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EDITORS' PREFACE.
Theology has made great and rapid advances in receipt
years. New lines of investigation have been opened up,
fresh Hght has been cast upon many subjects of the deepest
interest, and the historical method has been applied with
important results. This has prepared the way for a Library
of Theological Science, and has created the demand for it.
It has also made it at once opportune and practicable now
to secure the services of specialists in the different depart-
ments of Theology, and to associate them in an enterprise
which will furnish a record of Theological inquiry up to
date.
This Library is designed to cover the whole field of Chris-
tian Theology. Each volume is to be complete in itself,
while, at the same time, it will form part of a carefully
planned whole. One of the Editors is to prepare a volume
of Theological Encyclopaedia which will give the history
and literature of each department, as well as of Theology
as a whole.
The Library is intended to form a series of Text-Books
for Students of Theology-
The Authors, therefore, aim at conciseness and compact-
ness of statement- At the same time, they have in view
that large and increasing class of students, in other depart-
ments of inquiry, who desire to have a systematic and thor-
ough exposition of Theological Science. Technical matters
EDITORS' PREFACE.
will therefore be thrown into the form of notes, and the
text will be made as readable and attractive as possible-
The Library is international and interconfessional- It
will be conducted in a catholic spirit, and in the interests
of Theology as a science.
Its aim will be to g-ive full and impartial statements both
of the results of Theological Science and of the questions
which are still at issue in the dififerent departments.
The Authors will be scholars of recognized reputation in
the several branches of study assigned to them. They will
be associated with each other, and with the Editors in the
eflort to provide a series of volumes which may adequately
represent the present condition of investigation, and indi-
cate the way for further progress.
CHARLES A. BRIGGS.
STEWART D. F. SALMOND.
Theological Encyclopeedia.
An Introduction to the Literature of
the Old Testament.
Canon and Text of the Old Testa-
ment.
Old Testament History.
Contemporary History of the Old
Testament.
Theology of the Old Testament.
An Introduction to the Literature
of the New Testament
Canon and Text of the New Testa-
ment.
The Life of Christ.
By Charles A. Briggs, D.D., D.Litt.,
Prof, of Theological Encyclopedia and
Symbolics, Union Theol. Seminary, N.Y.
By S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt.. Regius
Professor of Hebrew, and Canon of
Christ Church, Oxford. {Revised and
enlarged edition.')
By Francis Crawford Burkitt, M.A.,
Lecturer in Cambridge University.
By Henry Preserved Smith, D.D.,
Professor of Biblical History, Amherst
College, Mass. (^Now ready.)
By Francis Brown, D.D., LL.D., D.Litt.,
Professor of Hebrew, Union Theological
Seminary, New York.
By the late A. B. Davidson, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor of Hebrew, New College,
Edinburgh. {Now ready,)
By Rev. James Moffatt, B.D., Minister
United Free Church, Dundonald, Scot-
land.
By Caspar RenI Gregory, D.D., LL D.
Professor of New Testament Exegesis in
the University of Leipzig.
By William Sandav, D.D., LL.D., Lady
Margaret, Professor of Divinity, and
Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.
^EPlje international 2;9eouigicai JtturarF
A History of Christianity in the
Apostolic Age.
Contemporary History of the New
Testament.
Theology of the New Testament.
Biblical Archaeology.
The Ancient Catholic Church.
The Early Latin Church.
The Later Latin Church
The Greek and Oriental Churches.
The Reformation. I. In Germany.
The Reformation. II. In Lands Be-
yond Germany.
Symbolics,
History of Christian Doctrine,
Christian Institutions.
Philosophy of Religion.
The History of Religions.
Apologetics.
The Doctrine of God.
The Doctrine of Man.
The Doctrine of Christ.
The Christian Doctrine of Salvation.
The Doctrine of the Christian Life.
Christian Ethics.
The Christian Pastor and the Work-
ing Church.
The Christian Preacher.
Rabbinical Literature.
By Arthur C McGiffert, D.D., Professor
of Church History, Union Theological
Seminary, New York. iNow ready^
By Frank C. Porter, D.D., Professor of
Biblical Theology, Yale University, New
Haven, Conn.
By George B. Stevens, D.D., Professor
of Systematic Theology , Yale University,
New Haven^ Conn. {Now ready.)
By G. Buchanan Gray, D.D,, Professor of
Hebrew, Mansfield College, Oxford.
By Robert Rainy, D.D., LL.D., Principal
of the New College, Edinburgh. {Now
ready.)
By Charles Bigg, D.D., Regius Professor
of Church History, University of Oxford.
By E. W. Watson, M.A., Professor of
Church History, Kings College, London.
By W. F. Adeney, D.D., Principal of
Independent College, Manchester.
By T. M. Lindsay, D.D., Principal of the
United Free College, Glasgow. {Now
ready.)
By T. M. Lindsay, D.D., Principal of the
United Free College, Glasgow, {ingress.)
By Charles A. Briggs, D.D., D.Litt.,
Prof, of Theological Encyclopedia and
Symbolics, Union Theol. Seminary, N.Y.
By G. P. Fisher, D.D., LL D., Professor
of Ecclesiastical History, Yale University,
New Haven, Conn. {Revised and en-
larged edition.)
By A. V. G. Allen, D.D., Professor of
Ecclesiastical History, P. E. Divinity
School, Cambridge, Mass. {Now ready ^
By Robert Flint, D.D., LL.D., sometime
Professor of Divinity in the University of
Edinburgh.
By George F. Moore, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor in Harvard University.
By the late A, B. Bbuce, D.D. .sometime
Professor of New Testament Exegesis,
Free Church College, Glasgow. {Revised
and enlarged edition.)
By William N. Clarke. D.D., Professor
of Systematic Theology, Hamilton The-
ological Seminary.
By William P. Paterson, D.D., Professor
of Divinity, University of Edinburgh.
By H. R. Mackintosh, Ph.D., Professor of
Systematic Theology, New College,
Edinburgh.
ByGEORGE B. Stevens, D.D., Professor of
Systematic Theology, Yale University.
{Now ready.)
By William Adams Brown, D.D., Profes-
sor of Systematic Theology, Union The-
ological Seminary, New York.
By Newman Smyth, D.D., Pastor of Con-
gregational Church, New Haven. {Re-
vised and enlarged edition . )
By Washington Gladden, D.D., Pastor
of Congregational Church, Columbus,
Ohio. {Now ready.)
By Rev. W. T. Davison, D.D., sometime
Professor of Biblical Literature, Rich-
mond College.
By S. ScHErHTKR^ M.A., President of the
Jewish Theological Seminary, New York
City.
gbe 3nternattonaI ^beological Xibrav?.
EDITED BY
CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., D.LlT.,
Professor of Theological Encyclopeedia and Symbolics, Union Theological
Setninary, N'ezu York;
The late STEWART D. F. SALMOND, D.D.,
Principal^ and Professor of Systematic Theology and Nev} Testament Exegesis^
United Free Church College^ Aberdeen.
A HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.
By THOMAS M. LINDSAY,
M.A., D.D.
International Theological Library
A HISTORY
OP
THE REFORMATION
BT
THOMAS M. LINDSAY, MA., D.D.
EBINOIPAL, THE UNITED FREE CHURCH
COLLEGE, 0LA300W
THE RMFORMATION IN GERMANY
FROM ITS BEGINNINO TO THE
RELIGIOUS PEACE OF AUGSBURG
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
TO
The Rev. GEORGE CLARK HUTTON, D.D.
PEEFACE.
This History of the Eeformation has been written with
the intention of describing a great religious movement
amid its social environment. The times were heroic, and
produced great men, with striking individualities not
easily weighed in modern balances. The age is sufficiently
remote to compel us to remember that while the morality
of one century can be judged by another, the men who
belong to it must be judged by the standard of their
contemporaries, and not altogether by ours. The religious
revival was set in a framework of political, intellectual,
and economic changes, and cannot be disentangled from
its surroundings without danger of mutilation. All these
things add to the difficulty of description.
My excuse, if excuse be needed, for venturing on the
task is that the period is one to which I have devoted
special attention for many years, and that I have read
and re-read most of the original contemporary sources
of information. While full use has been made of the
labours of predecessors in the same field, no chapter in the
volume, save that on the political condition of Europe, has
been written without constant reference to contemporary
evidence.
A History of the Eeformation, it appears to me, must
describe five distinct but related things — the social and
religious conditions of the age out of which the great
Vlll PREFACE
movement came ; the Lutheran Eeformation down to looo,
when it received legal recognition ; the Eeformation in
countries beyond Germany which did not submit to the
guidance of Luther; the issue of certain portions of the
religious life of the Middle Ages in Anabaptism, Socinian-
ism, and Anti-Trinitarianism ; and, finally, the Counter-
Eeformation.
The second follows the first in natural succession ; bill
the third was almost contemporary with the second. li
the Eeformation won its way to legal recognition earliei
in Germany than in any other land, its beginnings in
France, England, and perhaps the Netherlands, had ap-
peared before Luther had published his Theses. I have nol
found it possible to describe all the five in chronological
order.
This volume describes the eve of the Eeformation anc
the movement itself under the guidance of Luther. In a
second volume I hope to deal with the Eeformation beyonc
Germany, with Anabaptism, Socinianism, and kindrec
matters which had their roots far back in the Middle
Ages, and with the Counter-Eeformation.
The first part of this volume deals with the intellectual
social, and religious life of the age which gave birth to th(
Eeformation. The intellectual life of the times has beei
frequently described, and its economic conditions are begin
ning to attract attention. But few have cared to investigat(
.popular and family religious life in the decades before th(
great revival. Yet for the history of the Eeformatioi
movement nothing can be more important. When it ii
studied, it can be seen that the evangelical revival wai
not a unique phenomenon, entirely unconnected with thi
immediate past. There was a continuity in the religiou
life of the period. The same hymns were sung in publii
and in private after the Eeformation which had been ii
PREFACE IX
^"'ii use before Luther raised the standard of revolt. Many of
'"o the prayers in the Eeformation liturgies came from the
^i service-books of the mediaeval Chvirch. Much of the
oil: family instruction in religious matters received by the
•» Eeformers when they were children was in turn taught by
OIK them to the succeeding generation. The great Eeformation
had its roots in the simple evangelical piety which had
a;:; never entirely disappeared in the mediaeval Church.
li i Luther's teaching was recognised by thousands to be no
<A startling novelty, but something which they had always
Egs: at heart beHeved, though they might not have been able
is, to formulate it. It is true that Luther and his fellow-
iKE Eeformers taught their generation that Our Lord, Jesus
iljoid Christ, filled the whole sphere of God, and that other
mediatprs and intercessors were superfluous, and that
BUI they also delivered it from the fear of a priestly caste ;
Ini but men did not receive that teaching as entirely new ;
uvoii they rather accepted it as something they had always
imjui felt, though they had not been able to give their feelings
ilijli due and complete expression. It is true that this simple
piety had been set in a framework of superstition, and that
jf-v' the Church had been generally looked upon as an institution
),ti( within which priests exercised a secret science of redemption
1^ through their power over the sacraments ; but the old
jjj,. evangelical piety existed, and its traces can be found when
^It sought for.
J II, A portion of the chapter which describes the family
[jjj and popular religious life immediately preceding the Ee-
■jj, formation has already appeared in the London Quarterly
^ Review for October 1903.
[I, In describing the beginnings of the Lutheran Eeforma-
■ J, tion, I have had to go over the same ground covered by my
K- chapter on " Luther " contributed to the second volume of
• the Cambridge Modern History, and have found it impossible
X PREFACE
not to repeat myself. This is specially the case with the
account given of the theory and practice of Indulgences.
It ought to l^e said, however, that in view of certain
strictures on the earlier work by Eoman Catholic reviewers,
I have gone over again the statements made about Indul-
gences by the great mediaeval theologians of the thirteenth
and fifteenth centuries, and have not been able to change
the opinions previously expressed.
My thanks are due to my colleague. Dr. Denney, and
to another friend for the care they have taken in revising
the proof-sheets, and for many valuable suggestions which
have been given effect to.
THOMAS M. LINDSAY.
MarOi, 1908.
til
Its
«; CONTENTS.
IK BOOK L
■^ ON THE EVE OF THE EEFORMATION.
CHAPTER I.
VThb Papacy.
§ 1. The Papacy — Its claim to universal Supremacy . .
The religious background of the claim
Its sanction from the needs of the practical religious 1;
i 2. The Temporal Supremacy
i 3. The Spiritual Supremacy
Its interference with the secular authority .
The financial exactions of the unreformed Papacy
fe
3
5
7
8
11
CHAPTER II.
The Political Situation.
§ 1. The small extent of Christendom 18
§ 2. Consolidation, the ruling political principle of the Period . 19
i 3. England and its consolidation under the Tudors -. . 20
§ 4. France and the establishment of ce ntral authority . . 22
I 5. Spain became wholly Christian 26
S 6. Germany and Italy — not compact nationalities ... 30
5 7. The five great powers of Italy 32
5 8. Germany or the Empire — a multiplicity of sepa,rate princi-
palities 35
Attempts at a constitutional unity 38
The election of Charles v. as Emperor .... 40
CHAPTER III.
The Renaissance.
i 1. The transition from the Mediaeval to the Modern World . 42
i 2. The Revival of Literature and Art 46
xu
CONTENTS
§ 3. Its earlier relation to Christianity
§ 4. The Brethren of the Common Lot
§ 5. German Universities, Schools and Scholarship
§ 6. The earlier German Humanists .
§ 7. The Humanist Circles in the Cities
§ 8, Humanism in the Universities .
§ 9. Reuchlin
§ 10. The Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum
§ 11. Ulrich von Hutten
FA9B
48
51
53
57
60
63
67
72
75
CHAPTER IV.
Social Conditions.
§ 1. Towns, Trade, and Artisan Life 79
§ 2. Geographical Discoveries and the beginnings of a World
Trade 84
§ 3. Increase in Wealth and luxurious Living .... 86
§ 4. The condition of the Peasantry 89
§ 5. Earlier Social Kevolts 95
§ 6. The Religious Socialism of Hans Bohm .... 99
§ 7. The Bundschuh Revolts 103
§ 8. The causes of the continuous Revolts 106
Germany fuU of social discontent and class hatreds . . 112
CHAPTER V.
Family and Popular Religious Life in the Decades
befoee the reformation.
§ 1. The Devotion of Germany to the Roman Church . . 114
§2. Preaching ■ .117
§ 3. Church Festivals— Miracle Plays— The Feast of the Ass . 119
§ 4. The Family Religious Life — its continuity throughout the
period of the Reformation 121
§ 5. A superstitious Religion based on fear .... 127
Pilgrimages, Pilgrim Guide-books 127
Confraternities of the Blessed Virgin and St. Anna . . 135
Reformation of the Mendicant Orders 137
§ 6. Non-Ecclesiastical Religion 139
Ecclesiastical Reforms carried out by the secular authorities 140
MedisBval Charity — Beggars, ecclesiastical and other — Lay-
management of Charity ...... 141
The Kalands and other religious confraternities . . . 144
Translations of the Scriptures into German . . .147
§7. The Brethren — Mediasval Nonconformists — The Praying
Circles of the Mystics — Tlie Unitas Fratrum . .152
CONTENTS
xm
CHAPTER VI.
Humanism and the Reformation.
§ 1. Savonarola and the Christian Humanists of Italy
§ 2. John Colet and the Christian Humanists of England
Dislike to the Scholastic Theology . ■ .
Colet and the Hierarchies of Dionysius
§ 3. Erasmus— The " Christian Philosophy "
His visit to England and how it marked him
His writings which were meant to serve the Reformation
The defects of the Humanist Reformation .
FASE
158
163
166
169
172
177
179
186
BOOK IL
THE KEFOEMATION.
CHAPTER I.
Luther to the Beginning op the Controveebt about
Indulgences.
1. Why Luther was successful as the Leader in a Reformation 189
2. Luther's Youth and Education 193
At the University of Erfurt . . . . , . 196
3. Luther in the Erfurt Convent 199
4. Luther's Early Life at Wittenberg 205
5. Luther's Early Lectures on Theology 208
The Indulgence-seller and his reception in a German city . 213
CHAPTER II.
From the Beginning or the Inddlqbncb Controversy to
THE Diet of Worms.
1. The theory and practice of Indulgences in the sixteenth
century *, 217
The Penitentiaries and the early Satisfactions . . .218
A thesaurus meritorum, the Sacrament of Penance, and the
doctrine of Attrition 219
Attrition, Confession, and Indulgence the mediaeval scheme of
salvation for the indifferent Christian . . . . 223
Did Indulgences remit guilt ? . ' 225
Luther looked at Indulgences from their practical effect . 226
XIV CONTENTS
PAOB
§ 2. Luther's Theses against Indulgences 228
Luther summoned to Borne 232
The mission of Charles von Miltitz 234
§ 3. The Leipzig Disputation . . . . . . .236
§ 4. The three Treatises — The Liberty of a Ohristian Man, To the
Nobility of the Germa/n, Nation, On the Babylonian Cap-
ti/oity of the Church of Christ 239
§ 5. The Bull Exv/rge Domine 247
Luther bums the Papal Bull 250
§ 6. Luther, the representative of Germany .... 252
Luther and the Humanists 255
The Elector Frederick of Saxony ^58
CHAPTER III.
The Diet op Wokms.
S 1. The Roman Nuncio Aleander 261
§ 2. The Emperor Charles v. . 264
§ 3. In the City of Worms 267
Was Luther to he summoned to Worms or was he not ? . 270
Luther's journey to Worms 273
§ 4. Luther in Worms 275
g 5. The first appearance before the Diet 278
§ 6. The second appearance before the Diet .... 284
§ 7. The Conferences 293
Luther's disappearance and the consternation produced . 295
§ 8. The Ban and what was thought of it 297
§ 9. Popular Literature — revolutionary literature — literature
directly connected with the Lutheran movement . 300
§ 10. The spread of Luther's teaching 305
§ 11. Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstad^ 311
The Wittenberg Ordinance 314
§ 12. Luther back in Wittenberg ...... 316
CHAPTER IV.
From the Diet op Worms to the Close op the
Peasants' Wab.
1. The continued spread of Lutheran teaching.
The Nuncio Campeggio and his intrigues in Germany
i 2. The beginnings of division in Germany
i 3. The Peasants' War .....'
i 4. Revolutionary Manifestoes— The Twelve Articles
i 6. Luther and the Peasants' War
i 6. Germany divided into two separate camps
319
322
324
326
331
335
338
CONTENTS XV
CHAPTER V.
From the Diet op Speter, 1526, to the Religkius Peace
OF Augsburg, 1555.
FAGB
i 1. The Diet of Speyer, 1526 .340
Otto von Pack's foi^ery 344
i 2. The Protest at Speyer 346
i 3. Luther and Zwingli 347
i 4. The Marburg Colloquy 352
The Controversy about the Sacrament of the Supper . . 353
i 5. The Emperor in Germany 359
i 6. The Diet of Augsburg, 15.30 363
i 7. The Augsburg Confession 384
i 8. The Reformation to be crushed 368
Luther at Coburg 369
i 9. The Schmalkald League 373
Two conflicting ideas of reformation — Charles v. and
Luther 375
Ducal Saxony and Electoral Brandenburg become Protestant 377
i 10. The Bigamy of Philip of Hesse 380
A General Council to be held at Trent .... 383
i 11. Maurice of Saxony 384
i 12. Luther's death 384
Extent of reformed Germany 386
i 13. The Religious War 389
i 14. The Augsburg Interim 390
Charles V. defeated — The Protestant Conference at Passau 393
i 15. The Religious Peace of Augsburg 395
CHAPTER VI.
The ORaANiSATiojf op the Lutheran Churches.
Principles of organisation 400
The Visitations .405
Consistorial Courts — Superintendents — Synods . . . 412
Democratic constitution for the Church of Hesse . . 415
S; CHAPTER VII.
The Lutheran Reformation outside German v.
S( Scandinavian lands 417
'3't The Reformation in Denmark and Norway . . . 419
Jj The Reformation in Sweden 421
XVI CONTENTS
CHAPTER VIII.
The Religious Principles inspiring the Reformation.
PAGI
§ 1. The Reformation did not take its rise from a criticism of
• doctrines 426
§ 2. The universal Priesthood of Believers 435
§ 3. Justification by Faith 444
§ 4. Holy Scripture . . 453
§ 5. The Person of Christ 468
§ 6. The Church 480
Chronological Summary 489
Indkz 615
BOOK I.
ON THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION.
CHAPTEE I.
THE PAPACY.^
§ 1. Claim to Universal Supremacy.
The long struggle between the Medifeval Church and the
Mediaeval Empire, between the priest and the warrior,*
ended, in the earlier half of the thirteenth century, in the
overthrow of the Hohenstaufens, and left the Papacy sole
inheritor of the claim of ancient Eome to be sovereign of
the civilised world.
Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi.
' Sources : Apparatus super qidnque Ubris decretalium (Strassburg,
1488) ; Burchard, Diarium (ed. by Thuasne, Paris, 1883-1885), in 3 vols. ;
Brand, ifarrenschiff {ed. by Simrock, Berlin, 1872) ; Denzinger, Enchiridion
Symbolorum et Definitionum, quce de rebus fidei et morum a conciliis
cecvmenieit et summis pontijicibus, emanarunt (Wiirzburg, 1900), 9th ed. ;
Erler, Der Liber CancellarUz Apostolicm vom Jdhre I4SO (Leipzig, 1888) ;
Faber, TractcUus de Euine Ecclesie Planctu (Memmingen) ; Murner,
Sehelmenzunft and Narrenbeschwiirung (Nos. 85, 119-124 of Nevdruclee
deutschen Litteraturwerke) ; Mirbt, Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsltums
(Freiburg 1. B. 1896) ; Tangl, Die pdpstlichen Xanzleiordnungen von
1200-1500 (Innsbruck, 1894) ; and Das Taxwesen der pdpstlichen Kirche
{Mitt, des Instituts fUr osterreichische Geschichlsforschung, xiii. 1892).
Latee Books: "Janus," The Pope and the Council (London, 1869);
Harnack, History of Dogma (London, 1899), vols. vi. vii. ; Thudichen,
Papsttum v/nd Meformation (Leipzig, 1903) ; Haller, Papsttum und Kirchen-
Beform (1903) ; Lea, Cambridge Modem History (Cambridge, 1902),
vol. I. xix.
' "In hao {sc. eoolesia) ejusque potestate duos esse gladios, spiritualem
videlicet et temporalem, evangelicis dictis instruimur. . . . Ille sacerdotis,
is manu regum et militum, sed ad nutum et paticnciam sacerdotis " ; Boni-
face VIII. in the Bull, Unam Sanctam.
T*
2 THE PAPACY
Strong and masterful Popes had for centuries insisted
on exercising powers which, they asserted, belonged to
them as the successors of St. Peter and the representatiyes
of Christ upon earth. Ecclesiastical jurists had translated
their assertions into legal language, and had expressed
them in principles borrowed from the old iniperisL law.
Precedents, needed by the legal mind to unite the past with
the present, had been found in a series of imaginary papal
judgments extending over past centuries. The forged
decretals of the pseudo-Isidor (used by Pope Nicholas i. in
his letter of 866 A.D. to the bishops of Gaxil), of the group
of canonists who supported the pretensions of Pope Gregory
VII. (1073-1085), — Anselm of Lucca, Densdedit, Cardinal
Bonzio, and Gregory of Pavia, — ^gave to the papal claims the
semblance of the sanction of antiquity. The Decretum of
Gratian, issued in 11 5 from Bologna, then the most famous
Law School in Etirope, incorporated all these earlier
forgeries and added new ones. It displaced the older
collections of Canon Law and became the starting-point
for succeeding canonists. Its mosaic of facts and false-
hoods formed the basis for the theories of the imperial
powers and of the universal jurisdiction of the Bishops of
Eome.^
The picturesque religious background of this conception
of the Church of Christ as a great temporal empire had
been furnished by St. Augustine, although probably he
would have been the fii-st to protest against the use made
of his vision of the City of God. His unfinished master-
piece, De Gimtate Dei, in which with a devout and glowing '
imagination he had contrasted the Civitas Terrena, or the
sec:ular State founded on conquest and maintained by fraud
and violence, with the Kingdom of God, which he identified
with the visible ecclesiastical society, had filled the
imagination of all Christians in the days immediately
preceding the dissolution of the Eoman Empire of the
West, and had contributed in a remarkable degree to the
'A succinct account of these forgeries wiU be found in "Janus," Tht
Pope and the Council (London, 1869), p. 94. ' ■•
UNIVERSAL SUPREMACY 3
final overthrow of the last remains of a cultured paganism.
It became the sketch outline which the jurists of the
Eoman Curia gradually filled in with details by their
strictly defined and legally expressed claim of the Eoman
Pontiff to a universal jurisdiction. Its living but poetically
indefinite ideas were transformed into clearly defined legal
principles found ready-made in the all-embracing juris-
prudence of the ancient empire, and were analysed and
exhibited in definite claims to rule and to judge in every
department of human activity. When poetic thoughts,
which from their very nature stretch forward towards and
melt in the infinite, are imprisoned within legal formulas
■ and are changed into principles of practical jurisprudence,
■ they lose all their distinctive character, and the creation
which embodies them becomes very different from what
; it was meant to be. The mischievous activity of the
t Eoman canonists actually transformed the Civitas Dei of
i! the glorious vision of St. Augustine into that Civitas
I Terrena which he reprobated, and the ideal Kingdom of
i God became a vulgar earthly monarchy, with all the
K accompaniments of conquest, fraud, and violence which,
[( according to the great theologian of the West, naturally
belonged to such a society. But the glamour of the City
[d of God long remained to dazzle the eyes of gifted and pious
il men during the earlier Middle Ages, when they contem-
c plated the visible ecclesiastical empire ruled by the Bishop
IB of Eome.
g The requirements of the practical religion of everyday -
)(c life were also believed to be in the possession of this
IE ecclesiastical monarchy to give and to withhold. For it
p: was the almost universal belief of mediaeval piety that the
i[g mediation of a priest was essential to salvation ; and the
[ t priesthood was an integral part of this monarchy, and did
^j not exist outside its boundaries. " No good Catholic
[ ji Christian doubted that in spiritual things the clergy were
j(i the divinely appointed superiors of the laity, that this
power proceeded from the right of the priests to celebrate
the sacraments, that the Pope was the real possessor of
4 THE PAPACY
this power, and was far superior to all secular authority. ' *
In the decades immediately preceding the Keformation,
many an educated man might have doubts about this
power of the clergy over the spiritual and eternal welfare
of men and women ; but when it came to the point, almost
no one could venture to say that there was nothing in it
And so long as the feeling remained that there might be
something in it, the anxieties, to say the least, which
Christian men and women coidd not help having when they
looked forward to an unknown future, made kings and
peoples hesitate before they offered defiance to the Pope
and the clergy. The spiritual powers which were believed
to come from the exclusive possession of priesthood and
sacraments went for much in increasing the authority of
the papal empire and in binding it together in one com-
pact whole.
In the earlier Middle Ages the claims of the Papacy
to universal supremacy had been urged and defended by
ecclesiastical jurists alone ; but in the thirteenth century
theology also began to state them from its own point of
view. Thomas Aquinas set himself to prove that sub-
mission to the Eoman Pontiff was necessary for every
human being. He declared that, under the law of the New
Testament, the king must be subject to the priest to the
■ extent that, if kings proved to be heretics or schismatics,
the Bishop of Eome was entitled to deprive them of aU
kingly authority by releasing subjects from their ordinary
obedience.^
The fu llest expression of this temporal and spiritual
supremacy claimed by the Bishops of Eome is to be found
in Pope Innocent iv.'s Oommtntary on the Dem-etak^ (1243-
1254), and in the Bull, Unam Sandam, published by Pope
Boniface vin. in 1302. But succeeding Bishops of Eoma
' Harnack, History of Dogma, vi. 132 n. (Eng. trans.).
" Compare his Opuscula contra errores Gracorumj De re-giminf privcipnm.
(The first two books were written by Thoujas and the other two prsfeably bj
Tolomeo (Ptolomoeus) of Lucca.)
' Apparatus super quinque Uhris Decrclaiium. (Strassburg, 1488).
TEMPORAL SUPREMACY 5
in no way abated their pretensions to universal sovereignty.
The same claims were made during the Exile at Avignon
and in the days of the Great Schism. They were asserted
by Pope Pius il. in his Bull, Execrahilis et pristinis (1459),
and by Pope Leo x. on the very eve of the Eeformation, in
his 'S>vM, Pastor JEternus (1516); while Pope Alexander vi.
(Kodrigo Borgia), acting as the lord of the universe, made
over the New World to Isabella of Castile and to Ferdinand
of Aragon by legal deed of gift in his Bull, Inter ccetera
divince (May 4th, 1493).^
The power claimed in these documents was a twofold
supremacy, temporal and spiritual.
§ 2. The Temporal Supremacy.
The former, stated in its widest extent, was the right
to depose kings, free their subjects from their allegiance,
and bestow their territories on another. It could only be
' Full quotations from the Bulls, Unam Sanctam and Inter ccetera divince,
are to be found in Mirbt's Quellen zur Oeschichte des Papsttums (Leipzig,
1895), jip. 88, 107. The Bulls, Execrahilis and Pastor ^termis, are in
Denzinger, Enchiridion (Wurzburg, 1900), 9th ed. pp. 172, 174.
The Deed of Gift of the American Continent to Isabella and Ferdinand is
in the 6th section of the Bull, Inter ccetera divince. It is as follows : —
" Motu proprio . . . de nostra mera liberalitate et ex certa scientia ao de
apostolicse potestatis plenitudine omnes insulas et terras firmas inventas
et inveniendas, detectas et detegendas versus Oecidentem et Meridiem
fabrieando et construenJo unam lineam a Polo Artico scilicet Septentrione
ad Polum Antarticum scilicet Meridiem, sive terrte firmse et insulae inventse
et inveniendse sint versus Indiam aut versus aliam quaracumque partem,
quae linea distet a quaUbet insularum, qusE vulgariter nuncupantur de
los Azores y cabo vierde, centum leucis versus Oecidentem et Meridiem;
ita quod omnes insulae et terrae iirmae, repertae et reperiendse, detectas et
detegendae, a priefata linea versus Oecidentem et Meridiem per alium
Eegem aut Principem Christianum non fuerint actualiter possessae usque ad
diem nativitatis Domini Nostii Jesu Christi proximi praeteritum . . .
auctoritate omnipotentis Dei nobis in Beato Petro concessa, ac vicariug Jesn
Christi, qua fungimur in terris, cum omnibus illarnra doniiniis, civitatibus,
castris, locis et villis, juribusque et jurisdictionibus ac pertinentiis univeris,
vobis haetedibusque et suocessoribus vestris in perpetuum tenore priesf ntium
donamu's. . . . Vosque et haercdes ac successorcs priefatos illanim dominos
cum plena, libera et omnimoda potestate, auctoritate et jurisdictione facimus,
oonstituimus et deputanius."
6 THE PAPACY
enforced when the Pope found a stronger potentate willing
to caiTy out his orders, and was naturally but rarely
exercised. Two instances, however, occurred not long
before the Eeformation. George Podiebrod, the King of
Bohemia, offended the Bishop of Eome by insisting that
the Eoman See should keep the bargain made with his
Hussite subjects at the Council of Basel. He was summoned
to Eome to be tried as a heretic by Pope Pius n. in 1464,
and by Pope Paul ii. in 1465, and was declared by the
latter to be deposed ; his subjects were released from their
allegiance, and his kingdom was offered to Matthias Cor-
vinus, the King of Hungary, who gladly accepted the offer,
and a protracted and bloody war was the consequence.
Later still, in 1511, Pope Julius ii. excommunicated the
King of Navarre, and empowered any neighbouring king to
seize his dominions — an offer readily accepted by Ferdinand
of Aragon.^
It was generally, however, in more indirect ways that
this claim to temporal supremacy, i.e. to direct the poUcy,
and to be the final . arbiter in the actions of temporal
'sovereigns, made itself felt. A great potentate, placed
over the loosely formed kingdoms of the Middle Ages,
hesitated to provoke a contest with an authority which
was able to give religious sanction to the rebellion of
powerful feudal nobles seeking a legitimate pretext for
defying him, or which could deprive his subjects of the
external consolations of religion by laying the whole or
part of his dominions under an interdict. We are not to
suppose that the exercise of this claim of temporal supre-
macy was always an evil thing. Time after time the
actions and interference of right-minded Popes proved that
the temporal supremacy of the Bishop of Eome meant that
moral considerations must have due weight attached to
them in the international affairs of Europe ; and this fact,
^ The exoomnninication, with its consequences, was used to thre:ten
Queen Elizabeth by the Ambassador of Philip ii. in 1559 {Calendar of Letters
and StaJe Papers relating to English affairs presened principally in the
Archives of Simaiieas, i. 62, London, 1892).
SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY 7
recognised and felt, accounted largely for much of the
practical acquiescence in the papal claims. But from the
time when the Papacy became, on its temporal side, an
ItaUan power, and when its international policy had for
its chief motive to increase the political prestige of the
Bishop of Rome within the Italian peninsula, the moral
standard of the papal court was hopelessly lowered, and
it no longer had even the semblance of representing morality
in the international affairs of Europe. The change may
be roughly dated from the pontificate of Pope Sixtus IV.
(1471-1484), or from the birth of Luther (November 10th,
1483). The possession of the Papacy gave this advantage
to Sixtus over his contemporaries in Italy, that he " was
relieved of all ordinary considerations of decency, con-
sistency, or prudence, because his position as Pope saved
him from serious disaster." The divine authority, assumed
by the Popes as the representatives of Christ upon earth,
meant for Sixtus and his immediate successors that they
were above the requirements of common morality, and had
the right for themselves or for their allies to break the
most solemn treaties when it suited their shifting policy.
§ 3. The Spiritual Supremacy.
The ecclesiastical supremacy was gradually interpreted
to mean that the Bishop of Eome was the one or universal
bishop in whom all spiritual and ecclesiastical powers
were summed up, and that all other members of the
hierarchy were simply delegates selected by him for the
purposes of administration. On this interpretation, the
Bishop of Eome was the absolute monarch over a kingdom
which was called spiritual,T)ut which was as thoroughly
material as were those of France, Spain, or England. For,
according to mediaeval ideas, men were spiritual if they had
taken orders, or were under monastic vows ; fields, drains,
and fences were spiritual things if they were Church pro-
perty ; a house, a barn, or a byre was a spiritual thing,
if it stood on land belonging to the Church. This papal
8 TTTR PAPACY
kingdom, miscalled spiritual, lay scattered over Europe i
diocesan lands, convent estates, and parish glebes — ^intei
woven in the web of the ordinary kingdoms and prind
\ palities of Europe. It was part of the Pope's claim t
\ spiritual snpremacv that his subjects (the clergy) owed n
If allegiance to the monarch within whose territories the;
l resided ; that they lived outside the sphere of civil legis
I lation and taxation ; and that they were under special Ian
j imposed on them by their supreme spiritual mler, an
paid teixes to him and to biyn alone. The claim to spiritns
I supremacy therefore involved endless interference with th
'rights of temporal sovereignty in every country in Europ(
and things civil and things sacred were so inextricabl;
mixed that it is quite impossible to speak of the Eeforma
tion as a purely religious movement It was also a
] endeavour to put an end to the exemption of the Churd
and its possessions from all secular control, and to her con
stant encroachment on secular territory.
To show how this claim for_ spiritual supremacy tres
passed continually on the domain of secular authority an
created a spirit of unrest all over Europe, we have onl
to look at its exercise in the matter-o Ljatrona f w'- tn hen f
fices, to the way in which the common law of the Churc
jinterfered with the sf^cial civil laws of European State
and to the increasing burden of papal requisitions of monei
In the case of bishops, the theory was that the dea
and chapter elected, and that the bishop-elect had to b
confirmed by the Pope. This procedure provided for tii
selection locally of a suitable spiritual ruler, and also fc
the supremacy of the head of the Church. The mediaevs
\ bishops, however, were temporal lords of great influenc
\m the civil aftairs of the kingdom or principality withi
which their dioceses were placed, and it was naturally a
dbject of interest to kings and princes to secure me
who would be faithful to themselves. Hence the tendenc
wias for the civil authorities to interfere more or less i
ej^iscopal appointments. This frequently resulted in makin
these elections a matter of conflict between the head c
RESERVATIONS 9
the Church in Rome and the head of the State in Frince,
England, or Germany ; in which case the rights of the
dean and chapter were commonly of small account. The
contest was in the nature of things almost inevitable even
when the civil and the ecclesiastical powers were actuated
by the best motives, and when both sought to appoint
men competent to discharge the duties of the position with
ability. But the best motives were not always active.
Diocesan rents were large, and the incomes of bishops made
excellent provision for the favourite followers of kings and
of Popes, and if the revenues of one see failed to express
royal or papal favour adequately, the favourite could be
appointed to several sees at once. Papal nepotism became
a byword ; but it ought to be remembered that kingly
nepotism also existed. Pope Sixtus v. insisted on appoint- -, v
ing a retainer of his nephew, Cardinal Giuliano della Eovere,
to the see of Modrus in Hungary, and after a contest of
three years carried his point in 1483 ; and Matthias
Corvinus, King of Hungary, gave the archbishopric of Gran
to IppoUto d'Este, a youth under age, and after a two
years' struggle compelled the Pope to confirm the appoint-
ment in 1487.
During the fourteenth century the Papacy endeavoured
to obtain a more complete control over ecclesiastical ap-
pointments by means of the system of Reservations which
figures so largely in local ecclesiastical affairs to the dif-
credit of the Papacy during the years before the Eeformatioi i.
For at least a century earlier. Popes had been accustome i
to declare on various pretexts that certain benefices were
vacantes apud Sedem Apostolicam, which meant that the
Bishop of Eome reserved the appointment for himself.
Pope John xxii. (1316-1334), founding on such previous
practice, laid down a series of rules stating what benefices
were to be reserved for the papaLpatronage. The osten-
sible reason for this legislation was to prevent the growing
evil of pluralities ; but, as in all cases of papal lawmaking,
these Constitutiones Johannince had the effect of binding
ecclesiastically all patrons but the Popes themselves. For
10 THE PAPACY
the Popes always maintained that they alone were superior
to the laws which they made. They were siipra legem or
legibiis ahsoluti, and their dispensations could always set
aside their legislation when it suited their purpose. Under
\ these constitutions of Pope John xxii., when sees were
vacant owing to the invalidation of an election they were
' reserved to the Pope. Thus we find that there was a
disputed election to the see of Dunkeld in 1337, and after
some years' litigation at Eome the election was quashed,
and Eichard de PUmor was appointed bishop auctorifate
apostolica. The see of Dunkeld was declared to be reserved
to the Pope for the appointment of the two succeeding
bishops at least.^ This system of Reservations was gradu-
ally extended under the successors of Pope John xxii., and
was applied to benefices of every kiud aU over Europe, until
it would be difficult to say what piece of ecclesiastical pre-
ferment escaped the papal net. There exists in the town
library in Trier a MS. of the Bules of the Roman Chancery
on which someone has sketched the head of a Pope, with
the legend issuing from the mouth, Reservamus omnia, which
somewhat roughly, represents the contents of the book. In
the end, the assertion was made that the Holy See owned
all benefices, and, in the universal secularisation of the
Church which the half century before the Eeformation
witnessed, the very Eules of the Eoman Chancery contained
the lists of prices to be charged for various benefices,
whether with or without cure of souls ; and in completing
the bargain the purchaser could always procure a clause
setting aside the civil rights of patrons.
On the other hand, ecclesiastical preferments always
implied the holders being liferented in lands and in
monies, and the right to bestow these temporalities was
protected by the laws of most European countries. Thus
the ever-extending papal reservations of benefices led to
continual conflicts between the laws of the Church — in this
case latterly the Eules of the Eoman Chancery — and the
laws of the European States. Temporal rulers sought to
' Scottish Sistorical Jieview, i. 318-320.
EXACTIONS IN MONEY 11
protect themselves and their subjects by statutes of Prm-
munire and others of a like kind.^ or else made bargains
I with the Popes, which took the form of Concordats, like
Ithat of Bourges (1438) and that of Vienna (1448).
VNeither statutes nor bargains were of much avail against
the superior diplomacy of the Papacy, and the dread which
its supposed possession of spiritual powers inspired in all
classes of people. A Concordat was always represented
by papal lawyers to be binding only so long as the good-
will of the Pope maintained it ; and there was a deep-seated
feeling throughout the peoples of Europe that the Church
was, to use the language of the peasants of Germany, " the
Pope's House," and that he had a right to deal freely with
its property. Pious and patriotic men, like Gascoigne in
England, deplored the evil effects of the papal reservations ;
but they saw no remedy unless the Almighty changed the
heart of the Holy Father ; and, after the failures of the
Conciliar attempts at reform, a sullen hopelessness seemed
to have taken possession of the minds of men, until Luther
taught them that there was nothing in the indefinable
power that the Pope and the clergy claimed to possess over
the spiritual and eternal welfare of men and women.
To Pope John xxii. (1316-1334) belongs the credit
or discredit of creating for the Papacy a machinery for
gathering in money for its support. His situation rendered
this almost inevitable. On his accession he found himself
with an empty treasury ; he had to incur debts in order
to live ; he had to provide for a costly war with the
Visconti; and he had to leave money to enable his suc-
cessors to carry out his temporal policy. Few Popes lived
so plainly ; his money-getting was not for personal luxury,
but for the supposed requirements of the papal policy. He
was the first Pope who systematically made the dispensa-
tion of grace, temporal and eternal, a source of revenue.
Hitherto the charges made by the papal Chancery had
' The two English statutes of Prcemnnire are printed in Gee and Hardy,
Documents illualrative of English Church History (London, 1896), [ip. 103,
122.
12 THE PAPACY
been, ostensibly at least, for actual work done — fees for
clerking and registration, and so on. John made the fees
proportionate to the grace dispensed, or to the power of
the recipient to pay. He and his successors made the
Tithes, the Annates, Procurations, Fees for the bestowment
of the Pallium, the Medii Fructus, Subsidies, and Dispensa-
tions, regular sources of revenue.
The Tithe — a tenth of all ecclesiastical incomes for
the service of the Papacy — had been levied occasionally
for extraordinary purposes, such as crusades. It was
still supposed to be levied for special purposes only, but
necessary occasions became almost continuous, and the
exactions were fiercely resented. When Alexander VL
levied the Tithe in 1500, he was allowed to do so in Eng-
land. The French clergy, however, refused to pay; they
were excommunicated; the University of Paris declared
the excommunication unlawful, and the Pope had to
withdraw.
The Annates were an ancient charge. From the begin-
ning of the twelfth century the incoming incumbent of a
benefice had to pay over his first year's income for local
uses, such as the repairs on ecclesiastical buildings, or as a
solatium to the heirs of the deceased incumbent. From
the beginning of the thirteenth century prelates and
princes were sometimes permitted by the Popes to exact
it of entrants into benefices. One of the earliest recorded
instances was when the Archbishop of Canterbury was
allowed to use the Annates of his province for a period
of seven years from 1245, for the purpose of liquidating
the debts on his cathedral church. Pope John xxii. began
to appropriate them for the purposes of the Papacy. His
predecessor Clement v. (1305-1314) had demanded all
the Annates of England and Scotland for a period of three
years from 1316. In 1316 John made a much wider
demand, and in terms which showed that he was. prepared
to regard the Annates as a permanent tax for the general
purposes of the Papacy. It is difficult to trace the stages
of the gradual universal enforcement of this tax ; but in
EXACTIONS IN MONEY 13
the decades before the Eeformation it was commonly
imposed, and averages had been struck as to its amount.'
" They consisted of a portion, usually computed at one-half,
of the estimated revenue of all benefices worth more than
25 florins. Thus the archbishopric of Eouen was taxed
at 12,000 florins, and the little see of Grenoble at 300 ;
the great abbacy of St. Denis at 6000, and the little
St. Ciprian Poictiers at 33; while all the parish cures
in France were uniformly rated at 24 ducats, equivalent
to about 30 florins." Archbishoprics were subject to a
special tax as the price of the Pallium, and this was often
very large.
The Frocurationes were the charges, commuted to
money payments, which bishops and archdeacons were
authorised to make for their personal expenses while on
their tours of visitation throughout their dioceses. The
Popes began by demanding a share, and ended by often
claiming the whole of these sums.
Pope John XXII. was the first to require that the
incomes of vacant benefices (medii frudus) should be paid
over to the papal treasury during the vacancies. The
earliest instance dates from 1331, when a demand was
made for the income of the vacant archbishopric of Gran
in Hungary ; and it soon became the custom to insist that
the stipends of all vacant benefices should be paid into the
papal treasury.
Finally, the Popes declared it to be their right to
require special subsidies from ecclesiastical provinces, and
great pressure was put on the people to pay these so-calle(J
free-will offerings.
' Besides the sums which poured into the papal treasury
from these regular sources of income, irregular sources
afibrded still larger amounts of money. Countless^dis^-
pensations were issued on payment of fees for all manner
of BfSacKfes of canonical and moral law — dispensations for
marriages within the prohibited degrees, for holding\ plural -
' For information about the English annates and the valor ecclesiasticus,
cf. Bird, Hamdhoolt to the Publie Records, pp. 100, 106.
14 THE PAPACY
ities, for acquiring unjust gains in trade or otherwise. ' Th;
demoralising traffic made the Eoman treasury the partne
in all kinds of iniquitous actions, and Luther, in his addrei
To the Nobility of the German Nation respecting the Eeforrrw
tion of the Christian Estate, could fitly describe the Court (
the Eoman Curia as a place " where vows were annuUec
where the monk gets leave to quit his Order, where pries!
can enter the married life for money, where bastards ca
become legitimate, and dishonour and shame may arriv
at high honours; all evil repute and disgrace is knighte
and ennobled." " There is," he adds, " a buying and
selling, a changing, blustering and bargaining, cheating an
lying, robbing and stealing, debauchery and villainy, an
all kinds of contempt of God that Antichrist could nc
reign worse."
The vast sums of money obtained in these ways do m
represent the whole of the funds which flowed from a
parts of Europe into the papal treasury. The Eoma
Curia was the highest court of appeal for the whole Churc
of the West. In any case this involved a large amoui
of law business, with the inevitable legal expenses; bi
the Curia managed to attract to itself a large amoui
of business which might have been easily settled in tl
episcopal or metropolitan courts. This was done in pu
suance of a double poUcy — an ecclesiastical and a financii
one. The half century before the Eeformation saw tl
overthrow of feudalism and the consolidation of king]
absolutism, and something similar was to be seen in tl
Papacy as well as among the principalities of Europ
Just as the kingly absolutism triumphed when the hered
tary feudal magnates lost their power, so papal absolutis
could only become an accomplished fact when it cou
trample upon an episcopate deprived of its ecclesiastic
independence and inherent powers of ruHng and judgin
The Episcopate was weakened in many ways, — by exemp
ing abbacies from episcopal control, by encouraging tl
mendicant monks to become the rivals of the parii
clergy, and so on, — but the most potent method of d
THE PAPAL CHANCERY 15'
grading it was by encouraging people with ecclesiastical
complaints to pass by the episcopal courts and to carry
their cases directly to the Pope. Nationalities, men were
Uold, had no place within the Catholic Church. Eome was
the common fatherland, and the Pope the universal bishop
and judge ordinary. His judgment, which was always
final, could be had directly. In this way men were
enticed to take their pleas straight to the Pope. No
doubt this involved sending a messenger to Italy with a
statement of the plea and a request for a hearing; but it
did not necessarily involve that the trial should take place
at Home. The central power could delegate its authority,
and the trial could take place wherever the Pope might
appoint. But the conception undoubtedly did increase
largely the business of the courts actually held in Eome,
and caused a flow of money to the imperial city. The
Popes were also ready to lend monies to impoverished
litigants, for which, of course, heavy interest was charged.
The immense amount of business which was thus
directed into the papal chancery from all parts of Europe
required a horde of officials, whose salaries were provided
partly from the incomes of reserved benefices all over
Europe, and partly from the fees and bribes of the litigants.
The papal law-courts were notoriously dilatory, rapacious,
and venal. Every document had to pass through an in-
credible number of hands, and pay a corresponding number
of fees ; and the costs of suits, heavy enough according to
the prescribed rule of the chancery, were increased im-
mensely beyond the regular charges by others which did
not appear on the official tables. Cases are on record
where the hriefs obtained cost from twenty-four to forty-
one times the amount of the legitimate official charges.
The Roman Church had become a law-court, not of the
most reputable kind, — an arena of rival litigants, a
chancery of writers, notaries, and tax-gatherers, — where
transactions about privileges, dispensations, buying of bene-
fices, etc., were carried on, and where suitors went wandering
with their petitions from the door of one office to another.
16 THE PAPACY
During the balf century which preceded the Eefor-
mation, things went from bad to worse. The fears aroused
by the attempts at a reform through General Councils
had died down, and the Curia had no desire to reform
itself. The venality and rapacity increased when Popes
began to seU offices in the papal court. Boniface ix.
(1389—1404) was the first to raise money by selling these
official posts to the highest bidders. "In 1483, when
SixtuB IV. (1471—1484) desired to redeem his tiara and
jewels, pledged for a loan of 100,000 ducats, he increased
his secretaries from six to twenty-four, and required each to
pay 2600 florins for the office. In 1503, to raise funds
for Caesar Borgia, Alexander vi. (1492—1503) created
eighty new offices, and sold them for 760 ducats apiece.
Julius n. formed a ' college ' of one hundred and one
scriveners of papal briefs, in return for which they paid
him 74,000 ducats. Leo x. (1513-1521) appointed sixty
chamberlains and a hundred and forty squires, with certain
perquisites, for which the former paid him 90,000 ducats
and the latter 112,000. Places thus paid for were
personal property, transferable on sale. Burchard tells us
that in 1483 he bought the mastership of ceremonies from
his predecessor Patrizzi for 450 ducats, which covered all
expenses; that in 1505 he vainly offered Julius ii. (1503-
1513) 2000 ducats for a vacant scrivenership, and that
soon after he bought the succession to an abbreviatorship
for 2040."! When Adrian vi. (1522-1523) honestly
tried to cleanse this Augean stable, he found himself con-
fronted with the fact that he would have to turn men
adrift who had spent their capital in buying the places
which any reform must suppress.
The papal exactions needed to support this luxurious
Eoman Court, especially those taken from the clergy of
Europe, were so obnoxious thab it was often hard to collect
them, acd devices were used which in the end increased
the burdens of those who were required to provide the
money. The papal court made bargains with the temporal
'■ H. C. Lea, Cambridge Modern History, i. 670.
THE OPEN SORE OF EUROPE 17
rulers to share the spoils if they permitted the collection.^
The Popes agreed that the kings or princes could seize the
Tithes or Annates for a prescribed time provided the papal
oflBcials had their anthority to collect them, as a rule, for
Soman use. In the decades before the Eeformation it
was the common practice to collect these dues by means
of agents, often bankers, whose charges were enormous,
amounting sometimes to fifty per cent The collection of
such extraordinary sources of revenue as the Indulgences
was marked by even woi-se abuses, such as the employ-
ment of pardon-sellers, who overran Europe, and whose lies
and extortions were the common theme of the denuncia-
tions of the greatest preachere and patriots of the times.
The unreformed Papacy of the closing decades of the
fifteenth and of the first quarter of the sixteenth century
was the open sore of Europe, and the object of execrations
by almost aU contemporary writers. Its abuses found
no defenders, and its partisans in attacking assailants
contented themselves with insisting upon the necessity
for the spuitual supremacy of the Bishops of Home.
"Sant Peters schifflin ist im schnangk
Ich sorge fast den untergangt,
Die wallen schlagen allsit dran,
Es wiirt vil sturm und plagen lian."'
' J. HaUer, Papsttum und Kirdim-Reform (1903), i. 116, 117.
'Sebastian Brand, Das Karrenschin, cap. ciiL L 63-66. Barolay paia-
phiases these lines :
"Snche counterfayte the kayes that Jesu dyd commyt
TJnto Peter: brekynge his Shyppis takelynge,
Snbvertynge the fayth, beleuynge theyr owne wyt
Against our perfyte fayth in euery thyuge.
So is OUT Shyp wUhmU gyde tuanden/nge.
By tempest dryuen, and the mayne sayle of tome.
Thai vithmit gyde the Shyp abovt is borne."
— The Ship of Fools, translated by Alexander Barclay, ii. 225 (Edinbnrgh,
1874).
CHAPTEE 11.
THE POLITICAL SITUATION.^
§ 1. The small extent of Christendom.
During the period of the Eeformation a small portion
of the world belonged to Christendom, and of that only a
part was affected, either really or nominally, by the move-
ment. The Christians belonging to the Greek Church
were entirely outside its influence.
Christendom had shrunk greatly since the seventh
century. The Saracens and their successors in Moslem
sovereignty had overrun and conquered many lands which
had formerly been inhabited by a Christian population
and governed by Christian rulers. Palestine, Syria, Asia
Minor, Egypt, and North Africa westwards to the Straits
of Gibraltar, had once been Christian, and had been lost
to Christendom during the seventh and eighth centuries.
The Moslems had invaded Europe in the West, had con-
quered the Spanish Peninsula, had passed the Pyrenees,
and had invaded France. They were met and defeated in
a three days' battle at Tours (732) by the Franks under
Charles the Hammer, the grandfather of Charles the Great.
After they had been thrust back beyond the Pyrenees, the
Spanish Peninsula was the scene of a struggle between
Moslem and Christian which lasted for more than seven
hundred years, and Spain did not become wholly , Christian
until the last decade of the fifteenth century.
If the tide of Moslem conquest had been early checked
in the West, in the East it had flowed steadily if slowly.
1 Cambridge Modern History, i. iii, vii, viii, ix, xi, xii, xiv ; Lavisse,
Hisloire de France dermis Us Origines jusqu' d. la Rivoliiiion, IV. i. ii.
18
POLITICAL COXSOLIDATIOX 19
In 1338, Orchan, Sultan of the Ottoman Turks, seized on
Gallipoli, the fortified town which guarded the eastern
entrance to the Dardanelles, and the Moslems won a foot-
ing on European soU. A few years later the troops of his
son Murad I. had seized a portion of the Balkan peninsula,
and had cut off Constantinople from the rest of Chris-
tendom. A hundred years after, Constantinople (1453)
had fallen, the Christian population had been slain or
enslaved, the great church of the Holy Wisdom (St. Sophia)
had been made a Mohammedan mosque, and the city had
become the metropolis of the wide-spreading empire of the
Ottoman Turks. Servia, Bosnia, Herzogo-sina (the Duchy,
from Herzog, a Duke), Greece, the Peloponnesus, Eoumania,
Wallachia, and Moldavia were incorporated in the Moslem
Empire. Belgrade and the island of Khodes, the two
bulwarks of Christendom, had fallen. Grermany was
threatened by Turkish invasions, and for years the beUs
tolled in hvmdreds of Grerman parishes calling the people to
pray against the coming of the Turk. It was not imtil
the heroic defence of Vienna, in 1529, that the victorious
advance of the iloslem was stayed. Only the Adriatic
separated Italy from the Ottoman Empire, and the great
motmtain waU with the strip of Dalmatian coast which
lies at its foot was the bulwark between civilisation and
barbarism.
§ 2. Consolidation.
In Western Europe, and within the limits affected
directly or indirectly by the Reformation, the distinctive
political characteristic of the times immediately preceding
the movement was consolidation or coalescence. Feudalism,
with its liberties and its lawlessness, was disappearing, and
compact nations were being formed under monarchies
which tended to become absolute. If the Scandinavian
North be excluded, five nations included almost the whoh
field of Western European life, and in all of them the prin-
ciple of consolidation is to be seen at work. In three
England, France, and Spain, there emerged great united
20 THE POLITICAL SITUATION
kingdoms ; and if in two, Germany and Italy, there was
no clustering of the people round one dynasty, the same
principle of coalescence showed ilself in the formation- of
permanent States which had all the appearance of modern
kingdoms.
It is important for our purpose to glance at each and
show the principle at work.
§ 3. Ungland
By the time that the Duke of Eichmond had ascended
the English throne and ruled with " politic governance " as
Henry vii., the distinctively modem history of England
had begun. Feudalism had perished on the field of the
battle of Bosworth. The visitations of the Black Death,
the gigantic agricultural labour strike under Wat Tyler and
priest Ball, and the consequent transformation of peasant
serfs into a free people working for wages, had created a
new England ready for the changes which were to bridge
the chasm between mediaeval and modem histoiy. The
consolidation of the people was favoured by the English
custom that the younger sons of the nobility ranked as
commoners, and that the privileges as well as the estates
went to the eldest sons. This kept the various classes of
the population from becoming stereotyped into castes, as in
Germany, France, and Spain, It tended to create an ever-
increasing middle class, which was not confined to the
towns, but permeated the country districts also. The
younger sons of the nobility descended into this middle
class, and the transformation of the serfs into a wage-earn-
ing class enabled some of them to rise into it. England
was the first land to become a compact nationality.
The earlier portion of the reign of Henry vii. was not
free from attempts which, if successful, would have thrown
the country back into the old condition of disintegration.
Although the king claimed to unite the rival lines of York
and Lancaster, the Yorkists did not cease to raise difficulties
at home which were eagerly fostered from abroad. Ireland
ENGLAND 21
was a Yorkist stronghold, and Margaret, the dowagei
Duchess of Burgundy, the sister of Edward iv., exercised a
sufficiently powerful influence in Flanders to make that
land a centre of Yorkist intrigue.
Lambert Simnel, a pretender who claimed to be either
the son or the nephew of Edward IV. (his account of him-
self varied), appeared in Ireland, and the whole island
gathered round him. He invaded England, drew to his
standard many of the old Yorkists, but was defeated at
Stoke-on-Trent in 1487. This was really a formidable
rebellion. The rising under Perkin Warbeck, a young
Burgundian from Tournay, though supported by Margaret
of Burgundy and James iv. of Scotland, was more easily
suppressed. A popular revolt against severe taxation was
subdued in 1497, and it may be said that Henry's home
difficulties were all over by the year 1500. England
entered the sixteenth century as a compact nation.
The foreign policy of Henry vii. was alliance with
Spain and a long-sighted attempt to secure Scotland by
peaceful means. It had for consequences two marriages
which had far-reaching results. The marriage of Henry s
daughter Margaret with James iv. of Scotland led to the
union of the two crowns three generations later ; and that
between Katharine, the third daughter of Ferdinand and
Isabella of Spain, and the son of Henry vii. came to be
the occasion, if not the cause, of the revolt of England from
Rome. Katharine was married to Arthur, Prince of Wales,
in 1501 (November 14th). Prince Arthur died on January
14th, 1502. After protracted negotiation, lengthened
by the unwillingness of the Pope (Pius in.) to grant a
dispensation, Katharine was contracted to Henry, and the
marriage took place in the year of Prince Henry's accession
to the crown. Katharine and Henry were crowned together
at Westminster on June 28th, 1509.
England had prospered during the reign of the first
Tudor sovereign. The steady increase in wool-growing and
wool-exporting is in itself testimony to the fact that the
period of internal wars had ceased, for sheep speedily
)22 THE POLITICAL SITUATION
become extinct when bands of raiders disturb the country.
The growth in the number of artisan capitalists shows that
money had become the possession of all classes in the com-
munity. The rise of the companies of merchant adven-
turers proves that England was taking her share in the
world-trade of the new era. English scholars like Grocyn
and Linacre (tutor in Italy of Pope Leo x. and in England
of the Prince of Wales) had imbibed the New Learning
in Italy, and had been followed there by John Colet, who
caught the spirit of the Eenaissance from the Italian
Humanists and the fervour of a rehgious revival from
Savonarola's work in Florence. The country had emerged
from Medisevalism in almost everything when Henry viil,
the hope of the English Humanists and reformers, ascended
the throne in 1509.
§ 4. France.
If England entered on the sixteenth century as the
most compact kingdom in Europe, in the sense that all
classes of its society were welded together more firmly
than anywhere else, it may be said of France at the same
date that nowhere was the central authority of the sovereign
more firmly established. Many things had worked for this
state of matters. The Hundred Years' War with England
did for France what the wars against the Moors had done
for Spain. It had created a sense of nationality. It had
also made necessary national armies and the raising of
national taxes. During the weary period of anarchy under
Charles Ti. every local and provincial institution of France
had seemed to crumble or to display its inefficiency to help
the nation in its sorest need. The one thing which was '
able to stand the storms and stress of the time was the
kingly authority, and this in spite of the incapacity of the
man who possessed it. The reign of Charles vii. had made
it plain that England was not destined to remain in pos-
session of French territory ; and the succeeding reigns had
seen the central authority slowly acquiring irresistible
strength. Charles vii. by his policy of yielding slightly to
FRANCE 23
pressure and sitting still when he could — by his inactivity,
perhaps masterly, — Louis xi. by his restless, unscrupulous
craft, Anne of Beaujeu (his daughter) by her clear insight
and prompt decision, had not only laid the foundations, but
built up and consolidated the edifice of absolute monarchy
in France. The kingly power had subdued the great nobles
and feudatories ; it had to a large extent mastered the
Church ; it had consolidated the towns and made them
props to its power ; and it had made itself the direct lord
of the peasants.
The work of consolidation had been as rapid as it was
complete. In 1464, three years after his succession,
Louis XI. was confronted by a formidable association of the
great feudatories of France, which called itself the League
of Public Weal. Charles of Guyenne, the king's brother,
the Count of Charolais (known as Charles the Bold of
Burgundy), the Duke of Brittany, the two great families
of the Armagnacs, the elder represented by the Count of
Armagnac, and the younger by the Duke of Nemours,
John of Anjou, Duke of Calabria, and the Duke of Bour-
bon, were allied in arms against the king. Yet by 1465
Normandy had been wrested from the Duke of Guyenne ;
Guyeime itself had become the king's in 1472 ; the Duke
of Nemours had been crushed and slain in 1476 ; the
Count of Charolais, become Duke of Burgundy, had been
overthrown, his power shattered, and himself slain by the
Swiss peasant confederates, and almost all his French fiefs
had been incorporated by 1480 ; and on the death of
King Eene (1480) the provinces of Anjou and Provence
had been annexed to the Crown of France. The great
' feudatories were so thoroughly broken that their attempt
to revolt during the earUer years of the reign of Charles viii.
was easily frustrated by Anne of Beaujeu acting on behalf
of the young king.
The efforts to secure hold on the Church date back
from the days of the Council of Basel, when Pope Eugenius
was at hopeless issue with the majority of its members.
In 1438 a deputation from the Council waited upon the
24 THE POLITICAL SITUATION
king and laid before him the conciliar plans of reform.
