the Wittenberg heretic to Rome, or imprisoning him there, namely, the protection afforded him by his sovereign. Miltitz was of a noble Saxon family, himself a Saxon subject by birth, and a friend of the Electoral court. He brought with him a high token of favour for the Elector. The latter had formerly expressed a wish to receive the golden rose; a symbol solemnly consecrated by the Pope himself, and bestowed by his ambassadors on princely personages to this day, for services rendered to the Church or the Papal see. The bearer of this decoration was Miltitz, and on October 24, 1518, he was furnished with a whole armful of Papal indulgences.
Above all, he took with him two letters of Leo X. to Frederick. The Elector, his beloved son, so ran the first missive, was to receive the most holy rose, anointed with the sacred chrism, sprinkled with scented musk, consecrated with the Apostolic blessing, a gift of transcendent worth and the symbol of a deep mystery, in remembrance and as a pledge of the Pope’s paternal love and singular good-will, conveyed through an ambassador specially appointed by the Pope, and charged with particular greetings on that behalf &c. &c. Such a costly gift, proffered him by the Church through her Pontiff, was intended to manifest her joy at the redemption of mankind by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and the rose was an appropriate symbol of the quickening and refreshing body of our Redeemer. These high-sounding and long-winded expressions showed very plainly the real object of the Pope. The divine fragrance of this flower was so to permeate the inmost heart of Frederick, the ‘beloved son,’ that he being filled with it, might with pious mind receive and cherish in his noble breast those matters which Miltitz would explain to him, and whereof the second brief made mention; and thus the more fervently comprehend the Pope’s holy and pious longing, agreeably to the hope he placed in him. The other letter, however, after referring to the call for aid against the Turks, goes on to speak of Luther. From Satan himself came this son of perdition, who was preaching notorious heresy, and that chiefly in Frederick’s own land. Inasmuch as this diseased sheep must not be suffered to infect the heavenly flock, and as the honour and conscience of the Elector also must needs be stained by his presence, Miltitz was commissioned to take measures against him and his associates, and Frederick was exhorted in the name of the Lord to assist him with his authority and favour.
Papal instructions in writing to the same effect were given to Miltitz for Spalatin, as Frederick’s private secretary, and for Degenhard Pfeffinger, a counsellor of the Elector. To Spalatin in particular, the most trusted adviser of Frederick in religious matters, it was represented, how horrible was the heretical audacity of this ‘son of Satan,’ and how he imperilled the good name of the Elector. In like manner the chief magistrate of Wittenberg was required by letter to give assistance to Miltitz, and enable him to execute freely and unhindered the Pope’s commands against the heretic Luther, who came of the devil. Miltitz took with him similar injunctions for a number of other towns in Germany, to ensure safe passage for himself and his prisoner to Rome, in the event of his arresting Luther. He was armed, it was said, with no less than seventy letters of this kind.
As regards the rose, Miltitz had strict orders to make the actual delivery of it to Frederick depend wholly on his compliance with Caietan’s advice and will. It was deposited first of all in the mercantile house of the Fuggers at Augsburg. This public precaution was taken, to prevent Miltitz from parting with the precious gift in haste or from too anxious a desire for the thanks and praise in prospect, before there were reasonable grounds for hoping that it had served its purpose.
Towards the middle of December a Papal bull, issued on November 9, was published by Caietan in Germany, which finally laid down the doctrine of indulgences in the sense directly combated by Luther, and, although not mentioning him by name, threatened excommunication against all who shared the errors which had lately been promulgated in certain quarters.
So utterly did the Pope appear to have set his face against all reconciliation or compromise. And yet, as the event showed, room was left for Miltitz in his secret instructions to try another method, according as circumstances might dictate.
Miltitz, after having crossed the Alps, sought an interview first with Caietan in Southern Germany, and, as the latter had gone to the Emperor in Austria, he paid a visit to his old friend Pfeffinger, at his home in Bavaria. Continuing his journey with him, he arrived on December 25 at the town of Gera, and from there announced his arrival to Spalatin, who was at Altenburg. On the way he had had constant opportunities of noticing, both among learned men and the common people, signs of sympathy for the man against whom his mission was directed, and a feeling hostile to Rome, of which those at Rome neither knew nor cared to know. He was a young and clever man, full of the enjoyment of life, who knew how to mix and converse with people of every kind, and even to touch now and then on the situation and doings at Rome which were exciting such lively indignation. Tetzel also, whom Miltitz summoned to meet him, wrote complaining that the people in Germany were so excited against him by Luther, that his life would not be safe on the road. Miltitz accordingly, with his usual readiness, resolved speedily on an attempt to make Luther harmless by other means. After paying his visit to the Elector at Altenburg, he agreed to treat with him there in a friendly manner.
The remarkable interview with Luther took place at Spalatin’s house at Altenburg in the first week of the new year. Miltitz feigned the utmost frankness and friendliness, nay, even cordiality. He himself declared to Luther, that for the last hundred years no business had caused so much trouble at Rome as this one, and that they would gladly there give ten thousand ducats to prevent its going further. He described the state of popular feeling as he had found it on his journey; three were for Luther where only one was for the Pope. He would not venture, even with an escort of 25,000 men, to carry off Luther through Germany to Rome. ‘Oh, Martin!’ he exclaimed, ‘I thought you were some old theologian, who had carried on his disputations with himself, in his warm corner behind the stove. Now I see how young, and fresh, and vigorous you are.’ Whilst plying him with exhortations and reproaches about the injury he did to the Romish Church, he accompanied them with tears. He fancied by this means to make him his confidant and conformable to his schemes.
Luther, however, soon showed him that he could be his match in cleverness. He refrained, he tells us, from letting Miltitz see that he was aware what crocodile’s tears they were. Indeed he was quite prepared, as he had been before under the menaces of a Papal ambassador, so now under his persuasions and entreaties, to yield all that his conscience allowed, but nothing beyond, and then quietly to let matters take their own course.
In the event of Miltitz withdrawing his demand for a retractation, Luther agreed to write a letter to the Pope, acknowledging that he had been too hasty and severe, and promising to publish a declaration to German Christendom urging and admonishing reverence to the Romish Church. His cause, and the charges brought against him, might be tried before a German bishop, but he reserved to himself the right, in case the judgment should be unacceptable, of reviving his appeal to the Church in Council. Personally he desired to desist from further strife, but silence must also be imposed on his adversaries.
Having come to this point of agreement, they partook of a friendly supper together, and on parting Miltitz bestowed on him a kiss.
In a report given of this conference to the Elector, Luther expressed the hope that the matter by mutual silence might ‘bleed itself to death,’ but added his fear that, if the contest were prolonged, the question would grow larger and become serious.
He now wrote his promised address to the people. He bated not an inch from his standpoint, so that, even if he should for the future let the controversy rest, he might not appear to have retracted anything. He allowed a value to indulgences, but only as a recompense for the ‘satisfaction’ given by the sinner, and adding that it was better to do good than to purchase indulgences. He urged the duty of holding fast in Christian love and unity, and notwithstanding her faults and sins, to the Romish Church, in which St. Peter and St. Paul and hundreds of martyrs had shed their blood, and of submitting to her authority, though with reference only to external matters. Propositions going beyond what was here conceded he wished to be regarded as in no way affecting the people or the common man. They should be left, he said, to the schools of theology, and learned men might fight the matter out between them. His opponents indeed, if they had admitted what Luther declared in this address, would have had to abandon their main principles, for to them the doctrine that indulgences and Church authority meant far more than was here stated was a truth indispensable for salvation.
Luther wrote his letter to the Pope on March 3, 1519. It began with expressions of the deepest personal humility, but differed significantly in the quiet firmness of its tone from his other letter of the previous year to Leo X. Quietly, but as resolutely, he repudiated all idea of retracting his principles. They had already, through the opposition raised by his enemies, been propagated far and wide, beyond all his expectations, and had sunk into the hearts of the Germans, whose knowledge and judgment were now more matured. If he let himself be forced to retract them he would give occasion to accusation and revilement against the Romish Church; for the sake of her own honour he must refuse to do so. As for his battle against indulgences, his only thought had been to prevent the Mother Church from being defiled by foreign avarice, and that the people should not be led astray, but learn to set love before indulgences.
Meanwhile, on January 12, Maximilian had died. He was the last national Emperor with whom Germany was blessed; in character a true German, endowed with rich gifts both mental and physical, a man of high courage and a warm heart, thoroughly understanding how to deal with high and low, and to win their esteem and love. By Luther too we hear him often spoken of afterwards in terms of affectionate remembrance: he tells us of his kindness and courtesy to everyone, of his efforts to attract around him trusty and capable servants from all ranks, of his apt remarks, of his tact in jest and in earnest; further of the troubles he had in his government of the Empire and with his princes, of the insolence he had to put up with from the Italians, and of the humour with which he speaks of himself and his imperial rule. ‘God,’ said he on one occasion, ‘has well ordered the temporal and spiritual government; the former is ruled over by a chamois-hunter, and the latter by a drunken priest’ (Pope Julius). He called himself a king of kings, because his German princes only acted like kings when it suited them. With the lofty ideas and projects which he cherished as sovereign, he stood before the people as a worthy representative of Imperialism, even though his eyes may have been fixed in reality more on his own family and the power of his dynasty, than on the general interests of the Empire. The ecclesiastical grievances of the German nation, which we heard of at the Diet of 1518, had long engaged his lively sympathy, though he deemed it wiser to abstain from interfering. He had an opinion on these matters and on the necessary reforms drawn up by the Humanist Wimpheling. Nay, he had once, in his contest with Pope Julius, worked to bring about a general reforming Council. The question forces itself on the mind–however vain such an inquiry may be from a historical point of view–what turn Luther’s great work, and the fortunes of the German nation and Church would have taken, if Maximilian had identified his own imperial projects with the interests for which Luther contended, and thus had come forward as the leader of a great national movement. As it was, Maximilian died without ever having realised more of the importance of this monk than was shown by his remark about him, already noticed, at Augsburg.
[Illustration: FIG. l3.–THE EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN. (From his Portrait by Albert Durer.)]
His death served to increase the respect which the Pope found it necessary to show to the Elector Frederick. For, pending the election of a new Emperor, the latter was Administrator of the Empire for Northern Germany, and the issue of the election depended largely on his influence. On June 28 Maximilian’s grandson, King Charles of Spain, then nineteen years of age, was chosen Emperor. He was a stranger to German life and customs, as the German people and the Reformer must constantly have had to feel. For the Pope, however, these considerations were of further import, for in his dealings with the new Emperor he had to proceed at least with caution, since the latter was aware that he had done his best to prevent his election. On the other hand, Charles was under an obligation to the Elector, being mainly indebted to him for his crown, and unable to come himself immediately to Germany to accept his rule.
Miltitz meanwhile had further prosecuted his scheme, without revealing his own ultimate object. He chose for a judge of Luther’s cause the Archbishop of Treves, and persuaded him to accept the office. Early in May he had an interview with Caietan at Coblentz, the chief town of the archiepiscopal diocese, and now summoned Luther to appear there before the Archbishop.
But Miltitz took good care to say nothing about the opinions entertained at Rome of his negotiations with Luther. Would Luther venture from his refuge at Wittenberg without the consent of his faithful sovereign, who himself evinced suspicion in the matter, and set forth in the dark, so to speak, on his long journey to the two ambassadors of the Pope? He would be held a fool, he wrote to Miltitz, if he did; moreover, he did not know where to find the money for the journey. What took place between Rome and Miltitz in this affair was altogether unknown to Luther, as it is to us.
Whilst this attempt at a mediation–if such it could be called–remained thus in abeyance, a serious occasion of strife had been prepared, which caused the seemingly muffled storm to break out with all its violence.
