actually calls the Reformer 'the son of the Mohra assassin.' With
these exceptions, not a trace of any story of this kind, in the
writings of either friend or foe, can be found in that or in the
following century. It was at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, in an official report on mining at Mohra, that the story,
evidently based on oral tradition, assumed all at once a more
definite shape; the statement being that Luther's father had
accidentally killed a peasant, who was minding some horses grazing.
This story has been told to travellers in our own time by people of
Mohra, who have gone so far as to point out the fatal meadow. We are
forced to notice it, not, indeed, as being in the least
authenticated, but simply on account of the authority recently
claimed for the tradition. For it is plain that what is now a matter
of hearsay at Mohra was a story wholly unknown there not many years
ago, was first introduced by strangers, and has since met with
several variations at their hands. The idea of a criminal flying
from Mohra to Mansfeld, which was only a few miles off, and was
equally subject to the Elector of Saxony, is absurd, and in this
case is strangely inconsistent with the honourable position soon
attained, as we shall see, by Hans Luther himself at Mansfeld.
Moreover, the very fact that Witzel's spiteful remark was long known
to Luther's enemies, coupled with the fact that they never turned it
to account, shows plainly how little they ventured to make it a
matter of serious reproach. Luther during his lifetime had to hear
from them that his father was a Bohemian heretic, his mother a loose
woman, employed at the baths, and he himself a changeling, born of
his mother and the Devil. How triumphantly would they have talked
about the murder or manslaughter committed by his father, had the
charge admitted of proof! Whatever occurrence may have given rise to
such a story, we have no right to ascribe it either to any fault or