Luther, vol. 2 of 6
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Title: Luther, vol. 2 of 6
Author: Hartmann Grisar
Editor: C. L. Dessoulavy
Translator: E. M. Lamond
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LUTHER
NIHIL OBSTAT
C. SCHUT, S.T.D.,
_Censor Deputatus._
IMPRIMATUR
EDM. CAN. SURMONT,
_Vic. Gen._
_Westmonasterii, die 10 Julii, 1913._
LUTHER
BY
HARTMANN GRISAR, S.J.
PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN BY
E. M. LAMOND
EDITED BY
LUIGI CAPPADELTA
VOLUME II
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD.
BROADWAY HOUSE, 68-74 CARTER LANE, E.C.
1913
A FEW PRESS OPINIONS OF VOLUME I
“His most elaborate and systematic biography ... is not merely a book
to be reckoned with; it is one with which we cannot dispense, if only
for its minute examination of Luther’s theological writings.”--_The
Athenæum._
“There is no room for any sort of question as to the welcome ready
among English-speaking Roman Catholics for this admirably made
translation of the first volume of the German monograph by Professor
Grisar on the protagonist of the Reformation in Europe.... The
book is so studiously scientific, so careful to base its teaching
upon documents, and so determined to eschew controversies that are
only theological, that it cannot but deeply interest Protestant
readers.”--_The Scotsman._
“Father Grisar has gained a high reputation in this country through
the translation of his monumental work on the History of Rome and the
Popes in the Middle Ages, and this first instalment of his life of
Luther bears fresh witness to his unwearied industry, wide learning,
and scrupulous anxiety to be impartial in his judgments as well as
absolutely accurate in matters of fact.”--_Glasgow Herald._
“It is impossible to understand the Reformation without understanding
the life and character of the great German. The man and the work are so
indissolubly united that we cannot have right judgments about either
without considering the other. It is one of Father Grisar’s many merits
that he does not forget for a single moment the fundamental importance
of this connection. The man and his work come before us in these
illuminating pages, not as more or less harmonious elements, but as a
unity, and we cannot analyse either without constant reference to the
other.”--_Irish Times._
“Professor Grisar is hard on Luther. Perhaps no Roman Catholic can
help it. But it is significant that he is hard on the anti-Lutherans
also.... He shows us, indeed, though not deliberately, that some
reformation of religion was both imperative and inevitable.... But he
is far from being overwhelmed with prejudice. He really investigates,
uses good authorities, and gives reasons for his judgments.”--_The
Expository Times._
“This Life of Luther is bound to become standard ... a model of every
literary, critical, and scholarly virtue.”--_The Month._
“The most important book on Luther that has appeared since Denifle’s
epoch-making ‘Luther und Luthertum.’ ... It is an ordered biography,
... and is therefore very probably destined to a wider general
usefulness as a Catholic authority.”--_The Irish Rosary._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XI. THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE GREAT APOSTASY
_pages_ 3-44
1. ALLIES AMONG THE HUMANISTS AND THE NOBILITY TILL
THE MIDDLE OF 1520.
Friends among the Humanists: Crotus Rubeanus, Eobanus
Hessus, etc. The nobility and the revolutionary
knights. Piety of Hutten’s language when addressing
Luther. Franz von Sickingen. Offer made by Silvester
von Schauenberg. Report that Hutten had trapped the
Papal Legates; Capito counsels greater moderation.
Luther’s reason for only meeting the knights
half-way. Luther’s work, “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome,”
1520; its violence contrasted with Luther’s earlier
demands of the “man of good will.” The manifesto
against Alveld. Prierias the Dominican attacks
Luther’s Indulgence-theses; the latter’s intense
annoyance; summary of his second reply. Treatment of
Hoogstraaten the Inquisitor. Luther’s description of
himself as a “man of contentions.” Scolded by Emser
for his lack of self-control _pages_ 3-15
2. THE VEILING OF THE GREAT APOSTASY.
By holding out hopes of reconciliation, Luther delays
the final decision. His missive to Bishop Scultetus,
in whose diocese lay Wittenberg. Three letters
to Pope Leo X; why the last was antedated; its
purport. Letter to the Emperor Charles V; reason and
setting of the letter; its contents. Luther’s later
description of his “inaction” during this period. His
correspondence with Spalatin; the real aim of many of
the letters: to promote his cause at Court; his offer
to resign his professorship. The diplomatist coupled
with the enthusiast _pages_ 15-26
3. LUTHER’S GREAT REFORMATION-WORKS--RADICALISM AND
RELIGION.
“To the Christian Nobility”; “On the Babylonish
Captivity”; “On the Freedom of a Christian Man”;
specimens from the last of Luther’s taking way of
addressing the people; his rejection of external
authority and assertion of the right of private
judgment against the “tyranny” of Popes and Bishops.
His new conception of faith. The pietist and
religious revolutionary _pages_ 26-37
4. LUTHER’S FOLLOWERS. TWO TYPES OF HIS CULTURED
PARTISANS: WILLIBALD PIRKHEIMER AND ALBERT DÜRER.
The deep-set discontent of the Germans leads even
the best-disposed to welcome Luther’s strictures.
Two famous Nurembergers: Willibald Pirkheimer’s
intervention on Luther’s behalf; his subsequent
deception; withdraws from the cause. Albert Dürer’s
prepossession in Luther’s favour; his art in Luther’s
service; did he afterwards alter his ideas? _pages_ 38-44
CHAPTER XII. EXCOMMUNICATION AND OUTLAWRY. SPIRITUAL
BAPTISM IN THE WARTBURG _pages_ 45-96
1. THE TRIAL. THE EXCOMMUNICATION (1520) AND ITS
CONSEQUENCES.
The proceedings in Rome postponed and then resumed.
The 41 propositions. The Bull “_Exsurge Domine_”
menaces all Lutherans with excommunication in the
event of their refusing to submit; some excerpts
from the Bull. Luther’s writings against the Bull;
futility of his appeal to a General Council; the
burning of the Bull. “_Compos mei non sum_”;
his feverish activity; “_Fluctibus his rapior
et volvor_”; his hints at armed opposition; on
“washing hands in blood”; moderates his language
when addressing the Saxon Court. Conviction that
the Pope is Antichrist strengthened by the birth of
the Freiberg Calf. His “Instruction to penitents
concerning forbidden books” (February, 1521) composed
in view of the Easter confession _pages_ 45-61
2. THE DIET OF WORMS, 1521; LUTHER’S ATTITUDE.
The Diet assembled. Luther’s journey to Worms.
Happenings at Erfurt. Arrival at Worms; his
interrogation; unofficial attempts to reach a
settlement; his final refusal to recant. Sympathisers
among the members of the Diet; pressure brought to
bear by the Knights; the Elector of Saxony. Luther’s
departure; preaches sermons in spite of the condition
laid down in his safe-conduct; carried off to the
Wartburg; formally declared an outlaw; a letter to
Sickingen _pages_ 61-69
3. LEGENDS.
The story of the Emperor’s breach of the
safe-conduct. Luther’s asseveration that his
opponents refused to argue because they knew him
to be in the right. What Luther stood for at Worms
was no “freedom of conscience” in the modern sense.
The legendary utterance “Here I stand. I cannot
do otherwise. God help me. Amen.” Various tales
unfavourable to Luther: His supposed drunkenness
and excesses at Worms; despatches of Contarini the
Venetian minister and Aleander the papal nuncio _pages_ 69-79
4. LUTHER’S SOJOURN AT THE WARTBURG.
Luther’s disposition and occupation in his lonely
retreat. Rising scruples crushed; gloomy thoughts;
bodily assaults of the evil one; temptations. His
cogitations on the question of celibacy; discovers
the best argument to use against vows and priestly
obligations, viz. “evangelical freedom”; result
committed to print in his work “On Monastic
Vows”; his own intention to remain unmarried. His
self-accusations of gluttony and laziness not to
be taken literally. His translation of the New
Testament. His work “On the Abuse of the Mass”;
its frightful caricature of the Pope of Rome. His
spiritual Baptism; his conviction of the reality of
his Divine mission _pages_ 79-94
5. WARTBURG LEGENDS.
Luther’s own language responsible for certain
unfounded charges against him. Meaning of the
“_titillationes_” and “_molestiæ_” of which he
complains. The haunted castle; incident of the
visit of “Hans von Berlips’s wife”; the ubiquitous
ink-smudge _pages_ 94-96
CHAPTER XIII. THE RISE OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES _pages_ 97-172
1. AGAINST THE FANATICS. CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES?
Luther quits the Wartburg and returns to Wittenberg.
Progress of the movement at Wittenberg during his
absence. Carlstadt a cause of misgivings. The Zwickau
Prophets appeal to Holy Writ and their Divine
mission; Luther preaches against their ways; haste
to be deprecated; he bases his superior claim on
the priority of his revelation; he is backed by the
Court. He invites people to smash the Bishoprics and
drive away the “wolves” (1522). As organiser of a new
Church he is faced by practical difficulties owing
to his having no clear notion of what the Church
should be. Apocalyptic dreams. A dilemma: Is the
new church-system to be introduced by the secular
authorities or to spring up spontaneously within
the congregations? The free brotherhood without law
or coercion. The new “Christians”; use of title
“Evangelicals.” Two points to be settled first, viz.
the celebration of the Supper and the appointment of
pastors. Luther’s then leanings to the democratic
congregational ideal. “_De instituendis ministris
ecclesiæ_” and his writing to the Church of Leisnig
(1523) a programme of congregationalism. High hopes
and excessive claims; his mysticism gives him the
assurance that unity will be achieved _pages_ 97-115
2. AGAINST CELIBACY. DOUBTFUL AUXILIARIES FROM THE
CLERGY AND THE CONVENTS.
Advantages and disadvantages of Luther’s warfare
on the state of religious celibacy. His work “On
Monastic Vows.” His exhortations to a religious to
“pocket his scruples and be a man.” On man’s need
to marry. Significant admissions. His teaching in
the Postils and Larger Catechism; advice to the
Prince-abbots and Knights of the Teutonic Order;
sarcastic remarks concerning the olden Fathers,
particularly Jerome, and their “petty temptations”;
connection of Luther’s attack on vows and his early
dislike of “works.” The character of the new pastors
and preachers; Luther suggests the erection of a
jail for their especial benefit; Eberlin, Hessus,
and Cordus, Erasmus and Ickelsamer on the reformed
pastors’ failings. Eberlin’s testimony in favour of
the Franciscans _pages_ 115-129
3. REACTION OF THE APOSTASY ON ITS AUTHOR. HIS
PRIVATE LIFE (1522-1525).
The “scandal” of his life as it appeared to the
Fanatics; displeasure of a Catholic contemporary;
reports carried to the Court of King Ferdinand; moral
circumspection imposed on Luther by his situation:
“we are a spectacle unto the whole world.” Flight
of Catherine von Bora and the Nimbschen nuns; the
“delivery” of other convent-inmates elsewhere;
Luther’s intercourse at Wittenberg with the escaped
nuns; his allusions to them. His joke about his
“three wives”; urges the Archbishop of Mayence to
wed, the latter’s retort and Luther’s offer “to
prance along in front” as an example to His Grace.
Some characteristic extracts from his letters to
intimates. Melanchthon shocked at Luther’s behaviour
and jests. Dungersheim on Luther’s doings in the
“herd of runaway nuns.” Eck on Luther’s character
and conduct. Luther’s sermons on self-control,
devil’s chastity, etc. “On Conjugal life.” Luther’s
disregard for decency unmatched by any writer of his
age. His description of King Henry VIII. Rebuked
by contemporaries for his incessant recourse to
invective _pages_ 129-157
4. FURTHER TRAITS TOWARDS A PICTURE OF LUTHER.
OUTWARD APPEARANCE. SUFFERINGS, BODILY AND MENTAL.
General descriptions of Luther’s personal appearance.
His reputed portraits not good likenesses. Effect
of anxiety and overwork on his nervous system.
Discussion of the question whether Luther suffered
from the venereal disease so common in his time; the
newly discovered letter of the physician Rychardus
in 1523 regarding Luther’s indisposition. Luther’s
fits of depression; he relieves his feelings by
greater violence in his attacks on the Church of
Rome, religious vows, the Popish Mass, and the foe
within the camp; Satan raging everywhere; the end
of all not far off. He invites Amsdorf to come and
comfort him, being “very sad and tempted”; falls
into a fainting-fit when alone at home; recovers his
composure under the cheering influence of music;
requests Senfl of Munich to set to music a favourite
anthem _pages_ 157-172
CHAPTER XIV. FROM THE PEASANT-WAR TO THE DIET OF
AUGSBURG (1525-1530) _pages_ 173-399
1. LUTHER’S MARRIAGE.
Luther’s unexpected wedding with Catherine von Bora;
his justification of it; Melanchthon’s mixed feelings
shown in his confidential letter to Camerarius; his
surprise that Luther should have chosen this “unhappy
time” (the period of the Peasant-War) for his
marriage. Luther’s excitement during the War and his
presentiment of approaching death; his determination
to spite the devil and himself; his marriage a “work
of God.” The death of Frederick the Wise removes an
obstacle to Luther’s matrimony. Luther’s jesting
references to the step. His friends’ misgivings.
Erasmus sadly disappointed in his hope that
marriage would tame Luther. Dungersheim’s lament.
Marriage-legends: The statement that the marriage was
consummated before being solemnised, due to a mere
misunderstanding; report of Bora’s early confinement
based on a statement of Erasmus which he afterwards
withdrew. Statements of Heyden and Lemnius regarding
Luther’s misconduct with Bora, too general to be of
historical value _pages_ 173-189
2. THE PEASANT-WAR. POLEMICS.
Connection of the Peasant-rising with the new
preaching. The “Twelve Articles” of the Swabians;
“Evangelical” demands of the Peasants; the Peasants
incited by fanatical preachers; efforts made by the
better pastors to quiet the populace. Luther drawn
into the movement; his “Exhortation to peace”; its
description of the lords calculated to fan the flame;
his broadside “Against the murderous Peasants” and
its drift: “Hew them down, slaughter, and stab them
like mad dogs.” The pamphlet alienates the lower
classes. Luther’s writing on the defeat of Münzer.
His “Circular letter on the severe booklet against
the Peasants.” Contemporary opinions regarding
Luther’s action; Zasius, Cochlæus, Erasmus. Luther’s
later references to his intervention in the revolt;
he ceases to be any longer the idol of the people.
The Catholic Princes take steps to maintain
their authority against the encroachments of the
innovators. The Dessau League and the Assembly of
Mayence. Luther’s suppressed tract “Against the
Mayence proposal,” 1526. The Lutherans enter into
an alliance at Torgau; Luther on the aversion of
both lords and peasants for himself. His abiding
distrust of the peasants. The “awful ingratitude”
of the people. His excitement and his polemics only
deepen his conviction of his Divine mission. Emser’s
indignation with Luther expressed in verse. The
multiplicity of the matters of business referred to
Luther _pages_ 189-223
3. THE RELIGION OF THE ENSLAVED WILL. THE CONTROVERSY
BETWEEN LUTHER AND ERASMUS (1524-1525).
The earlier Church on freedom of the will. Growth
of Luther’s denial of freedom from the time of the
Commentary on Romans; his attack on free-will in the
“Resolutions” after the Leipzig Disputation and in
the “_Assertio_” against the Bull of Excommunication
(1521): “_Omnia de necessitate absoluta eveniunt_,”
anything else mere Pelagianism; St. Augustine; the
“religion of the Cross”; Scripture the sole rule of
faith; Luther’s deviations from his stern doctrine
in his practical works; objections within his own
fold. Erasmus invited to take the field on behalf
of freedom; previous attitude of the leader of the
Humanists: partly for, partly against Luther; his
eyes opened in 1520; his regret in 1521 for having
fanned the flames by his writings; the saying:
“Erasmus laid the egg which Luther hatched”; various
opinions regarding Erasmus. Luther seeks in vain
to dissuade Erasmus from writing against him;
publication of the “_De libero arbitrio diatribe_,”
1524; Luther’s reply: “_De servo arbitrio_”; contents
and character of the work; religious determinism;
God the only real agent; peace to be secured only
at the price of surrendering free-will; unfreedom
and predestination to hell; God’s Secret Will versus
His Revealed Will; existence of commandments and
penalties; how explained? Man’s will a saddle-horse
mounted alternately by God and the devil. Luther’s
psychology as portrayed in his work on the enslaved
will. Laurentius Valla. Luther’s later dicta on the
enslaved will and predestination; his own opinion
unaltered to the end; he commends, however, the
second edition of the “_Loci Theologici_” in which
Melanchthon sacrifices determinism. Letter to
Count A. von Mansfeld on the scandal of the weak;
consolation for the damned. Recent views on Luther’s
attitude _pages_ 223-294
4. NEW VIEWS ON THE SECULAR AUTHORITIES.
Luther’s own estimation of the value of his teaching
on the subject. How his views were reached. His book
“Von welltlicher Uberkeytt,” 1523; his depreciation
of the Princes: “A good Prince a rare bird from
the beginning.” Antagonism to the fanatics and
revolted peasants and his desire to serve the cause
of the Evangel lead him to exaggerate the secular
authority at the expense of the spiritual; Luther’s
self-contradictory utterances on the subject of the
use of earthly weapons in the service of the Evangel _pages_ 294-312
5. HOW THE NEW CHURCH-SYSTEM WAS INTRODUCED.
Döllinger on the preparation of the ground for
the Reformation. The proceedings at Altenburg,
Lichtenberg, Schwarzburg, and Eilenburg typical of
the action of the town councils. Partial retention of
olden ceremonial for the sake of avoiding scandal.
An instance of misplaced enthusiasm: Hartmuth
von Cronberg. Proceedings at Wittenberg, in the
Saxon Electorate and in the free Imperial city of
Nuremberg. Lutheranism introduced at the University
town of Erfurt; Luther’s own part in this; the
Catholic opposition headed by Usingen; anticlerical
rising in the town; invasion of the peasants and
overthrow of the magistracy; awkward position of
Luther on being appealed to by the committees set
up by the revolutionaries; negotiations with the
Saxon Elector and the Archbishop of Mayence; partial
success of the Archbishop’s threats _pages_ 312-362
6. SHARP ENCOUNTERS WITH THE FANATICS.
Advantages accruing to Luther from his warfare
with the Anabaptists. Thomas Münzer’s opinions and
doings. Luther’s Circular on the spirit of revolt
and Münzer’s “Schutzrede”; with whom is the decision
as to the quality of the spirit to rest? Münzer’s
capture and execution; Luther exults. Luther’s tracts
against Carlstadt; all his gainsayers possessed by
the devil; Münzer’s description of Luther as the Pope
of Wittenberg. Ickelsamer’s objection that Luther
goes only half-way with his principle of private
judgment. Luther’s view that every man sent by God
must be “tried by the devil.” Luther shocks his wife _pages_ 363-379
7. PROGRESS OF THE APOSTASY. DIETS OF SPIRES (1529)
AND AUGSBURG (1530).
Previous Diets; the Diet of Spires in 1526; the
Protest at the Diet of Spires in 1529; that of
Augsburg in 1530; Melanchthon’s diplomacy approved
by Luther; “_insidiæ_” pitted against “_insidiæ_”;
the Gospel-proviso; Luther’s admission to Philip of
Hesse; failure of the Augsburg Diet; the tale of the
spectre-monks of Spires; Luther’s obsessions in the
fortress of Coburg; vehemence of his tract against
the “pretended Imperial edict”; his reply to Duke
George the “Dresden assassin.” Luther’s fidelity to
certain central truths of Christianity, particularly
to the doctrine of the Trinity _pages_ 380-399
VOL. II.
THE APOSTASY
LUTHER
CHAPTER XI
THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE GREAT APOSTASY
1. Allies among the Humanists and the Nobility till the middle of 1520
AS his work progressed the instigator of the innovations received
offers of support from various quarters where aims similar to his were
cherished.
In the first place there were many among the Humanists who greeted him
with joy because they trusted that their ideals, as expressed in the
“_Epistolæ obscurorum virorum_,” would really be furthered by means of
Luther’s boldness and energy. They took his side because they looked
upon him as a champion of intellectual liberty and thus as a promoter
of noble, humane culture against the prevalent barbarism.
