The Latin Verse of Martin Luther

(Hardback)

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Martin Luther wrote some thirty Latin poems in traditional classical meters over the course of his career. He used them to praise friends, insult adversaries, and express his faith in times of distress. Up until now Luthers neo-Latin poetry has largely fallen through the disciplinary cracks. Literary scholars have traditionally paid more attention to the Latin verse of more celebrated humanist poets such as Petrarch or Eobanus Hessus. Students of the Reformation have concentrated far more often on Luthers prose and his famous German hymns than on his Latin poems. Even scholars who are familiar with Luthers neo-Latin poetry have dismissed it as of only marginal significance. As this book demonstrates, Luthers Latin verses are valuable cultural products that amply reward scholarly reconsideration. Springers volume is the first to provide English translations of all of them. It also includes extensive introductions and line-by-line annotations for each of the poems, situating them within their literary traditions and contemporary contexts. As such, it should help readers to see that far from being a reformer who more or less repudiated the Classics, or someone who merely dabbled in them, Luther was a confident, even bold, Latin poet, who was serious about working out his own distinctive synthesis between Christianity and the language and literature of the ancient Romans.

Author Bio

Carl P. E. Springer is SunTrust Chair of Excellence in the Humanities and Professor in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, University of Tennessee, USA. He has written extensively on Martin Luthers Latin prose and poetry. Recent books include Luthers Aesop (2011), Cicero in Heaven (2017), and Luthers Rome/Romes Luther (forthcoming, 2021).