David M. Whitford, "The Making of a Reformation Man: Martin Luther and the Construction of Masculinity" (Routledge, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary

New Books Network

Host: Yana Byers
Guest: David M. Whitford (Professor of Reformation Studies, Baylor University)
Book: The Making of a Reformation Man: Martin Luther and the Construction of Masculinity (Routledge, 2025)
Date: October 5, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode explores David M. Whitford's new book, which examines Martin Luther not just as a religious figure but as a man shaped by—and helping to shape—the ideals of masculinity during the Reformation. Whitford uses a blend of personal reflection and historical analysis to offer a nuanced portrait of Luther as monk, husband, father, and public figure. The conversation delves into the ways Luther's life transitions and relationships influenced his outlook on gender, family, and theological debates, humanizing a figure often depicted either as a saintly hero or as a villain.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Personal Motivation and Historical Curiosity

[02:14 – 08:55]

• Whitford's personal experience of his father's death in 2020 inspired him to examine how men learn different modes of fatherhood and masculinity.

• Noted the generational differences in emotional expression between his grandfather, his father, and himself.

• Connects his personal reflections to his professional interest in Martin Luther, whose journey from monk to husband/father intrigued Whitford.

  "I got really interested in what did that mean for the person who sort of academically I spend the most amount of my time with, which is Martin Luther. ... He had spent 20 years of his life as a deeply earnest, deeply pious, celibate monk ... who at, you know, in his early 40s, has to figure out how to be a husband and a father. And I just, I found that really sort of intriguing."
  — David Whitford, 07:26

2. The Arc of Luther’s Masculinity: Insults and Identity

[08:55 – 15:04]

• Book begins by examining “Luther the insulter,” highlighting how insult culture and bravado hardened theological divides.

• Early debates show Luther was not initially skilled at rebuttal; his responses were defensive and childish (“I’m rubber, you’re glue…”).

• Insults and challenges to his intelligence went to the core of his masculine identity and made compromise very difficult.

  “...the insults go right to the core of his identity... It makes, it hardens boundaries almost from the get go. And that has nothing to do with the theology. It has everything to do with the egos involved.”
  — David Whitford, 14:36

3. The Wartburg Period: Isolation, Identity Crisis, and Lust

[15:23 – 24:27]

• After the Diet of Worms, Luther is “kidnapped” for his safety and kept in isolation at the Wartburg fortress.

• He experiences loneliness, illness, and an identity crisis; questionings of his manhood and role are central during this period.

• Shares vulnerable details about his struggles with lust, challenging the narrative that celibacy easily eliminates desire.

  “Brother Martin is dead. Because in some ways, the monk he was when he left Wittenberg ... does in fact die. Who he was ... really does disappear, and he has to struggle with that.”
  — David Whitford, 21:48

4. Luther’s Attitude Toward Women and Marriage

[25:21 – 34:53]

• Luther’s marriage to Katherina von Bora complicated his theoretical misogyny; she was strong-willed and competent, echoing strong women in his family.

• Contrasts public/theological statements about female obedience with private sentiments of affection and partnership.

• Table Talk records highlighting his harsh comments are unreliable and often biased by the recorders' own issues.

  “There’s this sort of public side, which can be kind of mean, and then there’s a very personal side that is deeply deferential, deeply sentimental at times, and who is clearly devoted to his wife.”
  — David Whitford, 34:40

5. Luther as Father: Emotional Contradictions and Cultural Formation

[36:01 – 44:43]

• Fatherhood changed Luther; he displayed unexpected tenderness and vulnerability toward his children.

• Despite experiencing and expressing deep grief, especially after the deaths of two daughters, Luther struggled to accept the same emotional displays from his son, Hans, due to deeply ingrained norms against male vulnerability.

