accompany their newly-devised recitative, the invention of which
in Florence, from the impulse of the Renaissance, is well known.
The height of a theorbo varied from 3 ft. 6 in. to 5 ft., the Paduan
being always the largest, excepting the Roman 6-ft. long chitarrone.
These large lutes had very deep notes, and doubtless great liberties
were allowed in tuning, but the strings on the finger-board followed
the lute accordance already given, or another quoted by Baron
(Untersuchung des Instruments der Lauten, Nuremberg, 1727) as the
old theorbo or “violway” (see Mace, Musick’s Monument, London,
1676):—
We find again both these accordances varied and transposed a tone higher, perhaps with thinner strings, or to accommodate local differences of pitch. Praetorius recommends the chanterelles of theorbos being tuned an octave lower on account of the great strain. By such a change, another authority, the Englishman Thomas Mace, says, the life and spruceness of airy lessons were quite lost. The theorbo or archlute had at last to give way to the violoncello and double bass, which are still used to accompany the “recitativo secco” in oratorios and operas. Handel wrote a part for a theorbo in Esther (1720); after that date it appears no more in orchestral scores, but remained in private use until nearly the end of the century.
The lute and the organ share the distinction of being the first instruments for which the oldest instrumental compositions we possess were written. For the lute, however, they were not written in our present notation, but in tablature, “lyrawise,” a system by which as many lines were drawn horizontally as there were pairs of strings on the finger-board, the frets, distributed at intervals of a semitone, being distinguished by the letters of the alphabet, repeated from A, representing the open string, for each line. This was the English and French manner; the Italian was by numbers instead of letters. The signs of time were placed over the stave, and were not repeated unless the mensural values changed. (A. J. H.; K. S.)
LUTHARDT, CHRISTOPH ERNST (1823–1902), German
Lutheran theologian, was born at Maroldsweisach, Bavaria, on
the 22nd of March 1823. He studied theology at Erlangen and
Berlin, and in 1856 became professor ordinarius of systematic
theology and New Testament exegesis at Leipzig. In 1865 he
was made a counsellor to the consistory, in 1871 canon of
Meissen cathedral, and in 1887 a privy councillor to the church.
He died at Leipzig on the 21st of September 1902. A strictly
orthodox theologian, and a clear writer, though not a very
profound scholar, Luthardt became widely appreciated as the
author of apologetic lectures. These were collected under the
title Apologie des Christentums (vol. i., 1864, 14th ed. 1896;
vol. ii. 7th ed., 1901; vol. iii. 7th ed., 1898; vol. iv. 2nd ed.,
1880), a work of which the first three volumes have been translated
into English. In 1868 he founded and edited the Allgemeine
evang.-lutherische Kirchenzeitung, with its supplement the
Theologisches Litteraturblatt, and in 1880 became editor of the
Zeitschrift für kirchl. Wissenschaft und kirchl. Leben.
His other works include Das Johanneische Evangelium . . . erklärt (1852–1853; 2nd ed. in 2 vols., 1875–1876), Offenbarung Johannis erklärt (1861), Lehre von den letzten Dingen (1861; 3rd ed. 1885); Kompendium der Dogmatik (1865; 9th ed., 1893), Geschichte der christlichen Ethik (2 vols., 1888–1893), Gnade und Wahrheit (1874), Das Wort des Lebens (1877) and Gnade und Frieden (1880). His autobiography was published with the title Erinnerungen aus vergangenen Tagen (1889; 2nd ed., 1891).
LUTHER, MARTIN (1483–1546), the great German religious
reformer, was born at Eisleben on the 10th of November 1483.
His father, Hans Luther (Lyder, Luder, Ludher), a peasant from
the township of Möhra in Thuringia, after his marriage with
Margarethe Ziegler, had settled in Mansfeld, attracted by the
prospects of work in the mines there. The counts of Mansfeld,
who, many years before, had started the mining industry,
made a practice of building and letting out for hire small furnaces
for smelting the ore. Hans Luther soon leased one, then three.
