of the better disposed nobles, burghers, and artisans of the time; while the fear <tf Jesus the Judge, who was coming to judge and punish the wicked, branded itself on his child's soul when he gazed up at the vengeful picture of our Lord. He was taught at home the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, words of Jesus from the Gospels, the Creed, such simple hymns as Christ ist erstanden, Ein kindelein so löbelich, and Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist-all that went to make what he long afterwards called " the faith of the children." His father's strong dislike to monks and friars; the Hussite propaganda, which, in spite of all attempts at repression, had penetrated the Harz and Thuringia; the Mansfeld police regulations, with other evidence from the local chronicles, show how much the lay religion had made its way among the people. The popular revival displayed itself in the great processions and pilgrimages made to holy places in his neighbourhood-to Kyffhäuser, where there was a miraculous wooden cross, to the Bruno Chapel of Quernfurt, to the old chapel at Welfesholz, and to the cloister church at Wimmelberg.
Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483, at Eisleben, and spent his childhood in Mansfeld. His father, Hans, was a miner in the Mansfeld district, where the policy of the Counts of Mansfeld, to build and let out on hire small smelting furnaces, enabled thrifty and skilled workmen to rise in the world.
The boy grew up amidst the toilsome, grimy, often coarse surroundings of the German peasant life-protected from much that was evil by the wise severity of his parents, but sharing in its hardness, its superstitions, and its simple political and ecclesiastical ideas; as that the Emperor was God's ruler on the earth who would protect poor people from the Turk; that the Church was the "Pope's house," in which the Bishop of Rome was the house-father; and that obedience and reverence were due to the lords of the soil. He went to the village school in Mansfeld and endured the cruelties of a merciless pedagogue; he was sent later to a school at Magdeburg, and then to St George's High School at Eisenach. In these boyish days he was a "poor student," i.e. one who got his education and lodging free, was obliged to sing in the church choir, and was permitted to sing in the streets, begging for bread. His later writings abound in references to these early school-days and to his own quiet thoughts; and they make it plain that the religion of fear was laying hold on him and driving out the earlier simple family faith. Two pictures branded themselves on his childish mind at Magdeburg. He saw a young Prince of Anhalt, who had forsaken rank and inheritance and, to save his soul, had become a barefooted friar, carrying the huge begging-sack, and worn to skin and bone by his scourgings and fastings and prayers. The other was an altar-piece in a church, the picture of a ship in which was no layman, not even a King or a Prince; in it were the Pope with his Cardinals and Bishops, and the Holy Ghost
