Yet it is no formless and incoherent cry, but an orderly recital of the ills of Germany. There are times when we feel in reading it that the writer is laying violent hands on his own wrath in the effort to be calm. For all its scathing quality, it is a sane arraignment of those who "under the holy name of Christ and St. Peter" are responsible for the nation's woes, and the remedies that are proposed are, many of them, practicable as well as reasonable.
The materials of the work are drawn from many sources,--from hearsay, from personal observation, from such histories as Luther had at his command, from the proceedings of councils and of diets; there are passages which would seem to bear more than an accidental resemblance to similar passages in Hutten's _Vadiscus_. All was grist that came to Luther's mill. But the spirit of the work is Luther's own.
For the general historian, who is concerned more with the practical than with the theoretical or theological aspects of the Reformation, the _Open Letter_ is undoubtedly Luther's greatest work. Its rank outspokenness about the true condition of Germany, the number and variety of the subjects that it treats, the multiplicity of the sources from which the subject-matter is drawn, and the point of view from which the whole is discussed make it a work of absorbing interest and priceless historical value. It shows, as does no other single work of the Reformation time, the things that were in men's minds and the variety of motives which led them to espouse the cause of the Protestant party. Doctrine, ethics, history, politics, economics, all have their place in the treatise. It is not only "a blast on the war-trumpet,"[16] but a connecting link between the thought of the Middle Ages and that of modern times, prophetic of the new age, but showing how closely the new is bound up with the old.
The text of the _Open Letter_ is found in _Weimar Ed_., VI, 404-469; _Erl. Ed._, XXI, 277-360; _Walch Ed._, X, 296-399; _St. Louis Ed._, X, 266-351; _Berlin Ed._, I, 203-290; _Clemen_ I, 363-425. The text of the Berlin Ed._ is modernized and annotated by E. Schneider. The editions of _K. Benrath_ (Halle, 1883) and E. Lemme (_Die 3 grossen Reformationsschriften L's vom J. 1520_; Gotha, 1884) contain a modernized text and extensive notes. A previous English translation in _Wace_ and _Buchheim_, _Luther's Primary Works_ (London and Philadelphia, 1896). The present translation is based on the text of Clemen.