In 1491 he became one of the four elected members of the village
council (vier Herren von der Gemeinde); and we are told that
the counts of Mansfeld held him in esteem. The boy grew up
amid the poor, coarse surroundings of the German peasant
life, imbibing its simple beliefs. He was taught that the Emperor
protected the poor people against the Turk, that the Church
was the “Pope’s House,” wherein the Bishop of Rome had all
the rights of the house-father. He shared the common superstitions
of the time and some of them never left him.
Young Martin went to the village school at Mansfeld; to a school at Magdeburg kept by the Brethren of the Common Lot; then to the well-known St George’s school at Eisenach. At Magdeburg and Eisenach Luther was “a poor student,” i.e. a boy who was received into a hospice where he lived rent-free, attended school without paying fees, and had the privilege of begging for his bread at the house-doors of the town; in return for which he sang as a chorister in the church to which the school was attached. Luther was never a “wandering student”; his parents were too careful of their child to permit him to lead the life of wandering licence which marked these pests of medieval German scholastic life. At Eisenach he attracted the notice of the wife of a wealthy merchant of Eisenach, whom his biographers usually identify as Frau Cotta.
After three happy years at Eisenach, Luther entered the university of Erfurt (1501), then the most famous in Germany. Hans Luther had been prospering, and was more than ever resolved to make his son a lawyer. Young Luther entered his name on the matriculation book in letters which can still be read “Martinus Ludher ex Mansfelt,” a free student, no longer embarrassed by great poverty. In Luther’s time Erfurt was the intellectual centre of Germany and its students were exposed to a variety of influences which could not fail to stimulate young men of mental ability.
Its theology was, of course, scholastic, but of what was then called the modern type, the Scotist; its philosophy was the nominalist system of William of Occam, whose great disciple, Gabriel Biel (d. 1495), had been one of its most famous professors; Nicholas de Lyra’s (d. 1340) system of biblical interpretation had been long taught there by a succession of able teachers; Humanism had won an early entrance to the university; the anti-clerical teaching of John of Wessel, who had himself taught at Erfurt for fifteen years (1445–1460), had left its mark on the place and was not forgotten. Hussite propagandists, even in Luther’s time, secretly visited the town and whispered among the students their anti-clerical Christian socialism. Papal legates to Germany seldom failed to visit the university and by their magnificence bore witness to the majesty of the Roman church.
A study of the scholastic philosophy was then the preliminary training for a course of law, and Luther worked so hard at the prescribed studies that he had little leisure, he said, for classical learning. He attended none of the Humanist lectures, but he read a good many of the Latin authors and also learned a little Greek. He never was a member of the Humanist circle; he was too much in earnest about religious questions and of too practical a turn of mind. The young Humanists would have gladly welcomed him into their select band. They dubbed him the “philosopher,” the “musician,” recalled in after days his fine social disposition, his skill in playing the lute, and his ready power in debate. He took the various degrees in an unusually brief time. He was bachelor in 1502 and master in 1505. His father, proud of his son’s steady application and success, sent him the costly present of a Corpus Juris. He may have begun to study law. Suddenly he plunged into the Erfurt Convent of the Augustinian Eremites and after due noviciate became a monk.
The action was so unexpected that his contemporaries felt bound to give all manner of explanations which have been woven into accounts which are legendary. Nothing is known about the cause of the sudden plunge but what Luther has himself revealed. He has told us that he entered the monastery because he doubted of himself, and that his action was sudden because he knew that his father would have disapproved of his intention.
The word “doubt” has made historians think of intellectual difficulties—of the “theological scepticism” taught by Occam and Biel, of the disintegrating criticism of Humanism. But there is no trace of any theological difficulties in Luther’s mind in the struggles which sent him into the convent and distracted him there. He was driven to do what he did by the pressure of a practical religious need, the desire to save his soul. The fires of hell and the shades of purgatory, which are the constant
