Lyndal Roper - Living I Was Your Plague: Martin Luther's World and Legacy

2017 saw the five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther beginning the Reformation. By lucky coincidence, rather than design, it was also the year that Lyndal Roper's epic biography of Luther was published. As a result Roper was asked to speak at numerous debates, lectures and events that marked the Reformation and this book, is the result of that experience. In her preface Roper recounts speaking in Wittenberg, the town where Luther was based and were the Reformation was centred. She was in St Mary's Church, where Luther preached and was married, but the Church is also the site of a hideously racist antisemitic sculpture. This then was the occasion for much debate and discussion, and in particular how she thought about Luther himself, and his antisemitism.

But the book then is not another biography of Luther. Rather it is an attempt to understand Luther's life and ideas in a deeper context. It is, she writes to be taken in the spirit of Lutheranism that she admires, "its profund anti-authoritarianism, its political engagement, and its insistence on argument, discussion, and critical appraisal of its own history". At the same time Roper is open that she is critical and prepared to highlight unpleasant and "less comfortable" aspects of Luther's ideas and life.

The book opens with a study of Luther's image. Luther's Reformation ran on image and ideas. He was the first figure in history to make use of the printing press in a systematic way. But the use of the press was for more than producing large quantities of sermons and printed texts. It was also, as Andrew Pettegree has pointed out in his book Brand Luther to create a Brand. Pamphlets had a style, and as Roper shows, Luther's image was carefully curated for "instant legibility". She points out that:

There is Luther the monk, and image which had run its course by 1524; Luther in the Wartburg; Luther as a marrid man; the standard portrait; the full-body Luther; and dead Luther. Each of these was made famous by the Cranach workshop. Finally there is a type I shall term 'Luther and Co.' which was produced only after Luther's death.

This curation of Luther's image created in a time before mass media, an instantly recognisable figure and thus helped propel Luther to leadership of the Reformation itself. But Roper continues, these images went further, "gave rise to a whole new material culture of images.... Indeed, Cranach's portrait proved so successful that it escaped the bounds of Luteranism altogether and became a signifier not just for the Lutheran Church, but for German-ness itself". Luther came to stand in for the religious changes and the society they helped create.

Another chapter looks at the role of dreams in Luther's life and those of his religious contemporaries. How particular dreams are understood was important, but I mostly refer to them because while Roper says that "Luther... wa scharacteristically sceptical about the significance of dreams", she places a some importance on them in understanding Luther himself. Indeed this includes her analysis of Luther's antisemitism. Here she writes:

In contrast to medieval anti-Semitism, Luther's was linked to a set of fantasies surrounding circumcision and the Jews as the Chosen People. Psychologically, in Freudian terms, such fears would be connected with the Oedipal stage and with castration... The infant feels rivalry towarsd the father, and fears that the father will take revenge on him by castrating him. Jews, so the irrational fear would run, have undergone a kind of symbolic castration ... The circumcised Jew would therefore function as a nightmare vision of what might happen to oneself. Anti-Semitism would consequently be connected to issues about sexual difference, power and parents. It would be fundamentally concerned with identity.

This is, I think, a remarkably weak analysis of Luther's antisemitism. It should be said that Roper's account of Luther's antisemitism is incredibly important. She notes herself that it was rarely acknowledged, often ignored, and only recently have books studied it closely. This acknowledgement of Luther's antisemitism by historians, biographers and scholars has been important. But Roper's own explanation of why Luther was an antisemite here, removes Luther, his ideas, and principly the Jewish people from their historical context. Rather than seeking to explain Luther's antisemitism in Freudian terms, we need to locate it in both his own developing religious ideas and the way that Jewish people were the victim of oppression and racism due to their economic and religious positions in 16th century Europe. This chapter was disappointing and inadequate.

Roper, it must be emphasised, does not in any way diminish or excuse Luther's antisemitism. Indeed she notes how it has been both exposed, and forgotten in the final part of her study of Luther's impact - Luther Kitsch. Here she highlights the Luther Playmobil figure, the most popular such plastic figure of all time, and one that was initially made with a version of a Bible that essentially emphasised Luther's antisemitic beliefs. This was hurridly corrected, but the kitsch continues. Even today, many years after the 500th anniversary, Wittenberg's shops are full of socks, ornaments, pictures and even honey, that celebrate the image of Luther.

The essays in Living I was your Plague are interesting, but the book felt disjointed and directionless. I have found Lyndal Roper's work stimulating and enjoyable, and her biography of Luther is unparalled. But this book was weak and in places flawed.

Related Reviews

Roper - Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet
Roper - Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War
Treu - Katherine von Bora: Luther's Wife
Stanford - Martin Luther: Catholic Dissident
Pettegree - Brand Luther