s as stealing eggs, milk, and butter; and Luther himself was never emancipated from such beliefs. “many regions are inhabited,” said he, “by devils. Prussia is full of them, and Lapland of witches. In my native country on the top of a high mountain called the Pubelsberg is a lake into which a stone be thrown a tempest will arise over the whole region because the waters are the abode of captive demons. This reveals much not only about Luther’s background in paganism but also about what the education he received had to overcome. His early schooling, unfortunately, was not much more enlightening than what he learned at home. The entire training of home school, and university was designed to instill fear of God and reverence for the Church. This fear of God taught to him in school was to deeply affect him mentally and emotionally. He professed that he was extremely “sensitive and subject to recurrent periods of exaltation and depression of spirit.” This condition can be blamed on the medieval Church’s utilization of alternating fear and hope into the people with the threat of purgatory and the salvation of indulgences, and on the “oscillation between wrath and mercy on the part of the members of the divine hierarchy” In fact he struggled profoundly with these issues in his early years, and they laid the foundation for his philosophical and theological struggles and ponderings. Religion of the time demanded that salvation must be earned. People were convinced that the final judgment was on the coming soon, and they would suffer in pain from eternal damnation. The priests preached that confession was mandatory. People had to work off their sin or they would be sent to purgatory. The church controlled their people minds with fear, and perhaps the most offensive to Martin was Peter’s pence.Fortunately for Martin Luther, his father wanted his children to succeed in ...