Charles vii. summoned an assembly of the French clergy to
meet at Bourges. He was present himself with his princi-
pal nobles ; and the meeting was also attended by members
of the Council and by papal delegates. There the cele-
brated Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges was formally pre-
sented and agreed upon.
- --This Pragmatic Sanction embodied most of the cherished
conciliar plans of reform. It asserted the ecclesiastical
I supremacy of Councils over Popes. It demanded a meet-
\ ing of a Council every ten years. It declared that the
> selection of the higher ecclesiastics was to be left to the
Chapters and to the Convents. It denied the Pope's
general claim to the reservation of benefices, and greatly
, limited its use in special cases. It did away with the Pope's
right to act as Ordinary, and insisted that no ecclesiastical
cases should be appealed to Eome without first having
I exhausted the lower courts of jurisdiction. It abolished
j the Annates, with some exceptions in favour of the present
Pope. It also made some attempts to provide the churches
' with an educated ministry. All these declarations simply
carried out the proposals of the Council of Basel ; but they
had an important influence on the position of the French
clergy towards the king. The Pragmatic Sanction, though
issued by an assembly of the French clergy, was neverthe-
less a royal ordinance, and thereby gave the king indefinite
rights oveFihe^^hufch within France. The right to elect
bishops and abbots was placed in the hands of Chapters
, and Convents, but the king and nobles were expressly per-
mitted to bring forward and recommend candidates, and
this might easily be extended to enforcing the election of
those recommended. Indefinite rights of patronage on
the part of the king and of the nobles over benefices in
France could not fail to be the result, and the French
Church could scarcely avoid assuming the appearance
i of a national Church controlled by the king as the head
I of the State. The abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction-
was always a bait which the French king could dangle
FRANCE 25
before the eyes of the Pope, and the promise to maintain
the Pragmatic Sanction was always a bribe to secure the
support of the clergy and the Farlements of France.
In 1516, Francis I. and Leo x. agreed on a Concordat,
the practical effect of which was that the king received
the right to nominate to almost all the higher vacant
benefices in France, while the Popes received the Annates.
The results were not beneficial to the Church. It left
the clergy a prey to papal exactions, and it compelled
them to seek for promotion through subserviency to the
king and the court ; but it had the effect of ranging the
mon^rch^ jon the jide of the Papacy when the Eeformation
came.
It can scarcely be said that France was a compact
nation. The nobility were separated from the middle and
lower classes by the fact that all younger sons retained the
status and privileges of nobles. In ancient times they had
paid no share of the taxes raised for war, on the ground
that they rendered personal service, and the privilege of
being fre^ from taxation was retained long after the ser-
vices of a feudal militia had disappeared. The nobility in
France became a caste, numerous, poor in many instances,
and too proud to belittle themselves by entering any of the
professions or engaging in commerce.
Louis XI. had done his best to encourage trade, and
had introduced the silkworm industry into France. But
as the whole weight of taxation fell upon the rural
districts, the middle classes took refuge in the towns, and
the peasantry, between the dues they had to pay to their
lords and~the taxation for the king, were in an oppressed
condition. Their grievances were set forth in the petition
they addressed, in the delusive hope of amelioration, to
the States-General which assembled on the accession of
Charles yiii. " During the past thirty-four years," they
say, " troops have been ever passing through France and
living on the poor people. When the poor man has
managed, by the sale of the coat on his back, and after
hard toil, to pay his taille, and hopes he may live out the
26 THE POLITICAL SITUATION
year on the little he has left, then come fresh troops to
his cottage, eating him up. In Normandy, multitudes have
died of hunger. From want of cattle, men and women
have to yoke themselves to the carts ; and others, fearing
that if seen in the daytime they will be seized for not
having paid their taille, are compelled to work at night.
The king should have pity on his poor people, and relieve
them from the said taiUes and charges." This was in 1483,
before the Italian wars had further increased the burdens
which the poorest class of the community had to pay.
The New Learning had begun to filter into France at a
comparatively early date. In 1458 an Italian of Greek
descent had been appointed to teach Greek by the Uni-
versity of Paris. But that University had been for long
the centre of .mediaeval scholastic study, and it was not
until the Italian campaigns of Charles viii., who was in
Italy when the Eenaissance was at its height, that France
may be said to have welcomed the Humanist movement.
A Greek Press was established in Paris in 1507, a group
of French Humanists entered upon the study of the authors
of classical antiquity, and the new learning gradually dis-
placed the old scholastic disciplines. French Humanists
were perhaps the earliest to make a special study of Eoman
Law, and to win distinction as eminent jurists. Francis,
like Henry vm. of England, was welcomed on his accession
as a Humanist king. Such was the condition of France
in the beginning of the sixteenth century.
§ 5. Spain.
j Spain had for centuries been under Mohammedan
/ domination. The Moslems had overrun almost the whole
country, and throughout its most fertile provinces the
Christian peasantry lived under masters of an alien faith.
At the beginning of the tenth century the only independent
Christian principalities were small states lying along the
southern shore of the Bay of Biscay and the south-westerii
slopes of the Pyrenees. The Gothic and Vandal chiefs slowly
SPAIN 27
ecovered the northern districts, while the Moors retained
he more fertile provinces of the south. The political
ionditions of the country at the close of the fifteenth
sentury inevitably reflected this gradual reconquest, which
lad brought the Christian principalities into existence.
.n 1474, when Isabella (she had been married in 1469
;o Ferdinand, the heir to Aragon) succeeded her brother
leury it. in the sovereignty of Castile, Spain was divided
nto five separate principalities : Castile, with Leon, contain-
ng 6 2 per cent. ; Aragon, with Valentia and Catalonia,
iontaining 1 5 per cent. ; Portugal, containing 2 per cent. ;
Jfavarre, containing 1 per cent. ; and Granada, the only
'emaining Moslem State, containing 2 per cent, of the
sntire surface of the country.
Castile had grown by almost continuous conquest of
ands from the Moslems, and these additions were acquired
n many ways. If they had been made in what may be
ermed a national war, the lands seized became the
)roperty of the king, and could be retained by him or
[ranted to his lords spiritual and temporal under varying
londitions. In some cases these grants made the possessors
ihnost independent princes. On the other hand, lands
aight be wrested from the aliens by private adventurers,
,nd in such cases they remained in possession of the con-
[uerors, who formed mimicipalities which had the right of
ihoosing and of changing their overlords, and really formed
ndependent communities. Then there were, as was natural
Q a period of continuous warfare, waste lands. These
lecame the property of those who settled on them. Lastly,
here were the dangerous frontier lands, which it was the
loliey of king or great lord who owned them to people
rith settlers, who could only be induced to undertake the
lerilous occupation provided they received charters (fueros),
rhich guaranteed their practical independence. In such a
ondition of things the central authority could not be
brong. It was further weakened by the fact that the
reat feudatories claimed to have both civil administration
od military rule over their lands, and assumed an almost
28 THE POLITICAL SITUATION
regal state. Military religious orders abounded, and were
possessed of great wealth. Their Grand Masters, in virtue
of their office, were independent military commanders, and
had great gifts, in the shape of rich commandries, to bestow
on their followers. Their power overshadowed that of the
sovereign. The great ecclesiastics, powerful feudal lords
in virtue of their lands, claimed the rights of civil admini-
stration and military rule like their lay compeers, and,
being personally protected by the indefinable sanctity of
the priestly character, were even more turbulent. Almost
universal anarchy had prevailed during the reigns of the
two weak kings who preceded Isabella on the throne of
Castile, and the crown lands, the support and special pro-
tection of the sovereign, had been alienated by lavish gifts
to the great nobles. This was the situation which faced
the young queen when she came into her inheritance. It
was aggravated by a rebellion on behalf of Juanna, the
illegitimate daughter of Henry iv. The rebellion was
successfully crushed. The queen and her consort, who was
not yet in possession of the throne of Aragon, then tried
to give the land security. The previous anarchy had pro-
duced its usual results. The country was infested with
bands of brigands, and life was not safe outside the walls
/ of the towns. Isabella instituted, or rather revived, the
I Holy Brotherhood {Hermaiwiad), a force of cavalry raised
I by the whole country (each group of one hundred houses
! was bound to provide one horseman). It was an army of
I mounted police. It had its own judges, who tried criminals
on the scene of their crimes, and those convicted were
punished by the troops according to the sentences pro-
nounced. Its avowed objects were to put down all crimes
of violence committed outside the cities, and to hunt
criminals who had fled from the towns' justice. Its judges
superseded the justiciary powers of the nobles, who pro-
tested in vain. The Brotherhood did its work very effectively,
and the towns and the common people rallied round the
monarchy which had given them safety for limb and
property.
SPAIN 29
Tfie sovereigns next attacked the position of the
nobles, whose mutual feuds rendered them a compara-
tively easy foe to rulers who had proved their strength
of government. The royal domains, which had been
alienated during the previous reign, were restored to the
sovereign, and many of the most abused privileges of the
nobility were curtailed.
One by one the Grand Masterships of the Crusading
Orders were centred in the person of the Crown, the Pope
acquiescing and granting investiture. The Church was
stripped of some of its superfluous wealth, and the civil
powers of the higher ecclesiastics were abolished or curtailed.
In the end it may be said that the Spanish clergy were
made almost as subservient to the sovereign as were those
of France.
The pacification and consolidation of Castile was fol-
lowed by the conquest of Granada. The Holy Brother-
hood served the purpose of a standing army, internal feuds
among the Moors aided the Christians, and after a pro-
tracted struggle (1481—1492) the city of Granada was
taken, and the Moorish rule in the Peninsula ceased. AH '
Spain, save Portugal and Navarre (seized by Ferdinand in
1512), was thus united under Ferdinand and Isabella, the
Catholic Sovereigns as they came to be called, and thei
civil unity increased the desire for religious uniformity.
The Jews in Spain were numerous, wealthy, and influential.
They had intermarried with many noble families, and
almost controlled the finance of the country. It was
resolved to compel them to become Christians, by force if
necessary. In 1478 a Bull was obtained from Pope
Sixtus IV. establishing the Inquisition in Spain, it being
provided that the inquisitors were to be appointed by the
sovereign. The Holy Office in this way became an instru-
ment for establishing a civil despotism, as well as a means
for repressing heresy. It did its work with a ruthless
severity hitherto unexampled. Sixtus himself and some
of his successors, moved by repeated complaints, endea-
voured to restrain its savage energy ; but the Inquisition
30 THE POLITICAL SITUATION
was too useful an instrument in the hands of a despotic
sovereign, and the Popes were forced to allow its proceed-
ings, and to refuse all appeals to Eome against its sen-
tences. It was put in use against the Moorish subjects
of the Catholic kings, notwithstanding ■ the terms of the
capitulation of Granada, which provided for the exercise of
civil and religious liberty. The result was that, in spite of
fierce rebellions, all the Moors, save small groups of
families under the special protection of the Crown, had
become nominal Christians by 1502, although almost a
century had to pass before- the Inquisition had rooted out
the last traces of the Moslem faith in the Spanish Peninsula.
The death of Isabella in 1504 roughly dates a formid-
able rising against this process of repression and consolida- ,
tion. The severities of the Inquisition, the insistence of
f Ferdinand to govern personally the lands of his deceased
I wife, and many local causes led to widespread conspiracies
I and revolts against his rule. The years between 1504 and
{ 1522 were a period of revolutions and of lawlessness which
was ended when Charles v., the grandson of Perdinand and
: Isabella, overcame all resistance and inaugurated a reign of
personal despotism which long distinguished the kingdom
of Spain. Spanish troubles had something to do with pre-
venting Charles from putting into execution in Germany,
as he wished to do, the ban issued at Worms against
Martin Luther.
§ 6. Germany and Italy.
Germany and Italy, in the beginning of the sixteenth
century, had made almost no progress in becoming united
and compact nations. The process of national consolida^
tion, which was a feature of the times, displayed itself in
these lands in the creation of compact principalities rather
than in a great and effective national movement under one
sovereign power. It is a commonplace of history to say
that the main reason for this was the presence within these
two lands of the Pope and the Emperor, the twin powers
GERMANY AND ITALY 31
of the earlier medJEeval ideal of a dual government, at once
civil and ecclesiastical. MachiavelU expressed the common
idea in his clear and strenuous fashion. He says that the
Italians owe it to Eome that they are divided into factions
and not united as were Spain and France. The Pope, he
explains, who claimed temporal as well as spiritual juris-
diction, though not strong enough to rule all Italy by
himself, was powerful enough to prevent any other Italian
dynasty from taking his place. Whenever he saw any
Italian power growing strong enough to have a future
before it, he invited the aid of some foreign potentate, thus
making Italy a prey to continual invasions. The shadowy
lordship of the Pope was sufficient, in the opinion of
MachiavelU, to prevent any real lordship under a native
dynasty within the Italian peninsula. In Germany there
was a similar impotency. The German king was the '
Emperor, the mediaeval head of the Holy Eoman Empire,
the " king of the Eomans." Some idea of what underlay
the thought and its expression may be had when one reads
across Albert Diirer's portrait of Maximilian, " Imperator
Caesar Divus Maximihanus Pius Felix Augustus," just as if
he had been Trajan or Constantine. The phrase carries
us back to the times when the Teutonic tribes swept down
on the Eoman possessions in Western Europe and took
possession of them. They were barbarians with an un-
alterable reverence for the wider civilisation of the great
Empire which they had conquered. They crept into the
shell of the great Empire and tried to assimilate its juris-
prudence and its religion. Hence it came to pass, in the
earlier Middle Ages, as Mr. Freeman says, " The two great
powers in Western Europe were the Church and the 1
Empire, and the centre of each, in imagination at least,
was Eome. Both of these went on through the settlements '
of the German nations, and both in a manner drew new
powers from the change of things. Men believed more
than ever that Eome was the lawful and natural centre of
the world. For it was held that there were of divine
right two Vicars of God upon earth, the Eoman Emperor,
32 THE POLITICAL SITUATION
His Vicar in temporal things, and the Eoman Bishop, His
Vicar in spiritual things. This belief did not interfere
with the existence either of separate commonwealths,
principalities, or of national Churches. But it was held that
the Eoman Emperor, who was the Lord of the World, was
of right the head of all temporal States, and the Eoman
Bishop, the Pope, was the head of all the Churches." This
idea was a devout imagination, and was never actually and
fully expressed in fact. No Eastern nation or Church ever
agreed with it ; and the temporal lordship of the Emperors
was never completely acknowledged even in the West.
Still it ruled in men's minds with all the force of an ideal
As the modern nations of Europe came gradually into
being, the real headship of the Emperor became more and
more shadowy. But both headships could prevent the
national consoUdation of the countries, Germany and Italy,
in which the possessors dwelt. All this is, as has been
said, a commonplace of history, and, like all commonplaces,
it contains a great deal of truth. Still it may be questioned
whether the mediaeval idea was solely responsible for the
disintegration of either Germany or Italy in the sixteenth
century. A careful study of the conditions of things in
both countries makes us see that many causes were at
work besides the mediaeval idea— conditions geographical,
social, and historical. Whatever the causes, the disinte-
gration of these two lands was in marked contrast to the
consolidation of the three other nations.
§ 7. Italy.
In the end of the fifteenth century, Italy contained a
very great number of petty principalities and five States
which might be called the great powers of Italy — Venice,
Milan, and Plorence in the north, Naples in the south,
and the States of the Church in the centre. Peace was
kept by a delicate and highly artificial balance of powers.
Venice was a commercial republic, ruled by an oligarchy
of nobles. The city in the lagoons had been founded by
ITALY 33
rembling fugitives fleeinj before Attila's Ht^a, and was
lore than a thousand years old. It had large territories
a the mainland of Italy, and colonies extending down the
ist coast of the Adriatic and among the Greek islands,
b had the largest revenue of all the Italian States, but its
xpenses were also much the heaviest. Milan came next
1 wealth, with its yearly income of over 700,000 ducats.
Lt the close of the century it was in the possession of the
forza family, whose founder had been born a ploughman,
nd had risen to be a formidable commander of mercenary
Dldiers. It was claimed by Maximilian as a fief of the
Impire, and by the Kings of France as a heritage of the
)ukes of Orleans. The disputed heritage was one of
he causes of the invasion of Italy by Charles viii.
'lorenee, the most cultured city in Italy, was, like Venice,
c ommercial republic ; but it was a dernqcratic republic,
rherein one family, the Medici, had usurped almost de-
potic power while preserving all the external marks of
3publican rule.
Naples was the portion of Italy where the feudal
ystem. of the Middle Ages had lingered longest. The
Id kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and Sicily) had,
ince 1458, been divided, and Sicily had been politically
eparated from the mainland. The island belonged to the
ring of Aragon ; while the mainland had for its ruler
tie illegitimate son of.Alphonso of Aragon, Ferdinand,
r Ferrante, who proved a despotic and masterful ruler.
le had crushed his semi-independent feudal barons, had
rought the towns under his despotic rule, and was able
3 hand over a compact kingdom to his son Alphonso in
494.
The feature, however, in the political condition of Italy
rhich illustrated best the general tendency of the age
awards coalescence, was the growth of the States of the
Jhurch. The dominions which were directly under the
smporal power of the Pope had been the most disorganised
1 all Italy. The vassal barons had been turbulenfcly inde-
endent, and the Popes had little power even within the
34 THE POLITICAL SITUATION
city of Kome. The helplessness of the Popes to control
their vassals perhaps reached its lowest stage in the days
of Innocent vm. His successors Alexander tl (Eodrigo
Borgia, 1492-1503), Julius ii. (Cardinal deUa Eovere,
1503-1513), and Leo x. (Giovanni de Medici, 1513-
1521), strove to create, and partly succeeded in formii^, a
strong central dominion, the States of the Church. The
troubled times of the French invasions, and the continual
warfare among the more powerful States of Italy, furnished
them with the occasion. They pursued their policy with a
craft which brushed aside all moral obligations, and with
a ruthlessness which hesitated at no amount of bloodshed.
In their hands the Papacy appeared to be a merely tem-
poral power, and was treated as such by contemporary
politicians. It was one of the political States of Italy, and
the Popes were distinguished from their contemporary
Italian rulers only by the facts that their spiritual position
enabled them to exercise a European influence which the
others could not aspire to, and that their sacred character
placed them above the obligations of ordinary morality in
the matter of keeping solemn promises and maiatainii^
treaty obligations made binding by the most sacred oaths.
In one sense their aim was patriotic. They were Italian
princes whose aim was to create a strong Italian central
power which might be able to maintain the independence
of Italy against the foreigner; and in this they were
partially successful, whatever judgment may require to be
passed on the means taken to attain their end. But the
actions of the Italian prince placed the spiritual Head of
the Church outside all those influences, intellectual, artistic,
and religious (the revival under Savonarola in Florence),
which were working in Italy for the regeneration of
European society. The Popes of the Kenaissance set the
example, only too faithfully followed by almost every
prince of the age, of believing that political far outweighed
all moral and religious motives.
GERMANY 35
§ 8. Germany.
Germany, or the Empire, as it was called, included,
the days of the Eeformation, the Low Countries in
le north-west and most of what are now ' the Austro-
ungarian lands in the east. It was in'arBtrairgetJondi-
on. On the one hand a strong popular sentiment for
lity had arisen in all the German-speaking portions, and
1 the other the country was cut into sections and slices,
id was more hopelessly divided than was Italy itself.
Nominally the Empire was ruled over by one supreme
ird, with a great feudal assembly, the Diet, under him.
The Empire was elective, though for generations the
ilers chosen had always been the heads of the House of
^apsbuxg, and since 1356 the election had been in the
inds of seven prmce-electors — three on the Elbe and
lur on the TTEme. On the Elbe were the King of
ohemia, the Elector of Saxony, and the Elector of
randenburg ; on the Ehine, the Count Palatine of the
hine and the Archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Koln.
This Empire, nominally one, and full of the strongest
intiments of unity, was hopelessly divided,' and — for this
as the pecuHarity of the situation — all the elements
taking for peaceful government, which in countries like
ranee or England supported the central power, were on
le side of disunion.
A glance at the map of Germany in the times of the
reformation shows an astonishing multiplicity of separate
rincipalities, ecclesiastical and secular, all the more be-
ildering that most of them appeared to be composed of
itches lying separate from each other. Almost every
iling prince had to cross some neighbour's land to visit
le outlying portions of his dominions. It must also be
jmembered that the divisions which can be represented
a. a map but faintly express the real state of things. The
jrritories of the imperial cities — the lands outside the
alls ruled by the civic fathers — were for tlie most part
)o small to figure on any map, and for the same reason
3S THE POLITICAL SITUATION
the tiny principalities of the hordes of free nobles are al8(
invisible. So we have to imagine all those little mediaeva
republics and those infinitesimal kingdoms camped on th{
territories of the great princes, and taking from them evei
the small amount of unity which 'the map shows.
The greater feudal States, Electoral and Ducal Saxony
Brandenburg, Bavaria, the Palatinate, Hesse, and manj
others, had meetings of their own Estates, — Councils ol
subservient nobles and lawyers, — their own Supreme Court!
of Justice, from which there was no appeal, their own fiscal
system, their own finance and • coinage, and largely con-
trolled their clergy and their relations to powers outside
Germany. Their princes, hampered as they were by the
great Churchmen, thwarted continually by the town re-
publics, defied by the free nobles, were nevertheless actual
kings, and profited by the centraUsiug tendencies of the
times. They alone in Germany represented settled central
government, and attracted to themselves the smaller units
lying outside and around them.
Yet with aU these divisions, having their roots deej
down in the past, there was pervading all classes ol
society, from princes to peasants, the sentiment of a united
Germany, and no lack of schemes to convert the feeliiif
into fact. The earliest practical attempts began with the
union of German Churchmen at Constance and the scheme
for a National Church of Germany ; and the dream ol
ecclesiastical unity brought in its train the aspiration aftei
political oneness.
The practical means proposed to create a Germai
national unity over lands which stretched from the Straitf
of Dover to the Vistula, and from the Baltic to the
"Adriatic, were the proclamation of a universal Land'!
Peace, forbidding all internecine war between Germans
the establishment of a Supreme Court of Justice to decide
quarrels within the Empire ; a common coinage, and a com-
mon Customs Union. To bind all more firmly togethei
there was needed a Common Council or governing body
which, under the Emperor, should determine the Homf
GERMANY 37
and Foreign Policy of the Empire. The only authorities
which could create a governmental unity of this kind were
the Emperor on the one hand and the great princes on the
other, and the two needed to be one in mutual confidence r
and in intention. But that is what never happened, and ,
all through the reign of Maximilian and in the early years'
of Charles we find two different conceptions of what the
central government ought to be— the one oligarchic and
the other autocratic. The princes were resolved to keep
their independence, and their plans for unity always im-
plied a governing oligarchy with serious restraint placed
on the power of the Emperor ; while the Emperors, who
would never submit to be controlled by an oligarchy of
German princes, and who found that they could not carry
out their schemes for an autocratic unity, were at least able
to wreck any other.
The German princes have been accused of preferring
the security and enlargement of their dynastic possessions
to the unity of the Empire, but it can be replied that in
doing so they only followed the example set them by their
Emperors. Frederick m., Maximilian, and Charles v. in-
variably neglected imperial interests when they clashed
with the welfare of the family possessions of the House of
Hapsburg. When Maximilian inherited the imperial Bur-
gundian lands, a fief of the Empire, through his marriage
with Mary, the heiress of Charles the Bold, he treated the
inheritance as part of the family estates of his House.
The Tyrol was absorbed by the House of Hapsburg when
the Swabian League prevented Bavaria seizing it (1487).
The same fate fell on the Duchy of Austria when Vienna
was recovered, and on Hungary and Bohemia ; and when
Charles v. got hold of WUrtemberg on the outlawry of
Duke Ulrich, it, too, was detached from the Empire and
absorbed into the family possessions of the Hapsburgs. /
There was, in short, a persistent policy pursued by three/
successive Emperors, of despoiling the Empire in order tqf
increase the family possessions of the House to which they
belonged.
38 THE POLITICAL SITUATION
' The last attempt to give a constitutional unity to the
German Empire was made at the Diet of Worms (1521)
—the Diet before which Luther appeared. There the
Emperor, Charles v., agreed to accept a Beichsr^iment,
vhich was in all essential points, though differing in some
details, the same as his grandfather Maximilian had pro-
posed to the Diet of 1495. The Central Council- was
/composed of a President and four members appointed by
[the Emperor, six Electors (the King of Bohemia being ex-
cluded), who might sit in person or by deputies, and twelve
members appointed by the rest of the Estates. The cities
were not represented. This Reichsregiment was to govern
all German lands, including Austria and the Netherlands,
but excluding Bohemia. Switzerland, hitherto nominally
within the Empire, formally withdrew and ceased to form
part of Germany. The central government needed funds to
carry on its work, and especially to provide an army to
enforce its decisions ; and various schemes for raising the
money required were discussed at its earlier meetings. It
was resolved at last to raise the necessary funds by im-
posing a tax of four per cent, on all imports and exports,
and to establish custom-houses on all the frontiers. The
practical effect of this was to lay the whole burden of
taxation upon the mercantile classes, or, in other words, to
make the cities, who were not represented in the Reichs-
regiment, pay for the whole of the central '"g overnm ent,
i This Beichsregiment was to be simply a board of advice,
without any decisive control so long as the Emperor was in
Germany. When he was absent from the country it had
^ an independent power of government. But all important
decisions had to be confirmed by the absent Emperor, who,
for his part, promised to form no foreign leagues involving
Germany without the consent of the Council.
As soon as the Reichsregiment had settled its scheme
of taxation, the cities on which it was proposed to lay the
whole burden of providing the funds required very natur-
ally objected. They met by representatives at Speyei
(1523), and sent delegates to Spain, to Valladolid, where
GERMANY 39
Charles happened to be, to protest against the scheme of
taxation. They were supported by the great German
capitalists. The Emperor received them graciously, and
promised to take the government into his own hands. In
this way the last attempt to give a governmental unity to
Germany was destroyed by the joint action of the Emperor
and of the cities. It is unquestionable that the Eeformation
\ under Luther did seriously assist in the disintegration of
^ Germany, but it must be remembered that a movement
cannot become national where there is no nation, and that
German nationality had been hopelessly destroyed just at
the time when it was most needed to imify and moderate
the great religious impulses which were throbbing in the
hearts of its citizens.
Maximilian had been elected King of the Eomans in
1486, and had succeeded to the Empire on the death of
his father, Frederick m, in 1493. His was a strongly
fascinating personality — a man full of enthusiasms, never
lacking in ideas, but singularly destitute of the patient
practical power to make them workable. He may almost
be called a type of that Germany over which he was called
to rule. No man was fuller of the longing for German
unity as an ideal ; no man did more to perpetuate the very
real divisions of the land.
He was the patron of German learning and of German
art, and won the praises of the German Humanists : no
ruler was more celebrated in contemporary song. He pro-
tected and supported the German towns, encouraged their
industries, and fostered their culture. In almost every-
thing ideal he stood for German nationality and unity.
He placed himself at the head of all those intellectual and
artistic forces from which spread the thought of a imited
Germany for the Germans. On the other hand, his one
persistent practical policy, and the only one in which he
was almost uniformly successful, was to unify and con-
solidate the family possessions of the House of Hapsburg.
In this policy he was the leader of those who broke up
Germany into an aggregate of separate and independent
40 THE POLITICAL SITUATION
principalities. The greater German princes followed his
example, and did their best to transform themselves into
the civilised rulers of modern States.
^Maximilian died somewhat unexpectedly on January
12th, 1519, and five months were spent in intrigues
by the partisans of Francis of France and young Charles,
King of Spain, the grandson of Maximilian. The French
party believed that they had secured by bribery a majority
of the Electors ; and when this was whispered about, the
popular feeling in favour of Charles, on account of his
German blood, soon began to manifest itself. It was
naturally strongest in the Ehine provinces. Papal dele-
gates could not get the Ehine skippers to hire boats to
them for their journey, as it was believed that the Pope
favoured the French king. The Imperial Cities accused
Francis of fomenting internecine war in Germany, and
displayed their hatred of his candidature. The very
Landsknechten clamoured for the grandson of their
"Father" Maximilian. The eyes of all Germany were
^turned anxiously enough to the venerable town of
iFrankfurt-on-the-Main, where, according to ancient usage,
the Electors met to select the ruler of the Holy Eoman
Empire. On the 28th of June (1519) the alarm bell
of the town gave the signal, and the Electors assembled
in their scarlet robes of State in the dim little chapel of
St. Bartholomew, where the conclave was always held.
The manifestation of popular feeling had done its work.
Charles was unanimously chosen, and all Germany rejoiced,
— the good burghers of Frankfurt declaring that if the
Electors had chosen Francis they would have been " playing
with death."
It was a wave of national excitement, the desire for
a German ruler, that had brought about the unanimous
election ; and never were a people more mistaken and, in
the end, disappointed. Charles was the heir of the House
of Hapsburg, the grandson of Maximilian, his veins full
of German blood. But he was no German. Maximilian
was the last of the real German Hapsbui-gs. History
GERMANY 41
scarcely shows another instance where the mother's blood
has so completely changed the character of a race. Charles
was his mother's son, and her Spanish characteristics
showed themselves in him in greater strength as the years
went on. When he abdicated, he retired to end his days
in a Spanish convent. It was the Spaniard,, not the
German, who faced Luther at Worms.
CHAPTER III.
THE RENAISSANCE.^
§ 1. The. Transition from the Mcdiceval to ihe Modem
World.
The movement called the Eenaissance, in its widest extent,
may be described as the transition, from the mediaeval to
the modem world. All our present conceptions of life
and thought find their roots within this period.
It saw the beginnings of modem science and the
application of true scientific methods to the investigation
of nature. It witnessed the astronomical discoveries of
Copernicus and Galileo, the foundation of anatomy under
^ SoTTECES : Boccaccio, Lettere ediie e iriediU, tradotte et commentate am
nuovi doeumenti da Corra7::i>ii (Florence, 1877) ; Francisei Petrarehee,
SpistoltB familiares et TXtrue (Florence, 1859) ; Cusani, Opera (Basel, 1565) ;
Bocking, Ulrici SuUeni Opera, 5 vols. (Leipzig, 1871) ; Supplement
containing Epistolm Obscurorum Virorum, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1864, 1869) ;
Gillert, Der BrU/mechsel des Konrad Mutianus (Halle, 1890) ; Renchlin,
De Verba Mirifico (1552).
Later Books : Jacob Bnrckliardt, The Civilisation of the Period of Oie
Senaissance (Eng. trans., London, 1892) ; Geiger, Mumanismtis und
Renaissance in Jtdlien und DeutschJand (Berlin, 1882) ; Michelet, ITistoin
de Prance, toL vii.. Renaissance (Paris, 1855) ; Lavisse, Histoire de France,
v. i. p. 287 ff. ; Symonds, Hie Renaissance in Italy (London, 1877) ;
H. Hallam, Introduction to the lAteratnre qf Europe during the M/leenth,
Sixteenth, arid SeveiiUenth Centuries, 6tli ed. (London, 1860) ; Kamp^
schnlte. Die Universitat Erfurt in ihrem Verhdltniss sa dem ffumarusmus
UTid der Reformation, 2 vols. (Ti-ier, 1856, 1860) ; Eranse, Helius Eobanus
Sessus, sein Leben und seine Werke, 2 vols. (Gotha, 1879) ; Geiger, Johann
Reuchlin (Leipzig, 1871) ; Binder, Oharitas Pirkheimcr, Aebtissin ron
St. Clara zu Niimberg (Freiburg i. B., 1893); Hofler, DenkvMrdigkeiten
der CharUas Pirkhcinur (Quellensamml. z. frank. Gesch. iv., 1858) ; Roth,
Willibald Pirkheimcr (Halle, 1874) ; Scott, Albert Surer, his Life and
Works (London, 1869) ; Thausing, Durer's Briefe, Tageb&cher, Reime
(Vienna, 1884) ; Cambridge Modem History, 1. xvi, xvii ; II. i.
12
A PERIOD OF TRANSITION 43
Vesgalius, and the discovery of the circulation of the blood
by Harvey.
It was the age of geographical explorations. The
discoveries of the telescope, the mariner's compass, and
gunpowder gave men mastery over previously unknown
natural forces, and multiplied their powers, their daring,
and their capacities for adventure. When these geogra-
phical discoveries had made a world-trade a possible thing,
there began that change from mediaeval to modern methods
in trade and commerce which lasted from the close of
the fourteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth
century, when the modern commercial conditions were
thoroughly established. The transition period was marked
by the widening area of trade, which was no longer
restricted to the Mediterranean, the Black and the North
Seas, to the Baltic, and to the east coasts of Africa. The
rigid groups of artisans and traders — the guild system of
the Middle Ages — began to dissolve, and to leave freer
space for individual and new corporate effort. Prices
were gradually freed from official regulation, and became
subject to the natural effects of bargaining. Adventure
companies were started to share in the world-trade, and a
beginning was made of dealing on commissions. All these
changes belong to the period of transition between the
mediaeval and the modern world.
In the art of governing men the Eenaissance was the age
of political concentration. In two realms — Germany and
Italy — the mediaeval conceptions of Emperor and Pope,
world-king and world-priest, were still strong enough to
prevent the union of national forces under one political
head ; but there, also, the principle of coalescence may be
found in partial operation, — in Germany in the formation
of great independent principalities, and in Italy in the
growth of the States of the Church, — and its partial failure
subjected both nationalities to foreign oppression. Every-
where there was the attempt to assert the claims of the
secular powers to emancipate themselves from clerical
tutelage and ecclesiastical usurpation. While, underlying
44 THE RENAISSANCE
all, there was the beginiiiiig of the assertion of the
supreme right of individual revolt against every custom,
law, or theory which would subordinate the man to the
caste or class. The Swiss peasantry began it when they
made pikes by tying their scythes to their alpenstocks,
and, standing shoulder to shoulder at Morgarten and
Sempach, broke the fiercest charges of mediseval knight-
hood. They proved that man for man the peasant was
as good as the noble, and individual manhood asserted
in this rude and bodily fashion soon began to express
itself mentally and morally.
In jurisprudence the Eenaissance may be described as
the introduction of historical and scientific methods, the
abandonment of legal fictions based upon collections of
false decretals, the recovery of the true text of the Eoman
code, and the substitution of civil for canon law as the
basis of legislation and government. There was a
complete break with the past. The substitution of civil
law based upon the lawbooks of Justinian for the canon
law founded upon the Decretum of Gratian, involved such
a breach in continuity that it was the most momentous of
all the changes of that period of transition. For law
enters into every human relation, and a thorough change
of legal principles must involve a revolution which is none
the less real that it works almost silently. The codes of
Justinian and of Theodosius completely reversed the
teachings of the canonists, and the civilian lawyers learned
to look upon the Church as only a department of the
State.
In literature there was the discovery of classical
manuscripts, the introduction of the study of Greek, the
perception of the beauties of language in the choice and
arrangement of words under the guidance of classical
models. The literary powers of modern languages were
also discovered, — Italian, English, French, and German, —
and with the discovery the national literatures of Europe
came into being.
In art a complete revolution was effected in architec-
A PERIOD OF TRANSITION 45
ture, painting, and sculpture by the recovery of ancient
models and the study of the principles of their con-
struction.
The manufacture of paper, the discovery of the arts
of printing and engraving, multiplied the possession of the
treasures of the intelligence and of artistic genius, and
combined to make art and literature democratic. What
was once confined to a favoured few became common pro-
perty. New thoughts could act on men in masses, and
began to move the multitude. The old mediaeval barriers
were broken down, and men came to see that there was
more in religion than the mediaeval Church had taught,
more in social life than feudahsm had manifested, and
that knowledge was a manifold unknown to their
fathers.
If the Eenaissance be the transition from the mediaeval
to the modern world, — and it is scarcely possible to regard
it otherwise, — then it is one of those great movements of
the mind of mankind that almost defy exact description,
and there is an elusiveness about it which confounds us
when we attempt definition. " It was the emancipation of
the reason," says Symonds, " in a race of men, intolerant
of control, ready to criticise canons of conduct, enthusiastic
of antique liberty, freshly awakened to the sense of beauty,
and anxious above all things to secure for themselves free
scope in spheres outside the region of authority. Men
so vigorous and independent felt the joy of exploration.
There was no problem they feared to face, no formula
they were not eager to recast according to their new con-
ceptions." ^ It was the blossoming and fructifying of the
European intellectual life ; but perhaps it ought to be
added that it contained a new conception of the universe
in which religion consisted less in a feeling of dependence
on God, and more in a faith on the possibilities lying in
mankind.
' Symonds, Eenaissance in Italy, Revival of Zel(ers (London, 1877),
p. 13.
46 THE RENAISSANCE
§ 2. The Revival of Literature and Art.
But the Eenaissance has generally a more limited
meaniiig, and one defined by the most potent of the new
forces which worked for the general intellectual regenera-
tion. It means the revival of learning and of art conse-
quent on the discovery and study of the literary and
artistic masterpieces of antiquity. It is perhaps in this
more limited sense that the movement more directly pre-
pared the way for the Eeformation and what followed, and
deserves more detailed examination. It was the discovery
of a lost means of culture and the consequent awakening
and diffusion of a literary, artistic, and critical spirit.
A knowledge of ancient Latin literature had not
entirely perished during the earlier Middle Ages. The
Benedictine monasteries had preserved classical manuscripts
— especially the monastery of Monte Cassino for the
southern, and that of Fulda for the northern parts of
Europe. These monasteries and their sister establishments
were schools of learning as well as libraries, and we read
of more than one where the study of some of the classical
authors was part of the regular training. Virgil, Horace,
Terence and Martial, Livy, Suetonius and Sallust, were
known and studied. Greek literature had not survived to
anything like the same extent, but it had never entirely
disappeared from Southern Europe, and especially from
Southern Italy. Ever since the days of the Eoman
Eepublic in that part of the Italian peninsula once caUecl
Magna Grsecia, Greek had been the language of many of
the common people, as it is to this day, in districts of
Calabria and of Sicily ; and the teachers and students of
the mediaeval University of Salerno had never lost their
taste for its study.^ But with all this, the fourteenth
century, and notably the age of Petrarch, saw the begin-
^ There is evidence that Thomas Aquinas was not dependent, as is com-
monly supposed, for his acquaintance with Greek philosophy on translations
into Latin of the Araliic translations of portions of Aristotle, but that he
procured Latin Tersions made directly from the original Greek.
THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS 47
nings of new zeal for the literature of the past, and was
really the beginning of a new era.
Italy was the first land to become free from the
conditions of mediaeval life, and ready to enter On the new
life which was awaiting Europe. There was an Italian
language, the feeling of distinct nationality, a considerable
advance in civilisation, an accumulation of wealth, and,
during the age of the despots, a comparative freedom from
constant changes in political conditions.
Dante's great poem, interwea,ving as it does the imagery
and mysticism of Giacchino di Fiore, the deepest spiritual
and moral teaching of the mediaeval Church, and the
insight and judgment on men and things of a great poet,
was the first sign that Italy had wakened from the sleep
of the Middle Ages. Petrarch came next, the passionate
student of the lives, the thoughts, and emotions of the
great masters of classical Latin literature. They were real
men for him, his own Italian ancestors, and they as he
had felt the need of Hellenic culture to solace their souls,
and serve for the universal education of the human race.
Boccaccio, the third leader in the awakening, preached the
joy of living, the universal capacity for pleasure, and the
sensuous beauty of the world. He too, like Petrarch, felt
the need of Hellenic culture. For both there was an
awakening to the beauty of literary form, and the con-
viction that a study of the ancient classics would enable
them to achieve it. Both valued the vision of a new
conception of life derived from the perusal of the classics,
freer, more enlarged and joyous, more rational than the
Middle Ages had witnessed. Petrarch and Boccaccio
yearned after the life thus disclosed, which gave unfettered
scope to the play of the emotions, to the sense of beauty,
and to the manifold activity of the human intelligence.
Learned Greeks were induced to settle in Italy — men
who were able to interpret the ancient Gj-eek poets and
prose writers — Manuel Chrysoloras (at Florence, 1397—
1400), George of Trebizond, Theodore Gaza (whose Greek
Grammar Erasmus taught from while in England), Gemistos
48 THE REXAISSAXCE
riethon, a distingmshed Platonist, under whom the Chris-
tian Platonism received its impulse, and John Argyroponlos,
who was the teacher of Beachlin. The men of the early
Eenaissance were their pupila
§ 3. Its earlier relation to Christianity.
There was nothing hostile to Christianity or to the
mediaeval Church in the earlier stages of this intellectual
revival, and very little of the neo-paganism which it
developed afterwards. Many of the instincts of medisBval
piety remained, only the objects were changed. Petrarch
revered the MS. of Homer, which he could not read, as an
ancestor of his might have venerated the scapulary of a
saint'- The men of the early Eenaissance made collections
of MSS. and inscriptions, of cameos and of coins, and
worshipped them as if they had been relics. The Medicean
library was formed about 1450, the Vatican library in
1453, and the age of passionate collection began.
The age of scholarship succeeded, and Italian students
began to interpret the ancient classical authors with a
mysticism aU their own. They sought a means of recon-
ciling Christian thought with ancient pagan philosophy,
and, like Clement of Alexandria and Origen, discovered it
in Platonism. Platonic academies were founded, and
Cardinal Bessarion, Marsiglio Ficino, and Pico della Mir-
andola became the Christian Platonists of Italy. Of cooise,
in their enthusiasm they went too far. They appropriated
the whole intellectual life of a pagan age, and adopted its
ethical as well as its intellectual perceptions, its basts of
sensuous pleasures, and its joy in sensuous living. Still
their Tnain thought was to show that Hellenism as well
as Judaism was a pathway to Christianity, and that the
Sibyl as well as Da^id was a witness for Christ.
The Papacy lent its patronage to the revival of litera-
1 He embraced it, sighed orer it, and told it how he Innged to bear it
speak: Fra:iss*Tti, Frajtdsd J'etnaxha, £pitU>lte famSiares et variae, iL
472-i76.
RELATION TO RELIGION 49
ture and art, and put itself at the head of the movement
of intellectual life. Pope Nicolas v. (1447—1455) was the
first Bishop of Eome who fostered the Eenaissance, and he
himself may be taken as representing the sincerity, the
simplicity, and the lofty intellectual and artistic aims of
its earliest period. Sprung from an obscure family belong-
ing to Saranza, a small town near Spezzia, and cast on his
own resources before he had fairly quitted boyhood, he had
risen by his talents and his character to the highest position
in the Church. He had been private tutor, secretary,
librarian, and through all a genuine lover of books. They
were the only personal luxury he indulged in, and perhaps
no one in his days knew more about them. He was the
confidential adviser of Lorenzo de Medici when he founded
his great library in San Marco. He himself began the
Vatican Library. He had agents who ransacked the
monasteries of Europe, and he collected the literary relics
which had escaped destruction in the sack of Constanti-
nople. Before his death his library in the Vatican contained
more than 5000 MSS. He gathered round him a band
of illustrious artists and scholars. He filled Eome with
skilled and artistic artisans, with decorators, jewellers,
workers in painted glass and embroidery. The famous Leo
Alberti was one of his architects, and Tra Angelico one
of his artists. Laurentius Valla and Poggio Bracciolini,
Cardinal Bessarion and George of Trebizond, were among
his scholars. He directed and inspired their work. Valla's
critical attacks on the Donation of Constantine, and on the
tradition that the Twelve had dictated the Apostles' Creed,
did not shake his confidence in the scholar. The principal
Greek authors were translated into Latin by his orders.
Europe saw theology, learning, and art lending each other
mutual support under the leadership of the head of the
Church. Perhaps Julius il. (1503—1513) conceived more
definitely than even Nicolas had done that one duty of
the head of the Church was to assume the leadership of
the intellectual and artistic movement which was making
wider the thought of Europe, — only his restless energy
50 THE RENAISSANCE
never permitted him leisure to give effect to his coi
ception. " The instruction which Pope Julius ii. gav
to Michelangelo to represent him as Moses can bear bi
one interpretation : that Julius set himself the missio
of leading forth Israel (the Church) from its state c
degradation, and showing it — though he could not grar
possession — the Promised Land at least from afar, tha
blessed land which consists in the enjoyment of th
highest intellectual benefits, and the training and con
secration of all the faculties of man's mind to unio
with God."i
The classical revival in Italy soon exhausted itsel
Its sensuous perceptions degenerated into sensuality, it
instinct for the beauty of expression into elegant trifling
and its enthusiasm for antiquity into neo-paganism. I
failed almost from the first in real moral earnestness
scarcely saw, and still less underatood, how to cure th
deep-seated moral evils of the age.
Italy had given birth to the Eenaissance, but it sooi
spread to the more northern lands. Perhaps France firs
felt the impulse, then Germany and England last of al]
In dealing with the Eeformation, the movement in German;
is the most important.
The Germans, throughout the Middle Ages, had con
tinuous and intimate relations with the southern peninsula
and in the fifteenth century these were stronger than evei
German merchants had their factories in Venice and Genoa
young German nobles destined for a legal or diplomatii
career studied law at Italian universities ; students o
medicine completed their studies in the famous souther
schools; and the German wandering student frequentl;
crossed the Alps to pick up additional knowledge. Ther
was such constant scholarly intercourse between German;
and Italy, that the New Learning could not fail to sprea(
among the men of the north.
^ Professor Krauss, Cambridge Modem Ristory, ii. 6.
BRETHREN OF THE COMMON LOT 51
§ 4. The Brethren of the Common Lot.
Germany and the Low Countries had been singularly
prepared for that revival of letters, art, and science which
had come to Italy. One of the greatest gifts bestowed by
the Mystics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries on
their native land had been an excellent system of school
education. Gerard Groot, a disciple of the Flemish mystic
Jail van Eysbroec^^ad, after long consultations with his
Master, founded a. brotherhood called the Brethren of the
Common Life} whose aim was to better the religious con-
dition of their fellow-inen by th« multiplication of good
books and by the careful training of the young. They
were to support themselves by copying and selling manu-
scripts. All the houses of the Brethren had a large
room, where a number of scribes sat at tables, a reader
repeated slowly the words of the main lipt, and books
were multiplied as rapidly as was possible before the
invention of printing. They filled their own libraries
with the best books of Christian and pagan antiquity.
They multiplied small tracts containing the mystical and
practical theology of the Friends of God, and sent them
into circulation among the people. One of the intimate
followers of Groot, Florentius Eadewynsohn, proved to be
a distinguished educationalist, and the schools of the Order
soon became famous. The Brethren, to use the words
of their founder, employed education for the purpose
of " raising spiritual pillars in the Temple oi . the Lord."
They insisted on a study of the Vulgate in their classes ;
they placed German translations of Christian authors in i
the hands of their pupils ; they took pains to give them
a good knowledge of Latin, and read with them selections i
from the best known ancient authors ; they even taught j
a little Greek; and their scholars learned to sing the!
simpler, more evangelical Latin hymns.
The mother school was at Deventer, a town situated at
' C. H. Delprot, Verhandeling over de Brosderschap van Gerard Qroott
(AiDheim, 1856).
! 1
52 THE REXAISSAXCE
the south-west comer of the great episcopal territory o:
Utrecht, now the Dutch province of Ober-T^ssel. It lies
on the bank of that branch of the Ehine (the Y^el) whict
flowing northwards glides past Zutphen, Deventer, Zwolle
and loses itself in the Zuyder Zee at Kampen. A large
number of the more distinguished leaders of the fifteentl
century owed their early training to this great school a(
Deventer. During the last decades of the fifteenth century
the headmaster was Alexander Hegius (1433—1498), whc
came to Deventer ia 1471 and remained there until his
death.^ The school reached its height of fame under this
renowned master, who gathered 2000 pupils around him,
— among them Erasmus, Conrad Mutti (Mutianus Eufus),
Hermann von Busch, Johann Murmellius, — and, rejecting
\ the older methods of grammatical instruction, taught
them to know the niceties of the Latin tongue by lejiding
them directly to the study of the great writers of classical
; antiquity. He was such an indefatigable student that he
i kept himself awake during the night-watches, it is said, by
holding in his hands the candle which lighted him, in order
to be wakened by its fall should slimiber overtake him.
The glory of Deventer perished with ■ this great teacher,
\ who to the last maintained the ancient traditions of the
\ school by his maxim, that learning without piety was rather
I a curse than a blessing.
j Other famous schools of the Brethren in the second
' half of the fifteenth century were Schlettstadt,* in Elsass,
some miles from the west bank of the Ehine, and about
half-way between Strassburg and Basel ; Munster on the
Ems, the Monasterium of the earlier Middle Ages ; Emme-
rich, a town on the Ehine near the borders of Holland, and
Altmarck, in the north-west. Schlettstadt, imder its master
Ludwig Dringenberg, almost rivalled the fame of Davenler,
and many of the members of the well-known Strassburg circle
which gathered round Jacob Wimpheling, Sebastian Brand,
^ H. Hartfelder, Der Zusfand der deutschen Huchschulen am Ende da
MittdaUers. His'. Zeiischr. Ixiv. 50-107, 1S90.
' StTUver, Die Schuie von Schlettstadt (Leipzig, ISSO).
UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLS 53
and the German Savonarola, John Geiler von Keysersberg,
had been pupils in this school. Besides these more famous
establishments, the schools of the Brethren spread all over
Germany. The teachers M^ere commonly called the Roll-
Brueder, and under this name they had a school in Magde-
burg to which probably Luther was sent when he spent a
year in that town. Their work was so pervading and their
teaching so effectual, that we are informed by chroniclers,
who had nothing to do with the Brethren, that in many
German towns, girls could be heard singing the simpler
Latin hymns, and that the children of artisans could
converse in Latin.
§ 5. German Universities, Schools, and Scholarship.
The desire for education spread all over Germany in
the fifteenth century. Princes and burghers vied with each
other in erecting seats of learning. Within one hundred
and fifty years no fewer than seventeeii new universities
were founded. Prag, a Bohemian foundation, came into
existence in 1348. Then followed four German founda-
tions, Vienna, in 1365 or 1384; Heidelberg, in 1386 ; Koln,
in 1388; and Erfurt, established by the townspeople, in
1392. In the fifteenth century there were Leipzig, in
1409 ; Eostock, on the shore of what was called the East
Sea, almost opposite the south point of Sweden, in 1419 ;
Cracow, a Polish foundation, in 1420-; Greif swald, in 1456 ;
Freiburg and Trier, in 1457 ; Basel, in 1460 ; Ingolstadt,
founded with the special intention of training students in
obedience to the Pope, a task singularly well accomplished,
in 1472; Tubingen and Mainz, in 1477; Wittenberg, in
1502; and Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, in 1507. Marburg, the
first Reformation University, was founded in 152^.
The craving for education laid hold on the burgher
class, and towns vied with each other in providing superior
schools, with teachers paid out of the town's revenues.
Some German towns had several such foundations.
Breslau, " the student's paradise," had seven. Nor was
54 THE RENAISSANCE
the education of girls neglected. Frankfurt-on-the-Main
founded a high school for girls early in the fifteenth
century, and insisted that the teachers were to be learned
ladies who were not nuns.^ Besides the classrooms, the
towns usually provided hostels, where the boys got lodging
and sometimes firewood (they were expected to obtain food
by begging through the streets of the town), and frequently
hospitals where the scholars could be tended in illness.^
These possibilities of education attracted boys from all
parts of the country, and added a new class of vagrants to
the tramps of all kinds who infested the roads during the
later Middle Ages. The wandering scholar, with his yellow
scarf, was a feature of the era, and frequently not a reput-
able one. He was usually introduced as a character into
the Fastnachtspiele, or rude popular carnival comedies, and
was almost always a rogue and often a thief. Children
of ten and twelve years of age left their villages, in charge
oi an older student, to join some famous school But
these older students were too often mere vagrants, with just
learning enough to impose upon the simple peasantry,
to whom they sold charms against toothache and other
troubles. The young children entrusted to them by con-
fiding parents were often treated with the greatest cruelty,
employed by them to beg or steal food, and sent round to
the public-houses with cans to beg for beer. The small
unfortunates were the prisoners, the slaves, of their dis-
reputable masters, and many of them died by the roadside.
We need not wonder that Luther, with his memory full of
these wandering students, in after days denounced the
system by which men spent sometimes " twenty and even
forty years " in a so-caUed student life, which was often
one of the lowest vagrancy and debauchery, and in the end
knew neither German nor Latin, " to say nothing," he adds
with honest indignation, " of the shameful and vicious life
by which our worthy youth have been so grievously cor-
^ Kriegk, DetUsches Burgerihum im MiUdaUer, neue Folge (Frankfurt a.
M. 1868), pp. 77 flf.
2 ISoos, Thomas und Felia: Platter (Leipzig, 1878), pp. 20 ff.
UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLS 55
rupted." Two or three of the autobiographies of these
wandering students have survived ; and two of them, those
of Thomas Platter and of Johann Butzbach, belong tc
Luther's time, and give a vivid picture of their lives.^
Germany had no lack of schools and universities, but it
can scarcely be said that they did more than serve as a
preparation for the entrance of the Eenaissance move-
ment. During the fifteenth century all the Universities
were under the influence of the Church, and Scholasticism
prescribed the methods of study. Very httle of the New
Learning was allowed to enter. It is true that if Koln and
perhaps Ingolstadt be excepted, the Scholastic which was
taught represented what were supposed to be the more
advanced opinions — those of John Duns Scotus, WUHam
of Occam, and Gabriel Biel, rather than the learning
of Thomas Aquinas and other great defenders of papal
traditions ; but it lent itself as thoroughly as did the older
Scholastic to the discussion of all kinds of verbal and
logical subtleties. Knowledge of every kind was discussed
under formulae and phrases sanctioned by long scholastic
use. It is impossible to describe the minute distinctions
and the intricate reasoning based upon them without
exceeding the space at our disposal It is enough to say
that the prevailing course of study furnished an imposing
framework without much solid content, and provided an
intellectual gymnastic without much real knowledge. A
survival can be seen in the Formal Logic still taught.
The quantity of misspent ingenuity called forth to produce
the figures and moods, and bestowed on discovering and
arranging all possible moods under each figure and in
providing aU. with mnemonic names, — Barbara, Celarent,
Darii, Ferioque prioris, etc., — affords some insight into the
scholastic methods in use in these universities of the
fifteenth century.
Then it must be remembered that the scholarship
' H. Boos, Thomas vmd Felix Flatter (Leipzig, 1876) ; Becker, Chronica
des fdh/renden Schulers oder Wa/nderlilchlein des JoJicmnes Butzbach (Katis-
bon, 1869).
56 THE RENAISSANCE
took a quasi-ecclesiastical form. The universities were
all monastic institutions, where the teachers were pro-
fessional and the students amateur celibates. The scholars
were gathered into hostels in which they lived with
their teachers, and were taught to consider themselves
very superior persons. The statutes of mediaeval Oxford
declare that God created " clerks " with gifts of intelli-
gence denied to mere lay persons ; that it behoved " clerks "
to exhibit this difference by their outward appearance ; and
that the university tailors, whose duty it was to make men
extrinsecus what God had made them intririsecus, were to be
reckoned as members of the University. Those mediaeval
students sometimes assumed airs which roused the passions
of the laity, and frequently led to tremendous riots. Thus
in 1513 the townsfolk of Erfurt battered in the gates of
the University with cannon, and after the flight of the
professors and students destroyed almost all the archives
and library. About the same time some citizens of Vienna
having jeered at the sacred student dress, there ensued the
" Latin war," which literally devastated the town. This pride
of separation between "clerks" and laity culminated in the
great annual procession, when the newly capped graduates,
clothed in all the glory of new bachelors' and masters' gowns
and hoods, marched through the principal streets of the
university town, in the midst of the university dignitaries
and frequently attended by the magistrates in their robes.
Young Luther confessed that when he first saw the pro-
cession at Erfurt he thought that no position on earth was
more enviable than that of a newly capped graduate.
Mediaeval ecclesiastical tradition brooded over aU de-
partments of learning; and the philosophy and logic, or
what were supposed to be the philosophy and logic, of
Aristotle ruled that tradition. The reverence for the name
of Aristotle almost took the form of a religious fervour.
In a curious medifeval Life of Aristotle the ancient pagan
thinker is declared to be a forerunner of Christ. All who
refused to accept his guidance were heretics, and his
formal scheme of thought was supposed to justify the
GERMAN HUMANISTS 57
refined sophisms of mediaeval dialectic. His system of
thought was the fortified defence which preserved the
old and protected it from the inroads of the New Learn-
ing. Hence the hatred which almost all the German
Humanists seem to have had for the name of Aristotle.
The attitudes of the partisans of the old and of the new
towards the ancient Greek thinker are represented in two
pictures, each instinct with the feeling of the times. In
one, in the church of the Dominicans in Pisa, Aristotle is
represented standing on the right with Plato on the left of
Thomas Aquinas, and rays streaming from their opened
books make a halo round the head of the great mediaeval
theologian and thinker. In the other, a woodcut published
by Hans Holbein the younger in 1527, Aristotle with the
mediaeval doctors is represented descending into the abodes
of darkness, while Jesus Christ stands in the foreground
and points out the true light to a crowd of people, among
whom the artist has figured peasants with their flails.
§ 6. The earlier German Humanists.
When the beginnings of the New Learning made their
appearance in Germany, they did not bring with them any
widespread revival of culture. There was no outburst, as '
in Italy, of the artistic spirit, stamping itself upon such'
arts as painting, sculpture, and architecture, which could
appeal to the whole public intelligence. The men who
first felt the stirrings of the new intellectual life were, for
the most part, students who had been trained in the more
famous schools of the Brethren of the Common Life, all
of whom had a serious aim in life. The New Learning
appealed to them not so much a means of self-culture as
an instrument to reform education, to criticise antiquated
methods of instructionTand, above all, to effect reforms in
the Church and to purify the social life. One of the most
conspicuous of such scholars was Cardinal Nicolas Cusanus ^
' Scharpff, Der Cardinal und Bischof Nicolaus von Cusa als Ee/onnator
in Kirche, Eeich und Philosophie (Tiibiugen, 1871).
58 THE RENAISSANCE
(1401—1464). He was a man of singularly open mind,
who, while he was saturated with the old learning, was able
to appreciate the new. He had studied the classics in
Italy. He was an expert mathematician and astronomer.
Some have even asserted that he anticipated the discoveries
of Galileo. The instruments with which he worked,
roughly made by a village tinsmith, may still be seen
preserved in the Brother-house which he founded at his
birthplace. Cues, on the Mosel ; and there, too, the sheets,
covered with his long calculations for the reform of the
calendar, may still be studied.
Another scholar, sent out by the same schools, was
John Wessel of Gfoningen (1420-1489), who wandered in
search of learning from Koln to Paris and from Paris to
Italy. He finally settled down as n canon in the Brother-
hood of Mount St. Agnes. There he gathered round him
a band of young students, whom he encouraged to study
Greek and Hebrew. He was a theologian who delighted
to criticise the current opinions on theological doctrines.
He denied that the fire of Purgatory could be material fire,
and he theorised about indulgences in such a way as to be
a forerunner of Luther.^ " If I had read his books before,"
said Luther, " my enemies might have thought that Luther
had borrowed everything from Wessel, so great is the
agreement between our spirits. I feel my joy -and my
strength increase, I have no doubt that I have taught
aright, when I find that one who wrote at a different time,
in another clime, and with a different intention, agrees so
entirely in my view and expresses it in almost the same
words."
Other like-minded scholars might be mentioned,
Eudolph Agricola^ (1442-1485), Jacob Wimpheling'
(1450-1528), and Sebastian Brand (1457-1521), who
' Wessel's most important Theses on Indulgences are given in Ullmann,
Reformers before the Beformation (Edinburgh, 1865), ii. F46 f.
'Tresling, Vila et Merita Budolphi Agricolce {Gnoumg^n, 1830).
' Wiskowatoff, Jacob Wimpkeling, sein Leben tmd seine Sehrften
(Berlin, 1867).
GERMAN HUMANISTS 5d
was town-clerk of Strassburg from 1500, and the author
of the celebrated Ship of Fools, which was translated into
many languages, and was used by his friend Geiler of
Keysersberg as the text for one of his courses of popular
sermons.
AH these men, and others like-minded and similarly
gifted, are commonly regarded as the precursors of the
German Eenaissance, and are classed among the German
Humanists. Yet it may be questioned whether they can be
taken as the representatives of that kind of Humanism which
gathered round Luther in his student days, and of which
Ulrich von Hutten, the stormy petrel of the times of the
Reformation, was a notable example. Its beginnings must
be traced to other and less reputable pioneers. Numbers of
young German students, with the talent for wandering and
for supporting themselves by begging possessed by so many
of them, had tramped down to Italy, where they contrived
to exist precariously while they attended, with a genuine
thirst for learning, the classes taught by Italian Humanists.
There they became infected with the spirit of the Italian
'Eenaissance, and learned also to despise the ordinary
restraints of moral living. There they imbibed a contempt
for the Church and for all kinds of theology, and acquired
the genuine temperament of the later Italian Humanists,
which could be irreligious without being anti-religious,
simply because religion of any sort was something foreign
to their nature.
Such a man was Peter Luders (1415—1474). He
began life as an ecclesiastic, wandered down into Italy,
where he devoted himself to classical studies, and where he
acquired the irreligious disposition and the disregard for
ordinary moral living which disgraced a large part of the
later Italian Humanists. While living at Padua (1444),
where he acted as private tutor to some yoimg Germans
from the Palatinate, he was invited by the Elector tt teach
Latin in the University of Heidelberg. The older pro-
fessors were jealous of him : they insisted on reading and
revising his introductory lecture : they refused him the use
60 THE EENAISSANCE
of the library ; and in general made his life a burden. He
struggled on till 1460. Then he spent many years in
wandering from place to place, teaching the classics pri-
vately to such scholars as he could find. He was not a
man of reputable life, was greatly given to drink, a free
liver in every way, and thoroughly irreligious, with a strong
contempt for all theology. He seems to have contrived
when sober to keep his heretical opinions to himself, but to
have betrayed himself occasionally in his drinking bouts.
When at Basel he was accused of denying the doctrine of
Three Persons in the Godhead, and told his accusers that
he would willingly confess to four if they would only let
him alone. He ended his days as a teacher of medicine
in Vienna.
History has preserved the names of several of these
wandering scholars who sowed the seeds of classical studies
in Germany, and there were, doubtless, many who have
been forgotten. Loose living, irreligious, their one gift a
genuine desire to know and impart a knowledge of the
ancient classical literature, careless how they fared pro-
vided only they could study and teach Latin and Greek,
they were the disreputable apostles of the New Learning,
and in their careless way scattered it over the northern
lands.
§ 7. The Humanist Circles in the Cities.
