Though the wedding gave his enemies plenty of openings for reviling him as an apostate, [Sidenote: June 13, 1525] and though it drew from Erasmus the scoffing jest that what had begun as a tragedy ended as a comedy, it {124} crowned his career, symbolizing the return from medieval asceticism to modern joy in living.

Dwelling in the fine old friary, entertaining with lavish prodigality many poor relatives, famous strangers, and students, notwithstanding unremitting toil and not a little bodily suffering, he expanded in his whole nature, mellowing in the warmth of a happy fireside climate.

His daily routine is known to us intimately through the adoring assiduity of his disciples, who noted down whole volumes of his _Table Talk_.
[Sidenote: Death and character of Luther] On February 18, 1546, he died.

Measured by the work that he accomplished and by the impression that his personality made both on contemporaries and on posterity, there are few men like him in history.
Dogmatic, superstitious, intolerant, overbearing, and violent as he was, he yet had that inscrutable prerogative of genius of transforming what he touched into new values.

His contemporaries bore his invective because of his earnestness; they bowed to "the almost disgraceful servitude" which, says Melanchthon, he imposed upon his followers, because they knew that he was leading them to victory in a great and worthy cause.