Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther

The most dangerous man in sixteenth-century Europe, captured not in his sermons or theological treatises, but at his dinner table. Table Talk is Martin Luther unfiltered: the arguments he made over ale, the opinions he voiced when he thought only his students were listening, the wit and wrath and wonder that no official document could contain. Here is the reformer as he truly lived, defending his faith between bites of bread, debating the devil, mocking the Pope with the same breath he used to explain Scripture. These conversations, recorded by his students and first published in 1566, range from the sacred to the startling. Luther discusses angels, marriage, the Turkish threat, the proper way to raise children, and why he believed the Pope was the Antichrist. This is Luther the human being, not the monument: brilliant, petty, funny, ferocious, and utterly certain. Anyone who wants to understand what the Reformation actually felt like from the inside, what kind of man could shatter medieval Christianity, needs to hear him speak as he spoke to those who knew him best.