In the film Luther (2003), a young Martin Luther, in a surprisingly modern fashion, refuses to condemn a youth who has committed suicide. Was the real Luther so understanding about suicide? This seems to go against the very strict and severe persona that emerges from his writings.

by JJVMT
cdesmoulins

Luther appeared to have a relatively compassionate attitude toward suicide in some cases. In his Table Talks, a collection of informal remarks and discourses on religious practice, he expresses the three following sentiments:

It is very certain that, as to all persons who have hanged themselves, or killed themselves in any other way, ‘tis the devil who has put the cord round their necks, or the knife to their throats.

Mention was made of a young girl who, to avoid violence offered her by a nobleman, threw herself from the window, and was killed. It was asked, was she responsible for her death? Doctor Luther said: No: she felt that this step formed her only chance of safety, it being not her life she sought to save, but her chastity.

I don’t share the opinion that suicides are certainly to be damned. My reason is that they do not wish to kill themselves but are overcome by the power of the devil. They are like a man who is murdered in the woods by a robber. However, this ought not be taught to the common people, lest Satan be given an opportunity to cause slaughter, and I recommend that the popular custom be strictly adhered to according to which it [the suicide’s corpse] is not carried over the threshold, etc. Such persons do not die by free choice or by law, but our Lord God will dispatch them as he executes a person through a robber. Magistrates should treat them quite strictly, although it is not plain that their souls are damned. However, they are examples by which our Lord God wishes to show that the devil is powerful and also that we should be diligent in prayer. But for these examples, we would not fear God. Hence he must teach us in this way.

"Relatively compassionate", in this case, is relative to orthodox Catholic stances as well as the stances of other Protestant reformers like John Calvin. (Calvin attributed suicide to demonic possession and stressed the nature of suicide as "self-murder", murder being a crime that could never be condoned under any circumstances -- Geneva had severe penalties regarding suicide and protocols for the bodies of those who died by suicide.)

Here you can see the genesis of one Lutheran stance on self-murder -- individuals who die by suicide are people who have been overwhelmed by the power of the devil, rather than committing felonious murder by their own will. But individuals who attempt suicide and do not die must face strict legal penalties for their attempted self-murder, and the bodies of those who die by suicide must be publicly stigmatized in certain ways (for instance, denial of burial in sacred ground) for the good of the general public in strengthening the will of others against suicide. This is not an altogether modern stance -- I haven't seen Luther (geez, I'm falling down on the job of watching Reformation cinema that's not about Catholics, I know I own it on DVD someplace) but the occurrence described in the film -- the suicide of an abused boy -- appears to draw directly from the language of Luther's Table Talks.

"Tell him: Some people say that according to God's justice, this boy is damned because he took his life. I say it was overcome by the devil. Is this child any more to blame for the despair that overtook him than an innocent man who is murdered by a robber in the woods? God must be mercy. God is mercy."

(Taken from a 2014 piece on suicide by modern Lutheran pastor Stew Carlson).

This isn't quite what Luther articulates -- it's the Hollywood version, especially as Fiennes' Luther apparently proceeds to bury the boy with his own hands while praying (for him? over him? which prayers? for what purpose?) -- but it's a gesture at least at where the historical Luther's views on suicide originated. Luther's writings put a great degree of emphasis on personal and continual struggle with the Devil, but also on the ultimate fate of the individual as a consequence of God's particular intentions for that person. Late Medieval and Early Modern religious debates on suicide center on the nature of self-murder as a sin, the intentions of the person who attempts or completes self-murder, and the ultimate fate of the person who dies by self-murder -- is an individual who's completely alienated from their own reason, for instance a raving and delirious man who leaps into a river when his well-meaning pursuers attempt to disarm him, responsible for the crimes they might commit against themselves? Is the primary agent of self-murder the action of the Devil, individual cowardice, or mental sickness? At what age do children become responsible for the crimes they commit against themselves? One thing about this scenario seems painfully on point to me, and that's that the suicide of children and young people was a grim reality of the Early Modern world. Fear of adult punishment seems to have been a common cause of child and youth suicide in the Early Modern world, and the incident described in the film Luther may be an interpolation or back-projection of that.

Some reading: