Martin Luther
(1483 - 1546)
Country
Germany
Profession
friar, lecturer, scholar
Bio
Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar, German university lecturer and scholar, is known primarily as a religious reformer and initiator of Protestantism.
In the years 1510-1511 he travelled to Italy and, crossing the Alps, passed through Milan and Florence, stopping in Siena and Viterbo,
arriving in Rome where he has the opportunity to learn about Italian food and wines and among these also the Malvasia, which he has occasion to quote several times in his writings.
According to the account of Girolamo Aleandro (1480-1542), Italian cardinal and humanist, Catholic biographer of Luther, it is narrated that the latter, after having affirmed his positions in the Diet of Worms which had a great impact not only on the history of religion,
on April 26 1521, after a breakfast with toasted bread, he drank "many cups of Malvasia", mounted a chariot and left the city gate.
The same Luther who is credited with the maxim "he who does not love wine, woman and song / remains a fool all his life" has the way of bestowing on his faithful the metaphor that "God is not behind you with a cane, but is in front of you with a glass of Malvasia” and he used to say to preachers that: "Like a mother who calms her children, gives them the bottle... makes them suck the milk from her breast, and does not offer them wine or Malvasia as a drink, so must preachers do”.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cantimori Delio, Saggio introduttivo a Martin Lutero. Discorsi a tavola. Translation by Leandro Perini. Torino, Einaudi, 1969, pp. VII-LXXXII.
Maffioli Giuseppe, Dalla mela di Eva ai consigli gastronomici di Lutero. Milano, Bietti, 1976.
Costacurta Angelo - Tazzer Sergio, Malvasia. Il vino prezioso d'Oriente che Venezia rese nobile nel Mediterraneo. Kellermann, 2020.