  “He can acknowledge his own pain and suffering and emote. But he’s formed in a world ... especially within a monastery, that says emotions are bad and you need to regulate your emotions. And that’s true for boys in general in Western civil. ... As a father, he does not appreciate it when he sees Hans emoting.”
  — David Whitford, 43:21

6. Late Luther: Vitriol, Loneliness, and the Dangers of Isolation

[44:43 – 50:24]

• As he aged, Luther grew increasingly intolerant and vitriolic toward his opponents, lashing out not just at Catholics but also Anabaptists and Jews.

• Whitford rejects “out of control old man” tropes—sees this as Luther receding into a defensive, uncompromising mindset.

• Notes Luther lacked confidants willing or able to challenge his escalating rhetoric, leading to his infamously harsh late-career writings.

  “By this point in his life ... he is a very good insulter. He has learned how to insult and attack... And he uses all of those. He attacks Catholics, Anabaptists and then most especially Jews with just utter abandon...”
  — David Whitford, 47:16

7. Complicated Legacy: Beyond Hero or Villain

[50:24 – 54:42]

• Whitford aims to “gray up the portrait,” moving away from simplifications of Luther as either saint or villain.

• Highlights Luther’s continuous struggle to negotiate new roles (from monk to husband/father to reformer) and their impact on his sense of self and masculinity.

• Emphasizes Luther’s efforts—sometimes conscious, sometimes not—to remake himself, often with difficulty.

  “What I tried to do here was to gray up the portrait a little. Did he do some things that were noble and laudatory? Yes. Did he do some things that were pretty horrible? Absolutely.”
  — David Whitford, 51:35

8. What’s Next? Broader Christian Masculinity

[54:57 – 56:43]

• Whitford is considering a future book project on the construction of masculinity within Christianity more broadly, across eras, potentially reaching to contemporary times.

  “That’s probably where I’m going next—to sort of think about what did it mean to be a godly Christian man in the medieval era ... probably all the way up to much more contemporary.”
  — David Whitford, 55:30

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “My grandfather never told my dad once in his entire life that he was proud of him. ... My brother and I had it kind of easy in figuring out how to be fathers, because you had a very good role model.”
  (Whitford, 02:27)

• “I have been saying for years in lecture, he was a goofy dad. Like, he just loved being a father.”
  (Whitford, 05:31)

• “You’re either or stupid. Which do you prefer?”
  (Yana Byers, 48:42)

• “Everybody needs an editor. Everybody needs an editor.”
  (Yana Byers, 50:24)

• “He is neither just a hero or just a villain ... he’s never just sort of Martin Luther ... always hero or anti hero. And what I tried to do here was to gray up the portrait a little.”
  (Whitford, 51:13)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:14] Whitford's personal motivation and family story
• [08:55] “Luther the insulter” and masculinity in conflict
• [15:23] The Wartburg period: identity crisis and sexuality
• [25:21] Encountering and marrying Katharina von Bora
• [36:01] Fatherhood and emotional contradictions
• [44:43] Late-life Luther’s vitriol and isolation
• [51:13] Humanizing Luther and the limits of either/or narratives
• [54:57] Whitford’s future research direction

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Tone and Style

The conversation is engaging and often intimate, mirroring the personal and vulnerable tone Whitford strives for in his book. Byers encourages Whitford to share personal anecdotes, bringing warmth and relatability to the scholarly discussion. The analysis is clear-eyed; neither apologetic nor purely critical, it balances Luther’s virtues and flaws, emphasizing his complexity as a person navigating seismic personal and historical changes.

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For Listeners

This episode offers a compelling look at how history’s “great men” are shaped by the shifting ideals of their times, the constraints of their upbringings, and the intimacy (and struggle) of their private lives. Whitford’s The Making of a Reformation Man invites readers to see Martin Luther not through the lens of hagiography or condemnation, but as a flawed, dynamic, and ultimately human figure—relevant for contemporary discussions of masculinity and identity.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to New Books in Early Modern History. I'm Yana Byers, your host, and I'm here today with David Whitford, professor of Reformation studies at Baylor University to talk about his new book, the Making of a Reformation Man, Martin Luther and the Construction of Masculinity, out this year, 2025 with Rutledge. Hi, David.

[A]

Hi, Jan. How are you?