Erasmus, Mutian, Crotus Rubeanus, Eobanus Hessus and others were
numbered amongst his patrons, though, as in the case of the first
three, some of them forsook him at a later date. Most of the Humanists
who sought, in verse and prose, to arouse enthusiasm for Luther in
Germany were as yet unaware that the spirit of the man whom they
were thus extolling differed considerably from their own, and that
Luther would later become one of the sternest opponents of their views
concerning the rights of reason and “humanity” as against faith.
Meanwhile, however, Luther not only did not scorn the proffered
alliance, but, as his letters to Erasmus show, condescended to crave
favour in language so humble and flattering that it goes far beyond
the customary protestations usual among the Humanists. He also drew
some very promising Humanists into close relation with himself, for
instance, Philip Melanchthon and Justus Jonas, whom he won over to his
cause at an early date. Crotus Rubeanus, the principal author of the
“_Epistolæ obscurorum virorum_,” sought to renew his old acquaintance
with his friend by letter in October, 1519. To him Luther appeared
as the man of whose courage in opposing tyrants all the world was
talking, and who was filled with the Spirit of the Lord. Crotus, at
the instigation of Hutten, was anxious to bring about an understanding
between Luther and the Knight Franz von Sickingen.[1]
The nobility was another important factor on whose support Luther was
later to rely.
Ulrich von Hutten, the Franconian Knight and Humanist, a typical
representative of the revolutionary knights of the day, speaks to the
Monk of Wittenberg in the same devout terms as Crotus. The language,
well padded with quotations from the Gospel, which he adopts to please
Luther and the Reformers, makes a very strange impression coming from
him, the libertine and cynic. His first dealings with Luther were in
January, 1520, when, through the agency of Melanchthon, he promised
him armed protection should he stand in need of such. The message was
to the effect, that Franz von Sickingen, the knight, would, in any
emergency,[2] offer him a secure refuge in his castle of Ebernburg.
As a matter of fact Sickingen, in 1520, made over this castle--called
the “Hostel of Justice”--to Hutten, Bucer and Œcolampadius as a place
of safety. Representatives of the nobility who had fallen foul of the
Empire there made common cause with the theologians of the new teaching.
As yet, however, Luther felt himself sufficiently secure under his
own sovereign at Wittenberg. He maintained an attitude of reserve
towards a party which might have compromised him, and delayed giving
his answer. The revolutionary spirit which inspired the nobility
throughout the Empire, so far as we can judge from the sources at our
disposal, was not approved of by Luther save in so far as the efforts
of these unscrupulous men of the sword were directed against the
power of Rome in Germany, and against the payments to the Holy See.
His own appeals to the national feeling of the Germans against the
“Italian Oppression,” as he styled it, were in striking agreement with
the warlike proclamations of the Knights against the enslaving and
exploitation of Germany.
Thus sympathy, as well as a certain community of interests, made the
Knights heralds of the new Evangel.
In February, 1520, Hutten, through the intermediary of Melanchthon,
again called the attention of Luther, “God’s Champion,” to the refuge
offered him by Sickingen.[3] Luther did not reply until May, nor has
the letter been preserved; neither do we possess the three following
letters which he wrote to Hutten. Cochlæus, his opponent, says, he had
seen “truly bloody letters” written by Luther to Hutten.[4] He does
not, however, give any further particulars of their contents; how the
words “bloody letters”--probably an unduly strong expression--are to be
understood may be gathered from some statements of Luther’s regarding
another offer made him about the same time.
The Knight Silvester von Schauenberg, a determined warrior, at that
time High Bailiff of Münnerstadt, declared he was ready to furnish
one hundred nobles who would protect him by force of arms until the
termination of his “affair.”[5] Luther made Schauenberg’s letter
known amongst his friends and adherents. He informs Spalatin, that
“Schauenberg and Franz von Sickingen have insured me against the fear
of men. The wrath of the demons is now about to come; this will happen
when I become a burden to myself.”[6] “A hundred nobles,” he repeats in
another letter, “have been promised me by Schauenberg in the event of
my fleeing to them from the menaces of the Romans. Franz Sickingen has
made the same offer.”[7]
He had already, several months before this, spoken openly in his sermon
“On Good Works” (March, 1520) of the intervention of the worldly powers
which he would like to see, because the spiritual powers do nothing
but lead everything to ruin.[8]
Hutten, who was more favourably disposed towards an alliance than
Luther, continued to make protestations of agreement with Luther’s
views and to hold out invitations to him. On June 4 he wrote to him
among other things: “I have always agreed with you [in your writings]
so far as I have understood them. You can reckon on me in any case.”
“Therefore, in future, you may venture to confide all your plans to
me.”[9] In another letter Hutten gave him to understand that, on
account of the action of the Papal party, he would now attack the
tyrant of Rome by force of arms,[10] at the same time informing also
the Archbishop of Mayence, and Capito, of his resolution.[11] Luther
was so carried away by this prospect that he wrote to Spalatin that
if the Archbishop of Mayence were to proceed against him (Luther)
in the same way as he had done against Hutten, viz. by prohibiting
his writings, then he would “unite his spirit [meaning his pen] with
Hutten’s,” and the Archbishop would have little cause to rejoice; the
latter, however, “by his behaviour would probably put a speedy end to
his tyranny.”[12]
In the autumn of 1520 it was said that, near Mayence, Hutten had fallen
upon the Papal Nuncios Marinus Caraccioli and Hieronymus Aleander, who
were on their way to the Diet at Worms; Luther believed the report,
which was as a matter of fact incorrect, that Hutten had attacked the
Nuncios and that it was only by chance that the plot miscarried. “I am
glad,” he wrote at that time, “that Hutten has led the way. Would that
he had caught Marinus and Aleander!”[13]
Luther’s threats to use brute force soon became a cause of annoyance,
even to certain of his admirers. We see this from a friendly warning
which Wolfgang Capito addressed to him in the same year, namely,
1520. After recommending a peaceable course of action he says to him:
“You affright your devoted followers by hinting at mercenaries and
arms. I think I understand the reason of your plan, but I myself look
upon it in a different light.” Capito advises Luther to proceed in a
conciliatory manner and with deliberation. “Do not preach the Word of
Christ in contention, but in charity.”[14]
He had thus been forewarned when he received from Hutten, that
turbulent combatant, a confidential account of his work and a request
to use his influence with the Elector in order that the latter might
be induced to lend his assistance to him and his party; the Prince
was “either to give help to those who had already taken up arms or at
least, in the interests of the good cause, to shut his eyes to what
was going on, and allow them to take refuge in his domains should
the condition of things call for it.”[15] Hutten, with his proposed
alliance, became more and more importunate. To such lengths Luther
was, however, not inclined to go; he prized too highly the favour
in which he stood with his sovereign to be willing to admit that he
was in favour of civil war or a supporter of questionable elements.
In his reply he thought it necessary to declare himself averse to
the use of arms, notwithstanding the fact that he hailed with joy
Hutten’s literary attacks which, according to his own expression,
“would help to overthrow the Papacy more speedily than could have been
anticipated.”[16] We learn from his own lips that he wrote to Hutten,
saying, “he did not wish to carry on the struggle for the Gospel by
means of violence and murder.” Writing of this to his friend Spalatin,
at Worms, he adds a reflection, intended for the benefit of the court:
“The world has been conquered, and the Church preserved by the Word,
and through the Word it will be renewed. Antichrist who rose to power
without human assistance will also be destroyed without human means,
namely, by the Word.”[17]
On the other hand, in a letter to Staupitz, who was already at that
time staying at Salzburg, he again makes much of the importance of
Hutten’s and his friends’ literary work for the advance of the new
teaching. “Hutten and many others are writing bravely for me.... Our
Prince,” he adds, “is acting wisely, faithfully and steadfastly,” and
as a proof of the favour of the Ruler of the land he mentions that
he is bringing out a certain publication in Latin and German at his
request.[18]
“The Prince is acting faithfully and steadfastly,” such was probably
the principal reason why Luther refrained from joining the forward
movement as advocated by the Knights of the Empire. The clever Elector
was opposed to any violent method of procedure and was unwilling to
have his fidelity to the Empire unnecessarily called in question.
To Luther, moreover, his favour was indispensable, as it was of the
utmost importance to him, in the interests of his aims, to be able
to continue his professional work at Wittenberg and to spread abroad
his publications unhindered from so favourable a spot. He was also
not of such an adventurous disposition as to anticipate great things
from the chimerical enterprise proposed by Hutten’s Knights. He was,
however, aware that the religious revolution he was furthering lent
the strongest moral assistance to the liberal tendencies of the
Knights, and he on his part was very well satisfied with the moral
help afforded by their party. His coquetting with this party was,
nevertheless, a dangerous game for Germany. As is well known, Sickingen
appealed in exoneration of his deeds of violence, and Hutten in defence
of his vituperation, to the new gospel which had recently sprung up in
the German land.
Efforts have frequently been made to represent Luther as treating the
efforts of the party opposed to the Empire with sublime contempt.
But it is certain “he was as little indifferent to the enthusiastic
applause of the Franconian Knight [Hutten] as to the offers of
protection and defence made him by Franz von Sickingen and Silvester
von Schauenberg, the favourable criticism of Erasmus and other
Humanists, the encouraging letters of the Bohemian Utraquists, the
growing sympathy of German clerics and monks, the commotion among the
young students, and the news of the growing excitement amongst the
masses. He recognised more and more clearly from all these signs that
he was not standing alone.”[19]
His language becomes, in consequence, stronger, his action bolder and
more impetuous. He casts aside all scruples of ecclesiastical reverence
for the primacy of Peter which still clung to him from Catholic times
and he seeks to arrogate to himself the rôle of spokesman of the
German nation, more particularly of the universal discontent with the
exactions of Rome. Both are vividly expressed in his book “Von dem
Bapstum tzu Rome” which he wrote in May, 1520, and which left the press
already in June.
He addressed his book “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome” to a very large
circle, viz. to all who hitherto had found peace of conscience and
a joyous assurance of salvation in fidelity to the Church and the
Papacy. He sought to prove to them that they had been mistaken,
that the Church is merely a purely spiritual kingdom; that the
riches of this kingdom are to be obtained simply by faith without
the intervention of priestly authority or the hierarchy; that God’s
Kingdom is not bound up with communion with Rome; that it exists
wherever faith exercises its sway; that such a spiritual commonwealth
could have no man as its head, but only Christ. Ecclesiastical
authority is to him no longer what he had at first represented it,
an authority to rule entrusted to the clerical state, but a gracious
promise of Divine forgiveness and mercy to consciences seeking
salvation. His new dogmatic or psychological standpoint, with its
tendency to tranquillise the soul, is noticeable throughout.
In the same work he deals angrily with the prevailing financial
complaints of the Germans against Rome. He tells the people, in the
inflammatory language of Hutten and Sickingen, that in Rome the
Germans are looked upon as beasts, that the object there is to cheat
the “drunken Germans” of their money by every possible thievish trick
from motives of avarice. “Unless the German princes and nobles see
to it presently, Germany will end in becoming a desert, or be forced
to devour itself.”[20] A prediction which was sadly verified in a
different sense, indeed, from that which Luther meant, though largely
owing to his action. The German princes and nobles did indeed do their
share in reducing Germany to a state of desolation, and the misery of
the Thirty Years’ War stamped its bloody seal on Luther’s involuntary
prophecy.
In the same year, 1520, Luther hurled his so-called “great reforming
writings,” “An den Adel” and “_De captivitate babylonica_,” into the
thick of the controversy. They mark the crisis in the struggle before
the publication of the Bull of Excommunication.
Before treating of them, however, we must linger a little on what has
already been considered; in accordance with the special psychological
task of this work, it is our duty to describe more fully one
characteristic of Luther’s action up to this time, viz. the stormy,
violent, impetuous tendency of his mind. This, as every unprejudiced
person will agree, is in striking contrast to the spiritual character
of any undertaking which is to bring forth lasting ethical results and
true blessing, namely, to that self-control and circumspection with
which all those men commissioned by God for the salvation of mankind
and of souls have ever been endowed, notwithstanding their strenuous
energy.
The necessity of these latter qualities, in the case of one who is
to achieve any permanent good, has never been better set forth than
by Luther himself: “It is not possible,” he says in his exposition
of the Lord’s Prayer, “that any man of good will, if really good,
can become angry or quarrelsome when he meets with opposition. Mark
it well, it is assuredly a sign of an evil will if he cannot endure
contradiction.”[21] “But deep-seated pride cannot bear to be thought
in the wrong, or foolish, and therefore looks upon all others as fools
and wicked.”[22] He declares that these passionate and self-seeking
men are the “worst and most shameful in the whole of Christendom,”
forgetting that he himself was classed by his contemporaries and
pupils among these very men.[23] If he really was desirous of hearing
the voice of Christ speaking within him, as he actually believed
he did hear it, then he ought not to have allowed that voice to be
drowned by his passionate excitement. Men chosen by God had always
been careful to await the Divine inspirations with the greatest
composure of mind, because they knew well how easy it is for a
troubled mind to be deaf to them, or to mistake for them the deceptive
voice of its own perverse will.
The writing already mentioned, “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome,” contains
the saddest examples of Luther’s unbridled excitement, and of the
irritation which burst into a flame at the least opposition to his
opinions.
It is directed against the worthy theologian of Leipzig, Augustine
Alveld, a Franciscan, who had ventured to take the part of the
Apostolic See, and to gauge Luther’s unfair attacks at their
true value. Luther falls upon this learned friar with absolutely
ungovernable fury, calls his book the “work of an ape, intended to
poison the minds of the poor laymen,” and him himself “an uncouth
miller’s beast who has not yet learnt to bray.” “He ought to have
too much respect for the fine, famous town of Leipzig [whence Alveld
wrote] to defile it with his drivel and spittle.”[24]
Alveld, however, may have consoled himself with the fact, that Rome
and the Papacy were the object of Luther’s wildest rage: “The Roman
scoundrels come along and set the Pope above Christ.” But he is
“Antichrist of whom the whole of Scripture speaks ... and I should be
glad if the King, the Princes and all the Nobles gave short shrift to
the Roman buffoons, even if we had to do without episcopal pallia. How
has Roman avarice proceeded so far as to seize on the foundations made
by our fathers, on our bishoprics and livings? Who ever heard or read
of such robbery? Have we not people who stand in need of such that we
should enrich the muleteers, stable-boys, yea, even the prostitutes
and knaves of Rome out of our poverty, people who look upon us as the
merest fools, and who mock at us in the most shameful fashion.”[25]
Such unrestrained violence, which tells of a bad cause, is not merely
the result of Luther’s embittered state of feeling arising from the
struggle with his opponents; we notice it in him almost from the
outset of his public career, and it is evident both in his utterances
and in his writings.
The ninety-five Theses, of which the wording was surely strong
enough, were followed by his first popular writing, the “Sermon on
Indulgences and Grace,” which ends with a furious outburst against
his adversaries; whatever they might advance was nothing but “idle
tattle”; he will not “pay much heed to it”; “they are merely dullards
who have never so much as sniffed the Bible,” but are infatuated
with their “threadbare opinions.”[26] The exclamation of Duke George
of Saxony at the Disputation at Leipzig: “Das wallt die Sucht,” might
be taken as the watchword for the whole of the disputatious and
passionate course Luther pursued, from the nailing up of the Theses
to the advent of the Bull of Excommunication. It is not deliberate
and calm logic which leads him on from step to step, rather he
advances by leaps and bounds, and allows himself to be carried away
in his excitement against his opponents to still stronger outbursts
against the Church, sometimes, it is true, merely for the pleasure
of trouncing his enemies and winning the applause of readers as
quarrelsome as himself. Only a few months after the publication of
the Theses, he wrote in this sense to a friend: “The greater the
opposition, the further I advance; the former propositions I leave to
be barked over, and set up others in order that they may fall upon
them also.”[27]
At the same time, however, he declares that his only crime is that,
“he teaches men to place their hopes in Christ alone, not in prayers,
merits and works.”[28]
The Dominican, Silvester Prierias, in his Dialogue directed against
Luther, had touched upon the Indulgence Theses, though only cursorily;
Luther was, however, intensely annoyed by the circumstance of his
having replied from Rome, and in his character of Master of the Sacred
Palace, for that Luther’s true character should be unmasked at Rome
could prove extremely dangerous to him; he was also vexed because
Prierias upheld the authority of the Pope, both as regards indulgences
and Church matters in general. Luther says, it is true, that as
regards his own person he is ready to suffer anything, but that he
will not allow any man to lay hands on his theological standpoint, his
exposition of Scripture and (as he insists later) on his preaching
of the Word and Gospel; “in this matter let no man expect from me
indulgence or patience.”[29]
He certainly proved the truth of the latter promise by his first
coarse writing against Prierias, who thereupon entered the lists with
a rejoinder certainly not characterised by gentleness. In his answer
to this, Luther’s anger knew no bounds. It would be most instructive
and interesting to compare the two replies of the Wittenberg professor
in respect of the advance in his controversial theological position
exhibited in the second reply when placed side by side with the first.
We must, however, for the sake of brevity, content ourselves with
selecting some characteristic passages from Luther’s second reply,
which appeared at the same time as the work on the Papacy, directed
against Alveld.[30]
“This wretched man wants to avenge himself on me as though I had
replied to his feeble jests in a ridiculous manner; he puts forth a
writing filled from top to bottom with horrible blasphemies, so that I
can only think this work has been forged by the devil himself in the
depths of hell. If this is believed and taught openly in Rome with the
knowledge of the Pope and the Cardinals, which I hope is not the case,
then I say and declare publicly that the real Antichrist is seated in
the Temple of God and reigns at Rome, the true Babylon ‘clothed in
purple’ (Apoc. xvii. 4), and that the Roman Court is the ‘Synagogue of
Satan’ (_Ibid._, ii. 9).” He unjustly imputes to Prierias the belief
that the Bible only receives its inward value from a mortal man (the
Pope). “Oh, Satan,” he cries, “Oh, Satan, how long do you abuse the
great patience of your creator?... If this [what is contained in
Prierias’s book] is the faith of the Roman Church, then happy Greece,
happy Bohemia [which are separated from Rome], happy all those who
have torn themselves away from her, and have gone forth from this
Babylon; cursed all those who are in communion with her!”
He goes so far as to utter those burning words: “Go, then, thou
unhappy, damnable and blasphemous Rome, God’s wrath has at last
come upon thee ... let her be that she may become a dwelling-place
of dragons, an habitation of every impure spirit (Isaias xxxiv.
13), filled to the brim with miserly idols, perjurers, apostates,
sodomites, priapists, murderers, simoniacs and other countless
monsters, a new house of impiety like to the heathen Pantheon of olden
days.” He inveighs against the teaching of Rome with regard to the
primacy; “if thieves are punished by the rope, murderers by the sword,
and heretics by fire, why not proceed against these noxious teachers
of destruction with every kind of weapon? Happy the Christians
everywhere save those under the rule of such a Roman Antichrist.”[31]
Prierias himself is described by Luther as a “shameless mouthpiece of
Satan,” and as “a scribe held captive in Thomistic darkness, and lying
Papal Decretals.”
In a similar fashion Luther, in his controversial writings, heaps
opprobrious epithets upon his other opponents, Tetzel, Eck and Emser.
It is true that in their censures on Luther his opponents were not
backward in the use of strong language, thus following the custom of
the day, but for fierceness the Wittenberg professor was not to be
surpassed.
Luther was not appealing to the nobler impulses of the multitude who
favoured him when, in 1518, he sought to incite his readers against
another of his literary opponents, the Dominican Inquisitor, Jakob
van Hoogstraaten, and his fellow-monks, with the violent assertion
that Hoogstraaten was nothing but a “mad, bloodthirsty murderer,
who was never sated with the blood of the Christian Brethren”; “he
ought to be set to hunt for dung-beetles on a manure heap, rather
than to pursue pious Christians, until he had learned what sin,
error and heresy was, and all else that pertained to the office of
an Inquisitor. For I have never seen a bigger ass than you ... you
blind blockhead, you blood-hound, you bitter, furious, raving enemy of
truth, than whom no more pestilential heretic has arisen for the last
four hundred years.”[32] Is it correct to characterise such outbursts
in the way Protestants have done when they mildly remark, that Luther
fought with “boldness and without any fear of men,” and that, though
his onslaught was “fierce and violent,” yet he was ever fearful “lest
he should do anything contrary to the Will of God”?[33]
Luther, on the other hand, as early as 1518, made the admission: “I
am altogether a man of strife, I am, according to the words of the
Prophet Jeremias, ‘A man of contentions.’”[34]
Hieronymus Emser, who had met Luther at the Leipzig Disputation and
before, might well reproach him with his passionate behaviour, so
utterly lacking in calmness and self-control, and liken him to “the
troubled sea which is never at rest day or night nor allows others to
be at peace; yet the Spirit of the Lord only abides in those who are
humble, in the peaceable and composed.”[35] In another work he laments
in a similar way that, “in the schools and likewise in his writings
and in the pulpit Luther neither displays devotion nor behaves like a
clergyman, but is all defiance and boastfulness.”[36]
It was in vain that anxious friends, troubled about the progress of
their common enterprise, besought him to moderate his language. It is
true he had admitted to his fellow-monks, even as early as the time
of the nailing up of his theses, his own “frivolous precipitancy and
rashness” (“_levitas et præceps temeritas_”).[37] He did not even find
it too hard a task to confess to the courtier Spalatin, that he had
been “unnecessarily violent” in his writings.[38] But these were mere
passing admissions, and, after the last passage, he goes on to explain
that his opponents knew him, and should know better than to rouse
the hound; ... “he was by nature hot-blooded and his pen was easily
irritated”; even if his own hot blood and customary manner of writing
had not of themselves excited him, the thought of his opponents and
their “horrible crimes” against himself and the Word of God would have
been sufficient to do so.