The seed-beds of the German Eenaissance were at first
not so much the Universities, as associations of intimates in
some of the cities. Three were pre-eminent, — Strassburg,
Augsburg, and Ntirnberg, — all wealthy imperial cities,
having intimate relations with the imperial court on the
one hand and with Italy on the other.
The Humanist circle at Nurnberg was perhaps the
most distinguished, and it stood in closer relations than
any other with the coming Eeformation. Its best known
member was Willibald Pirkheimer^ (1470-1528), whose
training had been more'tEairoTa'youSg Florentine patrician
'Eoth, Willibald Pirkheimcr {Kiaie, 1887).
HUMANISM IN THE CITIES 61
than of the son of a German burgher. His father, a
wealthy Niirnberg merchant of great intellectual gifts and
attainments, a skilled diplomatist, and a confidential friend
of the Emperor Maximilian, superintended his son's educa-
tion. He took the boy with him on the journeys which
trade or the diplomatic business of his city compelled him
to make, and initiated him into the mysteries of commerce
and of German politics. The lad was also trained in the
knightly accomplishments of horsemanship and the skilful
use of weapons. He was sent, like many a young German
patrician, to Padua and Pavia (1490—1497) to study juris-
prudence and the science of diplomacy, and was advised
not to neglect opportunities to acquire the New Learning.
When he returned, in his twenty-seventh year, he was
appointed one of the counsellors of the city, and was
entrusted with an important share in the management of
its business. In this capacity it was necessary for him to
make many a journey to the Diet or to the imperial court,
and he soon became a favourite with the Emperor Maxi-
milian, who rejoiced in converse with a mind as versatile,
as his own. No German so nearly approached the many- '
sided culture of the leading Italian Humanists as did this
citizen of Niirnberg. On the other hand, he possessed a
fund of earnestness which no Italian seems to have
possessed. He was deeply anxious about reformation in
Church and State, and after the Leipzig disputation had
shown that Luther's quarrel with the Pope was no mere
monkish dispute, but went to the roots of things, he was a
sedate supporter of the Eeformation in its earlier stages.
His sisters Charitas and Clara, both learned ladies, were
nuns in the Convent of St. Clara at Niirnberg. The elder,
who was the abbess of her convent, has left an interesting
collection of letters, from which it seems probable that she
had great influence over her brother, and prevented him
from joining the Lutheran Church . after it had finally
separated from the Eoman obedience.
Pirkheimer gave the time which was not occupied wita
.public affairs to learning and intercourse with scholars, \
62 THE REXAISSANCE
His house was a palace filled with objects of art. His
library, well stocked with MSS. and books, was open to
every student who came with an introduction to its owner.
At his banquets, which were famous, he delighted to
assemble round his table the most distinguished men of the
day. He was quite at home in Greek, and made transla-
tions from the works of Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch, and
Lucian into Latin or German. The description which he
gives, in his familiar letters to his sisters and intimate
friends, of his life on his brother-in-law's country estate is
like a picture of the habits of a Eoman patrician of the
fifth century in GauL The morning was spent in study,
in reading Plato or Cicero ; and in the afternoon, if the
gout chanced to keep him indoors, he watched from his
windows the country people in the fields, or the sportsman
and the fisher at their occupations. He was fond of enter-
taining visitors from the neighbourhood. Sometimes he
gathered round him his upper servants or his tenants, with
their wives and families. The evening was usually devoted
to the study of history and archaeology, in both of which
he was greatly interested. He was in the habit of sitting
up late at night, and when the sky was clear he followed
the motions of the planets with a telescope ; for, like many
others in that age, he had faith in astrology, and believed
that he could read future events and the destinies of
nations in the courses of the wandering stars.
^ In all those civic circles, poets and artists were found
as members — Hans Holbein at Augsburg ; Albert Diirer,
with Hans Sebaldus Beham, at Niirnberg. The contem-
porary Itahan painters, when they ceased to select their
subjects from Scripture or from the Lives of the Saints,
turned instinctively to depict scenes from the ancient
pagan mythology. The German artists strayed elsewhere.
They turned for subjects to the common life of the people.
But the change was gradual. The Virgin ceased to be the
Queen of Heaven and became the purest type of homely
human motherhood, and the attendant angels, sportive
children plucking flowers, fondling animals, playing with
HUMANISM IN THE UNIVERSITIES 63
fruit. In Lucas Cranach's " Eest on the Flight to Egypt "
two cherubs have climbed a tree to rob a bird's nest, and
the parent birds are screaming at them from the branches.
In one of Albert Diirer's representations of the Holy
Family, the Virgin and Child are seated in the middle of
a farmyard, surrounded by all kinds of rural accessories.
Then German art plunged boldly into the delineation of the
ordinary commonplace life — knights and tournaments, mer-
chant trains, street scenes, pictures of peasant life, and
especially of peasant dances, university and school scenes,
pictures of the camp and of troops on the march. The.
coming revolution in religion was already proclaiming that
all human life, even the most commonplace, could be
sacred; and contemporary art discovered the picturesque
in the ordinary Ufe of the people — in the castles of the
nobles, in the markets of the cities, and in the villages of the
peasants.
§ 8. Humanism in the Universities.
The New Learning made its way gradually into the
Universities. Classical scholars were invited to lecture or
settle as private teachers in university towns, and the
students read Cicero and Virgil, Horace and Propertius,
Livy and Sallust, Plautus and Terence. One of the earliest
signs of the growing Humanist feeling appeared in changes
in one of the favourite diversions of German students. In
all the mediaeval Universities at carnival time the students
got up and performed plays. The subjects were almost in-
variably taken from the Scriptures or from the Apocrypha.
Chaucer says of an Oxford student, that
"Sometimes to shew his lightnesse and his mastereye
He played Herod on a gallows high."
At the end of the fifteenth century the subjects changed,
and students' plays were either reproductions from Plautus
or Terence, or original compositions representing the
common life of the time.
The legal recognition of Humanism within a University
64 THE RENAISSANCE
commonly showed itself in the institution of a lectureship
of Poetry or Oratory — for the German Humanists were
commonly known as the " Poets." Freiburg established a
chair of Poetry in 1471, and Basel in 1474; in Tiibingen
the stipend for an Orator was legally sanctioned in 1481,
and Conrad Celtis was appointed to a chair of Poetry and
Eloquence in 1492.
Erfurt, however, was generally regarded as the special
nursery of German university Humanism ever sincQ Peter
Luders had taught there in 1460. From that date
the University never lacked Humanist teachers, and a
Humanist circle had gradually grown up among the sue-'
cessive generations of students. The permanent chief of
this circle was a German scholar, whose name was Conrad
Mut (Mudt, Mutta, and Mutti are variations), who Latinised
his name into Mutianus, and added Eufus because he was
red-haired. This Mutianus Eufus was in many respects
a typical German Humanist. He was born in 1472 at
Homburg in Hesse, had studied at Deventer under Alexander
Hegius, had attended the University of Erfurt, and had
then gone to Italy to study law and the New Learning,
He became a Doctor of Laws of Bologna, made friends
among many of the distinguished Italian Humanists, and
had gained many patrons among the cardinals in Rome.
He finally settled in Gotha, where he had received a
canonry in the Church. He did not win any distinction
as an author, but has left behind him an interesting
collection of letters. His great delight was to gather
round him promising young students belonging to the
University of Erfurt, to superintend their reading, and ta
advise them in all literary matters. While in Italy he
had become acquainted with Pico della Miraiidola, and had
adopted the conception of combining Platonism and Christi-
anity in an eclectic mysticism, which was to be the esoteric
Christianity for thinkers and educated men, while the
popular Christianity, with its superstitions, was needed for
the common herd. Christianity, he taught, had its begin-
nings long before the historical advent of our Lord. "The
HUMANISM IN THE UNIVERSITIES 65
true Christ," he said, " was not a man, but the Wisdom of
God ; He was the Son of God, and is equally imparted to
the Jews, the Greeks, and the Germans." ^ " The true Christ
is not a man, but spirit and soul, which do not manifest
themselves in outward appearance, and are not to be touched
or seized by the hands." ^ " The law of God," he said in
another place, " which enlightens the soul, has two heads :
to love God, and to love one's neighbour as one's self. This
law makes us partakers of Heaven. It is a natural law ;
not hewn in stone, as was the law of Moses ; not carved in
bronze, as was that of the Eomans ; not written on parch-
ment or paper, but implanted in our hearts by the highest
Teacher." " Whoever has eaten in pious manner this memor-
able and saving Eucharist, has done something divine. For
the true Body of Christ is peace and concord, and there
is no holier Host than neighbourly love." * He refused to
believe in the miraculous, and held that the Scriptures were
fuU of fables, meant, like those of ^sop, to teach moral
truths. He asserted that he had devoted himself to " God,
^lle~saints, and the study of all antiquity " ; and the result
^was expressed in the following quotation from a letter to
Urban (1505), one of his friends and pupils at Erfurt:
"There is but one god and one goddess; but there are
many forms and many names — Jupiter, Sol, Apollo, Moses,
Christ, Luna, Ceres, Proserpina, Tellus, Mary. But do not
spread it abroad ; we must keep sUence on these Eleusinian
mysteries. In religious matters we must employ fables
and enigmas as a veil. Thou who hast the grace of
Jupiter, the best and greatest God, shouldst in secret despise
the little gods. When I say Jupiter, I mean Christ and
the true God. But enough of these things, which are too
high for us." * Such a man looked with contempt on the
Church of his age, and lashed it with his scorn. " I do
not revere the coat or the beard of Christ ; I revere the
true and living God, who has neioher beard nor coat." ^-Jn^
private he denounced the fasts of the Church, confession,
1 Krause, Briefwechsd des Mviianus Rufus (Cassel, 1855), p. 32.
" Ibid. p. 94. ' Ibid. p. 93. * Ibid. p. 28. » Ihid. p. 427.
5*
66 THE RENAISSANCE
ajad masses for the dead, and called the begging friara
" cowled monsters." He' says sarcastically of the Christi-
anity of his times : " We mean by faith not the conformity
of what we say with fact, but an opinion about divine
things founded on credulity and a persuasion which seeks
after profit. Such is its power that it is commonly
believed that to us were given the keys of the kingdom of
heaven. Whoever, therefore, despises our keys, shall feel
our nails and our clubs {quisquis clams contemserit clavum
et clavam sentiei). We have taken from the breast of
Serapis a magical stamp to which Jesus of GaUlee has
■ given authority. With that figure we put our foes to
flight, we cozen money, we consecrate God, we shake hell,
and we work miracles ; whether we be heavenly minded or
earthly minded makes no matter, provided we sit happily
at the banquet of Jupiter." ^ But he did not wish to
revolt from the external authority of the Church of the
day. " He is impious who wishes to know more than the
Church. We bear on our forehead," he says, " the seal of
the Cross, the standard of our King. Let us not be deserters ;
let nothing base be found in our camp." ^ The authority
which the Humanists revolted against was merely intellec-
tual, as was the freedom they fought for. It did not
' belong to their mission to proclaim a spiritual freedom or
to free the common man from his slavish fear of the
! mediaeval priesthood; and this made an impassable gulf
between their aspirations and those of Luther and the
real leaders of the Eeformation movement.*
The Erfurt circle of Humanists had for members
Heinrich Urban, to whom many of the letters of Mutianus
were addressed, Petreius i^perbach, who won the title of
" mocker of gods and men " (derisor deorum et hominum),
Johann Jaeger of Dornheim (Crotus Eubeanus), George
..( Burkhardt from Spalt (Spalatinus), Henry and Peter
■^: Ebe^ach. Eoban of Hesse (Helius Eobanus Hessus), the
' ' Krause, Briefwechsel des Mutianus Rufus (Cassel, 18?5), p. 79.
^ Ibid. p. 175 : " Non sit vobiscum in oastris (nostris) uUa turpitudo."
' Ibid. ; of. especially Letter to Urban, pp. 352, 353, and pp. 153, 190.
REUCHLIN 67
most gifted of them all, and the hardest drinker, joined
the circle in 1494.
Similar university circles were formed elsewhere : at
Basel, where Heinrich Loriti from Glarus (Glareanus), and
afterwards Erasmus, were the attractions ; at Tubingen,
where Heinrich Bebel, author of the Facetice, encouraged
his younger friends to study history ; and even at Koln,
where Hermann von Busch, a pupil of Deventer, and
Ortuin Gratius, afterwards the butt of the authors of the
Epistolce dbscuTorum virorum, were looked upon as leaders
full of the New Learning.
As in Italy Popes and cardinals patronised the leaders
of the Eenaissance, so in Germany the Emperor and some
princes gave their protection to Humanism. To German
scholars, who were at the head of the new movement,
Maximilian seemed to be an ideal ruler. His coffers no
doubt were almost always empty, and he had not lucrative
posts at his command to bestow upon them ; the position
of court poet given to Conrad Celtes and afterwards to
Ulrich von Hutten brought little except coronation in
presence of the imperial court with a tastefully woven
laurel crown ; ^ but the character of Maximilian attracted
peasantry and scholars alike. His romanticism, his abiding
youthfulness, his amazing intellectual versatility, his knight-
errantry, and his sympathy fascinated them. Maximilian
lives in the folk-song of Germany as no other ruler does.
The scheme of education sung in the Weisshunig, and
illustrated by Hsms' Burgmaier, entitled him to the name
" the Htflnamst^mperor."
§ 9. Beicchlin.
The German Humanists, whether belonging to the
learned societies of the cities or to the gi-oups in tlje Uni-
versities, were too full of individuality to present the
' Geiger in his Renaissance wnd Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland
(Berlin, 1882, Oncken's Series) has given a picture of the insignia of the
poet laureate on p. 457, and one of Conrad Celtes crowned on p. 459.
0,8 THE RENAISSANCE
appearance of a body of men leagued together under the
impulse of a common aim. The Erfurt band of scholars
was called " the Mutianic Host " ; but the partisans of the
New Learning could scarcely be said to form a solid
phalanx. Something served, however, to bring them all
together. This was the persecution of Reuchlin.
Johann Eeuchlin (1455-1522), like Erasmus after
him, was very much a man by himself. He entered history
at first dramatically enough. A jtarty of Italian Humanists
had met in the house of John Argyropoulos in Eome in
148.3. Among them was a young unknown German, who
had newly arrived with letters of introduction to the host.
He had come, he explained, to study Greek. Argyropoulos
gave him a Thucydides and asked him to construe a page
or two into Latin. Eeuchlin construed with such ease and
elegance, that the company exclaimed that Greece had
flown across the Alps to settle in Germany. The young
German spent some years in Italy, enjoying the friendship
of the foremost Italian scholars. He was an ardent
student of the New Learning, and on his return was the
first to iriake Greek thoroughly jiopular.in Germany. But
he was a still more ardent student of Hebrew, and it may
almost be said of him that he introduced that ancient
language to the peoples of Europe. His De Iludimentu
Hehraicis (1506), a grammar and dictionary in one, was
the first book of its kind. His interest in the language
was more than that of a student. He believed that
Hebrew was not only the most ancient, but the holiest of
languages. God had spoken in it. He had revealed Him-
self to men not merely in the Hebrew writings of the Old
Testament, but had also imparted, through angels and other
divine messengers, a hidden wisdom which has been pre-
sented in arjcient Hebrew writings outside of the Scriptures,
— a wisdom known to Adam, to Noah, and to the Patri-
archs. He expounded his strange mystical theosophy in
a curious little book, De Verho Mirifico (1494), full of out-
of-the-way learrjing, and finding sublime mysteries in the
very jjoints of the Hebrew Scripture:-;. I'crhajis his cen
REUCHLIN 69
tral thought is expressed in the sentence, " God is love ;
man is hope; the bond between them is faith. . . . God
and man may be so combined in an indescribable union
that the human God and the divine man may be con-
sidered as one being." ^ The book is a Symposium where
Sidonius, Baruch, and Capnion (Eeuchlin) hold prolonged
discourse with each other.
Eeuchlin was fifty-four years of age when a controversy
began which gradually divided the scholars of Germany
into two camps, and banded the Humanists into one party
fighting in defence of free inquiry.
John Pfefferkorn (1469—1522), born a Jew and con-
verted to Christianity (1505), animated with the zeal of
a convert to bring the Jews wholesale to Christianity,
and perhaps stimulated by the Dominicans of Koln
(Cologne), with whom he was closely associated, conceived
an idea that his former co-religionists might be induced to
accept Christianity if all their pecuUar books, the Old
Testament excepted, were confiscated. During the earlier
Middle Ages the Jews had been continually persecuted,
and their persecution had always been popular ; but the
fifteenth century had been a period of comparative rest
for them; they had bought the imperial protection, and
their services as physicians had been gratefully recognised
in Frankfurt and many other cities.^ Still the popular
hatred against them as usurers remained, and manifested
itself in every time of social upheaval. It was always
easy to arouse the slumbering antipathy.
Pfefferkorn had written four books against the Jews
(Judenspiegel, Judenbeichte, Osterribuch, Jiidenfeind) in the
years 1507—1509, in which he had suggested that the
Jews should be forbidden to practise usury, that they
should be compelled to listen to sermons, and that their
Hebrew books should be confiscated. He actually got a
mandate from the Emperor Maximilian, probably through
some corrupt secretary, empowering him to seize upon all
' De Verio Mirifico (ed. 1552), p. 71.
' Eriegk, Deutsches Biirgerthvm iin MUlelallcr, jip. 1 ff., 38-53.
70 THE RENAISSANCE
such books. He began his work in the Ehineland, and
had already confiscated the books of many Jews, when, in
the summer of 1509, he came to Eeuchlin and requested
his aid. The scholar not only refused, but pointed out
some irregularities in the imperial mandate. The doubtful
legality of the imperial order had also attracted the attention
of Uriel, the Archbishop of Mainz, who forbade his clergy
from rendering Pfefferkom any assistance.
Upon this Pfefiferkorn and the Dominicans again applied
to the Emperor, got a second mandate, then a third, which
was the important one. It left the matter in the hands
of the Archbishop of Mainz, who was to collect evidence
on the subject of Jewish books. He was to ask the opinions
of Eeuchlin, of Victor von Karben (1422—1515), who had
been a Jew but was then a Christian priest, of James
Hochstrat^en (1460—1527), a Dominican and Inquisitor
to the diocese of Koln, a strong foe to Humanism, and of
the Universities of Heidelberg, Erfurt, Koln, and Mainz.
They were to write out their opinions and send them to
Pfefferkom, who was to present them to the Emperor.
Eeuchlin was accordingly asked by the Archbishop to
advise the Emperor "whether it would be praiseworthy
and beneficial to our holy religion to destroy such books
as the Jews used, excepting only the books of the Ten
Commandments of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalter
of the Old Testament ? " Eeuchlin's answer was ready by
November 1510. He went into the matter very thoroughly
and impartially. He divided the books of the Jews into
several classes, and gave his opinion on each. It was out
of the question to destroy the Old Testament. The Talmud
was a collection of expositions of the Jewish law at various
periods ; no one could express an opinion about it unless
he had read it through ; Eeuchlin had only been able to
procure portions ; judging from these, it was likely that
the book did contain many things contrary to Christianity,
but that was the nature of the Jewish religion which was
protected by law; it did contain iiiniiy good things, and
ought not to be destroyed. The Ualwila was, according to
REUCHLIN 71
Reuehlin, a very precious book, which assured us as no
other did of the divinity of Christ, and ought to be care-
fully preserved. The Jews ha'd various commentaries on
the books of the Old Testament which were very useful
to enable Christian scholars to understand them rightly,
and they ought not to be destroyed. They had also ser-
mons and ceremonial books belonging to their religion
which had been guaranteed by imperial law. They had
books on arts and sciences which ought to be destroyed
only in so far as they taught such forbidden arts as magic.
Lastly, there were books of poetry and fables, and some of
them might contain insults to Christ, the Virgin, and the
Apostles, and might deserve burning, but not without
careful and competent examination. He added that the
best way to deal with the Jews was not to burn their
books, but to engage in reasonable, gentle, and kindly
discussion.
Eeuchlin's opinion stood alone : all the other authorities
suggested the burning of Jewish books, and the University
of Mainz would not exempt the Old Testament until it
had been shown that it had not been tampered with by
Jewish zealots.
The temperate and scholarly answer of Eeuchlin was
made a charge against him. The controversy which fol-'
lowed, and which lasted for six weary years, was so managed
by the Dominicans, that Eeuchlin, a Humanist and a lay-
man, was made to appear as defying the theologians of the
Church on a point of theology. Like all medifeval con-
troversies, it was conducted with great bitterness and no
lack of invective, frequently coarse enough. The Humanists
saw, however, that it was the case of a scholar defending
genuine scholarship against obscurantists, and, after a fruit-
less endeavour to get Erasmus to lead them, they joined in
a common attack. Artists also lent their aid. In one
contemporary engraving, Eeuchlin is seated in a car decked
with laurels, and is in the act of entering his native town
of Pforzheim. The Kcln theologians march in chains before
the ear ; PfefTerkorn Ues on the ground with an executioner
72 THE RENAISSANCE
ready to decapitate him ; citizens and their wives in gala
costume await the hero, and the town's musicians salute
him with triumphant melo'dy ; while one worthy hurgher
manifests his sympathy by throwing a monk out of a
window. The other side of the controversy is represented
by a rough woodcut, in which Pfefferkorn is seen break-
ing the chair of scholarship in which a double-tongued
Eeuchlin is sitting.^ The most notable contribution to
the dispute, however, was the publication of the famous
Epistolm Ohscurorum Virorum, inseparably connected with
the name of Ulrich von Hutten.
§ 10. The "Epistolce Ohscurorum Virorum,"
While the controversy was raging (1514), Eeuchlin
had collected a series of testimonies to his scholarship, and
had published them under the title of Letters from Eminent
Men? This suggested to some young Humanist the idea of
a, collection of letters in which the obscurantists could be
seen exposing themselves and their unutterable folly under
the parodied title of Epistolce Ohscurorum Virorum. The
book bears the same relation to the scholastic disputations
of the later fifteenth century that Don Quixote does to the
romances of mediaeval chivalry. It is a farrago of questions
on grammar, etymology, graduation precedence, life in a
country parsonage, and scholastic casuistry. Magister
Henricus Schaffsmulius writes from Eome that he went
one Friday morning to breakfast in the Campo dei Fiori,
^ A chronicle and the details of the Reuohlin controversy are to be found
in the second volume of the supplement to Booking's edition of the works of
Ulrich von Hutten. Good accounts are to be found in Geiger's Renaissanc
und Humanismus in Jtalien wnd Deittschland, pp. 510 ff. (Berlin, 1882,
Onoken's Series) ; in Strauss' Ulrich von Hutten: His Life and Times, pp.
100-140 (English translation by Mrs. Sturge, London, 1^74) ; and in
Creigh ton's History of the Papacy from the Great Sqhism to the Sack of Home,
vol. vi. pp. 37 ff. (London, 1897).
^ The second edition is entitled Hlustrium Virorum Epistolce Hebraitoe,
OrcecK, et Latinoe ad Jo. Beuchlinum ; the first edition was entitled
Clarorum Virorum, etc. The letters are forty-three in number — the first
being from Erasmus, "the most learned man of the age."
EPISTOL^ OBSCURORUM VIRORDM 73
ordered an egg, which on being opened contained a chicten.
" Quick," said his companion, " swallow it, or the landlord
will charge the chicken in the bill." He obeyed, forgetting
that the day was Friday, on which no flesh could be eaten
lawfully. In his perplexity he consulted one theologian,
who told him to keep his mind at rest, for an embryo
chicken within an egg was like the worms or maggots in
fruit and cheese, which men can swallow without harm to
their souls even in Lent. But another, equally learned, had
informed him that maggots in cheese and worms in fruit
were to be classed as fish, which everyone could eat
lawfully on fast days, but that an embryo chicken was
quite another thing — it was flesh. Would the learned
Magister Ortuin, who knew everything, decide for him and
relieve his burdened conscience ? The writers send to their
dear Magister Ortuin short Latin poems of which they
are modestly proud. They confess that their verses do
not scan ; but that matters little. The writers of secular
verse must be attentive to such things ; but their poems,
which relate the lives and deeds of the saints, do not need
such refinements. The writers confess that at times their
lives are not what they ought to be ; but Solomon and
Samson were not perfect ; and they have too much Christian
humility to wish to excel such honoured Christian saints.
The letters contain a good deal of gossip about the wicked-
ness of the poets (Humanists). These evU men have been
speaking very disrespectfully about the Holy Coat at Trier
(Treves); they have said that the Blessed Eelics of the
Three Kings at Koln are the bones of three Westphalian
peasants. The correspondents exchange confidences about
sermons they dislike. One preacher, who spoke with un-
seemly earnestness, had delivered a plain sermon without
any learned syllogisms or intricate theological reasoning ;
he had spoken simply about Christ and His salvation,
and the strange thing was that the people seemed to listen
to him eagerly : such preaching ought to be forbidden.
Allusions to Eeuchlin and his trial are scattered all through
the letters, and the writers reveal artlessly their hopes and
74 THE RENAISSANCE
fears about the result. It is possible, one laments, that the
rascal may get off after all : the writer hears that worthy
Inquisitor Hochstratten's money is^ almost exhausted, and
that he has scarcely enough left for the necessary bribery
at Eome; it is to be hoped that he will get a further
supply. It is quite impossible to translate the epistles
and retain the original flavour of the language, — a mixture
of ecclesiastical phrases, vernacular idioms and words, and
the worst mediaeval Latin. Of course, the letters contain
much that is very objectionable: they attack the character
of men, and even of women ; but that was an ordinary
feature of the Humanism of the times. They were un-
^ doubtedly successful in covering the opponents of Eeuchlin
with ridicule, more especially when some of the obscurantists
failed to see the satire, and looked upon the letters as
, genuine accounts of the views they sympathised with.
Some of the mendicant friars in England welcomed a book
against Eeuchlin, and a Dominican prior in Brabant bought
several copies to send to his superiors.
The authorship of these famous letters is not thoroughly
known ; probably several Humanist pens were at work. It
is generally admitted that they came from the Humanist
circle at Erfurt, and that the man who planned the book
and wrote most of the letters was John Jaeger of Dornheim
(Crotus Eubeanus). They were long ascribed to TJlrich
von Hutten; some of the letters may have come from
his pen — one did certainly. These Epistolce Ohscurorum
Virorum, when compared with the JEncomium Morice
of Erasmus, show how immeasurably inferior the ordi-
nary German Humanist was to the scholar of the Low
Countries.^
' The best edition of the EpistolcE Ohscurorum Virorum is to be found in
vol. i. of the Supplement to Booking's Ulrici Hutteni Opera, 5 vols., with
2 vols, of Supplement (Leipzig, 1864, 1869). The iirst edition was published
in 1515, and consisted of forty-one letters ; the second, in 1516, contained
the same number ; in the third edition an appendix of seven additional
letters was added. In 1517 a second part appeared containing sixty-two
letters, and an appendix of eight letters was added to the second edition
of the second part.
ULRICH VON HUTTEN 75
§ 11. Ulrich von Hutten.
TJlrich von Hutten,^ the stormy petrel of the Eeforma-
tion period in Germany, was a member of one of the oldest
families of the Franconian nojjles — a fierce, lawless, tur-
bulent nobility. The old hot family blood coursed through
his veins, and accounts for much in his adventurous career.
He was the eldest son, but his frail body and sickly- dis-
position marked him out in his father's eyes for a clerical
life. He was sent at the age of eleven to the ancient
monastery of Fulda, where his precocity in all kinds of
intellectual work seemed to presage a distinguished position
if he remained true to the calling to which his father had
destined him. - The boy, however, soon found that he had
no vocation for the Church, and that, while he was keenly
interested in all manner of studies, he detested the scholastic
theology. He appealed to his father, told him how he
hated the thought of a clerical life, and asked him to be
permitted to look forward to the career of a scholar and a
man of letters. The old Franconian knight was as hard as
men of his class usually were. He promised Ulrich that
he could take as much time as he liked to educate himself,
but that in the end he was to enter the Church. Upon
this, Ulrich, an obstinate chip of an obstinate block, de-
termined _ to make his escape from the monastery and
follow his own life. How he managed it is unknown.
He fell in with John Jaeger of Dornheim, and the two
wandered, German student fashion, from University to
University; they were at Koln together, then at Erfurt.
The elder Hutten refused to assist his son in any way.
How the young student maintained himself no one knows.
He had wretched health ; he was at least twice robbed and
half-murdered by ruffians as he tramped along the unsafe
highways ; but his indomitable purpose to live the life of a
literary man or to die sustained him. At last family friends
patched up a half-heaited reconciliation between father and
^Strauss, Ulrich von Hutten, 2 vols. (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1874), translated
and slightly abridged by Mrs. George Sturge (London, 1874).
76 THE RENAISSANCE
son. They pointed out that the young man's abilities
might find scope in a diplomatic career since the Church
was so distasteful to him, and the father was induced to
permit him to go to Italy, provided he applied himself to
the study of law. XJlrich went gladly to the land^ of the
New Learning, reached Pavia, struggled on to Bologna, found
that he liked law no better than theology, and began to write.
It is needless to follow his erratic career. He succeeded
frequently in getting patrons ; but he was not the man to
live comfortably in dependence ; he always remembered that
he was a Franconian noble ; he had an irritable temper, —
his wretched health furnishing a very adequate excuse.
It is probable that his sojourn in Italy did as much
for him as for Luther, though in a different, way. The
Reformer turned with loathing from Italian, and especially
ifrom Eoman wickedness. The Humanist meditated on the
greatness of the imperial idea, now, he thought, the birth-
Iright of his Germany, which was being robbed of it by the
Papacy. Henceforward he was dominated by one per-
sistent thought.
He was a Humanist and a poet, but a ' man apart,
marked out from among his fellows, destined to live in the
memories of his nation when their names had been for-
gotten. They might be better scholars, able to write a
finer Latinity, and pen trifles more elegantly ; but he was
a man with a purpose. His erratic and by no means pure
life was ennobled by his sincere, if limited and unpractical,
patriotism. He wrought, schemed, fought, flattered, and
\apo8trophised to create a united Germany under a reformed
Emperor. Whatever hindered this was to be attacked
1 with what weapons of sarcasm, invective, and scorn were
at his comma,nd ; and the one enemy was the Papacy of
the close of the fifteenth century, and all that it implied.
It ; was the Papacy that drained Germany of gold, that kept
the Emperor in thraldom, that set one portion of the lan4
against the other, that gave the separatist designs of ,the
princes their promise of success. The Papacy was his
Carthage, which must be destroyed'.
\
ULRICH VON HUTTEN . 11
Hutten was a master of invective, fearless, critically-
destructive ; but he had small constructive faculty. It is
not easy to discover what he meant by a reformation of
the Empire — something loomed before him vague, grand,
a renewal of an imagined past. Germany might be great,
it is suggested in the Inspicientes (written ia 1520), if the
Papacy were defied, if the princes were kept in their
proper place of subordination, if a great imperial army
were created and paid out of a common imperial fund, — an
army where the officers were the knights, and the privates
a peasant infantry (landsknechts). It is the passion for a
German Imperial Unity which we find in all Hutten's
writings, from the early Epistola ad Maximilianum Ccesarem
Italice fictitia, the Vadiscus, or the Roman Triads, down to
the Inspicientes — not the means whereby this is to be
created. He was a born foeman, one who loved battle for
battle's sake, who could never get enough of fighting, — a
man with the blood of his Franconian ancestors coursing
hotly through his veins. Like them, he loved freedom
in all things — personal, intellectual, and religious. Like
them, he scorned ease and luxury, and despised the
burghers, with their love of comfort and wealth. He
thought much more highly of the robber-knights than of
the merchants they plundered. Germany, he believed,
would come right if the merchants and the priests could
be got rid of. The robbers were even German patriots
who intercepted the introduction of foreign merchandise,
and protected the German producers in securing the profits
due to them for their labour.
Hutten is usually classed as an ally of Luther's, and
from the date of the Leipzig Disputation (1519), when
Luther first attacked the Eoman Primacy, he was an
ardent admirer of the Eeformer. But he had very little
sympathy with the deeper religious side of the Eeforma-
tion movement. He regarded Luther's protest against
Indulgences in very much the same way as did Pope
\ Leo X. It was a contemptible monkish dispute, and all
sensible men, he thought, ought to delight to see monks
78 THE RENAISSANCE
devour one another. " I lately said to a friar, who was
telling me about it," he writes, " ' Devour one another, that
ye may be consumed one of another.' It is my desire that
our enemies (the monks) ma.y live in as much discord as
possible, and may be always quarrelling among themselves."
He attached himself vehemently to Luther (and Hutten
was always vehement) only when he found that the monk
stood for freedom of conscience {The Liberty of a Christian
Man) and for a united Germany against Eome (To the
Christian Nobility of the German Nation respecting the
Reformation of the Christian Estate). As we study his face
in the engravings which have survived, mark his hollow
cheeks, high cheek-bones, long nose, heavy moustache,
shaven chin, whiskers straggling as if frayed by the helmet,
and bold eyes, we can see the rude Franconian noble, who
by some strange freak of fortune became a scholar, a
Humanist, a patriot, and, in his own way, a reformer.
CHAPTER IV.
SOCIAL CONDITIONS.*
§ 1. Towns and Trade.
It has been already said that the times of the Eeraissance
were a period of transition in the social as well as in
'the intellectual condition of the peoples of Europe. The
economic changes were so great, that no description of the
environment of the Eeformation would be complete with-
out some account of the social revolution which was slowly
progressing. It must be remembered, however, that there
is some danger in making the merely general .statements
' SouHCES : Barack, Zimmerische Chronik, 4 vols. (2nd ed. , Freiburg i. B.
1881-1882) ; Chroniken der deutschen Siadte, 29 vols, (in progress) ; Grimm,
Weislkumer, 7 toIs. (Gottingen, 1840-1878) ; Haetzerlin, Liederhuch (Qued-
linburg, 1840) ; Liliencron, Die Mstorischen Volkslieder der Deutschen vom
dreizehnten bis zum sechzehnten Jahrhmidert (Leipzig, 1865-1869) ; Sebastian
Brand's Narremschiff (Leipzig, 1854) ; Geiler von Keysersbery's Ausgewahlle
Schriften (Trier, 1881); Hans Sachs, Faslnachspiele (Nendrucke deutschen
Litteraturwerke, Nos. 26, 27, 31, 32, 39, 40, 42, 43, 51, 52, 60, 63, 64) ;
Hans von Schweinichen, Lehen und Abenteuer des schlessischen Riiters, Hans
V. Schweimchen (Breslau, 1820-1823) ; Vandam, Social Life in Luther's Time
(Westminster, 1902); Trithemius, Annates Ilirsaugienses {St. GaDen, 1590).
Later Books : Alwyn Sohulz, Deutsches Leten im 14ten und IBlen
Jah/rhundert (Prague, 1892) ; Kriegk, Deutsches JBiirgerthum im Mittelcdter
(Frankfurt, 1868, 1871) ; Freytag, Bilder aus der deiUschen Vergangcnheit,
II. ii. (Leipzig, 1899 — translation by Mi's. Malcolm of an earlier edition,
London, 1862); the series of Monographien zur deutschen Kulturgeschichte
edited by Steinhausen (Leipzig, 1899-1905), are full of valuable information
and illustrations ; Aloys Schulte, Die Fugger in Bom (Leipzig, 1904) ;
Gothein, Politische und religiose Volksbewegungen ror der Reformation
(Breslau, 1878) ; Cambridge Modern History, i. i. xv ; v. Bezold, Oeschichte
der deutschen Reformation (Berlin, 1890) ; Gen^e, HaTis Safihs nnd seine Zeit
(Leipzig, 1902) ; Janssen, Oeschichte des deutschen Volkts, seit dem Ausgamg
des Mittelalters, i. (1897) ; Roth v. Schreckenstein, Das Patriziat in den
deutschen Stadten (Freiburg i. B., no date).
79
80 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
which alone are possible in this chapter. The economic
forces at work were modified and changed in countries and
in districts, and during decades, by local conditions. Any-
general description is liable to be qualified by numerous
exceptions.
Beneath the whole mediaeval system lay the idea that
the land was the only economic basis of wealth. During
the earlier Middle Ages this was largely true everywhere,
and was specially so in Germany. Each little district pro-
duced almost all that it needed for its own wants; and the
economic value of the town consisted in its being a cor-,
poration of artisans exchanging the fruits of their industries
for the surplus of farm produce which the peasants brought
to their market-place. But the increasing trade of the
towns, developed at first along the greater rivers, the
arteries of the countries, gradually produced another source
of wealth ; and this commerce made great strides after the
Crusades had opened the Eastern markets to European
traders. Trade, commerce, and manufactures were the life
of the towns, and were rapidly increasing their importance.
In mediaeval times each town was an independent
economic centre, and the regulation of industry and of
tr^e was an exclusively municipal affair. This state of
jjiatters had changed in some countries before the time
of the Eeformation, and statesmen had begun to recognise
the importance of a national trade, and to take steps to
further it ; but in Germany, chiefly owing to its hopeless
divisions, the old state of matters remained, and the
municipalities continued to direct and control all com-
mercial and industrial affairs.
The towns had originally grown up under the protection
of the Emperor, or of some great lord of the soil, or of an
ecclesiastical prince or foundation, and the early officials
were the representatives of these fostering powers. The
descendants of this early official class became known as
the " patricians " of the city, and they regarded all the
official positions as the hereditary privileges of their class.
The town population was thoroughly organised in associa-
THE ARTIZANS 81
tions of workmen, commonly called " gilds," which at first con-
cerned themselves simply with the regulation and improve-
ment of the industry carried on, and with the education and
recreations of the workers. But these " gilds " soon assumed
a political character. The workmen belonging to them
formed the fighting force needed for the independence and
protection of the city. Each " gild " had its fighting
organisation, its war banner, its armoury ; and its members
were trained to the use of arms, and practised it in their
hours of recreation. The " gilds " therefore began to claim
some share in the government of the town, and in most
German cities, in the decades before the Eeformation, the
old aristocratic government of the " patricians " had given
place to the more democratic rule of the "gilds." The
chief offices connected with the " gilds " insensibly tended
to become hereditary in a few leading families, and this
created a second " patriciat," whose control was resented by
the great mass of the workmen. Ntirnberg was one of
the few great German cities where the old " patricians "
continued to rule down to the times of the Eeformation.
These " gilds " were for the most part full of business
energy, which showed itself in the twofold way of making
such regulations as they beUeved would insure good work-
manship, and of securing facilities for the sale of their wares.
All the workmen, it was believed, were interested in the
production of good articles, and the bad workmanship of one
artisan was regarded as bringing discredit upon all. Hence,
as a rule, every article was tested in private before it
was exposed for public sale, and various punishments were
devised to check the production of inferior goods. Thus
in Bremen every badly made pair of shoes was publicly
destroyed at the pillory of the town. Such regulations
belonged to the private administration of the towns, and
diifered in different places. Indeed, the whole municipal
government of the German cities presents an endless variety,
due to the local history and other conditions affecting the
individual towns. While the production was a matter for
private regulation in each centre of industry, distribution
6*
82 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
iavolved the towns in something like a common policy.
It demanded safe means of communication between one
town and another, between the towns and the rural dis-
tricts, and safe outlets to foreign lands. It needed roads,
bridges, and security of travel. The towns banded them-
selves together, and made alliances with powerful feudal
nobles to secure these advantages. Such was the origin
of the great Hanseatic League, which had its beginnings
in Flanders, spread over North Germany, included the
Scandinavian countries, and grew to be a European power.^
The less known leagues among the cities of South Germany
did equally good service, and they commonly secured
outlets to Venice, Florence, and Genoa, by aUiances with
the peasantry in whose hands were the chief passes of the
Alps. All this meant an opposition between the burghers
and the nobles— an opposition which was continuous, which
on occasion flamed out into great wars, and which com-
pelled the cities to maintain civic armies, composed partly
of their citizens and partly of hired troops. It was
reckoned that Strassburg and Augsburg together could
send a fighting force of 40,000 men into the field.
The area of trade, though, according to modern ideas,
restricted, was fairly extensive. It included all the coun-
tries in modern Europe and the adjacent seas. The sea-
trade was carried on in the Mediterranean and Black Seas,
in the Baltic and North Seas, and down the western coasts
of France and Spain. The North Sea was the great fishing
ground, and large quantities of dried fish, necessary for the
due keeping of Lent, were despatched in coasting vessels,
and by the overland routes to the southern countries of
Europe. Furs, skins, and corn came fi'om Eussia and the
northern countries. Spain, some parts of Germany, and
above all England, were the wool-exporting countries. The
eastern counties of England, many towns in Germany and
France, and especially the Low Countries, were the centres
of the woollen manufactures. The north of France was
' Daenell, Gcschichte der deulschen Hanse in der zweiten Salfte des I4
Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1897).
TRADING 83
the great flax-growiDg country. In Italy, at Barcelona in
Spain, and at Lyons in France, silk was produced and
manufactured. The spices and dried fruits of the East,
and its silks and costly brocades and feathers, came from
the Levant to Venice, and were carried north through the
great passes which pierce the range of the Alps.
Civic statesmen did their best, by mutual bargains and
the establishment of factories, to protect and extend trading
facilities for their townsmen. The German merchant had
his magnificent Fondaco dei TcdescM in Venice, his factories
of the Hanseatic League in London, Bruges, Bergen, and
even in far-off Novgorod ; and Englishmen had also their
factories in foreign parts, within which they could buy and
sell in peace.
The perils of the German merchant, in spite of all
civic leagues, were at home rather than abroad. His country
swarmed with Free Nobles, each of whom looked upon
himself as a sovereign power, with full right to do as he
pleased within his own dominions, whether these were an
extensive principality or a few hundred acres surrounding
his castle. He could impose what tolls or customs dues
he pleased on the merchants whose heavily-laden waggons
entered his territories. He had customary rights which
made bad roads and the lack of bridges advantages to the
lord of the soil. If an axle or wheel broke, if a waggon
upset in crossing a dangerous ford, the bales thrown on
the path or stranded on the banks of the stream could be
claimed by the proprietor of the land. Worse than all
were the perils from the robber-knights — -men who insisted
on their right to make private war even when that took
the form of highway robbery, and who largely subsisted on
the gains which came, as they said, from making their
" horses bite off the purses of travellers."
In spite of all these hindrances, a capitalist class
gradually arose in Germany. Large profits, altogether
apart from trade, could be made by managing, collecting,
and forwarding the money coming from the universal
system of Indulgences. It was in this way that the
84 SOCIAL CONDITION'S
Fuggers of Augsburg first rose to wealth. Money soon
bred money. During the greater part of the Middle Ages
there was no such thing as lending out money on interest,
save among the Italian merchants of North Italy or
among the Jews. The Church had always prohibited
what it called usury. But Churchmen were the first to
practise the sin they had condemned. The members of
ecclesiastical corporations began to make useful advances,
charging an interest of from 7 to 12 per cent. — moderate
enough for the times. Gradually the custom spread among
the wealthy laity, who did not confine themselves to these
reasonable profits, and we find Sebastian Brand inveiglung
against the " Christian Jews," who had become worse
.oppressors than the Israelite capitalists whom they copied.
But the great alteration in social conditions, following
change in the distribution of wealth, came when the age
of geographical discovery had made a world commerce a
possible thing.
§ 2. Geograjphical Discoveries and the "beginning of a
World Trade.
The fifteenth century from its beginning had seen one
geographical discovery after another. Perhaps we may.
say that the sailors of Genoa had begun the new era
by reaching the Azores and Madeira. Then Dom
Henrique of Portugal, Governor of Ceuta, organised
voyages of trade and discovery down the coast of Africa.
Portuguese, Venetian, and Genoese captains commanded
his vessels. From 1426, expedition after expedition was
sent forth, and at his death in 1460 the coast of Africa
as far as Guinea, had been explored. His work was
carried on by his countrymen. The Guinea trade in
slaves, gold, and ivory was established as early as 1480 ;
the Congo was reached in 1484 ; and Portuguese ships,
under Bartholomew Diaz, rounded the Cape of Good Hope
in 1486. During these later years a new motive had
prompted the voyages of exploration. The growth of the
TRADING COMPANIES 85
Turkish power in the east of Europe had destroyed the
comuiercial colonies and factories on the Black Sea ; the
fall of Constantinople had blocked the route along the
valley of the Danube ; and Venice had a monopoly of the
trade with Egypt and Syria, the only remaining channels
by which the merchandise from the East reached Europe.
The great commercial problem of the times was how to
get some hold of the direct trade with the East. It was
this that inspired Bristol skippers, familiar with Iceland,
with the idea that by following old Norse traditions they
might find a path by way of the North Atlantic; that
sent Columbus across the Mid-Atlantic to discover the
Bahamas and the continent of America ; and that drove
the more fortunate Portuguese round the Cape of Good
Hope. Young Vasco da Gama reached the goal first,
when, after doubling the Cape, he sailed up the eastern
coast of Africa, reached Mombasa, and then boldly crossed
the Indian Ocean to Calicut, the Indian emporium for that
rich trade which all the European nations were anxious to
share. The possibilities of a world commerce led to the
creation of trading companies ; for a larger capital was
needed than individual merchants possessed, and the
formation of these companies overshadowed, discredited,
and finally destroyed the gild system of the mediaeval
trading cities. Trade and industry became capitalised to
a degree previously unknown. One great family of
capitalists, the Welser, had factories in Eome, Milan,
Genoa, and Lyons, and tapped the rich Eastern trade by
their houses in Antwerp, Lisbon, and Madeira. They
even tried, unsuccessfully, to establish a German colony
on the new continent — in Venezuela. Another, the
Fuggers of Augsburg, were interested in all kinds of
trade, but especially in the mining industry. It is said
that the mines of Thuringia, Carinthia, and the Tyrol
within Germany, and those of Hungary and Spain outside
it, were almost all in their hands. The capital of the
family was estimated in 1546 at sixty-three millions of
gulden. This increase of wealth does not seem to have
86 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
been confined to a few favourites of fortune. It belonged
to the mass of the members of the great trading companies.
Von Bezold instances a "certain native of Augsburg"
whose investment of 500 gulden in a merchant company
brought him in seven years 24,500 gulden. Merchant
princes confronted the princes of the State and those of
the Church, and their presence and power dislocated the
old social I'elations. The towns, the abodes of these rich
merchants, acquired a new and powerful influence among
the complex of national relations, until it is not too much
to say, that if the political future of Germany was in the
hands of the secular princes, its social condition came to
be dominated by the burgher class.
§ 3. Increase in Wealth and luxurious Living.
Culture, which had long abandoned the cloisters, came
to settle in the towns. We have already seen that they
were the centres of German Humanism and of the New
Learning. The artists of the German Eenaissance belonged
to the towns, and their principal patrons were the wealthy
burghers. The rich merchants displayed their civic
patriotism in aiding to build great churches ; in erecting
magnificent chambers of commerce, where merchandise
could be stored, with halls for buying and selling, and
rooms where the merchants of the town could consult
about the interests of the civic trade; in building
Artushofe or assembly rooms, where the patrician burghers
had their public dances, dinners, and other kinds of
social entertainments; in raising great towers for the
honour of the town. They built magnificent private
houses. ^neas Sylvius tells us that in Niirnberg he
saw many burgher houses that befitted kings, and that
the King of Scotland was not as nobly housed as a
Niirnberg burgher of the second rank. They filled these
dwellings with gold and silver plate, and with costly
Venetian glass ; their furniture was adorned with delicate
wood-carving; costly tapestries, paintings, and engravings
LUXURIOUS LIVING AND CORRUPTION OF MORALS 87
decorated the walls ; and the reception-room or sfuhe was
the place of greatest display. TJ;ie towns in which all
this wealth was accumulated were neither populous nor
powerful. They cannot be compared with the city
republics of Italy, where the town ruled over a large
territory : the lands belonging to the imperial cities
of Germany were comparatively of small extent. Nor
could they boast of the population of the great cities
of the Netherlands. Niirnberg, it is said, had a population
of a little over 20,000 in the middle of the fifteenth
century. Strassburg, a somewhat smaller one. The
population of Frankfurt-on-the-Main was about 10,000
in 1440.^ The number of inhabitants had probably
increased by one-half more in the decades immediately
preceding the Eeformation. But all the great towns,
with their elaborate fortifications, handsome buildings, and
massive towers, had a very imposing appearance in the
beginning of the sixteenth century.
There was, however, another side to all this. There was
very little personal " comfort " and very little personal
refinement among the rich burghers and nobles of Germany
— much less than among the corresponding classes in Italy,
the Netherlands, and France. The towns were badly
drained, if drained at all ; the streets were seldom paved,
and mud and filth accumulated in almost indescribable
ways ; the garbage was thrown out of the windows ; and
troops of swine were the ordinary scavengers. The increase
of wealth showed itself chiefly in all kinds of sensual living.
Preachers, economists, and satirists denounce the luxury
and immodesty of the dress both of men and women, the
gluttony and the drinking habits of the rich burghers and
of the nobility of Germany. We learn from Hans von
Schweinichen that noblemen prided themselves on having
men among their retainers who could drink all rivals
' These figures have been taken from Dr. F. von Beznld (GeschicTite der
deutschen Reformation, Berlin, 1890, p. 36). When the Chron. Episc.
Hildesheim. says that during a visitation of the phigue 10,000 persons died
in Niirnberg alone, the territory as well as the city must be included.
88 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
beneath the table, and that noble personages seldom met
without such a drinking contest.^ The- wealthy, learned,
and artistic city of Niirnberg possessed a public waggon,
which every night was led through the streets to pick up
and convey to their homes drunken burghers found lying
m the filth of the streets. The Chronicle of the Zimmer
Family relates that at the castle of Count Andrew of Son-
nenberg, at the conclusion of a carnival dance and after the
usual " sleeping drink " had been served round, one of the
company went to the kennels and carried to the ball-room
buckets of scraps and slops gathered to feed the hounds,
and that the lords and ladies amused themselves by flinging
the contents at each other, " to the great detriment," the
chronicler adds, " of their clothes and of the room." ^ A hke
licence pervaded the relations between men and women, of
which it will perhaps suffice to say that the public baths,
where, be it noted, the bathing was often promiscuous, were
such that they served Albert Diirer and other contemporary
painters the purpose of a " life school " to make drawings
of the nude.^ The conversation and behaviour of the nobles
and wealthy burghers of Germany in the decades before the
Reformation displayed a coarseness which would now be
held to disgrace the lowest classes of the population in any
country.*
The gradual capitalising of industry had been sapping
the old " gild " organisation within the cities ; the extension
of commerce, and especially the shifting of the centre of ex-
ternal trade from Venice to Antwerp, in consequence of the
discovery of the new route to the Eastern markets, and
' Hems von Schweimchen, i. 185.
" Zitnmerische Chronik, ii. 68, 69.
' Ephruasi, Les Bains des Femmes d' Albert Diirer (Niirnberg, no date).
* It has recently become a fashion among some Anglican and Roman
Catholic writers to dwell on the " coai-seness " of Luther displayed in his
writings. One is tempted to ask whether these writers have ever read the
Ziminer Chronicle, if they know anything about the Fasinachtspiele in the
beginning of the sixteenth century, of the BoUwagen, of Thomas Murner
and Bebel, Humanists ; above all, if they have ever heard of the parable of
the mote and the beam ?
PEASANT LIFE 89
above all, the growth of the great merchant companies,
whose world-trade required enormous capital, overshadowed
the "gilds" and destroyed their influence. The rise and
power of this capitalist order severed the poor from the
rich, and created, in a sense unknown before, a proletariat
class within the cities, which was liable to be swollen by
the influx of discontented and ruined peasants from the
country districts. The corruption of morals, which reached
its height in the city life of the first quarter of the six-
teenth century, intensified the growing hatred between
the rich burgher and the poor workman. The ostentatious
display of burgher wealth heightened the natural antipathy
between merchant and noble. The universal hatred of the
merchant class is a pronounced feature of the times. " They
increase prices, make hunger, and slay the poor folk," was
a common saying, Men like Ulrich von Hutten were
prepared to justify the robber-knights because they attacked
the merchants, who, he said, were ruining Germany. Yet
the merchant class increased and flourished, and with them,
the towns which they inhabited.
§ 4. The Condition of the Peasantry.
The condition of the peasantry in Germany has also to
be described. The folk who practise husbandry usually
form the most stable element in any community, but they
could not avoid being touched by the economic movements
of the time. The seeds of revolution had long been
sown among the German peasantry, and peasant risings
had taken place in different districts of south-central
Europe from the middle of the fourteenth down to the
opening years of the sixteenth centuries. It is difficult
to describe accurately the state of these German
peasants. The social condition of the nobles and the
burghers has had many an historian, and their modes
of life have left abundant traces in literature and archaeo-
logy ; but peasant houses and implements soon perished,
and the chronicles seldom refer to the world to which the
90 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
" land-folk " belonged, save when some local peasant rising
or the tragedy of the Peasants' War thrust them into
history. Our main difficulty, however, does not arise so
much from lack of descriptive material — for that can be
found when diligently sought for — as from the varying,
almost contradictory statements that are made. Some
contemporary writers condescend to describe the peasant
class. A large number of collections of Weisthiimer, the
consuetudinary laws which regulated the life of the village
communities, have been recovered and carefully edited;^
folk-songs preserve the old life and usages ; many of the
Fastnachtspiele or rude carnival dramas deal with peasant
scenes ; and Albert Diirer and other artists of the times
have sketched over and over again the peasant, his house
and cot-yard, his village and his daily life. We can, in
part, reconstruct the old peasant life and its surroundings.
Only it must be remembered that the life varied not only
in different parts of Germany, but in the same districts and
decades under different rural proprietors ; for the peasant
was so dependent on his over-lord that the character of
the proprietor counted for much in the condition of the
people.
The village artisan did not exist. The peasants lived by
themselves apart from all other classes of the population.
That is the universal statement. They carried the produce
of their land and their live-stock to the nearest town, sold
it in the market-place, and bought there what they needed
for their life and work.
They dwelt in villages fortified after a fashion ; for the
group of houses was surrounded sometimes by a wall, but
usually by a stout fence, made with strong stakes and
interleaved branches. This was entered hf a gate that
could be locked. Outside the fence, circling the whole was
* The Most complete collection of the Weisthumer is in seven volumes.
Volumes i.-iv. edited by J. Grimm, and volumes v.-vii. edited by R.
Sohroeder, Gottingen, 1840-1842, 1866, 1869, 1878. Important extracts
are given by Alwin Sohultz in his Beutsches Lehen im H und 15 Jahr-
hundert, Vienna, 1892, pp. 145-178 (Grosse Ausgabe).
PEASANT LIFE 91
a deep ditch crossed by a " falling door " or drawbridge.
Within the fence among the houses there was usually a
small church,, a public-house, a house or room (Spielhaus)
where the village council met and where justice was dis-
pensed. In front stood a strong wooden stake, to which
criminals were tied for punishment, and near it always the
stocks, sometimes a gallows, and more rarely the pole and
wheel for the barbarous mediaeval punishment " breaking
on the wheel."
The houses were wooden frames filled in with sun-
dried bricks, and were thatched with straw; the chimneys
were of wood protected with clay. The cattle, fuel, fodder,
and family were sheltered under the one large roof. The
timber for building and repairs was got from the forest
under regulations set down in the Weisthumer, and the
peasants had leave to collect the fallen branches for fire-
wood, the women gathering and carrying, and the men
cutting and stacking under the eaves. All breaches of
the forest laws were severely punished (in some of the
Weisthumer the felling of a tree without leave was pun-
ished by beheading) ; so was the moving of landmarks ; for
wood and soil were precious.
Most houses had a small fenced garden attached, in
which were grown cabbages, greens, and lettuce ; small onions
(ciboUe, Scotticd syboes), parsley, and peas ; poppies, garlic,
and hemp ; apples, plums, and, in South Germany, grapes ;
as well as other things whose mediaeval German names are
not translatable by me. Wooden beehives were placed in
the garden, and a pigeon-house usually stood in the yard.
The scanty underclothing of the peasants was of wool
and the outer dress of Hnen — the men's, girt with a belt
from which hung a sword, for they always went armed.
Their furniture consisted of a table, several three-legged
stools, and one or two chests. Eude cooking utensils hung
on the walls, and dried pork, fruits, and baskets of grain
on the rafters. The drinking-cups were of coarse clay ;
and we find regulations that the table-cloth or covering
ought to be washed at least once a year ! Their ordinary
92 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
food was " some poor bread, oatmeal porridge, and cooked
vegetables ; and their drink, water and whey." The live-
stock included horses, cows, goats, sheep, pigs, and hens,'
The villagers elected from among themselves four men,
the Bauernmeister, who were the Fathers of the community.
They were the arbiters in disputes, settled quarrels,
and arranged for an equitable distribution of the various
feudal assessments and services. They had no judicial or
administrative powers ; these belonged to the over-lord,
or a representative appointed by him. This official sat
in the justice room, heard cases, issued sentences, and
exercised all the mediaeval powers of "pit and gaUows."
The whole list of mediaeval punishments, ludicrous and
gruesome, were at his command. It was he who ordered
the scolding wife to be carried round the church three
times while her neighbours jeered ; who set the unfortunate
charcoal-burner, who had transgressed some forest law, into
the stocks, with his bare feet exposed to a slow fire till
his soles were thoroughly burnt ; who beheaded men who
cut down trees, and ordered murderers to be broken on the
wheel. He saw that the rents, paid in kind, were duly
gathered. He directed the forced services of ploughing,
sowing, and harvesting the over-lord's fields, what wood
was to be hewn for the castle, what ditches dug, and what
roads repaired. He saw that the peasants drank no wine
■' In the interesting collection of mediaeval songs, of date 1470 or 1471,
Liedertuch der Clara Edtzlerin (Quedlinburg and Leipzig, 1840), No. 67
(p. 259), entitled Von Mair Betzen, describes a peasant wedding, and tells
us what each of the pair contributed to the "plenishing." The bridegroom,
Betze or Bartholomew Mair, gave to his bride an acre (Jucharl) of land well
sown with flax, eight bushels of oats, two sheep, a cock and fourteen hens,
and a small sum of money ( fiinff pfunt pfenning) ; while Motze Nodung, the
bride, brought to the common ptock two wooden beehives, a mare, a goat,
a calf, a dnn cow, and a young pig. It is perhaps woith remarking that,
according to the almost universal custom in mediaeval Germany, and in
spite of ecclesiastical commands and threats, the actual man-iage ceremony
consisted in the father of the bride demanding from the young people whether
they took each other for man and wife, and in their promising themselves
to each other before witnesses. It was not until the morning after tljc
marriage had been consummated that the wedded pair went to church to get
the priest's blessing on a marriage that Ijad taken p'acc.
PEASANT LIFE 93
but what came from the proprietor's vineyards, and that
they drank it in sufficient quantity ; that they ground their
grain at the proprietor's mill, and fired their bread at the
estate bakehouse. He exacted the two most valuable of
the moveable goods of a dead peasant — the hated " death-
tax." There was no end to his powers. Of course, accord-
ing to the WeisthUmer, these powers were to be exercised
in customary ways ; and in some parts of Germany the
indefinite "forced services" had been commuted to twelve
days' service in the year, and in others to the payment of
a fixed rate in lieu of service. ,
This description of the peasant life has been taken
entirely from the WeisthUmer, and, for reasons to be seen
immediately, it perhaps represents rather a " golden past "
than the actual state of matters at the beginning of the
sixteenth century. It shows the peasants living in a state
of rude plenty, but for the endless exactions of their lords
and the continual robberies to which they were exposed from
bands of sturdy rogues which swarmed through the country,
and from companies of soldiers, who thought nothing of
carrying off the peasant's cows, slaying his swine, maltreat-
ing his womenkind, and even firing his house.
The peasants had their diversions, not always too
seemly. On the days of Church festivals, and they were
numerous, the peasantry went to church and heard Mass
in the morning, talked over the village business under the
lime-trees, or in some open space near the village, and
spent the afternoon in such amusements as they liked
best — eating and drinking at the public-house, and dancing
on the village green. In one of his least known poems,
Hans Sachs describes the scene — the girls and the pipers
waiting at the dancing-place, and the men and lads in the
pubHc-house eating calf's head, tripe, liver, black puddings,
and roast pork, and drinking whey and the sour country
wine, until some sank under the benches ; and there was
such a jostling, scratching, shoving, bawling, and singing,
that not a word could be heard. Then three young men
came to the dancing-place, his sweetheart had a garland
94 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
ready for one of them, and the dancing began ; other
couples joined, and at last sixteen pairs of feet were in
motion. Kough jests, gestures, and caresses went round.
"Nach dem der Messner von Hirschau,
Der tanzet mit des Pfarrhaus Frau
Von Budenheim, die hat er lieb,
Viel Scherzens am Tanz mit ihr trieb."
The men whirled their partners off their feet and spun
them round and round, or seized them by the waist and
tossed them as high as Ijhey could ; while they themselves
leaped and threw out their feet in such reckless ways that
Hans Sachs thought they would all fall down.
The winter amusements gathered round the spinning
house. For it was the custom in most German villages
for the young women to resort to a large room in the mill,
or to the village tavern, or to a neighbour's house, with
their wool and flax, their distaffs and spindles, some of
them old heirlooms and richly ornamented, to spin all
evening. The lads came also to pick the fluff off the
lasses' dresses, they said; to hold the small beaker of
water into which they dipped their fingers as they span ;
and to cheer the spinsters with songs and recitations.
After work came the dancing. On festival evenings, and
especially at carnival times, the lads treated their sweet-
hearts to a late supper and a dance ; and escorted them
home, carrying their distaffs and spindles.^ All the old
German love folk-songs are full of allusions to this peasant
courtship, and it is not too much to say that from the
singing in the spinning house have come most of the
oldest folk-songs.
These descriptions apply to the German peasants of
Central and South Germany. In the north and north-east,
the agricultural population, which was for the most part
of Slavonic descent, had been reduced by their con-
querors to a serfdom which had no parallel in the more
favoured districts.
1 Barack, Zeitschrift fur deutsche Culturgesokickte, iv. (1859) 36 ff.
SOCIAL REVOLTS 95
§ 5. Earlier Social Bevolts.
It was among the peasants of German descent that
there had been risings, successful and unsuccessful, for
more than a century. The train for revolution had been
laid not where serfdom was at its worst, but where there
was ease enough in life to allow men to think, and where
freedom was nearest in sight. It may be well to refer to
the earlier peasant revolts, before attempting to investigate
the causes of that permanent unrest which was abundantly
evident at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
The first great successful peasant rebellion was the
fight for freedom made by the people of the four forest
cantons in Switzerland. The weapons with which they
overthrew the chivalry of Europe, rude pikes made by
tying their scythes to their alpenstocks, may still be seen
in the historical museums of Basel and Constance. They
proved that man for man the peasant was as good as the
noble. The free peasant soldier had come into being. These
free peasants did not really secede from the Empire till
1499, and were formally connected with it till 1648. The
Emperor was still their over-lord. But they were his free
peasants, able to form leagues for their mutual defence
and for the protection of their rights. Other cantons and
some neighbouring cities joined them, and the Swiss Con-
federacy, with its flag, a white cross on a red ground, and
its motto, " Each for all and all for each," became a new
nation in Europe. During the next century (1424—1471)
the peasants of the Ehaetian Alps also won their freedom,
and formed a confederacy similar to the Swiss, though
separate from it. It was called the Graubund.
