Luther's Aesop by Carl Springer

Carl Springer’s book is about how Martin Luther used Aesop’s fables to promote his new form of Christianity, largely by manipulating them. In the chapter A Lutheran Fable Book, he takes the story of “The Rooster and the Pearl” and shows how Luther rewrote it, removing all of its meaning. The true meaning is that when the rooster says “someone would love to have you, but I have no use for you,” it shows how the working class prefer survival before aesthetics. But in Luther’s version the chicken represents an ignorant, vulgar man who doesn’t take the opportunity to appreciate Jesus.

I would be apt to believe everything in this book based on a historical context. Luther’s (possibly apocryphal) 99 Theses came at the time of the Renaissance, when Europeans were rediscovering Greek and Roman mythology, art, architecture, and language. An educated man, Luther would doubtless have come across ancient literature, translated from Greek, and these works obviously had a profound and lasting effect. But we also know that Luther was extremely opinionated, pig-headed, and vindictive. He thought his crowning achievement would be converting the Jews en masse to Christianity, and when they politely refused, he became a raving Anti-Semite. He was not as open-minded as the high school history textbook would lead us to believe.

Springer deserves praise for his unbiased writing and his informative approach. He has crafted a narrative of Luther’s use of Aesop’s fables, from his days as a translator of the stories into German, all  the way to his use of the fables as parables for his religious arguments.