[B]

Great. I'm having a lovely day, this fine fall day, so. Yeah. And how are you? How is Texas in October?

[A]

Well, it's still very hot, but it's less hot than it has been. And the Red Sox won last night, so life is good.

[B]

Yeah. Okay. Right. Boston guy, New Englander.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And, you know, that sticks with you. I'm a Tigers fan till death doesn't matter.

[A]

Really, really does. Yep. Yep.

[B]

Tigers almost blew it this year, but. So that's. That's a different podcast.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

October baseball. So nice. All right, so my first question might in this case actually be a personal one, but what led you to write this book?

[A]

Yeah, so this is probably the most deeply personal book that I've written. And I say this in the preface, so it's no big secret. My dad died in 2020. And one of the things that I was struck by was how my brother and I grieved differently than I think. The way my father grieved when his dad died. And my Grandfather was of the sort of generation that did not emote Cher. And my dad, I think, was the kind of person who craved that kind of approval. And so my grandfather never told my dad once in his entire life that he was proud of him. And I think when my grandfather died, my father sort of grieved that any hope of that was now extinguished. And my brother and I grieved very, very differently. But I got interested in how did my dad learn how to be this entirely different parent than the one that was modeled for him. Right. Like, I think on some level, my brother and I had it kind of easy in figuring out how to be fathers, because you had a very good role model. And, you know, 2020, the world is shut down. There's nothing to do except sort of sit in your own head. And I got really interested in what did that mean for the person who sort of academically I spend the most amount of my time with, which is Martin Luther. This is a guy who is in his 30s when the Reformation begins, right? He is in his early 40s when he gets married. He's in his early 40s when he has his first kid. And I have been saying for years in lecture, he was a goofy dad. Like, he just loved being a father. He sends these letters. He's one of my favorite letters of his is he's away on this trip, right? And he writes this crazed fast letter and sends it with somebody ahead of him that like my beloved Katrina. I spent hours today at the fair, and I still can't find anything to bring home to the children. Would you please look at the fair in town and see if you can buy something for them so that when I get there, I will have something to give them. It's the most sort of daddish, momish, been away on a trip, but I brought you a present when I came home. And he's, like, panicked that he spent half the afternoon looking through the fair and couldn't find anything to bring his kids. So he, like, writes his wife going, will you rescue a man? Right? Like, help a dude out at. And so I had already written one article by that point on Luther and gender, because gender is something that I've worked on in the past, but it was for a book in honor of Susan Karen Nunn. And so I had already looked at did being a father play a role in some of his more academic work? And I sort of demonstrated that it did. It changed how he viewed sex and sin, lust and even the biblical figure Eve. So I'm dancing all of these things sort of around in my head. And this book or the sort of outline of this book started to come together for me pretty quickly because, you know, we're all just stuck inside. So, you know, and so that's where this came from was me being curious about how, how did my dad figure out how to be a different parent? And Luther had to figure out how to. I mean, he had spent 20 years of his life as a deeply earnest, deeply pious, celibate monk. I mean, he wore his monk's cassock for years after the Reformation began. It wasn't until 1525 that he stopped wearing the frock and then went back to, then started to wear just regular clothes. But he had his head tonsured until 1525. Right. This is a guy who was still deeply embedded in a all male world on some level, who at, you know, in his early 40s, has to figure out how to be a husband and a, and a father. And I just, I found that really sort of intriguing.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, because he's not husband and father, everybody, it's, this is a tough transition for everyone to husband and father on some level, but, you know, not like lived apart from the world spurning human emotion for 20 years level, like. Right, yeah, that's serious. And you demonstrate this growth in Luther that I found really interesting. So you launch your argument with the idea of Luther the insulter, not this sort of pious, like thoughtful man, but as a human being bullying and insulting his interlocutors. And I, I want to know why you started here.

