to the outhouse in the same breath.
Sources:
- Martin Luther, Tischreden (Table Talk), compiled from student notes (6,596 entries)
- Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil (1989)
- Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (2016)
- Diet of Worms transcripts (1521)
- Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (1950)