Such was his self-confidence that it was not merely easy to him, but
a veritable pleasure, to attack all theologians of every school; they
were barely able to spell out the Bible. “Doctors, Universities,
Masters, are mere empty titles of which one must not stand in awe.”[39]
2. The Veiling of the Great Apostasy
Besides his stormy violence another psychological trait noticeable
in Luther is the astuteness with which he conceals the real nature
of his views and aims from his superiors both clerical and lay, and
his efforts at least to strengthen the doubts favourable to him
regarding his attitude to the hierarchy and the Church as it then was.
Particularly in important passages of his correspondence we find,
side by side with his call to arms, conciliatory, friendly and even
submissive assurances.
The asseverations of this sort which he made to his Bishop, to the
Pope, to the Emperor and to the Elector are really quite surprising,
considering the behaviour of the Wittenberg Professor. In such cases
Luther is deliberately striving to represent the quarrel otherwise than
it really stood.
If the cause he advocated had in very truth been a great and honourable
one, then it imperatively called for frank and honest action on his
part.
The consequence of his peaceable assurances was to postpone the
decision on a matter of far-reaching importance to religion and the
Christian conscience. Many who did not look below the surface were
unaware how they stood, and an inevitable result of such statements of
Luther’s was, that, in the eyes of many even among the nobles and the
learned, the great question whether he was right or wrong remained too
long undecided. He thus gained numerous followers from the ranks of
the otherwise well-disposed, and, of these, many, after the true aims
of the movement had become apparent, failed to retrace their steps.
In fairness, however, all the means by which the delay of the
negotiations was brought about must not be laid to Luther’s charge,
and to his intentional misrepresentations. It is more probable that
he frequently assumed an attitude of indecision because, to his
excited mind, the stress of unforeseen events, which affected him
personally, seemed to justify his use of so strange an expedient. Be
this as it may, we must make a distinction between his actions at the
various periods of his agitated life; the further his tragic history
approaches the complete and open breach which was the result of his
excommunication, the less claim to belief have his assurances of peace,
whereas his earlier protestations may at least sometimes be accorded
the benefit of a doubt.
To the assurances dating from the earlier stage belong in the first
place those made to his Ordinary, Hieronymus Scultetus, Bishop of
Brandenburg. To him on May 22, 1518, he forwarded, together with a
flattering letter, a copy of his “Resolutions,” in order that they
might be examined.[40]
“New dogmas,” he states, have just recently been preached regarding
indulgences; urged by some who had been annoyed by them to give a
strong denial of such doctrines, but being at the same time desirous
of sparing the good reputation of the preachers--for upon it their
work depended--he had decided to deal with the matter in a purely
disputatory form, the more so as it was a difficult one, however
untenable the position of his opponents might be; scholastics and
canonists could be trusted only when they quoted arguments in defence
of their teaching, more particularly from Holy Scripture. No one
had, however, answered his challenge or ventured to meet him at a
disputation. The Theses, on the other hand, had been bruited abroad
beyond his expectations, and were also being regarded as actual truths
which he had advocated. “Contrary to his hopes and wishes,” he had
therefore been obliged, “as a child and ignoramus in theology,” to
explain himself further (in the Resolutions). He did not, however,
wish obstinately to insist upon anything contained in the latter, much
being problematic, yea, even false. He laid everything he had said
at the feet of Holy Church and his Bishop; he might strike out what
he pleased, or consign the entire scribble to the flames. “I know
well that Christ has no need of me; He proclaims salvation to the
Church without me, and least of all does He stand in need of great
sinners.... My timidity would have kept me for ever in my quiet corner
had not the presumption and unwisdom of those who invent new gospels
been carried so far.”
When Bishop Scultetus thereupon declared himself against the
publication of the Resolutions, Luther promised to obey; he even
made this known to those about the Elector, through Spalatin the
Court-preacher. On August 21, 1518, the work nevertheless appeared. Had
Luther really been “released” from his promise, as has been assumed by
one writer in default of any better explanation?[41]
Let us consider more closely Luther’s letter to Pope Leo X, which
has already been referred to cursorily (vol. i., p. 335). As is well
known, it accompanied the copy of the Resolutions which, with singular
daring, and regardless of the challenge involved in their errors, he
had dedicated to the Supreme Teacher of Christendom.[42] Luther had
lavished flattery on his Bishop, but here he surpasses himself in
expressions of cringing humility.
He prostrates himself at the feet of the Pope with all that he has and
is; it is for His Holiness to make him alive, or kill him, to summon
or dismiss, approve or reprove, according to his good pleasure; his
voice he will acknowledge as the voice of Christ, and willingly die
should he be deserving of death. He is “unlearned, stupid and ignorant
in this our enlightened age,” nothing but dire necessity compels
him, so he says, “to cackle like a goose among the swans.” “The most
impious and heretical doctrines” of the indulgence preachers have
called him forth as the defender of truth, indeed of the Papal dignity
which is being undermined by avaricious money-makers; by means of the
Disputation he had merely sought to learn from his brothers, and was
never more surprised than at the way in which the Theses had become
known, whereas this had not been the case with his other Disputations.
Retract he cannot; he has, however, written the Resolutions in his
justification, from which all may learn how honestly and openly he is
devoted to the Power of the Keys. The publication of the Resolutions
“under the shield of the Papal name and the shadow of the Pope’s
protection [Luther is here alluding to the dedication] renders his
safety assured.”
As a matter of fact, the principal result of the dedication to the Pope
was a wider dissemination of the work among the learned, Luther’s
Bishop, the weak and uninformed Scultetus of Brandenburg, being
likewise hindered from taking any action against his unruly subject.
The move, if it really was intentional, had been well thought out.
After a lengthy delay Luther, in accordance with his promise to
Miltitz, drafted a second letter to Pope Leo X, on January 5 or 6,
1519.[43]
He, “the off-scouring of humanity, and a mere speck of dust,” here
declares, as he had done shortly before at Augsburg, that he cannot
retract; since his writings are already so widely known and have met
with so much support, a retractation would, he says, be useless, and
indeed rather injure the reputation of Rome among the learned in
Germany. He would never have believed, so he says, that his efforts
for the honour of the Apostolic See could have led to his incurring
the suspicion of the Pope; he will, nevertheless, be silent in
future on the question of indulgences, if silence is also imposed
upon his opponents; indeed, he will publish “a work which shall make
all see that they must hold the Roman Church in honour, and not lay
the foolishness of his opponents to her charge, nor imitate his own
slashing language against the Church of Rome,” for he is “absolutely
convinced that her power is above everything, and that nothing in
Heaven or on earth is to be preferred to her, excepting only our Lord
Jesus Christ.” This letter was not sent off, probably because it
occasioned Miltitz some scruples.[44] In any case, it is a document of
considerable interest.
Luther assumes an entirely different tone in the historic third and
last letter to Leo X, with which, in 1520, he prefaced his work “Von
der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen”; this letter was really written
after October 13 of that same year.[45]
The very date of the letter has a history. It was published by Luther
in Latin and German, with the fictitious date of September 6. The
questionable expedient of ante-dating this letter had been adopted
by Luther to satisfy the diplomatist Miltitz, and was due to the
necessity of taking into account the Papal Bull condemning Luther,
which had already been published on September 21, 1520; thereby it was
hoped to avoid all appearance of this letter having been wrung from
Luther by the publication of the Bull. This was what Miltitz[46] wrote
at a time when he still entertained sanguine hopes of what the letter
might achieve in the interests of the Pope and peace.[47] Luther, for
his part, looked on the antedated letter as a manifesto which might
considerably weaken, and to his advantage, the effect of the Bull on
public opinion. The vehement blame therein contained regarding the
corruption of the Roman Church ought surely to lessen the authority
of the excommunication, while the loud appreciation of the person
and good qualities of Leo would naturally cause the author of the
excommunication (supposing it to have been published subsequently to
the letter) to appear either ungrateful, or misled by others.
The Roman Church, in the words of this letter, has become the “most
horrible Sodom and Babylon,” a “den of murderers worse than any other,
a haunt of iniquity surpassing all others, the head and empire of sin,
of death and of damnation, so that it would be impossible to imagine
any increase in her wickedness even were Antichrist to come in person.
Yet you, Holy Father Leo, are seated like a sheep among the wolves,
like a Daniel amidst the lions”; Pope Leo, the author goes on to
assert with unblushing effrontery, is much to be pitied, for it is the
hardest lot of all that a man of his disposition should have to live
in the midst of such things; Leo would do well to abdicate. He himself
(Luther) had never undertaken any evil against his person; indeed,
he only wished him well, and, so far as lay in him, had attempted
to assist him and the Roman Church with all his might by diligent,
heartfelt prayer. But “with the Roman See all is over; God’s endless
wrath has come upon it; this See is opposed to General Councils, and
will not permit itself to be reformed; let this Babylon then rush
headlong to its own destruction!”
After this follow renewed protestations of his peaceableness
throughout the whole struggle from the very beginning, attempts to
justify the strong language he had later on used against thick-headed
and irreligious adversaries, for which he deserved the “favour and
thanks” of the Pope, and descriptions of the wiles of Eck who, at
the Leipzig disputation, had picked up some “insignificant chance
expression concerning the Papacy” so as to ruin him at Rome.
This, of course, was all intended to weaken the impression of the
excommunication on the public. Another bold assertion of his, of
which the object was the same, ran: “That I should retract what I
have taught is out of the question ... I will not suffer any check or
bridle to be placed on the Word of God which teaches entire freedom,
and neither can nor may be bound.” “I am ready to yield to every man
in all things, but the Word of God I cannot and will not forsake or
betray.”
Luther also approached the Emperor Charles V in a letter addressed
to him at the time when Rome was about to take action. He begged the
Emperor to protect him, entirely innocent as he was, against the
machinations of his enemies, especially as he had been dragged into the
struggle against his will. The letter was written August 30, 1520,[48]
and safely reached the Emperor, possibly through the good offices of
Sickingen; when it was again submitted at the Diet of Worms such was
Charles’s indignation that he tore the missive to pieces.
In order rightly to appreciate its contents we must keep in mind
that Luther had it printed and published in a Latin version in 1520,
together with an “Oblation or Protestation” to readers of every tongue,
wherein he offers them on the title-page his “unworthy prayers,” and
assures them of his humble submission to the Holy Catholic Church, as
whose devoted son he was determined to live and die.[49] Nevertheless,
at the end of August[50] part of his work “On the Babylonian Captivity
of the Church” already stood in print, in which, at the very
commencement, the Papacy is declared to be the Kingdom of Babylon and
the empire of Nimrod, the mighty hunter, and in which, as a matter of
fact, an end is made of the whole hierarchy and Church visible.
Luther’s Prince, the Elector Frederick, had grave misgivings concerning
the hot-headed agitator who had fixed his residence at the University
of Wittenberg, though, hitherto, thanks to the influence of Spalatin,
his Court Chaplain, he had extended to Luther his protection and
clemency. Both the Emperor, who was altogether Catholic in his views,
and the laws of the Empire, called for the greatest caution on his
part; were the Church’s rights enforced as the imperial law allowed,
then Luther was doomed. It was by the express advice of the Elector
that Luther drew up the above-mentioned letter to Charles V and the
pious “Protestation.” It was to these documents that the astute Elector
appealed when, towards the end of August, he warned his agent at Rome,
Teutleben, of the ostensibly dangerous disturbances which might result
in Germany from any violent action against Luther unless he had been
previously confuted by “strong and veracious proofs and statements
clearly set forth in writing.”[51] This letter too had Luther himself
for its author, Spalatin having, as usual, acted as intermediary.
Spalatin in fact received both documents from him beforehand for
revision.[52]
After these few words regarding the object and origin of the
celebrated letter to the Emperor, we may go on to quote some of the
statements it contains. Luther, at the commencement, protests that he
presents himself before Charles “like a flea before the King of kings,
who reigns over all.” “It was against my will that I came before the
public, I wrote only because others traitorously forced me to it by
violence and cunning; never did I desire anything but to remain in the
retirement of my cell. My conscience and the best men bear me witness
that I have merely endeavoured to defend the truth of the Gospel
against the opinions introduced by superstitious traditions. For three
years I have, in consequence, been exposed to every kind of insult
and danger. In vain did I beg for pardon, offer to be silent, propose
conditions of peace, and request enlightenment. I am, nevertheless,
persecuted, the sole object being to stamp out the Gospel along with
me.”
Things being thus, “prostrate before him,” he begs the Emperor to
protect, not indeed one who lies “poor and helpless in the dust,”
but, at least, the treasure of truth, since he, the greatest
secular sovereign, has been entrusted with the temporal sword for
the maintenance of truth and the restraint of wickedness; as for
himself, he only desired to be called to account in a fair manner,
and to see his teaching either properly refuted, or duly accepted by
all. He was ready to betake himself to any public disputation, so
he declares in the “Protestation,” and would submit to the decision
of any unprejudiced University; he would present himself before any
judges, saintly or otherwise, clerical or lay, provided only they
were just, and that he was given state protection and a safe conduct.
If they were able to convince him by proofs from Holy Scripture,
he would become a humble pupil, and obediently relinquish an
enterprise undertaken--this, at least, he would assert without undue
self-exaltation--only for the honour of God, the salvation of souls
and the good of Christianity, simply because he was a doctor, and
without any hope of praise or profit.
This manifesto was sufficient to satisfy the Elector Frederick. The
growing esteem in which Luther was held and the delay in the settlement
of his case served admirably Frederick’s purpose of making himself less
dependent on the Emperor and Empire. Calculation and politics thus
played their part in an affair which to some extent they shaped.
At a later date, it is true, Luther asserted in the preface to his
Latin works, that his success had been the result only of Heaven’s
visible protection; that he had quietly “awaited the decision of the
Church and the Holy Ghost”; only one thing, namely, the Catechism, he
had been unable to see condemned by the interference of Rome; to deny
Christ he could never consent. He was willing to confess his former
weaknesses “in order that--to speak like Paul--men may not esteem me
for something more than I am, but as a simple man.”[53]
From the pulpit, too, where honest truth usually finds expression,
he declared that it was not violence or human effort or wisdom that
had crowned his cause with the laurels of victory, but God alone: “I
studied God’s Word and preached and wrote on it; beyond this I did
nothing. The Word of God did much while I slept, or drank Wittenberg
beer with my Philip [Melanchthon] and Amsdorf, so that Popery has been
weakened and suffered more than from the attacks of any Prince or
Emperor. I did nothing; everything was achieved and carried out by the
Word.”[54] His object here is to oppose the violence and fanaticism of
the Anabaptists, and, if he points out to them that he has achieved
his mighty work without force of arms, and that the great success of
his movement was out of all proportion to the means he could employ as
professor and preacher--the truth being that his success was chiefly
due to the circumstances of the time--there is much in his contention.
In the circle of his friends, at a later date, he thus expressed
his conviction: “I did not begin the difficult business of my own
initiative ... rather it was God who led me in a wonderful manner....
All happened in accordance with God’s will.”[55] “I thought I was
doing the Pope a service [by throwing light upon the question of
Indulgences]; but I was forced to defend myself.” “Had I foreseen that
things would turn out as, thank God, they have, I would have held my
tongue; but had I kept silence it would have fared much worse with the
Papacy; the Princes and the Powers, enraged at its usurpations, would
finally have made an end of it.” “I acted with moderation and yet I
have brought the Papacy to an evil day.”[56]
The genius of history could well hide its face were such statements
accepted as reliable testimonies.
* * * * *
Certain extracts from Luther’s correspondence with Spalatin deserve
special consideration.
The worldly-wise Chaplain of Frederick, the Saxon Elector, frequently
gave Luther a hint as to how to proceed, and, in return, his Wittenberg
friend was wont to speak to him more openly than to others. It is,
however, necessary, in order to arrive at a right appreciation of this
correspondence, to distinguish between the letters written by Luther to
Spalatin as a personal friend and those he sent him with the intention
that they should reach the ruling Prince. It would betray a great lack
of critical discrimination were the whole correspondence with Spalatin
taken as the expression of Luther’s innermost thought. The fact that
Spalatin’s letters to Luther are no longer extant makes it even more
difficult to understand Luther’s replies. Nevertheless, it is easy to
trace a persistent effort throughout the correspondence, to secure
in the Saxon Electorate toleration both for the new teaching and its
originator without arousing the misgivings of a prudent sovereign. The
Court had to be won over gradually and gently.
Acting on Spalatin’s advice, Luther made the following declaration for
the benefit of the Elector, on March 5, 1519: “The Roman Decrees must
allow me full liberty with regard to the true Gospel; of whatever else
they may rob me, I don’t care. What more can I do, or can I be bound
to anything further?”[57]
“If they do not confute us on reasonable grounds and by written
proofs,” he says, on July 10, 1520, in another letter addressed to
Spalatin, but really intended for the Elector, “but proceed against
us by force and censures, then things will become twice as bad in
Germany as in Bohemia” [an allusion to the Husite apostasy].[58]
“Where then can I turn for better instruction?”[59] ... “Let His
Highness the Prince,” he here writes, coming to the question of
the University professorship which provided him with his means of
livelihood, “put me out into the street so that I may either be better
instructed or confuted.” He, for his part, is ready to resign his
public appointment, retire into private life, allow others to take
his place, and let all his belongings be burned. But he also thinks
it just that the Elector, being personally unable to instruct him,
should also refuse to act either as judge or as executioner until a
(true ecclesiastical) sentence be pronounced. The principal thing is,
so he says, that “the question under discussion has not been solved,
and my enemies have not touched it with so much as a single word. The
Prince, under these circumstances, may well refuse to punish anyone,
even though he be a Turk or a Jew, for he is in ignorance whether he
be guilty or not; his conscience bids him pause, and how then can the
Romanists demand that he should step in and obey men rather than God?”
Thereupon Frederick, the Elector, actually wrote to Rome that Luther
was ready to be better instructed from Holy Scripture by learned
judges; no one could reproach him, the Prince; he was far from
“extending protection to the writings and sermons of Dr. Martin
Luther,” or “from tolerating any errors against the Holy Catholic
faith.”[60]
At the very last moment before the promulgation of the Bull of
Excommunication, Luther made offers of “peace” to the Roman Court
through Cardinal Carvajal, professing to be ready to accept any
conditions, provided he was left free to teach the Word, and was
not ordered to retract. This step was taken to safeguard his public
position and his future; Spalatin, and through him the Elector,
received due notification of the fact on August 23, 1520.[61]
Yet only a few weeks before, on July 10, he had already expressly
assured the same friend privately: “The die is cast; I despise alike
the favour and the fury of the Romans; I refuse to be reconciled
with them, or to have anything whatever to do with them ... I will
openly attack and destroy the whole Papal system, that pestilential
quagmire of heresies; then there will be an end to the humility and
consideration of which I have made a show, but which has only served
to puff up the foes of the Gospel.”[62]
He had also not omitted, at the same time, to bring to the knowledge
of the Elector, through his same friend at Court, the promise of
a guard of one hundred noblemen, recently made by Silvester von
Schauenberg; he likewise begged that an intimation of the fact might
be conveyed to Rome, that they might see that his safety was assured,
and might then cease from threatening him with excommunication and
its consequences. “Were they to drive me from Wittenberg,” he adds,
“nothing would be gained, and the case would only be made worse; for
my men-at-arms are stationed not only in Bohemia, but in the very
centre of Germany, and will protect me should I be driven away, for
they are determined to defy any assault.” “If I have these at my back
then it is to be feared that I shall attack the Romanists much more
fiercely from my place of safety than if I were allowed to remain in
my professorship and in the service of the Prince [at Wittenberg],
which is what will certainly happen unless God walls otherwise.