The example of these peasant republics, strong in the
protection which their mountains gave them, fired the
imagination of the German peasantry of the south and the
south-west of the Empire, and the leaders of lost popular
causes found a refuge in the Alpine valleys while they
meditated on fresh schemes to emancipate their followers.
We have evidence of the popularity of the Swiss in the
96 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
towns and country districts of Germany all through the
fifteenth and into the sixteenth century.^
But while the social tumults and popular uprisings
against authority, which are a feature of the close of the
Middle Ages, are usually and rightly enough called peasant
insurrections, the name tends to obscure their real char-
acter. They were rather the revolts of the poor against
the rich, of debtors against creditors, of men who had
scanty legal rights or none at all against those who had
the protection of the existing laws, and they were joined
by the poor of the towns as well as by the peasantry
of the country districts. The peasants generally began
the revolt and the townsmen followed; but this was
not always the case. Sometimes the mob of the cities
rose first and the peasants joined afterwards. In many
cases, too, the poorer nobles were in secret or open sym-
pathy with the insurrectionary movement. On more than
one occasion they led the insurgents and fought at their
head. The union of poor nobles and peasants had made
the Bohemian revolt successful.
It must also be remembered that from the end of the
fourteenth century on to the beginning of the sixteenth,
however varied the cries and watchwords of the insurgents
may be, one persistent note of detestation' of the priests
{ih-Q pfaffen) is always heard; and, from the way in which
Jews and priests are continually linked together' in one
common denunciation, it may be inferred that the hatred
arose more from the intolerable pressure of clerical ex-
tortion than from any feehng of irrehgion. ' The tithes,
great and small, and the means taken to exact them, were
a galling burden. " The priests," says an English writer,
" have their tenth part of all the corn, meadows, pasture,
grass, wood, colts, lambs, geese, and chickens. Over and
besides the tenth part of every servant's wages, wool, milk,
honey, wax, cheese, and butter ; yea, and they look so
narrowly after their profits that the poor wife must be
' Droysen, Geschichte der preussiscTien Politik, ii. i. p. 309 ff. (5 vols.,
Berlin, 1865-1886) ; Boos, Thomas mid Felix PloJter (Leipsic, 1876), p. 21.
HATRED OP THE CLERGY 97
countable to them for every tenth egg, or else' she getteth
not her rights at Easter, and shall be taken as a heretic."
As matter of fact, many of these tithes, extorted in the
name of the Church, did not go into the pockets of the
clergy at aU, but were seized by the feudal superior and
went to increase his revenues. Popular feeling, however,
seldom discriminates, and feudal and clerical dues were
regarded as belonging to one system of intolerable oppres-
sion. Besides, the rapacity of Churchmen went far beyond
the exaction of the tithes. " I see," said a Spaniard,
" that we can scarcely get anything from Christ's ministers
but for money ; at baptism money, at bishoping money,
at marriage money, for confession money — no, not extreme
unction without money ! They will ring no bells without
money, no burial in the church without money ; so that it
seemeth that Paradise is shut up from them that have no
money. The rich is buried in the church, the poor in the
churchyard. The rich man may marry with his nearest
kin, but the poor not so, albeit he be ready to die for love
of her. The rich may eat flesh in Lent, but the poor may
not, albeit fish perhaps be much dearer. The rich man
may readily get large Indulgences, but the poor none,
because he wanteth money to pay for them/' ^
In spite of this hatred of the priests, it will be found
that almost every insurrectionary movement was im-
pregnated by some sentiment of enthusiastic religion, with
which was blended some confused dream that the kingdom
of God might be set up on earth, if only the priests were
driven out of the land. This religious element drew some
of its strength from the Lollard movement in England and
from the Taborite in Bohemia, but after 1476 it had a dis-
tinctly German character. Its connection with what may
almost be called the epidemic of pilgrimages, the strongly
increased veneration for the Blessed Virgin, and the in-
Jimctions laid upon the confederates in some of the
revolutionary movements to repeat so many Pater Nosters
' These quotations have been taken from Seebohm, The Era of the Pro-
testant Revolution, pp. 57, 58 (London, 1875).
7*
98 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
and Ave Marias, seem to lead to the conclusion that much
of that revival of an enthusiastic and superstitious religion
which marked the last half of the fifteenth century may be
regarded as an attempt to create a popular religion apart
from priests and clergy of all kinds.
One of the earliest of these popular uprisings occurred
at Gotha in 1391, when the peasantry of the neighbour-
hood and many of the burghers of the town rose against
the exactions of the Jews, and demanded their expulsion.
It was an insurrection of debtors against usurers, and was
in the end put down by the majority of the citizens. From
this date onwards to 1470 similar risings took place in
many parts of Germany, prompted by the same or like
causes — the exactions of Jews, priests, or nobles. The
years 1431—1432 saw a great Hussite propaganda carried
on all over Europe. Countries were flooded with Hussite
proclamations, and traversed by Hussite emissaries. Paul
Crawar was sent to Scotland, and others like him to Spain,
to the Netherlands, and to East Prussia. They taught
among other things that the Old Testament law about
tithes had no place within the Christian Church, and that
Christian tithes were originally free-will offerings, — a state-
ment pecuUarly acceptable to the German peasantry. All
Germany had learnt by this time how Bohemian peasants,
trained and led by men belonging to -the lesser nobihty,
had routed in two memorable campaigns the imperial
armies led by the Emperor himself, and how they had
begun even to invade Germany. The chroniclers speak of
the anxiety of the governing classes, civic and rural, when
they recognised the strength of the feelings excited by this
propaganda. The Hussite doctrine of tithes appears here-
after in most of the peasant programmes.
A still more powerful impulse to revolts was given by
the tragic fate of Charles the Bold of Burgundy. Charles
was the ideal feudal autocrat. He was looked up to and
imitated by the feudal princes of Germany in the fifteenth
as was Louis >:iv. by their descendants in the end of the
seventeenth century. The common people regarded him as
HANS BOHM 99
the typical feudal tyrant, and the hateful impression which
his arrogance, his vindictiveness, and his oppression of the
poor made upon them comes out in the folk-songs of the
period :
" Er schazt sich kiinig Alexander gleich ;
Er wolt bezwingen alle Reich,
Das wante Got in kurzer stund."
He even came to be considered by them as one of the
Antichrists who were to appear, and for years after his
death at Nancy (1477) many believed that he was alive,
expiating his sins on a prolonged pilgrimage.
When this great potentate, who was believed to have
boasted that there were three rulers — God in heaven,
Lucifer in hell, and himself on earth — was defeated at
Granson, routed at Morat, routed and slain at Nancy, and
that by Swiss peasants, the exultation was immense, and it
was believed that the peasantry might inherit the earth.^
§ 6. The religious Socialism of Hans Bbhm.
During the last years of this memorable Burgundian
war a strange movement arose in the very centre of
Germany, within the district which may be roughly deiined
as the triangle whose points were the towns of Aschaffen-
burg, Wtirzburg, and Crailsheim, in the secluded valleys of
the Spessart and the Taubergrund. A young man, Hans
Bohm (Boheim, Bohaim), belonging to the very lowest
class of society, below the peasant, who wandered from
one country festival or church ale to another, and played
on the small drum or on the dudelsack (rude bagpipes), or
' Lilienoron, Die historischen Vollcslieder der Deutschen vom dreizehnten
bis zum secheehnten Jahrhundert, ii. No. li*) (Leipzig, 1865-1869) ; cf. .also
131, 132, 133, 136, 137, 138-147. KonradStoUe, pastor at Erfurt, collected
all the information he could fiom "priests, clerical and lay students, mer-
chants, hurghers, peasants, pilgrims, knights and other good people," and
wove it all into a Thuringian Chrcniide which forms the 33rd volume of the
Bibliothek des iiterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart. It reflects the opinions ot
" the time almost as faithfully as the folk-songs do, and contains the above
quoted saying of Charles ; cf. pp. 61 ff.
100 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
sang soDgs for the dancers, was suddenly awakeneil to a
sense of spiritual things by the discourse of a wandering
Franciscan. He was utterly uneducated. He did not
even know the Creed. He had visions of the Blessed
Virgin, who appeared to him in the guise of a lady dressed
in white, called him to be a preacher, and promised him
further revelations, which he received from time to time.
His home was the village of Helmstadt in the Tauber
valley ; and the most sacred spot he knew was a chapel
dedicated to the Virgin at the small village of Niklashausen
on the Tauber. The chapel had been granted an indulg-
ence, and was the scene of small pilgrimages. Hans Bohm
appeared suddenly on the Sunday in Mid-Lent (March
24th, 1476), solemnly burnt his rude drum and bagpipes
before the crowd of people, and declared that he had
hitherto ministered to the sins and vanities of the villagers,
but that henceforth he was going to be a preacher of grace.
He had been a lad of blameless life, and his character
gave force to his words. He related his visions, and the
people believed him. It was a period when an epidemic of
pilgrimage was sweeping over Europe, and the pilgrims
spread the news of the prophet far and wide. Crowds
came to hear him from the neighbouring valleys. His
fame spread to more distant parts, and chroniclers declare
that on some days he preached to audiences of from twenty
to thirty thousand persons. His pulpit was a barrel set on
end, or the window of a farmhouse, or the branch of a tree.
He assured his hearers that the holiest spot on earth, holier
by far than Eome, was the chapel of Our Lady at Niklas-
hausen, and that true religion consisted in doing honour
to the Blessed Virgin. He denounced all priests in un-
measured terms : they were worse than Jews ; they might
be converted for a while, but as soon as they went back-
among their fellows they were sure to become backsliders.
He railed against the Emperor : he was a miscreant, who
supported the whole vile crew of princes, over-lords, tax-
gatherers, and other oppressors of the poor. He scoffed at
the Pope. He denied the existence of Purgatory : good
HANS BOHM 101
men went directly to heaven and bad men went to hell.
The day was coming, he declared, when every prince, even
the Emperor himself, must work for his day's wages like all
poor people. He asserted that taxes of all kinds were evil,
and should not be paid ; that fish, game, and meadow lands
were common property ; that all men were brethren, and
should share alike. When his sermon was finished the
crowd of devotees knelt round the " holy youth," and he,
blessing them, pardoned their sins in God's name. Then
the crowd surged round him,, tearing at his clothes to get
some scrap of cloth to take home and worship as a relic;
and the Niklashausen chapel became rich with the offer-
ings of the thousands of pilgrims.
The authorities, lay and clerical, paid little attention
to him at first. Some princes and some cities (Ntirnberg,
for example) prohibited their subjects from going to Nik-
lashausen ; but the prophet was left untouched. He
came to believe that his words ought to be translated into
actions. One Sunday he asked his followers to meet him
on the next Sunday, bringing their swords and leaving their
wives and children at home. The Bishop of Wiirzburg,
hearing this, sent a troop of thirty-four horsemen, who
seized the prophet, flung him on a horse, and carried him
away to the bishop's fortress of Frauenberg near Wiirzburg.
His followers had permitted his capture, and seemed dazed
by it. In a day or two they recovered their courage, and,
exhorted by an old peasant who had received a vision, and
headed by four Franconian knights, they marched against
Frauenberg and surrounded it. They expected its walls
to fall Hke those of Jericho ; and when they were dis-
appointed they Ungered for some days, and then gradually
dispersed. Hans himself, after examination, was condemned
to be burnt as a heretic. He died singing a folk-hymn in
praise of the Blessed Virgin.
His death did not end the faith of his followers. In
spite of severe prohibitions, the pilgrimages went on and
the gifts accumulated. A neighbouring knight sacked the
chapel and carried away the treasure, which he was forced
102 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
to share with his neighbours. Still the pilgrimages con-
tinued, until at last the ecclesiastical authorities removed
the priest and tore down the building, hoping thereby to
destroy the movement.
The memory of Hans Bohm lived among the common
people, peasants and artisans ; for the lower classes of
Wiirzburg and the neighbouring towns had been followers
of the movement. A religious social movement, purely
German, had come into being, and was not destined to die
soon. The effects of Hans Bohm's teaching appear in
almost all subsequent peasant and artisan revolts.^ Even
Sebastian Brand takes the Niklashausen pilgrims as his
type of those enthusiasts who are not contented with the
revelations of the Old and New Testaments, but must seek
a special prophet of their own :
"Man weis doch aus der Schrift so viel,
Aus altem und aus neuem Bunde,
Es braucht nicht wieder neuer Kunde.
Dennoch wallfahrten sie zur Klausen
Des Sackpfeifers von Nicklashausen." ^
And the Niklashausen pilgrimage was preserved in the
memories of the people by a lengthy folk-song which Lili-
encron has printed in his collection.^
From this time onwards there was always some tinge
of religious enthusiasm in the social revolts, where peasant
and poor burghers stood shoulder to shoulder against the
ruling powers in country and in town.
The peasants within the lands of the Abbot of Kempten,
north-east of the Lake of Constance, had for two genera-
tions protested against the way in which the authorities
^ The beat account of this movement is to be found in an article con-
tributed to the Archiv des historiscken Vereins von Unierfranlcen und
Aschaffeniurg, xiv. iii. 1, where Hans Bohm's sayings have been carefully
collecteil. Pastor Konrad Stolle's Chronicle, published in the library of
the Stuttgart Literary Society [Bihliothelc des llterarischen Vereins in
Stuttgart, xxxiii.), is also valuable. A list of authorities may also be found
in Ullmann's Beformers before the Reformation (Eng. trans.), i. 377 ff.
^ Narrenschiff, c. xi. 1. 14-18.
' Die historischen Volkslieder der Deufaclien vom IS bis 16 Jahrhv/ndcrt,
ii. No. 148.
BUNDSCHDH REVOLTS 'lOS
were treating them (1420—1490). They rose in open
revolt in 1491—1492. It was a purely agrarian rising
to begin with, caused by demands made on them by their
over-lord not sanctioned by the old customs expressed in
the Weisthilmer ; but the lower classes of the town of
Kempten made common cause with the insurgents. Yet
there are distinct traces of impregnation with religious
enthusiasm not unlike that which inspired the Hans Bohm
movement. The rising was crushed, and the leaders who
escaped took refuge in Switzerland.
§ 7. Bundschuh Revolts.
In the widespread social revolt which broke out in
Elsass in 1493, the peasants were supported by the towns ;
demands were made for the abolition of the imperial and
the ecclesiastical courts of justice, for the reduction of
ecclesiastical property, for the plundering of Jews who
had been fattening upon usury, and for the curbing of the
power of the priests. The Gerrnans had a proverb, " The
j^-peor man must tie his shoes with string," and the " tied
shoe " {Bundschuh), the poor man's shoe, became the emblem
of this and subsequent social revolts, while their motto was,
" Only what is just before God." This rebellion, which
■.^-Was prematurely betrayed, did not lack prominent leaders.
One of them was Hans Ulman, the burgomeister of
Schlettstadt, who died on the scaffold affirming the justice
of the demands which he and his companions had made,
and predicting their future triumph.
In 1501 the peasants of Kempten and the neighbour-
ing districts again rose in rebellion, and were again joined
by the poorer townspeople. In the year following, 1502, a
revolt was planned having for its headquarters the village
of Untergrombach, near Speyer ; it spread into Elsass, along
the Neckar and down the Ehine. The Bundschuh banner
was again unfurled. It was made of blue silk, with a
white cross, the emblem of Switzerland, in the centre. It
was adorned with a picture of the crucified Christ, a Bund-
J
104 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
schuh on the one side, and a kneeling peasant on the other.
The motto was again, " Only what is just before God."
Every associate promised to repeat five times a day the
Lord's Prayer and the Ave Maria. The patron saints were
declared to be the Blessed Virgin and St. John. The
movement was strongly anti-clerical. The leaders taught
that there could be no deliverance from oppression until
the priests were driven from the land, and until the pro-
perty of the nobles and the priests was confiscated and
their power broken. Tithes, feudal exactions of all kinds,
and all social inequalities were denounced; water, forest
and pasture lands were declared to be the common property
of all. The leaders recognised the rule of the Emperor
as over-lord, but denounced all intermediate jurisdictions.
The plan was to raise the peasants and the townspeople
throughout all Germany, and to call upon the Swiss to
aid them in winning their deliverance from oppression.
The revolt was put down with savage cruelty; most of
the leaders were quartered. Many escaped to Switzerland,
and lay hid among the Alpine valleys.
One of these was Joss Fritz, who had been a soldier
(landsknecht) — a man with many qualities of leadership.
He had tenacity of purpose, great powers of organisation,
and gifts of persuasion. He vowed to restore the Bundschuh
League. He remained years in hiding in Switzerland,
maturing his plans. Then he returned secretly to his
own people. He seems to have secured an appointment
as forester to a nobleman whose lands lay near the town of
Freiburg in the Breisgau ; and there, in the small village
of Lehen, he began to weave together again the broken
threads of the Bundschuh League. He mingled with the
poorer people in the taverns, at church ales, on the village
greens on festival days. He spoke of the justice of
God and the wickedness of the world. He expounded
the old principles of the Bundschuh with some few varia-
tions. Indiscriminate hatred of priests seems to have been
abandoned. Most of the village priests were peasants,
and suffered, like them, from overbearing superiors. The
BUNDSCHUH REVOLTS 105
parish priest of Lehen became a strong supporter of the
Bundschuh, and told his parishioners that all its ideas
could be proved from the word of God. Joss Fritz won
over to his side the " gilds " of beggars, strolling musicians,
all kinds of vagrants who could be useful. They carried
his messages, summoned the people to his meetings in
quiet spaces in the woods, and were active assistants. At
these meetings Joss Fritz and his lieutenant Jerome, a
journeyman baker, expounded the Scriptures " under the
guidance of the Holy Spirit simply," and proved all the
demands of the Bundschuh from the word of God.
When the country seemed almost ripe for the rising.
Joss Fritz resolved to prepare the banner as secretly as
possible. It was easy to get the blue silk and sew the
white cross on its ground ; the difficulty was to find an
artist sympathetic enough to paint the emblems, and cour-
ageous enough to keep the secret. The banner was at last
painted. The crucified Christ in the centre, a peasant
kneeling in prayer on the one side and the Bundschuh on
the other, the figures of the Virgin Mary and St. John,
and the pictures of the Pope and the Emperor. The
motto, " Lord, help the righteous," was added, and the
banner with its striking symbolism was complete. The
League had the old programme with some alterations : —
no masters but God, the Pope, and the Emperor, no
usury, all debts to be cancelled, and the clauses mentioned
above. The leaders boasted that their league extended as
far as the city of Koln (Cologne), and that the Swiss would
march at their head. But the secret leaked out before the
date planned for the general rising; and the revolt was
mercilessly stamped out (151 2—1 5 1 3). Its leader escaped
with the Bundschuh banner wound round his body under
bis clothes. In four years he was back again at his work
(151Y). In a very short time his agents, the "gild" of
beggars, wandering minstrels, poor priests, pilgrims to local
shrines, pardon-sellers, begging friars, and even lepers, had
leagued the peasantry and the poorer artisans in the towns
in one vast conspiracy which permeated the entire district
106 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
between the Vosges and the Black Forest, including the
whole of Baden and Elsass. The plot was again betrayed
before the plans of the leaders were matured, and the
partial risings were easily put down ; but when the
authorities set themselves to make careful investigations,
they were aghast at the extent of the movement. The
peasants of the country districts and the populace of the
towns had been bound together to avenge common wrongs.
The means of secret communication had been furnished by
country innkeepers, old landsknechts, pedlars, parish priests,
as well as by the vagrants above mentioned ; and the names
of some of the subordinate leaders — " long " John, " crooked"
Peter, " old " Kuntz — show the classes from which they
were drawn. It was discovered that the populace of Weisen-
burg had come to an agreement with the people of Hagenau
(both towns were in Elsass) to slay the civic councillors
and judges and all the inhabitants of noble descent, to
refuse payment of all imperial and ecclesiastical dues, and
that the Swiss had promised to come to their assistance.
One might almost say that between the years 1503
and 1517 the social revolution was permanently established
in the southern districts of the Empire, from Elsass in the
west to Carinthia and the Steiermarck in the east. It is
needless to describe the risings in detail. They were not
purely peasant rebellions, for the townspeople were almost
always involved ; but they all displayed that minghng of
communist ideas and religious enthusiasm of which the
JBundschuh banner had become the emblem, and which may
be traced back to the movement under Hans Bohm as its
German source, and perhaps to the earlier propaganda
of the Hussite revolutionaries or Taborites. The later
decades of the fifteenth and the earlier years of the six-
teenth century were a time of permanent social unrest.
§ 8. The Causes of the continuous Revolts.
If we ask why it was that the peasants, whose lot,
according to the information given in the Weisthilmer,
THE CAUSES OP THE SOCIAL UNREST 107
eould not have been such a very hard one, were so ready
to rise in rebellion during the last quarter of the fifteenth
century, the answer seems to be that there must have
been a growing change in their circumstances. Some
chroniclers have described the condition of the peasants
in the end of the fifteenth and in the beginning of the six-
teenth century, and the"y always dwell upon their misery.
John Bohm, who wrote in the beginning of the sixteenth
century, says that " their lot was hard and pitiable," and
calls them " slaves." ^ Sebastian Frank (1534)^ Sebastian
Mimster (1546), H. Pantaleon^' (1570), 'aEH4talian who"
wrote a description of Germany, all agree with Bohm. ;
Frank adds that the peasants hate every kind of cleric,
good or bad, and that their speech is full of gibes against
priests and monks ; while Pantaleone! observes that many
ekiUed workmen, artisans, artists, and men of learning
have sprung from this despised peasant class. There must
have been a great change for the worse in the condition of
the poorer dwellers both in town and in country.
So far as the townsmen are concerned, nothing need be
added to what has already been said ; but the causes of
the growing depression of the peasantry were more com-
plicated. The universal testimony of contemporaries is
that the gradual introduction of Eoman law brought the
greatest change, by placing a means of universal oppression
In the hands of the over-lords. There is no need to
suppose that the lawyers who introduced the new juris-
prudence meant to use it to degrade and oppress the
peasant class. A slight study of the Weisthilmer shows
how complicated and varied was this consuetudinary law
which regulated the relations between peasant and over-
lord. It was natural, when great estates grew to be
principalities, whether lay or clerical, that the over-lords
should seek for some principle of codification or reduction
to uniformity. ■ It had been the custom for centuries to
attempt to simplify the ruder and involved German codes
by bringing them into harmony with the principles of
' Omnium Oeniium Mores, in. xii. (first printed in 1576).
108 , SOCIAL CONDITIONS
Eoman law, and this idea had received a powerful impetus
from the Eenaissance movement. But when the bewilder-
ing multiplicity of customary usages which had governed the
relations of cultivators to over-lords was simplified according
to the ideas of Eoman law, the result was in the highest
degree dangerous to the free peasantry of Germany. The
conception of strict individual proprietorship tended to
displace the indefinite conception of communal proprietor-
ship, and the peasants could only appear in the gidse of
tenants on long leases, or serfs who might have some per-
sonal rights but no rights of property, or slaves who had
no rights at all. The new jurisprudence began by attacking
the common lands, pastures, and forests. The passion for
the chase, which became the more engrossing as the right
to wage private war grew more and more dangerous, led
to the nobles insisting on the individual title to all forest
lands, and to the publication of such forest laws as we find
made in Wiirtemberg, where anyone found trespassing with
gun or cross-bow was liable to lose one eye. The attempt
to reduce a free peasantry in possession of communal pro-
perty to tenants on long lease, then to serfs, and, lastly, to
slaves, may be seen in the seventy years' struggle between
the Abbots of Kempten and their peasants. These spiritual
lords carried on the contest with every kind of force and
chicanery they could command. They enlarged illegally
the jurisdiction of their spiritual courts; they prevented
the poor people who opposed them from coming to the
Lord's Table; they actually falsified their title-deeds, in-
serting provisions which were not originally contained in
them.
The case of the Kempten lands was, no doubt, an
extreme one, though it could be matched by others. But
the point to be noticed is the immense opportunities for
oppression which were placed in the hands of the over-
lords by the new jurisprudence, and the temptation to make
use of them when their interests seemed to require it, or
when their peasantry began to grow refractory or became
too prosperous. The economic changes which were at
CAUSES OP THE SOCIAL UNREST 109
work throughout the fifteenth century gave occasion for
the use of the powers which the new jurisdiction had
placed at the disposal of landlords. The economic revolu-
tion from the first impoverished the nobles of Germany ;
while, in its beginnings and until after the great rise in
prices, it rather helped the peasantry. They had a better
market for their produce, and they so profited by it that
the burghers spoke of denying them the right of free
markets, on the ground that they had begun to usurp the
place of the merchants and were trafficking in gold by
lending money on interest. The competition in luxurious
dress and living, which the impoverished nobles carried
on with the rich burghers, made the former still poorer
and more reckless. We read of a noble lady in Swabia
who, rather than be outshone at a tournament, sold a
village and all her rights over it in order to buy a blue
velvet dress. The nobles, becoming poorer and poorer,
saw their own peasants making money to such an extent
that they were, comparatively speaking, much better off
than themselves, so that in Westphalia it was said that a
peasant could get credit more easily than five nobles.
Moreover, the peasants did not appear to be as sub-
missive to their lords as they once had been. Nor was it
to be wondered at. The creation of the landsknecMs had
put new thoughts into their heads. The days of the old
fighting chivalry were over, and the strength of armies was
measured by the number and discipline of the infantry.
The victories of the Swiss over Charles the Bold had made
the peasant or artisan soldier a power. Kings and princes
raised standing armies, recruited from the country districts
or from among the wilder and more restless of the town
population. The folk-songs are full of the doings of these
plebeian soldiers. When the landshiecM visited his rela-
tions in village or in town, swaggered about in his gorgeous
parti-coloured clothes, his broad hat adorned with huge
feathers, his great gauntlets and his weapons ; when he
showed a gold chain or his ducats, or a jewel he had won
as his share of the booty ; when his old neighbours saw his
110 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
dress and gait imitated by the young burghers, — he became
a centre of admiration, and his relations began to hold
themselves high on his account. They acquired a new
independence of character, a new impatience against aU
that prevented them from rising in the world. It has
scarcely been sufficiently noted how most of the leaders
in the plebeian risings were disbanded landsknechts}
The new jurisprudence was a very effectual instrument
in the hands of an impoverished landlord class to ease the
peasant of his superfluous wealth, and to keep him in his
proper place. It was used almost universally, and the
peasant rebellions were the natural consequences. But the
more determined peasant revolts, which began with the
Bundschuh League, arose at a time when life was hard for
peasant and artisan alike.
The last decade of the fifteenth century and the first
of the sixteenth contained a number of years in which
the harvest failed almost entirely over all or in parts
of Germany. They began with 1490, and in that year
contemporary writers, like Trithemius, declare that the lot
of the poor was almost unbearable. The bad harvests
of 1491 and 1492 made things worse. In 1493, the year
which saw the foundation of the Bundschuh, the state of
matters may be guessed from the fact that men came all
the way from the Tyrol to the upper reaches of the Main,
where the harvest was comparatively good, bought barley
^ LandsJcnecM or lanzknecM (for the words are the same) is often trans-
literated lance-knight in English State Papers of the sixteenth century. The
English word, suggesting as it does cavalry armed with lances, is very mis-
leading. The victories of the Swiss peasants, and their reputation as soldiers, ~
suggested to the Emperor Frederick, and especially to his son, the Emperor
Maximilian, the formation of troops of infantry recruited from the peasantry
and from the lower classes of townsmen. Troops of cavalry of a like origin
were also formed, and they were called reiters or reisiger. These mercenaries
frequently gained much money both from pay and from plunder and were
regarded as heroes by the members of the classes from whom they had
sprung. Liliencron's Die historischen Volkslieder vom ISlen bis ::um ISten
Jahrhundert contains many folk-songs celebrating their prowess. The
history of the gradual rise and growing importance of these peasant soldiera
is given in Schultz, Deutsches Leben im 14ten mid ISten Jahrhundert pp.
589 f. (Grosse Ausgabe), and in the authorities there quoted.
FAMINE YEARS 11]
there for five times its usual price, carried it on pack-
horses by little frequented paths to their own country, and
sold it at a profit.
In 1499 the Swiss refused to submit to the imperial
proposals for consolidating the Empire. Maximilian or
his government in the Tyrol resolved to punish them, and
the Swabian League were to be the executioners. The
Swiss, highly incensed, had declared that if they were
forced into war it would be a war of extermination. They
were as bad as their word. An eye-witness saw whole
villages in the wasted districts forsaken by the men, and
the women gathered in troops, feeding on herbs and roots,
and seeing with the apathy of despair their ranks diminish
day by day.^ The Swiss war was worse than many bad
harvests for the Hegau and other districts in South Ger-
many.
In 1500 the harvest failed over all Germany ; 1501
and 1502 were years when the crops failed in a number of
districts ; and in 1503 there was another universally bad
harvest. These years of scarcity pressed most heavily on the
peasant class. In some districts of Brandenburg, peasants
were found in the woods dead of starvation, with the grass
which they had been trying to eat still in their mouths.
Cities like Augsburg and Strassburg bought grain, stored
it in magazines, and kept the poor alive by periodical
distributions. This cycle of famine years from 1490 to
1503 was the period when the most determined and
desperate social risings took place, and largely explains
them.^
Our description of the social conditions existing during
the period which ushered in the Reformation has been
confined to Germany. The great religious movement took
its origin in that land, and it is of the utmost importance
to study the environment there. But the universal economic
' Willibald Pirkheimer in his book on the Swiss war, chap. ii. (German
ed., Basel, 1826).
' Gothein, Politische und religiose Volksbewegimgen vor der Reformation
(Brcelau, 1878), p. 78.
112 SOCIAL CONDITIONS
changes were producing social disturbances everywhere,
modified in appearance and character by the special con-
ditions of the various countries of Europe. The popular
risings in England, which began with the gigantic labour
strike under Wat Tyler and priest Ball, and ended with
the disturbances during the reign of Edward vi., were the
counterpart of the social revolt in Germany.
From all that has been said, it will be evident that on
the eve of the Eeformation the condition of Europe, and
of Germany in particular, was one of seething discontent
and fuU of bitter class hatreds, — the trading companies and
the great capitalists against the " gUds," the poorer classes
against the wealthier, and the nobles against the towns.
This state of things is abundantly reflected in the folk-songs
of the period, which best reveal the intimate feelings of
the people. Eor it was an age of song everywhere, and
especially in Germany. Nobles and knights, burghers and
peasants, landsknechts and Swiss soldiers, priests and clerks,
lawyers and merchants — all expressed the feelings of their
class when they sang ; and the folk-songs give us a wonder-
ful picture of the class hatreds which were rending asunder
the old conditions of mediaeval life, and preparing the way
for a new world.
This social ferment was increased by a sudden and
mysterious rise in prices, affecting first the articles of
foreign produce, to which the wealthier classes had become
greatly addicted, and at last the ordinary necessaries of
life. The cause, it is now believed, was not the debasing
of the coinage, for that affected a narrow circle only ; nor
was it the importation of precious metals from America,
for that came later ; it was rather the increased output of
the mines in Europe. Whatever the cause, the thing was
to contemporaries an irritating mystery, and each class in
society was disposed to blame the others for it. We have
thus at the beginning of the sixteenth century a restless
social condition in Germany, caused in great measure by
economic causes which no one understood, but whose re-
sults were painfully manifest in the crowds of sturdy
SOCIAL UNREST 113
beggars who thronged the roads — the refuse of all classes
in society, from the broken noble and the disbanded mer-
cenary soldier to the ruined peasant, the workman out of
employment, the begging friar, and the " wandering student."
It was into this mass of seething discontent that the spark
of religious protest fell — the one thing needed to fire the
train and kindle the social conflagration. This was the
society to which Luther spoke, and its discontent was the
sounding-board which made his words reverberate.
8*
CHAPTER V.
FAMILY AND POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE IN THE
DECADES BEFORE THE REFORMATION.^
§ 1. The Devotion of Germany to the Boman Church.
The real roots of the spiritual life of Luther and of the
other Eeformers ought to be sought for in the family and
in the popular religious life of the times. It is the duty of
the historian to discover, if possible, what religious instruc-
tion was given by parents to children in the pious homes
out of which most of the Eeformers came, and what
religious influences confronted and surrounded pious lads
after they had left the family circle. Few have cared to
^ To Sources given to Chapter IV. add : Wackemagel, Das deutsche
Kirchenlied von der alteslen Zeit Ms zum Anfang des 17 Jahrhivnderts
(Leipzig, 1864-1877) vols. i. ii. ; " Rainerii Saohoni Snmma de Cathaiis et
Leonistis " in the Magna Bibliotheca Pairum, vol. xiii. (Col. Agrip. 1618), of.
"Comra. Crit. de Eainerii Sachoni Summa" {Gdttingen Osterprogramm o{
1834) ; Habler, Bos Wallfahrtbuch des Hermann von Vach, und die Pil-
gerreisen der Beutschen Tiach Santiago de Composlella (Strassburg, 1899) ;
Mirabilia Romce (reprint by Parthey, Berlin, 1869) ; Munzenberger, Frank-
furter und Magdeburger Beichtbiichlein (Mainz, 1883) ; Hasak, Die letzte
Base, etc. (Ratisbon, 1883) ; Hasak, Der christliche Qlaube des deutschen,
Koikes beim Schluss des Mittelalters (Ratisbon, 1868) ; Hbfler, Denkvmrdig-
keiten der Charitas Pirckheirmr {Quellensaminl. z. frank. Gesch. iv., 1858) ;
Konrad Stolle, Tliuringische Chronik (in Bibliothek d. lit. Vereins (Stutt-
gai'dt), xxxiii.).
Later Books : v. Bezold, CfescMcJUe der deutschen Beformaiion (Berlin,
1890) ; Janssen, OeschicMe des deutschen Volkes^seit dem Ausgang des Mitttl-
alters (17th ed., 1897), vol. i. ; Briiek, Der religiose UnterricM fur Jugev4
nnd Volk in Deutschland in der zweiten Ealfte des filnfzehnten Jahrhunderts ;
Cruel, Oeschichte der deutschen Predigt im Mittclalter (Det^old, 1879) ;
Dacheux, Jean Geiler de Keysersberg (Paris, 1876) ; "Walther, Die deulsche
Bibelilbcrselzung des Mittelalters (Brunswick, 1889) ; Uhlhom, Die Christ-
lich/i Liebesthatigkeil im Mittclalter (Stuttgart, 1887) ; Wilken, Oeschichie
der geistlichen S2nele in Deutschland (Gtittingen, 1872).
Ill
GERMAN DEVOTION TO ROME 115
prosecute the difficult task ; and it is only within late
years that the requisite material has been accumulated.
It has to be sought for in autobiographies, diaries, and
private letters ; in the books of popular devotion which
the patience of ecclesiastical arcbfeologists is exhuming and
reprinting ; in the references to the pious confraternities of
the later Middle Ages, and more especially to the Kalands
among the artisans, which appear in town chronicles, and
whose constitutions are being slowly unearthed by local '
historical societies ; in the police regulations of towns and
country districts which aim at curbing the power of the
clergy, and in the edicts of princes attempting to enforce
some of the recommendations of the Councils of Constance
and Basel ; in the more popular hymns of the time, and in
the sermons of the more fervent preachers; in the pilgrim
songs and the pilgrim guide-books ; and in a variety of
other sources not commonly studied by Church historians.
On the surface no land seemed more devoted to the
mediaeval Church and to the Pope, its head, than did
Germany in the half century before the Eeformation. A
cultivated Italian, Aleander, papal nuncio at the Diet of
Worms, was astonished at the signs of disaffection he met
with in 1520.1 jjg ]ja,(j visited Germany frequently, and
he was intimately acquainted with many of the northern
Humanists; and his opinion was that down to 1510 (the
date of his last visit) he had never been among a people so
devoted to the Bishop of Eome. No nation had exhibited
such signs of delight at the ending of the Schism and the
re-establishment of the " Peace of the Church." The
Italian Humanists continually express their wonder at the
strength of the religious susceptibilities of the Germans ;
and the papal Curia looked upon German devotion as a
never-failing source of Eoman revenue. The Germans dis-
played an almost feverish anxiety to profit by all the
ordinary and extraordinary means of grace. They built
innumerable churches; their towns were full of conventual
' Kalkoff, Die Depeschen des Nunlius Aleander, etc. (Halle a. S. 1897),
pp. 26, 45-48,
116 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
foundations ; they bought Indulgences, went on pilgrimages,
visited shrines, reverenced relics in a way that no other
nation did. The piety of the Germans was proverbial.
The number of churches was enormous for the popula-
tion. Almost every tiny village had its chapel, and every
town of any size had several churches. Church building
and decoration was a feature of the age. In the town of
Dantzig 8 new churches had been founded or completed
during the fifteenth century. The "holy" city of Koln
(Cologne) at the close of the fifteenth century contained
11 great churches, 19 parish churches, 22 monasteries, 12
hospitals, and 76 convents; more than a thousand Masses
were said at its altars every day. It was exceptionally
rich in ecclesiastical buildings, no doubt ; but the smaller
town of Brunswick had 15 churches, over 20 chapels, 5
monasteries, 6 hospitals, and 12 Beguine-houses, and its
great church, dedicated to St. Blasius, had 26 altars served
by 60 ecclesiastics. So it was all over Germany.
Besides the large numbers of monks and nuns who
peopled the innumerable monasteries and convents, a large
part of the population belonged to some semi-ecclesiastical
association. Many were tertiaries of St. Francis; many
were connected with the Beguines: Koln (Cologne) had
106 Beguine-houses; Strassburg, over 60, and Basel,
over 30.
The churches and chapels, monasteries and religious
houses, received all kinds of offerings from rich and poor
alike. In those days of unexampled burgher prosperity
and wealth, the town churches became " museums and
treasure-houses." The windows were filled with painted
glass ; weapons, armour, jewels, pictures, tapestries were
stored in the treasuries or adorned the walls. Ancient
inventories have been preserved of some of these ecclesias-
tical accumulations of wealth. In the cathedral church in
Bern, to take one example, the head of St. Vincentius, the
patron, was adorned with a great quantity of gold, and with
one jewel said to be priceless ; the treasury contained
70 gold and 50 silver cups, 2 silver coffers, and 450 costly
PREACHING 117
sacramental robes decked with jewels of great value. The
luxury, the artistic fancy, and the wealth which could
minister to both, all three were characteristic of the times,
were lavished by the Germans on their churches.
§ 2. Preaching.
On the other hand, preaching took a place it had never
previously held in the mediaeval Church. Some dis-
tiaguished Churchmen did not hesitate to say that it was
the most important duty the priest could perform — more
important than saying Mass. It was recognised that when
the people began to read the Bible and religious books in
the vernacular, it became necessary for the priests to be
able to instruct their congregations intelligently and sym-
pathetically in sermons. Attempts were made to provide
the preachers with material for their sermon-making. The
earliest was the Bihlia Pauperum (the Bible for the
Pauperes Ohristi, or the preaching monks), which collects
on one page pictures of Bible histories fitted to explain
each other, and adds short comments. Thus, on the twenty-
fifth leaf there are three pictures — in the centre the Cruci-
fixion ; on the left Abraham about to slay Isaac, with the
lamb in the foreground ; and on the left the Brazen Serpent
and the healing of the Plague. More scholarly preachers
found a valuable commentary in the Postilla of the learned
Franciscan Nicolas de Lyra (Lira or Lire, a village in
Normandy), who was the first real exegetical scholar, and
to whom Luther was in later days greatly indebted.^
Manuals of Pastoral Theology were also written and
published for the benefit of the parish priests, — the most
famous, under the quaint title, Dormi Secure (sleep in safety).
It describes the more important portions of the service, and
what makes a good sermon ; it gives the Lessons for the
Sunday services, the chief articles of the Christian faith,
and adds directions for pastoral work and the cure of souls.
' No fewer than six editions of his Postilla were published between 1471
and 1-508.
'.18 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
It is somewhat difficult to describe briefly the character
of the preaching. Some of it was very edifying and de-
servedly popular. The sermons of John Herolt were
printed, and attained a very wide circulation. No fewer
than forty-one editions appeared. Much of the preaching
was the exposition of themes taken from the Scholastic
Theology treated in the most technical way. Many of the
preachers seem to have profaned their office ra the search
after popularity, and mingled very questionable stories and
coarse jokes with their exhortations. The best known of
the preachers who flourished at the close of the flfteenth
century was John Geiler of Keysersberg (in Elsass near
Colmar), the friend of Sebastian Brand, and a member of
the Humanist circle of Strassburg. The position he flUed
illustrates the eagerness of men of the time to encourage
preaching. A burgher of Strassburg, Peter Schott, left a
Bum of money to endow a preacher, who was to be a doctor
of theology, one whc had not taken monk's vows, and who
was to preach to the people in the vernacular ; a special
pulpit was erected iu the Strassburg Minster for the preacher
provided by this foundation, who was John Geiler. His
sermons are full of exhortations to piety and correct living.
He lashed the vices and superstitions of his time. He
denounced relic worship, pilgrimages, buying indulgences,
and the corruptions iu the monasteries and convents. He
spoke against the luxurious living of Popes and prelates,
and their trafficking ia the sale of benefices. He made
sarcastic references to the papal decretals and to the
quibblings of Scholastic Theology. He paints the luxuries
and vices he denoimced so very clearly, that his writings
are a 'valuable mine for the historian of popular morals.
He was a stern preacher of morals, but his sermons con-
taia very little of the gospel message. As we read
them we can understand Luther's complaint, that while
he had listened to many a sermon on the sins of the age,
and to many a discourse expounding scholastic themes, he
had never heard one which declared the love of God to
man in the mission and work of Jesus Christ.
CHURCH FESTIVALS 119
§ 3. Church Festivals.
The Church itself, recognising the fondness of the
people for all kinds of scenic display, delighted to gratif}
the prevailing taste by magnificent processions, by gorgeoua
church ceremonial, by Passion and Miracle Plays. Such
scenes are continually described in contemporary chronicles.
The processions were arranged for Corpus Christi Day,
for Christmas, for Harvest Thanksgivings, when the civic
fathers requested the clergy to pray for rain, or when
a great papal official visited the town. We hear of one
at Erfurt which began at five o'clock iu the morning,
and, with its visits to the stations of the Cross and the
services at each, did not end till noon. The school chil-
dren of the town, numbering 948, headed the procession,
then came 312 priests, then the whole University, — in
all, 2141 personSj^and the monks belonging to the five
monasteries followed. The Holy Sacrament carried by the
chief ecclesiastics, and preceded by a large number of
gigantic candles, occupied the middle of the procession.
The town council followed, then all the townsmen, then
the women and maidens. The troop of maidens was
2316 strong. They had garlands on their heads, and their
hair flowed down over their shoulders ; they carried lighted
candles in their hands, and they marched modestly looking
to the ground. Two beautiful girls walked at their head
with banners, followed by four with lanterns. In the
centre was the fairest, clad in black and barefoot, carrying
a large and splendid cross, and by her side one of the town
councillors chosen for his good looks. Everything was
arranged with a view to artistic effect.^
The Passion and Miracle Plays ^ were of great use in
instructing the people in the contents of Scripture, being
almost always composed of biblical scenes and histories.
.' V. Bezold, Oesehiclite der dcnischen Reformation, p. 91 f.
' Heinzel, Beschreibung des geistlichen Sehauspieh im deutschen Mittel-
alter (Hamburg and Leipzig, 1898) ; JF. J. Mone, Schauspiele des Mittel-
alters, 2 vols. (Karlsruhe, 1846).
120 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
They were often very elaborate ; sometimes more than one
hundred actors were needed to fill the parts ; and the plays
were frequently so lengthy that they lasted for two or three
days. The ecclesiastical managers felt that the continuous
presentatioii of grave and lofty scenes and sentiments might
weary their audiences, and they mixed them with lighter
ones, which frequently degenerated into buffoonery and
worse. The sacred and severe pathos of the Passion was
interlarded with coarse jokes about the devil ; and the most
solemn conceptions were profaned. These Mysteries were
generally performed in the great churches, and the build-
ings dedicated to sacred things witnessed scenes of the
coarsest humour, to the detriment of aU religious feeling.
The more serious Churchmen felt the profanation, and tried
to prohibit the performance of plays interlarded with rude
and indecent scenes within the chui'ches and churchyards.
Their iaterf erence came too late ; the rough popular taste
demanded what it had been accustomed to ; sacred histories
and customs coming down from a primitive heathenism
were mixed together, and the people lost the sense of
sacredness which ought to attach itself to the former. The
Feast of the Ass, to mention one, was supposed to com-
memorate the FKght to Egypt. A beautiful girl, holding a
child in her lap, was seated on an ass decked with splendid
trappings of gold cloth, and was led in procession by the
clergy through the principal streets of the town to the parish
church. The gii'l on her ass was conducted into the church
and placed near the high altar, and the Mass and other
services were each concluded by the whole congregation
braying. There is indeed an old MS. extant with a rubric
which orders the priest to bray thrice on elevating the
Host.^ At other seasons of popular licence, all the parts
of the church service, even the most solemn, were parodied
by the profane youth of the towns.*
' Hampsen, Medii JEvi Kalendarium (London, 1841), i. 140 f.
^ Tilliot, Mimoires pour servir a Vhistoire de la file des fous (Lau-
sanne, 1761) ; cf. Floegel's Geschichte des Grotesk-Komischen {Std ed., Leipzig
1886), pp. 199^242.
FAMILY RELIGION 121
All this, however, tells us little about the intimate
religious life and feelings of the people, which is the
important matter for the study of the roots of the great
ecclesiastical revolt.
When the evidence collected from the sources is sifted,
it will be found that the religious life of the people at
the close of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth
centuries is full of discordant elements, and makes what
must appear to us a very incongruous mosaic. If classifica-
tion be permissible, which it scarcely is (for reUgious types
always refuse to be kept distinct, and always tend to run
into each other), one would be disposed to speak of the
simple homely piety of the family circle — the religion
taught at the mother's knee, the Kinderlehre, as Luther
called it ; of a certain flamboyant religion which inspired
the crowds ; of a calm anti-clerical religion which grew and
spread silently throughout Germauy ; of the piety of the
praying-circles, the descendants of the fourteenth century
Mystics,
§ 4. The Family Eeligiotis lAfe.
The biographies of some of the leaders of the Eeforma-
tion, when they relate the childish reminiscences of the
writers, bear unconscious witness to the kind of religion
which was taught to the children in pious burgher and
peasant families. We know that Luther learned the Creed,
the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer. He knew
such simple evangelical hymns as " Ein kindelein so lobe-
lich," ^ " Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist," and " Crist ist
erstanden." Children were rocked to sleep while the mothers
sang:
"Ach lieber Heere Jhesu Christ
Sid Du ein Kind gewesen bist,
So gib oucb disem Kindelin
Din Qnod und ouch den Segen den.
Ach Jhesu, Heere min,
Behiit diz Kindelin.
' The old Scottish version is, "To us is borne a barne of bliss," Chdi
and Godlie Bdllates (Scot. Text Society, Edinburgh, 1897), pp. 51, 250.
122 POPULAR RELIGIOCS LIFE
Nun sloff, nun. sloff, min Kindelin,
Jhesus der sol din biilli sin,
Der well, daz dir getroume wol
Und werdest aller Tugent vol.
Ach. Jhesus, Heere min,
Behiit diz Kindelin." i
These songs or hymns, common before the Eeformation
were sung as frequently after the break .with Eome. The
continuity in the private devotional life before and after
the advent of the Eeformation is a thing to be noted. Few
hymns were more popular during the last decade of the
fifteenth century than the " In dulci Jubilo " in which Latin
and German mingled. The first and last verses were :
" In dulci jubilo,
Nun singet und seid f roh I
Unsers Herzens Wonne
Leit in prsesepio,
Und leuchtet als die Sonne
Matris in greniio.
Alpha es et O,
Alpha es et I
Ubi sunt gaudia?
Nirgends mehr denn da,
Da die Engel singen
Nova cantica,
Und die Schellen klingen
In regis curia.
Eya, war'n wir da,
Eya, war'n wir da ! "
^ This may be translated :
" Oh Jesus, Master, meek and mild,
Since Thou wast once a little child,
Wilt Thou not give this baby mine
Thy Grace and every blessing thine !
Oh Jesus, Master mild.
Protect my little child.
Now sleep, now sleep, my little child,
He loves thee, Jesus, meek and mild :
He'll never leave thee nor forsake,
He'll make thee wise and good and great.
Oh Jesus, Master mild.
Protect my little child."
FAMILY RELIGION 123
This hymn continued to enjoy a wonderful popularity
in the German Protestant churches and families until quite
recently, and during the times of the Eeformation it spread
far beyond Germany.^ In the fifteenth-century version it
contained one verse in praise of the Virgin :
" Mater et filia
Du bist, Jungfraw Maria.
Wir weren all verloren
Per nostra crimina,
So hat sy uns ervvorben
Celorum gaiidia.
Eya, war'n wir da,
Eya, war'n wir da 1 "
1 The old Scotch version was :
" In dulci jubilo,
Now let us sing with mirth and jo I
Our hartis consolation
Lies in preesepio ;
And schynis as the Sonne
Matris in greniio.
Alpha as et 0,
Alpha es et I
Jesn parvule,
1 thirst sair after Thee ;
Comfort my hart and mind,
Puer optime !
God of all grane so kind,
Et Princeps Glorite,
Trahe me post Te,
Trahe me post Te I
TJbi sunt gaudia
In any place but there,
Where that the angels sing
Nova cantica,
But and the bellis ring
In Eegis curia !
God gif I were there,
God gif I were there ! "
—{Chide and Oodlie Ballates {Scot. Text Suciity, Eiliiiburgh, ,1897), pp. 53,
250.)
There is a variety of English versions: "Let Jubil trumpets blow,
and hearts in rapture flow" ; " In dulci jubilo, to the House of God we'll
go"; "In dulci jubilo, sing and shout all below." Cf. Julian, Diclionaiij
of Hymnology, p. 564.
124 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
which was either omitted in the post-Eeformation versions,
or there was substituted:
"O Patris charitas,
O Nati lenitas !
Wir weren all verloren
Per nostra crimina,
So hat Er uns erworben
Coelorum gaudia.
Eya, war'n wir da,
Eya, war'n wir da."^
Nor was direct simple evangelical instruction lacking.
Friedrich Mecum (known better by his Latinised name of
Myconius), who was born in 1491, relates how his father,
a substantial burgher belonging to Lichtenfels in Upper
Franconia, instructed him in religion while he was a child.
" My dear father," he says, " had taught me in my child-
hood the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the
Creed, and constrained me to pray always. For, said he,
' Everything comes to us from God alone, and that gratis,
free of cost, and He will lead us and rule us, if we
only diligently pray to Him.' " We can trace this simple
evangelical famUy religion away back through the Middle
Ages. In the wonderfully interesting Chronicle of Brother
Salimbene of the Franciscan Convent of Parma, which
comes from the thirteenth century, we are told how many
of the better-disposed burghers of the town came to the
convent frequently to enjoy the religious conversation of
Brother Hugh. On one occasion the conversation turned
upon the mystical theology of Abbot Giaocchino di Fiore.
The burghers professed to be greatly edified, but said that
they hoped that on the next evening Brother Hugh would
confine himself to telling them the simple luords of Jesus.
The central thought in all evangelical religion is that
the believer does not owe his position before God, and
his assui-ance of salvation, to the good deeds which he
really can do, but to the grace of God manifested in the
mission . and the work of Christ ; and the more we turn
' Waokernagel, Das deulsche Kirchenlied, etc., ii. 483 ff.
FAMILY RELIGION 125
from the thought of what we can do to the thought of
what God has done for us, the stronger will be the con-
viction that simple trust in God is that by which the
pardoning grace of God is appropriated. This double con-
ception — God's grace coming down upon us from above,
and the believer's trust rising from beneath to meet and
appropriate it — was never absent from the simplest religion
of the Middle Ages. It did not find articulate expression
in mediaeval theology, for, owing to its enforced connection
with Aristotelian philosophy, that theology was largely
artificial ; but the thought itself had a continuous and con-
stant existence in the public consciousness of Christian men
and women, and appeared in sermons, prayers, and hymns,
and in the other ways in which the devotional life mani-
fested itself. It is found in the sermons of the greatest,
of mediaeval preachers, Bernard of Clairvaux, and in the
teaching of the most persuasive of religious guides, Francis
of AssisL The one, Bernard, in spite of his theological
training, was able to rise above the thought of human
merit recommending the sinner to God ; and the other,
Francis, who had no theological training at all, insisted that
he was fitted to lead a life of imitation simply because he
had no personal merits whatsoever, and owed everything
to the marvellous mercy and grace of God given freely to
him in the work of Christ. The thought that all the good
we can do comes from the wisdom and mercy of God, and
that without these gifts of grace we are sinful and worth-
less — the feeling that all pardon and all holy living are
free gifts of God's grace, was the central thought round
which in mediaeval, as in all times, the faith of simple and
pious people twined itself. It found expression in the
simpler mediaeval hymns, Latin and German. The utter
need for sin-pardoning grace is expressed and taught in the
prayer of the Canon of the Mass. It found its way, in
spite of the theology, even into the official agenda of the
Church, where the dying are told that they must repose
their confidence upon Christ and His Passion as the sole
ground of confidence in their salvation. If we take the
126 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
fourth book of Thomas k Kempis' Imitatio Christi, it ia
impossible to avoid seeing that his ideas about the sacra-
ment of the Supper (in spite of the mistakes in them) kept
aUve in his mind the thought of a free grace of God, and
that he had a clear conception that God's grace was freely
given, and not merited by what man can do. For the
main thought with pious mediaeval Christians, however it
might be overlaid with superstitious conceptions, was that
they received in the sacrament a gift of overwhelming
greatness. Many a modern Christian seems to think that
the main idea is that in this sacrament one does something
— ^makes a profession of Christianity. The old view went
a long way towards keeping people right in spite of errors,
while the modern view does a great deal towards leading
them wrong in spite of truth.
AU these things combine to show us how there was a
simple evangelical faith among pious mediaeval Christians,
and that their lives were fed upon the same divine trutha
which lie at the basis of Eeformation theology. The
truths were all there, as poetic thoughts, as earnest suppli-
cation and confession,' in fervent preaching or in fireside
teaching. When mediaeval Christians knelt in prayer, stood
to sing their Eedeemer's praises, spoke as a dying man
to dying men, or as a mother to the children about her
knees, the words and thoughts that came were what Luther
and Zwingli and Calvin wove into Eeformation creeds,
and expanded into that experimental theology which was
characteristic of the Eeformation.
When the printing-press began in the last decades of
the fifteenth century to provide little books to aid private
and family devotion, it is not surprising, after what has
been said, to find how full many of them were of simple
evangelical piety. Some contained the Lord's Prayer, the
Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, and occasionally
a translation or paraphrase of some of the Psalms, notably
the 51st Psalm. Popular religious instructions and cate-
chisms for family use were printed. The Catechism of
Dietrich Koelde (written in 1470) says: "Man must place
SUPERSTITIOUS RELIGION 127
his faith and hope and love on God alone, and not in any
creature ; he must trust in nothing but in the work of
Jesus Christ." The Seelenwurzgartlein, a widely used book
of devotion, instructs the penitent : " Thou must place all
thy hope and trust on nothing else than on the work and
death of Jesus Christ." The Geistliche Streit of UlriCh
Krafft (1503) teaches the dying man to place all his trust
on the " mercy and goodness of God, and not on his own
good works." Quotations might be multiplied, all proving
the existence of a simple evangelical piety, and showing
that the home experience of Friedrich Mecum (Myconius)
was shared in by thousands, and that there was a simple
evangelical family religion in numberless German homes in
the end of the fifteenth century.
§ 5. ^ superstitious Beligion hosed on Fear.
When sensitive, religiously disposed boys left pious
homes, they could not fail to come in contact with a very
different kind of religion. Many did not need to quit the
family circle in order to meet it. Near Mansfeld, Luther's
home, were noted pilgrimage places. Pilgrims, singly or
in great bands, passed to make their devotions before the
wooden cross at Kyffhauser, which was supposed to effect
miraculous cures. The Bruno Quertfort Chapel and th^
old chapel at Welfesholz were pilgrimage places. Sick
people were carried to spots near the cloister church at
Wimmelberg, where they could best hear the sound of the
cloister bells, which were believed to have a healing virtue.
The latter half of the fifteenth century witnessed a
great and widespreading religious revival, which prolonged
itself into the earlier decades of the sixteenth, though the
year 1475 may perhaps be taken as its high- water mark.
Its most characteristic feature was the impulse to make
pilgrimages to favoured shrines ; and these pilgrimages
were always considered to be something in the nature of
satisfactions made to God for sins. With some of the
earlier phenomena we have nothing here to do.
128 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
The impetus to pilgrimages given after the great
Schism by the celebration in 1456 of the first JubUee
" after healing the wounds of the Church " ; the relation
of these pilgrimages to the doctrines of Indulgences which,
formulated by the great Schoolmen of the thirteenth cen-
tury, had changed the whole penitential system of the
mediseval Church, must be passed over ; the curious socialist,
anti-clerical, and yet deeply superstitious movement led by
the cowherd and village piper, Hans Bohm, has been
described. But one movement is so characteristic of the
times, that it must be noticed. In the years 1455—1459
all the chroniclers describe great gatherings of children from
every part of Germany, from town and village, who, with
crosses and banners, went on pilgrimage to St. Michael in
Normandy. The chronicler of Liibeck compares the spread
of the movement to the advance of the plague, and wonders
whether the prompting arose from the inspiration of God
or from the instigation of the devil. When a band of
these child-pilgrims reached a town, carrying aloft crosses
and banners blazoned with a rude image of St. Michael,
singing their special pilgrim song,^ the town's children
were impelled to join them. How this strange epidemic
arose, and what put an end to it, seems altogether doubt-
ful ; but the chronicles of almost every important town in
Germany attest the facts, and the contemporary records
of North France describe the bands of youthful pilgrims
who traversed the country to go to St. Michael's Mount.
During these last decades of the fifteenth century, a
great fear seems to have brooded over Central Europe.
' The song began :
" Wijllent ir geren horen
Von sant Michel's wvinn ;
In Gargau ist er gsessen
Drei mil im meresgrund.
' heilger man, sant Michel,
Wie hastu dass gesundt,
Dass du so tief hast buwen
Wol in des meres grand ? ' "
— (Wackeniagel, Das deutsche Kirchenlied, etc. ii. 1008.)
PILGRIMAGES 129
The countries were scourged by incessant visits of the
plague ; new diseases, never before heard of, came to swell
the terror of the people. The alarm of a Turkish invasion
was always before their eyes. Bells tolled at midday in
himdreds of German parishes, calling the parishioners
together for prayer against the incoming of the Turks, and
served to keep the dread always present to their minds.
Mothers threatened their disobedient children by calling
on the Turk to come and take them. It was fear that lay
at the basis of this crude revival of religion which marks
the closing decades of the fifteenth century. It gave rise
■to an urgen,t restlessness. Prophecies of evil were easily
believed in. Astrologers assumed a place and wielded
a power which was as new as it was strange. The
credulous people welcomed all kinds of revelations and
proclamations of miraculous signs. At Wilsnack, a village
in one of the divisions of Brandenburg (Priegnitz), it had
been alleged since 1383 that a consecrated wafer secreted,
the Blood of Christ. Suddenly, in 1475, people were
seized with a desire to make a pilgrimage to this shrine.
Swarms of child-pilgrims again filled the roads — boys and
girls, from eight to eighteen years of age, bareheaded, clad
only in their shirts, shouting, " Lord, have mercy upon
us " — going to Wilsnack. Sometimes schoolmasters headed
a crowd of pilgrims ; mothers deserted their younger
children; country lads and maids left their work in the
fields to join the processions. These pilgrims came mostly
from Central Germany (1100 from Eisleben alone), but
the contagion spread to Austria and Hungary, and great
bands of youthful pilgrims appeared from these coimtries.
They travelled without provisions, and depended on the
charity of the peasants for food. Large numbers of these
child-pUgrims did not know why they had joined the
throng ; they had never heard of the Bleeding Host towards
which they were journeying ; when asked why they had set
out, they could only answer that they could not help it,
that they saw the red cross at the head of their little
band, and had to follow it. Many of them could not
9*
130 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
speak; all went weeping and groaning, shivering as if
they had a fit of ague. An unnatural strength supported
them. Little boys and girls, some of them not eight years
old, from a small village near Bamberg, were said to have
marched, on their first setting forth, all day and the first
night the incredible distance of not less than eighty miles !
Some towns tried to put a stop to these pilgrimages. Erfurt
shut its gates against the youthful companies. The pil-
grimages ended as suddenly as they had begun.^
Succeeding years witnessed similar astonishing pilgrim-
ages — in 1489, to the " black Mother of God " in Altotting ;
in 1492, to the "Holy Blood" at Sternberg; in the same
year, to the "pitiful Bone" at Dornach; in 1499, to the
picture of the Blessed Virgin at G-rimmenthal ; in 1500, to
the head of St. Anna at Diiren; and in 1519, to the
" Beautiful Mary " at Kegensburg.
Apart altogether from these sporadic movements, the
last decades of the fifteenth century were pre-eminently a
time of pilgrimages. German princes and wealthy mer-
chants made pilgrimages to the Holy Land, visited the
sacred places there, and returned with numerous rehcs,
which they stored in favourite churches. Frederick the
Wise, the Elector of Saxony, to be known afterwards as the
protector of Luther, made such a pilgrimage, and placed the
relics he had acquired in the Castle Church (the Church of
All Saints) in Wittenberg. He became an assiduous col-
lector of relics, and had commissioners on the Ehine, in the
Netherlands, and at Venice, with orders to procure him
any sacred novelties they met with for sale.^ He procured
from the Pope an Indulgence for all who visited the col-
lection and took part in the services of the church on All
Saints' Day ; for it is one of the ironies of history that the
church on whose door Luther nailed his theses against
Indulgences was one of the sacred edifices on which an
Indulgence had been bestowed, and that the day selected
' Konrad StoUe, Thiiringische Chronik, pp. 128-131 (BiUiothek des
literarischcn Vereins in Stuttgart, xxxiii. ).
^ Kolde, Friedrich der Wclse und die Anfdnge der Be/ormati<m, p. 14.
PILGRIMAGES 131
by Luther was the yearly anniversary, which drew crowds
to benefit by it.^
A pilgrimage to the Holy Land was too costly and
dangerous to be indulged in by many. The richer
Germans made pilgrimages to Eome, and the great pilgrim-
age place for the middle-class or poorer Germans was
Compostella in Spain. Einsiedeln, in Switzerland, also
attracted yearly swarms of pilgrims.
Guide-books were written for the benefit of these pious
travellers, and two of them, the most popular, have recently
been reprinted. They are the Mirabilia Eomce for Eoman
pilgrims, and the Walfart und Strasse zu Sant Jacob for
travellers to Compostella. These little books had a wonder-
ful popularity. The Mirabilia Eomm went through nine-
teen Latin and at least twelve German editions before the
year 1500 ; it was also translated into Italian and Dutch.
It describes the various shrines at Kome where pilgrims
may win special gifts of grace by visiting and worshipping
at them. Who goes to the Lateran Church and worships
there has " forgiveness of all sins, both guilt and penalty."
There is " a lovely little chapel " (probably what is now
called the Lateran Baptistry) near the Lateran, where the
same privileges may be won. The pilgrim who goes with
good intention to the High Altar of St. Peter's Church,
" even if he has murdered his father or his mother," is freed
from all sin, " guilt as well as penalty," provided he repents.
The virtues of St. Croce seem to have been rated even
higher. If a man leaves his house with the intention of
going to the shrine, even if he die by the way, all his sins
are forgiven him ; and if he visits the church he wins a
thousand years' relief from Purgatory.^
Compostella in Spain was the people's pilgrimage place.
Before the invention of printing we find traces of manu-
' Lucas Cranaoh, Witteiiberger Heiligenthumsbuch vom Jdhre 1509, in
Birth's Liebhaher-Bibliothek alter JUustratoren in Facsimilien-Rejiroduk-
tian. No. vii. (Munich, 1896).
' Mirabilia Romce, ed. by G. Parthey : the quotations are from an old
Geiman translation.
132 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
script guides to travellers, which were no doubt circulated
among intending pilgrims, and afterwards the services of
the printing-press were early called in to assist. In the
Spanish archives at Simaneas there are two siagle sheets,
one of which states the numerous Indulgences for the
benefit of visitors at the shrtae of St. James, while the
other enumerates the relics which are to be seen and tisited
there. It mentions thirty-nine great felics — from the
bones of St. James, which lay under the great altar of the
cathedral, to those of St. Susanna, which were interred ia a
church outside the walls of the town.^ These leaflets were
sold to the pilgrims, and were carried back by them to
Germany, where they stimulated the zeal and devotion of
those who intended to make the pilgrimage. Our pilgrim's
guide-book, the Walfart und Strasse zu Sant Jacob? deals
almost exclusively with the road. The author was a
certain Hermann Kiinig of Vach, who calls himself a
Mergen-hnecM, or servant of the Virgin Mary. The well-
known pilgrim song, " Of Satut James " ( Von Sant Jacob),
told how those who reached the end of their journey got,
through the intercession of St. James, forgiveness from the
guilt and penalty (von Fein und Schuldt) of all their sins;
it tells the pilgrims to provide themselves with two pairs
of shoes, a water-bottle and spoon, a satchel and staff,
a broad-brimmed hat and a cloak, both trimmed with
leather in the places likeliest to be frayed, and both needed
as a protection against wind and rain and snow.* It
^ The title is Hm sunt reliquve qum habeniur in hoc sanclissima ecdesia
Composlellana in qvM corjnis Beciii Jacohi Zebedei in integrum.
" No. i. of Druckf und Holzschnitte des 15 tmd 16 Jahrhunderts (Strass-
burg, 1899).
* " Zway par suhuech der davff er wol,
Ein scliitssel bei der flaschen ;
Ein breitcn huet den sol er lian,
Und an mantel sol er nit gan
Myt leder wol besezet;
Es sclinei oder regn oder welie der wiut,
Dass in die lufft niclit nezet ;
Sagkli und stab ist auch dar bey."
— ( Waokeruagel, Das deutselie Kirchcnlied von der aeltcstcii Zcit Ms zu Anfwng
dcs 17 JaJirhuiidcrls, ii, 1009.)
PILGRIMAGES 133
charges them to take permits from their parish priests
to dispense with confession, for they were going to
foreign lands where they would not find priests who spoke
German. It warns them that they might die far from
home and find a grave on the pilgrimage route. Our
guide-book omits all these things. It is written by a man
who has made the pilgrimage on foot ; who had observed
minutely all the turns of the road, and could warn fellow-
pilgrims of the difficulties of the way. He gives the
itinerary from town to town ; where to turn to the right
and where to the left ; what conspicuous buildings mark
the proper path ; where the traveller will find people who
are generous to poor pilgrims, and where the inhabitants
are uncharitable and food and drink must be paid for ;
where hostels abound, and those parts of the road on
which there are few, and where the pilgrims must buy
their provisions beforehand and carry them in their
satchels ; where sick pilgrims can find hospitals on the way,
and what treatment they may expect there ; ^ at what
hostels they must change their money into French and
Spanish coin. In brief, the booklet is a mediaeval
" Baedeker," compiled with German accuracy for the
' The hospital at Romans is much praised :
" Da selbst eyn gutter spital ist,
Dar inne gybt maun brot und wyn
Auch synt die bett hubsch und fyn."
On the other hand, although the hospital at Montpelier was good enough,
its superintendent was a sworn enemy to Germans, and the pilgrims of that
nation suffered much at his hands. These hospitals occupy a good deal of
space in the pilgrimage song, and the woes of the Germans are duly set
forth. If the pilgrim asks politely for more bread :
" Spitelmeister, lieber spitelnieister meyn.
Die brot sein vil zu kleine";
or suggests that the beds are not very clean :
" Spitelmeister, lieber spitelmeister meyn,
Die bet sein nit gar reine,"
the superintendent and his daughter (der spitelmeister het eyn tochterlein
es mocht recht vol eyn schelckin seyn) declared that they were not going to
be troubled with " German dogs." — "Wackernagel, Das deutsche Kirdienlied,
etc., ii. 1009-1010.
134 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
benefit of German pilgrims to the renowned shrine of St.
James of Compostella. This little book went through
several editions between 1495 and 1521, and is of itself a
proof of the popularity of this pilgrimage place. In the
last decades of the fifteenth century there arose a body of
men and women who might be called professional pilgrims,
and who were continually on the road between Germany
and Spain. A pilgrimage was one of the earliest so-called
" satisfactions " which might be done vicariously, and the
Brethren of St. James {Jacobs-Brueder) made the pilgrimage
regularly, either on behalf of themselves or of others.
Many of these pilgrims were men and women of
indifferent character,^ who had been sent on a pilgrimage
as an ecclesiastical punishment for their sins. The
Chronicles of the Zimmer Family^ gives several cases of
criminals, who had committed murder or theft or other
serious crimes between 1490 and 1520, who were sent to
Santiago as a punishment. Even in the last decades of
the fifteenth century, when the greater part of the pilgrims
were devout in their way, it was known only too well
that pilgi-images were not helpful to a moral life. Stern
preachers of righteousness like Geiler of Keysersberg " and
Berchtold of Eegensburg denounced pilgrimages, and said
that they created more sins than they yielded pardons.*
Parish priests continually forbade their women penitents,
especially if they were immarried, from going on a
pilgrimage. But these warnings and rebukes were in
vain. The prevailing terror had possessed the people,
and they journeyed from shrine to shrine seeking some
relief for their stricken consciences.
A marked characteristic of this revival which found
such striking outcome in these pilgrimages was the
thought that Jesus was to be looked upon as the Judge
who was to come to punish the wicked. His saving and
intercessory work was thrust into the background. Men
forgot that He was the Saviour and the Intercessor ; and
1 Zimmerische Chrcmik (Freiburg i. B. 1881-188-2), ii. 314.
" Ibid. iii. 474-475 iv. ilOl. » Prediglen, i. 448.
THE VIRGIN AND SAINT ANNA 135
bis the human heart craves for someone to intercede for
it, another intercessor had to be found. This gracious
personality was discovered in the Virgin Mother, who was
to be entreated to intercede with her Son on behalf of
poor sinning human creatures. The last half of the
fifteenth century saw a deep-seated and widely-spread crav-
ing to cling to the protection of the Virgin Mother with
& strength and intensity hitherto unknown in mediaeval
religion. It witnessed the furthest advance that had yet
been made towards what must be called Mariolatry. This
devotion expressed itself, as rehgious emotion continually
does, in hymns ; a very large proportion of the mediaeval
hymns in praise of the Virgin were written in the second
half of the fifteenth century — the period of this strange
revival based upon fear. Dread of the Son as Judge gave
rise to the devotion to the Mother as the intercessor.
Little books for private and family devotion were printed,
bearing such titles as the Pearl of the Pas'.ion and the Little
Gospel, containing, with long comments, the words of our
Lord on the cross to John and to Mary. She became the
ideal woman, the ideal mother, the " Mother of God," the
mater dolorosa, with her heart pierced by the sword, the
eharer in the redemptive sufferings of her Son, retaining
lier sensitive woman's heart, ready to listen to the appeals
of a suffering, sorrowful humanity. We can see this
devotion to the Virgin Mother impregnating the social
revolts from Hans Bohm to Joss Fritz. The theology of
the schools followed in the wake of the popular sentiment,
and the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was more
Btrictly defined and found its most strenuous supporters
during the later decades of this fifteenth century.
The thought of motherly intercession went further ;
the Virgin herself had to be interceded with to induce
her to plead with her Son for men sunk in sin, and her
mother (St. Anna) became the object of a cult which may
almost be said to be quite new. Hymns were written in
her praise.^ Confraternities, modelled on the confraternities
' Waokernagel, Das deulsche Kirchenlied, etc., ii. 564, 1016-1022.
136 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, were formed in order to
bring the power of the prayers of numbers to bear upon<
her. These confraternities spread all over Germany and
beyond it.^ It is almost possible to trace the widening
area of the cult from the chronicles of the period. The
special cult of the Virgin seems to have begun, at least
in its extravagant popular form, in North France, and to
have spread from France through Germany and Spain ;
but so far as it can be traced, this cult of St. Anna, " the
Grandmother," had a German origin, and the devotion
manifested itself most deeply on German soil. Even the
Humanist poets sang her praises with enthusiasm, and such
collectors of relics as Frederick of Saxony and the Cardinal
Archbishop of Mainz rejoiced when they were able to add
a thumb of St. Anna to their store. Luther himself tells
us that " St. Anna was his idol " ; and Calvin speaks of
his mother's devotion to the saint. Her name was graven
on many a parish church bell, and every pull at the ropes
and clang of the bell was supposed to be a prayer to
her to intercede. The Virgin and St. Anna brought
in their train other saints who were also believed to be
the true intercessors. The three bells of the church in
which Luther was baptized bore the following inscriptions
carved deeply in the brass : — " God help us ; Mary have
mercy. 1499." " Help us Anna, also St. Peter, St. Paul.
1509." "Help us God, Mary, Anna, St. Peter, Paul,
Arnold, Stephan, Simon. '1509." The popular religion
always represented Jesus, Mecum (Myconius) tells us, as
the stern Judge who would convict and punish all those
who had not secured righteousness by the intercession of
the saints or by their own good works.
This revival of religion, crude as it was, and based on
fear, had a distinct effect for good on a portion of the
clergy, and led to a great reformation of morals among
those who came under its influence. The papal Schism,
which had lasted till 1449, had for one of its results the
• Schwaumkell, Der CnUiis der heillgen Anna am Ausgange des
Miitelalters (Freiburg, 1893).
THE MENDICANT ORDERS 137
weakening of all ecclesiastical discipline, and its con-
sequences were seen in the growing immorality which
pervaded all classes of the clergy. So far as one can
judge, the revival of religion described above had not
very much effect on the secular clergy. Whether we
take the evidence from the chronicles of the time or
from visitations of the bishops, the morals of the parish
priests were extremely low, and the private lives of the
higher clergy in Germany notoriously corrupt. The ,
occupants of episcopal sees were for the most part the
younger brothers of the great princes, and had been placed
in the religious life for the sake of the ecclesiastical
revenues. The author of the Chronicles of the Zimmer
Family tells us that at the festive gatherings which
accompanied the meetings of the Diet, the young nobles,
lay and clerical, spent most of their time at dice and
cards. As he passed through the halls, picking his way
among groups of young nobles lying on the floor (for
tables and chairs were rare in these days), he continually
heard the young count call out to the young bishop,
" Play up, parson ; it is your turn." The same writer
describes the retinue of a great prelate, who was always
accompanied to the Diet by a concubine dressed in man's
clothes. Nor were the older Orders of monks, the Bene-
dictines and their offshoots, greatly influenced by the
revival. It was different, however, with those Orders of
monks who came into close contact with the people, and
caught from them the new fervour. The Dominicans, the
great preaching Order, were permeated by reform. The
Franciscans, who had degenerated sadly from their earlier
lives of self-denial, partook of a new life. Convent after
convent reformed itself, and the inmates began to lead
again the lives their founder had contemplated. The fire
of the revival, however, burnt brightest among the
Augustinian Eremites, the Order which Luther joined, and
they represented, as none of the others did, all the char-
acteristics of the new movement.
These Augustinian Eremites had a somewhat curious
138 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
history. They had nothing in common with St. Augustine
save the name, and the fact that a Pope had given them
the rule of St. Augustine as a hasis for their monastic
constitution. They had originally been hermits, living
solitary lives in mountainous parts of Italy and of
Germany. Many Popes had desired to bring them under
conventual rule, and this was at last successfully done.
They shared as no other Order had done in the revival
of the second half of the fifteenth century, and exhibited
in their lives all its rehgious characteristics. No Order
of monks contained such devoted servants of the Virgin
Mother. She was the patron along with St. Augustine.
Her image stood in the chapter -house of every convent.
The theologians of the Augustinian Eremites vied with
those of the Franciscans in spreading the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception. They did much to spread the
cult of the " Blessed Anna." They were devoted to the
Papacy. One of their learned men, John of Palz, one of
the two professors of theology in the Erfurt Convent when
Luther entered it as a novice, was the most strenuous
defender of the doctrine of Attrition and of the religious
value of Indulgences. "With all this their lives were more
self-denying than those of most monks. They cultivated
theological learning, and few Universities in Germany were
without an Augustinian Eremite who acted as professor of
philosophy or of theology. They also paid great attention
to the art of preaching, and every large monastery had a
special preacher who attracted crowds of the laity to the
convent chapeL Their monasteries were usually placed in
large towns ; and their devout lives, their learning, and the
popular gifts of their preachers, made them favourites with
the townspeople. They were the most esteemed Order in
Germany.
These last decades of the fifteenth century were the
days of the resuscitation of the mendicant Orders and the
revival of their power over the people. The better
disposed among the princes and among the wealthier
burghers invariably selected their confessors from the
NON-ECCLESiASTICAL RELIGION 13d
monks of the mendicant Orders, and especially from the
Augustinian Eremites. The chapels of the Franciscans
and of the Eremites were thronged, and those of the parish
clergy were deserted. The common people took for their
religious guides men who shared the new revival, and
who proved their sincerity by self-denying labours. It
was in vain that the Eoman Curia published regulations
insisting that every parishioner must confess to the priest
of the parish at least once a year, and that it explained
again and again that the personal character of the ministrant
did not affect the efficacy of the sacraments administered
by him. So long as poorly clad, emaciated, clean-living
Franciscan or Eremite priests could be found to act as con-
fessors, priests, or preachers, the people deserted the parish
clergy, flocked to their confessionals, waited on their serv-
ing the Mass, and thronged their chapels to listen to their
sermons. These decades were the time of the last revival
of the mendicant monks, who were the religious guides in
this flamboyant popular religion which is so much in
evidence during our period.
§ 6. ^ non-Ecclesiastical Beligion.
The third religious movement which belongs to the
last decades of the flfteenth and the earlier decades of
the sixteenth century was of a kind so different from, and
even contrary to, what has just been described, that it is
with some sm-prise that the student finds he must recognise
its presence alongside of the other. It was the silent
spread of a quiet, sincere, but non-ecclesiastical religion.
Historians usually say nothing about this movement, and it
is only a minute study of the town chronicles and of the
records of provincial and municipal legislation that reveals
its power and extent. It has always been recognised that
Luther's father was a man of a deeply religious turn of
mind, although he commonly despised the clergy, and
thought that most monks were rogues or fools ; but what is
not recognised is that in this he represented thousands of
140 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
quiet and pious Germans in all classes of society. We find
traces of the silent, widespreading movement in the
ecclesiastical legislation of German princes, in the police
regulations, and in the provisions for the support of the
poor among the hurghers ; in the constitutions and practices
of the confraternities among the lower classes, and especially
among the artisans in the towns ; and in the numerous
translations of the Vulgate into the vernacular.
The reforms sketched by the Councils of Constance and
of Basel had been utterly neglected by the Eoman Curia,
and in consequence several German princes, while they felt
the hopelessness of insisting on a general purification of the
Church, resolved that these reforms should be carried out
within their own dominions. As early as 1446, Duke
WiUiam of Saxony had published decrees which interfered
with the pretensions of the Church to be quite independent
of the State. His regulations about the observance of the
Sunday, his forbidding ecclesiastical courts to interfere with
Saxon laymen, his stern refusal to allow any Saxon to
appeal to a foreign jurisdiction, were all more or less
instances of the interference of the secular power within
what had been supposed to be the exclusive province of the
ecclesiastical. He went much fui'ther, however. He
enacted that it belonged to the secular power to see that
parish priests and their superiors within his dominions
lived lives befitting their vocation — a conception which was
entirely at variance with the ecclesiastical pretensions of
the Middle Ages. He also declared it to be within the
province of the secular power to visit officially and to
reform all the convents within his dominions. So far as
proofs go, it is probable that these declarations about the
rights of the civil authorities to exercise discipline over the
parish priests and their superiors remained a dead letter.
We hear of no such reformation being carried out. But
the visitation of the Saxon monasteries was put in force
in spite of the protests of the ecclesiastical powers. Andreas
Proles would never have been able to carry out his proposals
of reform in the convents of the Augustinian Eremites but
NON-ECOLESIASTICAL RELIGION 141
foi the support he received from the secular princes against
his ecclesiastical superiors in Eome. The Dukes Ernest
and Albrecht carried out Duke William's conceptions about
the relation of the civil to the ecclesiastical authorities in
their ordinances of 1483, and the Elector Frederick the
Wise was heir to this ecclesiastical policy of his family.
The records of the Electorate of Brandenburg, investi-
gated by Priebatsch and described by him in the Zeitschri/t
fiir KircherigeschicMe} testify to the same ideas at work
there. A pious prince like Frederick n. of Brandenburg
removed unworthy Church dignitaries and reinstituted
them, thus taking upon himself the oversight of the Church.
Appeals to Eome were forbidden under penalties. Gradu-
ally under Frederick and his successors there arose what
was practically a national Church of Brandenburg, which
was almost completely under the control of the civil power,
and almost entirely separated from Eoman control.
The towns also interfered in what had hitherto been
believed to be within the exclusive domain of the ecclesi-
astical authorities. They recognised the harm which the
numerous Church festivals and saints' days were doing to
the people, and passed regulations about their observance,
all of them tending to lessen the number of the days on
which men were compelled by ecclesiastical law to be idle.
When Luther pleaded in his Address to the Nobility of the
German Nation for the abolition of the ecclesiastical laws
enforcing idleness on the numerous ecclesiastical holy days,
he only suggested an extension and wider application of
the police regulations which were in force within his native
district of Mausfeld.
This non-ecclesiastical feeling appears strongly in the
change of view about Christian charity which marks the
close of the fifteenth century.
Nothing shows how the Church of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries had instilled the mind of Jesus into
the peoples of Europe like the zeal with which they tried
to do their duty by the poor, the sick, and the helpless.
1 xix. p. 397 if., XX. p. 159 ff., 329 ff., xxi. p. 43 ff.
142 POPULAR RELIGIODS LIFE
Institutions, founded by individuals or by corporations, for
the purpose of housing the destitute abounded, and men
and women willingly dedicated themselves to the service
of the unfortunate.
"The Beguins crowned witi flapping hats,
O'er long-drawn bloodless faces blank,
And gowns unwashed to wrap their lank
Lean figures,"'-
were sisters of mercy in every mediaeval town. Unfor-
tunately the lessons of the Church included the thought
that begging was a Christian virtue ; while the idea that
because charity is taught by the law of Christ, its exercise
must be everywhere superintended by ecclesiastics, was
elevated to a definite principle of action, if not to something
directly commanded by the law of God. The Eeformation
protested against these two ideas, and the silent anticipa-
tion of this protest is to be found in the non-ecclesiastical
piety of the close of the fifteenth century.
The practice of begging, its toleration and even encour-
agement, was almost universal In some of the benevolent
institutions the sick and the pensioners were provided from
the endowment with all the necessaries of life, but it was
generally thought becoming that they should beg them from
the charitable. The very fact of begging seemed to raise
those who shared in it to the level of members of a
religious association. St. Francis, the " imitator of Christ,"
had taught his followers to beg, and this great example
sanctified the practice. It is true that the begging friars
were always the butt of the satirists of the close of the
fifteenth century. They delighted to portray the mendi-
cant monk, with his sack, into which he seemed able to
stuff everything: honey and spice, nutmegs, pepper, and
preserved ginger, cabbage and eggs, poultry, fish, and new
clothes, milk, butter, and cheese ; cheese especially, and of
all kinds — ewe's milk and goat's milk, hard cheese and
soft cheese, large cheeses and small cheeses — were greedily
' The Romance of the Rose, ii. p. 168 (Temple Classics edition).
NON-ECCLESIASTICAL RELIGION 143
demanded by these "cheese hunters," as they were
satirically called. On their heels tramped a host of semi-
ecclesiastical beggars, all of them with professional names- —
men who begged for a church that was building, or for an
altar-cloth, or to hansel a young priest at his first Mass ;
men who carried relics about for the charitable to kiss —
some straw from the manger of Bethlehem, or a feather
from the wing of the angel Gabriel ; the Brethren of St.
James, who performed continual and vicarious pilgrimages
to Compostella, and sometimes robbed and murdered on
the road ; the Brethren of St. Anthony, who had the
special privilege of wearing a cross and carrying a bell on
their begging visits. These were all ecclesiastical beggars.
The ordinary beggars did their best to obtain some share
of the sanctity which surrounded the profession ; they
carried with them the picture of some saint, or placed the
cockle-shell, the badge of a pilgrim, in their hats, and
secured a quasi-ecclesiastical standing.^ Luther expressed
not merely his own opinion on this plague of beggars in
his Address to the Nobility of the German Nation, but what
had been thought and partially practised by quiet laymen
for several decades. Some towns began to make regulations
against promiscuous begging by able-bodied persons, pro-
vided work for them, seized their children, and taught
them trades — all of which sensible doings were against the
spirit of the mediaeval Church.
The non-ecclesiastical reUgious feeling, however, appears
much more clearly when the history of the charitable
foundations is examined. The invariable custom during
the earUer Middle Ages was that charitable bequests were
left to the management of the Church and the clergy.
At the close of the fifteenth century the custom began
to alter. The change from clerical to lay management
was at first probably due mainly to the degeneracy of the
clergy, and to the belief that the funds set apart for the
poor were not properly administered. The evidences of
this are to be found in numerous instances of the civic
^ V. Bezold, ffeschichle der deutsclien RcformaMon^ pp. 95 f.
144 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
authorities attempting, and successfully, to take the
management of charitable foundations out of the hands
of ecclesiastical authorities, and to vest them in lay
management. But this cannot have been the case always.
We should rather say that it began to dawn upon men
that although charity was part of the law of Christ, this
did not necessarily mean that all charities must be placed
under the control of the clergy or other ecclesiastical
administrators. Hence we find during the later years of
the fifteenth century continual instances of bequests for
the poor placed in the hands of the town councU or of
boards of laymen. That this was done without any
animus against the Church is proved by the fact that the
same testator is found giving benefactions to foimdations
which are under clerical and to others under lay manage-
ment. Out of the funds thus accumulated the town councils
began a system of caring for the poor of the city, which
consisted in giving tokens which could be exchanged for so
much bread or woollen cloth, or shoes, or wood for firing, at
the shops of dealers who were engaged for the purpose. How
far this new and previously unheard of lay management, in
what had hitherto been the pecuUar possession of the clergy,
had spread before the close of the fifteenth century, it is
impossible to say. No archseologist has yet made an
exhaustive study of the evidence lying buried in archives
of the mediaeval towns of Germany ; but enough has been
collected by Kriegk^ and others to show that it had
become very extensive. The laity saw that they were
quite able to perform this peculiarly Christian work apart
from any clerical direction.
Another interesting series of facts serves also to show
the growth of a non-ecclesiastical religious sentiment. The
later decades of the fifteenth century saw the rise of
innumerable associations, some of them definitely religious,
' Kriegk, Deutsehcs Biirgeiihum im Mittelalter. A''ach urkwndluihm
Forschuncien vnd mit bisondcrer'Bezichung auf Frankfurt a. M., pp. ]61ff.
(Frankfurt, 1868). Uhlliorn, Die christliche Liebesthatigkeit im Mittelalter,
pp. 431 S. (Stuttgart, 1854).
NON-ECCLESIASTICAL RELIGION 145
and all of them with a religious side, which are unlike
what we meet with earlier. They did not aim to be, like
the praying circles of the Mystics or of the Gottesfrewnde,
ecclesiolcB in ecclesia, strictly non-clerical or even anti-
clerical. They had no difficulty in placing themselves under
the protection of the Church, in selecting the ordinary
ecclesiastical buildings for their special services, and in
employing priests to conduct their devotions ; but they were
distinctively lay associations, and lived a religious life in
their own way, without any regard to the conceptions of
the higher Christian life which the Church was accustomed
to present to its devout disciples. Some were associations
for prayer ; others for the promotion of the " cult " of a
special saint, like the confraternities dedicated to the
Virgin Mother or the associations which spread the " cult "
of the Blessed Ann a ; but by far the largest number were
combinations of artisans, and resembled the workmen's
" gilds " of the Koman Empire.
Perhaps one of the best known of these associations
formed for the purpose of encouraging prayer was the
" Brotherhood of the Eleven Thousand Virgins," commonly
known imder the quaint name of St. Ursula's Little Ship.
The association was conceived by a Carthusian monk of
Cologne, and it speedily became popular. Frederick the
Wise was one of its patrons, his secretary, Dr. Pfeffinger,
one of its sjipporters; it numbered its associates by the
thousand; its praises were sung in a quaint old German
hymn.^ No money dues were exacted from its members.
The only duty exacted was to pray regularly, and to learn
to better one's life through the power of prayer. This was
one type of the pious brotherhoods of the fifteenth century.
' Wackernagel, Das deutsche Kirchenlied, ii. 768-769 ; it began :
" Ein zeyt hort ioh mit gutter mer
von einem scliyfflin sagen,
Wie es mit tugendeii also gar
kostliohen war beladen :
Zu dem schyfflin gewan ioh ein hertz,
Ich fand dar yn vil gilter gemertz
in mancher hande gaden."
10*
146 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
It was the best known of its kind, and there were many
others. But among the brotherhoods which bear testi-
mony to the spread of a non-ecclesiastical piety none are
more important than the confraternities which went by the
names of Kalands or Kalandsgilden ia North Germany and
Zechen in Austria. These associations were useful in a
variety of ways. They were unions for the practice of
religion ; for mutual aid in times of sickness ; for defence
in attack ; and they also served the purpose of insurance
societies and of burial clubs. It is with their religious
side that we have here to do. It was part of the bond of
association that all the brethren and sisters (for women
were commonly admitted) should meet together at stated
times for a common religious service. The brotherhood
selected the church in which this was held, and so far
as we can see the chapels of the Franciscans or of the
Augustinian Eremites were generally chosen. Sometimes
an altar was relegated to their exclusive use ; sometimes,
if the church was a large one, a special chapel. The
interesting thing to be noticed is that the rules and the
modes of conducting the religious services of the associa-
tion were entirely in the hands of the brotherhood itself,
and that these laymen insisted on regulating them in
their own way. Luther has a very interesting sermon,
entitled Sermon upon the venerdbh Sacrament of the holy
true Body of Christ and of the Brotherhoods, the latter
half of which is devoted to a contrast between good
brotherhoods and evil ones. Those brotherhoods are evil,
says Luther, ia which the religion of the brethren is ex-
pressed in hearing a Mass on one or two days of the year,
while by guzzling and drinking continually at the meetings
of the brotherhood, they contrive to serve the devil the
greater part of their time. A true brotherhood spreads
its table for its poorer members, it aids those who are sick
or infirm, it provides marriage portions for worthy young
members of the association. He ends with a comparison
between the true brotherhood and the Church of Christ.
Theodore Kolde remarks that a careful monograph on the
NON-ECCLESIASTICAL RELIGION 147
brotherhoods of the end of the fifteenth century in the light
of this sermon of Luther's would afford great information
about the popular religion of the period. Unfortunately,
no one has yet attempted the task, but German archaeo-
logists are slowly preparing the way by printing, chiefly
from MS. sources, accounts of the constitution and practices
of many of these Kalands.
From all this it may be seen that there was in these
last decades of the fifteenth and in the earlier of the
sixteenth centuries the growth of what may be called a
non-ecclesiastical piety, which was quietly determined to
bring within the sphere of the laity very much that had
been supposed to belong exclusively to the clergy. The
jus episcopale which Luther claimed for the civil authorities
in his tract on the Liberty of the Christian Man, had, in
part at least, been claimed and exercised in several of the
German principalities and municipalities ; the practice of
Christian charity and its management were being taken
out of the hands of the clergy and entrusted to the laity
and the brotherhoods were making it apparent that men
could mark out their reHgious duties in a way deemed
most suitable for themselves without asking any aid from
the Church, further than to engage a priest whom they
trusted to conduct divine service and say the Masses they
had arranged for.
The appearance of numerous translations of the Scrip-
tures into the vernacular, unauthorised by the officials of
the mediaeval Church, and jealously suspected by theni,
appears to confirm the growth and spread of this non-
ecclesiastical piety. The relation of the Church of the
Middle Ages, earlier and later, to vernacular translations
of the Vulgate is a complex question. The Scriptures were
always declared to be the supreme source and authority
for all questions of doctrines and morals, and in the earlier
stages of the Eeformation controversy the supreme author-
ity of the Holy Scriptures was not supposed to be one of
the matters in dispute between the contending parties.
This is evident when we remember that the Augsburg
148 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
Confession, unlike the later confessions of the Keformed
Churches, does not contain any article affirming the
supreme authority of Scripture. That was not supposed
to be a matter of debate. It was reserved for the Council
of Trent, for the first time, to place traditiones dne Scripto
on the same level of authority with the Scriptures of the
Old and New Testaments. Hence, many of the small
books, issued from convent presses for the instruction
of the people duriag the decades preceding the Eefor-
mation, frequently declare that the whole teaching of
the Church is to be found within the books of the Holy
Scriptures.
It is, of course, undoubted that the mediaeval Church
forbade over and over again the reading of the Scriptures
in the Vulgate and especially in the vernacular, but
it may be asserted that these prohibitions were almost
always connected with attempts to suppress heretical or
schismatic revolts.^
On the other hand, no official encouragement of the
reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular by the people
can be found during the whole of the Middle Ages, nor any
official patronage of vernacular translations. The utmost
that was done in the way of tolerating, it can scarcely be
said of encouraging, a knowledge of the vernacular Scrip-
tures was the issue of Psalters in the vernacular, of Service-
Books, and, in the fifteenth century, of the Plenaria —
little books which contained translations of some of the
paragraphs of the Gospels and Epistles read in the Church
service accompanied with legends and popular tales.
Translations of the Scriptures were continually reprobated
' The strongest prohibition of the vernacular Scriptures comes from the
time of the Albigenses : ' ' Prohibemus etiam, ne libros veteris Testament! aut
novi permittantur habere ; nisi forte psalterium, vel brevariam pro divinis
officiis, aut horas B. Mariae aliquis ex devotione habere velit. Sed ne prse-
missos libros habeant in vulgari translates, arctissime inhibemus" {Cmu:.
of Toulouse of 1229, o. xiv.). The Coiistitutimies Thomce Arundel, for
the mediseyal Church of England, declared: "Ordinamus ut nemo dein-
ceps aliquem textum S. Scripturae auctoritate sua in linguam Anglicanam
vel aliam transferat per viam libri, libelli aut traotatus" (Art. VII.,
1408 A.D.).
THE SCRIPTURES IN THE VERNACULAR 149
by Popes and primates for various reasons.^ It is also
unquestionable that a knowledge of the Scriptures in the
vernacular, especially by uneducated men and women,
was almost always deemed a sign of heretical tendency.
" The third cause of heresy," says an Austrian inquisitor,
writing about the end of the thirteenth century, " is that
they translate the Old and New Testaments into the vulgar
tongue ; and so they learn and teach. I have heard and
seen a certain country clown who repeated the Book of
Job word for word, and several who knew the New Testa-
ment perfectly." ^ A survey of the evidence seems to lead
to the conclusion that the rulers of the mediaeval Church
regarded a knowledge of the vernacular Scriptures with
grave suspicion, but that they did not go the length of
condemning entirely their possession by persons esteemed
trustworthy, whether clergy, monks, nuns, or distinguished
laymen.
Yet we have in the later Middle Ages, ever since
Wiclif produced his English version, the gradual publica-
tion of the Scriptures in the vernaculars of Europe. This
was specially so in Germany ; and when the invention of
printing had made the diffusion of literature easy, it is
noteworthy that the earliest presses in Germany printed
many more books for family and private devotion, many
more Plenaria, and many more editions of the Bible than
of the classics. Twenty -two editions of the Psalter
in German appeared before 1509, and twenty-five of
the Gospels and Epistles before 1518. No less than
fourteen (some say seventeen) versions of the whole Bible
were printed in High-German and three in Low-German
during the last decades of the fifteenth and the earlier
decades of the sixteenth century — all translations from the
' Pope Innocent lll. reprobated the translation of the Scriptures into the
vernacular, because ordinary laymen, and especially women, had not suffi-
cient intelligence to understand them (Epistolce, ii. 141) ; and Berthold,
Archbishop of Mainz, in his diocesan edict of I486, asserted that vernaculars
were unable to express the profundity of the thoughts contained in the
original languages of the Scriptures or in the Latin of the Vulgate.
^ Magna BiUiolheca Patrum (Colonise Agrippinae, 1618), xiii. 299.
150 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
Vulgate. The first was issued by John Metzel in Strass-
burg in 1466. Then followed another Strassburg edition
in 1470, two Augsburg editions in 1473, one in the Swiss
dialect in 1474, two in Augsburg in 1477, one in Augs-
burg in 1480, one in Niirnberg in 1483, one in Strassburg
in 1485, and editions in Augsburg in 1487, 1490, 1507,
and 1518. A careful comparison of these printed ver-
nacular Bibles proves that the earlier editions were in-
dependent productions ; but as edition succeeded edition
the text became gradually assimilated until there came
into existence a German Vulgate, which was used indis-
criminately by those who adhered to the mediaeval Church
and those who were dissenters from it. These German
versions were largely, but by no means completely, dis-
placed by Luther's translation. The Anabaptists, for ex-
ample, retained this German Vulgate long after the
publication of Luther's version, and these pre-Eeformation
German Bibles were to be found in use almost two hundred
years after the Eeformation.^
Whence sprang the demand for these vernacular ver-
sions of the Holy Scriptures ? That the leaders of the
mediaeval Church viewed their existence with, alariji is
evident from the proclamation of the Primate of Germany,
Berthold of Mainz, issued in 1486, ordering a censorship
of books with special reference to vernacular translations
of the Scriptures.^ On the other hand, there is no evi-
dence that these versions were either wholly or in great
part the work of enemies of the mediaeval Church. The
mediaeval Brethren, as they called themselves (Waldenses,
Picards, Wiclifites, Hussites, etc., were names given to
them very indiscriminately by the ecclesiastical authorities),
had translations of the Scriptures both in the Eomance
and in the Teutonic languages as early as the close of the
thirteenth century. The records of inquisitors and of
councils prove it. But there is no evidence to connect
any of these German versions, save, perhaps, one at Augs-
* Walther, Die deutsche Bihelilbersetzung des Mittelalters {Bvaxisviick., 1889).
' Gudenus, Oodex Diplomatic. Auecdola, iv. 469-475 (1758).
THE SCRIPTDRES IN THE VERNACULAR 151
burg, and that issued by the Koburgers in Niirnberg, with
these earlier translations. The growing spread of educa-
tion in the fifteenth century, and, above all, the growth of
a non-ecclesiastical piety which claimed to examine and to
judge for itself, demanded and received these numerous
versions of the Holy Scriptures in the vulgar tongue.^
The " common man " had the word of God in his hands,
could read, meditate, and judge for himself. The effect of
the presence of these vernacular Scriptures is apt to be
exaggerated.^ The Humanist, Conrad Celtes, might threaten
the priests that the Bible would soon be seen in every village
tavern ; but we know that in these days of early printing
a complete Bible must have been too expensive to be pur-
chased by a poor man. Still he could get the Gospels or
the Epistles, or the Psalter ; and there is evidence, apart
from the number of editions, that the people were buying
and were studying the Scriptures. Preachers were exhorted
to give the meaning of the passages of Scripture read in
Church to prevent the people being confused by the dif-
ferent ways in which the text was translated in the Bibles
in their possession. Stories were told of peasants, like
■ Hans Werner, who worsted their parish priests in argu-
ments drawn from Scripture. The ecclesiastical authorities
were undoubtedly anxious, and their anxiety was shared by
many who desired a reformation in life and manners, but
dreaded any revolutionary movement. It was right that
the children should be fed with the Bread of Life, but
Mother Church ought to keep the bread-knife in her hands
lest the children cut their fingers. Some .publishers of
the translations inserted prefaces saying that the contents
of the volumes should be understood in the way taught
by the Church, as was done in the Book of the Gospels,
' Walther, Die deutsche Bihelubersetzungen des MiUelalters (Brunswick,
1889).
' Sebastian Brand, NmrenscMff, Preface, lines 1-4 :
" Alle Land ist jetz vol! heilger Schrift,
Und was der seelen Heil betrifft
Bibel und hoilger Vater Lclir
Und andrer frommon Biicher mehr."
152 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
published at Basel in 1514. Bat in spite of all a ky
religion had come into being, and laymen were beginning
to think for themselves in matters where ecclesiastics had
hitherto been considered the sole judges.
§ 7. The "Brethren."
There was another type of religious life and pious
association which existed, and which seems in one form
or other to have exercised a great influence among the
better class of artisans, and more especially among the
printers of Augsburg, Ntirnberg, and Strassburg.
It is probable that this type of piety had at least three
roots.
(a) We can trace as far back as the closing years of
the thirteenth century, in many parts of Germany, the
existence of nonconformists who, on the testimony of in-
quisitors, lived pious lives, acted righteously towards their
neighbours, and believed in all the articles of the Christian
faith, but repudiated the Eoman Church and the clergy.
Their persecutors gave them a high character. " The
heretics are known by their walk and conversation: they
live quietly and modestly ; they have no pride in dress ;
their learned men are tailors and weavers ; they do not
heap up riches, but are content with what is necessary;
they live chastely ; they are temperate in eating and drink-
ing ; they never go to taverns, nor to public dances, nor to
any such vanities ; they refrain from all foul language,
from backbiting, from thoughtless speech, from lying and
from swearing." The list of objections which they had to
usages of the mediaeval Church are those which would
occur to any evangelical Protestant of this century. They
professed a simple evangelical creed ; they ofifered a passive
resistance to the hierarchical and priestly pretensions of
the clergy ; they were careful to educate their children
in schools which they supported ; they had vernacular
translations of the Scriptures, and committed large portions
to memory; they conducted their religious service in the
THE "brethren" 153
vernacular, and it was one of the accusations made against
them that they alleged that the word of God was as pro-
fitable when read in the vernacular as when studied in
Latin. It is also interesting to know that they were
accused of visiting the leper-houses to pray with the inmates,
and that in some towns they had schools for the leper
children.^ They called themselves the Brethren. The
societies of the Brethren had never died out. During the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries they were continually
subject to local and somewhat spasmodic persecutions,
when the ecclesiastical could secure the aid of the secular
authorities to their schemes of repression, which was
not always possible. They were strongly represented
among the artisans in the great cities, and there are
instances when the civic authorities gave them one of the
churches of the towns for their services. The liability to
intermittent persecution led to an organisation whereby the
Brethren, who were for the time being living in peace,
made arrangements to receive and support those who were
able to escape from any district where the persecution
raged. These societies were in correspondence with their
brethren all over Europe, and were never so active as
during the last decades of the fifteenth and the first
quarter of the sixteenth century.
(6) As early as the times of Meister Eckhart (d. 1327),
of his disciples Tauler (d. 1361) and Suso (d 1>366), of
the mysterious " Friend of God in the Oberland " and his
associates (among them the Strassburg merchant Eulman
Merswin (d. 1382)), and of the Brussels curate John
Euysbroeck (d. 1381), the leaders of the mediaeval Mystics
had been accustomed to gather their followers together
into praying circles ; and the custom was perpetuated long
after their departure. How these pious associations con-
tinued to exist in the half century before the Eeformation,
and what forms their organisation took, it seems impossible
to say with any accuracy. The school system of the Brethren
' Magna Bibliolheca Pairum (Colonise Agvippina, 1618), vol. xiii. pp.
299-301.
154 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
of the, Common Lot, which always had an intimate connection
with the Gottesfreunde, in all probability served to spread
the praying circles which had come down from the earlier
Mystics. It seems to have been a custom among these
Brethren of the Common Lot to invite their neighbours to
meet in their schoolrooms or in a hall to listen to reli-
gious discourses. There they read and expounded the New
Testament in the vernacular. They also read extracts
from books written to convey popular religious iustruction.
They questioned their audience to find out how far their
hearers understood their teaching, and endeavoured by
question and answer to discover and solve religious diffi-
culties. These schools and teachers had extended aU over
Germany by the close of the fifteenth century, and their
effect in quickening and keeping alive personal religion
must have been great.
(c) Then, altogether apart from the social and semi-
political propaganda of the Hussites, there is evidence that
fever since the circulation of the encyclic letter addressed
by the Taborites in November 1431 to all Christians in
all lands, and more especially since the foimdation of the
Unitas Fratrum in 14^2, there had been constant com-
munication between Bohemia and the scattered bodies
of evangelical dissenters throughout Germany. Probably
historians have credited the Hussites with more than
their due influence over their German sympathisers. The
latter had arrived at the conclusion that tithes ought to
be looked upon as free-will offerings, that the cup should
be given to the laity, etc., long before the movements under
the leadership of Wiclif and of Huss. But the knowledge
that they had sympathisers and brethren beyond their own
land must have been a source of strength to the German
nonconformists.
Our knowledge of the times is still too obscure to
warrant us in making very definite statements about
the proportionate effect of these three religious sources
of influence on the small communities of Brethren or
evangelical dissenters from the mediaeval Church which
THE "brethren" 155
maintained a precarious existence at the close of the Middle
Ages. There is one curious fact, however, which shows
that there must have been an intimate connection between
the Waldenses of Savoy and France, the Brethren of Ger-
many, and the Unitas Fratrum of Bohemia. They all used
the same catechism for the instruction of their children in
divine things. So far as can be ascertained, this small
catechism was first printed in 1498, and editions can be
traced down to 1530. It exists in French, Italian, German,
and Bohemian. The inspiration drawn from the earlier
Mystics and Gottesfreunde is shown by the books circulated
by the Brethren. They made great use of the newly dis-
covered art of printing to spread abroad small mystical
writings on personal religion, and translations of portions
of the Holy Scriptm-es. They printed and circulated books
which had been used in manuscript among the Mystics of
the fourteenth century, such as the celebrated Masterhook,
single sermons by Tauler, Prayers and Eules for holy living
extracted from his writings, as well as short tracts taken
from the later Mystics, like the Explanation of the Ten
Commandments. It is also probable that some of the many
translations of the whole or portions of the Bible which
were in circulation in Germany before the days of Luther
came from these praying circles. The celebrated firm of
Ntirnberg printers, the Koburgers, who published &o many
Bibles, were the German printers of the little catechism
used by the Brethren ; and, as has been said, the Anabap-
tists, who were the successors of these associations, did not
use Luther's version, but a much older one which had come
down to them from their ancestors.
The members of these praying circles welcomed the
Lutheran Eeformation when it came, but they can scarcely
be said to have belonged to it. Luther has confessed how
much he owed to one of their publications. Die deutsche
Theologie ; and what helped him must have benefited others.
The organisation of a Lutheran Church, based on civil
divisions of the Empire, gave the signal for a thorough
reorganisation of the members of these old associations
156 POPULAR RELIGIOUS LIFE
who refused to have anything to do with a State Church.
They formed the best side of the very mixed and very
much misunderstood movement which later was called
Anabaptism, and thus remained outside ^ the two great,
divisions into which the Church of the Eeformation
separated. This religious type existed and showed itself
more especially among the artisans in the larger towns
of Germany.
It must not be supposed that these four classes of
religious sentiment which have been found existing during
the later decades of the fifteenth and the early decades
of the sixteenth centuries can always be clearly distin-
guished from each other. Eeligious types cannot be kept
distinct, but continually blend with each other in the most
unexpected way. Humanism and Anabaptism seem as far
apart as they can possibly be ; yet some of the most
noted Anabaptist leaders were distinguished members of
the Erasmus circle at BaseL Humanism and delicate
clinging to the simple faith of childhood blended in the
exquisite character of Melanchthon. Luther, after his
stern wrestle with self-righteousness in the convent at
Erfurt, beheved that, had his parents been dead, he could
have delivered their souls from purgatory by his visits to
the shrines of the saints at Eome. The boy Mecum
(Myconius) retained only so much of his father's teaching
about the free Grace of God that he believed an Indulgence
from Tetzel would benefit him if he could obtain it without
paying for it. There is everywhere and at all times a
blending of separate types of religious faith, until a notable
crisis brings men suddenly face to face with the necessity
of a choice. Such a crisis occurred during the period we
call the Reformation, with the result that the leaders In
that great religious revival found that the truest theology
after all was what had expressed' itself in hymns and
prayers, in revivalist sermons and in fireside teaching, and
that they felt it to be their duty as theologians to give
articulate dogmatic expression to what their fathers had
been content to find inarticulately in the devotional rather
' POPULAR KELIGIOUS LIFE 157
than in the intellectual sphere of the mediaeval religious
life.
Such was the religious atmosphere into which Luther
was born, and which he breathed from his earliest days.
Every element seems to have shared in creating and shaping
his religious history, and had similar effects doubtless on
his most distinguished and sympathetic followers.
CHAPTER VI.
HUMANISM AND EEFORMATION.
§ 1. Savonarola}
When the Italian Humanism seemed about to become a
mere revival of ancient Paganism, with its accompaniments
of a cynical sensualism on the one hand, and the bUndest
trust in the occult sciences on the other, a great preacher
arose in Florence who recalled men to Christianity and to
Christian virtue.
Girolamo Savonarola was an Italian, a countryman of
Giaocchiuo di Piore, of Arnold of Brescia, of Francis of
Assisi, of John of Parma, and, like them, he beheved him-
self to be favoured with visions apocalyptic and other. He
belonged to a land over which, all down through the Middle
Ages, had swept popular rehgious revivals, sudden, con-
suming, and transient a^ prairie fires. When a boy, he
' SouEOES : Casanova and Guasti, Poesie di G. Savonarola (Florence,
1862) ; Scella di Prediche e Scritti di Fra G. Savonarola, con nv-ovi Docu-
menii intomo alia sua Vita, by Villari and Casanova (Florence, 1898) ;
Bayonne, (Ewores Spirituelles cTwisies de Jerome Savonarola (Paris, 1879) ;
The Workes of Sir TJiomas More . . . wHUen by him in the Englyshe tonge
(London, 1557) ; Erasmus, Opera Omnia, ed. Le Clerc (Leyden, 1703-1706) ;
Nichols, The Epistles of Erasmus from his earliest letters to his fifty-first
year, arramged in order of time (London, 1901) ; Enchiridion Militis Chris-
tiard (Cambridge, 1685) ; The whole Fa/mUia/r Colloquies of Erasmus
(London, 1877) ; Sir Thomas More, Utopia (Temple Classics Series).
Later Works : Villari, Girolamo Savonarola, 2 vols. (Florence, 1887-
1888 ; Eng. trans., London, 1890) ; Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers: John,
Colet, Erasmus, and Thomas More, etc. (London, 1887) ; Drummond,
Erasmus, his life and character (London, 1873) ; Woltmann, Holhein and
his Time (London, 1872) ; Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus (London,
1894); Amiel, Un litre pensevr d% 16 siecle: ikasme (Paris, 1889);
Emmerton, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (New York, 1899).
iss
SAVONAROLA 159
had quivered at seeing the pain in the world around him ;
he had shuddered as he passed the great grim palaces of
the Italian despots, where the banqueting hall was separated
from the dungeon by a floor so thin that the groans of
the prisoners mingled with the tinkle of the silver dishes
and the wanton conversation of the guests. He had been
destined by his family for the medical profession, and the
lad was set to master the writings of Thomas Aquinas and
the Arabian commentaries on Aristotle — the gateway in
those days to a knowledge of the art of healing. The
Summa of the great Schoolman entranced him, and in-
sensibly drew him towards theology ; but outwardly he did
not rebel against the lot in life marked out for him. A
glimpse of a quiet resting-place in this world of pain and
evil had come to him, but it vanished, swallowed up in the
universal gloom, when Roberto Strozzi refused to permit
him to marry his daughter Laodamia. There remained
only rest on God, study of His word, and such slight
solace as music and sonnet-writing could bring. His de-
votion to Thomas Aquinas impelled him to seek within a
Dominican convent that refuge which he passionately yearned
for, from a corrupt world and a corrupt Church. There he
remained buried for long years, reading and re-reading the
Scriptures, poring over the Summa, drinking in the New
Learning, almost unconsciously creating for himself a philo-
sophy which blended the teachings of Aquinas with the
Neo-Platonism of Marsiglio Ficino and of the Academy,
and planning how he could best represent the doctrines of
the Christian religion in harmony with the natural reason
of man.
When at last he became a great preacher, able to sway
heart and conscience, it should not be forgotten that he
was mediaeval to the core. His doctrinal teaching was
based firmly on the theology of Thomas Aquinas. His
intellectual conception of faith, his strong belief in the
divine predestination and his way of expressing it, his
view of Scripture as possessing manifold meanings, were
all defined for him by the great Dominican Schoolmaa
160 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
He held strongly the mediseval idea that the Church was
an external political unity, ruled by the Bishop of Eome,
to whom every human soul must be subject, and whom
everyone must obey save only when commands were issued
contrary to a plain statement of the evangelical law. He
expounded the fulness of and the slight limitations to the
authority of the Pope exactly as Thomas and the great
Schoolmen of the thirteenth century had done, though in
terms very different from the canonists of the Eoman
Curia at the close of the Middle Ages. Even his apprecia-
tion of the Neo-Platonist side of Humanism could be
traced back to mediaeval authorities ; for at all times the
writings of the pseudo-Dionysius had been a source of
inspiration to the greater Schoolmen.
His scholarship brought him into relation with the
Humanist leaders ' in Florence, the earnest tone of his
teaching and the saintliness of his character attracted
them, his deep personal piety made them feel that he
possessed something which they lacked ; while no N"eo-
Platonist could be repelled by his claim to be the recipient
of visions from on high.
The celebrated Humanists of Florence became the
disciples of the great preacher. Marsiglio Ficino himself,
the head of the Florentine Academy, who kept one lamp
burning before the bust of Plato and another before an
image of the Virgin, was for a time completely under his
spell. Young Giovaimi Pico della Mirandola's whole inner
life was changed through his conversations with the Prior
of San Marco. He reformed his earlier careless habits.
He burnt five books of wanton love-songs which he had
composed before his conversion.^ He prayed daily at fixed
hours, and he wrote earnestly to his nephew on the im-
portance of prayer for a godly life :
" ' I stir thee not,' he says, ' to that prayer that standeth
in many words, but to that prayer which in the secret
chamber of the mind, in the privy-closet of the soul, with
• The ll'orhs of Sir Thomas More, Knyght, sometyme Lorde Chancellour
of England, Wnjtlcn by him in the Enghjsh tonge (London, 1557), p. 6 0.
PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA 161
every affect speaketh to God ; which in the most lightsome
darkness of contemplation not only presenteth the mind to
the Father, but also uniteth it with Him by unspeakable
ways which only they know who have assayed. Nor care I
how long or how short thy prayer be ; but how effectual,
how ardent, and rather interrupted and broken between with
sighs, than drawn on length with a number of words. . . .
Let no day pass but thou once at the leastwise present
thyself to God in prayer. . . . What thou shalt in thy
prayer ask of God, both the Holy Spirit which prayeth for
U8 and also thine own necessity shall every hour put in thy
mind."'i
He studied the writings of Thomas Aquinas, which con-
tained the favourite theology of Savonarola, and spoke of
the great Schoolman as a " pillar of truth." ^ He handed
over the third part of his estates to his nephew, and lived
plainly on what remained, that he might give largely in
charity.* He made Savonarola his almoner, who on his
behalf gave alms to destitute people and marriage portions
to poor maidens.* He had frequent thoughts of entering
the Dominican Order, and
"On a time as he walked with his nephew, John Francis,
in a garden at Ferrara, talking of the love of Christ, he
broke out with these words : ' Nephew,' said he, ' this will I
show thee; I warn thee keep it secret; the substance I have
left after certain books of mine are finished, I intend to give
out to poor folk, and, fencing myself with the crucifix, bare-
foot, walking about the world, in every town and castle I
pvurpose to preach Christ.' " ^
It is also recorded that he made a practice of scourging
himself ; especially " on those days which represent unto us
the Passion and Death that Christ suffered for our sake,
he beat and scourged his own flesh in remembrance of that
great benefit, and for cleansing his old offences."* But
above all things he devoted himself to a diligent study of
^ The Workes of Sir Thomas More, KnygM, somelyme Lorde Chance/ lour
of England, Wrytlen by him in the Englysh tonge (London, 1657), p. 13 C.
' Ibid. 5 A. * Ibid. 6 B. " Ibid. 6 0.
» Ibid. 8 D. « Ibid. 6 D.
II*
162 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
the Holy Scriptures, and commended the practice to his
nephew :
" ' Thou mayest do nothing more pleasing to God, nothing
more profitable to thyself, than if thine hand cease not day
and night to turn and read the volumes of Holy Scripture.
There lieth privily in them a certain heavenly strength,
quick and effectual, wliich, with a marvellous power, trans-
formeth and changeth the readers' mind into the love of
God, if they be clean and lowly entreated.'"^
The great Platonist forsook Plato for St. Paul, whom he
called the " glorious Apostle." ^ When he died he left his
lands to one of the hospitals in Florence, and desired to be
buried in the hood of the Dominican monks and within the
Convent of San Marco.
Another distinguished member of the Florentine
Academy, Angelo PoUziano, was also one of Savonarola's
converts. We find him exchanging confidences with Pico,
both declaring that love and not knowledge is the faculty
by which we learn to know God :
" ' But now behold, my well-beloved Angelo,' writes Pico,
' what madness holdeth us. Love God (while we be in this
body) we rather may, than either know Him, or by speech
utter Him. In loving Him also we more profit ourselves ;
we labour less and serve Him more. And yet had we rather
always by knowledge never find that thing we seek, than by
love possess that thing which also without love were in vain
found.'"*
Poliziano, like Pico, had at one time some thoughts of
joining the Dominican Order. He too was buried at his
own request in the cowl of the Dominican monk in the
Convent of San Marco.
Lorenzo de Medici, who during his life had mg,de many
attempts to win the support of Savonarola, and had always
been r^epulsed, could not die without entreating the great
preacher to visit him on his deathbed and grant him
absolution.
^ The Workea of Sir Thomas More, Enyght, sometyine Lorde OTumeeilawt
of England, Wrytten by him in the Englysh tonge (London, 1557), X3 P.
s Ibid. 12 D. s Ibid. 7 D.
JOHN COLET 163
Italian Humanism was for the moment won over to
Christianity by the Prior of San Marco. Had the poets
and the scholars, the politicians and the ecclesiastics, the
State and the Church, not been so hopelessly corrupt, there
might have been a great renovation of mankind, under the
leadership of men who had no desire to break the political
unity of the mediaeval Church. For it can scarcely be too
strongly insisted that Savonarola was no Eeformation leader
in the more limited sense of the phrase. The movement
he headed has much more affinity with the crude revival
of religion in Germany in the end of the fifteenth century,
than with the Eeformation itself; and the aim of the re-
organisation of the Tuscan congregation of the Dominicans
under Savonarola has an almost exact parallel in the
creation of the congregation of the Augustinian Eremites
under Andreas Proles and Johann Staupitz. The whole
Italian movement, as might be expected, was conducted by
men of greater intelligence and refinement. It had there-
fore less sympathy than the German with pilgrimages,
relics, the niceties of ceremonial worship, and the cult of
the vulgarly miraculous ; but it was not the less mediaeval
on these accounts. It was the death rather than the life
and lifework of Savonarola that was destined to have direct
effect on the Eeformation soon to come beyond the Alps ;
for his martyrdom was a crowning evidence of the im-
possibility of reforming the Church of the Middle Ages
apart from the shock of a great convulsion. " Luther
himself," says Professor Villari, " could scarcely have been
so successful in inaugurating his Eeform, had not the
sacrifice of Savonarola given a final proof that it was
hopeless to hope in the purification of Eome." ^
§ 2. John Golet.
While Savonarola was at the height of his influence in
Florence, there chanced to be in Italy a young Englishman,
' Life ami Times of Girolamo Savonarola, p. 771 (Eng. trans., London,
1897).
164 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
John Colet, son of a wealthy London merchant who had
been several times Lord Mayor. He had gone there, we
may presume, like his countrymen Grooyn and Linacre, to
make himself acquainted with the New Learning at its
fountainhead. There is no proof that he went to Florence
or ever saw the great Italian preacher ; but no stranger
could have visited Northern Italy in 1495 without hearing
much of him and of his work. Colet's whole future life
in England bears evidence that he did receive a new impulse
while he was in Italy, and that of such a kind as could
have come only from Savonarola. What Erasmus tells us
of his sojourn there amply confirms this. Colet gave him-
self up to the study of the Holy Scriptures ; he read care-
fully those theologians of the ancient Church specially
acceptable to the Neo-Platonist Christian Humanists; he
studied the pseudo-Dionysius, Origen, and Jerome. What
is more remarkable still in a foreign Humanist come to
study in Italy, he read diligently such English classics as
he could find in order to prepare himself for the work of
preaching when he returned to England. The words of
Erasmus imply that the impulse to do all this came to him
when he was in Italy, and there was no one to impart it
to him but the great Florentine.
When Colet returned to England in 1496, he began to
lecture at Oxford on the Epistles of St. Paul. His method
of exposition, familiar enough after Calvin had introduced
it into the Eeformed Church, was then absolutely new, and
proves that he was an original and independent thinker.
Hig aim was to find out the personal message which the
writer (St. Paul) had sent to the Christians at Eome ; and
this led him to seek for every trace which revealed the
personality of the Apostle to the Gentiles. It was equally
imperative to know what were the surroundings of the
men to whom the Epistle was addressed, and Colet studied
Suetonius to find some indications of the environment of
the Eoman Christians. He had thus completely freed
himself from the Scholastic habit of using the Scrijitures
as a mere collection of isolated texts to be employed in
JOHN COLET 165
proving doctrines or moral rules constructed or imposed by
the Church, and it is therefore not surprising to find that
he never lards his expositions with quotations from the
Fathers. It is a still greater proof of his daring that he
set aside the allegorising methods of the Schoolmen, —
methods abundantly used by Savonarola, — and that he did
so in spite of his devotion to the writings of the pseudo-
Dionysius. He was the first to apply the critical methods
of the New Learning to discover the exact meaning of the
books of the Holy Scriptures. His treatment of the Scrip-
tures shows that however he may have been influenced by
Savonarola and by the Christian Humanists of Italy, he
had advanced far beyond them, and had seen, what no
mediaeval theologian had been able to perceive, that the
Bible is a personal and not a dogmatic revelation. They
were mediaeval : he belongs to the Eeformation circle of
thinkers. Luther, Calvin, and Colet, whatever else separates
them, have this one deeply important thought in common.
Further, Colet discarded the mediaeval conception of a
mechanical inspiration of the text of Scripture, in this also
agreeing with Luther and Calvin. The inspiration of the
Holy Scriptures was something mysterious to him. " The
Spirit seemed to him by reason of its majesty to have a
peculiar method of its own, singularly, absolutely free,
blowing where it lists, making prophets of whom it will,
yet so that the spirit of the prophets is subject to the
prophets." ^
Colet saw clearly, and denounced the abounding evils
which were ruining the Church of his day. The Convoca-
tion of the English Church never listened to a bolder
' Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers : John Colet, Erasmus, wnd Thomas
More; teing a history of their felluw-work, 2nd ed. p. 125 (London, 1869).
Mr. Seebohm seems to think that the Eeformers clung to the medieval
conception of the inspiration of Scripture. Calvin held the same ideas as
Colet, and expressed them in the same way. Cf. bis comments on Matt.
xxvii; 9 : " Quomodo Ilieremise nomen obrepserit, me nescire fateor, nee
anxie lahoro : certe. Hieremiffi nomen errore positum esse pro Zacharia, res
ipsa ostendit" ; and his comment on.Acts vii. 16 : "quare bio loeus corri-
gendusest."
166 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
sermon than that preached to them by the Dean of St.
Paul's in 1512 — the same year that Luther addressed an
assembly of clergy at Leitzkau. The two addresses should
be compared. The same fundamental thought is contained
in both — that every true reformation must begin with the
individual man. Colet declared that reform must begin
with the bishops, and that once begun it would spread to
the clergy and thence to the laity ; " for the body follows
the soul ; and as are the rulers in a State, such will the
people be." He urged that what was wanted was the en-
forcement of ecclesiastical laws which were already in
existence. Ignorant and wicked men were admitted to
holy orders, and there were laws prohibiting this. Simony
was creeping "like a cancer through the minds of priests,
so that most are not ashamed in these days to get for
themselves great dignities by petitions and suits at court,
rewards and promises " ; and yet strict laws against the
evil were in existence. He proceeded to enumerate the
other flagrant abuses — the non-residence of clergy, the
worldly pursuits and indulgences of the clergy ; the scan-
dals and vices of the ecclesiastical law-courts; the infre-
qency of provincial councils to discuss and remedy existing
evils ; the wasting of the patrimony of the Church on
sumptuous buildings, on banquets, on enriching kinsfolk, or
on keeping hounds. The Church had laws against all these
abuses, but they were not enforced, and could not be until
the bishops amended their ways. His scheme of reform
was to put in operation the existing regulations of Canon
Law. " The diseases which are now in the Church were
the same in former ages, and there is no evil for which
the holy fathers did not provide excellent remedies; there
are no crimes in prohibition of which there are not laws
in the body of Canon Law." Such was his definite idea
of reform in this famous Convocation sermon.
But he had wider views. He desired the diffusion of
a sound Christian education, and did the best that could
be done bygone man to promote it, by spending his private
fortune in founding St. Paul's school, which he character-
JOHN COLET 167
istically left in charge of a body of laymen. He longed to
see a widespread preaching in the vernacular, and believed
that the bishops should show an example in this clerical
duty. It is probable that he wished the whole service to
be in the vernacular, for it was made a charge against him
that he taught his congregation to repeat the Lord's Prayer
in English. Besides, he had clearly grasped the thought,
too often forgotten by theologians of all schools, that the
spiritual facts and forces which lie at the roots of the
Christian life are one thing, and the intellectual conceptions
which men make to explain these facts and forces are
another, and a much less important thing ; that men are
able to be Christians and to live the Christian life because
of the former and not because of the latter. He saw that,
while dogma has its place, it is at best the alliance of an
immortal with a mortal, the union between that which is
unchangeably divine and the fashions of human thought
which change from one age to another. For this reason
he thought little of the Scholastic Theology of his days, with
its forty-three propositions about the nature of God and its
forty-five about the nature of man before and after the
Fall, each of which had to be assented to at the risk of a
charge of heresy. " Why do you extol to me such a man
as Aquinas ? If he had not been so very arrogant, indeed,
he would not surely so rashly and proudly have taken
upon himself to define all things. And unless his spirit
had been somewhat worldly, he would not surely have
corrupted the whole teaching of Christ by mixing it with
his profane philosophy." The Scholastic Theology might
have been scientific in the thirteenth century, but the
"scientific" is the human and changing element in dogma,
and the old theology had become clearly unscientific in the
sixteenth. Therefore he was accustomed to advise young
theological students to keep to the Bible and the Apostles'
Creed, and let divines, if they liked, dispute about the rest ;
and he taught Erasmus to look askance at Luther's recon-
struction of the Augustinian theology.
But no thinking man, however he may flout at philo-
168 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
sophy and dogma, can do without either ; and Colet was
no exception to the general rule. He has placed on record
his detestation of Aquinas and his dislike of Augustine,
and we may perhaps see in this a lack of sympathy with
a prominent characteristic of the theology of Latin Chris-
tianity from Tertullian to Aquiaas and Occam, to say
nothing of developments since the Eeformation. The great
men who built up the Western Church were almost all
trained Eoman lawyers. Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine,
Gregory the Great (whose writings form the bridge between
the Latin Fathers and the Schoolmen) were all men whose
early training had been that of a Eoman lawyer, — a train-
ing which moulded and shaped all their thinkiag, whether
theological or ecclesiastical. They instinctively regarded
all questions as a great Eoman lawyer would. They had
the lawyer's craving for exact definitions. They had the
lawyer's idea that the primary duty laid upon them was
to enforce obedience to authority, whether that authority
expressed itself in external institutions or in the precise
definitions of the correct ways of thinking about spiritual
truths. No branch of Western Christendom has been able
to free itself from the spell cast upon it by these Eoman
lawyers of the early centuries of the Christian Church.
If the ideas of Christian Eoman lawyers, filtering
slowly down through the centuries, had made the Bishops
of Eome dream that they were the successors of Augustus,
at once Emperor and Pontifex Maximus, master of the
bodies and of the souls of mankind, they had also inspired
the theologians of the Mediaeval Church with the concep-
tion of an intellectual imperialism, where a system of
Christian thought, expressed with legal precision, could
bind into a comprehensive unity the active intelligence of
mankind. Dogmas thus expressed can become the instru-
ments of a tyranny much more penetrating than that of
an institution, and so Colet found. In his revolt he turned
from the Latins to the Greeks, and to that thinker who
was furthest removed from the legal precision of statement
which was characteristic of Western theology.
JOHN COLET 169
It is probable that his intercourse with the Christian
Humanists of Italy, and his introduction to Platonists and
to Neo-Platonism, made him turn to the writings of the
pseudo-Dionysius ; but it is certain that he believed at
first that the author of these quaint mystical tracts was
the Dionysius who was one of the converts of St. Paul at
Athens, and that these writings embodied much of the teach-
ing of the Apostle to the Gentiles, and took the reader back
to the first generation of the Christian Church. After he
had learned from Grocyn that the author of the Celestial
and the Terrestrial Hierarchies could not have been the
convert of St. Paul, and that the writings could not be
earher than the sixth century, he still regarded them as
evidence of the way in which a Christian philosopher could
express the thoughts which were current in Christianity
one thousand years before Colet's time. The writings
could be used as a touchstone to test usages and opinions
prevalent at the close of the Middle Ages, when men were
still subject to the domination of the Scholastic Theology,
and as justification for rejecting them.
They taught him two things which he was very willing
to learn : that the human mind, however it may be able
to feel after God, can never comprehend Him, nor imprison
His character and attributes in propositions^stereotyped
aspects of thoughts — which can be fitted into syllogisms ;
and that such things as hierarchy and sacraments are to
be prized not because they are in themselves the active
sources and centres of mysterious powers, but because they
faintly symbolise the spiritual forces by which God works
for the salvation of His people. Colet applied to the
study of the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius a mind
saturated with simple Christian truth gained from a study
of the Holy Scriptures, and especially of the Epistles of
St. Paul ; and the very luxuriance of imagination and
bewildering confusion of symbolism in these writings, their
elusiveness as opposed to the precision of Thomas Aquinas
or of John Duns the Scot, enabled him the more easily to
find in them the germs of his own more definite opinions.
170 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
When one studies the abstracts of the Hierarchies'^ — which
Colet wrote out from memory — with the actual text of the
books themselves, it is scarcely surprising to find how much
there is of Colet and how little of Dionysius.^
While it is impossible to say how far Colet, and the
Christian Humanists who agreed with him, would have
welcomed the principles of a Eeformation yet to come, it
can be affirmed that he held the same views on two very
important points. He did not believe in a priesthood in
the mediaeval nor in the modern Eoman sense of the word,
and his theory of the efficacy and meaning of the sacra-
ments of the Christian Church was essentially Protestant.
According to Colet, there was no such thing as a media-
torial priesthood whose essential function it was to approach
God on men's behalf and present their offerings to Him.
The duty of the Christian priesthood was ministerial ; it
was to declare the love and mercy of God to their fellow-
men, and to strive for the purification, illumination, and
salvation of mankind by constant preaching of the truth
and diffusion of gospel light, even as Christ strove. He
did not believe that priests had received from God the
power of absolving from sins. " It must be heedfully
remarked," he says, "lest bishops be presumptuous, that
it is not the part of men to loose the bonds of sins ; nor
does the power belong to them of loosing or bindiug any-
thing," — the truth Luther set forth in his Theses against
Indulgences.
^ Colet's abstracts of the Celestial and of the Terrestrial Hierarchies have
been published by the Rev. J. H. Lupton (London, 1869), from the MS. at
St. Paul's School. Mr. Lupton has also published Colet's treatise On the
Sacramenis of the Church (London, 1867). The best edition of the works of
the pseudo-Dionysius is that of Balthasar Corderius, S.J., published at
Venice in 1755. The actual writings of the pseudo-Dionysius are not
extensive ; the editor has added translations, notes, scholia, commentaries,
etc. , and his folio edition contains more than one thousand pages.
" " The radical conception is most often due to Dionysius ; the passages
represent the effervescence produced by the Dionysian conceptions in
Colet's mind. . . . The fire was indeed very much Colet's. I find passages
which burn in Colet's abstract, freeze in the original." — Seebohm, The
Oxford Beformers, p. 76 (2nd ed., London, 1869). My knowledge Of Colet's
sermons cornea from the extracts in Mr, Seebohm 's work.
JOHN COLET 171
Colet is even more decided in his repudiation of
the sacramental theories of the mediseval Church. The
Eucharist is not a sacrifice, but a commemoration of the
death of our Lord, and a symbol of the union and com-
munion which believers have with Him, and with their
fellow-men through Him. Baptism is a ceremony which
symbolises the believer's change of heart and his vow of
service to his Master, and signifies " the more excellent
baptism of the inner man " ; and the duty of sponsors
is to train children in the knowledge and fear of
God.i
We are told that the Lollards delighted in Colet's
preaching ; that they advised each other to go to hear
him ; and that attendance at the Dean's sermons was
actually made a charge against them. Colet was no Lol-
lard himself ; indeed, he seems to have once sat among
ecclesiastical judges who condemned Lollards to death ; ^
but the preacher who taught that tithes were voluntary
offerings, who denounced the evil lives of the monks and
the secular clergy ; who hated war, and did not scruple to
say so ; whose sermons were full of simple Bible instruction,
must have recalled many memories of the old Lollard
doctrines. For LoUardy had never died out in England:
it was active in Colet's days, leavening the country for the
Eeformation which was to come.
Nor should it be forgotten, in measuring the influence
of Colet on the coming Eeformation, that Latimer was a
friend of his, that William Tyndale was one of his favourite
pupils, and that he persuaded Erasmus to turn from purely
classical studies to edit the New Testament and the early
Christian Fathers.
' Of. Mr. Lupton's translation of the Ecclesiastical hierarchies, c. li. If
it be permissible to adduce evidence from the Utopia of Sir Thomas More,
the anti-saoerdotal views of the Oxford Reformers went much further. In
Utopia confession was made to the head of the family aud not to the
priests ; women could be priests ; divorce from bed and board was per-
mitted. Cf. the Temple Classics edition, p. 116 (divorce), p. 148 (women-
priests), p. 152 (confession).
2 Seebohm, The Oxford Heformers, p. 221 (2nd ed. 1869).
172 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
§ 3. Erasmus.
Erasmus, as has often been said, was a " man by him-
self " ; yet he may be regarded as representing one, and
perhaps the most frequent, type of Christian Humanism.
His character will always be matter of contrdversyT-and
his motives may, without unfairness, be represented in an
unfavourable light, — a "great scholar but a petty-minded
man," is a verdict for which there is abundant evidence.'
Such was the iinal judgment of his contemporaries, mainly
because he refused to take a definite side in the age when
the greatest controversy which has convulsed Western
Europe since the downfall of the old Empire seemed to
call on every man to range himself with one party or
other. Our modern judgment must rest on a different
basis. In calmer days, when the din of battle has
almost died away, it is possible to recognise that to refuse
to be a partisan rnay indicate greatness instead of littleness
of soul, a keener vision, and a calmer courage. We cannot
judge the man as hastily as his contemporaries did. Still
there is evidence enough and to spare to back their verdict.
Every biographer has admitted that it is hopeless to look
for truth in his voluminous correspondence. His feelings,
hopes, intentions, and actual circumstances are described to
different correspondents at the same time in utterly dififerent
ways. He was always writing for effect, and often for
effect of a rather sordid kind. He seldom gave a definite
opinion on any important question without attempting to
qualify it va. such a manner that he might be able, if need
arose, to deny that he had given it. No man knew better
how to use " if " and " but " so as to shelter himself from all
responsibiUty. He had the ingenuity of the cuttle-fish to
conceal himself and his real opinions, and it was commonly
used to protect his own skin. All this may be admitted ;
it can scarcely be denied.
Yet from his first visit to England (1498) down to his
practical refusal of a Cardinal's Hat from Pope Adrian vi.,
on condition that he would reside at Eome and assist in
ERASMUS 173
fighting the Eeformation, Erasmus had his own conception
of what a reformation of Christianity really meant, and
what share in it it was possible for him to take. It must
be admitted that he held to this idea and kept to the path
he had marked out for himself with a tenacity of purpose
which did him honour. It was by no means always
that of personal safety, still less the road to personal
aggrandisement. It led him in the end where he had
never expected to stand. It made him a man despised
by both sides in the -great controversy ; it left him abso-
lutely alone, friendless, and without influence. He fre-
quently used very contemptible means to ward off attempts
to make him diverge to the right or left ; he abandoned
many of his earher principles, or so modified them that
they were no longer recognisable. But he was always true
to his own idea of a reformation and of his life-work as a
reformer.
Erasmus was firmly convinced that Christianity was
above all things something jgractical. It had to do with
the ordinary life of mankind. It meant love, humility,
purity, reverence, — every virtue which the Saviour had
made manifest in His life on earth. This early " Christian
philosophy " had been buried out of sight under a Scholastic
Theology full of sophistical subtleties, and had been lost in
the mingled Judaism and Paganism of the popular reUgious
life, with its weary ceremonies and barbarous usages. A
true reformation, he beUeved, was the moral renovation of
mankind, and the one need of the age was to return to 1
that earlier purer religion based on a real inward reverence
for and imitation of Christ. The man of letters, like him-
self, he conceived could play the part of a reformer, and
that manfully, in two ways. He could try, by the use of
wit and satire, to make contemptible the follies of the
Schoolmen and the vulgar travesty of religion which was in
vogue among the people. He could also bring before the
eyes of all men that earlier and purer religion which was
true Christianity. He could edit the New Testament, and
enable men to read the very words which Jesus spoke and
174 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
Paul preached, make them see the deeds of Jesus and hear
the apostolic explanations of their meaning. He could
say:
" Only be teachable, and you have already made much
way in this (the Christian) Philosophy. It supplies a spirit
for a teacher, imparted to none more readily than to the
simple-minded. Other philosophies, by the very difficulty
of their precepts, are removed out of the range of most
minds. No age, no sex, no condition of life is excluded from
this. The sun itself is not more common and open to aU
than the teaching of Christ. For I utterly dissent from
those who are unwilling that the Sacred Scriptures should be
read by the unlearned translated into their vulgar tongue,
as though Christ had taught such subtleties that* they can
scarcely be understood even by a few theologians, or as
though the strength of the Christian religion consisted in
men's ignorance of it. The mysteries of kings it may be
safer to conceal, but Christ wished His mysteries to be
published as openly as possible. I wish that even the
weakest woman should read the Gospel — should read the
Epistles of Paul. And I wish these were translated into all
languages, so that they might be read and understood, not
only by Scots and Irishmen, but also by Turks and Saracens.
To make them understood is surely the first step. It may
be that they might be ridiculed by many, but some would
take them to heart. I long that the husbandman should
sing portions of them to himself as he follows the plough,
that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his shuttle,
that the traveller should beguile with their stories the
tedium of his journey."^
The scholar who became a reformer could further make
plain, by editing and publishing the writings of the earlier
Christian Fathers, what the oldest Christian Theology had
been before the Schoolmen spoiled it.
' The conception that a reformation of Christianity was
mainly a renovation of morals, enabled the Christian
"Humanist to keep true to the Eenaissance idea that the
writers of classical antiquity were to be used to aid the
work of ameliorating the lot of mankind. The Florentine
circle spoke of the inspiration of Homer, of Plato, and of
^ Erasmus, O^wra Omnia (Leydon, 1703-1706), v. 140.
ERASMUS 1T5
Cicero, and saw them labouring as our Lord had done to
teach men how to live better lives. Pico and Eeuchlin
had gone further afield, and had found illuminating anti-
cipations of Christianity, in this sense and in others, among
the Hebrews, the Egyptians, and perhaps the Brahmins.
Erasmus was too clear-sighted to be drawn into any
alliance with Oriental mysticism or cabalistic speculations ;
but he insisted on the aid which would come from the
Christian reformer making full use of the ethical teaching
of the wise men of Greece and Eome in his attempt to
produce a moral renovation in the lives of his fellows.
Socrates and Cicero, each in his own day and within his
own sphere, had striven for the same moral renovation
that Christianity promised, and, in this sense at least, might
be called Christians before Christ. So persuaded was
Erasmus of their affinity with the true spirit of Chris-
tianity, that he declared that Cicero had as much right to a
high place in heaven as many a Christian saint, and that
when he thought of the Athenian martyr he could scarcely
refrain from saying, Sancte Socrates, Ora pro nobis.
T ' It must be remembered also that Erasmus had a
/genuine and noble horror of war, which was by no means
the mere shrinking of a man whose nerves were always
' quivering. He preached peace as boldly and in as dis-
interested a fashion as did his friend John Colet. He
could not bear the thought of a religious war. This must
not be forgotten in any estimate of his conduct and of his
relation to the Eeformation. No man, not even Luther,
scattered the seeds of revolution with a more reckless hand,
■ and yet a thorough and steadfast dislike to all movements
which could be called revolutionary was one of the most
abiding elements in his character. He hated what he
icalled the "jtumult." He had an honest belief that all
.public evils in State and Church must be endured until
they dissolve away quietly under the influence of sarcasm
and common sense, or until they are removed by the action
of the responsible authorities. He was clear - sighted
'enough to see that an open and avowed attack on the
176 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
papal supremacy, or on any of the more cherished doctrines
and usages of the mediaeval Church, must end in strife and
in bloodshed, and he therefore honestly believed that no
such attack ought to be made.
When all these things are kept in view, it is possible
to see what conception Erasmus had about his work as a
reformer, with its possibilities and its limitations. He
adhered to it tenaciously all his life. He held it in the
days of his earlier comparative obscurity. He maintained
it when he had been enthroned as the prince of the realm
of learning. He clung to it in his discredited old age.
No one can justify the means he sometimes took to prevent
being drawn from the path he had marked out for himself ;
but there is something to be said for the man who, through
good report and evil, stuck resolutely to his view of what a
reformation ought to be, and what were the fimctions of a
man of letters who felt himseK called to be a reformer.
Had Luther been gifted with that keen sense of prevision
with which Erasmus was so fatally endowed, would he have
stood forward to attack Indulgences in the way he did ?
It is probable that it would have made no difference in his
action ; but he did not think so himself. He said once,
" No good work comes about by our own wisdom ; it
begins in dire necessity. I was forced into mine ; but had
I known then what I know now, ten wild horses would not
have drawn me into it." The man who leads a great
movement of reform may see the distant, but has seldom a
clear vision of the nearer future. He is one who feels the
slow pressure of an imperious spiritual power, who is con-
tent with one step at a time, and who does not ask to see
the whole path stretching out before him.
Erasmus lost both his parents while he was a child,
and never enjoyed the advantages of a home training. He
was driven by deceit or by self-deception into a monastery
when he was a lad. He escaped from the clutches of the
monastic life when he was twenty years of age, broken in
health, and having learned to know human nature on its
bad side and to trade on that knowledge. He was one of
ERASMUS 177
the loneliest of mortals, and trusted in no one but himself.
With one great exception, he had no friendship which left
an enduring influence on his character. From childhood
he taught himself in his own way ; when he grew to man-
hood he planned and schemed for himself ; he steadfastly
refused to be drawn into any kind of work which he did
not like for its own sake ; he persistently shunned every
entanglement which might have controlled his action or
weighted him with any responsibility. He stands almost
alone among the Humanists in this. All the others were
officials, or professors, or private teachers, or jurists, or
ecclesiastics. Erasmus was nothing, and would be nothing,
but a simple man of letters.
Holbein has painted him so often that his features
are familiar. Every line of the clearly cut face suggests
demure sarcasm — the thin lips closely pressed together, the
half-closed eyelids, and the keen glance of the scarcely
seen blue eyes. The head is intellectual, but there is
nothing masculiue about the portrait — nothing suggesting
the massiveness of the learned burgher Pirkheimer; or
the jovial strength of the Humanist landsknecM Eobanus
Hessus; or the lean wolf -like tenacity of Hutten, the
descendant of robber-knights ; or the steadfast homely
courage of Martia Luther. The dainty hands, which
Holbein drew so often, and the general primness of his
appearance, suggest a descent from a long line of maiden
aunts. The keen intelligence was enclosed in a sickly
body, whose frailty made continuous demands on the soul it
imprisoned. It needed warm rooms with stoves that sent
forth no smell, the best wines, an easy-going horse, and a
deft servant ; and to procure all these comforts Erasmus
wrote the sturdiest of begging letters and stooped to all
kinds of flatteries.
The visit which Erasmus paid to England in 1498 was
the turning-point in his life. He found himself, for the
first time, among men who were his equals in learning and
his superiors in many things. " When I listen to my friend
Colet," he says, "it seems to me like listening to Plato
178 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
himself. Who does not marvel at the complete mastery
of the sciences in Grocyn ? "What could be keener, iuore
profound, and more searching than the judgment of Linsfe||f/
Has Nature ever made a more gentle, a sweeter, or a haMpal
disposition than Thomas More's ? " He made the acqi|piiP'
ance of men as full of the New Learning as he was hiiMelf,
who hated the Scotist theology more bitterly than hffl(fi^
and who nevertheless believed in a pure, simple Chri^a
philosophy, and were earnest Christians. They urgedj^^
to join them in their work, and we can trace in,ithe
correspondence of Erasmus the growing influence of (SeteL
The Dean of St. Paul's made Erasmus the deci(^dly
Christian Humanist he became, and impressed on him ^^^
conception of a reformation which, leaving external th^ga^
very much as they were, undertook a renovation of mo:
He never lost the impress of Colet's stamp.
It would appear from one of Erasmus' letters that CI
urged him to write commentaries on some portions of
New Testament ; but Erasmus would only work in his
way ; and it is probable that his thoughts were soon t
to preparing an edition of the New Testament in Gn
The task was long brooded over; and he had to perfect
himself in his knowledge of the language.
This determination to undertake no work for which he
was not supremely fitted, together with his powers of
application and acquisition, gave Erasmus the reputation
of being a strong man. He was seen to be unlike any other
Humanist, whether Italian or German. He had no desire
merely to reproduce the antique, or to confine himself
within the narrow circle in which the "Poets" of the
Eenaissanoe worked. He put ancient culture to modern
uses. Erasmus was no arm-chair student. He was one
of the keenest observers of everything human — the Lucian
or the Voltaire of the sixteenth century. From under his
half-closed eyelids his quick glance seized and retained
the salient characteristics of all sorts and conditions of men
and women. He described theologians, jurists and philo-
sophers, monks and parish priests, merchants and soldiers,
ERASMUS 179
husbands and wives, women good and bad, dancers and
diners, pilgrims, pardon-sellers, and keepers of relics; the
peasant in the field, the artisan in the workshop, and the
vagrant on the highway. He had studied all, and could
describe them with a few deft phrases, as incisive as
Diirer's strokes, with an almost perfect style, and with easy
sarcasm.
This application of the New Learning to portray the
common life, combined with his profound learning, made
Erasmus the idol of the young German Humanists. They
said that he was more than mortal, that his judgment was
infallible, and that his work was perfect. They made
pilgrimages to visit him. An interview was an event to
be talked about for years ; a letter, a precious treasure to be
beq[ueathed as an heirloom. Some men refused to render
the universal homage accorded by scholars and statesmen,
by princes lay and clerical. Luther scented Pelagian
theology in his annotations; he scorned Erasmus' wilful
playing with truth ; he said that the great Humanist was
a mocker who poured ridicule upon everything, even on
Christ and religion. There was some ground for the
charge. His sarcasm was not confined to his Praise
of Folly or to his Colloquies. It appears in almost every-
thing that he wrote — even in his Paraphrases of the New
Testament.
That such a man should have felt himself called upon
to be a reformer, that this Saul should have appeared
among the prophets, is in itself testimony that he lived
during a great religious crisis, and that the religious
question was the most important one in his days.
The principal literary works of Erasmus meant to
serve the reformation he desired to see are : — two small
books, ETwhiridion militis christiani (A Handbook of the
Christian Soldier, or A Pocket Dagger for the Christian
Soldier — it may be translated either way), first printed in
1503, and Institutio Principis Christiani (1518); his
Encomium Morice (Praise of Folly, 1511); his edition of
the New Testament, or Novum Instrumentum (1516), with
180 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
prefaces and paraphrases ; and perhaps many of the
dialogues in his Golloguia (1519).
Erasmus himself explains that in the Enchiridion he
wrote to counteract the vulgar error of those who think
that religion consists in ceremonies and in more than
Jewish observances, while they neglect what really belongs
to piety. The whole aim of the book is to assert the
individual responsibility of man to God apart from any
intermediate human agency. Erasmus ignores as com-
pletely as Luther would have done the whole mediaeval
thought of the mediatorial function of the Church and its
priestly order. In this respect the book is essentially
Protestant and thoroughly revolutionary. It asserts in so
many words that much of the popular religion is pure
paganism :
" One worships a certain Eochus, and why ? because he
fancies he will drive away the plague from his body.
Another mumbles prayers to Barbara or George, lest he fall
into the hands of his enemy. This man fasts to ApoUonia
to prevent the toothache. That one gazes upon an image of
the divine Job, that he may be free from the itch. ... In
short, whatever our fears and our desires, we set so many
gods over them, and these are different in different nations.
. . . This is not far removed from the superstition of those
who used to vow tithes to Hercules in order to get rich, or
a cock to ^sculapius to recover from an illness, or who slew
a bull to Neptune for a favourable voyage. The names are
changed, but the object is the same." ^
In speaking of the monastic life, he says :
" ' Love,' says Paul, ' is to edify your neighbour,' . . . and
if this only were done, nothing could be more joyous or more
easy thai; the life of the ' religious ' ; but now this life seems
' Erasmus, Opera Omnia (Leyden, 1703-1706), v. 26. The sarcasm of
Erasmus finds ample confirmation in Kerler's Die Fairoiiate der SeUigen
(Ulm, 1905), where St. Eochus, with fifty-nine companion saints, is stated
to be ready to hear the prayers of those who dread tlie plague ; St. ApoUonia,
with eighteen others, talces special interest in all who are afflicted with
toothache ; the holy Job, with thirteen companions, is ready to cure the
itch ; and St. Barbara with St. George figur(^ as protectors against a violent
death ;cf. pp. 266-273, 419-422, 218-219, 358-309,
ERASMUS 18 i
gloomy, full of Jewish superstitions, not in any way free
from the vices of laymen and in some ways more corrupt.
If Augustine, whom they boast of as the founder of their
order, came to life again, he would not recognise them ; he
would exclaim that he had never approved of this sort of
life, but had organised a way of living according to the rule
of the Apostles, not according to the superstition of the
Jew8."i
The more one studies the Praise of Folly, the more
evident it becomes that Erasmus did not intend to write
a satire on human weakness in general : the book is the
most severe attack on the mediseval Church that had, up
to that time, been made ; and it was meant to be so. The
author wanders from his main theme occasionally, but
always to return to the insane follies of the reUgious life
sanctioned by the highest authorities of the mediaeval
Church. Popes, bishops, theologians, monks, and the
ordinary lay Christians, are all unmitigated fools in their
ordinary religious life. The style is vivid, the author has
seen what he describes, and he makes his readers see it
also. He writes with a mixture of light mockery and
bitter earnestness. He exposes the foolish questions of
the theologians ; the vices and temporal ambitions of the
Popes, bishops, and monks ; the stupid trust in festivals,
pilgrimages, indulgences, and relics. The theologians, the
author says, are rather dangerous people to attack, for they
come down on one with their six hundred conclusions and
command him to recant, and if he does not they declare
him a heretic forthwith. The problems which interest
them are :
"Whether there was any instant of time in the divine
generation? . . . Could God have taken the .form of a
woman, a devil, an ass, a gourd, or a stone ? How the gourd
could have preached, wrought miracles, hung on the cross ?"2
He jeers at the Popes and higher ecclesiastics :
"Those supreme Pontiffs who stand in the place of
Christ, if they should try to imitate His life, that is. His
1 Erasmus, Opera Omnia, v. 35^36. ' Ihid. iv. 465.
182 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
poverty, His toil, His teaching, His cross, and His scorn of
this world . . . what could be more dreadful ! . . . We
ought not to forget that such a mass of scribes, copyists,
notaries, advocates, secretaries, mule-drivers, grooms, money-
changers, procurers, and gayer persons yet I might mention,
did I not respect your ears, — that this whole swarm which
now burdens — I beg your pardon, honours — the Koman See
would be driven to starvation."^
As for the monks :
" The greater part of them have such faith in their cere-
monies and human traditions, that they think one heaven
is not reward enough for such great doings. . . . One will
show his belly stuffed with every kind of fish ; another will
pour out a hundred bushels of psalms ; another will count
up myriads of fasts, and make up for them all again by
almost bursting himself at a single dinner. Another will
bring forward such a heap of ceremonies that seven ships
would hardly hold them ; another boast that for sixty years
he has never touched a penny except with double gloves
on his hands. . . . But Christ will interrupt their endless
bragging, and will demand — 'Whence this new kind of
Judaism ? '
" They do all things by rule, by a kind of sacred mathe-
matics ; as, for instance, how many knots their shoes must
be tied with, of what colour everything must be, what variety
in their garb, of what material, how many straws' -breadth to
their girdle, of what form and of how many bushels' capacity
their cowl, how many fingers broad their hair, and how
many hours they sleep. ..." *
He ridicules men who go running about to Eome, Com-
postella, or Jerusalem, wasting on long and dangerous
journeys money which might be better spent in feeding
the hungry and clothing the naked. He scoffs at those
who buy Indulgences, who sweetly flatter themselves with
counterfeit pardons, and who have measured off the duration
of Purgatory without error, as if by a water-clock, into ages,
years, months, and days, like the multiplication table.* Is
it religion to believe that if any one pays a penny out of
'■ Erasmus, Opera Omnia, iv. 481-484. * Jbid. iv. 471-474.
• Ibid. iv. 446.
ERASMUS 183
what he has stolen, he can have the whole slough of his
life cleaned out at once, and all his perjuries, lusts, drunken-
nesses, all his quarrels, murders, cheats, treacheries, false-
hoods, bought off in such a way that he may begin over
again with a new circle of crimes ? The reverence for
relics was perhaps never so cruelly satirised as in the
Colloquy, Feregrinatio Religionis Ergo.
It must be remembered that this bitter satire was
written some years before Luther began the Reformation
by an attack on Indulgences. It may seem surprising
how much liberty the satirist aiUowed himself, and how
much was permitted to him. But Erasmus knew very
well how to protect himself. He was very careful to
make no definite attack, and to make no mention of names.
He was always ready to explain that he did not mean to
attack the Papacy, but only bad Popes ; that he had the
highest respect for the monastic life, and only satirised
evil-minded monks ; or that he reverenced the saints, but
thought that reverence ought to be shown by imitating
them in their lives of piety. He could say all this with
perfect truth. Indeed, it is likely that with all his scorn
against the monks, Erasmus, in his heart, believed that a
devout Capuchin or Franciscan monk lived the ideal Chris-
tian life. He seems to say so in his Colloquy, Militis et
Carthusiani. He wrote, moreover, before the dignitaries of
the mediaeval Church had begun to take alarm. Liberal
Churchmen who were the patrons of the New Learning had
no objection to see the vices of the times and the Church
life of the day satirised by one who wrote such exquisite
latinity. In all his more serious work Erasmus was care-
ful to shelter himself under the protection of great eccle-
siastics.
Erasmus was not the only scholar who had proposed
to publish a correct edition of the Holy Scriptures. The
great Spaniard, Cardinal Ximenes, had announced that he
meant to bring out an edition of the Holy Scriptures in
which the text of the Vulgate would appear in parallel
columns along with the Hebrew and the Greek. The
184 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
prospectus of this Complutensian Polyglot was issued as
early as 1502 ; the work was finished in 1517, and was
published in Spain in 1520 and in other lands in 1522.
Erasmus was careful to dedicate the first edition of his
Novum Instrumentum (1 5 1 6) to Pope Leo X., who graciously
received it. He sent the second edition to the same Pope
in 1519, accompanied by a letter in which he says:
" I have striven with all my might to kindle men from
those chilling argumentations in which they had been so
long frozen up, to a zeal for theology which should be at once
more pure and more serious. And that this labour has so
far not been in vain I perceive from this, that certain persons
are furious against me, who cannot value anything they are
unable to teach and are ashamed to learn. But, trusting to
Christ as my witness, whom my writings above all would
guard, to the judgment of your Holiness, to my own sense
of right and the approval of so many distinguished men,
I have always disregarded tne yelpings of these people.
Whatever little talent I have, it has been, once for all, dedi-
cated to Christ : it shall serve His glory alone ; it shall serve
the Eoman Church, the prince of that Church, but especially
your Holiness, to whom I owe more than my whole duty."
He dedicated the various parts of the Paraphrases of the
New Testament to Cardinal Campeggio, to Cardinal Wolsey,
to Henry viii., to Charles v., and to Francis I. of France.
He deliberately placed himself under the protection of
those princes, ecclesiastical and secular, who could not be
suspected of having any revolutionary designs against the
existing state of things in Church or in State.
In all this he was followed for the time being by the
most distinguished Christian Humanists in England, France,
and Germany. They were full of the brightest hopes. A
Humanist Pope sat on the throne of St. Peter, young
Humanist kings ruled France and England, the Emperor
Maximilian had long been the patron of German Humanism,
and much was expected from his grandson Charles, the
young King of Spain. Erasmus, the acknowledged prince
of Christian learning, was enthusiastically supported by
Colet and More in England, by Buddmus and Lef^vre ia
THE CHRISTIAN HUMANISTS 185
France, by Joliaan Staupitz, CochbiBus, Thomas Murner,
Jerome Emser, Conrad Mutianus, and George Spalatin in
G-ermany. They all believed that the golden age was
approaching, when the secular princes would forbid wars,
and the ecclesiastical lay aside their rapacity, and when
both would lead the peoples of Europe in a reforma-
tion of morals and in a re-establishment of pure rehgion.
Their hopes were high that all would be effected without
the " tumult " which they all dreaded, and when the storm
burst, many of them became bitter opponents cf Luther
and his action. Luther found no deadlier enemies than
Thomas Murner and Jerome Emser. Others, like George
Spalatin, became his warmest supporters. Erasmus main-
tained to the end his attitude of cautious neutrality. In
a long letter to Marlianus, Bishop of Tuy in Spain, he
says that he does not like Luther's writings, that he feared
from the first that they would create a " tumult," but
that he dare not altogether oppose the reformer, " because
he feared that he might be fighting against God." The
utmost that he could be brought to do after the strongest
persuasions, was to attack Luther's Augustinian theology
in his Be Libera Arbitrio, and to insinuate a defence of
the principle of ecclesiastical authority in the interpreta-
tion of Scripture, and a proof that Luther had laid too
much stress on the element of " grace " in human actions.
He turned away from the whole movement as far as he
possibly could, protesting that for himself he would ever
cling to the Eoman See.
The last years of his life were spent in excessive literary
work — in editing the earlier Christian Fathers ; he com-
pleted his edition of Origen in 1536, the year of his
death. He settled at Louvain, and found it too hotly
theological for his comfort ; went to Basel ; wandered off
to Freiburg; then went back to Basel to die. After his
death he was compelled to take the side he had so long
shrunk from. Pope Paul rv. classed him as a notorious
heretic, and placed on the first papal " Lidex " " all his
commentaries, notes, scholia, dialogues, letters, translations.
186 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
books, and writings, even when they contain nothing against
religion or about religion."
"We look in vain for any indication that those Chris-
tian Humanists perceived that they were actually living in
a time of revolution, and were really standing on the edge
of a crater which was about to change European history
by its eruption. Sir Thomas More's instincts of religious
life were all mediaeval. Colet had persuaded him to
abandon his earlier impulse to enter a monastic order, but
More wore a hair shirt next his skin till the day of his
death. Yet in his sketch of an ideal commonwealth, he
expanded St. Paul's thought of the equality of all men
before Christ into the conception that no man was to be
asked to work more than six hours a day, and showed that
religious freedom could only flourish where there was
nothing in the form of the mediaeval Church. The lovable
and pious young Englishman never imagined that his
academic dream would be translated into rude practical
thoughts and ruder actions by leaders of peasant and
artisan insurgents, and that his Utopia (1515), within ten
years after its publication, and ten years before his own
death (1535), would furnish texts for communist sermons,
preached in obscure public-houses or to excited audiences
on village greens. The satirical criticisms of the hier-
archy, the monastic orders, and the popular religious
life, which Erasmus flung broadcast so recklessly in his
lighter and more serious writings, furnished the weapons
for the leaders in that "tumult" which he had dreaded
all his days ; and when he complained that few seemed to
care for the picture of a truly pious life, given in his
Enchiridion, he did not foresee that it would become a
wonderfully popular book among those who renounced all
connection with the See of Eome to which the author had
promised a life-long obedience. The Christian Humanists,
one and all, were strangely blind to the signs of the times
in which they lived.
No one can fail to appreciate the nobility of the pur-
pose to work for a great moral renovation of mankind
THE CHRISTIAN HUMANISTS 187
which the Christian Humanists ever kept before them,
or refuse to see that they were always and everywhere
preachers of righteousness. When we remember the cen-
tury and a half of wars, so largely excited by ecclesiastical
motives, which desolated Europe during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, few can withhold their sympathy
from the Christian Humanist idea that the path of refor-
mation lay through a great readjustment of the existing
conditions of the religious life, rather than through eccle-
siastical revolution to a thorough-going reconstruction ;
although we may sadly recognise that the dynastic struggles
of secular princes, the rapacity and religious impotence of
Popes and ecclesiastical authorities, and the imperious
pressure of social and industrial discontent, made the path
of peace impossible. But what must fill us with surprise
is that the Christian Humanists seemed to believe with a
childlike innocence that the constituted authorities, secular
and ecclesiastical, would lead the way in this peaceful reform,
mainly because they were tinged with Humanist culture,
and were the patrons of artists and men of learning.
Humanism meant to Pope Leo x. and to the young Arch-
bishop of Mainz additional sources of enjoyment, repre-
sented by costly pictures, collections of MSS., and rare
books, the gratification of their taste for jewels and cameos,
to say nothing of less harmless indulgences, and the adula-
tion of the circle of scholars whom they had attracted to
their courts ; and it meant little more to the younger
secular princes.
It is also to be feared that the Christian Humanists
had no real sense of what was needed for that renovation
of morals, public and private, which they ardently desired
to see. Pictures of a Christian life lived according to the
principles of reason, sharp polemic against the hierarchy,
and biting mockery of the stupidity of the popular religion,
did not help the masses of the people. The multitude in
those early decades of the sixteenth century were scourged
by constant visitations of the plague and other new and
strange diseases, and they lived in perpetual dread of a
188 HUMANISM AND REFORMATION
Turkish invasion. The fear of death and the judgment
thereafter was always before their eyes. What they
wanted was a sense of God's forgiveness for their sins,
and they greedily seized on Indulgences, pilgrimages to holy
places, and relic-worship to secure the pardon they longed
for. The aristocratic and intellectual reform, contemplated
by the Christian Humanists, scarcely appealed to them.
Their longing for a certainty of salvation could not be
satisfied with recommendations to virtuous living according
to the rules of Neo-Platonic ethics. It is pathetic to
listen to the appeals made to Erasmus for something more
than he could ever give :
" ' Oh ! Erasmus of Eotterdam, where art thou ? ' said
Albert Diirer. ' See what the unjust tyranny of earthly
power, the power of darkness, can do. Hear, thou knight
of Christ ! Eide forth by the side of the Lord Christ ; de-
fend the truth, gain the martyr's crown ! As it is, thou art
but an old man. I have heard thee say that thou hast given
thyself but a couple more years of active service ; spend
them, I pray, to the profit of the gospel and the true Chris-
tian faith, and believe me the gates of Hell, the See of Eome,
as Christ has said, will not prevail against thee.' " ^
The Eeformation needed a man who had himself felt that
commanding need of pardon which was sending his fellows
travelling from shrine to shrine, who could tell them in
plain homely words, which the common man could under-
stand, how each one of them could win that pardon for
himself, who could deliver them from the fear of the priest,
and show them the way to the peace of God. The Eefor-
mation needed Luther.
^ Leitschuh, AlhrecU Durer's Tagehuch der Meise in die Niederlande
(Leipzig, 1884), p. 84.
BOOK II.
THE REFORMATION.
CHAPTER I.
LUTHER TO THE BEGINNING OF THE CONTROVERSY
ABOUT INDULGENCES.^
§ 1. Why Luther was sxiccessful as tlie Leader in a
Reformation.
Reformation had been attempted in various ways. Learned
ecclesiastical Jurists had sought to bring it about in the
fifteenth century by what was called Conciliar Beform.
• SouKCES : Melanohthon, Historia de vita et actis Lufheri ("Witten-
berg, 1545, in the Carpus Eeformatorwm, vi.); Hathcsius, Historien von
, . Martini Lufheri, Anfang, Lere, Leben und Sterben (Prague, 1896);
Myconius, Historia BeformcUionis 15T7-15Jfi (Leipzig, 1718) ; Katzeberger,
Oeschiehte ilber LviJier und seine Zeit (Jena, 1850) ; Killian Leib, Annates
von 1S0S-15Z3 (vols. vii. and ix. of v. Aretin'a Beitrage zur Geschichte und
LUteratur, Munich, 1803-1806) ; Wrampelmeyer, Tagebuch ilbcr Dr. Martin
Luther, gefilhrt von Dr. Conrad Oordatus, 15S7 (Halle, 1885) ; Caspar
Cruciger, Tabulce chronologicoe actorum M. Lutheri (Wittenberg, 1553) ;
Fbrstemann, Neues Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der evangelischen Kirehen-
reformation (Hamburg, 1842) ; Kolde, Analecta Lutherana (Gotha, 1883) ;
6. Loesohe, Analecta Lutherana et Melanchthoniana (Gotha, 1892) ; Loscher.
Vollstdndige Beformatioms-Acta und Documenta (Leipzig, 1720-1729) ;
Enders, Dr. Martin Luther's Briefwechsel, 6 vols. (Frankfurt, 1884-1893) ;
De Wette, Dr. Martin Luther's Briefe, Sendschreiben und Bedenken, 5 vols.
(Berlin, 1825-1828) ; J. Cochlseus (Rom. Cath.), Commentarius de actis et
seriptis M. Lutheri . . . ab anno 1517 usque ad annum 1537 (St. Victor
prope Moguntiam, 1549) ; V. L. Seckendorf, Commentarius . . . de
Lutheranismo (Frankfurt, 1692) ; Constitutioiies Fratrum HeremUarum
Sancti Augustini (Nurnberg, 1504) ; Cambridge Modem History, ii. iv.
Latek Books : J. Kostlin, Martin Luther, sein Leben und seine
;S9
190 LUTHER TO THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
The sincerity and ability of the leaders of the movement
are unquestioned ; but they had failed ignominiously, and
the Papacy with all its abuses had never been so powerful
ecclesiastically as when its superior diplomacy had van-
quished the endeavour to hold it in tutelage to a coimciL
The Christian Humanists had made their attempt —
preaching a moral renovation and the application of the
existing laws of the Church to punish ecclesiastical wrong-
doers. Colet eloquently assured the Anglican Convocation
that the Church possessed laws which, if only enforced,
contained provisions ample enough to curb and master the
ills which all felt to be rampant. Erasmus had held up
to scorn the debased religious life of the times, and had
denounced its Judaism and Paganism. Both were men of
scholarship and genius ; but they had never been able to
move society to its depths, and awaken a new religious hfe,
which was the one thing needful.
History knows nothing of revivals of moral living
apart from some new religious impulse. The motive
power needed has always come through leaders who have
had communion with the unseen. Humanism had supplied
a superfluity of teachers; the times needed a prophet.
They received one ; a man of the people ; bone of their
bone, and flesh of their flesh ; one who had himself lived
that popvdar religious life with all the thoroughness of a
strong, earnest nature, who had sounded all its depths and
tested its capacities, and gained in the end no relief for his
Schriften,2-vo1a. (Berlin,1889); Th.Kolde, Martin Luther. JSiiie Biographie,
2 vols. (Gotha, 1884, 1893) ; A. Hausrath, Luther's Leben, 2 vols. (Berlin,
1904) ; Lindsay, Luther wad the German Reformation (Edinburgh, 1900) ;
Kolde, Friedrich der Weise und die Anfange der Reformation mit archi-
valischen Beilagen (Erlangen, 1881), and Die deutsche Augustiner-Con-
gregation und Johwwn v. Staupitz (Gotha, 1879) ; A. Hausrath, M. Luther's
Somfahrt nach eitiem gleichzeiligen Pilgerbuche (Berlin, 1894) ; Oergel,
Vom jungen I/uftier (Erfurt, 1899) ; Jurgens, Luther von seiner Oeburt bis
zum Ablassstreit, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1846-1847) ; Krumhaar, Die Orafschaft
Mansfeld im Eeformatiouszeitalter (Eisleben, 1845) ; Buchwald, Zur
Wittenberg Stadt- und Universitdtsgeschichte in der Reformalionszeit (Leipzig,
1893) ; Kampsohulte, Die Universitdt Erfurt in ihrem Verhdltniss sm dem
Sumanismus und der Reformation (Trier, 1856-1860).
WHY LUTHER SUCCEEDED 191
burdened conscience ; who had at last found his way into
the presence of God, and who knew, by his own personal
experience, tliat the living God was accessible to every
Christian. He had won the freedom of a Christian man, i/
and had reached through faith a joy in living far deeper
than that which Humanism boasted. He became a leader
of men, because his joyous faith made him a hero by
delivering him from all fear of Church or of clergy — the
fear which had weighed down the consciences of men for
generations. Men could see what faith was when they
looked at Luther.
It must never be forgotten that to his contemporaries
Luther was the embodiment of personal piety. All spoke
of his sensitiveness to religious impressions of all kinds in
his early years. While he was inside the convent, whether
before or after he had found deliverance for his troubles of
soul, his fellows regarded him as a model of piety. In
later days, when he stood forth as a Reformer, he became
such a power in the hearts of men of all sorts and ranks,
because he was seen to be a thoroughly pious man. Albert
Diirer may be taken as a type. In the great painter's
diary of the journey he made with his wife and her maid
Susanna to the Netherlands (1520), — a mere summary of
the places he visited and the persons he saw, of what he
paid for food and lodging and travel, of the prices he got
for his pictures, and what he paid for his purchases,
literary and artistic, — he tells how he heard of Luther's
condemnation at Worms, of the Reformer's disappearance,
of his supposed murder by Popish emissaries (for so the
report went through Germany), and the news compelled
him to that pouring forth of prayers, of exclamations, of
fervent appeals, and of bitter regrets, which fills three out
of the whole forty-six pages. The Luther he almost
worships is the " pious man," the " follower of the Lord
and of the true Christian faith," the " man enlightened by
the Holy Spirit," the man who had been done to death by
the Pope and the priests of his day, as the Son of God had
been murdered by the priests of Jerusalem. The one
192 LUTHER TO THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
bhing which fills the great painter's mind is the personal
religious life of the man Martin Luther.^
Another source of Luther's power was that he had
been led step by step, and that his. countrymen could
follow him deliberately without being startled by any too
sudden changes. He was one of themselves; he took
them into his confidence at every stage of his public
career ; they knew him thoroughly. He had been a
monk, and that was natural for a youth of his exemplary
piety. He had lived a model monastic life; his com-
panions and his superiors were unwearied in commending
him. He had spoken openly what almost all good men
had been feeling privately about Indulgences in plain
language which all could understand; and he had
gradually taught himself and his countrymen, who were
following his career breathlessly, that the man who trusted
in God did not need to fear the censures of Pope or of
the clergy. He emancipated not merely the learned and
cultivated classes, but the common people, from the fear
of the Church ; and this was the one thing needful for
a true reformation. So long as the people of Europe
believed that the priesthood had some mysterious powers,
no matter how vague or indefinite, over the spiritual and
eternal welfare of men and women, freedom of conscience
and a renovation of the public and private moral life was
impossible. The spiritual world will always have its
anxieties and terrors for every Christian soul, and the
greatest achievement of Luther was that by teaching and,
above all, by example, he showed the common man that
he was in God's hands, and not dependent on the blessing
or banning of a clerical caste. For Luther's doctrine of
Justification by Faith, as he himself showed in his tract
on the Liberty of a Christian Man (1520), was simply
that there was nothing in the indefinite claim which th3
mediaeval Church had always made. From the momeirfc
the common people, simple men and women, knew and
' Albrecht Dilrer's Tagebuch der Seise in die Niederlande, Edited by
Dr. "pr. Leitscliuh (Leipzig, 1884), pp. 28-84.
Luther's youth and education 193
felt this, they were freed from the mysterious dread of
Church and priesthood ; they could look the clergy fairly
in the face, and could care little for their threats. It was ,
because Luther had freed himself from this dread, because
the people, who knew him to be a deeply pious man, saw
that he was free from it, and therefore that they need be
in no concern about it, that he became the great reformer
and the popular leader in an age which was compelled to
revise its thoughts about spiritual things.
Hence it is that we may say without exaggeration that
the Eeformation was embodied in Martin Luther, that it
lived in him as in no one else, and that its inner religious
history may be best studied in the record of his spiritual
experiences and in the growth of his religious convictions.
§ 2. Luther's Youth and Education.
Martin Luther was born in 1483 (Nov. 10th) at
Eisleben, and spent his childhood in the small mining
town of Mansfeld. His father, Hans Luther, had belonged
to Mohra (]M[portown), a small peasant township lying in
the north-eafst corner of the Thuringian Wald, and his
mother, Margarethe Ziegler, had come from a burgher family
in Eisenach. It was a custom among these Thuringian
peasants that only one son, and that usually the youngest,
inherited the family house and the croft. The others were
sent out one by one, furnished with a small store of money
from the family strong-box, to make their way in the
world. Hans Luther had determined to become a miner
in the Mansfeld district, where the policy of the Counts
of Mansfeld, of building and letting out on hire small
smelting furnaces, enabled thrifty and skilled workmen to
rise in the world. The father soon made his way. He
leased one and then three of these furnaces. He won the
respect of his neighbours, for he became, in 1491, one of
the four members of the village council, and we are told
that the Counts of Mansfeld held him in esteem.
In the earlier years, when Luther was a child, the
13*
194 LUTHEB, TO THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
family life was one of grinding poverty, and Luther often
recalled the hard struggles of his parents. He had often
seen his mother carrying the wood for the family fire from
the forest on her poor shoulders. The child grew up
among the hard, grimy, coarse surroundings of the German
working-class hfe, protected from much that was evil by
the wise severity of his parents. He imbibed its simple
political and ecclesiastical ideas. He learned that the
Emperor was God's ruler on earth, who would protect poor
people against the Turk, and that the Church was the
"Pope's House," in which the Bishop of Eome was the
house-father. He was taught the Creed, the Ten Com-
mandments, and the Lord's Prayer. He sang such simple
evangelical hymns as "Ein Kindelein so lobelich," "Nun
bitten wir den heiligen Geist," and " Crist ist erstanden."
He was a dreamy, contemplative child; and the unseen
world was never out of his thoughts. He knew that some
of the miners practised sorcery in dark corners below the
earth. He feared an old woman who lived near; she
was a witch, and the priest himself was afraid of her.
He was taught about Hell and Purgatory and the Judg-
ment to come. He shivered whenever he looked at the
stained-glass window in the parish church and saw the
frowning face of Jesus, who, seated on a rainbow and with
a flaming sword in His hand, was coming to judge him,
he knew not when. He saw the crowds of pilgrims who
streamed past Mansfeld, carrying their crucifixes high, and
chanting their pilgrim songs, going to the Bruno Quertfort
chapel or to the old church at Wimmelberg. He saw
paralytics and maimed folk carried along the roads, going
to embrace the wooden cross at Kyffhaiiser, and find a
miraculous cure; and sick people on their way to the
cloister church at Wimmelberg to be cured by the sound
of the blessed bells.
The boy Luther went to the village school in Mansfeld,
and endured the cruelties of a merciless pedagogue. He
was sent for a year, in 1497, to a school of the Brethren
of the Common Lot in Magdeburg. Then he went to St.
AT ERFURT 195
George's school in Eisenach, where he remained three
years. He was a " poor scholar," which meant a boy who
received his lodging and education free, was obliged to sing
in the church choir, and was allowed to sing in the streets,
begging for food. The whole town was under the spell
of St. Elizabeth, the pious landgravine, who had given up
family life and aU earthly comforts to earn a mediaeval
saintship. It contained nine monasteries and nunneries,
many of them dating back to the days of St. Elizabeth ;
her good deeds were emblazoned on the windows of the
church in which Luther sang as choir-boy ; he had long
conversations with the monks who belonged to her founda-
tions. The boy was being almost insensibly attracted to
that revival of the mediaeval religious life which was the
popular religious force of these days. He had glimpses of
the old homely evangelical piety, this time accompanied by
a refinement of manners Luther had hitherto been un-
acquainted with, in the house of a lady who is identified by
biographers with a certain Erau Cotta. The boy enjoyed
it intensely, and his naturally sunny nature expanded under
its influence. But it did not touch him religiously. He
has recorded that it was with incredulous surprise that he
heard his hostess say that there was nothing on earth more
lovely than the love of husband and wife, when it is in the
fear of the Lord.
After three years' stay at Eisenach, Luther entered the
University of Erfurt (1501), then the most famous in
Germany. It had been founded in 1392 by the burghers
of the town, who were intensely proud of their own Uni-
versity, and especially of the fact that it had far surpassed
other seats of learning which owed their origin to princes.
The academic and burgher life were allied at Erfurt as they
were in no other University town. The days of graduation
were always town holidays, and at the graduation pro-
cessions the officials of the city walked with the University
authorities. Luther tells us that when he first saw the
newly made graduates marching in their new graduation
robes in the middle of the procession, he thought that
196 LUTHER TO THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
they had attained to the summit of earthly felicity. The
University of Erfurt was also strictly allied to the Church.
Different Popes had enriched it with privileges ; the Primate
of Germany, the Archbishop of Mainz, was its Chancellor ;
many of its professors held ecclesiastical prebends, or were
monks ; each faculty was under the protection of a tutelary
saint ; the teachers had to swear to teach nothing opposed
to the doctrines of the Eoman Church ; and special pains
were taken to prevent the rise and spread of heresy.
Its students were exposed to a greater variety of
influences than those of any other seat of learning in
Germany. Its theology represented the more modern type
of scholastic, the Scotist ; its philosophy was the nominalist
teaching of William of Occam, whose great disciple, Gabriel
Biel (d. 1495), had been one of its most celebrated pro-
fessors ; the system of biblical interpretation, first intro-
duced by Nicholas de Lyra^ (d. 1340), had been long
taught at Erfurt by a succession of .able masters ; Human-
ism had won an early entrance, and in Luther's time the
Erfurt circle of " Poets " was already famous. The strongly
anti-clerical teaching of John of Wessel, who had lectured
in Erfurt for fifteen years (1445-1460), had left its mark
on the University, and was not forgotten. Hussite propa-
gandists, Luther tells us, appeared from time to time,
whispering among the students their strange, anti-clerical
Christian socialism. While, as if by way of antidote, there
came Papal Legates, whose magnificence bore witness to
the might of the Eoman Church.
Luther had been sent to Erfurt to learn Law, and the
Faculty of Philosophy gave the preliminary training re-
' Nicholas, born at Lyre, a Tillage in Normandy, was one of the earliest
students of the Hebrew S.riptures ; he explained the accepted fourfold sense
of Scripture in the following distich ;
" Litera gesta docet, quid credas Allegoria,
Moralis quid agas, quo tendas A'/iagogia."
Luther used his commentaries when he became Professor of Theology at
Wittenberg, and acknowledged the debt ; but it is too much to say :
"Si Lyra non lyrasset,
Lutherus uon saltassot."
AT ERFURT 197
quired. The young student worked hard at the prescribed
tasks. The Scholastic Philosophy, he said, left him little
time for classical studies, and he attended none of the
Humanist lectures. He found time, however, to read a
good many Latin authors privately, and also to learn some-
thing of Greek. Virgil and Plautus were his favourite
authors ; Cicero also charmed him ; he read Livy, Terence,
and Horace. He seems also to have read a volume of
selections from Propertius, Persius, Lucretius, TibuUus,
Silvius Itahcus, Statius, and Claudian. But he was never
a member of the Humanist circle ; he was too much in
earnest about religious questions, and of too practical a
turn of mind.
The scanty accounts of Luther's student days show
that he was a hardworking, bright, sociable youth, and
musical to the core. His companions called him "the
Philosopher," " the Musician," and spoke of his lute-playing,
of his singing, and of his ready power in debate. He
took his various degrees in unusually short time. He
was Bachelor in 1502, and Master in 1505. His father,
proud of his son's success, had sent him the costly present of
a Corpus Juris. He may have begun to attend the lectures
in the Faculty of Law, when he suddenly plunged into the
Erfurt Convent of the Augustinian Eremites.
The action was so sudden and unexpected, that con-
temporaries felt bound to give all manner of explanations,
and these have been woven together into accounts which
are legendary.^ Luther himself has told us that he entered
the monastery because he doubted of himself; that in his
' There is one persistent contemporary suggestion, that Luther was
finally driven to take the step by the sudden death of a companion, for
which a good deal may be said. Oergel has shown, from minute researches
in the university archives, that a special friend of Luther's, Hieronymus
Pontz of Windsheim, who was working along with him for his Magister's
degi'ee, died suddenly of pleurisy before the end of the examination ; that
a few weeks after Luther had taken liis degree, another promising student
whom he knew died of the plague ; that the plague broke out again in
Erfurt three months afterwards ; and that Luther entered the convent a
few days after this second appearance of the [dague. — Cf. Georg Oergel,
Fomya«g'e» iMtter (Erfurt, 1899), pp. 35-41.
198 LUTHER TO THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
case the proverb was true, " Doubt makes a monk." He
also said that his resolve was a suddpn one, because he
knew that his decision would grieve his father and his
mother.
What was the doubting ? We are tempted in these
days to think of intellectual difficulties, and Luther's
doubting is frequently attributed to the self-questioning
which his contact with Humanism at Erfurt had engen-
dered. But this idea, if not foreign to the age, was strange
to Luther. His was a simple pious nature, practical rather
than speculative, sensitive and imaginative. He could play
with abstract questions ; but it was pictures that compelled
him to action. He has left on record a series of pictures
which were making deeper and more permanent impression
on him as the years passed; they go far to reveal the
history of his struggles, and to tell us what the doubts
were which drove him into the convent. The picture on
the window in Mansfeld church of Jesus sitting on a rain-
bow, with frowning countenance and drawn sword in His
hand, coming to judge the wicked ; the altar-piece at
Magdeburg representing a great ship sailing heavenwards,
no one within the ship but priests or monks, and in the
sea laymen drowning, or saved by ropes thrown to them
by the priests and monks who were safe on board ; the
living picture of the prince of Anhalt, who to save his
soul had become a friar, and carried the begging sack on
his bent shoulders through the streets of Magdeburg; the
history of St. Elizabeth blazoned on the windows of the
church at Eisenach ; the young Carthusian at Eisenach,
who the boy thought was the holiest man he had ever
talked to, and who had so mortified his body that he had
come to look like a very old man; the terrible deathbed
scene of the Erfurt ecclesiastical dignitary, a man who
held twenty-two benefices, and whom Luther had often
seen riding in state in the great processions, who was
known to be an evil-liver, and who when he came to die
filled the room with his frantic cries. Luther doubted
whether he could ever do what he believed had to be done
IN THE ERFURT CONVENT 19 'J
by him to save his soul if he remained in the world.
That was what compelled him to become a monk, and bury
himself in the convent. The lurid fires of Hell and the
pale shades of Purgatory, which are the permanent back-
ground to Dante's Paradise, were present to Luther's mind
from childhood. Could he escape the one and gain entrance
to the other if he remained in the world ? He doubted it,
and entered the convent. .
§ 3. Luther in the Erfurt Convent.
It was a convent of the Augustinian Eremites, perhaps
the most highly esteemed of monastic orders by the common
people of Germany during the earlier decades of the six-
teenth century. They represented the very best type of
that superstitious mediaeval revival which has been already
described.^ It is a mistake to suppose that because they
bore the name of Augustine, the evangelical theology of
the great Western Father was known to them. Their
leading theologians belonged to another and very different
school The two teachers of theology in the Erfurt con-
vent, when Luther entered in 1505, were John Genser of
Paltz, and John Nathin of Neuenkirehen. The former was
widely known from his writings in favour of the strictest
form of papal .absolutism, of the doctrine of Attrition, and
of the efficacy of papal Indulgences. It is not probable
that Luther was one of his pupils ; for he retired broken
in health and burdened with old age in 1507.* The latter,
though unknown beyond the walls of the convent, was an
able and severe master. He was an ardent admirer of
Gabriel Biel, of Peter d'Ailly, and of William of Occam
their common master. He thought little of any inde-
^ Cf. above, pp. 127 ff.
' In my chapter on Luther in the Cambridge Modern History, ii. p. 114,
where notes were not permitted, I have said with too much abruptness that
John of Paltz was "the teacher of Luther himself." Luther was certainly
taught the theology of John of Paltz, and the latter was residing in the
monastery during two years of Luther's stay there ; but it is more probable
that Luther's actual instructor was Natliin.
200 LUTHER TO THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
pendent study of the Holy Scriptures. " Brother Martin,"
he once said to Luther, " let the Bible alone ; read the old
teachers ; they give you the whole marrow of the Bible :
reading the Bible simply breeds unrest." ^ Afterwards he
commanded Luther on his canonical obedience to refrain
from Bible study.^ It was he who made Luther read and
re-read the writings of Biel, d'Ailly, and Occam, until he
had committed to memory long passages ; and who taught
the Eeformer to consider Occam " his dear Master."
Nathin was a determined opponent of the Eeformation
until his death in 1529; but Luther always spoke of him
with respect, and said that he was " a Christian man in
spite of his monk's cowl."
Luther had not come to the convent to study theo-
logy ; he had entered it to save his souL These studies
were part of the convent discipline; to engage in them,
part of his vow of obedience. He worked hard at them,
and pleased his superiors greatly ; worked because he was a
submissive monk. They left a deeper impress on him than
most of his biographers have cared to acknowledge. He
had more of the Schoolman in him and less of the Humanist
than any other of the men who stood in the first line of
leaders in the Eeformation movement. Some of his later
doctrines, and especially his theory of the Sacrament of the
Supper, came to him from these convent studies in d'Ailly
and Occam. But in his one great quest — how to save his
soul, how to win the sense of God's pardon — they were
more a hindrance than a help. His teachers might be
Augustinian Eremites, but they had not the faintest
knowledge of Augustinian experimental theology. They
belonged to the most pelagianising school of mediaeval
Scholastic ; and their last word always was that man must
work out his own salvation. Luther tried to work it out
' In the Tischreden (Preger, Leipzig, 1888), i. 27, the saying is attributed
to BartholomsBUa Uaingen, who is erroneously called Luther's teacher in the
Erfurt convent. Usingen did not enter the convent before 1512. He was
a professor in the University of Erfurt, not in the convent.
' N. Selneccer, Eisloria . . . D. M. Lutheri : ' ' Jussus est omissis
Saoris Bibliis ex obedientia legere scholastica et sophistica scripts."
IN THE ERF17RT CONVENT 201
in the most approved later mediteval fashion, by the
strictest asceticism. He fasted and scourged himself ; he
practised all the ordinary forms of maceration, and invented
new ones ; but all to no purpose. For when an awakened
soul, as he said long afterwards, seeks to find rest in work-
righteousness, it stands on a foundation of loose sand which
it feels running and travelling beneath it ; and it must go
from one good work to another and to another, and so on
without end. Luther was undergoing all unconsciously the
experience of Augustine, and what tortured and terrified the
great African was torturing him. He had learned that
man's goodness is not to be measured by his neighbour's
but by God's, and that man's sin is not to be weighed
against the sins of his neighbours, but against the righteous-
ness of God. His theological studies told him that God's
pardon could be had through the Sacrament of Penance,
and that the first part of that sacrament was sorrow for
sin. But then came a difficulty. The older, and surely
the better theology, explained that this godly sorrow {con-
tritio) must be based on love to God. Had he this love ?
God always appeared to him as an implacable Judge,
inexorably threatening punishment for the breaking of a law
which it seemed impossible to keep. He had to confess to
himself that he sometimes almost hated this arbitrary Will
which the nominalist Schoolmen called God. The more
modern theology, that taught by the chief convent theo-
logian, John of Paltz, asserted that the sorrow might be
based on meaner motives (attritio), and that this attrition
was changed into contrition in the Sacrament of Penance
itself. So Luther wearied his superiors by his continual
use of this sacrament. The slightest breach of the most
trifling conventual regulation was looked on as a sin, and
had to be confessed at once and absolution for it received,
until the perplexed lad was ordered to cease confession
until he had committed some sin worth confessing. His
brethren believed him to be a miracle of piety. They
boasted about him in their monkish fashion, and in all the
monasteries around, and as far away as Grimma, the monks
202 LUTHER TO THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
and nuns talked about the young saint in the Erfurt con-
vent. Meanwhile the " young saint " himself lived a life
of mental anguish, whispering to himself that he was
"gallows-ripe." Writing in 1518, years after the conflict
was over, Luther tells us that no pen could describe the
mental anguish he endured.^ Gleams of comfort came to
him, but they were transient. The Master of the Novices
gave him salutary advice; an aged brother gave him
momentary comfort. John Staupitz, the Vicar-General of
the Congregation, during his visits to the convent was
attracted by the traces of hidden conflicts and sincere
endeavour of the young monk, with his high cheek-bones,
emaciated frame, gleaming eyes, and looks of settled
despair. He tried to find out his difficulties. He revoked
Nathin's order that Luther should not read the Scriptures.
He encouraged him to read the Bible; he gave him a
Qlossa Ordinaria or conventual ecclesiastical commentary,
where passages were explained by quotations from eminent
Church Fathers, ajid difficulties were got over by much
pious allegorising; above all, he urged him to become a
good localis and textualis in the Bible, i.e. one who, when he
met with difficulties, did not content himself with com-
mentaries, but made collections of parallel passages for
himself, and found explanations of one in the others. Still
this brought at first little help. At last Staupitz saw the
young man's real difficulty, and gave him real and lasting
assistance. He showed Luther that he had been rightly
enough contrasting man's sin and God's holiness, and
measuring the depth of the one by the height of the other ;
that he had been following the truest instincts of the
deepest piety when he had set over-against each other the
righteousness of God and the sin and helplessness of man ;
but that he had gone wrong when he kept these two
* Modem Romanists describe all ihis as the self-torturing of an hysterical
youth. They are surely oblivious to the fact that the only great German
mediaeval Mystic who has been canonised by the Romish Church, Henry
Suso, went through a similar experience ; and that these very experiences
were in both cases looked on by contemporaries as the fruits of a more than
ordinary piety.
IN THE ERFURT CONVENT 20S
thoughts in a permanent opposition. He then explained
that, according to God's promise, the righteousness of God
might become man's own possession in and through Christ
Jesus. God had promised that man could have fellowship
with Him; all fellowship is founded on personal trust;
and trust, the personal trust of the believing man on a
personal God who has promised, gives man that fellowship
with God through which all things that belong to God can
become his. Without this personal trust or faith, all
divine things, the Incarnation and Passion of the Saviour,
the Word and the Sacraments, however true as matters of
fact, are outside man and cannot be truly possessed. But
when man trusts God and His promises, and when the
fellowship, which trust or faith always creates, is once
established, then they can be truly possessed by the man
who trusts. The just live by their faith. These thoughts,
acted upon, helped Luther gradually to win his way to
peace, and he told Staupitz long afterwards that it was
he who had made him see the rays of light which dis-
pelled the darkness of his soul.^ In the end, the vision of
the true relation of the believing man to God came to him
suddenly with all the force of a personal revelation, and the
storm-tossed soul was at rest. The sudden enUghtenment,
the personal revelation which was to change his whole life,
came to him when he was reading the Epistle to the Romans
in his cell It came to Paul when he was riding on the
road to Damascus; to Augustine as he was lying under
a fig-tree in the Milan garden; to Francis as he paced
anxiously the flag-stones of the Portiuncula chapel on the
plain beneath Assisi; to Suso as he sat at table in the
morning. It spoke through different words : — to Paul,
" Why persecutest thou Me ? " ; ^ to Augustine, " Put ye on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the
flesh " ; ^ to Francis, " Get you no gold, nor silver, nor
brass in your purses, no wallet for your journey, neither
two coats, nor shoes, nor staff";* to Suso, "My son, if
' Resolutiones, Preface. ^ Acts viii. 4.
» Eom. xiii. 14. * Matt. x. 9.
204 LUTHER TO THE INDULGENCE CONTROVEESY
thou wilt hear My words." ^ But though the words were
different, the personal revelation, which mastered the men,
was the same : That trust in the All-merciful God, who
has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, creates companion-
ship with God, and that all other things are nothing in
comparison with this fellowship. It was this contact with
the Unseen which fitted Luther for his task as the leader
of men in an age which was longing for a revival of moral
living inspired by a fresh religious impulse.^
It is not certain how long Luther's protracted struggle
lasted. There are indications that it went on for two years,
and that he did not attain to iaward peace until shortly
before he was sent to Wittenberg in 1508. The intensity
and sincerity of the conflict marked him for life. The
conviction that he, weak and sinful as he was, nevertheless
lived in personal fellowship with the God whose love he
was experiencing, became the one fundamental fact of life
on which he, a human personality, could take his stand as
on a foundation of rock ; and standing on it, feeling his own
strength, he could also be a source of strength to others.
Everything else, however venerable and sacred it might
once have seemed, might prove untrustworthy without
hereafter disturbing Luther's religious life, provided only
this one thing remained to him. For the moment, how-
ever, nothing seemed questionable. The inward change
^ Prov. ii. 1.
' " If we review all the men and women of the "West since Augustine's
time, whom, for the disposition which possessed them, history has designated
as eminent Cliristians, we have always the same type ; we find marked con-
viction of sin, complete renunciation of their own strength, and trust in
grace, in the personal God who is apprehended as the Merciful Otk in the
humility of Christ. The variations of this frame of mind are innumerable
— but the fundamental type is the same. This frame of mind is taught in
sermons and in instruction by truly pious Romanists and by Evangelicals ;
in it youthful Christians are trained, and dogmatics are constructed in
harmony with it. It has always produced so powerful an effect, even where
it is only preached as the experience of others, that he who has come in con-
tact with it can never forget it ; it accompanies him as a pillar of cloud by
day and of fire by night ; he who imagines that he has long shaken it off,
sees it rising up suddenly before him again." — Harnack's History of Dogma,
V. 74 (Eng. trans., London, 1898).
EARLY LIFE AT WITTENBERG 205
altered nothing external. He still believed that the
Church was the " Pope's House " ; he accepted all its
usages and institutions — its Masses and its relics, its in-
dulgences and its pilgrimages, its hierarchy and its monastic
life. He was still a monk and believed in his vocation.
Luther's theological studies were continued. He
devoted himself especially to Bernard, in whose sermons
on the Song of Solomon he found the same thoughts of the
relation of the believing soul to God which had given him
comfort. He began to show himself a good man of busi-
ness with an eye to the heart of things. Staupitz and his
chiefs entrusted him with some delicate commissions on
behaH of the Order, and made quiet preparations for his
advancement. In 1508 he, with a few other monks, was
sent from Erfurt to the smaller convent at Wittenberg, to
assist the small University thera
§ 4. Luther's early Life in Wittenberg.
About the beginning of the century, Frederick the Wise,
Elector of Saxony and head of the Ernestine branch of his
family, had resolved to establish a University for his
dominions. Frederick had maintained close relations with
the Augustinian Eremites ever since he had made acquaint-
ance with them when a schoolboy at Grimma, and the
Vicar-General, John Staupitz, along with Dr. Pollich of
MeHerstadt, were his chief advisers. It might almost be
said that the new University was, from the beginning, an
educational establishment belonging to the Order of monks
which Luther had joined. Staupitz himself was one of the
professors, and Dean of the Faculty of Theology ; another
Augustinian Eremite was Dean of the Faculty of Arts ; the
Patron Saints of the Order of the Blessed Virgin and St.
Augustine were the Patron Saints of the University;
St. Paul was the Patron Saint of the Faculty of Theology,
and on the day of his conversion there was a special
celebration of the Mass with a sermon, at which the Eector
(Dr. Pollich) and the whole teaching staff were present.
206 LUTHER TO THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
The University was poorly endowed. Electoral Saxony
was not a rich principality ; some mining industry did exist
in the south end, and Zwickau was the centre of a great
weaving trade ; but the great proportion of the inhabitants,
whether of villages or towns, subsisted on agriculture of a
poor kind. There was not much money at the Electoral
court. A sum got from the sale of Indulgences some years
before, which Frederick had not allowed to leave the
country, served to make a beginning. The prebends
attached to the Church of All Saints (the Castle Church)
supplied the salaries of some professors ; the others were
Augustinian Eremites, who gave their services gratuitously.
The town of Wittenberg was more like a large village
than the capital of a principality. In 1513 it only con-
tained 3000 inhabitants and 356 rateable houses. The
houses were for the most part mean wooden dwellings,
roughly plastered with clay. The town lay in the very
centre of Germany, but it was far from any of the great
trade routes ; the inhabitants had a good deal of Wendish
blood in their veins, and were inclined to be sluggish and
intemperate. The environs were not picturesque, and the
surrounding country had a poor soil. Altogether it was
scarcely the place for a University. Imperial privileges
were obtained from the Emperor Maixinulian, and the
University was opened on the 18th of October 1502.
One or two eminent teachers had been induced to come
to the new University. Staupitz collected promising young
monks from many convents of his Order and enrolled them
as students, and the University entered 416 names on its
books during its first year. This success seems to have
been somewhat a.rtificial, for the numbers gradually declined
to 56 in the summer session of 1505. Staupitz, however,
encouraged Frederick to persevere.
It was in the interests of the young University that
Luther and a band of brother monks were sent from Erfurt
to the Wittenberg convent. There he was set to teach the
Dialectic and Physics of Aristotle, — a hateful task, — but
whether .to the monks in the convent or in the University
EARLY LIFE AT WITTENBERG 207
it is impossible to say. All the while Staupitz urged him
to study theology in order to teach it. it" was then that
Luther began his systematic study of Augustine. He also
began to preach: His first sermons were delivered in an
old chapel, 30 feet long and 20 feet wide, built of wood
plastered over with clay. He preached to the monks.
Dr. Pollich, the Eector, went sometimes to hear him, and
spoke to the Elector of the young monk with piercing eyes
and strange fancies in his head.
His work was interrupted by a command to go to Eome
on business of his Order (autumn 1511). His selection
was a great honour, and Luther felt it to be so ; but it
may be questioned whether he did not think more of
the fact that he would visit the Holy City as a devout
pilgrim, and be able to avail himself of the spiritual
privileges which he believed were to be found there.
When he got to the end of his journey and first caught a
glimpse of the city, he raised his hands in an ecstasy, ex-
claiming, " I greet thee, thou Holy Eome, thrice holy from
the blood of the martyrs."
When his official work was done he set about seeing
the Holy City with the devotion of a pilgrim. He visited
all the famous shrines, especially those to which Indulg-
ences were attached. He listened reverently . to all the
accounts given, of the relics which were exhibited to
the pilgrims, and believed in all the tales told him. He
thought that if his parents had been dead he could have
assured them against Purgatory by saying Masses in certain
chapels. Only once, it is said, his soul showed revolt. He
was slowly cUmbing on his knees the Scala Santa (really a
mediaeval staircase), said to have been the stone steps
leading up to Pilate's house in Jerusalem, once trodden by
the feet of our Lord ; when half-way up the thought came
into his mind, The Just shall live ly his faith ; he stood up-
right and walked slowly down. He saw, as thousands
of pious German pilgrims had done before his time, the j
moral corruptions which disgraced the Holy City — infidel |
priests who scoffed at the sacred mysteries they performed,
208 LUTHER TO THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
and princes of the Church who lived in open sia. He saw
and loathed the moral degradation, and the scenes imprinted
themselves on his memory ; but his home and cloister
training enabled him, for the time being, in spite of the
loathing, to revel in the memorials of the old heroic
martyrs, and to look on their relics as storehouses of divine
grace. In later days it was the memories of the vices of
the Eoman Court that helped him to harden his heart
against the sentiment which surrounded the Holy City.
When Luther returned to Wittenberg in the early
summer of 1512, his Vicar-General sent him to Erfurt to
complete his training for the doctorate ia theology. He
graduated as Doctor of the Holy Scripture, took the
Wittenberg Doctor's oath to defend the evangelical truth
vigorously (viriliter), was made a member of the Witten-
berg Senate, and three weeks later suceeeded Staupitz as
Professor of Theology.
Luther was still a genuine monk, with no doubt of his
vocation. He became sub-prior of the Wittenberg convent
in 1512, and' was made the District Vicar over the eleven
convents in Meissen and Thuringia in 1515. But that side
of his life may be passed over. It is his theological work
as professor in Wittenberg University that is important for
his career as a reformer.
§ 5. Luther's early Lectures in Theology.
From the beginning his lectures on theology differed
from those ordinarily given, but not because he had any
theological opinions at variance with those of his old
teachers at Erfurt. No one attributed any sort of heretical
views to the young Wittenberg professor. His mind was
intensely practical, and he believed that theology might be
made useful to guide men to find the grace of God and to
tell them how, having acquired through trust a sense of
fellowship with God, they could persevere in a life of
joyous obedience to God and His commandments. The
Scholastic theologians of Erfurt and elsewhere did not
Luther's theological lectures 209
look on theology as a practical discipline of this kind.
Luther thought that theology ought to discuss such
matters, and he knew that his main interest in theology
lay on this practical side. Besides, as he has told us,
he regarded himself as specially set apart to lecture on
the Holy Scriptures. So, like John Colet, he began by
expounding the Epistles of St. Paul and the Psalms.
Luther never knew much Hebrew, and he used the
Vulgate in his prelections. He had a huge widely printed
volume on his desk, and wrote out the heads of his lectures
between the printed lines. Some of the pages still survive
in the Wolfenbiittel Library, and can be studied.^
He made some use of the commentaries of Nicholas de
Lyra, but got most assistance from passages in Augustine,
Bernard, and Gerson,^ which dealt with practical religion,'
* The Wolfenbiittel Library contains the Psalter (Vulgate) used by
Luther in lecturing on the Psalms. The book was printed at Wittenberg
in 1613 by John Gronenberg, and contains Luther's notes writteii on the
margin and between the printed lines.
' Luther's indebtedness to Gerson (Jean Charlier, bom in 1363 at Gerson,
a hamlet near Kethel in the Ardennes, believed by some to be the author of
the De Imitatione Christi) has not been sufiBciently noticed. It may be
partially estimated by Luther's own statement that most experimental
divines, including Augustine, when dealing with the struggle of the
awakened soul, lay most stress on that part of the conflict which comes
from temptations of the flesh ; Gerson confines himself to those which
are purely spiritual. Luther, during his soul-anguish in the convent, was
a young monk who had lived a humanly stainless life, sans peur et satis
reproche ; Augustine, a middlo-aged professor of rhetoric, had been living
'or years in a state of sinful concubinage.
' It is commonly said that Luther made use of the mystical passages
found in Ihese and other authors ; but mystical is a very ambiguous word.
It is continually used to express personal or individual piety in general ; or
this personal religion as opposed to that religious life which is consciously
lived within the fellowship of men called the Church, provided with the
external means of grace. These are, however, very loose uses of the word.
The fundamental problem, even in Christian Mysticism, appears to me to be
how to bridge the gulf between the creature and the Creator, while the
problem in Reformation theology is how to span the chasm between the
sinful man and the righteous God. Hence in mysticism the tendency is
always to regard sin as imperfection, while in the Reformation theology sin
is always the power of evil and invariably includes the thought of guilt.
Luther was no mystic in the sense of desiring to be lost in God : he wished
to be saved through Christ.
14*
210 LUTHER TO THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
His lectures were experimental. He started with the fact
of man's sin, the possibility of reaching a sense of pardon
and of fellowship with God through trust in His promises.
From the beginning we find in the germ what grew to be
the main thoughts in the later Lutheran theology. Men
are redeemed apart from any merits of their own ; God's
grace is really His mercy revealed in the mission and work
of Christ ; it has to do with the forgiveness of sins, and is
the fulfilment of His promises ; man's faith is trust in the
historical work of Christ and in the verity of God. These
thoughts were for the most part all expressed in the formal
language of the Scholastic Theology of the day. They grew
in clearness, and took shape in a series of propositions
which formed the common basis of his teaching : man wins
pardon through the free grace of God : when man lays
hold on God's promise of pardon he becomes a new
creature ; this sense of pardon is the beginning of a
new life of sanctification ; the life of faith is Christianity
on its inward side ; the contrast between the law and the
gospel is something fundamental : there is a real distinc-
tion between the outward and visible Church and the ideal
Church, which latter is to be described by its spiritual and
moral relations to God after the manner of Augustine.
All these thoughts simply pushed aside the ordinary
theology as taught in the schools without staying to
criticise it.
In the years 1515 and 1516, which bear traces of
a more thoroughgoing ' study of Augustine and of the
German mediaeval Mystics, Luther began to find that
he could not express the thoughts he desired to convey
in the ordinary language of Scholastic Theology, and
that its phrases suggested ideas other than those he
wished to set forth. He tried to find another set of
expressions. It is characteristic of Luther's conservatism,
that in theological phraseology, as afterwards in eccle-
siastical institutions and ceremonies, he preferred to retain
what had been in use provided only he could put his
own evangeUcal meaning into it in a not too arbitrary
LUTHER'S THEOLOGICAL LECTURES 211
way.^ Having found that the Scholastic phraseology
did not always suit his purpose, he turned to the popular
mystical authors, and discovered there a rich store of
phrq,ses in vfhich he could express his ideas of the im-
perfection of man towards what is good. Along with
this change in language, and related to it, we find evi-
dence that Luther was beginning to think less highly
of the monastic life with its external renunciations. The
thought of predestination, meaning by that not an abstract
metaphysical category, but the conception that the whole
believer's life, and what it involved, depended in the
last resort on God and not on man, came more and more
into the foreground. Still there does not seem any
disposition to criticise or to repudiate the current theology
of the day.
The earliest traces of conscious opposition appeared
about the middle of 1516, and characteristically on the
practical and not on the speculative side of theology. They
began in a sermon on Indulgences, preached in July 1516.
Once begun, the breach widened until Luther could contrast
" our theology " ^ (the theology taught by Luther and his
colleagues at Wittenberg) with what was taught elsewhere,
and notably at Erfurt. The former represented Augustine
and the Holy Scriptures, and the latter was founded on
Aristotle. In September 1517 he raised the standard of
theological revolt, and wrote directly against the " Scholastic
Theology " ; he declared that it was Pelagian at heart, and
buried out of sight the Augustinian doctrines of grace ; he
lamented the fact that it neglected to teach the supreme
value of faith and of inward righteousness ; that it en-
' Of course, Luther's intense individuality appeared in his language from
the first. Take as an example a note on Ps. Ixxxiv. 4 : "As the meadow
is to the cow, the house to the man, the nest to the bird, the rock to the
chamois, and the stream to the fish, so is the Holy Scripture to the believiu"
soul."
' The expression is interesting, because it shows that Luther's influence
had made at least two of his colleagues change their views. Nicholas
Amsdorf and Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt had come to Wittenberg to
teach Scholastic Theology, and Amsdorf had made a great name for himself
as an exponent of the older type of that theology.
212 LUTHER TO THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
couraged men to seek escape from what was due for sin by
means of Indulgences, instead of exhorting them to practise
the inward repentance which belongs to every genuine
Christian life.
It was at this interesting stage of his own religious
development that Luther felt himself forced to oppose
publicly the sale of Indulgences in Germany.
By the year 1517, Luther had become a power in
Wittenberg both as a preacher and as a teacher. He
had become the preacher in the town church, from whose
pulpit he delivered many sermons every week, taking in-
finite pains to make himself understood by the "raw
Saxons." He became a great preacher, and, like all great
preachers, he denounced prevalent sins, and bewailed the
low standard of morals set before the people by the higher
ecclesiastical authorities ; he said that rehgion was not an
easy thing ; that it did not consist in the decent perform-
ance of external ceremonies ; that the sense of sin, the
experience of the grace of God, and the fear of God and
. the overcoming of that fear through the love of God, were
aU contmuous experiences.
His exegetical lectures seemed like a rediscovery of
the Holy Scriptures. Grave burghers of Wittenberg
matriculated as students in order to hear them. The
fame of the lecturer spread, and students from all parts
of Germany crowded to the small remote University, until
the Elector became proud of his seat of learning and of
the man who had made it prosper.
Such a man could not keep silent when he saw what
he believed to be a grave source of moral evil approaching
the people whose souls God had given him in charge ; and
this is how Luther came to be a Eeformer.
Up to this time he had been an obedient monk, doing
diligently the work given him, highly esteemed by his
superiors, fulfilling the expectations of his Vicar-General,
and recognised by all as a quiet and eminently pious man.
He had a strong, simple character, with nothing of the
quixotic about him. Of course be saw the degradation of
THE INDULGENCE-SELLER 213
much of the religious life of the times, and had attended
at least one meeting where those present discussed plans of
reformation. He had then (at Leitzkau in 1512) declared
that every true reformation must begin with individual
men, that it must reveal itself in a regenerate heart aflame
with faith kindled by the preaching of a pure gospel.
§ 6. The Indulgence-seller.
What drew Luther from his retirement was an Indul-
gence proclaimed by Pope Leo x., farmed by Albert of
Brandenburg, the Archbishop of Mainz, and preached by
John Tetzel, a Dominican monk, who had been commis-
sioned by Albert to sell for him the Papal Letters, as the
Indulgence tickets were called. It had been announced
that the money raised by the sales would be used to build
the Basilica of St. Peter to be a tomb worthy of the great
Apostle, who rested, it was said, in a Eoman grave.
The Indulgence-seller had usually a magnificent recep-
tion when he entered a German town. Frederick Mecum
(Myconius), who was an eye-witness, thus describes the en-
trance of Tetzel into the town of Annaberg in Ducal Saxony :
" When the Commissary or Indulgence-seller approached
the town, the Bull (proclaiming the Indulgence) was carried
before him on a cloth pf velvet and gold, and all the priests
and monks, the town council, the schoolmasters and their
scholars, and all the men and women went out to meet him
with banners and candles and songs, forming a great pro-
cession ; then all the bells ringing and all the organs playing,
they accompanied him to the principal church ; a red cross
was set up in the midst of the church, and the Pope's banner
was displayed ; in short, one might think they were receiving
God Himself."
The Commissary then preached a sermon extolling the
Indulgence, declaring that " the gate of heaven was open,"
and that the sales would begin.
Many German princes had no great love for the
Indulgence-sellers, and Frederick, the Elector of Saxony,
214 LUTHER TO THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
had prohibited Tetzel from entering his territories. But
the lands of Ernestine (Electoral) and Albertine (Ducal)
Saxony were so mixed up that it was easy for the Com-
missary to command the ' whole population of Electoral
Saxony without actually crossing the frontier. The " Eed
Cross " had been set up in Zerbst in Ducal Saxony a few
miles to the west, and at Jiiterbogk in the territory of
Magdeburg a few miles to the east of Wittenberg, and
people had gone from the town to buy the Indulgence.
Luther believed that the sales were injurious to the moral
and religious life of his townsmen ; the reports of the
sermons and addresses of the Indulgence-seller which
reached him appeared to contain what he believed to be
both lies and blasphemies. He secured a copy of the
letter of recommendation given by the Archbishop to his
Commissary, and his indignation grew stronger. Still it
was only after much hesitation, after many of his friends
had urged him to interfere, and in deep distress of mind,
that he resolved to protest. "When he had determined to
do something he went about the matter with a mixture of
caution and courage which were characteristic of the man.
The Church of All Saints (the Castle Church) in
Wittenberg had always been intimately connected with
the University ; its prebendaries were professors ; its doors
were used as a board on which to publish important
academic documents ; and notices of public academic " dis-
putations," common enough at the time, had frequently
appeared there. The day of the year which drew the
largest concourse of townsmen and strangers to the church
was All Saints' Day, the first of November. It was the
anniversary of the consecration of the building, and was
commemorated by a prolonged series of services. The Elector
Frederick was a great collector of relics, and had stored
his collection in the church.^ He had also procured an
' An illustrated catalogue of Frederick's collection of relics was prepared
by Lucas Cranaoh, and published under the title, Witienberger HeUig-
thwmsbucli vom Jahre 1509. It has been reprinted by G. Hirth of Munich in
his Lieihaber-BibliotTuk oiler Ulustraioren in FacsimileSeproduktion, No. vi.
ltjther's protest 215
Indulgence to benefit all who came to attend the anni-
versary services and look at the relics.
On All Saints' Day, Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses
to the door of the church. It was a strictly academic pro-
ceeding. The Professor of Theology in Wittenberg, wishing
to elucidate the truth, offered to discuss, either by speech
or by writing, the matter of Indulgences.^ He put forth
ninety-five propositions or heads of discussion which he
proposed to maintain. Academic etiquette was strictly
preserved; the subject, judged by the numberless books
which had been written on it, and the variety of opinions
expressed, was eminently suitable for debate ; the Theses
were offered as subjects of debate ; and the author, accord-
ing to the usage of the time in such cases, was not sup-
posed to be definitely committed to the opinions expressed.
The Theses, however, differed from most programmes
of academic discussions in this, that everyone wanted to
read them. A duplicate was made in German. Copies
of the Latin original and the translation were sent to the
University printing-house, and the presses could not throw
them off fast enough to meet the demand which came from
all parts of Germany.
' "Amore pt studio elucidandse veritatis hsec snbsoripta disputabuntur
Wittenbergse, praesidente R. P. Martino Luttber, artium et sacrae theologiae
magistro eiusdemque ibidem lectore ordinario. Quare petit, ut qui non
possunt verbis prsesentes iiobisoum disceptare, agant id literis absentes. In
■ Bomine Domini nostri Hiesu Chriati. Amen."
CHAPTER 11.
PROM THE BEGINNING OF THE INDULGENCE
CONTROVERSY TO THE DIET OF WORMS.^
§ 1. The Theory and Practice of Indvlgeruxs in the
Sixteenth Century.
The practice of Indulgences pervaded the whole penitential
system of the later mediaeval Chiu'ch, and had done so
from the beginning of the thirteenth century. Its begin-
nings go back a thousand years before Luther's time.
In the ancient Church, lapse into serious sin involved
separation from the Christian fellowship, and readmission to
communion was only to be had by pubHc confession made in
presence of the whole congregation, and by the manifestation
of a true repentance in performing certain satisfactions,' I
' SotTRCES : Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologice, Supplementum Tertwe
Partis, Qusestiones xxv.-xxvii. ; Alexander of Hales, Summa Theologies, iv.;
Bona Ventura, Opera Omnia; In Lihrum Quartum SenterUiarum, dist. xx. ;
vol. V. 264 ff. (Moguntise, 1609) ; Denzinger, Enchiridvm Symholoram el
Definitionum, quce de rebus fidei et morum a ameUiis cecumenicis et summis
powtifidbus emanarunt, 9th ed. (Wiirzburg, 1900), p. 175 ; Kohler, Docii-
menta zum Ablassstreit von 1517 (Tubingen, 1902).
Later Books: F. Beringer (Soc. Jes.), Der Ablass, sein Wesen und
Oebrauch, 12th ed. (Paderborn, 1898) ; Bouvier, Treatise on Indulgences
(London, 1848) ; Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgence in
the Latin Church, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1896) ; Brieger, Dtt£ Wesen des
Ablasses am Ausgange des Mittelalters (Leipzig, 1897) ; Harnack, History
of Dogma, vi. pp. 243-270; Gotz, "Studien zur Gesohichte des Buss-
sacraments" in Zeitschrift filr Kirchengeschichte, xv. 821 ff., xvi. 641 ff. ;
Schneider, Der Ablass (1881) ; Cambridge Modern History, II. iv.
' The use of the word satisfaction to denote an outward sign of sorrow for
sin which was supposed to be well-pleasing to God and to affoi-d reasonable
ground for the congregation restoring a lapsed member, is very old — much
older than the use of the woTd to denote the work of Christ. It is found as
early as the time of Tertullian and Cyprian.
210
J INDULGENCES 217
such as the manumission of slaves, prolonged fasting
extensive almsgiving, etc. These satisfactions were the
open signs of heartfelt sorrow, and were regarded as at
ouce well-pleasing to God and evidence to the Christian
community that the penitent had true repentance, and
might be received back again into their midst. The con-
fession was made to the whole congregation ; the amount of
satisfaction deemed necessary was estimated by the con-
gregation, and readmission was also dependent on the will
of the whole congregation. It often happened that these
satisfactions were mitigated or exchanged for others. The
penitent might fall sick, and the fasting which had been
prescribed could not be insisted upon without danger of
death ; in such a case the external sign of sorrow which
had been demanded might be exchanged for another. Or
it might happen that the community became convinced of
the sincerity of the repentance without insisting that the
whole of the prescribed satisfaction need be performed.^
These exchanges and mitigations of satisfactions were the
small beginnings of the later syglejoi. of Indulgences.
In course of time~the public confession of sins made
to the whole congregation was exchanged for a private
confession made to the priest, and instead of the public
satisfaction imposed by the. whole congregation, it was left
to the priest to enjoin a satisfaction or external sign of
' TertuUian was no believer in any indulgence shown to penitent sinners,
and his account of the way in wliich penitents appeared before the congrega-
tion to ask for a remission or mitigation of the ecclesiastical sentence pro-
nounced against them is doubtless a caricature, but it may be taken as a not
unfair description of what must have frequently taken place: "You intro-
duce into the Church the penitent adulterer for the purpose of melting the
brotherhood by his supplications. You lead him into the midst, clad in
sackcloth, covered with ashes, a compound of disgrace and horror. He
prostrates himself before the widows, before the elders, suing for the tears
of all ; he seizes the edges of their garments, he clasps their knees, he kisses
the prints of their feet. Meanwhile you harangue the people and excite
their pity for the sad lot of the penitent. Good pastor, blessed father that
you are, you describe the coming back of your goat in recounting the
parable of the lost sheep. And in case your ewe lamb may take another
leap out of the fold . . . you fill all the rest of the flock with apprehension
at the very moment of granting indulgence." — {De Pudicitia, 13.)
218 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
sorrow which he believed was appropriate to the sin
committed and confessed. The substitution of a private
confession to the priest for a public confession made to the
whole congregation, enlarged_the circle of sias^onfessfid.
The secret sins of the heart whose presence could be elicited
by the questions of the confessor were added to the open
sins seen of men. The circle of satisfactions was also
widened in a corresponding fashion.
. When the imposition of satisfactions was left in the
hands of the priest, it was felt necessary to provide some
check_agaiMt_the arbitrariness which could not fail to
result. So books were published containing Jis^_of_sins
with the corresponding appropriate ,.saiis;5asefems which
ought to be demanded from the penitents. If it be re-
membered that some of the sins mentioned were very
heinous (murders, incests, outrages of all kinds), it is not
surprising that the appropriate satisfactions or penances, as
they came to be called, were very severe in some cases, and
extended over a course of years. From the seventh cen-
tury there arose a practice of coramutiag. s atisfactions o r
penances. A penance of several years' practice of fasting
might be commuted into saying so many prayers or j)salms,
into giving a definite amount of alms, or even into a money
fine — and in this last case the analogy of the Wehrgeld
of the Germanic tribal codes was frequently followed.^
These customary commutations were frequently inserted in
the Penitentiaries or^books of discipline. This new custom
commonly took the form that the penitent, who visited a
certain church on a prescribed day and gave a contribution
to its funds, had the penance, which had been imposed
upon him by the priest in the ordinary course of discipline,
shortened b/ one-seventh, one-third, one-half, as the case
might be. This was in every case the commutation or
relaxation of the penance or outward sign of sorrow which
' In one book of discipline a man who has comniitted Certain sins is
ordered either to go on pilgrimage for ten years, or to live on bread and
water for two years, or to pay 12s. a year. Detailed information may be
found in Schmitz, Die Busshucher tmd die Bwisdisziplin der Kirche.
INDULGENCES 219
had been imposed according to the regulations of the
J Church, laid down in the Penitentiaries (relaxatio de injunda
pcenitentia). This was the real origin of Indulgences, and
these earliest examples were invariably a relaxation of
'.ecclesiastical penalties which had been imposed according
to the regular custom in cases of discipline. It will be
fieen that Luther expressly excluded this kind of Indulgence
, from his dttack. He declared that what the Church had
\ I a right to impose, it had a right to relax. It was at first
■ ' believed that this right to relax or commute imposed
penances was in the hands of the priests who had charge
of the discipline of the members of the Church ; but the
abuses of the system by the priests ended by placing the
povf'er to grant Indulgences in the hands of the bishops,
and they used the money procured in building many Of the
great mediaeval cathedrals. Episcopal abuse of Indulgences
led to their being reserved for the Popes.
Three conceptions, all of which belong to the begin-
ning of the thirteenth century, combined to effect a
great change on this old and simple idea of Indulgences.
These were — (1) the formulation of the thought of a
treasury of merits (thesauriis meritorum) ; (2) the change
of the institution into the Sacrament of Penance ; and j
(3) the distinction between attrition and contrition in the
thought of the kind of sorrow God demands from a real
penitent.
The conception of a storehouse of merits (thesaurus
meritorum or indulgentiarum) was first formulated by
Alexander of Hales ^ in the, thirteenth century, and his
ideas were accepted, enlarged, and made more precise by
succeeding theologians.^ Starting with the existing practice
in the Church that some penances (such as pilgrimages)
might be vicariously performed, and bringing together
the several thoughts that the faithful are members of one
body, that the good deeds of each of the members are
the common property of all, and therefore that the more
' Srnnma, iv. 23,
^ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologix, iii., Supplementum, Quaes, xxv. 1,
220 THE INDULaENCE CONTROVERSY
sinful can benefit by the good deeds of their more saintly
brethren, and" that the sacrifice of Christ was sufficient to
wipe out the sins of all, theologians gradually formulated
the doctrine that there was a common storehouse which
contained the goadjieedsoj living men and women, of
the saints in heaven and the inexhaustible merits of
Christ, and that all these merits accumulated there had
been placed under the charge pfjthe Pope, and could be
dispensed by him to the faithful. The doctrine was not
very precisely~defined by the beginning of the sixteenth
century, but it was generally believed in, taught, and
accepted. It went to increase the vague sense of super-
natural, spiritual powers attached to the person of the
Bishop of Eome. It had one important consequence on
the doctrine of Indulgences. They might be the pay-|
ment out of this treasury of an absolute equivalent for the'
satisfaction due by the penitent for his sins ; they were'
noi longer merely the substitution of one form of penancq
for another, or the relaxation of a penance enjoined.
The institution of Penance contained within it the four^
practices of Sorrow for the sins committed (contritio) ; the
Confession of these sins to the priest ; Satisfaction, or the
due manifestation of sorrow in the ways prescribed by
the Church through the command of the confessor ; and the
Pardon (alsolutio) pronounced by the priest in God's name.
The pardon followed the satisfaction. But when the
institution became the Sacrament of Penance, the order
was changed : absolution followed confession and came
before satisfaction, which it had formerly followed. Satis-
factionlost jtsj)ld meaning. It was no longer the outward
sign of sorrow aiid the liecessary precedent of pardon or
absolution. According to the new theory, the absolution
which immediately followed confession had the efifeot of
removing the whole guilt of the sins confessed, and with
the guilt the whole of the eternal punishment due. This
cancelling of guilt and of eternal punishment did not,
however, forthwith open the gates of heaven to the par-
doned sinner. It was felt that the justice of God could
INDULGENCES 221
not permit the baptized sinner to escape from all punish-
ment whatever. Heiiice it \ragTiaimhat although eternal
punishment had disappeared with the absolution, there
remained temporal punishment due for the sins, and that
heaven could not be entered until this temporal punish-
ment had been endured.^ Temporal punishments might
be of two kinds — those endured in this life, or those
suffered in a place of punishment after death. The pen-
' ance imposed by the priest, the satisfaction, now became
I the temporal punishment due for sins committed. If the
priest had imposed the due amount, and if the penitent
■ was able to perform all that had been imposed, the sins
were expiated. But if the priest had imposed less than
the justice of God actually demanded, then these temporal
pains had to be completed in Purgatory. This gave rise
to great uncertaihty ; for who could feeFassured that the
priest had calculated rightly, and had imposed satisfactions
or temporal penalties which were of the precise amount
demanded by the justice of God? Hence the pains of
Purgatory threateneji every man. It was here that the
new idea of Indulgences came in to aid the faithful by
securing him against the pains of Purgatory, which were
not included in the absolution obtained in the Sacrament
of Penance. Indulgences in the sense of relaxations of
imposed penances went into the background, and the
really valuable Indul gence w as one which, because of the
merits transferred from the storehouse of merits, was an
equivalent in God's sight for the temporal punishments
due for sins. Thus, in the opinion of Alexander of Hales,
of Bona Ventura,^ and, above all, of Thomas Aquinas, the real
• "Du spriohst 'So ich am letsten in todes not,
Ain yeder priester mioh zu absolviren not ' :
Von Schuld ist war, noeh nitt von pein, so du bist tod,
Ja fiir ain stand in fegfeiir dort.
Gabat du des Kaysers giite."
— (Wackernagel, Das deutsche Kirehenlied, etc. li. 1068.)
" Bonaventura, In Librum Quartuin Sententiarum, Dist. xx. Qiusst. 5.
Alexander of Hales, Swinma, iv. Quasst. 59 ; Thomas Aquiuas, Summa, iii.,
Suppl. Qusest. i. 2.
222 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
value of Indulgences was that they procured the remission
of penalties due after absolution, whether these penalties
were penances imposed by the priest or not ; and when
Ithe uncertainty of the imposed penalties is remembered,
the most valuable of all Indulgences were those which had
regard to the unimposed penalties ; the priest might make
a mistake, but God did not blunder.
While Indijlgenees- were always connected with satis-
factions, and changed with the changes in the meaning of
the latter term, they were not _the_ less iafluenced_bj_a^
distinction which came to be drawn between attrition and
contrition, and by the application of the distinction,, to the
theory of the Sacrament of Penance. During the earlier
Middle Ages and down to the thirteenth century, it was
always held that contrition^ (sotiow prompted by love) was
the one thing taken into account by God in pardoning the
sinner. The theologians of the thirteenth century, how-
ever, began to draw a distinction between this, godly-sorrow
and a certain amount of sorrow which might_arise_from_a
variety of causes of a less worthy nature, and especially-
from servile fear. This was called attrition; and it was
held that this attrition, though of itself too . imperfect to
win the pardon of God, might become perffifitedr-throtif?'
the confession heard by the priest, and in the sacramental
absolution pronounced by_him. Very naturally, though
perhaps illogically, it was believed that an imperfect sorrow,
though sufficient to procure absolution, and, tTierefore, the
blotting out of eternal punishment, merited more te mporal _
punishment than if it had been sorrow of_ a ^godly sort.
But it was these tempoial— penalties (including the pains
of Purgatory) that Indulgences^ provided for. Hence,
Indulgences appealed, more strongly to the indifferent
Christian, who knew that he had sinned, and at the same
time felt that his sorrow was not the effect of his Jove to
God. He knew that his sins deserved some punishment.
His conscience, however weak, told him that he could not
sin with perfect impunity, and that something more was
needed than his perfunctory confession to a priest. He
INDULGENCES 223
felt that he must do something- — fast, or go on a pilgrimage,
or purchase an Indulgence. It was at this point that the
Church intervened to show him how his poor performance
could be transformed by the power of the Church and its
treasury of merits into something so great that the penal-
ties of Purgatory could be actually evaded. His cheap
jorrow, his careless confession, need not trouble him.
j Hence, for the ordinary indifferent Christian, Attrition,
'; Confession, and Indulgence became the three heads of the
l' scheme of the Church for his salvation. The one thing
"^that satisfied his conscience was the burdensome thing
he had to do, and that was to procure an Indulgence
— a matter made increasingly easy for him as time
went on.
It must not be supposed that this doctrine of Attrition,
and its evident effect in deadening the conscience and in
lowering the standard of moraUty, had the undivided sup-
port of the theologians of the later Middle Ages, but it
was the doctrine taught by most of the Scotist theologians,
who took the lead in theological thinking during these
times. It was set forth in its most extravagant form
by such a representative man as John of Paltz in Erfurt ;
it was preached by the pardon-sellers ; it was eagerly
welcomed by indifferent Christians, who desired to escape
the penalties of sin without abandoning its enjoyments ;
it exalted the power of the priesthood ; and it was
specially valuable in securing good sales of Indulgences,
and therefore in increasing the papal revenues. It
lay at the basis of the whole theory and practice of
Indulgences, which confronted Luther when he issued his
Theses.
History shows us that gross abuses had always gathered
round the practice of Indulgences, even in their earlier and
simpler forms. The priests had abused the system, and
the power of issuing Indulgences had been taken from
them and confined to the bishops. The bishops, in turn,
had abused the privilege, and the Popes had gradually
assumed that the power to grant an Indulgence belonged
224 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
to the Bishop of Eome exclusively, or to those to whom
he might delegate it; and this assumption seemed both
reasonable and salutary. The power was at first sparingly
used. It is true that Pope Urban ii., in 1095, promised
to the Crusaders an Indulgence such as had never before
been heard of — a complete remission of all imposed
canonical penances; but it was not until the thirteenth
and fourteen centuries that Indulgences, now doubly danger-
ous to the moral life from the new theories which had
arisen, were lavished even more unsparingly than in the
days when any bishop had power to grant them. From
the beginning of the fourteenth century they were given to
raise recruits for papal wars. They were lavished on the
religious Orders, either for the benefit of the members or
for the purpose of attracting strangers and their gifts to
their churches. They were bestowed on cathedrals and
other churches, or on individual altars in churches, and had
the effect of endowments. They were joined to special
collections of relics, to be earned by the faithful who
visited the shrines. They were given to hospitals, and for
the upkeep of bridges and of roads. Wherever they are
met with in the later Middle Ages, and it would be diffi-
cult to say where they are not to be found, they are seen
to be associated with sordid money - getting, and, as
Luther remarked in an early sermon on the subject, they
were a very grievous instrument placed in the hand of
avarice.
The practice of granting Indulgences was universally
prevalent and was universally accepted ; but it was not easy
to give an explanation of the system, in the sense of show-
ing that it was an essential element in Christian discipline.
No mediaeval theologian attempted to do any such thing.
Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas, the two great School-
men who did more than any others to provide a theological
basis for the system, tell us quite frankly that it is their
business to accept the fact that Indulgences do exist as
part of the penitentiary discipline of the Church, and,
accepting it, they thought themselves bound to construct a
INDULGENCES 225
reasonable theory.^ The practice altered, and new theories
were needed to explain the variations. It is needless to
say that these explanations did not always agree ; and
that there were very great differences of opinion about
what an Indulgence really effected for the man who
bought it.
Of aU these disputed questions the most important
was : Did an Indulgence give remission for the guilt of sin,
or only for certain penalties which followed the sinful
deed ? This is a question about which modern Eomanists
are extremely sensitive.
The universal answer given by all defenders of Indul-
gences who have written on the subject since the Council
of Trent, is that guilt (culpa) and eternal punishment
{pcencB eternce) are dealt with in the Sacrament of Penance,
and that Indulgences relate only to temporal punishments,
including under that designation the pains of Purgatory.
This modern opinion is confirmed by the most eminent
authorities of the mediaeval Church. It has been accepted
in the description of the theory of Indulgences given
above, since it has been said that the principal use of
Indulgences was to secui-e against Purgatory. But these
statements do not exhaust the question. Mediaeval theo-
logy did not create Indulgences, it only followed and tried
to justify the practices of the Pope and of the Eoman
Curia, — a rather difficult task. The question still remains
whether some of the Papal Bulls promulgating Indulgences
did not promise the removal of guilt as well as security
against temporal punishments. If these be examined,
spurious Bulls being set aside, it will be found that many
of them make no mention of the need of previous con-
fession and of priestly absolution ; that one or two
expressly make mention of a remission of guilt as well as
of penalty; and that many (especially those which pro-
' Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologice, iii., Supplem. Qusestio xxv. 1:
"Ecolesia universalis non potest errare . . . eocle^ia universalis indulgentias
approbat et faeit. Ergo indulgentije aliijuid valeut . . . quia impium esset
dieere quod Ei;clesia aUquid vani iaceret."
IS*
226 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
claim a Jubilee Indulgence) use language which inevitably
led intelligent laymen like Dante to believe that the Popes
did proclaim the remission of guilt as well as of penalty.
Of course, it may be said that in those days the distinction
between guilt {culpa) and penalty (poena) had not been very
exactly defined, and that the phrase remission of sins was
used to denote both remission of guilt and remission of
penalty; still it is difficult to withstand the conclusion
that, even in theory, Indulgences had been declared to be
efficacious for the removal of the guilt of sin in the pre-
sence of God.
These questions of the theological meaning of an
Indulgence, though necessary to understand the whole
situation, had after all little to do with Luther's action.
He approached the whole matter from the side of the
practical effect of the proclamation of an Indulgence on
the minds of common men who knew nothing of refined
theological distinctions ; and the evidence that the common
people did generally believe that an Indulgence did remove
the guUt of siQ is overwhelming. Contemporary chroniclers
are to be found who declare that Indulgences given to
Crusaders remit the guilt as well as the punishment ;
contemporary preachers assert that plenary Indulgences
remit guUt, and justify their opinion by declaring that
such Indulgences were supposed to contain within them
the Sacrament of Penance. The popular guide-books
written for pilgrims to Eome and Compostella spread the
popular idea that Indulgences acquired by such pilgrimages
do remit guilt as well as penalty. The popular belief was
so thoroughly acknowledged, that even Councils had to
throw the blame for it on the pardon-sellers, or, like the
Council of Constance, impeached the Pope and compelled
him to confess that he had granted Indulgences for the
remission of guilt as well as of penalty. This widespread
popular belief of itself justified Luther in calling attention
to this side of the matter.
Moreover, it is well to see what the theory of the
most respected theologians actually meant when looked at
INDULGENCES 227
practically. Since the formulation of the Sacrament of
Penance, the theory had been that all guilt of sin and
all eternal punishment were remitted in the priestly abso-
lution which followed the confession of the penitent. The
Sacrament of Penance had abolished guilt and Hell. But
there remained the actual sins to be punished, because the
justice of God demanded it, and this was done in the
temporal pains of Purgatory. The " common man," if he
thought at all about it, may be excused if he considered
that guilt and Hell, taken away by the one hand, were
restored by the other. There remained for him the sense
that God's justice demanded some punishment for the sins
he had committed ; and if this was not guilt according to
theological definition, it was probably all that he could
attain to. He was taught and beheved that punishment
awaited him for these actual sins of his ; and a punishment
which might last thousands of years in Purgatory was not
very different from an eternal pimishment in his eyes.
The Indulgence came to him filled as he was with these
vague thoughts, and offered him a sure way of easing his
conscience and avoiding the punishment he knew he
deserved. He had only to pay the price of a Papal Ticket,
perform the canonical good deed required, whatever it
might be, and he was assured that his punishment was
remitted, and God's justice satisfied. This may not involve
the thought of the remission of guilt in the theological
sense of the word, but it certainly misled the moral
instincts of the "common man" about as much as if it
did. It is not surprising that the common people made
the theological mistake, if mistake it was, and saw in every
plenary Indulgence the promise of the remission of guilt
as well as of penalty,^ for with them remission of guilt
and quieting of conscience were one and the same thing.
It was this practical moral effect of Indulgences, and not
the theological explanation of the theory, which stirred
Luther to make his protest.
' Cf. the hymn, "Der guldin Ablass," of the fifteenth century, in
Waokemagel, ii. 283-284.
228 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
§ 2. Luther's Theses}
Luther's Theses are singularly unlike what might have
been expected from a Professor of Theology. They lack
theological definition, and contain many repetitions which
might have been easily avoided. They are simply ninety-
five sturdy strokes struck at a great ecclesiastical abuse
which was seariug the consciences of many. They look
like the utterances of a man who was in close touch with
the people ; who had been greatly shocked at reports
brought to him of what the pardon-sellers had said ; who
had read a good many of the theological explanations of
the practice of Indulgence, and had noted down a few
things which he desired to contradict. They read as if
they were meant for laymen, and were addressed to their
common sense of spiritual things. They are plain and
easily understood, and keep within the field of simple
religion and plain moral truths.
The Theses appealed irresistibly to all those who had
been brought up in the simple evangelical faith which
distinguished the quiet home life of so many German
families, and who had not forsaken it. They also appealed
to all who had begun to adopt that secular or non-ecclesi-
astical piety which, we have seen, had been spreading
quietly but rapidly throughout Germany at the close of
the Middle Ages. These two forces, both religious, gathered
round Luther. The effect of the Theses was almost imme-
•* SoijKOES : Kohler, Luthers 95 Theses samt seinen BesoltUionen soteie
den Gegenschriften von WimpitiA-Tei-M, EcTc, und Prierias und den ArUworUm
I/aOiers (forcm/ (Leipzig, 1903); Emil Reich, Select Documents illustrating
Medimval wnd Modem History (Loudon, 1905).
Latek Books : J. E. Kapp, Sammlung einiger zum pdpstUchen Ailass,
ilberhaupt . . . abcr zu der . . . zwischen Martin Luther und Johann Tetzel
hicrvongefilhrten Slreitigkeit gehorigen Schriften, mit EinleUimgen und
Anmerlcungen mrsehen (Leipzig, 1721), and Kleine Vachlcse liniger . . .
zur Erlduterung der Refoi-mfitionsgenchichte niitdicher Urkunden (Four
parts, Leipzig, 1727-1733) ; Bratke, Luthers 95 Theses und ihre dogmen-
historischen yoraussetzungen {Gottingen, 1884); Dieckhoff, Der Ablassslreit
dogmengeschichllich dargeslellt (Gotha, 1886) ; Grbne, Tetzel und Luther
(Soest, 1860).
LUTHER'S THESES 229
diate : the desire to purchase Indulgences cooled, and the
sales almost stopped.
The Ninety-five Theses made six different assertions
about Indulgences and their efficacy :
i. An Indulgence is and can only be the remission of
a merely ecclesiastical penalty ; the Church can remit what
the Church has imposed ; it cannot remit what God has
imposed.
ii. An Indulgence can^jieyer remit guilt ; the Pope
himself cannot do such a thing ; God has kept that in
His own hand.
iii. It cannot remit the divine punishment for sin;
that also is in the hands of God alone.
iv. It can have no efficacy__ for souls in Purgatory;
penalties imposed by the Church can only refer to th6
living ; death dissolves them ; what the Pope can do for
soUIs in Purgatory is by prayer, not by jurisdiction or the
power of the keys.
V. The Christian who has true rej)entance has^lready
received pardon from God altogether apart from an In-
dulgence, and does not need one ; Christ demands this
true repentance from every one.
vi. The Treasury of Merits has never Jbeenjproperly
defined, it is hard to say what it is, and it is not properly
understood by the people ; it cannot be the merits of
Christ and of His saints, because these act of themselves
and quite apart from the intervention of the Pope ; it can
mean nothing more than that the Pope, having the power of
the keys, can remit ecclesiastical penalties imposed by the
Church ; the true Treasure-house of merits is the Holy
Gospel of the grace and glory of God.
The Archbishop of Mainz, finding that the publication
of the Theses interfered with the sale of the Indulgences,
sent a copy to Rome. Pope Leo, thinking that the whole
thing was a monkish quarrel, contented himself with asking
the General of the Augustinian Eremites to keep his
monks quiet. Tetzel, in conjunction with a friend, Conrad
Wimpina, published a set of counter-theses. John Mayr
230 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
of Eck, professor at Ingolstadt, by far the ablest opponent
Luther ever had, wrote an answer to the Theses which he
entitled Ohelisks;^ and Luther replied in a tract with the
title Asterisks. At Eome, Silvester MazzoUni (1460— ?)
of Prierio, a Dominican monk, papal censor for the Eoman
Province and an Inquisitor, was profoundly dissatisfied with
the Ninety-five TJieses, and proceeded to criticise them
severely ia a Dialogue ahovi the Power of the Pope ; against
the Presumpttunis Conclusions of Martin Luther. The book
reached Germany by the middle of January 1518. The ,
Augustioian Eremites held their usual annual chapter at
Heidelberg in April 1518, and Luther heard his Theses
temperately discussed by his brother monks. He found
the opposition to his views much stronger than he had
expected; but the discussion was fair and honest, and
Luther enjoyed it after the ominous silence kept by most
of his friends, who had thought his action rash. When
he returned from Heidelberg he began a general answer
to his opponents. The book, Resolutiones, was probably the
most carefully written of all Luther's writings. He thought
long over it, weighed every statement carefully, and re-
wrote portions several times. The preface, addressed to his
Vicar-General, Staupitz, contains some interesting auto-
biographical material; it was addressed to the Pope; it
was a detailed defence of his Theses.^
The Ninety-five Tlieses had a circulation which was, for
the Ume, unprecedented. They were known throughout
Geifmany in a little over a fortnight ; they were read over
Western Europe within four weeks "as if they had been
circulated by angelic messengers," says Myconius enthusi-
astically. Luther was staggered at the way they were
' The Ohelishs of Eck were printed and circulated priratdy long before
they were puhlished ; a copy was in Luther's hand on March 4th, 1518 ;
it was answered by him on March •24th, and was published in the August
following.
' Kohler has collected together the Xinety-fire Theses, the Resolvivmes,
and the attacks on the Theses by Winipiiia-Tetzil, Eck, and Prierias, and
published them in one small book (Leipzig, 1903). It is a handbook of
reference, and the text of tlie documents has been carefully examined.
Luther's theses 231
received ; he said that he had not meant to determine,
but to debate. The controversy they awakened increased
their popularity. In the Theses, and especially in the Be
solutiones, Luther had practically discarded all the practices
which the Pope and the Eoman Curia had introduced in
the matter of Indulgences from the beginning of the
thirteenth century, and all the ingenious explanations '
Scholastic theologians had brought forward to justify these
practices. The readiest way to refute him was to assert
the power of the Eoman Bishop ; and this was the line
taken by his critics. Their arguments amount to this :
the power to issue an Indulgence is simply a particular
instance of the power of papal jurisdiction, and Indulgences
are simply what the Pope proclaims them to be. Therefore,
to attack Indulgences is to attack the power of the Pope,
and that cannot be tolerated. The Eoman Church is
virtually the Universal Church, and the Pope is practically
the Eoman Church. Hence, as the representative of the
Eoman Church, which in turn represents the Church
Universal, the Pope, when he acts officially, cannot err.
Official decisions are given in actions as well as in words,
custom has the force of law. Therefore, whoever objects to
such a long-established system as Indulgences is a heretic,
and does not deserve to be heard.^
But the argument which appealed most powerfully to
the Eoman Curia was the fact that the sales of the Papal
Tickets had been declining since the publication of the
Theses. Indulgences were the source of an enormous
revenue, and anything which checked their sale would
cause financial embarrassment. Pope Leo x. in his " enjoy-
ment of the Papacy " lived lavishly. He had a huge
income, much greater than that of any European monarch,
but he lived beyond it. His income amounted to between
four and five hundred thousand ducats ; but he had spent
seven hundred thousand on his war about the Duchy of
Urbino; the magnificent reception of his brother Julian
• Tlie arguments were all founded on Thomas Aquinas, Summa, iii.,
Supplemenlum, Quaestio xxv. 1.
232 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
and his bride in Eome (1514) had cost him fifty thousand
ducats ; and he had spent over three hundred thousand on
the marriage of his nephew Lorenzo (1518). Voices had
been heard in Rome as well as in Germany protesting
against this extravagance. The Pope was in desperate
need of money. It is scarcely to be wondered that Luther
was summoned to Eome (summons dated July 1518, and
received by Luther on August 7 th) to answer for his attack
on the Indulgence system. To have obeyed would have
meant death.
The peremptory summons could be construed as an affront
to the University of Wittenberg, on whose boards the Ninety-
five Theses had been posted. Luther wrote to his friend
^Spalatin (George Burkhardt of Spalt, 1484—1545), who was
chaplain and private secretary to the Ele ctor Frederick ,
suggesting that the prince ought to defend the rights^of^ his
University. Spalatin wrote at once to the Elector and also
to the Emperor Maximilian,, and the result was that the
summons to Eome was cancelled, and it was arranged that
the matter was to be left in the hands of the Papal JLggate
in Germany, Thomas de Vio, Cardin al Cajetan j^ (1470—
1553), and Luther was ordered to present himself before
that official at Augsburg. The interview (October 1518)
was not very satisfactory. The cardinal demanded that
ILuther should recant his heresies without any argument.
[When pressed to say what the heresies were, he named the
statement in the 58th Thesis that the merits of Christ
work effectually without the intervention of the Pope, and
that in the Resolutiones which said that the sacraments are
Inot efficacious apart from faith in the recipient. There
[was some discussion'notwithstanding the Legate's declara-
tion ; but in the end Luther was ordered to recant or
^ Tbomas de Vio was born at Gffita, a town situated on a promontory
about fifty miles north of Naples, and was called Cajetanus from his birth-
place. His baptismal name was James, and he took that of Thomas in
honour of Thomas Aquinns. He had entered the Dominican Order at the
age of sixteen ; he was a leorned man, a Scholastio of the older Thomist
type, and not without evangelical sympathies ; but he had the Dominican
idea that ecclesiastical discipline nmst be maintained at all costs.
GROWING SYMPATHY WITH LUTHER 233
depart. He wrote out an appeal from the Pope ill-
informed to the Pope well-informed, also an appeal to a
General Council, and returned to Wittenberg.
When Luther had posted his Theses on the doors of the
Church of All Saints, he had been a solitary monk with
nothing but his manhood to back him ; but nine months
had made a wonderful difference in the situation. He /
now knew that he was a representative man, with sup- J
porters to be numbered byThethousand. His colleagues
at Wittenberg were with him ; his students demon-
stratively loyal (they had been burning the Wimpina-
Tetzel counter-theses) ; his theology was spreading among
all the cloisters of his Order in Germany, and even in the
Netherlands ; and the rapid circulation of his Theses had
shown him that he had the ear of Germany. His first
task, on his return to Wittenberg, was to prepare for the
press an account of his interview with Cardinal Cajetan
at Augsburg, and this was published under the title. Acta
Augustana.
Luther was at pains to take the people of Germany
into his confidence ; he published an account of every
important interview he had; the people were able to follow
him step by step, and he was never so far in advance that
they were unable to see his footprints. The immediate
effect of the Acta Augustana was an immense amount of
public ^sympathy for Luther. The people, even the
Humanists who hadT^cared little for the controversy, saw
that an eminently pious man, an esteemed teacher who
was making his obscure University famous, who had done
nothing but propose a discussion on the notoriously in-
tricate question of Indulgences, was peremptorily ordered
to recant and remain silent. They could only infer that
the Italians treated the Germans contemptuously, and
wished sJBoply to drain the_couiitry of -money to be spent
in the luxuries of the papal court. The Elector Frederick
shared the conimon liipinion, and was, besides, keenly alive
to anything which touched his University and its pro-
sperity. There is no evidence to show that he had much
234 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
sympathy with Luther's views. But the University of
Wittenberg, the seat of learning he had founded, so long
languishing^with a very precarious life and now flourish-
ing, was the apple of his eye ; and he resolved to defend
it, and to protect the teacher who had won renown
for it.
The political situation in Germany was too delicate, and
the personal political influence of Frederick too great, for the
Pope to act rashly in any matter in which that prince took
a deep interest. The country was on the eve of an election
of a King of the Eomans ; Maximilian was old, and an
imperial election might occur at any time ; and Frederick
was one of the most important factors in either case. So
the Pope resolved to act cautiously. The condemnation of
Luthef by the Cardinal-Legate was held over, and a special
papal delegate^ was sent down to Germany to make inquiries.
Every care was taken to select a man who would be likely to
be acceptable to the Elector. Charles von Miltitz, a Saxon
nobleman belonging to the Meisen district, a canon of
Mainz, Trier, and Meissen, a papal chamberlain, an acquaint-
of Spalatin's, the Elector's own agent at the Court of Eome,
was sent to Germany. He took with him the " Golden
Eose " as a token of the Pope's personal admiration for the
Elector. He was furnished with numerous letters from
His Holiness to the Elector, to some of the Saxon council-
lors, to the magistrates of Wittenberg,-in aU of which
Luther figured as a child of the Devil. The phrase was
probably forgotten when Leo wrote to Luther some time
afterwards and called him his dear son.
When Miltitz got among German speaking people he
found that the state of matters was undreamt of at the
papal court. He was a German, and knew the Germans.
He could see, what the Cardinal-Legate had never per-
ceived, that he had to deal not with the stubbornness of a
recalcitrant monk, but with the slow movement of a nation.
