Letters

Currie’s volume translates a selection of Martin Luther’s letters, taken from the collections of de Wette and Walch and arranged by date. Each letter is headed with a short note by the translator; those notes are hers and are not cited here.

The letters are primary evidence for what Luther said and knew on the day he wrote. For the Diet of Augsburg he depended on reports from his colleagues, and he says so. The translation is free in places, so the letters are paraphrased in this wiki and quoted only in short phrases.

Letters of the years to 1530 are also cited from the two volumes of Smith and Jacobs, which print letters by Luther’s contemporaries beside his own (the elector Frederick’s letter to his brother of April 1521 is one) and add editors’ notes on dates and places. Where an entry rests on such a note, it says so.