[A]

You know, so the first thing that I was really interested in was I wanted this to have some sort of a chronological arc to it. Right. And I had already written an article a while ago about the sort of intellectual history behind the 95 theses. And I think there's, in that article is basically just there's way too much sort of Luther triumphalism that, you know, ta da, he created everything all on his own. And I wanted to go back and sort of trace the arc. And so I sort of had this big pile of research and I wanted, that had sort of occurred to me why that's where you start this book is in that moment. And I then asked the question, you know, how much did being a man play a role in the 95 theses? And so there's that part of the equation. And then the other part of the equation was really, as I had read him for that earlier article, I realized he's just a simply horrible insulter, which is so deeply ironic. Because that is one of the things for which he is now best remembered, right? Like there's that whole Internet website. I'm sure you've seen it. But if other people haven't seen it, please Google it. It's called the Luther Insulter. And you can just press a button and it will insult you with, with an insult from Luther, right? And some of them are magnificent. But, you know, in the 95 theses, in the reaction to the 95 theses, his insults amount to, no, I'm not. You are. You know, like, I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you, right? Like it's all, he's horrible at it. And I just got very, very intrigued in that. I got intrigued in the way in which insult. I think people who live and breathe insults also tend to have fairly thin skins. And he really does. But what I, what I wanted to argue in that chapter a little bit was the insults go right to the core of his identity. The insults that are being thrown at him. So he's not the first one to insult in 1517. It's really other people insulting him, but they go sort of right to the core of his identity. And what I want to argue in that chapter is that makes compromise almost impossible because they repeatedly tell him he's just too stupid. You were just too stupid to, to have understood this. And it's really hard to then compromise and say, oh, well, you know, I see your point. When your point is you're just stupid, right? Like one of, one of the people that responds to him, a papal theologian by the name of Sylvester Prierias, just belittles him repeatedly in his response back to Luther. He calls him Martini me, Martini me, Martini me. Which in a letter to a close friend would come across in the Latin, kind of like, my dearest Martin, right? But can also sort of be, oh, dear Martin, you tried, right? Oh, Martin, that's special, right? I mean, dear Martin, you're special can have different meanings depending on how one inflects it. And Martini me has that double sort of meaning behind it. And it just sends Luther off an edge. I mean, he just loses his ever loving mind. And so what I want to say in that chapter is that theology matters, but it's not the theology that prevents compromise. It's, it, it's, it's the bravado and the masculinity and the insults. And they, they, they've all backed themselves into corners. And so they, it makes, it hardens boundaries almost from the get go. And that has nothing to do with the theology. It has everything to do with the.

[B]

Egos involved, which is a theme you continue right. When you're talking about how his development as a person influences the theology. And so then let's talk about Luther's year at Wartwork. Okay, what happens here?

[A]

So after the very famous diet of worms, he is, you know, quote unquote kidnapped, and he's taken to the Wartburg fortress, which is sort of hidden out of the way. If people have never been there, it's kind of worth the trip because it's kind of a neat fortress that sits on the top of a small mountain. Big hill, small mountain somewhere in that range. But it has this sort of commanding view of the entire valley around it. And it's a castle that belonged to his prince, Frederick the Wise. And he is brought in after dark. He's snuck into the castle, he's put into a room by himself. His, his clothes are taken away from him and he's given just civilian sort of guard clothes from, from the castle. His name has changed. They, they tell him, you know, from now on, you're going to be George.

[B]

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[B]

Yeah. So we. I can just. I just see him kind of stuck there. Like, what now? And no. No shoot. No. No idea about what's coming next either. Like, no plan for the future. No.

[A]

No idea when he'll be allowed to leave or if he'll be allowed to leave, where he would go, what he would do, you know, and the church.

[B]

To which he has devoted his life, he is. He's now having a fight with.

[A]

Right. Which is also painful. Right. Like, I think we miss that sometimes in the sort of triumphalism of Luther is. I don't think he takes particular joy in some of this. And I vacillate every once in a while back and forth from how naive he was. Did he really think nobody knew about this or did he. He never sort of self reveals that. And I think there is some naivete. I think he did legitimately sort of think, once I explain this to people. And his actual. His first experience of sort of explaining what he really meant was at this sort of regional meeting in Heidelberg not long after the 95 theses came out. And he did convince people. And so he was like, this is going to work.

