Five hundred years ago today, Martin Luther wrote a letter from the cloister at Erfurt, Germany, to his friend, the elderly John Braun , O.F.M., vicar of the St. Mary’s Chapter in Eisenach. It is the oldest surviving letter we have from Luther.
In his letter he invited Braun to attend the celebration of Luther’s first mass as a Roman Catholic priest, “on the fourth Sunday following Easter,” May 2, 1507. He explained that “this day was set aside to celebrate my first mass before God, since it is convenient to my father.”
Luther’s relationship with Braun dated back to his attendance at school in Eisenach from 1498 to 1501, and he apparently had seen him recently and felt they were close enough to ask the old man to make the 68 mile journey, for he wrote:
To this then, kind friend, I invite you humbly, perhaps even boldly. I do this certainly not because I consider myself in a position, due to favors I may have granted you (there are none), to request you to inconvenience yourself with the trouble of such a journey to visit me, a poor and humble man; but I do so because I experienced your good will and your obvious kindness toward me when I visited you the other day, and in great abundance on many other occasions.
[Luther's Works, J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, and H. T. Lehmann, eds., Volume 48: Letters I, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963 and 1999).]
Luther also invited Braun to bring anyone who wanted to come, and suggested one of his own relatives whom Braun knew, Conrad Hutter, who was related to Luther on his mother’s side. In a postscript, however, he advised Braun that he did not want to “burden” the Schalbe family with an invitation, one of whom had provided him with free board. He also warned Braun not to expect deluxe accommodations.
Finally I urge you to come right into our monastery to stay with us this little while (I am not afraid that you will settle down here!) and not to look elsewhere for quarters. You will have to become a cellarius, that is, an inhabitant of a monastic cell.
[Ibid.]
