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  • Luther’s Fortress: Martin Luther and His Reformation under Siege by James Reston Jr.
  • Timothy Wengert
Luther’s Fortress: Martin Luther and His Reformation under Siege. By James Reston Jr. (New York: Basic Books. 2015. Pp. xii, 260. $27.00. ISBN 978-0-465-06393-2.)

Good history writing needs both a clear topic and careful execution. To grasp the complexities of Martin Luther’s thought and life, independent scholar and writer James Reston Jr. admirably chose to focus on a single year: Luther’s sojourn in the Wartburg Castle (1521–22), when Luther was in the protective custody of his prince, the Elector Frederick the Wise. From here Luther penned many influential works and, most important, translated the New Testament from Greek into German.

Reston’s execution, however, fails completely. First, the text is riddled with factual errors. Philipp Melanchthon, Luther’s colleague at Wittenberg, was fourteen (not seventeen) years Luther’s junior; his father did not change his name to “Melanchthon” (p. 54f.). Luther did not eat potatoes for his Christmas dinner in 1521 at the Wartburg (not introduced until the 1570s; p. 152), nor did he frequent [End Page 611] a bar in Wittenberg (or use drinking songs for melodies of his hymns; pp. 112, 156, 231f.). In Reston’s description of Luther’s addition of the term “faith alone” to the text of Romans, he gets the verses wrong and thus incorrectly compares the Vulgate and King James Version on Romans 3:23–24 with Luther’s on Romans 3:28 (p. 168). Regarding Frederick the Wise, Reston misdates the founding of the University of Wittenberg and imagines that the prince personally recruited Luther, was impressed by Luther’s Latin lectures on the Psalms, and raised Luther’s salary to keep him at the university (as a monk, Luther had taken a vow of poverty; raises came with Frederick’s death and Luther’s marriage in 1525). Reston confuses the two Johann Ecks from this time—one Luther’s opponent at the Leipzig Debates of 1519 and the other his prosecutor at the Diet of Worms (pp. 35, 72).

Far worse is the inaccurate impression the author leaves of all parts of this drama: with Pope Leo X as debauched and Luther as a proto-Puritan (p. 31); with no clue as to how indulgences functioned in the late-medieval theology (p. 7f.); and little understanding of late-medieval Christianity and its influence on Luther. Instead, the reader is subjected to an old-time “Protestant” Luther and an evil papacy, not surprising given that the greatest percentage of books in the bibliography come from 1970 or earlier—one third before 1945. All of the old saws about Luther and the Reformation are on display. For example, Luther’s advice to Melanchthon to “sin boldly” has nothing to do with any imagined issues over sexuality (p. 108, cf. p. 223). Throughout the book lurks the specter of anti-Roman Catholic history writing more at home in the nineteenth century. Given the careless mistakes and false assumptions, this book has little or nothing to offer anyone who seriously wishes to learn more about Luther, the Reformation, or the late-medieval Church out of which both emerged.

Timothy Wengert
Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (Emeritus)
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