Martin Luther Renegade and Prophet [Paperback]

USLyndal Roperis the first woman to hold the prestigious Regius Chair at Oxford University. She is one of the most respected scholars of early modern history on both sides of the Atlantic. She is the winner of the Gerda Henkel Prize (2016), and her previous books includeWitch Craze: Terror and Fantasyin Baroque Germany; Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Religion, and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe; The Witch in the Western Imagination; andThe Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg.1. Mansfeld and Mining

“I am the son of a peasant,” Luther averred, “my great-grandfather, grandfather and my father were all true peasants.”1 This was only half the truth. If he came from peasant stock, Luther grew up in a mining town, and his upbringing was to have a profound influence on him. Martin’s childhood was spent in Mansfeld, a small mining town in the territory of the same name, where wagonloads of charcoal would file along the muddy roads, and where the smell of the fires of the smelters hung on the air. He would remain loyal to Mansfeld throughout his life, referring to himself as “from Mansfeld,” enrolling at the University of Erfurt as “Martinus ludher ex mansfelt,” and corresponding with the counts of Mansfeld until he died.2 In 1546, he set out, ill, on what was to be his final journey to Eisleben, trying to settle yet another dispute between the counts. He knew that the trip could cost him his life, and it did: He died still trying to put matters right in Mansfeld. Yet this deep connection has been almost completely obliterated in the image of Luther we have today.3 Most biographies have little to say about Luther’s childhood. Unlike his birthplace Eisleben, and unlike Wittenberg, where he spent most of his life, Mansfeld never became a site of Lutheran pilgrimage. But to make sense of Luther, one has to understand the world frol£+