#1714-To Hieronymous Baumgartner in Augsburg

To the very dear man, Herr Hieronymous Baumgartner, Nuernberg-Councilor, his superior in the Lord. Grace and peace!

That I didn't answer your letter, better Hieronymous, is partly because there is nothing going on to write about, and partly because I postponed it until the day on which I could bid you farewell [Luther is leaving Coburg, and Augsburg and Nuernberg are nearby] on the day which I leave this wilderness. The reason [for writing] is, however, that you would take this letter [which accompanies] to deliver to the musician Ludwig Senfel, since he has requested that if I should send him something, I should send it through you, since he thinks that it would securely and conveniently [be] accomplished. Therefore, I ask that you would fulfill and strengthen the confidence that he has in you, and that you would send the accompanying here attached to him. I very much do not want the hate of my name or the danger connected with it to burden him who is a very good man so long as he lives in the present conditions.

I hear that you have become a "gross" Baumgartner so that you are hastening toward the verse of Moses [Dt.32:15]: "he has become stout and fat and strong". But may the Lord bless you so that you become fatter and stronger in spirit so that this does not follow: "and he has forsaken the God who made him," but rather, "and he holds to God, his Lord, with all his heart."

I am jesting with you because there is nothing that I have to write to you. What is happening in all the world you know before me and more accurately. The Papists are pressing on to their destiny and already Pharaoh is blinded and hardened. What is left for him other than the Red Sea? The Lord will liberate us as we believe and pray.

Greet for me your Rib [wife] and your children. I greet you in the name of my Herrin [Kaethe], your former flame; and the same I will relate to her when I return. Thus I am continuing to jest with you in the meantime. Christ be with you, Amen. From the high fortress on the 5th of October, 1530. Your Martin Luther.

[NOTES: In #769, Luther wrote to Baumgartner that he better hurry to take Kaethe to wife as there was another (Caspar Glatz) whom he had in mind but whom Kaethe refused and then told him that she had not gotten over Baumgartner. Would it have changed history if Katherine had married Jerry Baumgartner instead of Luther? Luther had just writtern Senfel (#1714) in spite of his request to do it through Baumgartner. I assume that Baumgartner is a fellow Augustinian as "Your Martin Luther" seems to be reserved for them and people like Melanchton and Catherine. Once, Luther wrote to Pistorius, that Nuernberg is the "eyes and ears of the world". But B. is still at Augsburg.

In the Latin original, Luther has "Ex Altoburgo" rightly translated from the high fortress by the St.Louis Edition "aus der hohen," and they believe Luther mistakenly wrote "prima" instead of "quinta" for the October date, i.e. October 5. Some thought that he made it to Altenburg, but Luther never writes Altoburgum for Altenburg, contrary to Erlangen, who found it twice, I think.]