Luther’s colleague, Carlstadt, who at first, on the appearance of Luther’s theses, had viewed them with anxiety, but who afterwards espoused the new Wittenberg theology, and pressed forward in that path, had had a literary feud since 1518 with Eck, on account of his attacks upon Luther. The latter, meeting Eck at Augsburg in October, arranged with him for a public disputation in which Eck and Carlstadt could fight the matter out. Luther hoped, as he told Eck and his friends, that there might be a worthy battle for the truth, and the world should then see that theologians could not only dispute but come to an agreement. Thus then, at least between him and Eck, there seemed the prospect of a friendly understanding. The university of Leipzig was chosen as the scene of the disputation. Duke George of Saxony, the local ruler, gave his consent, and rejected the protest of the theological faculty, to whom the affair seemed very critical.
When, however, towards the end of the year, Eck published the theses which he intended to defend, Luther found with astonishment that they dealt with cardinal points of doctrine, which he himself, rather than Carlstadt, had maintained, and that Carlstadt was expressly designated the ‘champion of Luther.’ Only one of these theses related to a doctrine specially defended by Carlstadt, namely, that of the subjection of the will in sinful man. Among the other points noticed was the denial of the primacy of the Romish Church during the first few centuries after Christ. Eck had extracted this from Luther’s recent publications; so far as Carlstadt was concerned, he could not have read or heard a word of such a statement.
Luther fired up. In a public letter addressed to Carlstadt he observed that Eck had let loose against him, in reality, the frogs or flies intended for Carlstadt, and he challenged Eck himself. He would not reproach him for having so maliciously, uncourteously, and in an untheological manner charged Carlstadt with doctrines to which he was a stranger; he would not complain of being drawn himself again into the contest by a piece of base flattery on Eck’s part towards the Pope; he would merely show that his crafty wiles were well understood, and he wished to exhort him in a friendly spirit, for the future, if only for his own reputation, to be a little more sensible in his stratagems. Eck might then gird his sword upon his thigh, and add a Saxon triumph to the others of which he boasted, and so at length rest on his laurels. Let him bring forth to the world what he was in labour of; let him disgorge what had long been lying heavy on his stomach, and bring his vainglorious menaces at length to an end.
Luther was anxious, indeed, apart from this special reason, to be allowed to defend in a public disputation the truth for which he was called a heretic; he had made this proposal in vain to the legate at Augsburg. He now demanded to be admitted to the lists at Leipzig. He wished in particular, to take up the contest, openly and decisively, about the Papal primacy.
His friends just on this point grew anxious about him. But he prepared his weapons with great diligence, studying thoroughly the ecclesiastical law-books and the history of ecclesiastical law, with which until now he had never occupied himself so much. Herein he found his own conclusions fully confirmed. Nay, he found that the tyrannical pretensions of the Pope, even if more than a thousand years old, derived their sole and ultimate authority from the Papal decretals of the last four centuries. Arrayed against the theory of that primacy were the history of the previous centuries, the authority of the Council of Nice in 325, and the express declaration of Scripture. This he stated now in a thesis, and announced his opinion in print.
We have already noticed the high importance of this historical evidence in regard to matters of belief, as well as to the entire conception of Christian salvation, and of the true community or Church of Christ. The real essence of the Church is shown not to depend on its constitution under a Pope. And the course of history, wherein God allowed the Christians of the West to come under the external authority of the Pope, just as people come to be under the rule of different princes, in no way subjected, or should subject, the whole of Christendom to his dominion. The millions of Eastern Christians, who are not his subjects, and who are therefore condemned by the Pope as schismatics, are all, as Luther now distinctly declares, none the less members of Christendom, of the Church, of the Body of Christ. Participation in salvation does not exist only in the community of the Church of Rome. For Christendom collectively, or the Universal Church, there is no other Head but Christ. Luther now also discovered and declared that the bishops did not receive their posts over individual dioceses and flocks until after the Apostolic period; the episcopate therefore ceases to be an essential and necessary element of the Church system. What, then, is really essential for the continuance of the Church, and how far does it extend? Luther answers this question with the fundamental principle of Evangelical Protestantism. The Church, he says, is not at Rome only, but there, and there only, where the Word of God is preached and believed in; where Christian faith, hope, and charity are alive, where Christ, inwardly received, stands before a united Christendom as her bridegroom. This Universal Church, says Luther, is the one intended by the Creed, when it says ‘I believe in a Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints.’
The mere external power which the Popedom exercised in its government of the Church, in the imposition of outward acts and penalties–appeared, so far, to Luther a matter of indifference in respect to religion and the salvation of souls. But it was another and more serious matter with regard to the claim to Divine right asserted for that power by the Papacy, and to its extension over the soul and conscience, over the community of the faithful, nay, over the fate of departed souls. Here Luther saw an invasion of the rights reserved by God to Himself, and a perversion of the true conditions of salvation, as established by Christ and testified in Scripture. Here he saw a human potentate and tyrant, setting himself up in the place of Christ and God. He shuddered, so he wrote to his friends, when, in reading the Papal decretals, he looked further into the doings of the Popes, with their demands and edicts, into this smithy of human laws, this fresh crucifixion of Christ, this ill-treatment and contempt of His people. As previously he had said that Antichrist ruled at the Papal court, so now, in a letter of March 13, 1519, he wrote privately to Spalatin, ‘I know not whether the Pope is Antichrist himself, or one of his Apostles,’ so antichristian seemed to him the institution of the Papacy itself, with its principles and its fruits. Of these decretals he says in another letter: ‘If the death-blow dealt to indulgences has so damaged the see of Rome, what will it do when, by the will of God, its decretals have to breathe their last? Not that I glory in victory, trusting to my own strength, but my trust is in the mercy of God, whose wrath is against the edicts of man.’
[Illustration: Fig. 14.–DUKE GEORGE OF SAXONY. (From an old woodcut.)]
Luther earnestly entreated Duke George to allow him to take part in the disputation. His Elector, who no doubt was personally desirous of a public, free, and learned treatment of the questions at issue, had already given him his permission. Luther’s understanding with Miltitz presented no obstacle, since the silence required as a condition on the part of his opponents, had never been observed, nor indeed had ever been enjoined or recommended either by Miltitz or any other authorities of the Church. His application, nevertheless, to the Duke was referred to Eck for his concurrence, and the latter let him wait in vain for an answer. At last the Duke drew up a letter of safe-conduct for Carlstadt and all whom he might bring with him, and under this designation Luther was included. He might safely trust himself to George’s word as a man and a prince.
The whole disputation was opposed and protested against from the outset by the Bishop of Merseburg, the chancellor of the university of Leipzig and the spiritual head of the faculty of theology. The project must have been inadmissible in his eyes from the mere fact that Eck’s theses revived the controversy about indulgences, which was supposed to have been settled once and for ever by the Papal bull. He appealed to this pronouncement as a reason for not holding it. Inasmuch as the disputation took place, in spite of this protest, with the Duke’s consent, it became an affair of all the more importance.
Duke George himself took an active interest in the matter. His was a robust, upright, and sturdy character. He was a staunch and faithful upholder of the ecclesiastical traditions in which he had grown up; it was difficult for him to extend his views. But he was honestly interested in the truth. He wished that his own men of learning might have a good scuffle in the lists for the truth’s sake. On hearing of the objections of the Leipzig theologians to the disputation, his remark was, ‘They are evidently afraid to be disturbed in their idleness and guzzling, and think that whenever they hear a shot fired, it has hit them.’ An unusually large audience being expected for the disputation, he had the large hall of his Castle of Pleissenburg cleared and furnished for the occasion. He commissioned two of his counsellors to preside, and was anxious himself to be present. How much depended on the impression which the disputation itself, and Luther with it, should produce upon him!
On June 24 the Wittenbergers entered Leipzig, with Carlstadt at their head. An eye-witness has described the scene: ‘They entered at the Grimma Gate, and their students, two hundred in number, ran beside the carriages with pikes and halberds, and thus accompanied their professors. Dr. Carlstadt drove first; after him, Dr. Martin and Philip (Melancthon) in a light basket carriage with solid wooden wheels (Rollwagen); none of the wagons were either curtained or covered. Just as they had passed the town-gate and had reached the churchyard of St. Paul, Dr. Carlstadt’s carriage broke down, and the doctor fell out into the dirt; but Dr. Martin and his _fidus Achates_ Philip, drove on.’ Meanwhile, an episcopal mandate, forbidding the disputation on pain of excommunication, had been nailed up on the church doors, but no heed was paid to it. The magistrate even imprisoned the man who posted the bill for having done so without his permission.
Before commencing the disputation, certain preliminary conditions were arranged. The proceedings were to be taken down by notaries. Eck had opposed this, fearing to be hindered in the free use of his tongue, and not liking to have all his utterances in debate so exactly defined. The protocols, however, were to be submitted to umpires charged to decide the result of the disputation, and were to be published after their verdict was announced. In vain had both Luther and Carlstadt, who refused to bind themselves to this decision, opposed this stipulation. The Duke, however, insisted on it, as a means of terminating judicially the contest.
Early on the morning of June 27 the disputation was opened with all the worldly and spiritual solemnity that could be given to a most important academical event. First came an address of welcome in the hall, spoken by the Leipzig professor, Simon Pistoris; then a mass in the church of St. Thomas, whither the assembly repaired in a procession of state; then a still grander procession to the Pleissenburg, where a division of armed citizens was stationed as a guard of honour; then a long speech on the right way of disputing, delivered in the Castle hall by the famous Peter Schade Mosellanus, a professor at Leipzig and a master of Latin eloquence; and lastly the chanting three times of the Latin hymn, ‘Come, Holy Ghost,’ the whole assembly kneeling. At two o’clock the disputation between Eck and Carlstadt began. They were placed opposite each other in pulpits.
A host of theologians and learned laymen had flocked together to the scene. From Wittenberg had come the Pomeranian Duke Barnim, then Rector of the University. Prince George of Anhalt, then a young Leipzig student, and afterwards a friend of Luther, was there. Duke George of Saxony frequently attended the proceedings, and listened attentively. His court jester is said to have appeared with him, and a comic scene is mentioned as having occurred between him and Eck, to the great diversion of the meeting. Frederick the Wise was represented by one of his counsellors, Hans von Planitz.
Eck and Carlstadt contended for four days, from June 27 to July 8, on the question of free will and its relations to the operation of the grace of God. It was a wearisome contest, with disconnected texts from Scripture and passages from old teachers of the Church, but without any of the lively and free animation of moral and religious spirit, which, in Luther’s treatment of such questions, carried his hearers with him. In power of memory, as in readiness of speech, Eck proved himself superior to his opponent. On Carlstadt bringing books of reference with him, he got this disallowed, and had now the advantage that no one could check his own quotations. Thus, confident of triumph, he proceeded to his contest with Luther.
Luther meanwhile, on June 29, the day of St. Peter and St. Paul, had preached a sermon at the request of Duke Barnim at the Castle of Pleissenburg, wherein, referring to the Gospel of the day, he treated, in a simple, practical, and edifying manner, of the main point of the disputation between Eck and Carlstadt, and at the same time of the point he himself was about to argue, namely, the meaning of the power of the keys granted to St. Peter. In opposition to him, Eck delivered four sermons in various churches of the town (none of which Luther would have been allowed to preach in), and speaking of them afterwards he said, ‘I simply stirred up the people to be disgusted with the Lutheran errors.’ The members of the Leipzig university kept peevishly aloof from their brethren of Wittenberg throughout the disputation, while paying all possible homage to Eck. When Luther one day entered a church, the monks who were conducting service hastily took away the monstrance and the elements, to avoid having them defiled by his presence. And yet he was afterwards reproached for neglecting to go to church at Leipzig. In the hostelries where the Wittenberg students lodged, such violent scenes occurred between them and their Leipzig brethren, that halberdiers had to be stationed at the tables to keep order.