[B]

Spoiler, spoiler, spoiler alert.

[A]

Did not. Right.

[B]

Yeah. And so we. He comes. He reckons with. Comes to reckon with or begins to reckon with, lust, feelings of lust, human sexuality. And not as something that is inherently, you know, not. Not as something that could never touch it. Right. Not as something that's very distant, but in fact, something that, as a human, he might. It. It might happen, you know, and again, it does. And, you know, when we talk about Luther's position on women, one's likely to note his misogyny. And you don't shy away from that, but you do offer some nuance while looking at an examination of his life, like his lived experience with his wife Katharina. And so what. How am I to understand his relationship with his wife?

[A]

So I think he married someone who was remarkably similar to his mother and his grandmother, his father's side of the family comes from sort of good farmer stock, well, fairly comfortable. His grandfather is a fairly successful farm farmer, is not the sort of lowest level of peasant by any means. And so his father comes from that sort of background, but his mother comes from the sort of urban, upper middle, for lack of a better word, sort of upper middle class, business class. And there's really good evidence that says the women in these families played as much of a. Played an important role in the affairs of their family's business and used their family connections. So they marry into a business and they use the family from which their family of origin connections to help further their new husband's family's business connections. And so there's these webs of influence and things like that. So these are successful, competent, businesslike women. And Luther ends up marrying a woman who I think is actually kind of similar to them. And I think he struggles with that because the tradition that formed him, the tradition out of which he comes, says in the theology is just. The theology just pounds this away in a way that, say, his brother, who doesn't study theology all day long every day and isn't entirely formed by it, doesn't really get hammered with all the time. And the theology says women are absolutely inferior. Women are always to be subject, women are always to be obedient. And Luther's most famous line is that a woman is to be a nail in the wall, that she is to be home, she is to be obedient, she is to be subject. And I think on some level he struggles with the fact that that's who he is supposed to be married to. And if there is anybody in Wittenberg who is not a nail in the wall, it is Katharine von Boer, right? Like this woman is not that woman even in the slightest degree. Now, some of the really horrible things that Luther says about Catalina von Bora are from the Table Talk. And these are collections of writings around the dinner table. Students, former student. Mostly it's former students of his who, you know, Luther sort of holds court at dinner every evening with. There are visitors in town, there are the. There are boarders that live in the house with them. You know that this is where they eat their dinner. And Luther just sort of sits and pontificates, right? And then later that evening, the. The former student goes up to his room and he writes down everything Luther said that day. So you have to be really, really suspect about how much weight you put onto a transcription from dinner that's done later on in the evening and then edited later to make it smoother. Right. Like, so you're two, three steps away. But also, at least in some of the More. Some of the worst things that Luther says about women all come from the same guy. And this is a guy who also has a reputation for being perpetually late in his rent. And let's be very clear, in the Luther von Bora house, it was never Martin who was going and asking people for their rent and telling them they needed to. He's famous for telling people like, no, I understand you're having a tough time. Of course, you don't have to pay your rent this month. Right. Like, he gave away, like, candlesticks once, just like, on a whim, to which, like, von Bora then had to send their son back and be like, I'm very sorry. My father did not mean to give you those. My mother tells me I have to ask them for them back. Right. I just love that. Right? But it's Von Borough who's knocking on the door going, hey, buddy, you got to pay your rent. So does that guy sort of pay more attention when Luther says something kind of mean to. To von Bora maybe? That might partially explain some of it. I sort of say in the book at one point that there are these two sides to him. There's this sort of public side, which can be kind of mean, and then there's a very personal side that is deeply deferential, deeply sentimental at times, and who is clearly devoted to his wife. There's a lot made about a letter that Luther writes to one of his colleagues just as he's getting ready to get married, where I make an argument in the book that that quote has been magnificently misread because people don't sort of pay attention to the fact that this is a letter going between two theologians, and he can't use the word passion. He has to use the word that gets translated, admires, which I think is horrible. It's the same word that's used in John 3:16, For God so loved the world. Right. Luther chooses that word specifically because he can't say passion. He knows some of his letters by 1525 have already fallen into Catholic hands. And so if he says, you know, I have passion for my wife, they're all going to go, see, told you. This is all about lust. So he has to use a different word. And he uses the word that John uses in the Gospel of John, which should not be translated admired. I mean, we don't translate John 3:16 for God so admired the world. Right. I think. And I think they Both marry people that sort of matched them. Well, she seems to have been utterly devoted to him as much as he was to her. And we have no idea, because nobody wrote them down, what she said. Like when he says some of the meaner things to her. We don't have anything written down about what she said back. Right. And I would kill to hear what she said back because she's not a wilting violet by any stretch of the imagination. So did she give it back to him just as good as she got it? I don't know. But also, we're catching sort of half side of a banter in a conversation, I think, sometimes. And there are different ways in which, you know, things get. When you only have one side of the conversation, it's hard to know. That is not to excuse anything that he says. And I don't want to come across like I'm trying to excuse him. I'm trying. I'm trying to understand why. Why there are these two different sides to him. There's this very personal, very sentimental, very.

