etely forgot his
meals. When he could not get meat and wine, he contented himself with
bread and water. . . . Melanchthon tells us that Luther loved the coarse
food as he did the coarse speech of the peasantry, and even of that food
ate little, so little that Melanchthon marveled how Luther could
maintain strength upon such a diet.--It is further a noteworthy fact
that, when we read the sermons of the day, we find nobody who so
frequently and so earnestly attacks the prevailing vice of drunkenness
as does Luther. Now, whatever Luther may or may not have been, hypocrite
he was not. Had he himself been intemperate, he would not have preached
against it in such a manner. Furthermore, Luther was under constant
espionage. His every move was noted. People knew how many patches there
were on his undergarments. Think you, think you for a moment, that the
Wittenbergians would have listened meekly to Luther's repeated assaults
upon the wide-spread sin of intemperance, had they known him for a
confirmed tippler? It is too absurd.--But the best evidence for the
defense comes from a mute witness--Luther's industry. He wrote more than
four hundred books, brochures, sermons, and so forth, filling more than
one hundred volumes of the Erlangen edition. There are extant more than
three thousand of his letters, which represent only a small proportion
of all that he wrote. Thus we know, for example, that one evening in
1544 Luther wrote ten letters, of which only two have been preserved. He
was, furthermore, in frequent conference with leaders in both Church and
State. He preached on Sundays and lectured on week-days. Now, a man may,
it is true, perform a considerable amount of manual labor even after
overeating and overdrinking, but every physician will admit the
correctness of my assertion, it is a physiological impossibility that a
man could habitually overindulge in food or liquor, or both, and still
get over the enormous amount of intellectual work that Luther performed
day to day" (Boehmer, _The Man Luther,_ p. 16 f.)

Most shameless have been the charges of lewdness and immorality against
Luther. His relation to Frau Cotta has been represented as impure. Think
of it, a boy of sixteen to eighteen thus related to an honorable
housewife! Illegitimate children have been foisted upon him. A humorous
remark about his intention to marry and being unable to choose between
several eligible parties has been twisted into an immoral meaning. The