Duke George invited the heretic, together with Eck and Carlstadt, to his own table, and to a private audience as well. So frank and genial was he, and so intent on making himself acquainted with Luther and his cause. Luther spoke of him then as a good, pious prince, who knew how to speak in princely fashion. The Duke, however, told him at that audience, that the Bohemians entertained great expectations of him; and yet George, who on his mother’s side was grand-son to Podiebrad, King of Bohemia, was anxious to have all taint of the hateful Bohemian heresy most carefully avoided. On this point Luther remarked to him that he knew well how to distinguish between the pipe and the piper, and was only sorry to see how accessible princes might be to the influence of foreign agitations. Leipzig altogether must have been a strange and uncomfortable atmosphere for Luther.
On Monday, July 4, he entered the lists with Eck. On the morning of that day he signed the conditions, which had been arranged in spite of his protest; but he stated that, against the verdict of the judges, whatever it might be, he maintained the right of appeal to a Council, and would not accept the Papal curia as his judge. The protocol on this point ran as follows: ‘Nevertheless Dr. Martin has stipulated for his appeal, which he has already announced, and so far as the same is lawful, will in no wise abandon his claim thereto. He has stipulated further that, for reasons touching himself, the report of this disputation shall not be submitted for approval to the Papal court.’
[Illustration: Fig. 15.–LUTHER. (From an engraving of Cranach, in 1520.)]
The appearance of Luther at this disputation has given occasion for the first description of his person which we possess from the pen of a contemporary. Mosellanus, already mentioned, says of him in a letter: ‘He is of middle stature, his body thin, and so wasted by care and study, that nearly all his bones may be counted. He is in the prime of life. His voice is clear and melodious. His learning and his knowledge of Scripture are extraordinary; he has nearly everything at his fingers’ ends. Greek and Hebrew he understands sufficiently well to give his judgment on the interpretation of the Scriptures. In speaking, he has a vast store of subjects and words at his command; he is moreover refined and sociable in his life and manners; he has no rough Stoicism or pride about him, and he understands how to adapt himself to different persons and times. In society he is lively and witty. He is always fresh, cheerful, and at his ease, and has a pleasant countenance, however hard his enemies may threaten him, so that one cannot but believe that Heaven is with him in his great undertaking. Most people however reproach him with wanting moderation in polemics, and with being more cutting than befits a theologian and one who propounds something new in sacred matters.’ His ability as a disputant was afterwards acknowledged by Eck, who in referring to this tourney, quoted Aristotle’s remark that when two men dispute together, each of whom has learned the art, there is sure to be a good disputation.
Eck is described by Mosellanus as a man of a tall, square figure, with a voice fit for a public crier, but more coarse than distinct, and with nothing pleasant about it; with the mouth, the eyes, and the whole appearance of a butcher or soldier, but with a most remarkable memory. In power of memory and elocution he surpassed even Luther; but in solidity and real breadth of learning, impartial men like Pistoris gave the palm to Luther. Eck is said to have imitated the Italians in his great animation of speech, his declamation, and gesticulations with his arms and his whole body. Melancthon even said in a letter after the disputation, ‘Most of us must admire Eck for his manifold and distinguished intellectual gifts.’ Later on he calls him, ‘Eckeckeck, the daws’-voice.’ At any rate Eck displayed a rare power and endurance in those Leipzig days, and understood above all how to pursue with cleverness the real object he had in view in his contest with Luther.
The two began at once with that point which Eck had singled out as the chief object of debate, and about which Luther had advanced his boldest proposition, namely, the question of the Papal power.
[Illustration: Fig 16.–DR. JOHN ECK. (From an old woodcut.)]
After lengthy discussions on the evidence of texts of Scripture; on the old Fathers of the Church, to whom the Papal supremacy was unknown; on the Western Church of middle ages, by whom that supremacy was acknowledged at an earlier period than Luther would admit; on the non-subjection to Rome of Eastern Christendom, to whom Luther referred, and whom Eck with a light heart put outside the pale of salvation, Eck on the second day of the disputation passed, after due premeditation, from the ecclesiastical authorities he had quoted in favour of the Divine right of the Papal primacy, to the statements of the English heretic Wicliffe, and the Bohemian Huss, who had denied this right, and had therefore been justly condemned. He was bound to notice them, he said, since, in his own frail and humble judgment, Luther’s thesis favoured in the highest degree the errors of the Bohemians, who, it was reported, wished him well for his opinions. Luther answered him as he had done in each case before. He condemned the separation of the Bohemians from the Catholic Church, on the ground that the highest right derived from God was that of love and the Spirit, and he repudiated the reproach which Eck sought to cast upon him. But he declared at the same time that the Bohemians on that point had never yet been refuted. And with perfect self-conviction and calm reflection he proceeded to assert that among the articles of Huss some were fundamentally Christian and Evangelical, such as, for example, his statements that there was only one Universal Church (to which even Greek Christendom had always and still belonged), and that the belief in the supremacy of the Church of Rome was not necessary to salvation. No man, he added, durst impose upon a Christian an article of belief which was antiscriptural; the judgment of an individual Christian must be worth more than that of the Pope or even of a Council, provided he has a better ground for it.
That moment, when Luther spoke thus of the doctrines of Huss, a heretic already condemned by a Council and proscribed in Germany, was the most impressive and important in the whole disputation. An eye-witness, who sat below Duke George and Barnim, relates that the Duke, on hearing the words, shouted out in a voice heard by all the assembly, ‘A plague upon it!’ and shook his head, and put both hands to his sides. The whole audience, variously as they thought of the assertion, must have been fairly astounded. Luther, it was true, had already stated in writing that a Council could err. But now he declared himself for principles which a Council, namely that of Constance, solemnly appointed and unanimously recognised by the whole of Western Christendom, had condemned, and thus openly accused that Council of error in a decision of the most momentous importance. Nay more, that decision had been concurred in by the very men who, while recognising the Papal primacy, strenuously defended against Papal despotism the rights of General Councils, and of the nations and states which they represented. The Western Catholic Church entertained, as we have seen, a diversity of views as to the relative authority of the Popedom, as an institution of Christ, and that which appertained to Councils. Luther now, by denying the Divine institution and authority of the Papacy, seemed to have broken with all authority whatsoever existing in the Church, and with every possible exercise of the same.
Luther himself does not appear to have considered at the moment this extent of his acknowledgment of the ‘Christian’ character of some of Huss’s articles, nor to have adequately reflected on the attitude of direct opposition in which it placed him to the Council of Constance. When Eck declared it ‘horrible’ that the ‘reverend father’ had not shrunk from contradicting that holy Council, assembled by consent of all Christendom, Luther interrupted him with the words, ‘It is not true that I have spoken against the Council of Constance.’ He then went on to draw the inference that the authority of the Council, if it erred in respect of those articles, was consequently fallible altogether.
Some days later, and after further consideration, Luther produced four propositions of Huss, which were perfectly Christian, although they had been formally rejected by the Council. He sought means, nevertheless, to preserve for the Council its dignity. As for these rejected articles, he said, it had declared only some to be heretical, and others to be simply mistaken, and the latter, at all events, must not be counted as heresies–nay, he took the liberty of supposing that the former were interpolations in the text of the Council’s resolutions. He would grant, further, that the decisions of a Council in matters of faith must at all times be accepted. And in order to guard himself against any misunderstanding and misconstruction, he once broke off from the Latin, in which the whole disputation had been conducted, and declared in German that he in no way desired to see allegiance renounced to the Romish Church, but that the only question in dispute was whether its supremacy rested on Divine right–that is to say, on direct Divine institution in the New Testament, or whether its origin and character were simply such as the Imperial Crown, for example, possessed in relation to the German nation. He was well aware how charges of heresy and apostasy were raised against him, and how industriously Eck had promoted them. It was only with pain and inward struggles that he stood out, Bible in hand, against the Council of Constance and such a general gathering of Western Christendom. But not a step would he go towards any recognition of the Papacy as an institution resting on Scripture. He insisted that even a Council could not compel him to do this, or make an essential article of Christian belief out of anything not found in the Bible. Again and again he declared that even a Council could err.
For five whole days they contested this main point of the disputation, without arriving at any further result.
The other subjects of discussion, relating to purgatory, indulgences, and penance, were after this of very little importance. With regard to indulgences even Eck now displayed striking moderation. The dispute on the correct conception of purgatory led to a new and important declaration by Luther as to the power of the Church in relation to Scripture. Eck quoted as Biblical proof a passage from the Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament, which although not originally included in the records of the Old Covenant, had been accepted by the middle ages as of equal authority with the other Biblical writings. For the first time Luther now protested against the equal value thus assigned to them, and especially against the Church conferring upon them an authority they did not possess.
The disputation between Eck and Luther lasted till July 13. Luther concluded his argument with the words: ‘I am sorry that the learned doctor only dips into Scripture as deep as the water-spider into the water–nay, that he seems to fly from it as the devil from the Cross. I prefer, with all deference to the Fathers, the authority of Scripture, which I herewith recommend to the arbiters of our cause.’
After this Carlstadt and Eck had only a short passage of arms. The disputation was to be concluded on the 15th, as Duke George wished to receive the Elector of Brandenburg on a visit to the Pleissenburg. With regard to the universities, to whom the report of the disputation was to be submitted, those agreed upon were Paris and Erfurt, but neither of the two would undertake so responsible a task.
Eck left the disputation with triumph, applauded by his friends and rewarded by Duke George with favours and honours. He followed up his fancied victory by further exciting the people against Luther, and pointing out to them in particular the sympathy between him and Huss. He wrote even to the Elector Frederick from Leipzig, proposing that he should have Luther’s books burnt. The two men henceforth and for ever were mutual enemies, with no dealings together but those of heated controversy in writing. Eck’s chief efforts were directed to securing Luther’s formal and public condemnation.
At Leipzig Luther had been watched with the utmost suspicion. The common people had actually been told that there was something mysterious in the little silver ring he wore on his finger, very likely a small charm with the devil inside. It was even remarked on and wondered at that he carried a bunch of flowers in his hand, which he would look at and smell. From that time probably originated the saying of a devout old dame at Leipzig, as published by one of his theological opponents, the old woman having once lived at Eisleben with Luther’s mother, that her son Martin was the fruit of an embrace by the devil.
For real information, however, about Luther at Leipzig, and the impression he produced by his arguments, more is to be gathered from the effect of his public appearance there during this disputation, than from a whole heap of printed matter. We allude not only to the educated laity and men of learning, but to the mass of the people who shared in the excitement caused by this controversy. A few months later we hear an opponent complain that Luther’s teaching had given rise to so much squabbling, discord, and rebellion among the people, that ‘there was absolutely not a town, village, or house, where men were not ready to tear each other to pieces on his account.’
Luther returned to Wittenberg full of dejection. The time at Leipzig had only been wasted; the disputation had been unworthy of the name; Eck and his friends there had cared nothing whatever about the truth. Eck, he said, had made more clamour in an hour than he or Carlstadt could have done in a couple of years, and yet all the time the question at issue was one of peaceful and abstruse theology. His disappointment, however, did not refer, as people perhaps might have imagined, to the treatment his thesis on the Papal primacy had met with, or to any embarrassment occasioned him on that account. On the contrary, while complaining of the unworthy character of the disputation, he excepted that particular thesis. He alluded rather to the superficiality and want of interest with which such important questions as justification by faith, and the sinfulness attaching even to the best works of man, were passed over or evaded. On all the points which he had wished to contend for and expound at Leipzig, he now published further explanations. And with regard to the Councils, he declared in still stronger terms than at Leipzig, that they certainly might err and had erred even in the most important matters; one had no right to identify either them or the Pope with the Church.
From this he proceeded to explain his true relations with the Bohemians. The theologian Jerome Emser, a friend of Eck, and a favourite of Duke George, contributed in his own way to this end. He had had a hot discussion with Luther before the disputation at Leipzig, in which he reproached him with causing trouble in the Church. He now prepared a remarkable public letter to a high Catholic ecclesiastic at Prague, of the name of Zack. Whilst asserting in it that the Bohemian schismatics appealed to Luther and had actually offered prayers and held services for him during the disputation, he announced, with feigned kindness to Luther, that the latter, on the contrary, had eagerly repudiated at Leipzig any fellowship with them, and had denounced their apostasy from Rome. Luther detected in all this, mere trickery and malice, and we also can only recognise in it a crafty attempt to ruin Luther’s position all round. If, says Luther, he were to accept in silence the praise here meted out to him, he would seem to have retracted his whole teaching, and laid down his arms before Eck; if, on the other hand, he were to disclaim it, he would be cried down at once as a patron of the Bohemians, and charged with base ingratitude to Emser. Accordingly, in a small pamphlet, he broke out, full of wrath and bitterness, against Emser, who replied to him in a similar tone. But he represented the case with great clearness. If his doctrines had pleased the Bohemians, he would not retract them on that account. He had no desire to screen their errors, but he found on their side Christ, the Scriptures, and the sacraments of the Church, and therewith a Christian hatred of the worldliness, immorality, and arrogance of the Romish clergy. Nay, he rejoiced to think that his doctrines pleased them, and would be glad if they pleased Jews and Turks, and Emser, who was enthralled in godless error, and even Eck himself.
Letters were now already on the way to Luther from two ecclesiastics of Prague, Paduschka and Rossdalovicky, members of the Utraquist Hussite Church, which in opposition to Rome insisted on the sacramental cup being given to the laity. They assured Luther of their joyful and prayerful sympathy with him in his struggle. One of them sent him a present of knives of Bohemian workmanship, the other a writing of Huss upon the Church. Luther accepted the presents with cordiality, and sent them his own writings in return. With regard to separation from the Romish Church, the experience of Huss plainly showed him how impossible that Church made it, even to one whose heart was heavy at the thought of leaving her, to remain in her communion.
Thus the contest at Leipzig was now over, whilst in the meantime at Frankfort-on-the-Main, after the election of the new Emperor, the Elector Frederick and the Archbishop of Treves consulted together about an examination of Luther before the Archbishop, as proposed by Miltitz. Both wished to postpone it till the Diet, then about to be held. Miltitz, however, notwithstanding the result of the disputation and the further declarations of Luther, still clung to his plan of mediation. He arranged once more an interview with Luther on October 9 at Liebenwerda, when the latter renewed his promise to appear before the Archbishop, but he failed to induce the Elector to let Luther travel with him to the Archbishop. For the delivery of the golden rose, when it at last took place, he was richly rewarded with money. But the fruitlessness of his negotiations with Luther had become apparent.
CHAPTER V.
LUTHER’S FURTHER WORK, WRITINGS, AND INWARD PROGRESS, UNTIL 1520.
Luther looked upon his disputation at Leipzig as an idle waste of time. He longed to get back to his work at Wittenberg. He remained, in fact, devoted with his whole soul to his official duties there, though to the historian, of course, his work and struggles in the broader and general arena of the Church engage the most attention. He might well quarrel with the occasions that constantly called him out to it, as so many interruptions to his proper calling.
His energy there in the pulpit was as constant as his energy in the professor’s chair. He glowed with zeal to unfold the one truth of salvation from its original source, the Scriptures, and to declare it and impress it on the hearts of his young pupils and his Wittenberg congregation, of educated and uneducated, of great and small. But he also wished to lay it before his students as a truth for life. With this object, he continued active with his pen, both in the Latin and the German languages. He was glad to turn to this from the questions of ecclesiastical controversy, which had formed the subject of his disputation, and of the writings referring to it. It was enough for him to show forth simply the merciful love of God and of the Saviour Christ, to point out the simple road of faith, and to destroy all trust in mere outward works, in one’s own merit and virtue. Only to this extent, and because the authority pretended by the Church was opposed to this truth and this road to salvation, he was forced here also, and in face of his congregation, to wield the sword of his eloquence against that authority, and this he did with a zeal regardless of consequences. In all that he did, in his lectures as well as in his sermons, in his exposition of God’s word in particular, as in his own polemics, he always threw his whole personality into the subject. We see him inwardly moved and often elated by the joyful message which he himself had learned, and had to announce to others, inspired by love to his fellow-Christians, whom he would wish to help save, and zealous even to anger for the cause of his Lord. At the same time, it cannot be denied that he was often carried away by the vehemence of his views, which saw at once in every opponent an uncompromising enemy to the truth; and that his naturally passionate temperament was often powerfully stirred, though even then his whole tone and demeanour was blended with outbursts of the noblest and the purest zeal.
In his academical lectures Luther still remained faithful to that path which he had struck out on entering the theological faculty. He wished simply to propound the revealed word of God, by explaining the books of the Old and New Testaments; though he took pains in these lectures, in which he devoted several terms to the study of a single book, to explain thoroughly and impressively the most important doctrines of Christian faith and conduct. Thus he occupied himself during the time of the contest about indulgences, and after the autumn of 1516, with the Epistle to the Galatians, wherein he found comprised clearly and briefly the fundamental truth of salvation, the doctrine of the way of faith, of God’s laws of requirements and punishments, and of gospel grace. He then turned anew to the Psalms, dissatisfied with his own earlier exposition of them. His exposition of St. Paul’s Epistle he had sent to the press whilst engaged in his preparations for the Leipzig disputation. His opponents, he says here, might busy themselves with their much larger affairs, with their indulgences, their Papal bulls, and the power of the Church, and so on; he would retire to smaller matters, to the Holy Scriptures and to the Apostle, who called himself not a prince of Apostles, but the least of the Apostles. He also now began the printing of his work on the Psalms.
Crowds of listeners gathered around him; his audience at times numbered upwards of four hundred. During the three years following the outbreak of the quarrel about indulgences, the number of those who matriculated annually at the university increased threefold. Luther wrote to Spalatin that the number of students increased mightily, like an overflowing river; the town could no longer contain them, many had to leave again for want of dwellings.
To this prosperity of the university Melancthon especially contributed. He had been appointed, as we have already mentioned, first professor of Greek by the Elector, and in addition to the young theologians, he attracted a number of other students to his lectures. Of still greater importance for Luther and his work, was the personal friendship and community of ideas, convictions, and aspirations which had bound the two men together in close intimacy from their first acquaintance. Their paths in life had hitherto been very different. Philip Schwarzerd, surnamed Melancthon, born in 1497 of a burgher’s family of the little town of Bretten in the Palatinate, had passed a happy youth, and harmoniously and peacefully developed into manhood. He had had from early life capable teachers for his education, and was under the protection of the great philologist Reuchlin, who was a brother of his grandmother. He then showed gifts of mind wonderfully rich and early ripening. Besides the classics, he learnt mathematics, astronomy, and law. He also studied the Scriptures, grew to love them, and even when a youth had made himself familiar with their contents, without having had first to learn to know their worth by a heavy sense of inward need, by inward struggles or a long unsatisfied hunger of the soul. Thus, at seventeen he was already master of arts, and at twenty-one was appointed professor at Wittenberg. The young man, with an insignificant, delicate frame, and a shy, awkward demeanour, yet with a handsome, powerful forehead, an intellectual eye, and refined, thoughtful features, effaced at once, by his inaugural address, any doubts arising from his youthful appearance.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.–MELANCTHON. (From a Portrait by Durer.)]
In this speech, however, he already declared that the chief object of classical studies was to teach theologians to draw from the original fount of Holy Scripture. He himself delivered a lecture on the New Testament immediately after one on Homer. And it was the Lutheran conception of the doctrine of salvation which he adopted in his own continued study of the Bible.
The year of his arrival at Wittenberg he celebrated Luther in a poem. He accompanied him to Leipzig. During the disputation there he is said to have assisted his friend with occasional suggestions or notes of argument, and thereby to have roused the anger of Eck. He now took the lowest theological degree of bachelor, to qualify himself for giving theological lectures on Scripture. He who from early youth had enjoyed so abundantly the treasures of Humanistic learning, and had won for himself the admiration of an Erasmus, now found in this study of Scripture a ‘heavenly ambrosia’ for his soul, and something much higher than all human wisdom. And already, in independent judgment on the traditional doctrines of the Church, he not only kept pace with Luther but even outwent him. It was he who attacked the dogma of transubstantiation, according to which in the mass the bread and wine of the sacrament are so changed by the consecration of the priest into the body and blood of our Lord, that nothing really remains of their original substance, but they only appear to the senses to retain it.
Luther at once recognised with joy the marvellous wealth of talent and knowledge in his new colleague, whose senior he was by fourteen years, besides being far ahead of him in theological study and experience. We have seen, during Luther’s stay at Augsburg, how closely his heart clung to Melancthon and to the ‘sweet intercourse’ with him; we know of no other instance where Luther formed a friendship so rapidly. The more intimately he knew him, the more highly he esteemed him. When Eck spoke slightingly of him as a mere paltry grammarian, Luther exclaimed, ‘I, the doctor of philosophy and theology, am not ashamed to yield the point, if this grammarian’s mind thinks differently to myself; I have done so often already, and do the same daily, because of the gifts with which God has so richly filled this fragile vessel; I honour the work of my God in him.’ ‘Philip,’ he said at another time, ‘is a wonder to us all; if the Lord will, he will beat many Martins as the mightiest enemy to the devil and Scholasticism;’ and again, ‘This little Greek is even my master in theology.’ Such were Luther’s words, not uttered to particular friends of Melancthon, in order to please them, nor in public speeches or poetry, in which at that time friends showered fulsome flattery on friends, but in confidential letters to his own most intimate friends, to Spalatin, Staupitz, and others. So willing and ready was he, whilst himself on the road to the loftiest work and successes, to give precedence to this new companion whom God had given him. Luther also interested himself with Spalatin to obtain a higher salary for Melancthon, and thus keep him at Wittenberg. In common with other friends, he endeavoured to induce him to marry; for he needed a wife who would care for his health and household better than he did himself. His marriage actually took place in 1520, after he had at first resisted, in order to allow no interruption to his highest enjoyment, his learned studies.
At the university Luther was also busily engaged with the necessary preparations for many lectures that were not theological. He steadily persisted in his efforts to secure the appointment of a competent professor of Hebrew. He also worked hard to get a qualified printer, the son of the printer Letter at Leipzig, to settle at the university, and set up there for the first time a press for three languages, German, Latin, and Greek. For everything of this kind that was submitted to the Elector, who took a constant interest in the prosperity of the university, his friend Spalatin was his confidential intermediary. As early as 1518 Luther had expressed to him the wish and hope that Wittenberg, in honour of Frederick the Wise, should, by a new arrangement of study, become the occasion and pattern for a general reform of the universities. In addition to his constant and arduous labours of various kinds, he took part also in the social intercourse of his colleagues, although he complained of the time he lost by invitations and entertainments.
In the town church at Wittenberg he continued his active duties not only on Sundays but during the week. His custom was to expound consecutively in a course of sermons the Old and New Testaments, and he explained particularly to children and those under age, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments. This work alone, he once complained to Spalatin, required properly a man for it and nothing else. These services he gave to the town congregation gratuitously. The magistracy were content to recognise them by trifling presents now and then; for instance, by a gift of money on his return from Leipzig, where he had had to live on his own very scanty means. In simple, powerful, and thoroughly popular language, Luther sought to bring home to the people who filled his church, the supreme truth he had newly gained. Here in particular he employed his own peculiar German, as he employed it also in his writings.
Both he and Melancthon formed a close personal intimacy with several worthy townsmen of Wittenberg. The most prominent man among them, the painter Lucas Cranach, from Bamberg, owner of a house and estate at Wittenberg, the proprietor of an apothecary’s and also of a stationer’s business, besides being a member of the magistracy, and finally burgomaster, belonged to the circle of Luther’s nearest friends. Luther took a genuine pleasure in Cranach’s art, and the latter, in his turn, soon employed it in the service of the Reformation.
[Illustration: Fig. l8.–LUCAS CRANACH. (From a Portrait by himself.)]
While occupied thus in delivering simple and practical sermons to his congregation in the town, he continued to publish written works of the same character and purport, in addition to his labours in the field of learned ecclesiastical controversy, thus showing the love with which he worked for them at large in this matter. These writings were little books, tracts, so-called sermons. It did not disturb him, he once said, to hear daily of certain people who despised his poverty because he only wrote little books and German sermons for the unlearned laymen. ‘Would to God,’ he said, ‘I had all my life long and with all my power served a layman to his improvement; I should then be content to thank God, and would very willingly after that let all my little books perish. I leave it to others to judge whether writing large books and a great number of them constitutes art and is useful to Christianity; I consider rather, even if I cared to write large books after their art, I might do that quicker, with God’s help, than making a little sermon in my fashion. I have never compelled or entreated anyone to listen to me or read my sermons. I have given freely to the congregation of what God has given to me and I owe to them; whoever does not like His word, let him read and listen to others.’
In this spirit he composed, after the Leipzig disputation, a little consolatory tract for Christians, full of reflection and wisdom. He dedicated it to the Elector, an illness of whom had prompted him to write it. Even his most bigoted opponents could not withhold their approbation of the work. Luther’s pupil and biographer Mathesius, thought there had never been such words of comfort written before in the German language. In a similar strain Luther wrote about preparation for dying, the contemplation of Christ’s sufferings, and other matters of like kind. He explained to the people in a few pages the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. At the desire of the Elector, conveyed to him through Spalatin, and notwithstanding the difficulty he had in finding time for such a large work, he applied himself to a practical exposition of the Epistles and Gospels read in church, intended principally for the use of preachers.
At the same time he made steady progress with his own Scriptural researches, which led him away more and more from the main articles of the purely traditional doctrines of the Church. And the light which dawned upon him in these studies he took pains to impart at once to his congregation. But it was no mere negative or hypercritical interest that led him on and induced him to write. In connection with the saving efficacy of faith, which he had gathered from the Bible, new truths, full of import, unfolded themselves before him. On the other hand, such dogmas of the Church as he found to have no warrant in Scripture, nor to harmonise with the Scriptural doctrine of salvation, frequently faded from his notice, and perished even before he was fully conscious of their hollowness. The new knowledge had ripened with him before the old husk was thrown away.
Thus he now learnt and taught others to understand anew the meaning of the Christian sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The Church of the middle ages beheld with wonder in this sacrament the miracle of transubstantiation. The body of our Lord, moreover, here present as the object of adoration, was to serve above all as the bloodless repetition of the bloody sacrifice for sin on Golgotha, to be offered to God for the good of Christendom and mankind. To offer that sacrifice was the highest act which the priesthood could boast of, as being thought worthy to perform by God. This whole mysterious, sacred transaction was clothed in the mass, for the eye and ear of the members of the congregation, with a number of ritualistic forms. In giving them, moreover, the consecrated elements in the sacrament, the priest alone partook of the cup. Luther, on the contrary, found the whole meaning of that institution of the departing Saviour, according to His own words, ‘Take, eat, and drink,’ in the blessed and joyful communion here prepared by Him for the congregation of receivers, each one of whom was verily to partake of it in faith. Here, as he taught in a sermon on the Sacrament in 1519, they were to celebrate and enjoy real communion; communion with the Saviour, who feeds them with His flesh and blood; communion with one another, that they, eating of one bread, should become one cake, one bread, one body united in love; communion in all the benefits purchased by their Saviour and Head; and communion also in all gifts of grace bestowed upon His people, in all sufferings to be endured, and in all virtues alive in their hearts. Above all, he appealed to Christ’s own words, that He had shed His blood for the forgiveness of sins. Here at His holy Supper, He wished to dispense this forgiveness, and, with it, eternal life to all His guests; He pledged it to them here by the gift of His own body. Luther, but only incidentally, remarked in this sermon, when speaking of the cup: ‘I should be well pleased to see the Church decree in a General Council, that communion in _both kinds_ should be given to the laity as to the priests.’ Even then he regarded as unfounded that idea of sacrifice at the mass which in his later writings he so strenuously denied and combated. At the same time he pointed out the sacrifice which Christendom, and indeed every Christian, must continually offer to God, namely, the sacrifice to God of himself and all that he possesses, offered with inward humility, prayer, and thankfulness. The question as to a change of the elements, which Melancthon had already denied, Luther passed by as an unnecessary subtlety. Lastly, together with the sacrifice supposed to be offered by the priest, he dismissed also the notion of a peculiar priesthood; for with the real sacrifice offered by Christians, as he understood it, all became priests. Instead of the difference theretofore existing between priests and laymen, he would recognise no difference among Christians but such as was conferred by the public ministration of God’s word and sacrament.
Whilst discoursing in a sermon, in a similar manner, on the inner meaning of baptism, he passed from the vow of baptism to the vow of chastity, so highly prized in the Catholic Church. He admits this vow, but represents the former one as so immeasurably higher and all-embracing, as to deprive the Church of her grounds for attaching such value to the latter.
He enlarged on moral and religious life in general in a long sermon ‘On Good Works,’ which he dedicated early in 1520 to Duke John, the brother of the Elector. In clear and earnest language he explained how faith itself, on which everything depended, was a matter of innermost moral life and conduct, nay, the very highest work conformable to God’s will; and further, how that same faith cannot possibly remain merely passive, but, on the contrary, the faithful Christian must himself become pleasing to God, on whose grace he relies, must love Him again, and fulfil His holy Will with energy and activity in all duties and relations of life. These duties he proceeds to explain according to the Ten Commandments. He will not, however, have the conscience further laden with duties imposed by the Church, for which no corresponding moral obligation exists. He turns then with earnest exhortation to rebuke certain common faults and crimes in the public life of his nation, the gluttony and drunkenness, the excessive luxury, the loose living, and the usury, which was then the subject of so much complaint. Against this last practice he preached a special sermon, in which, agreeably with the older teaching of the Church, he spoke of all interest taken for money as questionable, inasmuch as Jesus had exhorted only to lending without looking for a return. The creditor, at any rate, he said, should take his share of the risks to which his capital, in the hands of the debtor, was exposed from accident or misadventure.
The essence of the Church of Christ he placed in that inner communion of the faithful with one another and their heavenly Head, on which he dwelt with such emphasis in connection with the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. For the stability and prosperity of this Church he considered no externals necessary beyond the preaching of God’s Word and the administration of the Sacraments, as ordained by Christ,–no Romish Popedom, nor any other hierarchical arrangements. But in the same spirit of love and brotherly fellowship with which he embraced Hussites, as well as the Eastern Christians who were denounced as Schismatics, he still wished to hold fast to the visible community of the Church of Rome, declining to identify it with the corrupt Romish Curia. That love, he said, should make him assist and sympathise with the Church, even in her infirmities and faults.
He was anxious also to fulfil personally all the minor duties incumbent on him as a monk and a priest. And yet the higher obligations of his calling, that incessant activity in proclaiming the word, both by speech and writing, were of much greater importance in his eyes. He performed with diligence such duties as the regular repetition of prayers, singing, reading the _Horae_, and never dreamed of venturing to omit them. He relates afterwards, how wonderfully industrious he had been in this respect. Often, if he happened to neglect these duties during the week, he would make up for it in the course of the Sunday from early morning till the evening, going without his breakfast and dinner. In vain his friend Melancthon represented to him that, if the neglect were such a sin, so foolish a reparation would not atone for it.
Measures, however, were now taken by the Romish Church and its representatives, which, by attacking the word, as he preached it, drove him further into the battle.
It will be remembered that the Papal bull, directed against his theses on indulgences, had not actually mentioned him by name. Contemptuously, therefore, as the Pope had spoken of him as an execrable heretic, he had never yet uttered a formal public judgment upon him. Two theological faculties, those of the universities of Cologne and Louvain, were the first to pronounce an official condemnation of him and his writings. The latter were to be burnt, and their author compelled publicly to recant. This sentence, though pronounced after the disputation at Leipzig, related only to a small collection of earlier writings. In a published reply he dismissed, not without scorn, these learned divines, who, in a spirit of vain self-exaltation and without the smallest grounds, had presumed to pass sentence on Christian verities. Their boasting, he said, was empty wind; their condemnation frightened him no more than the curse of a drunken woman.
The first official pronouncement of a German bishop touched him more nearly. This was a decree, issued in January 1520 by John, Bishop of Meissen, from his residence at Stolpen. Herein, Luther’s one statement about the cup, which the Church, as he said, would do well to restore to the laity, was picked out of his Sermon on the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The people were to be warned against the grievous errors and inconveniences which were bound to ensue from such a step; and the sermon was to be suppressed. Luther was now classed as an open ally of the Hussites, whose very ground of contention was the cup. Duke George in alarm complained of him to the Elector Frederick. It was rumoured about him even that he had been born and educated among the Bohemians.
To this episcopal note, which he ridiculed in a pun, Luther published a short and pungent reply in Latin and German. He was particularly indignant that this occasion should have been seized to tax his sermon with false doctrine, since the wish he there expressed did not contain, as even his enemies must admit, anything contrary to any dogma of the Church. For his enemies, no doubt, this one point was of more practical importance than many deviations from orthodoxy with which they might have reproached him in his doctrine of salvation; for it concerned a jealously guarded privilege of their priestly office, and was connected with the ‘Bohemian heresy.’ As for Huss, however, Luther now confessed without reserve the sympathy he shared with his evangelical teaching. He had learned to know him better since the Leipzig disputation. He now wrote to Spalatin: ‘I have hitherto, unconsciously, taught everything that Huss taught, and so did John Staupitz, in short we are all Hussites, without knowing it. Paul and Augustine are also Hussites. I know not, for very terror, what to think as to God’s fearful judgments among men, seeing that the most palpable evangelical truth known for more than a century, has been burnt and condemned, and nobody has ever ventured to say so.’
On the part of the Elector, Luther still continued to reap the benefit of that placid good-will which disregarded all attempts, either by friendly words or menaces, to set that prince against him. Luther for this thanked him publicly, without meeting with any demurrer from the Elector, as well in a dedication of the first part of his new work on the Psalms, which he had sent to the press early in 1519, as in another prefixed to his tract on Christian comfort, already noticed. This last work he had been encouraged to write by Spalatin, the confidant of the sick prince whom it was intended to please. In the dedication prefixed to the Psalms, he expressed his joy at hearing how Frederick had declared in a conversation reported by Staupitz, that all sermons, made by man’s wit and uttering man’s opinions, were cold and powerless, and the Scriptures alone inspired with such marvellous power and majesty that one must needs say, ‘There is something more there than mere Scribe and Pharisee; there is the finger of God;’ and how, when Staupitz had concurred in the remark, the prince had taken his hand and said, ‘Promise me that you will always think thus.’ Luther also thanked Frederick for having, as all his subjects knew, taken more care of his safety than he had done himself. In his thoughtlessness, he himself had thrown the die, and had already prepared himself for the worst, and only hoped to be able to retire into some corner, when his prince had come forward as his champion.
At the same time the Elector remained constant in his efforts to check the impetuosity of Luther. We have noticed how he encouraged him, through Spalatin, to peaceful work in the service of Christian preaching. When the episcopal missive from Stolpen threatened to make the storm break out afresh, he sent, by Spalatin, an urgent exhortation to Luther to restrain his pen, and further advised him to send letters of explanation, in a conciliatory spirit, to Albert, Archbishop of Magdeburg and Mayence, and the Bishop of Merseburg.
Luther wrote to both in a tone of perfect dignity. He begged them not to lend an ear to the complaints and calumniations which were being circulated against him, especially in reference to giving the cup to the laity, and to the Papal power, until the matter had been seriously examined. He spoke at the same time of malicious accusers, who on those points held secretly the same opinions as himself.
But from this contest with the Bishop of Meissen he refused to withdraw. To Spalatin he broke out again in February 1520, in terms more decided than any he had previously given vent to, and which led people to expect still sharper utterances. ‘Do not suppose,’ he said, ‘that the cause of Christ is to be furthered on earth in sweet peace: the Word of God can never be set forth without danger and disquiet: it is a Word of infinite majesty, it works great things, and is wonderful among the great and the high; it slew, as the prophet says (Psalm lxxviii. 31), the wealthiest of them, and smote down the chosen ones of Israel. In this matter one must either renounce peace or deny the Word; the battle is the Lord’s, who has not come to bring peace into the world.’ Again he says: ‘If you would think rightly of the Gospel, do not believe that its cause can be advanced without tumult, trouble, and uproar. You cannot make a pen out of a sword: the Word of God is a sword; it is war, overthrow, trouble, destruction, poison; it meets the children of Ephraim, as Amos says, like a bear on the road, or like a lioness in the wood.’ Of himself he adds: ‘I cannot deny that I am more violent than I ought to be; they know it, and therefore should not provoke the dog. How hard it is to moderate one’s heat and one’s pen you can learn for yourself. That is the reason why I was always unwilling to be forced to come forward in public; and the more unwilling I am, the more I am drawn into the contest; that this happens so is due to those scandalous libels which are heaped against me and the Word of God. So shameful are they that, even if my heat and my pen did not carry me away, a very heart of stone would be moved to seize a weapon, how much more myself, who am hot and whose pen is not entirely blunt.’
The two dignitaries of the Church answered not ungraciously. They merely expressed an opinion that he was too violent, and that his writings would have a questionable influence with the mass of the people. They refrained from giving judgment on the matter; a proof that, in the Catholic Church in Germany, the questions raised by Luther could not then have been considered of such importance as the upholders of the strict Papal system maintained and desired. Even Albert, the Cardinal, Archbishop, and Primate of the German Church, ventured to speak of the whole question about the Divine or merely human right of the Papacy as an insignificant affair, which had but little to do with real Christianity, and therefore should never have become the occasion of such passionate dispute.
From Rome was now awaited the supreme judicial decision as to Luther and his cause. The Pope had already in 1518 indicated clearly enough to Frederick the Wise in what sense he intended to give this decision. But it kept on being delayed, because, on the one hand, it still appeared necessary to act with caution and consideration, and, on the other, because Roman arrogance continued to underestimate the danger of the German movement. Meanwhile Eck, by a report of his disputation and by letters had stirred the fire at Rome. The theologians of Cologne and Louvain worked in the same direction, and called on the whole Dominican Order to assist them with their influence. The Papal pretensions which Luther had disputed were now for the first time proclaimed in all their fulness of audacity and exaggeration. Luther’s old opponent Prierias, in a new pamphlet, extended them to the temporal as well as the spiritual sovereignty of the world; the Pope, he said, was head of the Universe. Eck now devoted an entire treatise to justifying the Divine right of the Papal primacy, resting his proofs boldly, and without any attempt at critical inquiry, on spurious old documents. With this book he hastened in February 1520 to Rome, in order personally to push forward and assist in publishing the bull of excommunication which was to demolish his enemy and extinguish the flame he had kindled.
But Luther’s work, in proportion as it advanced and became bolder, had stirred already the minds of the people both wider and deeper. Opponents of Rome who had risen up against her in other quarters, on other grounds, and with other weapons, now ranged themselves upon his side. Among all alike the ardour of battle grew the more powerful and violent, the more it was attempted to smother them with edicts of arbitrary power.
CHAPTER VI.
ALLIANCE WITH THE HUMANISTS AND THE NOBILITY.
We have already seen how astonished Miltitz was at the sympathy with Luther which he found among all classes of the German people. The growth of this sympathy is shown in particular by the increasing number of printed editions of his writings; the perfect freedom then enjoyed by the press contributed largely to their wide circulation. In 1520 alone there were more than a hundred editions of Luther’s works in German. Though the ordinary book-trade as now carried on was then unknown, there were a multitude of colporteurs actively employed in going with books from house to house, some of them merely in the interests of their trade, others also as emissaries of those who were friends of the cause, thus intended to be furthered. As reading was a difficult matter to the masses, and even to many of the higher classes, there were travelling students who went about to different places, and proffered their assistance. The earnest, deeply instructive contents of Luther’s small popular tracts met the needs of both the educated and uneducated classes, in a manner never done by any other religious writings of that time, and served to stimulate their appetite for more. And to this was added the strong impression produced directly on their minds by the elementary exposition of his doctrine, irreconcilable with all notions of the Church system hitherto prevailing, and stigmatised by his enemies as poison. All, in short, that this condemned heretic wrote, became dear to the hearts of the people.
Luther found now, moreover, most valuable allies in the leading champions of that Humanistic movement, the importance of which, as regards the culture of the priesthood and the religious and ecclesiastical development of that time, we had occasion to notice during Luther’s residence at the university of Erfurt. That Humanism, more than anything else, represented the general aspiration of the age to attain a higher standard of learning and culture. The alliance between Luther and the Humanists inaugurated and symbolised the union between this culture and the Evangelical Reformation.
Luther, even before entering the convent, had formed a friendship with at least some of the young ‘poets,’ or enthusiasts of this new learning. Later on, when, after the inward struggles and heart-searchings of those gloomy years of monastic experience, the light dawned upon him of his Scriptural doctrine of salvation, we find him expressing his sympathy and reverence for the two leading spirits of the movement, Reuchlin and Erasmus; and this notwithstanding the fact that he never approved the method of defence adopted by the supporters of the former, nor could ever conceal his dislike of the attitude taken up by Erasmus in regard to theology and religion.
Meanwhile, such Humanists as wished to enjoy the utmost possible freedom for their own learned pursuits flocked around Reuchlin against his literary enemies, and cared very little about the authorities of the Church. The bold monk and his party excited neither their interest nor their concern. Many of them thought of him, no doubt, when he was engaged in the heat of the contest about indulgences, as did Ulrich von Hutten, who wrote to a friend: ‘A quarrel has broken out at Wittenberg between two hot-headed monks, who are screaming and shouting against each other. It is to be hoped that they will eat one another up.’ To such men the theological questions at issue seemed not worth consideration. At the same time they took care to pay all necessary respect to the princes of the Church, who had shown favour to them personally and to their learning, and did homage to them, notwithstanding much that must have shocked them in their conduct as ecclesiastics. Thus Hutten did not scruple to enter the service of the same Archbishop Albert who had opened the great traffic in indulgences in Germany, but who was also a patron of literature and art, and was only too glad to be recognised publicly by an Erasmus. We hear nothing of any remonstrances made to him by Erasmus himself. In the same spirit that dictated the above remark of Hutten, Mosellanus, who opened with a speech the disputation at Leipzig, wrote to Erasmus during the preparations for that event. There will be a rare battle, he said, and a bloody one, coming off between two Scholastics; ten such men as Democritus would find enough to laugh over till they were tired. Moreover, Luther’s fundamental conception of religion, with his doctrine of man’s sinfulness and need of salvation, so far from corresponding, was in direct antagonism with that Humanistic view of life which seemed to have originated from the devotion to classical antiquity, and to revive the proud, self-satisfied, independent spirit of heathendom. Even in an Erasmus Luther had thought he perceived an inability to appreciate his new doctrine.
Melancthon’s arrival at Wittenberg was, in this respect, an event of the first importance. This highly-gifted young man, who had united in his person all the learning and culture of his time, whose mind had unfolded in such beauty and richness, and whose personal urbanity had so endeared him to men of culture wherever he went, now found his true happiness in that gospel and in that path of grace which Luther had been the first to make known. And whilst offering the right hand of fellowship to Luther, he continued working with energy in his own particular sphere, kept up his intimacy with his fellow-labourers therein, and won their respect and admiration. Humanists at a distance, meanwhile, must have noticed the fact, that the most violent attacks against Luther proceeded from those very quarters, as for instance, from Hoogstraten, and afterwards from the theological faculty at Cologne, where Reuchlin had been the most bitterly persecuted. At length the actual details of the disputation between Luther and Eck opened men’s eyes to the magnitude of the contest there waged for the highest interests of Christian life and true Christian knowledge, and to the greatness of the man who had ventured single-handed to wage it.
At Erfurt Luther had found already in the spring of 1518, on his return from the meeting of his Order at Heidelberg, in pleasing contrast to the displeasure he had aroused among his old teachers there, a spirit prevailing among the students of the university, which gave him hope that true theology would pass from the old to the young, just as once Christianity, rejected by the Jews, passed from them to the heathen. Those well-wishers and advisers who took his part at Augsburg, when he had to go thither to meet Caietan, were friends of Humanistic learning. Among the earliest of those, outside Wittenberg, who united that learning with the new tendency of religious teaching, we find some prominent citizens of the flourishing town of Nuremberg, where, as we have seen, Luther’s old friend Link was also actively engaged. Already before the contest about indulgences broke out, the learned jurist Scheuerl of that place had made friends with Luther, whom the next year he speaks of as the most celebrated man in Germany. The most important of the Humanists there, Willibald Pirkheimer, a patrician of high esteem and an influential counsellor, and who had once held local military command, corresponded with Luther, and after learning from him the progress of his views and studies concerning the Papal power, made his Leipzig opponent the object of a bitter anonymous satire, ‘The Polished Corner’ (Eck). Another learned Nuremberger, the Secretary of the Senate, Lazarus Spengler, was on terms of close Christian fellowship with Luther: he published in 1519 a ‘Defence and Christian Answer,’ which contained a powerful and worthy vindication of Luther’s popular tracts. Albert Durer also, the famous painter, took a deep interest in Luther’s evangelical doctrine, and revered him as a man inspired by the Holy Ghost. Among the number of theologians who ranked next to Erasmus, the well-known John Oecolampadius, then a preacher at Augsburg, and almost of the same age as Luther, came forward in his support, towards the end of 1519, with a pamphlet directed against Eck. Erasmus himself in 1518, at least in a private letter to Luther’s friend Lange at Erfurt, of which the latter we may be sure did not leave Luther in ignorance, declared that Luther’s theses were bound to commend themselves to all good men, almost without exception; that the present Papal domination was a plague to Christendom; the only question was whether tearing open the wound would do any good, and whether it was not conceivable that the matter could be carried through without an actual rupture.