[B]

Yeah, I.

[A]

Well.

[B]

And he. Fatherhood really changes the way he manages his emotions kind of overall. So we've got the Katarina situation, but him as a father is this whole other matter, too.

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And that's what running is all about.

[A]

Run your your way. @newbalance.com Running he. I think he again, is formed in a tradition that says babies are the result of sinful lust and are. Are born sin. And Augustine will go to great lengths to sort of argue that even small children manifest profound sin. And there is this in some medieval texts from cloistered monks, they can say some pretty horrible things about children and just these are nothing but the manifestations of sinful desire and stuff. And I swear to God, he has Hans and goes, you know, nobody told me these things were as dang cool as they are. Right? Like, these things are. They're kind of cool. And I'm kind of a fan and he will confess utter astonishment at his mother and his wife's ability to quiet Hans down. Which, when I read that section of him, I was like, yeah, this is a real thing. I remember the first time I was sort of being asked to put a new outfit on my daughter. And I remember just sort of staring at her, trying to figure out how I get these little tiny hands through the. Through the sleeve. And just like, I don't want to break her, right? And my mother sort of was standing next to me, watching me do this, and I think she finally just was like, oh, I just need to show him. And so she did. She just sort of, like, took her hand and she put it inside the sleeve of the onesie and pulled my daughter's hand back through. And I was like, right. And so Luther. Luther talks about this at one point. He's like, I just. I. I can't get the kid to be quiet. And his mother just sort of talks to him and. And he talks about. He sticks. I forget. It's if it's a thumb or her pinky just into his mouth so he can sort of nurse on it. And he's like, quiet sound. He's like, there's a secret code book that nobody, you know, like, that nobody told me about. And when the plague comes through Wittenberg, hans is about 18 months, 20 months, somewhere in that range. And Catalina gets the plague. Other people get the plague. A young woman, one of his aides, that. One of Luther's aides, his wife, gets the plague and is nine months pregnant. And she. She's so sick that she is unable to deliver the baby. And they both die. And Luth and Katie gets the plague, and then Hans gets it. And Luther writes these just utterly terrified letters to friends, like, I just. I. I don't know what I'm going to do. And then he writes a joyous letter that after two weeks of doing nothing but drinking a little tiny bit of milk he ate today, and. And Luther is just overjoyed that, like, he's. He's not going to. To die. Katharina did recover. She was about six months pregnant, I guess, when she got the plague. The baby that she had dies at about eight months old. She never really thrived. She never really grew. She never really. And I think Luther sort of harbors the belief the rest of his life that the plague took her to. Even if indirectly. She never just she. Which. Which makes some sense, like, when you sort of think about that. And he grieves deeply when that daughter dies. And then when another daughter dies a decade later, he's inconsolable. He, he, he's. He just. They have to sort of pry her away from him because he's holding her when she dies. And they almost have to. There's this image that comes to my head in the descriptions of it. Not from him, but from someone in the hallway of them really just sort of having to peel his arms away from her. And he talks about wanting to climb into and on top of the coffin and can't believe that we have to build a coffin for somebody so little. What's interesting is he can grieve that way. He does not appreciate it when his son does. Right? So he can. Right. And this is the thing that I found interesting in this book is formation does turn out to actually matter and that you can be working and moving in one direction, but it's still going to pull you back. And so he can acknowledge his own pain and suffering and emote. But he's formed in a world, especially within a monastery, that says emotions are bad and you need to regulate your emotions. And that's true for boys in general in Western civil. Boys are not supposed to emote. And as a father, he does not appreciate it when he sees Hans emoting. Hans gets incredibly homesick at one point. And it's sort of clear to me, it says reading around the letters that there is a sense in which von Bora probably wants to bring him home. And Luther instead writes a letter to the headmaster where he basically says, would you quit coddling the boy? He needs to learn how to suck it up, right? Like, come on, man, like, can you take over here and apply it over there? And you know, I mean, he can't. And I. Because that's not the world in which he, he lives, which is tragic. I think for Hans, the one exception to that is as his daughter, the second daughter is, is dying of a disease that we don't know what it was. It comes on very quickly. She, she comes down with it and she is dead within about five weeks. But at about the four week mark, Luther sends a carriage, a sort of fast moving carriage to go and get Hans because he and his sister are quite close. And Luther hopes if I bring the boy back, he'll cheer her up and she'll get better, you know, so I mean, he could embrace emotions when he needed them to be embraced, I guess maybe.

