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During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, an old quotation attributed to the 16th-century German theologian Martin Luther gained prominence online, especially among Christians, as millions of people navigated the disruption and difficulty caused by the virus. In memes, social media posts, and blog posts published by various churches, roughly the same words were included, and the quotation was typically described as deriving from a letter Luther wrote to Johan Hess, in the context of the Black Death: That quotation was accurate, and was rightly attributed to Luther, a key figure in the Protestant Reformation who died in 1546. As such, we are issuing a rating of Correct Attribution. However, the memes omitted parts of the same letter in which Luther warned Christians not to wantonly or needlessly risk their own health, and the health of others, stating that such behavior was morally equivalent to suicide and murder. The original source of Luther's musings about the bubonic plague that devastated Europe in the Middle Ages was his 1527 letter to a fellow Reformation leader. That summer and fall, according to a 1968 collection of Luther's writings, the plague badly affected the German city of Wittenberg, site of the university where Luther served as chair of the theology department. Two hundred miles to the east, in Breslau, now the city of Wrocław in modern-day Poland, Luther's fellow Reformationists debated whether it was appropriate for Christians to flee a bubonic plague hotspot, and wrote to Luther seeking his advice. His response came in the form of an open letter addressed to Johann Hess, a Reformation leader in Breslau. The letter can be read in its original German, here, and an English translation by Carl Schindler can be read in full here. It was finished around November 1527, and was turned into a widely-distributed 14-page pamphlet. In it, Luther encourages Christians who have a duty of care to others, like sick relatives or neighbors, to stay and tend to them. However, he advises that anyone without such responsibilities should flee the plague, rather than tempt God's wrath by unnecessarily risking exposure to it. The sections included in the widely-shared memes and online posts during COVID-19 can be found towards the end of the letter. As translated by Schindler, Luther wrote: It is striking that the memes and online posts shared widely in 2020 and 2021 conspicuously left out those passages from this section of Luther's letter that warned Christians not to needlessly risk exposing themselves or others to the plague. For example, the memes omitted the sentence which states I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance infect and pollute others. Whether deliberate or not, the result of these omissions was likely to be that the reader would have the distorted impression that Luther's approach to the COVID-19 pandemic might have been to eschew social distancing, face-masking, and other mitigation strategies. In fact, earlier in the letter he issued a searing condemnation of those who wantonly risked their health, and the health of others, drawing a moral equivalence to suicide and murder. Luther wrote: Sources:
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