Hitherto I have been unwilling to place the Prince in any difficulty;
once expelled, all such scruples will vanish.”[63]
In conclusion, he extols his great consideration for the Prince.
“It is only the respect I owe my sovereign, and my regard for the
interests of the University [of Wittenberg] that the Romanists have to
thank for the fact that worse things have not been done by me; that
they escaped so lightly they owe neither to my modesty, nor to their
action and tyranny.”
All the diplomacy which he cultivated with so much calculation did
not, however, hinder his giving free course to the higher inspiration
with which he believed himself to be endowed; the result was a series
of works which may be numbered among the most effective of his
controversial writings. He there fights, to employ his own language,
“for Christ’s sake new battles against Satan,” as Deborah, the
prophetess, fought “new wars” for Israel (Judges v. 8).[64]
In Luther we find a singular combination of the glowing enthusiast
and cool diplomatist. Just as it would be wrong to see in him
nothing but hypocrisy and deception without a spark of earnestness
and self-sacrifice, so too, at the other extreme, we should not be
justified in speaking of his success as simply the result of enthusiasm
and entire surrender of earthly considerations. History discerns in him
a combatant full of passion indeed, yet one who was cool-headed enough
to choose the best means to his end.
3. Luther’s Great Reformation-Works--Radicalism and Religion
It was at the time when the Bull of Excommunication was about to be
promulgated by the Head of Christendom that Luther composed the Preface
to the work entitled: “An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation von
des christlichen Standes Besserung.”[65] The booklet appeared in the
middle of August, and by the 18th four thousand copies were already
in circulation, eagerly devoured by a multitude of readers hungry for
books of all kinds. Staupitz’s warning not to publish it had come too
late. “Luther’s friends, the Knights, were urging him on, and something
had to be done at once.”[66]
This inflammatory pamphlet, so patronised by the rebellious Knights,
was, with its complaints against Rome, in part based on the writings of
the German Neo-Humanists.
Full of fury at the offences committed by the Papacy against the
German nation and Church, Luther here points out to the Emperor, the
Princes and the whole German nobility, the manner in which Germany
may break away from Rome, and undertake its own reformation, for the
bettering of Christianity. His primary object is to show that the
difference between the clerical and lay state is a mere hypocritical
invention. All men are priests; under certain circumstances the
hierarchy must be set aside, and the secular powers have authority
to do so. “Most of the Popes,” so Luther writes with incredible
exaggeration, “have been without faith.” “Ought not Christians, who
are all priests, also to have the right [like them, i.e. the bishops
and priests] to judge and decide what is true and what false in
matters of faith?”
The work was, as Luther’s comrade Johann Lang wrote to the author,
a bugle-call which sounded throughout all Germany. Luther had to
vindicate himself (even to his friends) against the charge of “blowing
a blast of revolt.”[67] It is not enough to acquit him to point out
in his defence that he had merely assigned to the Rulers the right
of employing force, and that his intention was to “make the Word
triumphant.”
One of the most powerful arguments in Luther’s work consisted in the
full and detailed description of the Roman money traffic, Germany and
other countries being exploited on the pretext that contributions
were necessary for the administration of the Church. Luther had drawn
his information on this subject from the writings of the German
Neo-Humanists, and from a certain “Roman courtier” (Dr. Viccius)
resident in Wittenberg.
It was, however, the promise he received of material help which
spurred Luther on to give a social aspect to his theological
movement and thus to ensure the support of the disaffected Knights
and Humanists. Concerning Silvester von Schauenberg, he wrote to a
confidant, Wenceslaus Link: “This noble man from Franconia has sent me
a letter ... with the promise of one hundred Franconian Knights for
my protection, should I need them.... Rome has written to the Prince
against me, and the same has been done by an important German Court.
Our German book addressed to the whole Nobility of Germany on the
amelioration of the Church is now to appear; that will be a powerful
challenge to Rome, for her godless arts and usurpations are therein
unmasked. Farewell and pray for me.”[68]
By the end of August another new book by Luther, which, like the
former, is accounted by Luther’s Protestant biographers as one of the
“great Reformation-works,” was in the press; such was the precipitancy
with which his turbulent spirit drove him to deal with the vital
questions of the day. The title of the new Latin publication which was
at once translated into German was “Prelude to the Babylonish Captivity
of the Church.”[69]
He there attacks the Seven Sacraments of the Church, of which he
retains only three, namely, Baptism, Penance, and the Supper, and
declares that even these must first be set free from the bondage in
which they are held in the Papacy, namely, from the general state of
servitude in the Church; this condition had, so he opined, produced in
the Church many other perverse doctrines and practices which ought to
be set aside, among these being the whole matrimonial law as observed
in the Papacy, and, likewise, the celibacy of the clergy.
The termination of this work shows that it was intended to incite the
minds of its readers against Rome, in order to forestall the impending
Ban.
This end was yet better served by the third “reforming” work “On the
Freedom of a Christian Man,” a popular tract in Latin and German
with its dangerously seductive explanation of his teaching on faith,
justification and works.[70]
In this work, as a matter of fact, Luther expresses with the utmost
emphasis his theological standpoint which hitherto he had kept in the
background, but which was really the source of all his errors. As
before this in the pulpit, so here also he derives from faith only
the whole work of justification and virtue which, according to him,
God alone produces in us; this he describes in language forcible,
insinuating and of a character to appeal to the people; it was
only necessary to have inwardly experienced the power of faith in
tribulations, temptations, anxieties and struggles to understand that
in it lay the true freedom of a Christian man.
This booklet has in recent times been described by a Protestant as
“perhaps the most beautiful work Luther ever wrote, and an outcome
of religious contemplation rather than of theological study.”[71] It
does, as a matter of fact, present its wrong ideas in many instances
under a mystical garb, which appeals strongly to the heart, and which
Luther had made his own by the study of older German models.
The new theory which, he alleged, was to free man from the burden
of the Catholic doctrine of good works, he summed up in words, the
effect of which upon the masses may readily be conceived: “By this
faith all your sins are forgiven you, all the corruption within you
is overcome, and you yourself are made righteous, true, devout and
at peace; all the commandments are fulfilled, and you are set free
from all things.”[72] “This is Christian liberty ... that we stand in
need of no works for the attainment of piety and salvation.”[73] “The
Christian becomes by faith so exalted above all things that he is made
spiritual lord of all; for there is nothing that can hinder his being
saved.”[74] By faith in Christ, man, according to Luther, has become
sure of salvation; he is “assured of life for evermore, may snap his
fingers at the devil, and need no longer tremble before the wrath of
God.”
It was inevitable that the author should attempt to vindicate himself
from the charge of encouraging a false freedom. “Here we reply to
all those,” he says in the same booklet,[75] “who are offended at
the above language, and who say: ‘Well, if faith is everything and
suffices to make us pious, why, then, are good works commanded? Let
us be of good cheer and do nothing.’” What is Luther’s answer? “No,
my friend, not so. It might indeed be thus if you were altogether an
interior man, and had become entirely spiritual and soulful, but this
will not happen until the Day of Judgment.”
But in so far as man is of the world and a servant of sin, he
continues, he must rule over his body, and consort with other men;
“here works make their appearance; idleness is bad; the body must
be disciplined in moderation and exercised by fasting, watching
and labour, that it may be obedient and conformable to faith and
inwardness, and may not hinder and resist as its nature is when it is
not controlled.” “But,” he immediately adds this limitation to his
allusion to works, “such works must not be done in the belief that
thereby a man becomes pious in God’s sight”; for piety before God
consists in faith alone, and it is only “because the soul is made pure
by faith and loves God, that it desires all things to be pure, first
of all its own body, and wishes every man likewise to love and praise
God.”
In spite of all reservations it is very doubtful whether the work “On
the Freedom of a Christian Man” was capable of improving the many
who joined Luther’s standard in order to avail themselves of the new
freedom in its secular sense. “By faith” man became, so Luther had
told them, pure and free and “lord of all.” They might reply, and as a
matter of fact later on they did: Why then impose the duty of works,
especially if the interior man has, according to his own judgment,
become strong and sufficiently independent? Such was actually the
argument of the fanatics. They added, “to become altogether spiritual
and interior,” is in any case impossible, moreover, as, according to
the new teaching, works spring spontaneously from the state of one who
is justified, why then speak of a duty of performing good works, or
why impose an obligation to do this or that particular good work here
and now? It is better and easier for us to stimulate the spirit and
the interior life of faith in the soul merely in a general way and in
accordance with the new ideal.
As a matter of fact, experience soon showed that where the traditional
Christian motives for good works (reparation for sin, the acquiring
of merit with the assistance of God’s grace, etc.) were given up, the
practice of good works suffered.
There is, however, no doubt that there were some on whom the booklet,
with its heartfelt and moving exhortation to communion with Christ, did
not fail to make a deep impression, more particularly in view of the
formalism which then prevailed.
“Where the heart thus hears the voice of Christ,” says Luther with a
simple, popular eloquence which recalls that of the best old German
authors, “it must needs become glad, receive the deepest comfort and
be filled with sweetness towards Christ, loving Him and ever after
troubling nothing about laws and works. For who can harm such a heart,
or cause it alarm? Should sin or death befall, it merely recollects
that Christ’s righteousness is its own, and then, as we have said,
sin disappears before faith in the Righteousness of Christ; with the
Apostle it learns to defy death and sin, and to say: O death, where is
thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin,
but thanks be to God Who has given us the victory through our Lord
Jesus Christ, so that death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. xv. 54
ff.).[76]
Pious phrases, such as these, which are of frequent occurrence,
demanded a stable theological foundation in order to produce any
lasting effects. In Luther’s case there was, however, no such
foundation, and hence they are merely deceptive. The words quoted, as
a matter of fact, detract somewhat from the grand thought of St. Paul,
since the victory over sin and death of which he speaks refers, not to
the present life of the Faithful, but to the glorious resurrection.
The Apostle does, however, refer to our present life in the earnest
exhortation with which he concludes (1 Cor. xv. 58): “Therefore, my
beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and unmoveable, always abounding in
the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the
Lord.”
Protestants frequently consider it very much to Luther’s credit
that he insisted with so much force and feeling in his work “On the
Freedom of a Christian Man” upon the dignity which faith and a state
of grace impart to every calling, even to the most commonplace;
his words, so they say, demonstrate that life in the world, and
even the humblest vocation, when illumined by religion, has in it
something of the infinite. This, however, had already been impressed
upon the people, and far more correctly, in numerous instructions
and sermons dating from mediæval times, though, agreeably with the
teaching of the Gospel, the path of the Evangelical Counsels, and
still more the Apostolic and priestly vocation, was accounted higher
than the ordinary secular calling. A high Protestant authority,
of many of whose utterances we can scarcely approve, remarks: “It
is usual to consider this work of Luther’s as the Magna Charta of
Protestant liberty, and of the Protestant ideal of a worldly calling
in contradistinction to Catholic asceticism and renunciation of the
world. My opinion is that this view is a misapprehension of Luther’s
work.”[77]
It was this booklet, “On the Freedom of a Christian Man,” that the
author had the temerity to send to Pope Leo X, with an accompanying
letter (see above, p. 18), in which he professed to lay the whole
matter in the hands of the Sovereign Pontiff, though in the work
itself he denied all the Papal prerogatives. In the latter denial
Luther was only logical, for if the foundation of the whole of the
hierarchy be upset, what then remains of the position of the Pope?
To appreciate the effects of the three works just mentioned it may be
worth our while to examine more closely two characteristics which there
appear in singular juxtaposition. One is the deeply religious tone
which, as we said, is so noteworthy in Luther’s book “On the Freedom of
a Christian Man.” The other is an unmistakable tendency to dissolve all
religion based on authority.
Luther, as we said before, positively refused to have anything to do
with a religion of merely human character; yet, if we only draw the
necessary conclusions from certain propositions which he sets up, we
find that he is not very far removed from such a religion; he is,
all unawares, on the high road to the destruction of all authority
in matters of faith. This fact makes the depth of religious feeling
evinced by the author appear all the more strange to the experienced
reader.[78]
Some examples will make our meaning clearer.
In the work addressed to the Christian nobility, Luther confers on
every one of the Faithful the fullest right of private judgment as
regards both doctrines and doctors, and limits it by no authority save
the Word of God as explained by the Christian himself.
“If we all are priests”--a fact already proved, so he says--“how then
shall we not have the right to discriminate and judge what is right
or wrong in faith? What otherwise becomes of the saying of Paul in 1
Corinthians ii. [15], ‘The spiritual man judgeth all things, and he
himself is judged of no man,’ and again, ‘Having all the same spirit
of faith,’ 2 Corinthians iv. [13]? How then should we not perceive,
just as well as an unbelieving Pope, what is in agreement with faith
and what not? These and many other passages are intended to give us
courage and make us free, so that we may not be frightened away from
the spirit of liberty, as Paul calls it (2 Cor. iii. [17]), by the
fictions of the Popes, but rather judge freely, according to our
understanding of the Scriptures, of all things that they do or leave
undone, and force them to follow what is better and not their own
reason.”[79]
“A little man,” he had said already, “may have a right comprehension;
why then should we not follow him?” and, with an unmistakable allusion
to himself, he adds: surely more trust is to be placed in one “who has
Scripture on his side.”[80]
Such assertions, as a matter of fact, destroy all the claims made
by the visible Church to submission to her teaching. Further, they
proclaim the principle of the fullest independence of the Christian
in matters of faith; nothing but private judgment and personal
inspiration can decide. Luther failed to see that, logically, every
barrier must give way before this principle of liberty, and that Holy
Scripture itself loses its power of resistance, subjectivism first
invading its interpretation and then, in the hands of the extremer
sort of critics, questioning its value and divine origin. The inner
consequences of Luther’s doctrine on freedom and autonomy have been
clearly pointed out even by some of the more advanced Protestant
theologians. Adolf Harnack, for instance, recently expressed the truth
neatly when he said that “Kant and Fichte were both of them hidden
behind Luther.”[81]
The second work “On the Babylonish Captivity,” with its sceptical
tendency, of which, however, Luther was in great part unconscious,
also vindicates this opinion.
The very arbitrariness with which the author questions facts of faith
or usages dating from the earliest ages of the Church, must naturally
have awakened in such of his readers as were already predisposed a
spirit of criticism which bore a startling resemblance to the spirit
of revolt. Here again, in one passage, Luther comes to the question of
the right of placing private judgment in matters of religion above all
authority. He here teaches that there exists in the assembly of the
Faithful, and through the illumination of the Divine Spirit, a certain
“interior sense for judging concerning doctrine, a sense, which,
though it cannot be demonstrated, is nevertheless absolutely certain.”
He describes faith, as it comes into being in every individual
Christian soul, “as the result of a certitude directly inspired of
God, a certitude of which he himself is conscious.”[82]
What this private judgment of each individual would lead to in Holy
Scripture, Luther shows by his own example in this very work; he
already makes a distinction based on the “interior sense” between the
various books of the Bible, i.e. those stamped with the true Apostolic
Spirit, and, for instance, the less trustworthy Epistle of St. James,
of which the teaching contradicts his own. Köstlin, with a certain
amount of reserve, admits: “This he gives us to understand, agreeably
with his principles and experience; it is not our affair to prove
that it is tenable or to vindicate it.”[83]
Luther says at the end of the passage in question: “Of this question
more elsewhere.” As a matter of fact, however, he never did treat of
it fully and in detail, although it concerned the fundamentals of
religion; for this omission he certainly had reasons of his own.
A certain radicalism is perceptible in the work “On the Babylonish
Captivity,” even with regard to social matters. Luther lays it down:
“I say that no Pope or Bishop or any other man has a right to impose
even one syllable upon a Christian man, except with his consent; any
other course is pure tyranny.”[84] It is true that ostensibly he is
only assailing the tyranny of ecclesiastical laws, yet, even so, he
exceeds all reasonable limits.
With regard to marriage, the foundation of society, so unguarded is
he, that, besides destroying its sacramental character, he brushes
aside the ecclesiastical impediments of marriage as mere man-made
inventions, and, speaking of divorce based on these laws, he declares
that to him bigamy is preferable.[85] When a marriage is dissolved on
account of adultery, he thinks remarriage allowable to the innocent
party. He also expresses the fervent wish that the words of St. Paul
in 1 Corinthians vii. 15, according to which the Christian man or
woman deserted by an infidel spouse is thereby set free from the
marriage tie, should also apply to the marriages of Christians where
the one party has maliciously deserted the other; in such a case, the
offending party is no better than an infidel. Regarding the impediment
of impotence on the man’s part, he conceives the idea[86] that the
wife might, without any decision of the court, “live secretly with her
husband’s brother, or with some other man.”[87] In the later editions
of Luther’s works this statement, as well as that concerning bigamy,
has been suppressed.
Luther, so he says, is loath to decide anything. But neither are
popes or bishops to give decisions! “If, however,” says Luther, “two
well-instructed and worthy men were to agree in Christ’s name, and
speak according to the spirit of Christ, then I would prefer their
judgment before all the Councils, which are now only looked up to
on account of the number and outward reputation of the people there
assembled, no regard being paid to their learning and holiness.”[88]
Apart from other objections, the stipulation concerning the “Spirit
of Christ,” here made by the mystic, renders his plan illusory, for
who is to determine that the “Spirit of Christ” is present in the
judgment of the two “well-instructed men”? Luther seems to assume that
this determination is an easy matter. First and foremost, who is to
decide whether these men are really well-instructed? There were many
whose opinion differed from Luther’s, and who thought that this and
such-like demands, made in his tract “On the Babylonish Captivity,”
opened the door to a real confusion of Babel.
Neither can the work “On the Freedom of a Christian Man” be absolved
from a certain dangerous radicalism. A false spirit of liberty in the
domain of faith breathes through it. The faith which is here extolled
is not faith in the olden and true meaning of the word, namely the
submission of reason to what God has revealed and proposes for belief
through the authority He Himself instituted, but faith in the Lutheran
sense, i.e. personal trust in Christ and in the salvation He offers.
Faith in the whole supernatural body of Christian truth comes here
so little into account that it is reduced to the mere assurance of
salvation. All that we are told is that the Christian is “free and has
power over all” by a simple appropriation of the merits of Christ; he
is purified by the mere acceptance of the merciful love revealed in
Christ; “this faith suffices him,” and through it he enjoys all the
riches of God. And this so-called faith is mainly a matter of feeling;
a man must learn to “taste the true spirit of interior trials,” just
as the author himself, so he says, “in his great temptations had
been permitted to taste a few drops of faith.”[89] Faith is thus
not only robbed of its true meaning and made into a mere personal
assurance, but the assurance appears as something really not so easy
of attainment, since it is only to be arrived at by treading the
difficult path of spiritual suffering.
Luther thereby strikes a blow at one of the most vital points of
positive religion, viz. the idea of faith.
The author, in this same work,[90] again reminds us that by faith all
are priests, and therefore have the right “to instruct Christians
concerning the faith and the freedom of believers”; for the
preservation of order, however, all cannot teach, and therefore some
are chosen from amongst the rest for this purpose. It is plain how,
by this means, a door was opened to the introduction of diversity of
doctrine and the ruin of the treasure of revelation.
The religious tone which Luther assumed in the work “On the Freedom of
a Christian Man,” and his earnestness and feeling, made his readers
more ready to overlook the perils for real religion which it involved.
This consideration brings us to the other characteristic, viz. the
pietism which, as stated above, is so strangely combined in the three
works with intense radicalism.
The religious feeling which pervades every page of the “Freedom of a
Christian Man” is, if anything, overdone. In what Luther there says we
see the outpourings of one whose religious views are quite peculiar,
and who is bent on bringing the Christian people to see things in
the same light as he does; deeply imbued as he is with his idea of
salvation by faith alone, and full of bitterness against the alleged
disfiguring of the Church’s life by meritorious works, he depicts his
own conception of religion in vivid and attractive colours, and in
the finest language of the mystics. It is easy to understand how so
many Protestant writers have been fascinated by these pages, indeed,
the best ascetic writers might well envy him certain of the passages
in which he speaks of the person of Christ and of communion with Him.