[B]

Irene, I'm seeing this really complex person. So you've humanized Luther here and I've seen something of this kind. Human. You've seen someone who loves his family, you know, but he's still, as you demonstrate, at the end of his life, he's still all vitriol and angry. He's not a nice guy there at the end, it seems. What it, what happens? What are you thinking?

[A]

You know, I don't buy the old man no longer in control of his faculties, that I don't buy. What I think I do buy is he has less and less patience as he gets older. He has less and less empathy with those with whom he disagrees. But that goes way back. I mean, when Ulrich Zwingli dies at the, at the second Battle of Kapell, a person with whom he had an incredible amount in common and with whom he agreed on like 99% of theology, all except for how they understood the Eucharist. Again, this blows up partly over, over a bravado and stuff. But you know, when Zwingli dies, Luther is like, well, good, he deserved it. And that's not the old Luther. So there's always that part to him. Yeah, I think he just has less patience. He has less, less willingness. As he sees his time running out, he moves into this sort of defensive position to man the barricades. And so he will use every one of his rhetorical, sort of every rhetorical arrow in his quiver he will use to defend that which he has built. And by this point in his life, he is a very good insulter. He has learned how to insult and attack. He has learned how to not just counter punch, but punch himself. And he uses all of those. He attacks Catholics, Anabaptists and then most especially Jews with just utter abandon because they all disagree with him. And he's one of those guys that very carefully thinks through arguments and doesn't come to, doesn't come to theological positions arbitrarily. He's thought them through deeply and he just cannot understand why someone would then disagree with him. He's like, I have literally explained this to you. This is self evidently true. So there must be some other reason that you are refusing to acknowledge what I have just explained to you, and that is that you are evil and wrong. And so then he just hurls insults and vitriol.

[B]

You're either or stupid. Which do you prefer?

[A]

Right, right. And he doesn't have anybody sort of in his later life willing to tell him no. And I think that's not insignificant when you don't have anybody in your life to be like, hey, dude. And that's one place where like von Bora never goes at Least that we know of. He asks her her opinion on things. He tells her what he's working on, but she doesn't have the training or the academic background to sort of point out, hey, you know, there's this thing, and I think after the. The sort of debacle around Philip of Hess's bigamous marriage where. Where he sort of gets boxed into a corner and is, I think, against his own better judgment, forced to sort of give his blessing to a bigamous marriage at the behest of Martin Bucer. That relationship seems to be problematic after that to me, and I think he respected Bucer enough that had Bootser sort of said, hey, dude, you know, you might want to chill that out. But there was nobody sort of when, when. When you talk about the worst things that he said, there's nobody in his life around him that's telling him, though.