Luther, on his part, approached Reuchlin and Erasmus by letter. To the former he wrote, at the urgent entreaty of Melancthon, in December 1518, to the latter in the following March. Both letters are couched in the refined language befitting these learned men, and particularly Erasmus, and contain warm expressions of respect and deference, though in a tone of perfect dignity, and free from the hyperboles to which Erasmus was usually treated by his common admirers. At the same time Luther was careful indeed to conceal the other and less favourable side of his estimate of Erasmus, which he had already formed in his own mind and expressed to his friends. We can see how bent he was, notwithstanding, upon a closer intimacy with that distinguished man.
Reuchlin, then an old man, would have nothing to do with Luther and the questions he had raised. He even sought to alienate his nephew Melancthon from him, by bidding him abstain from so perilous an enterprise.
[Illustration: Fig. l9.–W. PIRKHEIMER. (From a Portrait by Albert Durer.)]
Erasmus replied with characteristic evasion. He had not yet read Luther’s writings, but he advised everyone to read them before crying them down to the people. He himself believed that more was to be gained by quietness and moderation than by violence, and he felt bound to warn him in the spirit of Christ against all intemperate and passionate language; but he did not wish to admonish Luther what to do, but only to continue steadfastly what he was doing already. The chief thought to which he gives expression is the earnest hope that the movement kindled by Luther’s writings would not give occasion to opponents to accuse and suppress the ‘noble arts and letters.’ A regard for these, which indeed were the object of his own high calling, was always of paramount importance in his eyes. Not content with attacking by means of ridicule the abuses in the Church, Erasmus took a genuine interest in the improvement of its general condition, and in the elevation and refinement of moral and religious life, as well as of theological science; and the high esteem he enjoyed made him an influential man among even the superior clergy and the princes of the Church. But from the first he recognised, as he says in his letter to Lange, and possibly better than Luther himself, the difficulties and dangers of attacking the Church system on the points selected by Luther. And when Luther boldly anticipated the disturbances which the Word must cause in the world, and dwelt on Christ’s saying that He had come to bring a sword, Erasmus shrank back in terror at the thought of tumult and destruction. Conformably with the whole bent of his natural disposition and character, he adhered anxiously to the peaceful course of his work and the pursuit of his intellectual pleasures. Questions involving deep principles, such as those of the Divine right of the Papacy, the absolute character of Church authority, or the freedom of Christian judgment, as founded on the Bible, he regarded from aloof; notwithstanding that silence or concealment towards either party, when once these principles were publicly put in question, was bound to be construed as a denial of the truth.
We shall see how this same standpoint, from which this learned man still retained his inward sympathy with Church matters, dictated further his attitude towards Luther and the Reformation. For the present, Luther had to thank the good opinion of Erasmus, cautiously expressed though it was, for a great advancement of his cause. It was valuable to Luther in regard to those who had no personal knowledge of him, as giving them conclusive proof that his character and conduct were irreproachable. His influence is apparent in the answer of the Archbishop Albert to Luther, in its tone of gracious reticence, and its remarks about needless contention. Erasmus had written some time before to the Archbishop, contrasting the excesses charged against Luther with those of the Papal party, and denouncing the corruptions of the Church, and particularly the lack of preachers of the gospel. Much to the annoyance of Erasmus, this letter was published, and it worked more in Luther’s favour than he wished.
Those hopes which Luther had placed in the young students at Erfurt were shortly fulfilled by the so-called ‘poets’ beginning now to read and expound the New Testament. The theology, which, in its Scholastic and monastic form, they regarded with contempt, attracted them as knowledge of the Divine Word. Justus Jonas, Luther’s junior by ten years, a friend of Eoban Hess, and one of the most talented of the circle of young ‘poets,’ now exchanged for theology the study of the law, which he had already begun to teach. To his respect for Erasmus was now added an enthusiastic admiration for Luther, the courageous Erfurt champion of this new evangelical doctrine. A close intimacy sprang up between Jonas and Luther, as also between Jonas and Luther’s friend Lange. Erasmus had persuaded him to take up theology; Luther, on hearing of it in 1520, congratulated him on taking refuge from the stormy sea of law in the asylum of the Scriptures.
None of the old Erfurt students, however, had cultivated Luther’s friendship more zealously than Crotus, his former companion at that university; and this even from Italy, where his sympathies with Luther had been stirred by the news from Germany, and where he had learned to realise, from the evidence of his eyes, the full extent of the scandals and evils against which Luther was waging war. He, who in the ‘Epistolae Virorum Obscurorum,’ had failed to exhibit in his satire the solemn earnestness which recommended itself to Luther’s taste and judgment, now openly declared his concurrence with Luther’s fundamental ideas of religion and theology, and his high appreciation of Scripture and of the Scriptural doctrine of salvation. He wrote repeatedly to him, reminding him of their days together at Erfurt, telling him about the ‘Plague-chair’ at Rome, and the intrigues carried on there by Eck, and encouraging him to persevere in his work. Expressions common to the ‘poets’ of his university days were curiously mingled in his letters with others of a religious kind. He would like to glorify, as a father of their fatherland, worthy of a golden statue and an annual festival, his friend Martin, who had been the first to venture to liberate the people of God, and show them the way to true piety. Not only from Italy, but also after his return, he employed his characteristic literary activity, by means of anonymous pamphlets, in the service of Luther. It was he who, towards the end of 1519, sent from Italy to Luther and Melancthon at Wittenberg, the Humanist theologian, John Hess, afterwards the reformer of the Church at Breslau. Crotus himself returned in the spring of 1520 to Germany.
[Illustration: Fig. 20.–ULRICH VON HUTTEN. (From an old woodcut.)]
Here these Humanist friends of the Lutheran movement had already been joined by Crotus’ personal friend, Ulrich von Hutten, who not only could wield his pen with more vigour and acuteness than almost all his associates, but who declared himself ready to take up the sword for the cause he defended, and to call in powerful allies of his own class to the fight. He sprang from an old Franconian family, the heirs, not indeed of much wealth or property, but of an old knightly spirit of independence. Hatred of monasticism and all that belonged to it, must have been nursed by him from youth; for having been placed, when a boy, in a convent, he ran away with the aid of Crotus, when only sixteen. Sharing the literary tastes of his friend, he learned to write with proficiency the poetical and rhetorical Latin of the Humanists of that time. In spite of all his irregularities, adventures, and unsettlement of habits, he had preserved an elastic and elevated turn of mind, desirous of serving the interests of a ‘free and noble learning,’ and a knightly courage, which urged him to the fight with a frankness and straightforwardness not often found among his fellow-Humanists. Whilst laughing at Luther’s controversy as a petty monkish quarrel, he himself dealt a heavy blow to the traditional pretensions of the Papacy by the republication of a work by the famous Italian Humanist Laurentius Valla, long since dead, on the pretended donation of Constantine, in which the writer exposed the forgery of the edict purporting to grant the possession of Rome, Italy, and indeed the entire Western world to the Roman see. This work Hutten actually dedicated to Pope Leo himself. But what distinguished this knight and Humanist above all the others who were contending on behalf of learning and against the oppressions and usurpations of the Church and monasticism, were his thoroughly German sympathies, and his zeal for the honour and independence of his nation. He saw her enslaved in ecclesiastical bondage to the Papal see, and at the mercy of the avarice and caprice of Rome. He heard with indignation how scornfully the ‘rough and simple Germans’ were spoken of in Italy, how even on German soil the Roman emissaries openly paraded their arrogance, how some Germans, unworthy of the name, pandered to such scorn and contempt by a cringing servility which made them crouch before the Papal chair and sue for favour and office. He warned them to prepare for a mighty outburst of German liberty, already well-nigh strangled by Rome. At the same time he denounced the vices of his own countrymen, particularly that of drunkenness, and the proneness to luxury and usurious dealing in trade and commerce, all of which, as we have seen, had been complained of by Luther. Nor less than of the honour of Germany herself, was he jealous of the honour and power of the Empire. In all that he did he was guided, perhaps involuntarily, but in a special degree, by the principles and interests of knighthood. His order was indebted to the Empire for its chief support, although the imperial authority no less than that of his own class, had sunk in a great measure through the increasing power of the different princes. In the prosperous middle class of Germany he saw the spirit of trade prevailing to an excess, with its attendant evils. In the firmly-settled regulations of law and order, which had been established in Germany with great trouble at the end of the middle ages, he felt most out of his element: he longed rather to resort to the old method of force whenever he saw justice trampled on. And in this respect also Hutten proved true to the traditions of knighthood.
But in the material power required to give effect to his ideas of reform in the kindred spheres of politics and of the Church in her external aspect, Hutten was entirely wanting. More than this, we fail to find in him any clear and positive plans or projects of reform, nor any such calm and searching insight into the relations and problems before him as was indispensable for that object. His call, however rousing and stirring it was, died away in the distance of time and the dimness of uncertainty.
Hutten found, however, an active and powerful friend, and one versed in war and politics, in Francis von Sickingen, the ‘knight of manly, noble, and courageous spirit,’ as an old chronicler describes him. He was the owner of fine estates, among them the strong castles of Landstuhl near Kaiserslautern, and Ebernburg near Kreuznach, and had already, in a number of battles conducted on his own account and to redress the wrongs of others, given ample proof of his energy and skill in raising hosts of rustic soldiery, and leading them with reckless valour, in pursuit of his objects, to the fray. Hutten won him over to support the cause of Reuchlin, still entangled in a prosecution by his old accusers of heresy, Hoogstraten and the Dominicans at Cologne. A sentence of the Bishop of Spires, rejecting the charges of his opponents, and mulcting them in the costs of the suit, had been annulled, at their instance, by the Pope. Against them and against the Dominican Order in particular, Sickingen now declared his open enmity, and his sympathy with the ‘good old doctor Reuchlin.’ In spite of delay and resistance, they were forced to pay the sum demanded. Meanwhile, no doubt under the influence of his friend Crotus, Hutten’s eyes were opened about the monk Luther. During a visit in January 1520 to Sickingen at his castle of Landstuhl, he consulted with him as to the help to be given to the man now threatened with excommunication, and Sickingen offered him his protection. Hutten at the same time proceeded to launch the most violent controversial diatribes and satires against Rome; one in particular, called ‘The Roman Trinity,’ wherein he detailed in striking triplets the long series of Romish pretensions, trickeries, and vexatious abuses. At Easter he held a personal interview at Bamberg with Crotus, on his return from Italy.
For the furtherance of their objects and desires, in respect to the affairs of Germany and the Church these two knights placed high hopes in the new young Emperor, who had left Spain, and on the 1st of July landed on the coast of the Netherlands. Sickingen had earned merit in his election. He had hoped to find in him a truly German Emperor, in contrast to King Francis of France, who was a competitor for the imperial crown. The Pope, as we have seen, had opposed his election; his chief advocate, on the contrary, was Luther’s friend, the Elector Frederick. Support was also looked for from Charles’ brother Ferdinand, as being a friend of arts and letters. Hutten even hoped to obtain a place at his court.
[Illustration: Fig. 2l.–FRANCIS VON SICKINGEN. (From an old engraving.)]
On this side, therefore, and from these quarters, Luther was offered a friendly hand.
We hear Hutten first mentioned by Luther in February 1520, in connection with his edition of the work of Valla. This work, though published two years before, had been made known to Luther then, for the first time, by a friend. It had awakened his keenest interest; the falsehoods exposed in its pages confirmed him in his opinion that the Pope was the real Antichrist.