Nevertheless, a fault which runs through the whole work is, as already
explained, his tendency to narrow the horizon of religious thought
and feeling by making the end of everything to consist in the mere
awakening of trust in Christ as our Saviour. Ultimately, religion to
him means no more than this confidence; he is even anxious to exclude
so well-founded and fruitful a spiritual exercise as compassion
with the sufferings of our crucified Redeemer, actually calling it
“childish and effeminate stupidity.”[91] How much more profound and
fruitful was the religious sentiment of the genuine mystics of the
Church, whom the contemplation of the sufferings of Christ furnished
with the most beautiful and touching subject of meditation, and who
knew how to find a source of edification in all the truths of faith,
and not only in that of the forgiveness of sins. Writers such as they,
described to their pious readers in far greater detail the person
of Christ, the honour given by Him to God and the virtues He had
inculcated.
The booklet “To the Nobility,” likewise, particularly in the Preface,
throws a strange sidelight on the pietism of the so-called great
Reformation works.
Here, in his exordium to the three tracts, the author seeks to win
over the minds of the piously disposed. The most earnest reformer
of the Church could not set himself to the task with greater fear,
greater diffidence and humility than he. Luther, as he assures his
readers, is obliged “to cry and call aloud like a poor man that God
may inspire someone to stretch out a helping hand to the unfortunate
nation.” He declares that such a task “must not be undertaken by one
who trusts in his power and wisdom, for God will not allow a good work
to be commenced in trust in our own might and ability.” “The work
must be undertaken in humble confidence in God, His help being sought
in earnest prayer, and with nothing else in view but the misery and
misfortune of unhappy Christendom, even though the people have brought
it on themselves.... Therefore let us act wisely and in the fear of
God. The greater the strength employed, the greater the misfortune,
unless all is done in the fear of God and in humility.”[92]
Further on, even in his most violent attacks, the author is ever
insisting that it is only a question of the honour of Christ: “it is
the power of the devil and of End-Christ [Antichrist] that hinders
what would be for the reform of Christendom; therefore let us beware,
and resist it even at the cost of our life and all we have.... Let us
hold fast to this: Christian strength can do nothing against Christ,
as St Paul says (2 Cor. xiii. 8). We can do nothing against Christ,
but only for Him.”[93]
In his concluding words, convinced of his higher mission, he declares
that he was “compelled” to come forward. “God has forced me by them
[my adversaries] to open my mouth still further, and, because they
are cowards, to preach at them, bark at them, roar at them and
write against them.... Though I know that my cause is good, yet it
must needs be condemned on earth and be justified only by Christ in
heaven.”[94] When a mission is Divine, then the world must oppose
it.--One wonders whether everything that meets with disapproval must
therefore be accounted Divine.
It is the persuasion of his higher mission that explains the religious
touch so noticeable in these three writings. The power of faith there
expressed refers, however, principally to his own doctrine and his own
struggles. If we take the actual facts into account, it is impossible
to look on these manifestations of religion as mere hypocrisy. The
pietism we find in the tract “To the German Nobility” is indeed
overdone, and of a very peculiar character, yet the writer meant it as
seriously as he did the blame he metes out to the abuses of his age.
We still have to consider the religious side of the work “On the
Babylonish Captivity.” Originally written in Latin, and intended not
so much for the people as for the learned, this tract, even in the
later German version, is not clad in the same popular religious dress
as the other two. Like the others, nevertheless, it was designed as a
weapon to serve in the struggle for a religious renewal, especially in
the matter of the Sacraments. Among other of its statements, which are
characteristic of the direction of Luther’s mind, is the odd-sounding
request at the very commencement: “If my adversaries are worthy of
being led back by Christ to a more reasonable conception of things,
then I beg that in His Mercy He may do so. Are they not worthy, then
I pray that they may not cease to write their books against me, and
that the enemies of truth may deserve to read no others.”[95] His
conclusion is: He commits his book with joy to the hands of all the
pious, i.e. of those who wish to understand aright the sense of
Holy Scripture and the true use of the Sacraments.[96] He further
declares in an obstinate and mocking manner his intention of ever
holding fast to his own opinion. His more enlightened contemporaries
saw with anxiety how every page of his work teemed with signs of
self-deception and blind prejudice, and of a violent determination to
overthrow religious views which had held the field for ages. To those
who cared to reflect, Luther’s religiousness appeared in the light of
a religious downfall, and as the chaotic manifestation of a desire to
demolish all those venerable traditions which encumbered the way of
the spirit of revolt.
4. Luther’s Followers. Two Types of His Cultured Partisans: Willibald
Pirkheimer and Albert Dürer
Owing to the huge and rapid circulation of the three “Reformation
works,” the number of Luther’s followers among all classes increased
with prodigious speed.
The spirit of the nation was roused by his bold words, the like of
which had never before been heard.
Too many of those whose Catholicism was largely a matter of form were
seduced by the new spirit that was abroad, and by the “liberty of the
Gospel,” before they rightly saw their danger. The fascination of the
promised freedom was even increased by Luther’s earnest exhortations
to commence a general reformation, to cultivate the inner man, and to
assert the independence of the German against immoral Italians, the
extortioners of the Curia and the spiritual tyranny of the Pope. Even
better minds, men who despised the masses and their vulgar agitation,
were powerfully attracted. At no other time, save possibly at the
French Revolution, was mankind more profoundly stirred by the force of
untried ideas, which with suggestive power suddenly invaded every rank
of society. Scholars, writers, artists, countless men who had heard
nothing of Luther that was not to his advantage, and who, from lack of
theological knowledge, were unable fully to appreciate the spirit of
his writings, were carried away by the man who so courageously attacked
the crying abuses which they themselves had long bewailed.
In explaining this universal commotion we cannot lay too great stress
upon a factor which also played a part in it, viz. the comparative
ignorance of most people regarding Luther, his antecedents and his
aims. Eminent men, and his own contemporaries, who allowed themselves
to be borne away by the current, were incredibly ignorant of Luther as
he is now known to history. They knew practically nothing of the whole
arsenal of letters, tracts and reports which to-day lie open before us
and are being read, compared and annotated by industrious scholars.
It is difficult for us at the present day to imagine the condition of
ignorance in which even cultured men were, in the sixteenth century,
regarding the Lutheran movement, especially at its inception.
To show the seduction and fascination exercised by Luther’s writings
even on eminent men, we may take two famous Nurembergers, Willibald
Pirkheimer and Albert Dürer.
Willibald Pirkheimer, a Senator of Nuremberg and Imperial Councillor,
was one of the most respected and cultured Humanists of his day. He
edited or translated many patristic works. After taking a too active
part in the Reuchlin controversy against the theologians of Cologne,
owing to his zeal for a reformed method of studies, he put himself
on Luther’s side, again out of enthusiasm for reform, and under the
impression that he had found in his doctrine a more profound conception
of religion. He received Luther as his guest when he passed through
Nuremberg on his return journey from Augsburg, after his appearance
before Cardinal Cajetan. In a letter to Emser he declared that the
learned men of Wittenberg had earned undying fame by having been, after
so many centuries, the first to open their eyes, and to distinguish
between the true and the false, and to banish from Christian theology
a bad philosophy.[97] Eck even inserted his name in the Bull of
Excommunication which he published, though Pirkheimer was absolved on
appealing to Pope Leo X. He wrote, in Luther’s favour, a letter to
Hadrian VI which, however, was perhaps never despatched, in which he
calls him “a good and learned man.” The entire blame for the quarrel
was thrust by this disputatious and peculiar man on Eck and the
Dominicans.
In later years, however, he withdrew more and more from the Lutheran
standpoint, chiefly, as it would appear, because he perceived the
unbridled nature of the Reformers’ views and the bad moral and social
effects of the innovations. He died in 1530 at peace with the Catholic
Church.
“I had hoped at the commencement,” he wrote already in 1527 to Zasius
in Freiburg, “that we might have obtained a certain degree of liberty,
but of a purely spiritual character. Now, however, as we see with
our own eyes, everything is perverted to the lust of the flesh, so
that the last state is far worse than the first.”[98] He admitted his
definite turning away from Lutheranism in a letter to Kilian Leib,
Prior of the Rebdorf Monastery (1529), in which he at the same time
relates the reason of his previous enthusiasm: “I hoped that [by
Luther’s enterprise] the countless abuses would be remedied, but I
found myself greatly deceived; for, before the former errors had
been expelled, others, much more intolerable, and compared to which
the earlier were mere child’s play, forced themselves in. I therefore
began to withdraw myself gradually, and the more attentively I
considered everything the more clearly I recognised the cunning of the
old serpent.”[99]
His letter to his friend Tschertte in Vienna (1530) also contains
a “loud lamentation and outburst of anger against Luther’s work.”
We can see that he has entirely broken with it.[100] In this letter
he says: “I admit that at first I too was a good Lutheran, like our
departed Albert [Dürer]. We hoped thereby to better the Roman knavery
and the roguery of the monks and parsons.” But the contrary was the
result; those of the new faith were even worse than those whom they
were to reform. Members of the Council had also hoped for a general
improvement of morals, but had found themselves shamefully deceived.
He knows for certain--a valuable admission in view of the unhistorical
idea of some Catholics that Luther’s partisans were all frivolous
men--that “many pious and honourable men” lent a willing ear to his
teaching; “hearing beautiful things said of faith and the holy Gospel,
they fancy all is real gold that glitters, whereas it is hardly
brass.”[101]
Another statement against Luther, made by this same scholar in 1528,
is still stronger: “Formerly almost all men applauded at the sound of
Luther’s name, but now nearly all are seized with disgust on hearing
it ... and not without cause, for apart from his audacity, impudence,
arrogance and slanderous tongue he is also guilty of lying to such an
extent that he cannot refrain from any untruth; what he asserts to-day
he does not scruple to deny to-morrow; he is instability itself.”[102]
We see also from the example of Albert Dürer of Nuremberg, who is
rightly accounted one of the greatest masters of Art, how overwhelming
an influence the stormy energy, the calls for reform and the religious
tone of Luther’s writings could exert on the susceptible minds of
the day. Of a lively temper,[103] full of imagination and religious
idealism, as his sixteen wonderful illustrations to the Apocalypse
proved in 1498, he, like his Nuremberg friend Willibald Pirkheimer,
gave himself up from the very first to the influence of the Lutheran
writings, with which to a certain extent he was in sympathy. In his
enthusiasm for freedom he considered that Christianity was too much
fettered by oppressive rules of human invention, and was profoundly
troubled by the desecration of holy things introduced in many regions
by the greed and avarice of a worldly-minded clergy.
In 1520 he wrote to Spalatin: “God grant that I may meet with Dr.
Martinus Luther, for then I will make a careful sketch of him and
engrave it in copper, so that the memory of the Christian man may long
be preserved, for he has helped me out of much anxiety.” He believed
that light had been brought to him by means of Luther’s spiritual
teaching, and a little further on he calls him “a man enlightened by
the Holy Ghost and one who has the Spirit of God”; these words, which
came from the depths of his soul, are an echo of Luther’s writings.
Altogether prepossessed in Luther’s favour, though he never formally
abandoned the Church, he wrote in his Diary, on May 17, 1521; “The
Papacy resists the liberty of Christ by its great burden of human
commandments, and in shameful fashion sucks our blood and robs us of
our sweat for the benefit of idle and immoral folk, while those who
are sick are parched with thirst and left to die of hunger.”
Being at that time somewhat anxious with regard to his material
position, he had gone to Holland, and had heard of Luther’s supposed
capture and disappearance after the Diet of Worms. In the same
Memorandum, therefore, he summons Erasmus to undertake a reform of
the Church: “O Erasmus Roderdamus, why hangest thou back? Listen, O
Christian knight, ride forth by the side of the Lord Christ and defend
the cause of truth.... Then the gates of Hell, the Roman See, shall,
as Christ says, not prevail against thee ... for God is on the side of
the holy Christian Churches.” And he adds in Apocalyptic tone: “Await
the completing of the number of those who have been slain innocently,
and then I will judge.”[104] Yet even on this journey through the
Netherlands, Dürer showed interest in the manifestations of Catholic
life, attended the Catholic services, and, with his wife, duly made
his Easter Confession.
Two thoughts, the oppression of the Faithful by man-made commandments
and the unjust extortion of their money, held him under the spell of
Luther’s writings with their promise of deliverance.
“O God, if Luther is dead who will in future expound the Holy Gospel
to us so clearly? What would he not have written for us in ten or
twenty years!” “Never,” he says, “has anyone written more clearly
during the last 140 years [i.e. since the death of Wiclif in 1381],
never has God given to anyone so evangelical a spirit.” So transparent
is his teaching, that “everyone who reads Dr. Martin Luther’s books
sees that it is the Gospel which he upholds. Hence they must be held
sacred and not be burnt.”[105]
The man who wrote this was clearly better able to wield the pencil
or brush than to pass theological judgment on the questions under
discussion. Dürer was already among the most famous men of the day.
Led astray by the praise of the Humanists, he, and other similarly
privileged minds, easily exceeded the limits of their calling, abetted
as they were by the evil tendency to individualism and personal
independence prevalent among the best men of the day.
On his return to Nuremberg in the autumn of 1521 he lived entirely
for his art and remote from all else, clinging to the opinions he had
already embraced, or at least suspending his judgment. How greatly the
real or imaginary abuses in Catholic practice were capable of exciting
him, especially where avarice appeared to play a part, is proved by his
indignant inscription in 1523 to an Ostendorfer woodcut, representing
the veneration of a picture of our Lady at Ratisbon: “This spectre
has risen up against Holy Scripture at Regenspurg ... out of greed of
gain”; his wish is that Mary should be rightly venerated “in Christ.”
In 1526 he presented his picture of the four Apostles, now the ornament
of the Munich Pinacothek, to the Nuremberg bench of magistrates who had
just established Protestantism in the city, exhorting them “to accept
no human inventions in place of the Word of God, for God will not allow
His Word to be either added to or detracted from.” The “warnings,” in
the form of texts, afterwards removed, which he placed in the mouths
of Peter, John, Paul and Mark in his celebrated picture, also refer
to religious seducers and false prophets, more particularly those who
seize on the possessions of the poor through avarice and greed. We can
hardly do otherwise than apply these texts to the abuses which met with
his disapproval, and alleged false teaching of the Catholic Church. It
is plain that the Elector Maximilian I of Bavaria understood them in
this sense when he ordered their removal. This view is also supported
by Dürer’s letter in 1524 to Nicholas Kratzer, in which he says: “We
are derided as heretics,” but this must be endured. At a later date
Pirkheimer seems to have regarded him as merely “on the way to becoming
a Lutheran” (p. 40). It cannot be affirmed with certainty that,
when he died suddenly at Nuremberg, on April 6, 1528, he was either
entirely convinced of the justice of Luther’s cause or had reverted
to Catholicism.[106] At any rate, his art grew up on the soil of the
Church.
Luther himself spoke of him after his death, on the strength of the
reports received, and, perhaps, also from a desire to reckon him
amongst his followers, in a letter to the Nuremberg Humanist Eobanus
Hessus, as “the best of men,” and one to be congratulated “for that
Christ allowed him to die so happily after such preparation” (“_tam
instructum et beato fine_”), sparing him the sight of the evil days to
come. “Therefore may he rest in peace with his fathers, Amen.”[107]
Melanchthon says a few words of regret on the death of the great
artist, but from them nothing definite can be gathered. Venatorius,
the Lutheran preacher at Nuremberg, preached his panegyric.[108] In
his letter to Tschertte, in 1530, on the other hand, Pirkheimer counts
him, like himself, among those who were at first good Lutherans, but
were afterwards disappointed in their hopes. “The close friendship
which united Dürer to this passionate and conceited scholar, who could
not brook the slightest contradiction, is, in fact, a proof which we
must not undervalue, of a certain affinity in their views with regard
to the cardinal question of faith and religious belief.”[109] It is
not impossible that Dürer, like Pirkheimer, began to have doubts,
and withdrew at last the open support he had previously given the
Reformers.
The spiritual experiences of Pirkheimer and Dürer help to bring before
our eyes typical instances of the false paths followed by many of their
contemporaries and the struggles through which they went.
CHAPTER XII
EXCOMMUNICATION AND OUTLAWRY SPIRITUAL BAPTISM IN THE WARTBURG
1. The Trial. The Excommunication (1520) and its Consequences
ON June 15, 1520, Leo X promulgated the Bull condemning forty-one
Propositions of Luther’s teaching, and threatening the person of their
author with excommunication.[110]
The Bull was the result of a formal suit instituted at Rome on the
details of which light has been thrown in recent times by Karl Müller,
Aloys Schulte and Paul Kalkoff.[111]
The trial had taken a long time, much too long considering the state
of things in Germany; this delay was in reality due to political
causes, to the Pope’s regard for the Elector of Saxony, the
approaching Imperial Election and to the procrastination of the German
Prince-Bishops. Even before Dr. Johann Eck proceeded to Rome to promote
the case the negotiations had been resumed in the Papal Consistories
at the instance of the Italian party. The first Consistory was held on
January 9, 1520.
After this, from February to the middle of March, the matter was in the
hands of a commission of theologians who were to prepare the decision.
A still more select commission, presided over by the Pope in person,
then undertook the drafting of the Bull with the forty-one Propositions
of Luther which were to be condemned. Upon the termination of their
work, in the end of April, it was submitted to the Cardinals for their
decision; four more Consistories, held in May and June, were, however,
necessary before the matter was finally settled. Certain differences
of opinion arose as to the question whether the forty-one Propositions
were, as Cardinal Cajetan proposed, to be separately stigmatised as
heretical, false, scandalous, etc., or whether, as had been done in the
case of the Propositions of Wiclif and Hus at Constance, they should be
rejected in the lump without any more definite characterisation. The
latter opinion prevailed. In the last Consistory of June 1 the Pope
decided on the publication of the Bull in this shape, and by June 15 it
was complete.
Two Cardinals, Pietro Accolti (Anconitanus) and Thomas de Vio
(Cajetanus), had all along been busy with the case. The moving spirit
was, however, Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici.[112] Everything points to
“the matter having been treated as a very grave one.”[113]
Legally the case was based on the notoriety of Luther’s doctrines,
he having proposed and defended them at the Disputation of Leipzig,
according to the sworn evidence of the notaries-public. The Louvain
theologians and Eck had their share in selecting and denouncing the
Theses. It would seem that during the trial Eck submitted the official
printed minutes of the Leipzig Disputation in order to prove that the
errors were really expressed in Luther’s own words.
This utilisation of the Leipzig Disputation was justified, as it
rendered nugatory Luther’s appeal to a General Council. At the
Disputation in question he had denied the authority even of Œcumenical
Assemblies.
Eck’s efforts were of assistance in elucidating and pressing on the
matter. But we may gather how incorrectly the question was regarded in
Rome by many, who, it is true, had little to do with it, from the fact
that, even on May 21, persons were to be found holding the opinion that
the publication of a solemn Bull would tend to injure the cause of the
Church rather than to advance it, and that the scandal in Germany would
only become greater if it were apparent that so much importance was
attached to Luther’s errors.[114]
In the final sentence pronounced by the Pope, i.e. in the Bull
commencing with the words: _Exsurge Domine_, the forty-one Propositions
are condemned _in globo_ as “heretical or false, scandalous,
offensive to pious ears, insulting, ensnaring and contrary to
Catholic truth.”[115] A series of Luther’s principal doctrines on
human inability for good, on Faith, Justification and Grace, on the
Sacraments, the Hierarchy and Purgatory were there condemned.
The Papal sentence did not proceed against Luther’s person with the
severity which, in accordance with Canon Law, his fiercest adversaries
perhaps anticipated. Even the errors mentioned as occurring in his
writings are designated only in the body of the Bull, and with
much circumlocution. The only penalty directly imposed on him in
the meantime was the prohibition to preach. The Bull declares that
legally, as his case then stood, he might have been excommunicated
without further question, particularly on account of his appeal to a
General Council, to which the Constitutions of Pius II and Julius II
had attached the penalties of heresy. Instead of this he is, for the
present, merely threatened with excommunication, and is placed under
the obligation, within sixty days (i.e. after a triple summons repeated
at intervals of twenty days) from the date of the promulgation of
the Bull, of making his submission in writing before ecclesiastical
witnesses, or of coming to Rome under the safe conduct guaranteed by
the Bull; he was also to commit his books to the flames; in default of
this, by virtue of the Papal declaration, he would, _ipso facto_, incur
the penalties of open heresy as a notorious heretic (i.e. be cut off
from the Communion of the Faithful by excommunication); every secular
authority, including the Emperor, was bound, in accordance with the
law, to enforce these penalties. A similar sentence was pronounced
against all Luther’s followers, aiders or abettors.