[B]

And I mean, everybody needs an editor. Everybody needs an editor. Yeah. Yeah. All right. You know, so in the end, I'm going back to this. David, you. Luther's human. He's complex, in position, in. In possession of conflicting positions and conflicting emotions within himself and conflicting positions and emotions vis a vis the rest of the world. You know, he. He has a public life and a private life, and sometimes he holds different opinions at once. So he's human. It asked. Right. So that's kind of what I'm taking away here. Is there something else you want our listeners to really know when they're done with this? Well, and our read and your readers. Our listeners know and your readers, when they're finished with the book, I think.

[A]

I want them to get the sense that he is a. He is neither just a hero or just a villain in the 16th century. He's painted in vivid colors, and those colors are either vibrant and adoring. Luther, the third Elijah. Right. He gets called that. The third Elijah. Right. Or he is the embodiment of the Antichrist. He's never. He's never just sort of Martin Luther. He's always hero or anti hero. And what I tried to do here was to gray up the portrait a little. Did he do some things that were noble and laudatory? Yes. Did he do some things that were pretty horrible? Absolutely. And I think it's. And then I want people to see that figuring out how to be this entirely different person who is no longer a monk, but is still a college professor, but is no longer celibate, is now a husband, is now a father, that changed him and that that work took work, whether he did it sort of self consciously or not, I don't know. I think he did some like there's this wonderful letter that he writes where Katerina Vombura is having a hard time weaning one of their children and he gets this in a letter. And that evening at dinner there he's away and he gets this note in a letter sort of. And I think this is just von Boris sort of just sort of filling him in on the family and being like. And this kid just won't wean and she's driving me insane, right. And at dinner is one of the Reformation's most famous pamphleteers in the early Reformation, Argurla von Grumbach and who I think Argrula had five kids. I think don't quote me on how many children she had, but she is she. And he asks her advice like how do you do this? And then he sends back a letter to Katerina von Bora, like, you know, our gorilla von Grumbach said this is what you do, right? And he sort of lays it all out and like, like Katie wasn't asking him for advice. I think she was just sort of sharing. But it is this sort of little glimpse into. He tried to be as good a parent as he could be. I mean this wasn't. He wasn't indifferent to the work, you know. So.

[B]

Yeah, that is a great place to kind of draw this to a close. It really is a nice little punctuation on our conversation. So I have just one more question which is what's next? What are you working on?

[A]

So one of the things that my reviewers. So you know this. But when you, when you send a manuscript like this to a, to a press, they'll send it out to for review. And a couple of the. My reviewers said why isn't David going more directly at the construction of masculinity within Christianity more broad, broadly. And I sort of had a conversation with my editor that that's a whole different book, the sort of construction of Christian masculinity as a whole different project. But that's probably where I'm going next to sort of think about what did it mean to be a godly Christian man in the medieval era. The Reformation section kind of writes itself because I've done all that research already, but also all the way up to, as I think about it, probably all the way up to much more contemporary. So sort of leaving my. This is going to require me to leave my comfort zone a little if, if you know, my dad had to learn how to be a be a father, and Luther had to figure out how to not be a monk. I'm gonna have to figure out a little bit how not to be just a Reformationist, I guess.

[B]

All right. You know, as the Dutch say, stark, like, that's some stuff. Wow. All right, thank you so much for joining me today.

[A]

Thank you for having me. I had a great time.

[B]

Yeah. Delightful conversation. All right, listeners, the making of a Reformation man. Martin Luther, and the construction of masculinity. Out this year, 2025, with Rutledge. We've got a link on our website. Go give it a look. And, David, take care.

[A]

Thank you. Thank you for having me.