Shortly after, a letter from Hutten reached Melancthon, containing Sickingen’s offer of assistance; a similar communication forwarded to him some weeks before, had never reached its destination. Sickingen had charged Hutten to write to Luther, but Hutten was cautious enough to make Melancthon the medium, in order not to let his dealings with Luther be known. Sickingen, he wrote, invited Luther, if menaced with danger, to stay with him, and was willing to do what he could for him. Hutten added that Sickingen might be able to do as much for Luther as he had done for Reuchlin; but Melancthon would see for himself what Sickingen had then written to the monks. He spoke, with an air of mystery, of negotiations of the highest importance between Sickingen and himself; he hoped it would fare badly with the Barbarians, that is, the enemies of learning,–and all those who sought to bring them under the Romish yoke. With such objects in view, he had hopes even of Ferdinand’s support. Crotus, meanwhile, after his interview with Hutten at Bamberg, advised Luther not to despise the kindness of Sickingen, the great leader of the German nobility. It was rumoured that Luther, if driven from Wittenberg, would take refuge among the Bohemians. Crotus earnestly warned him against doing so. His enemies, he said, might force him to do so, knowing, as they did, how hateful the name of Bohemian was in Germany. Hutten himself wrote also to Luther, encouraging him, in pious Scriptural language, to stand firm and persevere in working with him for the liberation of their fatherland. He repeated to him the invitation of N., (he did not mention his name,) and assured him that the latter would defend him with vigour against his enemies of every kind.
Another invitation, at the same time, and of the same purport, came to Luther from the knight Silvester von Schauenburg. He too had heard that Luther was going to the Bohemians. He was willing, however, to protect him from his enemies, as were also a hundred other nobles whom with God’s help he would bring with him, until his cause was decided in a right and Christian manner.
Whether Luther really entertained the thought of flying to Bohemia, we cannot determine with certainty. But we know with what seriousness, as early as the autumn of 1518, after he had refused to retract to the Papal legate, he anticipated the duty and necessity of leaving Wittenberg. How much more forcibly must the thoughts have recurred to him, when the news arrived of the impending decision at Rome, of the warning received from there by the Elector, and of the protest uttered even in Germany, and by such a prince as Duke George of Saxony, against any further toleration of his proceedings. The refuge which Luther had previously looked for at Paris was no longer to be hoped for. Since the Leipzig disputation he had advanced in his doctrines, and especially in his avowed support of Huss, far beyond what the university of Paris either liked or would endure.
Such then was Luther’s position when he received these invitations. They must have stirred him as distinct messages from above. The letters in which he replied to them have not been preserved to us. We hear, however, that he wrote to Hutten, saying that he placed greater hopes in Sickingen than in any prince under heaven. Schauenburg and Sickingen, he says, had freed him from the fear of man; he would now have to withstand the rage of demons. He wished that even the Pope would note the fact that he could now find protection from all his thunderbolts, not indeed in Bohemia, but in the very heart of Germany; and that, under this protection, he could break loose against the Romanists in a very different fashion to what he could now do in his official position.
As he reviewed, in the course of the contest, the proceedings of his enemies, and was further informed of the conduct of the Papal see, the picture of corruption and utter worthlessness, nay the antichristian character of the Church system at Rome, unfolded itself more and more painfully and fully before his eyes. The richest materials for this conclusion he found in the pamphlets of the writers already referred to, and in the descriptions sent from Italy by men like Hess and others, who shared his own convictions.
All this time, moreover, Luther’s feelings as a German were more and more stirred within him, while thinking of what German Christianity in particular was compelled to suffer at the hands of Rome. A lively consciousness of this had been awakened in his mind since the Diet of Augsburg in 1518, with its protest against the claims of the Papacy, its statement of the grievances of the German nation, and the vigorous writings on that subject which were circulated at that time. He referred in 1519 to that Diet, as having drawn a distinction between the Romish Church and the Romish Curia, and repudiated the latter with its demands. As for the Romanists, who made the two identical, they looked on a German as a simple fool, a lubberhead, a dolt, a barbarian, a beast, and yet they laughed at him for letting himself be fleeced and pulled by the nose. Luther’s words were now re-echoed in louder tones by Hutten, whose own wish, moreover, was to incite his fellow-countrymen, as such, to rise and betake themselves to battle.
There were certain of the laity who had already brought these German grievances in Church matters before the Diets, and who now gave vent in pamphlets to their denunciations of the corruption and tyranny of the Romish Church. As for Luther, he valued the judgment of a Christian layman, who had the Bible on his side, as highly, and higher, than that of a priest and prince of the Church, and ascribed the true character of a priest to all Christians alike: these Estates of the Augsburg Diet he speaks of as ‘lay theologians.’ Leading laymen of the nobility now came forward and offered to assist him in his labours on behalf of the German Church. Both he and Melancthon placed their confidence also gladly in the new German Emperor.
Several letters of Luther at this time, closely following on each other, express at once the keenest enthusiasm for the contest, and the idea of a Reformation proceeding from the laity, represented, as he understood them, by their established authorities and Estates.
We find in these letters powerful effusions of holy zeal and language full of Christian instruction, mingled with the most vehement outbursts of the natural passion which was boiling in Luther’s breast. Compared with them, the cleverest controversial writings of the Humanists, and even the fiercest satires of Hutten, sound only like rhetoric and elaborate displays of wit.
Luther, in his Sermon on Good Works, already noticed as so replete with wholesome doctrine and advice, had already complained that God’s ministry was perverted into a means of supporting the lowest creatures of the Pope, and had declared that the best and only thing left was for kings, princes, nobles, towns, and parishes to set to work themselves, and ‘make a breach in the abuse,’ so that the hitherto intimidated clergy might follow. As for excommunication and threats, such things need not trouble them: they meant as little as if a mad father were to threaten his son who was guarding him.
The sharpest replies on the part of Luther were next provoked by two writings which justified and glorified the Divine authority and power of the Papacy. One was by a Franciscan friar, Augustin von Alveld; the other by Silvester Prierias, already mentioned, who was his most active opponent in this matter.
Luther broke out against ‘the Alveld Ass’ (as he called him in a letter to Spalatin) in a long reply entitled ‘The Popedom at Rome,’ with the object of exposing once and finally the secrets of Antichrist. ‘From Rome’ he says ‘flow all evil examples of spiritual and temporal iniquity into the world, as from a sea of wickedness. Whoever mourns to see it, is called by the Romans a ‘good Christian,’ or in their language, a fool. It was a proverb among them that one ought to wheedle the gold out of the German simpletons as much as one could.’ If the German princes and nobles did not ‘make short work of them in good earnest,’ Germany would either be devastated or would have to devour herself.
Prierias’ pamphlet provoked him to exclaim, in that same letter to Spalatin, ‘I think that at Rome they are all mad, silly, and raging, and have become mere fools, sticks and stones, hells and devils.’ His remarks on this pamphlet, written in Latin, contain the strongest words that we have yet heard from his lips about the ‘only means left,’ and the ‘short work’ to be made of Rome. Emperors, kings, and princes, he says, would yet have to take up the sword against the rage and plague of the Romanists. ‘When we hang thieves, and behead murderers, and burn heretics, why do not we lay hands on these Cardinals and Popes and all the rabble of the Romish Sodom, and bathe our hands in their blood?’ What Luther now in reality wished to see done, was, as he goes on to say, that the Pope should be corrected as Christ commands men to deal with their offending brethren (St. Matth. xviii. 15 sqq.), and, if he neglected to hear, should be held as an heathen man and a publican.
While these pages of Luther’s were in the press, towards the middle of June, Hutten, full of hope himself, and carrying with him the hopes of Luther and Melancthon, set off on his journey to the Emperor’s brother in the Netherlands, and, on his way, paid a visit at Cologne to the learned Agrippa von Nettesheim, accompanied, as the latter says, by a ‘few adherents of the Lutheran party.’ There, as Agrippa relates with terror, they expressed aloud their thoughts. ‘What have we to do with Rome and its Bishop?’ they asked. ‘Have we no Archbishops and Bishops in Germany, that we must kiss the feet of this one? Let Germany turn, and turn she will, to her own bishops and pastors.’ Hutten paid the expenses of this journey out of money given him by the Archbishop Albert; between these two, therefore, the bonds of friendship were not yet broken. Albert was the first of the German bishops; Hutten, and very possibly the Archbishop also, might reasonably suppose that a reform proceeding from the Emperor and the Empire, might place him at the head of a German National Church.
But Luther had already put his pen to a composition which was to summon the German laity to the grand work before them, to establish the foundations of Christian belief, and to set forth in full the most crying needs and aims of the time. He had resolved to give the strongest and amplest expression in his power to the truth for which he was contending.
CHAPTER VII.
LUTHER’S WORKS TO THE CHRISTIAN NOBILITY OF THE GERMAN NATION, AND ON THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY.
In a dedication to his friend and colleague Amsdorf, prefixed to the first of these works, he begins, ‘The time of silence is past, and the time for speaking is come.’ He had several points, he tells us, concerning the improvement of the Christian condition, to lay before the Christian nobility of Germany; perhaps God would help His Church through the laity, since the clergy had become entirely careless. If charged with presumption in venturing to address such high people on such great matters, so be it, then perhaps he was guilty of a folly towards his God and the world, and might one day become court-jester. But inasmuch as he was a sworn doctor of Holy Scripture, he rejoiced in the opportunity of satisfying his oath in this manner.
He then turns to the ‘Most illustrious, Most powerful Imperial Majesty, and to the Christian nobility of the German nation,’ with the greeting, ‘Grace and strength from God first of all, most illustrious, gracious, and beloved Lords!’
The need and troubles of Christendom, and especially of Germany, constrained him, as he said, to cry to God that He might inspire some one to stretch out his hand to the suffering nation. His hopes were in the noble young blood now given by God as her head. He would likewise do his part.
The Romanists, in order to prevent their being reformed, had shut themselves within three walls. Firstly, they said, the temporal power had no rights over them, the spiritual power, but the spiritual was above the temporal; secondly, the Scriptures, which were sought to be employed against them, could only be expounded by the Pope; thirdly, no one but the Pope could summon a Council. Against this, Luther calls to God for one of those trumpets which once blew down the walls of Jericho, in order to blow down also, these walls of straw and paper.
His assault upon the first wall was decisive for the rest. He accomplished it with his doctrine of the spiritual and priestly character of all Christians, who had been baptised and consecrated by the blood of Christ (1 Peter ii. 9; Rev. v. 10). Thus, according to Luther, they are all of one character, one rank. The only thing peculiar to the so-called ecclesiastics or priests, is the special office or work of ‘administering the Word of God and the Sacraments’ to the congregation. The power to do this is given, indeed, by God to all Christians as priests, but, being so given, cannot be assumed by an individual without the will and command of the community. The ordination of priests, as they are called, by a bishop can in reality only signify that, out of the collective body of Christians, all possessing equal power, one is selected, and commanded to exercise this power on behalf of the rest. They hold, therefore, this peculiar office, like their fellow-members of the community who are entrusted with temporal authority, namely, to wield the sword for the punishment of the bad and the protection of the good. They hold it, as every shoemaker, smith, or builder holds office in his particular trade, and yet all alike are priests. Moreover, this temporal magisterial power has the right to exercise its office free and unhindered in its own sphere of action; no Pope or bishop must here interfere, no so-called priest must usurp it.
As a consequence of this spiritual character of Christians, the second wall was also doomed to fall. Christ said of all Christians, that they shall all be taught of God (St. John vi. 45). Thus any man, however humble, if he was a true Christian, could have a right understanding of the Scriptures; and the Pope, if wicked and not a true Christian, was not taught of God. If the Pope alone were always in the right, one would have to pray ‘I believe in the Pope at Rome,’ and the whole Christian Church would then be centred in one man, which would be nothing short of devilish and hellish error. After this the third wall fell by itself. For, says Luther, when the Pope acts against the Scriptures, it is our duty to stand by the Scriptures and to punish him as Christ taught us to punish offending brethren