With respect to the terms in which the Papal Edict is couched, the
severe criticism of certain Protestant writers might perhaps have been
somewhat less scathing had they taken into account the traditional
usages of the Roman Chancery, instead of judging them by the standard
of the legal language of to-day. Such are the harsh passages quoted
from Holy Scripture, which may appear to us unduly irritating and
violent. When all is said, moreover, is it to be wondered at, that,
after the unspeakably bitter and insulting attacks on the Papacy and
the destruction of a portion of the German Church, strong feelings
should have found utterance in the Bull?
The document begins with the words of the Bible: “Arise, O God, judge
thine own cause: remember thy reproaches with which the foolish man
hath reproached thee all the day” (Ps. lxxiii. 22). “Shew me thy face;
catch us the little foxes that destroy the vines” (Cant. ii. 15)....
“The boar out of the wood hath laid it waste: and a singular wild
beast hath devoured it” (Ps. lxxix. 14). “Lying teachers have arisen
who set up schools of perdition and bring upon themselves speedy
destruction; their tongue is a fire full of the poison of death,” etc.
“They spit out the poison of serpents, and when they see themselves
vanquished they raise calumnies.” “We are determined to resist this
pestilence and this eating canker, the noxious adder must no longer
be permitted to harm the vineyard of the Lord.” These, the strongest
expressions, are taken almost word for word from the Bible; they
might, moreover, be matched by much stronger passages in Luther’s own
writings against the authorities of the Church.
Further on the Pope addresses, in a mild, fatherly and conciliatory
fashion, the instigator of the dreadful schism within a Christendom
hitherto united. “Mindful of the compassion of God Who desireth not
the death of a sinner, but that he be converted and live, we are ready
to forget the injury done to us and to the Holy See. We have decided
to exercise the greatest possible indulgence and, so far as in our
power lies, to seek to induce the sinner to enter into himself and to
renounce the errors we have enumerated, so that we may see him return
to the bosom of the Church and receive him with kindness, like the
prodigal son in the Gospel. We therefore exhort him and his followers
through the love and mercy of our God and the precious blood of Our
Lord Jesus Christ, by which the human race was redeemed and the Church
founded, and adjure them that they cease from troubling with their
deadly errors the peace, unity and truth of the Church for which the
Saviour prayed so fervently to His Father. They will then, if they
prove obedient, find us full of fatherly love and be received with
open arms.”
Luther was aware that, after the promulgation of the Bull, he could
place no further hope in the Emperor Charles V, whose devotion to
the Church was well known, but he was sure of the protection of his
Elector.[116] It was clear to Luther that, without the support of the
Elector, the execution of the Bull by the secular power after the
excommunication had come into force would mean his death.
Before publicly burning his boats he launched among the people his
booklet “Von den newen Eckischenn Bullen und Lügen,”[117] pretending
that the Bull (which he knew to be genuine) was merely a fabrication of
Dr. Eck’s. Here, with a bold front, he repeated that his doctrine had
not yet been condemned, nor the controversy decided, and that all the
hubbub was merely the result of Eck’s personal hatred.
This was shortly after followed by the pamphlet “Against the Bull
of ‘End-Christ,’”[118] issued by his indefatigable press. The Latin
version of the little work, brimming over with hatred, was ready by the
end of October, 1520.
Although, in order to keep up the pretence of doubting the
authenticity of the Bull, he here deals with it hypothetically, he
nevertheless implores the Pope and his Cardinals, should they really
have issued it, to reflect, otherwise he would be forced to curse
their abode as the dwelling-place of Antichrist. In the same strain he
proceeds: “Where art thou, good Emperor, and you, Christian Kings and
Princes? You took an oath of allegiance to Christ in baptism and yet
you endure these hellish voices of Antichrist.”[119]
In the German version, from motives of policy, the tone is rather
milder. Luther shrank from instigating the German princes too openly
to violent measures. The appeal to them and to the Emperor is there
omitted. The call to the people, however, rings loud and enthusiastic:
“Would it be a wonder if the Princes, the Nobility and the laity were
to knock the Pope, the Bishops, parsons and monks on the head and
drive them out of the land?” For the action of Rome is heretical,
the Pope, the Bishops, the parsons and the monks were bringing the
laity about their ears by this “blasphemous, insulting Bull.” Then he
suddenly pulls himself up, but to very little purpose, and adds: “not
that I wish to incite the laity against the clergy, but rather that
we should pray to God that He may turn aside His wrath from them, and
set them free from the evil spirit that has possessed them.”[120]
In the German version, however, he refers more distinctly to the
existence of “the Bulls against Dr. Luther which are said to have
recently come from Rome.”[121] He here declares, as to the theological
question involved, that “as a matter of fact the whole Christian
Church cannot err,” viz. “all Christians throughout the whole world,”
but that the Pope is guilty of the most devilish presumption in
setting up his own opinion, as though it were as good as that of the
whole Church. The work is thus levelled at the doctrine of Papal
Infallibility, which had always been accepted in the Church in cases
where the Pope decides on matters of doctrine as supreme judge; this
doctrine had ever been taken for granted, and stood in the forefront
in all the measures previously taken by the Church against the attacks
of heretics. Even in those days the Church had always based her action
against separatists on her infallibility as a teacher.
In view of the existing political conditions there was but little hope
that it would be possible for the General Council, to which Luther had
appealed, to meet at an early date. At the time of Luther’s uprising,
moreover, the state of feeling, both in ecclesiastical circles and
among the laity, gave little promise of good results even in the event
of the calling together of a great Council. The stormy so-called
Reforming Councils of the fifteenth century had shown the dangers
of the prevailing spirit of independence, and the feeling among the
ecclesiastical authorities was, from motives of caution, averse to the
holding of Councils. Luther, on his part, was well aware how futile was
his appeal to a General Council.
That his request was useless and only intended to gain time was
apparent to all who had any discernment, when, on November 17, 1520,
he again appealed to a “free Christian Council.” Luther’s appeal
was published at the same time as his Latin work “Against the Bull
of End-Christ” Its character is plain from its invitation to the
people “to oppose the mad action of the Pope.” It was a method of
agitation calculated to call forth the applause of those who had become
accustomed to the ecclesiastical radicalism of the so-called reforming
Councils.
* * * * *
Luther gave practical effect to his view regarding the value to be set
on solemn Papal decrees on faith by his famous act before the Elster
Gate of Wittenberg.
On December 10 he there proceeded to burn the Bull of Excommunication
amid the acclamations of his followers amongst the students, whom
he had invited to the spectacle by a public notice exhibited at the
University. Not the Bull only was committed to the flames, but,
according to the programme, also “books of the Papal Constitutions and
of scholastic theology.” Besides the Bull the following were cast into
the great fire: the Decretum of Gratian, the Decretals with the “Liber
Sextus,” the Clementines and the Extravagants, also the Summa Angelica
of Angelus de Clavasio, the work then most in use on the Sacrament of
Penance, books by Eck, particularly that entitled “Chrysopassus,” some
by Emser, and others, too, offered by the zeal of private individuals.
The recently discovered account by Johann Agricola says, that the works
of Thomas and Scotus would also have been consigned to the flames but
that no one was willing to deprive himself of them for this purpose.
According to this writer, whose information is fuller than that of the
authority generally quoted, Luther, while in the act of burning the
Bull, pronounced the words: “Because thou hast destroyed the truth of
the Lord, the Lord consume thee in this fire” (cp. Josue vii. 25).[122]
A few weeks later Luther related, not without pride, how the students
“in the Carnival days made the Pope figure in the show [the students
being dressed up to play the part], seated on a car with great pomp; it
was really too droll. At the stream in the market-place they allowed
him to escape with his Cardinals, bishops and attendants; he was then
chased through various parts of the city: everything was well and
grandly planned; for the enemy of Christ is deserving of such mockery,
since he himself mocks at the greatest Princes and even Christ Himself.
The verses which describe the whole scene are now being printed.” This
was how Luther wrote to Spalatin, who was then with the Elector at the
Diet of Worms.[123]
Evil things were in store for Luther at Worms. It seemed that his
summons thither was unavoidable, since Pope Leo X, in the new Bull,
“_Decet Romanum Pontificem_,” of January 3, 1521, had declared that
Luther, owing to his persistent contumacy, had, _ipso facto_, incurred
excommunication and become liable to the penalties already decreed by
law against heretics.
Certain historians have extolled the great calmness which Luther
preserved even during the stormy days when the excommunication arrived;
they will have it that his composure of mind never deserted him. He
himself, however, speaks otherwise.
According to his own statements contained in the letters which give
so speaking a testimony to the state of his mind, he frequently did
not know what he was doing, and blindly obeyed the impulse which drove
him onward. Luther’s behaviour at that time was the very reverse of
the clear-sighted, enlightened and self-controlled conduct of holy and
virtuous Churchmen when in the midst of storm and stress. He himself
confessed with regard to his polemics: “Yes, indeed, I feel that I
am not master of myself (_compos mei non sum_). I am carried away
and know not by what spirit. I wish evil to none, but I am not on my
guard against Satan, and it is to this that the fury of my enemies is
due.”[124]
To explain this inward turmoil we must take into account, not only the
excommunication, but also the unexampled overexertion which at that
time taxed his mental and physical powers. He was necessarily in a
state of the utmost nervous tension. “Works of the most varied kind,”
he says, in the letter quoted, “carry my thoughts in all directions.
I have to speak publicly no less than twice daily. The revision of
the Commentary on the Psalms engages my attention. At the same time
I am preparing sermons for the press, I am also writing against my
enemies, opposing the Bull in Latin and in German and working at my
defence. Besides this I write letters to my friends. I am also obliged
to entertain my ordinary visitors at home.” At this time Luther not
unfrequently kept three printing-presses at work at once.
Never before had Gutenberg’s art been of such service to any public
cause; all Germany was flooded with Luther’s writings with bewildering
rapidity.
He commenced printing the booklet “To the Christian Nobility” before
it was fully written, and its plan he settled whilst a second pamphlet
of his against Prierias was passing through the press. This, in turn,
was accompanied by a booklet against the Franciscan Alveld. Between
the publication of the three so-called great “Reformation works,”
which, with the new editions immediately called for, followed each
other in rapid succession, came the printing of a sermon on the New
Testament and the tracts already mentioned: “Von den newen Eckischenn
Bullen,” and “Against the Bull of Antichrist” (in Latin); then followed
the publication of his “Warumb des Bapsts und seyner Jüngern Bücher
vorbrant seyn,” then the “Defence of all the Propositions” condemned
in the Bull (in Latin), then the controversial pamphlets: “An den Bock
zu Leyptzck” (Hieronymus Emser), and “Auff des Bocks zu Leypczick
Antwort.” At the same time, however, he published some religious works
of a practical nature, namely the “Tessaradekas,” a book of consolation
for suffering and perturbed Christians, and the commencement of his
exposition of the Magnificat. The latter he dedicated to Johann
Friedrich, the Elector’s nephew; it is not only improving in tone, but
was also of practical use in increasing the esteem in which he was held
at Court.
Such incredible overtaxing of his strength naturally resulted in
a condition of serious mental strain, at the very time, too, when
Luther had to weigh in his mind profound and momentous questions,
vital problems, the treatment of which called for the most utmost
recollection and composure.
“While I am preaching to others, I myself am a castaway,” so he once
writes in biblical terms in a letter to Staupitz,[125] “so much does
intercourse with men carry me away.” Pope Leo X, whose personal
qualities he had shortly before been praising, becomes in this letter
a wolf, who in his Bull has condemned all that Staupitz had taught
regarding God’s mercy. Christ Himself is condemned by the Pope, damned
and blasphemed. Staupitz might well exhort him to humility, for, alas,
he knew he was proud, but Staupitz, on his part, was too humble,
otherwise he would not retreat before the Pope. “Men may accuse me of
every vice, of pride, adultery, murder and even of Anti-popery, but
may I never be guilty of a godless silence in the presence of those
who are crucifying our Lord afresh.... Therefore at least suffer me
to go on and be carried away even though you may not yourself agree
to follow (_sine me ire et rapi_).” It is here that he appeals to the
assistance of Hutten and his party, and to the intervention of the
Elector Frederick in the words already quoted.[126]
And yet he confesses to a certain nervousness: “At first I trembled
and I prayed while burning the Papal books and the Bull. But now I am
more rejoiced at this than at any previous act of my life; they [the
Romanists] are a worse pestilence than I had thought.” This he writes
to his same fatherly friend, Staupitz.[127]
His perturbation, which had become to him almost a life-element, served
to dispel his fears and his doubts: “I am battling with the floods and
am carried away by them (“_fluctibus his rapior et volvor_”). “The
noise [of strife] rages mightily. Both sides are putting their heart
into it.”[128] Catholics discern with grief in this uncanny joy a sad
attempt on his part to find encouragement in the preposterous notion he
fostered of the “devilishness” of the Papacy. They will also perceive
in his outbursts of rage, and in the challenges to violence in which
he indulges in unguarded moments, the effect of the excommunication
working on a mind already stirred to its innermost depths. When we hear
him declare in a popular pamphlet, after the arrival of the Papal Bull,
that it would not be surprising were the Princes, the nobility and
laity to hit the Pope, the bishops, priests and monks over the head and
drive them out of the land,[129] we find that such language agrees only
too well with his furious words in his tract written in 1520 against
Prierias, where he compares the Pope and his followers to a band of
cut-throats.
If murderers are punished with the sword, why then should we not
proceed with still greater severity against those “teachers of
perdition” who are determined not to repent? “Why do we not attack
them with every weapon that comes to hand and wash our hands in their
blood, if we thereby save ourselves and ours from the most dangerous
of flames? How happy are those Christians who are not obliged like
us, the most miserable of men, to live under such an Antichrist.”
Recognising the ominous character of the passage “_Cur non ...
manus nostras in sanguine istorum lavamus_,” etc., later Lutherans
added certain words which appear first in the Jena edition (German
translation) in 1555: “But God Who says (Deut. xxxii. 35, Rom. xii.
19) ‘Vengeance is mine’ will find out these His enemies in good time,
who are not worthy of temporal punishment, but whose punishment must
be eternal in the abyss of hell.” These words, which are not found
in the original edition of 1520, are given in Walch’s edition of
Luther, vol. xviii., p. 245. The argument in exoneration of Luther,
based upon them by a recent Lutheran, thus falls to the ground. The
addition will be sought for in vain in the Weimar edition (6, p. 347
f.), and in that of Erlangen (“Opp. Lat. var.” 2, p. 107). Paulus has
proved that the falsification of the text was the work of Nicholas
Amsdorf, who was responsible for the Jena edition, though in the
Preface he protests that his edition of Luther’s works is free from
all correction or addition.[130]
In view of the inflammatory language which he hurled among the
crowd, assurances of an entirely different character, which, when
it suited his purpose, he occasionally made for the benefit of the
Court, really deserve less consideration. In these he is desirous of
disclaiming beforehand the responsibility for any precipitate and
dangerous measures taken by men like Hutten, and such as Spalatin
in his anxiety fancied he foresaw. What Luther wrote on January 16,
1521, was addressed to him and intended for the Elector;[131] here he
says that the war for the Gospel ought not to be waged by violence
and manslaughter, because Antichrist is to be destroyed by “the Word”
alone. On this occasion he expresses the wish that God would restrain
the fury of those men who threatened to injure His good cause and who
might bring about a general rising against the clergy such as had
taken place in Bohemia (i.e. the Husite insurrection).[132]
1911, p. 17. He foresees, however, that the Romanists will bring this
misfortune upon themselves through their obstinate resistance to “the
Word.” As yet they were holding back (so he wrote when the meeting at
Worms had commenced); but, should their fury burst forth, then, it was
generally apprehended that it would lead to a regular Bohemian revolt
in Germany, in which the clergy would suffer; he himself, however,
was certainly not to blame, as he had advised the nobility to proceed
against the Romanists with “edicts” and not with the sword.[133]
The menacing attitude of the Knights seemed to Luther sufficiently
favourable to his cause without their actually declaring war. We shall
return later to Luther’s ideas regarding the use of force in support of
the Evangel (vol. iii. xv. 3).
As for the above-mentioned references to Antichrist, we can only assume
that he had gradually persuaded himself that the Pope really was the
Antichrist of the Bible. According to his opinion the Antichrist of
prophecy was not so much a definite person as the Papacy as a whole,
at least in its then degenerate form. So thoroughly did he imbue his
mind with those biblical images which appealed to him, and so vivid
were the pictures conjured up by his imagination of the wickedness of
his foes, that we cannot be surprised if the idea he had already given
expression to, viz. that the Pope was Antichrist,[134] took more and
more possession of him. Owing to the pseudo-mysticism, under the banner
of which he carried on his war against the Church of Rome, he was the
more prone to indulge in such a view. His lamentations over Babylon and
Antichrist, and his intimate persuasion that he had unmasked Antichrist
and that therefore the second coming of Christ was imminent (see
below), undoubtedly rested on a morbid, pseudo-mystic foundation.
At about that time he set forth his ideas regarding Antichrist in
learned theological form, for the benefit of readers of every nation,
in a Latin exposition of the prophecies of Daniel, in which, according
to him, the Papacy is predicted as Antichrist and described in minutest
detail. This strange commentary is found in his reply to the Italian
theologian Ambrose Catharinus: “_Ad librum Catharini responsio_.”[135]
Cultured foreign readers can scarcely have gained from these pages a
very favourable impression of the imaginative German monk’s method of
biblical exposition. This curious tract followed too quickly upon that
to which it was a reply. Luther received a copy of the book against him
by Catharinus on March 6 or 7, yet, in order to forestall the effect
of the work on the Diet of Worms, in the course of the same month he
composed the lengthy reply which is all steeped in mystical fanaticism.
From that time forward the crazy fiction that the Pope was Antichrist
gained more and more hold of him, so that even towards the end of his
life, as we shall see, he again set about decking it out with new and
more forceful proofs from Holy Scripture.
Luther’s frame of mind again found expression in a tract which he
launched among the people not long after, viz. the “Deuttung des
Munchkalbes.”[136] Here he actually seeks to show in all seriousness
that the horrors of the Papacy, and particularly of the religious
state, had been pointed out by heaven through the birth of a misshapen
calf, an occurrence which at that time was attracting notice. Passages
from the Bible, and likewise Apocalyptic dreams, were pressed in to
serve the author of this lamentable literary production.
Yet, in spite of all these repulsive exaggerations with which his
writings were crammed, nay, on account of these images of a heated
imagination, the attack upon the old Church called forth by Luther
served its purpose with all too many. Borne on the wings of a hatred
inspired by a long-repressed grudge, his pamphlets were disseminated
with lightning speed by discontented Catholics. Language of appalling
coarseness, borrowed from the lips of the lowest of the populace,
seemed to carry everything before it, and the greater the angry
passion it displayed the greater was its success. What one man’s
words can achieve under favourable circumstances was never, anywhere
in the history of the world, so clearly exemplified as in Germany
in those momentous days. Luther’s enthusiastic supporters read his
writings aloud and explained them to the people in the squares and
market-places, and the stream of eloquence falling on ready ears proved
far more effective than the warnings of the clergy, who in many places
were regarded with suspicion or animosity.
Spalatin, in the meantime, was engaged in trying to prevent Luther from
incurring the only too well-founded reproach of openly inciting people
to revolt against the authority of the Empire; with such a charge
against him it would have been difficult for the Elector of Saxony to
protect him.
As, during Spalatin’s stay at Worms, the burning of Luther’s books
had already begun in various places, owing to the putting in force of
the Bull “_Exsurge Domine_,” the courtier was at pains to advise his
impetuous friend as to what he should do respecting such measures. He
counselled Luther to compose a pamphlet addressed to penitents, dealing
with the forbidden books, the matter being a practical one owing to
the likelihood of people confessing in the tribunal of penance that
they possessed works of Luther. It was no easy task to deal with this
question of the duty of confession. Luther, however, felt himself
supported by the attitude assumed by the Elector, at whose command,
so he says, he had first published his new booklet against the Bull,
“Grund und Ursach aller Artickel” (Ground and Reason of all the
[condemned] Articles), in German and Latin.[137]
He therefore determined to carry his war into the confessional and, by
means of a printed work, to decide, in his own favour, the pressing,
practical question regarding his books. The flames were blazing in
the bishoprics of Merseburg and Meissen, and to them were consigned
such of Luther’s writings as had been given up by Catholics or halting
disciples. Easter, too, was drawing near with the yearly confession.
Many a conscience might be stirred up by the exhortations of pious
confessors and be aroused to renewed loyalty to the Church. Luther’s
pamphlet, entitled “Unterricht der Beychtkinder ubir die vorpotten
Bücher” (An Instruction for Penitents concerning the prohibited books),
which appeared in the earlier part of February, 1521, affords us an
insight into the strategies adopted by Lutheranism at its inception.
The language of this tract is, for a writer like Luther, extremely
moderate and circumspect, for its object was to enlist in his cause
the most secret and intimate of all acts, that of the penitent in
confession; its apparent reticence made it all the more seductive.
In his new guise of an instructor of consciences, Luther here seems
fully to recognise the Sacrament of Confession. He has no wish, so he
protests, to introduce “strife, disputation and dissension into the
holy Sacrament of Confession.”[138]
The penitent, who is in the habit of reading his works, he tells to
beg his confessor in “humble words,” should he question him, not to
trouble him concerning Luther’s books. He is to say to his confessor:
“Give me the Absolution to which I have a right, and, after that,
wrangle about Luther, the Pope and whomsoever else you please.” He
encourages his readers to make such a request by explaining that these
books, and likewise Luther’s guilt, have not yet been duly examined,
that many were in doubt about the Bull, that Popes had often changed
their minds upon similar matters and contradicted themselves, and that
a confessor would therefore be acting tyrannically were he to demand
that the books should be given up; this was, however, the unfair
treatment to which he had ever been subjected. There was only one
thing wanting, namely, that Luther should have repeated what he had
shortly before declared, that, for the sake of peace, he would “be
quite happy to see his books destroyed,” if only people were permitted
to keep and read the Bible.[139]
He continues: Since it might happen that some would be conscientiously
unable to part with his writings, owing to knowledge or suspicion of
the truth, such people should quietly waive their claim to Absolution
should it be withheld. They were nevertheless to “rejoice and feel
assured that they had really been absolved in the sight of God and
approach the Sacrament without any shrinking.” Those who were more
courageous, however, and had a “strong conscience” were to say plainly
to the “taskmaster” (the confessor): “You have no right to force me
against my conscience, as you yourself know, or ought to know, Romans
xiv.” “Confessors are not to meddle with the judgment of God, to whom
alone are reserved the secrets of the heart.” If, however, communion
be refused, then all were first to “ask for it humbly,” “and if that
was of no avail, then they were to let Sacrament, altar, parson and
Church go”; for “contrary to God’s Word and your conscience no
commandment can be made, or hold good if made, as they themselves all
teach.”
Such a view of the functions of a confessor and of his duty as a
judge appointed by authority had certainly never been taught in the
Church, but was entirely novel and unheard of, however much it might
flatter the ears of the timid, and of those who wavered or were
actually estranged from the Church. Most of his readers were unaware
how shamelessly their adviser was contradicting himself, and how this
apparently well-meaning instructor of consciences in the confessional
was the very man who in previous polemical tracts had denied that
there was any difference between priests and laymen.[140] Towards the
close of this Instruction, however, the author reappears in his true
colours, and whereas, at the commencement when introducing himself, he
had spoken of confession as a holy Sacrament, at the end he describes
it as an unjust invention of the priesthood, and, indeed, in his eyes,
it was really a mere “human institution.” Towards the conclusion,
where he relapses into his wonted threatening and abusive language,
he “begs all prelates and confessors” not to torture consciences in
the confessional lest the people should begin to question “whence
their authority and the practice of private confession came”; as if
his very words did not convey to the reader an invitation to do so.
“The result,” he prudently reminds them, “might be a revolt in which
they [the prelates] might be worsted. For though confession is a most
wholesome thing, everyone knows how apt some are to take offence.”
He points out how in his case the authorities had driven him further
and further, well-intentioned though he was: “How many things would
never have happened had the Pope and his myrmidons not treated me with
violence and deceit.”[141]
The Easter confession that year might prove decisive to thousands.
The little earnestness shown by too many in the practice of their
religion, the laxity of the German clergy, even the apparent
insignificance of the question of retaining or perusing certain books,
all this was in his favour. In the above tract he set before the
devout souls who were “tyrannised” by their confessors the example of
Christ and His Saints, who all had suffered persecution; “we must ask
God to make us worthy of suffering for the sake of His Word.” The more
imaginative, he likewise warned of the approaching end of the world.
“Remember that it was foretold that in the days of ‘End-Christ’ no
one will be allowed to preach, and that all will be looked upon as
outcasts who speak or listen to the Word of God.” Those who hesitated
and were scrupulous about keeping Luther’s writings, seeing they had
been prohibited by law and episcopal decrees as “blasphemous,” he
sought to reassure by declaring that his books were nothing of the
kind, for in them he had attacked the person neither of the Pope nor
of any prelate, but had merely blamed vices, and that if they were to
be described as blasphemous, then the same “must be said of the Gospel
and the whole of Holy Scripture.”[142]
Thus, in this ingenious work, each one found something suited to his
disposition and his scruples and calculated to lead him astray. The
culmination is, however, in the words already adduced: Nothing against
conscience, nothing against the Word of God! The “enslaved conscience”
and the “commanding Word of God,” these are the catchwords of which
Luther henceforth makes use so frequently and to such purpose. He
employs these terms as a cloak to conceal the complete emancipation of
the mind from every duty towards a rule of faith and ecclesiastical
authority which he really advocates. The “commanding Word of God,” on
his lips, means the right of independent, private interpretation of
the sacred Books, though he reserves to himself the first place in
determining their sense.
Conscience and the Word of God, words with which Luther had
familiarised the masses from the commencement of his apostasy, were
also to be his cry at the Diet of Worms in 1521, when he stood before
the supreme spiritual and temporal authorities there assembled around
the Emperor. Uttered there before Church and Empire, this cry was to
re-echo mightily and to bring multitudes to his standard.
2. The Diet of Worms, 1521; Luther’s Attitude
The Diet had been assembled at Worms around the Emperor since January
27, 1521.
Charles V showed himself in religious questions a staunch supporter of
the Catholic Church, to which indeed he was most devotedly attached. He
was not, however, always well-advised, and the multitudinous cares of
his empire frequently blinded him to the real needs of the Church, or
else made it impossible for him to act as he would have wished.
On February 13, 1521, in the presence of the Princes and the
States-General of the Empire, Hieronymus Aleander, the Papal Legate
accredited to the Diet, delivered the speech, which has since become
historic, on the duty of the Empire to take action against Luther as
a notorious, obstinate heretic, definitively condemned by the supreme
Papal Court. He did not fail to point out, that “it was a fact of
common knowledge that Luther was inciting the people to rebellion and
that, like the heretics of Bohemia, he was destroying all law and order
in the name and semblance of the Gospel.”[143]
On March 6 Luther was summoned to appear before the Diet at Worms,
the Emperor furnishing him with an escort and guaranteeing his safe
return. Encouraged by the latter promise, secure in the favour of his
own sovereign, and assured of the support of the Knights, he decided to
comply with the summons.
The thought of bearing testimony to his newly discovered Evangel before
the whole country and enjoying the opportunity, by his appearance in
so public a place, of rousing others to enthusiasm for the work he
had undertaken urged him on. Severe bodily ailments from which he was
suffering at that time did not deter him. His illness, he declared, was
merely a trick of “the devil to hinder him”; on his part he would do
all he could to “affright and defy him.” “Christ lives, and we shall
enter Worms in spite of all the gates of hell and the powers of the
air.”[144] To Spalatin we owe an echo from one of Luther’s letters at
that time: “He was determined to go to Worms though there should be as
many devils there as there were tiles on the roofs.”[145]
The journey to Worms resembled a sort of triumphal progress, owing to
the festive reception everywhere prepared for him by his friends, and
in particular by the Humanists.
His arrival at Erfurt was celebrated beforehand by Eobanus Hessus in
a flattering poem. On April 6 the Rector of the University, Crotus
Rubeanus, with forty professors and a great crowd of people, went out
to meet him when he was still three leagues from the city. The address
delivered by Rubeanus at the meeting expressed gratitude for the
“Divine apparition” which was vouchsafed to them in the coming of the
“hero of the Evangel.”[146]
On the following day Luther preached in the Church of the Augustinians.
He spoke of good works: “One erects churches, another makes a
pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella or to St. Peter’s, a third
fasts and prays, wears a cowl or goes barefoot ... such works are of
no avail and must be done away with. Mark these words: All our works
are worthless. I am your justification, says Christ our Lord, I have
destroyed the sins with which you are loaded; therefore believe only
that it is I alone who have done this and you will be justified.”
Luther fired invectives against the intolerable yoke of the Papacy
and against the clergy who “slaughtered the sheep instead of leading
them to pasture.” Himself he represents as persecuted by the would-be
righteous, the Pope and his Bull, on account of his teaching which was
directed against the false self-righteousness arising from works.[147]
On the occasion of this sermon Luther, as his followers asserted,
performed his first miracle, quelling a disturbance excited by the
devil during the sermon in the overcrowded church; the interruption
ceased when Luther had exorcised the fiend.[148]
At Erfurt the enthusiasm for his cause became so great that on the day
after his departure riots broke out, the so-called “Pfaffensturm” or
priest-riot, which will be considered below (xiv. 5), together with
other circumstances attending the introduction of the new Evangel at
Erfurt. Luther was at the time silent concerning the occurrence.[149]
Not long after his arrival at the Wartburg, referring to similar scenes
of violence, he says, in a letter to Melanchthon: “The priests and
monks raged against me like madmen when I was free; but now that I am a
captive they are afraid and have restrained their insane action. They
cannot endure the common people who now have them under their heel.
Behold the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob, Who is working for us while
we are silent, suffer and pray.”[150] Nevertheless, when all was over,
he protested against the acts of violence committed at Erfurt in a
letter to Spalatin, which was found in that courtier’s library.[151]
On the journey through Thuringia he met the Prior of the
Rheinhardsbrunn monastery, whom he exhorted as follows: “Say an Our
Father for our Lord Christ that His Father may be gracious to Him. If
He upholds His cause, then mine also is assured.”[152] Such was the
strange manner in which he expressed his real inward feelings. Those
who expected him to recant at Worms did not know their man.
Reaching Worms on April 16 he was, on the following day, submitted to
the first interrogation. To the question whether he was the author
of the books mentioned, he replied in the affirmative, and when
exhorted to retract his errors he begged for “a respite and time for
consideration” that, as he says in his own notes at the time, “as I
have to give a verbal answer I may not through want of caution say too
much, or too little, to repent of it later,” especially as it was a
matter concerning “the highest good in heaven or on earth, the Holy
Word of God and the faith.” The respite granted was only for one day.
On April 18 he declared boldly, at his second interrogation, that
any retractation of the books he had written against the Pope was
impossible for him, since he would thereby be strengthening his tyranny
and unchristian spirit; the consciences of Christians were held captive
in the most deplorable fashion by the Papal laws and the doctrines of
men; even the property of the German nation was swallowed up by the
rapacity of the Romans. He would repeat what Christ had said before the
High Priest and his servants: “If I have spoken evil, give testimony
of the evil”; if the Lord was willing to listen to the testimony of a
servant, “how much more must I, the lowest erring creature, wait and
see whether any man brings forward testimony adverse to my teaching.”
He asks, therefore, to be convinced of error and confuted by the Bible.
“I shall be most ready if I am shown to be wrong to retract every
error.” He owed it to Germany, his native land, to warn those in high
station to beware of condemning the truth. After recommending himself
to the protection of the Emperor against his enemies, he concluded with
the words: “I have spoken.”
On returning after this to the inn through the staring crowds, no
sooner had he reached the threshold than “he stretched out his arms
and cried with a cheerful countenance: ‘I have got through, I have got
through.’”[153]
The Emperor bade him begone from that very hour, but the Estates, who
were divided in their views as to the measures to be taken, feared a
“revolt in the Holy Empire,” owing to the strength of the feeling in
his favour and the threats uttered by his armed friends, should “steps
be taken against him so hurriedly and without due trial.” Accordingly
an effort was made to persuade Luther by friendly means, through
the intermediary of a commission consisting of certain clerical and
lay members of the Diet under the Archbishop of Treves, Richard of
Greiffenklau. Their pains were, however, in vain.[154]
Even some of his friends besought him to commit his cause to the
Emperor and the Estates of the Empire, but likewise to no purpose. He
also refused the proposal that he should submit to the joint decision
of the Emperor and certain German prelates to be nominated by the Pope.
All he would promise was to hearken to a General Council, but even
this promise he qualified with a proviso which rendered his assent
illusory: “So long as no judgment contrary or detrimental to the
truth is pronounced.” Who but Luther himself was to decide what was
the truth? Cochlæus made an offer, which under the circumstances was
foredoomed to refusal, that a public disputation should be held with
the Wittenberg monk; to this Luther would not listen. Neither would he
give an undertaking to refrain from preaching and writing.
His final declaration at the Diet was as follows: Seeing that a simple
and straightforward answer was demanded of him, he would give it:
“If I am not convinced by proofs from Scripture or clear theological
reasons (‘_ratione evidente_’), then I remain convinced by the passages
which I have quoted from Scripture, and my conscience is held captive
by the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract, for to go against
one’s conscience is neither prudent nor right.” He concluded this
asseveration, after a protest had been raised and caused a tumult
amongst the audience, with the words which passed almost unheard: “God
help me, Amen!” The tragic and solemn setting which was very soon given
to these not at all unusual concluding words, was an uncalled-for
embellishment not in agreement with the oldest sources.[155]
After this, on April 26, in accordance with the command of the Emperor,
he was obliged to quit Worms. An extension of the safe conduct for
twenty-one days was expressly granted him, coupled, however, with
the injunction not to preach or publish anything on the way. Two
days later, while on his journey, Luther forwarded a missive to the
Emperor and another to the Estates in his own defence, the latter being
immediately printed by his friends as a broadsheet. The print depicted
Luther with a halo, and the dove or symbol of the Holy Ghost hovering
over him.
The fact that at the time the Diet was sitting a committee of the
Estates brought forward, under a new form, the so-called “Gravamina of
the German Nation” against the Roman See, was greatly to the advantage
of Luther’s cause. They consisted largely of legitimate suggestions
for the amelioration of ecclesiastical conditions and the removal of
the oppression exercised by the Curia. These were made the subject of
debate, and were exploited in Luther’s interests by those desirous of
innovations. Those among the Humanists who sided with him, and likewise
the Knights of the Empire, had taken various steps during his stay at
Worms to strengthen his position and to frighten the Estates by hinting
at violent action to be undertaken on his behalf.
Ulrich von Hutten wrote to him from the Ebernburg on April 17: “Keep
a good heart ... I will stand by you to the last breath if you remain
true to yourself.” He knows how those assembled at the Diet gnash
their teeth at him; his fancy indeed paints things black, but his
hope in God sustains him.[156] In a second letter of April 20, Hutten
speaks to him of trusting not only in God and His Christ, but also
in earthly weapons: “I see that sword and bow, arrows and bolts are
necessary in order to withstand the mad rage of the devil ... the
wisdom of my friends hinders me from a venture, because they fear lest
I go too far, otherwise I should already have prepared some kind of
surprise for these gentlemen under the walls [of Worms]. In a short
time, however, my hand will be free, and then you shall see that I
will not be wanting in the spirit which God has roused up in me.”[157]
In the same way as in his rhetorical language he ascribes his own
mood to the illumination of the Spirit of God, so Hutten also sought
to unearth a Divine inspiration in his friend Franz von Sickingen;
all this was the outcome of Luther’s pseudo-mysticism, to which his
friends were indebted for such figures of speech. Regarding Sickingen,
Hutten wrote to Willibald Pirkheimer: “He has, so to speak, drunk in
Luther completely; he has his little books read aloud at table, and I
have heard him swear that he will never forsake the cause of truth in
spite of every danger.” “You may well regard these words as a Divine
Voice, so great is his constancy.”[158]
Numerous threats of violence reached the ears of the timorous Estates
assembled at Worms. A notice was affixed to the Rathaus in which
400(?) sworn noblemen with 8000(?) men challenged the “Princes and
Messrs. the Romanists.” It concluded with the watchword of the
insurgents: “Bundschuh, Bundschuh, Bundschuh.” Towards the close of
the Diet several hundred knights assembled around Worms.[159]
At the Diet the Elector of Saxony made no secret of his patronage of
Luther.
He it was who, on the evening before Luther’s departure, informed him
in the presence of Spalatin and others, that he would be seized on the
homeward journey and conducted to a place of safety which would not be
told him beforehand.[160]
After having received this assurance Luther left Worms.
On the journey such was his boldness that he disregarded the Imperial
prohibition to preach, though he feared that this violation of the
conditions laid down would be taken advantage of by his opponents, and
cause him to forfeit his safe-conduct. He himself says of the sermons
which he delivered at Hersfeld and Eisenach, on May 1 and 2, that they
would be regarded as a breach of the obligations he had undertaken
when availing himself of the safe conduct; but that he had been unable
to consent that the Word of God should be bound in chains. He is here
playing on the words of the Bible: “_Verbum Dei non est alligatum_.”
“This condition, even had I undertaken it, would not have been binding,
as it would have been against God.”[161]
After the journey had been resumed the well-known surprise took place,
and Luther was carried off to the Wartburg on May 4.
In his lonely abode, known to only a few of his friends, he awaited
with concern the sentence of outlawry which was to be passed upon him
by the Emperor and the Estates. The edict, in its final form of May 8,
was not published until after the safe-conduct had expired. “To-morrow
the Imperial safe conduct terminates,” Luther wrote on May 11 from the
Wartburg to Spalatin; “ ... It grieves me that those deluded men should
call down such a misfortune upon their own heads. How great a hatred
will this inconsiderate act of violence arouse. But only wait, the time
of their visitation is at hand.”[162] The proclamation of outlawry
was couched in very stern language and enacted measures of the utmost
severity, following in this the traditions of the Middle Ages; Luther’s
writings were to be burnt, and he himself was adjudged worthy of death.
Of Luther the document says, that, “like the enemy of souls disguised
in a monk’s garb,” he had gathered together “heresies old and new.” The
impression made by Luther on the Emperor and on other eminent members
of the Diet, was that of one possessed.[163]
There was, from the first, no prospect of the sentence being carried
into effect. The hesitation of the German Princes of the Church to
publish even the Bull of Excommunication had shown that they were not
to be trusted to put the new measures into execution.
The thoughts of retaliation which were aflame in Luther, i.e. his
expectation of a “Divine judgment” on his adversaries, he committed to
writing in a letter which he forwarded to Franz von Sickingen on June
1, 1521, together with a little work dedicated to him, “Concerning
Confession, whether the Pope has the power to decree it.”[164] In it he
reminds Sickingen that God had slain thirty-one Kings in the land of
Chanaan together with the inhabitants of their cities. “It was ordained
by God that they should fight against Israel bravely and defiantly,
that they should be destroyed and no mercy shown them. This story looks
to me like a warning to our Popes, bishops, men of learning and other
spiritual tyrants.” He feared that it was God’s work that they should
feel themselves secure in their pride, “so that, in the end, they would
needs perish without mercy.” Unless they altered their ways one would
be found who “would teach them, not like Luther by word and letter, but
by deeds.” We cannot here go into the question of why the revolutionary
party in the Empire did not at that time proceed to “deeds.”
3. Legends
The beginning of the legends concerning the Diet of Worms can be traced
back to Luther himself. He declared, only a year after the event,
shortly after his departure from the Wartburg, in a letter of July
15, 1522, intended for a few friends and not for German readers: “I
repaired to Worms although I had already been apprised of the violation
of the safe-conduct by the Emperor Charles.”
He there says of himself, that, in spite of his timidity, he
nevertheless ventured “within reach of the jaws of Behemoth [the
monster mentioned in Job xl.]. And what did these terrible giants [my
adversaries] do? During the last three years not one has been found
brave enough to come forward against me here at Wittenberg, though
assured of a safe-conduct and protection”; “rude and timorous at one
and the same time” they would not venture “to confront him, though
single-handed,” or to dispute with him. What would have happened
had these weaklings been forced to face the Emperor and all-powerful
foes as he had done at Worms? This he says to the Bohemian, Sebastian
Schlick, Count of Passun, in the letter in which he dedicates to him
his Latin work “Against Henry VIII of England.”[165] It is worth
noting that Luther did not insert this dedication in the German
edition, but only in the Latin one intended for Bohemia and foreign
countries where the circumstances were not so well known.
Luther always adhered obstinately to the idea, which ultimately passed
into a standing tradition with many of his followers, that no one
had been willing to dispute with him at Worms or elsewhere during
the period of his outlawry; that he had, in fact, been condemned
unheard; that his opponents had sought to vanquish him by force, not
by confronting him with proofs, and had obstinately shut their ears to
his arguments from Holy Scripture. He finally came to persuade himself,
that they were in their hearts convinced that he was right, but out of
consideration for their temporal interests had not been willing or able
to give in.
He expressly mentions Duke George of Saxony, as an opponent who
had taken up the latter position, also the influential Archbishop
Albrecht of Mayence, and, above all, Johann Eck. “Is it not obdurate
wickedness,” he exclaims in one of his outbursts, “to be the enemy
of, and withstand, what is known and recognised as true? It is a
sin against the first Commandment and greater than any other. But
because it is not their invention they look on it as nought! Yet
their own conscience accuses them.”[166] In another passage, in 1528,
he complains of the persecutors in Church and State who appealed to
the edict of Worms; “they sought for an excuse to deceive the simple
people, though they really knew better”; if they act thus, it must be
right, “were we to do the same, it would be wrong.”[167]
Yet,even from the vainglorious so-called “Minutes of the Worms
Negotiations” (“Akten der Wormser Verhandlungen”), published
immediately after at Wittenberg with Luther’s assistance,[168] it
is clear that the case was fully argued in his presence at Worms,
and that he had every opportunity of defending himself, though, from
a legal point of view, the Bull of Excommunication having already
been promulgated, the question was no longer open to theological
discussion. In these “Minutes” the speeches he made in his defence at
Worms are quoted. Catholic contemporaries even reproached him with
having allowed himself to be styled therein “Luther, the man of God”;
his orations are introduced with such phrases as: “Martin replied to
the rude and indiscreet questions with his usual incredible kindness
and friendliness in the following benevolent words,” etc.[169]
In order still further to magnify the bravery he displayed at Worms,
Luther stated later on that the Pope had written to Worms, “that no
account was to be made of the safe-conduct.”[170] As a matter of
fact, however, the Papal Nuncios at Worms had received instructions
to use every effort to prevent Luther being tried in public, because
according to Canon Law the case was already settled; if he refused
to retract, and came provided with a safe-conduct, nothing remained
but to send him home, and then proceed against him with the utmost
severity.[171] It was for this reason, according to his despatches,
that Aleander took no part in the public sessions at which Luther was
present. Only after Luther, on the return journey, had sent back the
herald who accompanied him, and had openly infringed the conditions
of the Imperial safe-conduct, did Aleander propose “that the Emperor
should have Luther seized.”[172]
Luther, from the very commencement, stigmatised the Diet of Worms
as the “Sin of Wormbs, which rejected God’s truth so childishly and
openly, wilfully and knowingly condemned it unheard”;[173] to him the
members of the Diet were culpably hardened and obdurate “Pharaohs,”
who thought Christ could not see them, who, out of “utterly sinful
wilfulness,” were determined “to hate and blaspheme Christ at Wormbs,”
and to “kill the prophets, till God forsook them”; he even says:
“In me they condemned innocent blood at Wormbs; ... O thou unhappy
nation, who beyond all others has become the lictor and executioner
of End-Christ against God’s saints and prophets.”[174] An esteemed
Protestant biographer of Luther is, however, at pains to point out,
quite rightly, that the Diet could “not do otherwise than condemn
Luther.” “By rejecting the sentence of the highest court he placed
himself outside the pale of the law of the land. Even his very friends
were unable to take exception to this.” It is, he says, “incorrect
to make out, as so many do, that Luther’s opponents were merely
impious men who obstinately withstood the revealed truth.” This author
confines himself to remarking that, in his own view, it was a mistake
to have “pronounced a formal sentence” upon such questions.[175]
That Luther, at the Diet of Worms, bore away the palm as the heroic
defender of entire freedom of research and of conscience, and as the
champion of the modern spirit, is a view not in accordance with a fair
historical consideration of the facts.
He himself was then, and all through life, far removed from the idea of
any freedom of conscience in the modern sense, and would have deemed
all who dared to use it against Divine Revelation, as later opponents
of religion did, as deserving of the worst penalties of the mediæval
code. “It is an altogether one-sided view, one, indeed, which wilfully
disregards the facts, to hail in Luther the man of the new age, the
hero of enlightenment and the creator of the modern spirit.” Such is
the opinion of Adolf Harnack.[176]
At Worms, Luther spoke of himself as being bound by the Word of God. It
is true he claimed the freedom of interpreting Holy Scripture according
to his own mind, or, as he said, according to the understanding
bestowed on him by God, and of amending all such dogmas as displeased
him.
But he would on no account cease to acknowledge that a revealed Word
of God exists and claims submission from the human mind, whereas, from
the standpoint of the modern free-thinker, there is no such thing
as revelation. The liberty of interpreting revelation, which Luther
proclaimed at Worms, or, to be more exact, calmly assumed, marked, it
is true, a great stride forward in the road to the destruction of the
Church.
Luther failed to point out at Worms how such liberty, or rather
licence, agreed with the institutions established by Christ for the
preservation and perpetual preaching of His doctrine of salvation.
He was confronted by a Church, still recognised throughout the whole
public life of the nations, which claimed as her own a Divine authority
and commission to interpret the written Word of God. She was to the
Faithful the lighthouse by which souls struggling in the waves of
conflicting opinions might safely steer their course. In submitting his
own personal opinion to the solemn judgment of an institution which had
stood the test of time since the days of Christ and the Apostles, the
Wittenberg Professor had no reason to fear any affront to his dignity.
Whoever submitted to the Church accepted her authority as supreme, but
he did not thereby forfeit either his freedom or his dignity; he obeyed
in order not to expose himself to doubt or error; he pledged himself
to a higher, and better, wisdom than he was able to reach by his own
strength, by the way of experience, error and uncertainty. The Church
plainly intimated to the heresiarch the error of his way, pointing
out that the freedom of interpretation which he arrogated to himself
was the destruction of all sure doctrine, the death-blow to the truth
handed down, the tearing asunder of religious union, and the harbinger
of endless dissensions.--We here see where Luther’s path diverged from
that followed by Catholics. He set up subjectivity as a principle, and
preached, together with the freedom of interpreting Scripture, the most
unfettered revolt against all ecclesiastical authority, which alone
can guarantee the truth. The chasm which he cleft still yawns; hence
the difference of opinion concerning the sentence pronounced at Worms.
We are not at liberty to conceal this fact from ourselves, nor can we
wonder at the conflicting judgments passed on the position then assumed
by Luther.
We may perhaps be permitted to quote a Protestant opinion which throws
some light on Luther’s “championship of entire freedom of conscience.”
It is that of an experienced observer of the struggles of those
days, Friedrich Paulsen: “The principle of 1521, viz. to allow no
authority on earth to dictate the terms of faith, is anarchical; with
it no Church can exist.... The starting-point and the justification
of the whole Reformation consisted in the complete rejection of all
human authority in matters of faith.... If, however, a Church is to
exist, then the individual must subordinate himself and his belief
to the body as a whole. To do this is his duty, for religion can
only exist in a body, i.e. in a Church.”[177] ... “Revolution is the
term by which the Reformation should be described ... Luther’s work
was no Reformation, no ‘reforming’ of the existing Church by means
of her own institutions, but the destruction of the old shape, in
fact, the fundamental negation of any Church at all. He refused to
admit any earthly authority in matters of faith, and regarding morals
his position was practically the same; he left the matter entirely
to the individual conscience.... Never has the possibility of the
existence of any ecclesiastical authority whatsoever been more rudely
denied.”[178]
“It is true that this is not the whole Luther,” he continues.
“The same Luther who here advocates ecclesiastical ‘anarchy’ at
a later date was to oppose those whose conscience placed another
interpretation on God’s Word than that discovered in it by the
inhabitants of Wittenberg.” Paulsen quotes certain sentences in
which Luther, shortly afterwards, denounced all deviations from
his teaching: “My cause is God’s cause,” and “my judgment is God’s
judgment,” and proceeds: “Nothing was left for the Reformers, if there
was to be a Church at all, but to set up their own authority in place
of the authority of the Popes and the Councils. Only on one tiresome
point are they at a disadvantage, anyone being free to appeal from the
later Luther to the Luther of Worms.” “Just as people are inclined
to reject external authority, so they are ready to set up their own.
This is one of the roots from which spring the desire for freedom
and the thirst for power. It was not at all Luther’s way to consider
the convictions of others as of equal importance with his own.” This
he clearly demonstrated in the autocratic position which he claimed
for the Wittenberg theology as soon as the “revolutionary era of the
Reformation had passed.”
“The argument which Luther had employed in 1521 against the Papists,
i.e. that it was impossible to confute him from Scripture, he found
used against himself in his struggle with the ‘fanatics’ who also
urged that no one could prove them wrong by Scripture.... For the
confuting of heretics a Rule of faith is necessary, a living one which
can decide questions as they arise.... One who pins his faith to what
Luther did in 1521 might well say: If heretics cannot be confuted from
Scripture, this would seem to prove that God does not attach much
importance to the confutation of heretics; otherwise He would have
given us His Revelation in catechisms and duly balanced propositions
instead of in Gospels and Epistles, in Prophets and Psalms....
On the one hand there can be no authority on earth in matters of
faith, and on the other there must be such an authority, such is the
antinomy which lies at the foundation of the Protestant Church.... A
contradiction exists in the very essence of Protestantism. On the one
hand the very idea of a Church postulates oneness of faith manifested
by submission; on the other the conviction that if faith in the
Protestant sense is to exist at all, then each person must answer
for himself; ... it is _my_ faith alone which helps me, and if my
faith does not agree with the faith and doctrine of others, I cannot
for that reason abandon it.... The fact is, there has never been a
revolution conducted on entirely logical lines.”[179]
That “authority in matters of faith” which Luther began to claim for
himself, did not prevent him in the ensuing years from insisting
on the right of private judgment, though all the while he was
interpreting biblical Revelation in accordance with his own views.
As time went on he became, however, much more severe towards the
heretics who diverged from his own standpoint. But this was only when
the “revolutionary era of the Reformation,” as Paulsen calls it, was
over and gone. So long as it lasted he would not and could not openly
refuse to others what he claimed for himself. Even in 1525 we find him
declaring that “the authorities must not interfere with what each one
wishes to teach and to believe, whether it be the Gospel or a lie.”
He is here speaking of the authorities, but his own conduct in the
matter of tolerating heretics was even then highly inconsistent, to
say nothing of toleration of Catholics.
From the above it is easy to see that the freedom which Luther
advocated at Worms cannot serve as the type of our modern freedom of
thought, research and conscience.
To return to the historical consideration of the event at Worms, the
words already mentioned, “God help me, Amen!” call for remark.
The celebrated exclamation put into Luther’s mouth: “Here I stand. I
cannot do otherwise. God help me, Amen!” usually quoted as the briefest
and most characteristic expression of his “exalted, knightly act” at
Worms, is a legend which has not even the credit of being incorporated
in Luther’s Latin account of his speech.
He himself gives the conclusion as simply: “God help me, Amen,” a
formula which has nothing emphatic about it, was customary at the end
of a discourse and is to be found elsewhere in Luther’s own writings.
Its embellishment by the historic addition was produced at Wittenberg,
where it was found desirable to render “the words rather more forcible
and high-sounding.” “There is not the faintest proof that the
amplification came from anyone who actually heard the words.”[180] The
most that can be said is that it may have grown up elsewhere.[181]
The enlarged form is first found in the two editions of the discourse
printed by Grüneberg at Wittenberg in 1521, one in Latin and the other
in German, which are based as to the remaining portion on notes on the
subject emanating from Luther. Karl Müller, the last thoroughly to
examine the question, opines that Luther’s concluding phrase may very
easily have been amplified without the co-operation of Luther or of
any actual witness. The proposal made in 1897 in Volume vii. of the
Weimar edition of Luther’s works to accept as reliable Grüneberg’s
edition which contains the altered form of the phrase, must, according
to Karl Müller, be regarded as “a total failure,” nor does he think
much better of the Weimar edition in its account of the Worms Acts
generally.
How little the exclamation can pretend to any special importance is
clear from a note of Conrad Peutinger’s, who was present during the
address and committed his impression to writing the following day.
When Luther had finished his explanation, so it runs, the “official”
again exhorted him to retract, seeing he had already been condemned by
higher councils. Thereupon Luther retorted that the Councils “had also
erred and over and over again contradicted themselves and come into
opposition with the Divine Law. This the ‘official’ denied. Luther
insisted that it was so and offered to prove it. This brought the
discussion suddenly to an end, and there was a great outcry as Luther
left the place. In the midst of it he recommended himself submissively
to His Imperial Mt. [Majesty]. Before concluding he uttered the words:
May God come to my help.” According to this account the words were
interjected as Luther was about to leave the assembly, in the midst of
the tumult and “great outcry” which followed his recommending himself
to the Imperial protection.
In view of the circumstances just described, P. Kalkoff, years
ago, admitted that Luther’s words as quoted above had “no claim to
credibility,”[182] while, quite recently, H. Böhmer declared that “it
would be well not to quote any more these most celebrated of Luther’s
words as though they were his. Many will be sorry, yet the absence
of these words need not affect our opinion of Luther’s behaviour at
Worms.”[183] W. Friedensburg is also of opinion that “we must, at any
rate, give up the emphatic conclusion of the speech--‘Here I stand,’
etc.--as unhistorical; the searching examinations made in connection
with the Reichstagsakten have rendered it certain that Luther’s
conclusion was simply: ‘God help me, Amen.’” Of this Karl Müller
adduced conclusive proofs.[184]
The immense success of the legend of the manly, decisive, closing
words so solemnly uttered in the assembly is quite explicable when we
come to consider the circumstances. The Diet, an event which stands
out in such strong relief in Luther’s history, where his friends
seemed to see his star rising on the horizon only to set again
suddenly behind the mountain fortress, was itself of a nature to
invite them to embellish it with fiction.
Apart from the legends in circulation among Luther’s friends, there
were others which went the rounds among his opponents and later
polemics. Such is the statement to the effect that Luther played the
coward at Worms, and that his assumed boldness and audacity was merely
due to the promises of material assistance, or, as Thomas Münzer
asserts, to actual coercion on the part of his own followers.
According to all we have seen, Luther’s chief motive-force was his
passionate prepossession in favour of his own ideas. It is true that,
especially previous to the Diet, this was alloyed with a certain
amount of quite reasonable fear. He himself admits, that when summoned
to Worms, he “fell into a tremble” till he determined to bid defiance
to the devils there.[185] On his first appearance before the Diet on
April 17, he spoke, according to those who heard him, “in an almost
inaudible voice,” and gave the impression of being a timid man.[186]
Later his enthusiasm and his boldness increased with the lively sense
of the justice of his cause aided by the applause of sympathisers.
There can be no doubt that he was stimulated to confidence not merely
by the thought of the thousands who were giving him their moral
support, but by the offers of material help he had received, and
by his knowledge that the atmosphere of the Diet was charged with
electricity. “Counts and Nobles,” he himself says later, “looked hard
at me; as a result of my sermon, as people in the know think, they
lodged in court a charge of 400 Articles [the ‘Gravamina’] against
the clergy. They [the members of the Diet] had more cause to fear me
than I to fear them, for they apprehended a tumult.”[187] It was his
fiery conviction that he had rediscovered the Gospel and torn away the
mask of Antichrist, combined with his assurance of outward support,
that inspired him with that “mad courage” of which he was wont to talk
even to the end of his life: “I was undismayed and feared nothing;
God alone is able to make a man mad after this fashion; I hardly know
whether I should be so cheery now.”[188]
The unfavourable accounts, circulated from early days among Luther’s
opponents concerning his mode of life at Worms, must not be allowed to
pass unchallenged.
Luther was said to have “distinguished himself by drunkenness,” and
to have indulged in moral “excesses.” Incontrovertible proof would be
necessary to allow of our accepting such statements of a time when he
was actually under the very eyes of the highest authorities, clerical
and lay, and a cynosure of thousands. We should have to ask ourselves
how he came to prejudice his judges still further by intemperance and
a vicious life. The accounts appealed to do not suffice to establish
the charge, consisting as they do of general statements founded partly
on the impression made by Luther’s appearance, partly on reports
circulated by his enemies. That the friends of the Church were all
too ready to believe everything, even the worst, of the morals of
so defiant and dangerous a heretic, was only to be expected. The
reports were not treated with sufficient discernment even in the
official papers, but accepted at their face-value when they suited
the purposes of his foes. Luther seemed deficient in the recollection
looked for in a religious, though he wore the Augustinian habit; the
self-confidence, which he never lost an occasion of displaying, had
the appearance of presumption and excessive self-sufficiency; it may
also be that the manners which he had inherited from his low-born
Saxon parents excited hostile comment among the cultured members
of the Diet; if he indulged a little in the good Malvasian wine in
which his friends pledged him, this would be regarded by strangers as
betraying his German love of the bottle; at the same time it is true
that, when starting for Worms, and likewise during the journey, it is
reported how, with somewhat unseemly mirth, he had not scrupled to
indulge in the juice of the grape, perhaps to dispel sad thoughts.
Caspar Contarini, the Venetian ambassador, who was present at Worms,
wrote to Venice: “Martin has scarcely fulfilled the expectations
cherished of him here by all. He displays neither a blameless life
nor any sort of cleverness. He is quite unversed in learning and
has nothing to distinguish him but his impudence.”[189] Perhaps the
remark concerning Luther’s want of culture and wit, on which alone
the Venetian here lays stress, was an outcome of Luther’s behaviour
at his first interrogation; we have already seen how another witness
alludes to the nervousness then manifested by him, but over which he
ultimately triumphed.[190]
The second authority appealed to, viz. the Nuncio, Hieronymus
Aleander, writes more strongly against Luther than does Contarini. It
is not however certain that he was an “eye-witness,” as he has been
termed, at least it is doubtful whether he ever saw Luther while he
was in the town, though he describes his appearance, his demeanour and
look, as though from personal observation.[191] Aleander speaks much
from hearsay, collects impressions and tittle-tattle at haphazard, and
enters into no detail, save that he sets on record the “many bowls of
Malvasian” which Luther, “being very fond of that wine,” drank before
his departure from Worms. It is he who wrote to Rome that the Emperor,
so soon as he had seen Luther, exclaimed: “This man will never make a
heretic of me.” Aleander merely adds, that almost everybody looked
on Luther as a stupid, possessed fool; and that it was unnecessary
to speak of “the drunkenness to which he was so much addicted, and
the many other instances of coarseness in his looks, words, acts,
demeanour and gait.” By his behaviour he had forfeited all the respect
the world had had for him. He describes him as dissolute and a
demoniac (“dissoluto, demoniaco”).[192] Yet Count Hoyer of Mansfeld,
who will be referred to more particularly below, and who blames
Luther’s moral conduct after his stay at the Wartburg, alleging it as
his reason for forsaking his cause, admits that, while at Worms, he,
the Count, had been quite Lutheran; hence nothing to the prejudice of
Luther’s morals can have reached his ears there. In the absence of any
further information we may safely assume that it was merely Luther’s
general behaviour which was rather severely criticised at the great
assembly of notables.
A capital opportunity for a closer study of Luther’s mind is afforded
by his life and doings in the Wartburg.
4. Luther’s sojourn at the Wartburg
The solitude of the Wartburg afforded Luther a refuge for almost ten
months, to him a lengthy period.
Whereas but a little while before he had been inspirited by the loud
applause of his followers and roused by the opposition of those in high
places to a struggle which made him utterly oblivious of self, here, in
the quiet of the mountain stronghold, the thoughts born of his solitude
assailed him in every conceivable form. He was altogether thrown upon
himself and his studies. The croaking of the ravens and magpies about
the towers in front of his windows sounded like the voices which spoke
in the depths of his soul.
Looking back upon his conduct at Worms, he now began to doubt; how,
indeed, could an outlaw do otherwise, even had he not undertaken so
subversive a venture as Luther? To this was added, in his case, the
responsibility for the storm he had let loose on his beloved native
land. His own confession runs: “How often did my heart faint for fear,
and reproach me thus: You wanted to be wise beyond all others. Are
then all others in their countless m
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