When he visited his friends and relatr6ns~"in Sugsburg and
Niirnberg, he found that three out of five were on Luther's
side. He came to the wise resolution that he would see
LUTHER STUDIES THE DECRETALS 235
both Luther and Tetzel privately before producing his
credeirtiais; Tetzel he could not see. The unhappy man
wrote to Miltitz that he dared not stir from his convent,
so greatly was he in danger from the violence of the people.
Miltitz met Luther in the house of Spalatin ; he at once
disowned the speeches of the pardon-sellers; he let it be
seen that he did not think much of the Cardinal-Legate's
methods of action ; he so prevailed on Luther that the
latter promised to write a submissive letter to the Pope,
to advise people to reverence the Eoman See, to say that
Indulgences were useful in the remission of canonical pen-
ances.", Luther did all this ; aud if the Eoman Curia had
supported Miltitz there is no saying how far the reconcilia-
tion would have gone. But the Eoman Curia did not
support the papal chamberlain, and Miltitz had also to
reckon with John Eck, who was burning to extinguish
Luther in a public discussion.
The months between his interview at Augsburg (October
1518) and the Disputation with John Eck at Leipzig
(June 1519) had been spent by Luther in hard and dis-
quieting studies. His opponents had confronted him with
the Pope's absolute supremacy in all ecclesiastical matters.
This was one of Luther's oldest inherited beliefs. The
Church had been for him " the Pope's House," in which
the Pope was the house-father, to whom all obedience
was due. It was hard for him to think otherwise. He
had been re-examining his convictions about justifying faith
and attempting to trace clearly their consequences, and
whether they did lead to his declarations about the efficacy
of Indulgences. He could come to no other conclusion. It
became necessary to investigate the evidence for the papal
claim to absolute authority. He began to study the
Decretals, and foimd, to his amazement and indignation,
that they were full of frauds ; and that the papal supre-
macy had been forced on Germany on the strength of a
collection of Decretals many of which were plainly for-
geries. It is difficult to say whether the discovery brought
more joy or more grief to Luther. Under the combined
236 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
influences of historical study, of the opinions of the early-
Church Fathers, and of the Holy Scriptures, one of his
oldest landmarks was crumbling to pieces. His mind was
in a whirl of doubt. He was half -exultant and half-
terrified at the result of his studies ; and his corre-
spondence reveals how his mood of mind changed from
week to week. It was while he was thus " on the swither,"
tremulously on the balance, that John Eck challenged him
to dispute at Leipzig on the primacy and supremacy of
the Eoman Pontiff. The discussion might clear the air,
might make himself see where he stood. He accepted the
challenge almost feverishly.
§ 3. The Leipzig Disputation} /
Leipzig was an enemies' country, and his Wittenberg
friends would not allow Luther to go there unaccompanied.
The young Duke Barnim, who was Eector of the University
of Wittenberg, accompanied Carlstadt and Luther, to give
them the protection of his presence. Melanchthon, who
had been a member of the teaching staff of Wittenberg
since August 1518, Justus Jonas, and Nicholas Amsdorf
went along with them. Two hundred Wittenberg students
in helmets and halberts formed a guard, and walked beside
the two country carts which carried their professors. An
eye-witness of the scenes at Leipzig has left us sketches of
what he saw :
" In the inns where the Wittenberg students lodged, the
landlord kept a man standing with a halbert near the table
to keep the peace while the Leipzig and the Wittenberg
students disputed with each other. L have seen the same
myself in the house of Herbipolis, a bookseller, where I went
to dine ... for there was at table a Master Baumgarten
. . . who was so hotagainSt the Wittenbergers that the host
had to restrain him with a halbert to make him keep the
peace so long as the Wittenbergers were in the house and
sat and ate at the table with him."
^ Seidemaun, Du Zeipziger Disputation im John 1519 (Dresden,
1843).
THE LEIPZIG DISPUTATION 237
The University buildings at Leipzig did not contain
any hall large enough for the audience, and Duke George
lent the use of his great banqueting-room for the occasion.
The discussions were preceded by a service in the church.
" When we got to the church . . . they sang a Mass with
twelve voices which had never been heard before. After
Mass we went to the Castle, where we found a great guard
of burghers in their armour with their best weapons and
their banners ; they were ordered to be there twice a day,
from seven to nine in the morning and from two to five in
the afternoon, to keep the peace while the Disputation
lasted."!
First, there was a Disputation between Carlstadt and
Eck, and then, on the fourth of July, Eck and Luther faced
each other — both sons of peasants, met to protect the old
or cleave a way for the new.
It was the first time that Luther had ever met a con-
troversialist of European fame. John Eck came to Leipzig
fresh from his triumphs at the great debates in Vienna
and Bologna, and was and felt himself to be the hero of
the occasion.
" He had a huge square body, a full strong voice coming
from his chest, fit for a tragic actor or a town crier, more
harsh than distinct ; his mouth, eyes, and whole aspect gave
one the idea of a butcher ■ or a soldier rather than of a
theologian. He gave one the idea of a man striving to
overcome his opponent rather than of one striving to win a
victory for the truth. There was as much sophistry as good
reasoning in his arguments ; he was continually misquoting
his opponents' words or trying to give them a meaning they
were not intended to convey."
" Martin," says the same eye-witness,
"is of middle height; his body is slender, emaciated by
study and by cares ; one can count almost all the bones ;
he stands in the prime of his age; his voice sounds clear
and distinct . . . however hard his opponent pressed him
he maintained his calmness and his good nature, though in
debate he sometimes used bitter words. . . . He carried a
1 Zeitschriftfiir die hisiorische Thcologie for 1872, p. 534.
238 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
bunch of flowers in his hand, and when the discussion became
hot he looked at it and smelt it." ^
Eck's intention was to force his opponent to make some
declaration which would justify him in charging Luther with
being a partisan of the mediaeval heretics, and especially of
the Hussites. He continually led the debate away to the
Waldensians, the followers of Wiclif, and the Bohemians.
The audience swayed with a wave of excitement when
Luther was gradually forced to admit that there might be
some truth in some of the Hussite opinions :
"One thing I must tell which I myself heard in the
Disputation, and which took place in the presence of Duke
George, who came often to the Disputation and listened
most attentively ; once Dr. Martin spoke these words to Dr.
Eck when hard pressed about John Huss: 'Dear Doctor,
the Hussite opinions are not all wrong.' Thereupon said
Duke George, so loudly that the whole audience heard,
' God help us, the pestilence ! ' (Das wait, die Sucht), and he
wagged his head and placed his arms akimbo. That I my-
self heard and saw, for I sat almost between his feet and
those of Duke Barnim of Pomerania, who was then the
Eector of Wittenberg." ^
So far as the dialectic battle was concerned, Eck-had__
been victorious. He had done what he had meant to do.
He had made Luther declare, himself. All that was now
needed was a Papal JBull against Luther, and the world
/would be rid of another pestilent heretic. He had done
/what the more politic Miltitz had wished to avoid. He
'had concentrated the attention of Germany on Luther,
and had made him the central figure round which all the
smouldering discontent could gather. As for Luther, he
returned to Wittenberg full of melancholy forebodings.
They did not prevent him preparing and publishing for
the German people an account of the Disputation, which
' Petri Mosellani, "Epistola de Disput. Lips." in Loscher's Beformations
Acta et Doeumejita (Leipzig, 1720-1729), i. pp. 242 ff.
' Zeitschri/t/iir die Tiistorische Theologie for 1872, p. 535. The diarist is
M. Sebastian Froscher.
THE THREE TREATISES 239
was eagerly read. His arguments had been historical
rather than theological. He tried to show that the ac-
knowledgment of the supremacy of the Bishop of Eome
was barejy four hundred years old in Western Europe,
and that it did not exist in the East. The Greek Church,
he said, was part of the Church of Christ, and it would
have nothing to do with the Pope ; the great Councils of
the Early Christian centuries knew nothing about papal
supremacy. Athanasius, Basil, the Gregories, Cyprian him-
self, had all taken Luther's own position, and were heretics,
according to Eck. Luther's speeches at Leipzig laid the
foundation of that modern historical criticism of institu-
tions which has gone so far in our own days.
In some respects the Leipzig Disputation was the
most important point in the career of Luther. It made
him see for the first time what b.y in his opposition to
Indulgences. It made the people see it also. His attack
was no criticism, as he had at first thought, of a mere ex-
crescence on the mediaeval ecclesiastical system. He had
struck at its- centre ; at its ideas of a priestly mediation
which denied the right of every believer to immediate
entrance into the very presence of God. It was after the
Disputation at Leipzig that the younger German Humanists
rallied round Luther to a man ; that the burghers saw that
religion and opposition to priestly tyranny were not opposite
things ; and that there was room for an honest attempt to
create a-'Germany for the Germans independent of Eome.
Luther found himself a new man after Leipzig, with a
new freedom and wider sympathies. His depression fled.
Sermons, pamphlets, letters from his tireless pen flooded
the land, and were read eagerly by all classes of the
population.
§ 4. The Three Treatises}
Three of these writings stand forth so pre-eminently \
that they deserve special notice : The Liberty of a Christian \
Man, To the Christian Nohility of the German Nation, and \
1 Wace and Buchheim, Lviher's Primary Works (London, 18961
240 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. These three
books are commonly called in Germany the Three Great
I Beformation Treatises, and the title befits them welL They
I were all written during the year 1520, after three years
Ispeilt in controversy, at a time when Luther felt that he
had completely broken from Eome, and when he knew that
he had nothing to expect from Eome but a sentence of
excommunication. His teaching may have varied in details
afterwards, but in all essential positions it remained what
is to be found in these books.
The tract on The Liberty of a Christian Man, " a very
small book so far as the paper is concerned," said Luther,
"but one containing the whole sum of the Christian life,"
had a somewhat pathetic history. MUtitz, hoping against
hope that the Pope would not push things to extremities,
had asked Luther to write out a short summary^^ his in-
most beliefs and send it to His^ Holiness. Luther con-
, sented, and this little vplume was the result. It has for
preface Luther's letter to Pope Leo x., which concludes
thus : "I, in my poverty, have no other present to make
you, nor do you need to be enriched by anything but a
spiritual gift." It was probably the last of the three
published (Oct. 1520), but it contains the principles which
underlie the other two.
The booklet is a brief statement, free from all theo-
logical subtleties, of the priesthood of aH believers which_i s
a consequence of the fact of justification by fa ith^lb ne. Its
note of warning to Eome, and its educational value for pious
people in the sixteenth century, consisted in its showing
I that the man who fears God and trusts in Him need not
fear the priests nor the Church. The first part proves
that every spiritual.. jlQgsgssion which a man has or can
have must be traced back tq^ his faith ; if he has faith, he
has all ; if he has not faith, he has nothing.^^ It is the ~
possession of faith which gives liberty to a Christian man ;
God is with him, who can be against him ?
" Here you wiU ask, ' If all who are in the Church are
priests, by what character are those whom we now call
THE THREE TREATISES 241
priests to be distinguished from the laity ? ' I reply, By the
use of those words priests, clergy, spiritual person, ecclesiastic,
an injustice has been done, since they have been transferred
from the remaining body of Christians to those few who are
now, by a hurtful custom, called ecclesiastics. For the Holy
Scripture makes no distinction between them, except that
those who are now boastfully called Popes, Bishops, and
Lords, it calls ministers, servants, and stewards, who are to
serve the rest in the ministry of the "Word, for teaching the
faith of Christ and the liberty of believers. For though it
is true that we are all equally priests, yet cannot we, nor
ought we if we could, all to minister and teach publicly."
The second part shows that everything that -aiJhr-istian
man does must come from his faith. It may be necessary
to use all the ceremonies of divine service which past
generations have found useful to promote the reUgious
life ; perhaps to fast and practise mortifications of the
flesh ; but if such things are to be really profitable, they
must be kept in their proper place. They are good deeds
not in the sense of making a man good, but as the signs of
his faith ; they are to be practised with joy because they
are done for the sake of the God who has united Himself
with man through Jesus Christ.
Nothing that Luther has written more clearly mani-
fests that combination of revolutionary daring and wise
conservatism which was characteristic of the man. There
is no attempt to sweep away any ecclesiastical machinery,
provided only it be kept in its proper place as a means
to an end. But religious ceremonies are not an end in
themselves ; and if through human corruption and neglect
of the plain precepts of God's word they hinder instead
of help the true growth of the soul, they ought to be
swept away ; and the fact that the soul of man needs
absolutely nothin^in the last resort but the word of Gbd
dwelling in him, gives men courage and calmness in de-
^^ manding their reformation.
^j' Luther applied those principles to the reformation of
y the Church in his book on the Babylonian Captivity of the
Church (i^ept-Oct. 1520). He subjected the elaborate
16*
242 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
satcramental sj[stem of the Chiirch to a searching criticism,
and concluded that there are only two, or perhaps three,
scriptural sacraments — the Eucjiaristj Baptism , and Pen-
ance. He denounced the doctrine of Transubstantiation
as a " monstrous phantom " which the Church of ThelGfst
twelve centuries knew nothing about, and said that any
endeavour to define the precise manner of Christ's Presence
in the sacrament is simply indecent curiosity. Perhaps the
most important practical portion of the book deals with the
topic of Christian marriage. In no sphere of human life
has the Eoman Church done more harm by interfering with
simple scriptural directions :
"What shall we say of those impious human laws by
which this divinely appointed manner of life has been en-
tangled and tossed up and down ? Good God ! it is horrible
to look upon the temerity of the tyrants of Eome, who thus,
according to their caprices, at one time annul marriages and
at another time enforce them. Is the human race given
over to their caprice „ for nothing but to be mocked and
abused in every way, that these men may do what they
please with it for the sake of their own fatal gains ? . . . And
what do they sell ? The shame of men and women, a mer-
chandise worthy of these traffickers, who surpass all that
is most sordid and most disgusting in their avarice and
impiety."
Luther points out that there is a clear scriptural law on the
degrees withiu which marriage is unlawful, and says that no
human regulations ought to forbid marriages outside these
degrees or permit them within. He also comes to the
conclusion that divorce a mensa et thoro is clearly per-
mitted in Scripture ; though he says that personally he
, hates divorce, and " prefers bigamy to it."
The appeal To the Christian Nobility of the German
Nation made the greatest immediate impression. It was
written lq haste, but must have been long thought over.
Luther began the introduction on June 23 rd (1520); the
book was ready by the middle of August ; and by the 18th,
four thousand copies were in circulation throughout Ger-
many, and the presses could not print fast enough for the
THE THREE TREATISES 243
demand. It was a call to all Crermany to unite against
Eome.
"Tt ~was nobly comprehensive : it grasped the whole
situation, and summed up with vigour and clearness all
the German grievances which had hitherto been stated
separately and weakly ; it brought forward every partial
proposal of reform, however incomplete, and quickened it by
setting it in its proper place in one combined scheme. All
the parts were welded together by a simple and courageous
faith, and made living by the moral earnestness which
pervaded the whole.
Luther struck directly at the imaginary mysterious
semi-supernatural power supposed to belong to the Church
and' tlie priesthood which had held Europe in awed submis-
sion for so many centuries. Eeform had been impossible,
the appeal said, because the walls behind which Eome lay
entrenched had been left standing — walls of straw and
paper, but in appearance formidable. These sham fortifica-
tions are : the Spiritual Power which is believed to be
superior to the temporal power of kings and princes, the
conception that wo one can interpret Scripture hut the Pope,
the idea that no one can summon a General Council hut
the Bishop of Rome. These are the threefold lines of
fortification behind which the Eoman Curia has entrenched
itself, and the German people has long believed that they
are impregnable. Luther sets to work to demolish them.
The Eomanists assert that the Pope, bishops, priests,
and monks belong to and constitute the spiriiuaL-estate,
whUe princes, lords, artisans, and peasants are th&^iempomt,
estate, which is subject to the spiritual. But this spiritual
estate is a mere delusion. The real spiritual estate i& the
whole body of believers in Jesus Christ, and they are
spiritual because Jesiis has made all His followers priests
to God and to His Christ. A cobbler belongs to the
spiritual estate as truly as a bishop. The clergy are
distinguished from the laity not by an indelible character
imposed upon them in a divine mystery called ordination,
but because they have been set apart to do a particular
244 THE IXDDLGEXCE CONTROVERSY
kind of work in the commonwealth. If a Pope, bishop,
priest, or monk neglects to do the work he is there to do,
he deserves to be punished as much as a careless mason
or tailor, and is as accountable to the civil authorities.
The spiritual priesthood jyf all believers, the gift of the faith
which justifies, has shattered the first and most formidable
of these papal fortifications.
It is foolish to say that the Popic alone can interpret
Scripture. If that were true, where is the need of Holy
Scriptures at all ?
" Let us burn them, and content ourselves with the
unlearned gentlemen at Eome, in whom the Holy Ghost
alone dwells, who, however, can dwell in pious souls only.
If I had not read it, I could never have believed that the
devil should have put forth such follies at Eome and find a
following."
The Holy Scripture is open to all, and can be interpreted
by all true lielie vers who have the mind of Christ and
approach the word of God humbly seeking enlightenment
The third wall faUs with the other two. It is nonsense
to say that the Pope alone can call a Council. We are
plainly taught in Scripture that if our brother offends we
are to tell it to the Chm-ch ; and if the Pope offends, and
he often does, we can only obey Scripture by calling a
Council. Every individual Clu-istian has a right to do
his best to have it summoned ; the temporal powers are
there to enforce his wishes; Emperors called General
Councils in the earlier ages of the Church.
The straw and paper walls having been thus cleared
away, Luther proceeds to state his indictmenk There is
in Rome one who calls himself the. Vicar of Christ, and
who lives in a state of singular resemblance to our Lord
and to St. Peter, His apostle. For this man wears a
triple crown (a single one does not content him), and keeps
up such a state that he needs a larger personal revenue
than the Emperor. He has surrouuding him a number of
men, called cardinals, whose only apparent use is that they
serve to draw to themselves the revenues of the richest
THE THREE TREATISES 245
convents, endowments, and benefices in Europe, and spend
the money thus obtained in keeping up the state of a great
monarch in Kome. When it is impossible to seize the
whole revenue of an ecclesiastical benefice, the Curia joins
some ten or twenty together, and mulcts each in a good
round sum for the benefit of the cardinal. Thus the
priory of Wiirzburg gives one thousand gulden yearly, and
Bamberg, Mainz, and Trier pay their quotas. The papal
court is enormous, — three thousand papal secretaries, and
hangers-on innumerable ; and all are waiting for German
henefices, whose duties they never fulfil, as wolves wait
for a flock of sheep. Germany pays more to the Curi^,
than it gives to its own Emperor. Then-laal£_atthe way
Eome robs the whole German land. Long ago the""
Emperor permitted the Tope to take the half of the first
year's income from every benefice — the Annates — to provide
for a war against the Turks. The money was never spent
for the purpose destined ; yet it has been regularly paid
for a hundred years, and the Pope demands it as a regular
and legitimate tax, and uses it to pay posts and offices at
Eome.
" Whenever there is any pretence of fighting the Turk,
they send out commissions for collecting money, and often
proclaim Indulgences under the same pretext. . . . They
think that we, Germans, will always remain such great
fools, and that we will go on giving money to satisfy their
unspeakable greed, though we see plainly that neither
Annates nor Indulgence - money nor anything — not one
farthing — goes against the Turks, but all goes into their
bottomless sack, . . . and all this is done in the name of
Christ and of St. Peter."
The chicanery used to get possession of German benefices
for officials of the Curia, the exactions on the bestowal of
the pallium, the trafficking in exemptions and permissions
to evade laws ecclesiastical and moral, are all trenchantly
described. The most shameless are those connected with
marriage. The Curial Court is described as a place
"where vows are annulled; where a monk gets leave to
quit his cloister; where priests can enter the married life
246 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
for money ; where bastards can become legitimate, and
dishonour and shame may arrive at high honours, and all
evil repute and disgrace is knighted and ennobled ; where
a marriage is suffered that is in a forbidden degree, or has
some other defect. . . . There is a buying and selling, a
changing, blustering, and bargaining, cheating and lying,
robbing and stealing, debauchery and villainy, and all kinds
of contempt of God, that Antichrist himself could not reign
worse."
The plan _af ^reform sket£bed_ includea.=r— the __complete
abolition of the power of the_Pqpe_ over the State ; the
creationTof'a naSonal German Church, with an ecclesiastical
Council of its own to be the _ final court of appeal. for
Germany, and to represent the German Church as the
Diet did the German State ; some internal religious
reforms, such as the limitation of the number of pilgrimages,
which were destroying morality and creating a distaste for
honest work ; reductions in the mendicant orders and in
the number of vagrants who thronged the roads, and were
a scandal in the towns.
"It is of much more importance to consider what is
necessary for the salvation of the common people than what
St. Francis, or St. Dominic, or St. Augustine, or any other
man laid down, especially as things have not turned out as
they expected."
He proposes the inspection of all convents and nimneries,
and permission given to those who are dissatisfied with
their monastic lives to return to the world ; the limitation
of ecclesiastical holy days, which are too often nothing but
scenes of drunkenness, gluttony, and debauchery ; a married
priesthood, and an end put to the degrading concubinage
of the German priests.
" We see how the priesthood is fallen, and how many a
poor priest is encumbered with a woman and children, and
burdened in his conscience, and no one does anything to
help him, though he might very well be helped. . ; . I will
not conceal my honest counsel, nor withhold comfort from
that unhappy crowd who now live in trouble with wife and
children, and remain in shame with a heavy conscience,
THE PAPAL BULL 247
hearing their wife called a priest's harlot, and their children
bastards. ... I say that these two (who are minded in
their hearts to live together in conjugal fidelity) are surely
married before God."
The appeal concludes with some solemn words addressed
to the luxury and licensed immorality of the German
towna
None of Luther's writings produced such an instan-
taneous effect as this. It was not the first programme
urging common action in the interests of a united Germany,
but it was the most complete, and was recognised to be so
by all who were working for a Germany for the Germans.
The three " Eeformation treatises " were the statement
of Luther's case laid before the people of the Fatherland,
and were a very effectual antidote to the Papal Bull
excommunicating him, which was ready for publication in
Germany.
§ 5. The Papal Bull.
The Bull, Exurge Domine^jiva,s scarcely worthy of the
occasion. The Pope seeiSs'to have left its construction in
the hands of Prierias, Cajetan, and Eck, and the contents
seem to show that Eck had the largest share in framing ^
it. Much of it reads like an echo of Eck's statements at
Leipzig a year before. It began pathetically : " Arise,
Lord, plead Thine own cause ; remember how the foolish
man reproacheth Thee daily ; the foxes are wasting Thy
vineyard, which Thou hast given to Thy Vicar Peter ; the
boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of
the field doth devour it." St. Peter is invoked, and the
Pope's distress at the news of Luther's misdeeds is described
at length. The most disturbing thing is that the errors of
the Greeks and of the Bohemians were being revived, and
that in Germany, which had hitherto been so faithful to
the Holy See. Then came forty-one propositions, said
to be Luther's, which are condemned as "heretical or
scandalous, or false or offensive to pious ears, or seducing
to simple minds, and standing in the way of the Catholic
248 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
faith." 1 All faithful peojle were ordered to bum Luther's
books wherever they could findTlheniT" Luther~hiiirself ^had
refused to come to Eome and submit to instruction; he
had even appealed to a General Council, contrary to the
decrees of Julius n. and Pius ii. ; he was therefore
inhibited from preaching; he and all who followed him
were ordered J;o__make public recantatiQa_jsdtbin ^sixty
days ; if they did not, they were to be treated as heretics,
wereiio be seized and imprisoned by the magistrates, and
all towns or districts which sheltered them were to be
placed under an interdict.
Among the forty-one propositions condemned was one
— that the burning of heretics was a sin against the Spirit
of Christ — to which the Pope seemed to attach special
significance, so often did he repeat it in letters to the
Elector Frederick and other authorities in Germany. The
others may be arranged in four classes — against Luther's
opinions about Indulgences; his statements about Purgatory;
his declarations that the efficacy of the sacraments depended
upon the spiritual condition of those who received them ;
that penance was an outward sign of sorrow, and that good
_works (ecclesiastical and moral) were to be regarded as the
signs of faith rather than as making men actually righteous ;
his denial of the later curial assertions of the nature of the
( papal monarchy over the Church. Luther's opinions on aU
these points could be supported by abundant testimony
from the earlier ages of the Church, and most of his
criticisms were directed against theories which had not
been introduced before the middle of the- thirteenth century.
The Bull made no attempt to argue about the truth of the
positions taken in its sentences. There was nothing done
to show that Luther's opinions were wrong. The one
dominant note running all through the papal deliverance
was the simple assertion of the Pope's right to order any
' discussion to cease at his command.
This did not help to commend the Bull to the people
of Germany; and was specially unsuited to an age of restless
' Denzinger, Enchiridion, etc. p. 175.
THE PAPAL BULL 249
mental activity. The method adopted for publishing it
in Germany was still less calculated to win respect for its
decisions. The publication- was- entrusted to John Eck
of Ingolstadt, who was universally recognised as Luther's
personal enemy ; and the hitherto unheard of liberty was
granted to him to insert at his pleasure the names of a
certain number of persons, and to summon them to appear
before the Eoman Curia. He showed how unfit he was
for this responsible task by inserting the names of men
who had criticised or satirised him — Adehnann, Pirkheimer,
Carlstadt, and three others.^
Eck discovered that it was an easier matter to get
permission from the Eoman Curia to frame a Bull against
the man who had stopped the sale of Indulgences, and was
drying up a great source of revenue, than to publish the
Bull in Germany. It was thought at Kome that no man
had more influence among the bishops and Universities,
but the Curia soon learnt that it had made a mistake.
The Universities stood upon their privileges, and would
have nothing to do with John Eck. The bishops made
all manner of technical objections. Many persons affected
to beUeve that the Bull was not authentic ; and Luther
himself did not disdain to take this line in his ' tract.
Against the Execrable Bull of Antichrist. Eck, who had
come down to Germany inflated with vanity, found himself
mocked and scorned. Pirkheimer dubbed him gehobelter
Eck, Eck with the swelled head, and the epithet stuck.
Nor was the publication any easier when the pretence
of unauthenticity could be maintained no longer. The
University of Wittenberg refused to publish the Bull,
' In a pamphlet written by Eck in 1519, he had asserted that all the
theologians in Germany were opposed to Luther save a few unlearned canons.
This called forth, tow'ards the end of the year, Tlie Answer of an Unlearned
Canon, which was generally ascribed to Bernard Adelmann, a canon of
Augsburg, but which was really written by Oecolampadius. Pirkheimer
had written a caustic attack on Eck in a satire, in which German coarseness
was clothed in elegant latinity, entitled Eceius Dedolalus {ITie Comer
planed off, Eck being the German for " corner"), published in Lateiniache
LiUeralurdenkmdler des 15 und 16 Jahrhundertes (Berlin, 1891). Carlstadt
had opposed Eck at Leipzig.
250 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
on the ground that the Pope woiild not have permitted
its issue had he known the true state of matters, and
they blamed Eck for misinforming His Holiness : the
Council of Electoral Saxony agreed with the Senate ;
and their action was generally commended. Spalatin
said that he had seen at least thirty letters from great
princes and learned men of all districts in Germany,
from Pomerania to Switzerland, and from the Breisgau
to Bohemia, encouraging Luther to stand firm. Eck
implored the bishops of the dioceses surrounding Witten-
berg — Merseburg, Meissen, and Brandenburg — to publish
the Bull. They were either unwilling or powerless.
I Luther had been expecting a Bull against him ever
since the Leipzig Disputation. His correspondence reveals
that he met it undismayed. What harm could a papal
Bull do to a man whose faith had given him fellowship
with God ? What truth coul^ there be in a Bull which
clearly contradicted the Holy Scriptures ? St. Paul has
warned us against believing an angel from heaven if he
uttered words different from the Scriptures, which are
our strength and our consolation; why should we pin
our faith to a Pope or a Council ? The Bull had done
one thing for him, it had made him an excommunicated
man, and therefore had freed him from his monastic
vows. He could leave the convent when he liked, only
he did not choose to do so. When he heard that his
writings had been burnt as heretical by order of the Papal
Legates, he resolved to retaliate. It was no sudden de-
cision. Eleven months previously he had assured Spalatin
(January 1520) that if Rome condemned and burnt his
writings he would condemn and burn the papal Decretal
Laws. On December 10 th (1520) he posted a notice invit-
ing the Wittenberg students to witness the burning of the
papal Constitutions and the books of Scholastic Theology at
nine o'clock in the morning.^ A multitude of students,
' A copy of Luther's notice has been preseiTed in the MS. " Annals " of
Peter Schumann in the Zvrickau Satsschulbibliothek at Zwickau. It has
been printed in Kolde's Analecla Lviherana (Gotlia, 1883), p. 26: "Quis
THE BURNING OF THE BULL 251
burghers, and professors met in the open space outside the
Elster Gate between the walls and the river Elbe. A great '
bonfire had been built. An oak tree planted long ago still
marks the spot. One of the professors kindled the pile ;
Luther laid the books of the Decretals on the glowing mass,
and they caught the flames ; then amid solemn silence he
placed a copy of the Bull on the fire, saying in Latin: As
thou hast wasted with a,nxiety the Holy One of God, so may
the eternal flames waste thee {Quia tu conturbasti Sanctum
Domini, ideoque te conturhet ignis eiernus). He waited till
the paper was consumed, and then with his friends and
fellow-professors he went back to the town. Some hundreds
of students remained standing round the fire. For a while
they were sobered by the solemnity of the occasion and
sang the Te Beum. Then a spirit of mischief seized them,
and they began singing funeral dirges in honour of the
burnt Decretals. They got a peasant's cart, fixed in it a
pole on which they hung a six-foot-long baimer emblazoned
with the Bull, piled the small cart with the books of Eck,
Emser, and other Eomish controversialists, hauled it along
the streets and out through the Elster Gate, and, throwing
books and Bull on the glowing embers of the bonfire, they
burnt them. Sobered again, they sang the Te Beum and
finally dispersed.
It is scarcely possible for us in the twentieth century
to imagine the thrill that went through Germany, and
indeed through all Europe, when the news sped that a poor
monk had burnt the Pope's Bull. Papal Bulls had been
burnt before Luther's days, but the burners had been for
the most part powerful monarchs. This time it was done
by a, monk, with nothing but his courageous faith to back
him. It meant that the individual soul had discovered its
quia veritatis Evangelicse studio teneatur. Adesto sub horam nonam, modo
ad templum S. Crucis extra mcenia oppidi, ubi pro veteri et apostolico ritu
impii pontificiarum constitutionum et scliolasticae theologiie libri croiiia-
buntnr quandoquidem eo processit audatia inimicorum Evangelii, ut pifs ac
evangelicos Luteri exusserit. Age pia et studiosa juventus ad hoc piuni ac
religiosum spectaculum constituito. Fortassia euim nunc teinpus est quo
revelari Antichristum opportuit."
252 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
true value. If eras can be dated, modern history began on
December 10th, 1520.
§ 6. Luther the Sepresenfative of Germany.
Hitherto we have followed Luther's personal career
exclusively. It may be well to turn aside for a little to
see how the sympathy of many classes of the people was
gathering round him.
The representatives of foreign States who were present
at the Diet of Worms, of England, Spain, and Venice, all
wrote home to their respective governments about the
extraordinary popularity which Luther enjoyed among
almost every class of his fellow-countrymen ; and, as we shall
\ see, the despatches of Aleander, the papal nuncio at the
Diet, are full of statements ajod" complaints wBTch confirm
these reports. This popularity had been growing since
1517, and there are traces that many thoughtful men had
been attracted to Luther some years earlier. The accounts
of Luther's interview with Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg,
and his attitude at the Leipzig Disputation, had given a
great impulse to the veneration with which people regarded
him ; but the veneration itself had been quietly growing,
apart from any striking incidents in his career. The
evidence for what follows has been collected chiefly from
such private correspondence as has descended to us ; and
most stress has been laid on letters which were not
addressed to Luther, and which were never meant to be
seen by him. Men wrote to each other about him, and de-
scribed the impression he was making on themselves and
on the immediate circle of their acquaintances. We learn
from such letters not merely the fact of the esteem, but what
were the characteristics in the man which called it forth.^
A large part of the evidence comes from the corre-
spondence of educated men, who, if they were not all
' Fr. V. Bezolrl haa some excellent pages on this subject in his Geschichte
der deutschen Iteformation (Berlin, 1890), pp. 278 ff. I have used the
material he has collected, and added to it from my own reaiiing.
LUTHER THE REPRESENTATIVE OF GERMANY 253
Humanists strictly so called, belonged to that increasing
class on whom the New Learning had made a great
impression, and had produced the characteristic habit of
mind which belonged to its possessors. The attitude and
work of Erasmus had prepared them to appreciate Luther.
The monkish opponents of the great Humanist had been
thoroughly in the right when they feared the effects of his
revolutionary ways of . thinking, however they might be
accompanied with appeals against all revolutionary action.
He had exhibited his idea of what a hfe of personal religion
ought to be in his Enchiridion ; he had exposed the mingled
Judaism and paganism of a great part of the popular
religion ; he had poured scorn on the trifling subtleties of
scholastic theology, and had asked men to return to a
simple " Christian Philosophy " ; above all, he had insisted
that Christianity could only renew its youth by going back
to the study of the Holy Scriptures, and especially of the
New Testament ; and he had aided his contemporaries to
make this return by his edition of the New Testament, and
by his efforts to bring within their reach the writings of
the earUer Church Fathers. His Humanist followers in
Germany believed that they saw in Luther a man who
was doing what their leader urged all men to do. They
saw in Luther an Erasmus, who was going to the root of
things. He was rejecting with increasing determination
the bewildering sophistries of Scholasticism, and, what was
more, he was showing how many of these had arisen by
exalting the authority of the pagan Aristotle over that of
St. Paul and St. Augustine. He had painfully studied
these Schoolmen, and could speak with an authority on
this matter ; for he was a learned theologian. The reports
of his lectures, which were spreading throughout Germany,
informed them that he based his teaching on a simple
exposition of the Holy Scriptures in the Vulgate version,
which was sanctioned by the mediaeval Church. He had
revolted, and was increasingly in revolt, against those
abuses in the ordinary religious life which were encouraged
from sordid motives by the Eoman Curia, — abuses which
254 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
Erasmus had pierced through and through with the light
darts of his sarcasm ; and Luther knew, as Erasmus did
not, what he was speaking about, for he had surrendered
himself to that popular religion, and had sought in it
desperately for a means of reconciliation with God without
succeeding in his quest. They saw him insisting, with a
strenuousness no Humanist had exhibited, on the Humanist
demand that every man had a right to stand true to his
own personal conscientious convictions. If some of them,
like Erasmus, in spite of their scorn of monkery, still
believed that the highest type of the rehgious life was a
sincere self-sacrificing Franciscan monk, they saw their
ideal in the Augustinian Eremite, whose life had never
been stained by any monkish scandal, and who had been
proclaimed by his brother monks to be a model of personal
holiness. They were sure that when he pled heroically
for the freedom of the religious life, his courage, which
they could not emulate, rested on a depth and strength of
personal piety which they sadly confessed they themselves
did not possess. If they complained at times that Luther
spoke too strongly against the Pope, they admitted that he
was going to the root of things in his attack. All clear-
sighted men perceived that the one obstacle to reform was the
theory of the papal monarchy, which had been laboriously
constructed by ItaUan canonists after the failure of Conciliar
reform, — a theory which defied the old medieval ecclesias-
tical tradition, and contradicted the solemn decisions of the
great German Councils of Constance and Basel. Luther's
attacks on the Papacy were not stronger than those of
Gerson and d'Ailly, and his language was not more un-
measured than that of their common master, William of
Occam. There was nothing in these early days to prevent
men who were genuinely attached to the mediaeval Church,
its older theology and its ancient rites, from rallying round
Luther. When the marches began to be redd, and the
beginnings of a Protestant -Church confronted the mediaeval,
the situation was changed. Many who had enthusiastically
supported Luther left him.
LUTHER AND THE HUMANISTS 255
Conrad Mutianus, canon of Gotha, and the veteran
leader of the Erfurt cu'cle of Humanists, wrote admiringly
of the originality of Luther's sermons as early as 1515.
He applauded the stand he took at Leipzig, and spoke
of him as Martinum, Beo devotissimum doctorem. His
followers were no longer contented with a study of the
classical authors. Eobanus Hessus, crowned " poet-king "
of Germ,any, abandoned his Horace for the Enchiridion of
Erasmus and the Holy Scriptures. Justus Jonas (Jodocus
Koch of Nordlingen) forsook classical Greek to busy
himself with the Epistles to the Corinthians. The wicked
satirist, Curicius Cordus, betook himself to the New Testa-
ment. They did this out of admiration for Erasmus, " their
father in Christ." But when Luther appeared, when they
read his pamphlets circulating through Germany, when
they followed, step by step, his career, they came under
the influence of a new spell. The Erasmici, to use the
phrases of the times, diminished, and the Martiniani in-
creased in numbers. One of the old Erfurt circle, Johannes
Crotus Eubeanus, was in Eome. His letters, passed round
among his friends, made no small impression upon them.
He told them that he was living in the centre of the
plague-spot of Europe. He reviled the Curia as devoid of
aU moral conscience. " The Pope and his carrion-crows "
were sitting content, gorged on the miseries of the Church.
When Crotus received from Germany copies of Luther's
writings, he distributed them secretly to his Italian friends,
and collected their opinions to transmit to Germany. They
were all sympathetically impressed with what Luther said,
but they pitied him as a man travelling along a very
dangerous road ; no real reform was possible without the
destruction of the whole curial system, and that was too
powerful for any man to combat. Yet Luther was a 'hero;
he was the Pater Fatrice of Germany ; his countrymen
ought to erect a golden statue in his honour ; they wished
him God-speed. When Crotus returned to Germany and
got more in touch with Luther's work, he felt more drawn
to the Eeformer, and wrote enthusiastically to his friends
256 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
that Luther was the personal revelation of Christ in modern
times. So we find these Humanists declaring that Luther
was the St. Paul of the age, the modern Hercules, the
Achilles of the sixteenth century.
No Humanist circle gave Luther more enthusiastic
support than that of Nlirnberg. The soil had been pre-
pared by a few ardent admirers of Staupitz, at the head
of whom was Wenceslas Link, prior of the Augustinian-
Eremites in Niirnberg, and a celebrated preacher. They
had learned from Staupitz that blending of the theology of
Augustine with the later German mysticism which was
characteristic of the man, and it prepared them to appre-
ciate the deeper experimental teaching of Luther. Among
these Niirnberg Humanists was Christopher Scheurl, a jurist,
personally acquainted with Luther and with Eck. The
shortlived friendship between the two antagonists had
been brought about by Scheurl, whose correspondence with
Luther began in 1516. Scheurl was convinced that
Luther's cause was the " cause of God." He told Eck
this. He wrote to him (February 18th, 1519) that all
the most spiritually minded clergymen that he knew were
devoted to Luther ; that " they flew to him in dense troops,
like starlings " ; that their deepest sympathies were with
him ; and that they confessed that their holiest desires
were prompted by his writings. Albert Diirer expressed
his admiration by painting Luther as St. John, the beloved
disciple of the Lord. Caspar Niitzel, one of the most
dignified officials of the town, thought it an honour to
translate Luther's Ninety-five Theses into German. Lazarus
Sprengel delighted to tell his friends how Luther's tracts
and sermons were bringing back to a living Christianity
numbers of his acquaintances who had bSen perplexed and
driven from the faith by the trivialities common in ordinary
sermons. Similar enthusiasm showed itself in Augsburg
and other towns. After the Leipzig Disputation, the great
printer of Basel, Frobenius, became an ardent admirer of
Luther ; reprinted most of his writings, and despatched
them to Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Italy,
LUTHER THE REPRESENTATIVE OP GERMANY 257
England, and Spain. He delighted to tell of the favour-
able reception they met with in these foreign countries, —
how they had been welcomed by Lef^vre in France, and
how the Swiss Cardinal von Sitten had said that Luther
deserved all honour, for he spoke the truth, which no
special pleading of an Eck could overthrow. The distin-
guished jurist Ulrich Zasius of Freiburg said that Luther
was an " angel incarnate," and while he deprecated his strong
language against the Pope, he called him the " Phosnix
among Christian theologians," the " flower of the Christian
world," and the " instrument of God." Zasius was a man
whose whole religious sympathies belonged to the mediseval
conception of the Church, yet he spoke of Luther in this way.
It is perhaps difficult for us now to comprehend the
state of mind which longed for the new and yet clung to
the old, which made the two Niirnberg families, the Ebners
and the Ntitzlers, season the ceremonies at their family
gathering to celebrate their daughters taking the veil with
speeches in praise of Luther and of his writings. Yet this
was the dominant note in the vast majority of the sup-
porters of Luther in these earlier years.
Men who had no great admiration for Luther personally
had no wish to see him crushed by the Eoman Curia by
mere weight of authority. Even Duke George of Saxony,
who had called Luther a pestilent fellow at the Leipzig
Disputation, had been stirred into momentary admiration
by the Address to the Christian Nohility of the German
Nation, and had no gi-eat desire to publish the Bull within
his dominions ; and his private secretary and chaplain,
Jerome Emser, although a personal enemy who never lost
an opportunity of controverting Luther, nevertheless hoped
that he might be the instrument of effecting a reforma-
tion in the Church. Jacob Wimpheling of Strassburg, a
thoroughgoing medisevalist who had manifested no sym-
pathy for Eeuchlin, and his friend Christopher of Utenheim,
Bishop of Basel, hoped that the movement begim by Luther
might lead to that reformation of the Church on mediaeval
lines which they both earnestly desired.
•17*
258 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
Perhaps no one represented better the attitude of the
large majority of Luther's supporters, in the years between
1517 and 1521, than did the Prince, who is rightly
called Luther's protector, Frederick the Elector of Saxony.
It is a great though common mistake to suppose that
Frederick shared those opinions of Luther which afterwards
grew to be the Lutheran theology. His brother John, and
in a still higher degree his nephew John Frederick, were
devoted Lutherans in the theological sense ; but there is
no evidence to show that Frederick ever was^
Frederick never had any intimate personal relations
with Luther. At Spalatin's request, he had paid the
expenses of Luther's promotion to the degree of Doctor of
the Holy Scriptures ; he had, of course, acquiescedrln his
appointment to succeed Spalatin as Professor of Theology ;
and he must have appreciated keenly the way in which
Luther's work had gradually raised the small and declining
University to the position it held in 1517. A few letters
were exchanged between Luther and Frederick, but there
is no evidence that they ever met in conversation ; nor is
there any that Frederick had ever heard Luther preach.
When he lay dying he asked Luther to come and see him ;
but the Eeformer was far distant, trying to dissuade the
peasants from rising in rebellion, and when he reached the
palace his old protector had breathed his last.
The Elector was a pious man according to mediaeval
standards. He had received his earhest lasting religious
impressions from intercourse with Augustinian Eremite
monks when he was a boy at school at Grimma, and he
maintained the closest relations with the Order all his
life. He valued highly all the external aids to a religious
life which the mediaeval Church had provided. He believed
in the virtue of pilgrimages and relics. He had made a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and had brought back a
great many relics, which he had placed in the Church of
All Saints in Wittenberg, and he had agents at Venice
and other Mediterranean ports commissioned to seom-e
other relies for his collection. He continued to purchase
THE ELECTOR OF SAXONY 259
them as late as the year 1523. He believed in Indul-
gences of the older type, — Indulgences which remitted in
whole or in part ecclesiastically imposed satisfactions,— and
he had procured two for use in Saxony. One served as
an endowment for the upkeep of his bridge at Torgau, and
he had once commissioned Tetzel to preach its virtues ;
the other was to benefit pilgrims who visited and venerated
his collection of relics on AU Saints' Day. But it is clear
that he disliked Indulgences of the kind Luther had
challenged, and had small belief in the good faith of the
Koman Curia. He had prevented money collected for one
plenary Indulgence leaving the country, and he had for-
bidden Tetzel to preach the last Indulgence within his
territories. His sympathies were all with Luther on this
question. He was an esteemed patron of the pious society
called St. Ursula's Schifflein. He went to Mass regularly,
and his attendances became frequent when he was in a
state of hesitation or perplexity. When he was at Kbln
(November 1520), besieged by the papal nuncios to induce
him to permit the publication of the Bull against Luther
within his lands, Spalatin noted that he went to Mass
three times in one day. His reverence for the Holy
Scriptures must have created a bond of sympathy between
Luther and himself. He talked with his private secretary
about the incomparable majesty and power of the word
of God, and contrasted its sublimities with the sophistries
and trivialities of the theology of the day. He maintained
firmly the traditional policy of his House to make the
decisions of the Councils of Constance and of Basel effective
within Electoral Saxony, in spite of protests from the Curia
and the higher ecclesiastics, and was accustomed to consider
himself responsible for the ecclesiastical as well as for
the civil good government of his lands. Aleander had
considered it a master-stroke of policy to procure the
burning of Luther's books at Koln while the Elector was
in the city. Frederick only regarded the deed as a petty
insult to himself. He was a staunch upholder of the
rights and liberties of the German nation, and remembered
260 THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY
that by an old concordat, which every Emperor had sworn
to maintain, every German had the right to appeal to a
General Council, and could not be condemned without a
fair trial; and this Bull had made Luther's appeal to a
Council one of the reasons for his condemnation. So, in
spite of the "golden rose" and other blandishments, in
spite of threats that he might be included ia the ex-
communication of his subject and that the privileges of his
University might be taken away, he stood firm, and would
not withdraw his protection from Luther. He was a pious
German prince of the old-fashioned type, with no great
love for Italians, and was not going to be browbeaten by
papal nuncios. His attitude towards Luther represents
very fairly that of the great mass of the German people
on the eve of the Diet of Worma
CHAPTER III.
THE DIET OF WORMS.^
§ 1. The Roman Nuncio Aleander.
■EoME had done its utmost to get rid of Luther by ecclesi-
astical measures, and had failed. If he was to be over-
thrown, if the new religious movement and the national
uprising which enclosed it were to be stifled, this could
only be done by the aid of the supreme secular authority.
The Curia turned to the Emperor.
Maximilian had died suddenly on the 12 th of January
1519. After some months of intriguing, the papal di-
^ SouKOES : Devische Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Karl V., 3 vols, have
been published (Gotha, 1893-1901) ; Balan, Monumenta Seformationis
Ztttherance ex tabulis S. Sedis secretin 15B1-16$5 (Ratisbon, 1883-1884) ;
Laemmer, Monumenta Vaticana historiam ecclesiasticam sceculi 16 illustrantia
(Freiburg, 1861) ; Meletematum Bomajioruin Mantissa (Eegensburg, 1875) ;
Brieger, Aleander und Luther 1621 : Die vervollstandigten Aleander-De-
peschen nebst Untersuchungen ilier den Wormser Seichsiag (Gotha, 1894);
Calendar of Spanish State Papers (London, 1886) ; Calendar of Venetian
State Papers, vols, iii.-vi. (London, 1864-1884); Letters and Papers, Foreign
and, Domestic, of the reign of Bem-y VIII., vols. iii.-xix. (London, 1860-
1903) ; V. E. Loescher, VoUstdndige Reformations-Ada und Documenta,
3 vols. (Leipzig, 1713-1722) ; Spalatin, Annates Seformationis (Leipzig,
1768) ; Chronikon, 2nd vol. of Menoke's Scriptores rerum Oermamicarum
proedpue Saxonicarum, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1728-1730) ; Historischer Nachlass
und Briefe (Jena, 1851) ; also the sources mentioned under the iirst chapter
of this part.
Latbk Books : Hausrath, Aleander und Luther auf dem Edchstage zu
Worms (Berlin, 1897) ; Kolde, Luther uvd der Reichstag zu Worms 1521
(Halle, 1883) ; Friedrich, Der Reichstag zu Worms 1521 (Munich, 1871) ;
Eanke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (Leipzig, 1881 ;
Eng. trans., London, 1905) ; Armstrong, The Emperor Cha/rles V. (London,
1902) ; V. Bezold, Geschichte der deutschen Reformation (Berlin, 1890) ;
Creighton, A History of the Papacy, vol. vi. (London, 1897) ; Gebhardt, Die
Oravamina der deuischen Nation (Breslau, 1895).
i61
262 THE DIET OF WOKMS
plomacy being very tortuous, his grandson Charles, the
young King of Spain, was unanimously chosen to be his
feuccessor (June 28th, 1519). Troubles in Spain prevented
him leaving that country at once to take possession of
his new dignities. He was crowned at Aachen on the 23rd
of October 1520, and opened his first German Diet on
January 22nd, 1521, at Worms.
The Pope had selected two envoys to wait on the
young Emperor, the Protonotary Marino Caraccioli (1469-
1530), who was charged with the ordinary diplomatic
business, and -Jerome Aleander, the Director of the Vatican
Library, who was appointed to secure the outla wry of
Luther.
The Eoman Curia had in Aleander one of the most
clear-sighted, courageous, and indefatigable of diplomatists.
He was an Italian, born of a burgher family in the little
Venetian town of Motta (1480-1542), educated at Padua
and Venice ; he had begun life as a Humanist, had lectured
on Greek with distinction in Paris, and had been personally
acquainted with many of the German Humanists, who could
not forgive the " traitor " who had deserted their ranks to
serve an obscurantist party. His graphic letters, full of
minute details, throb with the hopes and fears of the papal
diplomacy. The reader has his fingers on the pulse of
those momentous months. The Legate was in a land where
" every stone and every tree cried out, ' Luther.' " Land-
lords refused him lodging. He had to shiver during these
winter months in an attic' without a stove. The stench
and dirt of the house were worse than the cold. When he
appeared on the streets he saw scowling faces, hands
suddenly carried to the hilts of swords, heard curses
shrieked after him. He was struck on the breast by a
Lutheran doorkeeper when he tried to get audience of the
Elector of Saxony, and no one in the crowd interfered to
protect him. He saw caricatures of himself hanging head
downwards from a gibbet. He received the old deadly
German feud-letters from Ulrich von Hutten, safe in the
neighbouring castle of Ebernberg, about a day's ride
THE NUNCIO ALEANDEB 263
distant.^ The imperial Councillors to whom he complained
had neither the men nor the means to protect him. When
he tried to publish answers to the attacks on the Papacy
which the Lutheran presses poured forth, he could scarcely
find a printer ; and when he did, syndicates bought up his
pamphlets and destroyed them. As the weeks passed he
came to understand that there was only one man on whom
he could rely — the young Emperor, believed by all but
himself to be a puppet in the hands of his Councillors,
whom Pope Leo had called a "good child," but whom
Aleander from his first interview at Antwerp had felt to
be endowed with " a prudence far beyond his years," and to
" have much more at the back of his head than he carried
on his face." He also came to believe that the one man to
be feared was the old Elector of Saxony, " that basilisk,"
that " German fox," that " marmot with the eyes of a dog,
who glanced obliquely at his questioners."
Aleander was a pure worldling, a man of indifferent
morals, showing traces of cold-blooded cruelty (as when he
slew five peasants for the loss of one of his dogs, or tried
to get Erasmus poisoned). He believed that every man
had his price, and that low and selfish motives were alone
to be reckoned with. But he did the work of the Curia at
Worms with a thoroughness which merited the rewards he
obtained afterwards.^ He had spies everywhere — in the
households of the Emperor and of the leading princes, and
among the population of Worms. He had no hesitation in
lying when he thought it useful for the " faith," as he
frankly relates.^ The Curia had laid a difiicult task upon
him. He was to see that Luther was put under the
ban ,of the Empire at once and unheard. The Bull had
condemned him ; the secular power had nothing to do but
execute the sentence. Aleander had little difficulty in
persuading the Emperor to this course within his hereditary
' Kalkoff, Die DepescJien, etc. pp. 46, 60, 58, 69, etc.
' He became Arclibishop of Brindisi and Orio, and then a Cardinal.
' Brieger, Aleander und lAiiher 1621: Die vervoUstandigten Aleander-
Depeschen, p. 53 (Gotha, 1884) ; rwn auierslitiose verax, Erasmus said.
264 THE DIET OF WORMS
dominions. An edict was issued ordering Luther'e books
to be burnt, and the Legate had the satisfaction of presidirg
at several literary auto-da-fis in Antwerp and elsewhere.
He was also successful with some of the ecclesiastical princes
of Germany.^ But it was impossible to get this done at
Worms. PaUing this, it was Aleander's business to see
that Luther's case was kept separate from the question
of German national grievances against the Papacy, and
that, if it proved to be impossible to prevent Luther appear-
ing before the Diet, he was to be summoned there simply
for the purpose of making public recantation. With the
assistance of the Emperor he was largely successfuL*
§ 2. The Emperor Charles v.
Aleander was not the real antagonist of Luther at
Worms; he was not worthy of the name. The German
Diet was the scene of a fight of faiths ; and the man of
faith on the medieval side was the young Emperor. He
represented the believing past as Luther represented the
believing future.^ "What my forefathers established at
' KalkofF, Die Depeschen des Nuniiiis Aleander, etc. pp. 19, 20, 23, 2i,
265, 266.
^ Brieger, Aleander und Zuther ISSl : Die vervollstandigten AUcmder-
Depeschen (Gotha, 1884), Q^iellen und Forschungen zur GeschiclUe der He/or-
mMion, i. ; Friedensburg, Eine ungedriickte Depesche Aleanders von seiner
ersten Nuntiat-ur hei Karl V. , in Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen
Archiven, i. (1897) ; Kalkoff, Die Depeschen des Nwntins Aleander vmn
Wonnser Reichslage 1521 (Halle, 1897, 2nd ed.); Eolde, Luther und der
Reichstag zu Worms 1621 (Halle, 1883) ; Hausrath, Aleander und Luther
auf dem Meichslctge zu Worms (Berlin, 1897) ; Gebhardt, Die Gravamina
der deutschen Nation ( Breslau, 1895, 2nd ed. ).
' "Reserved as Charles was, the shock struck out the most outspoken
confession of his faith that he ever uttered. Nowhere else is it possible to
approach so closely to the workings of his spiritual nature, save in the con-
iidential letters to his brother in the last troubled hours of rule, when he
repeated that it was not in his conscience to rend the seamless mantle of
the Church." — Armstrong, The Emperor Charles T., i. 71 (London, 1902).
But we have another glimpse in the conversation with his sister Maria, in
which he confesses that he had come to think better of the Lutherans, for
he had learned to know that they taught nothing outside the Apostles'
Creed. Cf. Kawerau, Johann Agricola von Eisleben, p. 100 (Berlin, 188] ).
THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 265
Constance and other Councils," he said, " it is my privilege
to uphold. A single monk, led astray by private judgment,
has set himself against the faith held by all Christians for
a thousand years and more, and impudently concludes that
all Christians up till now have erred. I have therefore
resolved to stake upon this cause all my dominions, my
friends, my body and my blood, my life and soul." ^ The
crisis had not come suddenly on him. As early as May
12th, 1520, Juan Manuel, his ambassador at Eome, had
written to him asking him to pay some attention to " a
certain Martin Luther, who belongs to the following of the
Elector of Saxony," and whose preaching was causing some
discontent at the Eoman Curia. Manuel thought that
Luther might prove useful in a diplomatic dispute with
the Curia.^ Charles had had time to think over the
matter in his serious, reserved way ; and this was the
decision he had come to. The declaration was all the more
memorable when it is remembered that Charles owed his
election to that rising feeling of nationality which supported
Luther,* and that he had to make sure of German assistance
in his coming struggle with Francis I. A certain grim
reality lurked in the words, that he was ready to stake his
dominions on the cause he adopted. There is much to be
said for the opinion that " the Lutheran question made
a man of the boy-ruler." *
On the other hand, it is well to remember that the
young Emperor did not take the side of the Pope nor com-
mit himself to the Curial ideas of the absolute character
of papal supremacy. He laid stress on the unity of the
CathoHc (mediaeval) Church, on the continuity of its rites,
and on the need of maintaining its authority ; but the seat
of that authority was for him a General Council. The
declaration in no way conflicts with the changes in imperial
' Deutsche Meiehstagsakten, etc. ii. 595.
* Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 1S09-1B26, p. 305 (London, 1866).
' For an account of the indirect causes which led to the election ol
Charles, cf. t. Bezold, Oeschichte der deutschen Reformation, pp. 193 ff.
(Berlin, 1890).
* Armstrong, The Emperor Charles 7., p. 73 (London, 1902).
26(5 THE DIET OF WORMS
policy which may be traced during the opening weeks of
the Diet, nor with that future action which led to the Sack
of Eome and to the Augsburg Interim (1548). It is
possible that the young ruler had read and admired Luther's
earlier writings, and that he had counted on him as an aid
in bringing the Church to a better condition. It is more
than probable that he already believed that it was his
duty to free the Church from the abuses which aboxmded ;^
but Luther's fierce attack on the Pope disgusted him, and
a reformation which came from the people threatened
secular as well as ecclesiastical authority. He had made
up his mind that Luther must be condemned, and told the
German princes that he would not change one iota of his
determination. But this did not prevent him making use
of Luther to further his diplomatic dealings with the Pope
and wi'ing concessions from the Curia. For one thing, the
Pope had been interfering with the Inquisition in Spain,
• Charles V. had for his confessor Jean Glapion, who figured largely in
the preliminary scenes before Luther arrived at Worms. He had a remark-
able conversation with Dr. Briick, the Elector of Saxony's Chancellor, in
which he professed to .speak for the Emperor as well as for himself. Luther's
earlier writings had given him great pleasure ; he believed him to be a
" plant of renown," able to produce splendid fruit for the Church. But the
book on the Babylonian Captivity had shocked him ; he did not believe it
to be Luther's ; it was not in his usual style ; if Luther had written it, it
must have been because he was momentarily indignant at the papal Bull,
and as it was anonymous, it could easily be repudiated ; or if not repudiated,
it might be explained, and its sentences shown to be capable of a Catholic
interpretation. If this were done, and if Luther withdrew his violent writ-
ings against the Pope, there was no reason why an amicable arrangement
should not be come to. The Papal Bull could easily be got over, it could be
withdrawn on the ground that Luther had never had a fair trial. It was a
mistake to suppose that the Emperor was not keenly alive to the need for a
reformation of the Church ; there were limits to his devotion to the Pope ;
the Emperor believed that he would deserve the wrath of God if he did not
try to amend the deplorable condition of the Church of Christ. Such was
Glapion's statement. It is a question how far he was sincere, and how far
he could speak for the Emperor. He was a friend and admirer of Erasmus ;
but the Dutchman had said that no man could conceal his own viesvs so
skilfully. The Elector heard that after this conversation Glapion had got
from Aleander 400 copies of the Bull against Luther, and had distributed
them among Franciscan monks. This made him doubt his sincerity, and
he refused to grant him an audience. Cf. Meichstagsakten, ii. 477 if.
m THE CITV OF WORMS 267
trying to mitigate its severity ; and Charles, like his
maternal grandfather, Ferdinand of Aragon, believed that
the Holy Office was a help in curbing the freedom-loving
people of Spain, and had no wish to see his instrument of
punishment made less effectual. For another, it was evident
that Francis i. was about to invade Italy, and Charles
wished the Pope to take his side. If the Pope gave way
to him on both of these points, he was ready to carry out
his wishes about Luther as far as that was possible.^
§ 3. In the City of Worms.
The city of Worms was crowded with men of diverse
opinions and of many different nationalities. The first
Diet of the youthful Emperor (Charles was barely one and
twenty), from whom men of all parties expected so much,
had attracted much larger numbers than usually attended
these assemblies. Weighty matters affecting all Germany
were down on the agenda. There was the old constitutional
' A study of dates throws light on these bargainings. In Oct. 1520,
Charles issued an edict ordering the burning of Luther's books within his
hereditary dominions. In the following weeks Aleander was pressing Charles
to make the edict universal ; this was declared to be impossible, but (Not.
28th) Charles wrote to the Elector of Saxony ordering him to produce
Luther at Worms, and to hinder him from writing anything more against
the Pope ; as it were in answer (Deo. 12th), the Pope intimated to Charles
that he had withdrawn his briefs about the Inquisition in Spain. The
Emperor reached 'Worms about the middle of December. On Jan. 3rd
(1521) the Pope simplified matters for the Emperor by issuing a new Bull,
Decet Somanum, containing the names of Luther and Hutten ; the Diet
opened Jan. 28th ; Aleander made his three hours' speech against Luther on
Feb. 13 ; Feb. 19th, the Estates resolved that Luther should appear before
them, and not for the simple purpose of recantation — he was to be heard, and
to receive a safe conduct ; March 6th, the imperial invitation and safe con-
duct, beginning with the words, nobilis, devote, nobis dilecte ; Aleander pro-
tested vehemently against this address ; the Emperor drafted a universal
mandate ordering the burning of Luther's books ; this probably was not
published ; it was withdrawn in favour of a mandate ordering all Luther's
books to be delivered up to the magistrates ; this was published in Worms
on March 27th, and caused rioting ; April 17th and 18th, Luther appeared
before the Diet ; May 8th, Charles received the Pope's pledge to take his side
against Francis ; Diet agreed to the ban against Luther on May 25th ;
Charles dated the ban May 8th.
i
268 THE DIET OF WORMS
question of monarchy or oligarchy bequeathed from the
Diets of Maximilian ; curiosity to see whether the new
ruler would place before the Estates a truly imperial
policy, or whether, like his predecessors, he would sub-
ordinate national to dynastic considerations; the deputies
from the cities were eager to get some sure provisions made
for ending the private wars which distm-bed trade; all
classes were anxious to provide for an effective central
government when the Emperor was absent from Germany ;
local statesmen felt the need of putting an end to the
constant disputes between the ecclesiastical and secular
powers within Germany; but the hardest problem of all,
and the one which every man was thinking, talking, dis-
puting about, was : " To take notice of the books and
descriptions made by Eriar Martin Luther against the
Court of Eome." ^ Other exciting questions were stirring
the crowds met at Worms besides those mentioned on the
agenda of the Diet. Men were talking about the need
of making an end of the papal exactions which were drain-
ing Germany of money, and the air was full of rumours of
what Sickiagen and the knights might attempt, and whether
there was going to be another peas^t revolt. These
questions were instinctively felt to hang together, and each
had an importance because of the way in which it was
connected with the religious and social problems of the
day. Eor the people of Germany and for the foreign
representatives who were gathered together at Worms, it is
vmquestionable that the Lutheran movement, and how it
was to be dealt with, was the supreme problem of the
moment. All these various things combined to bring
together at Worms a larger concourse of people than had
been collected in any German town .since the meeting of
the General Council at Constance in 1414.
Worms was one of the oldest towns in Germany. Its
people were turbulent, asserting their rights as the inhabit-
ants of a free imperial city, and in constant feud with
'■ Calendar of State Papers, Henry VIII. Letters and Papers, Foreign a/nd
Domestic (London, 1867), lii. i. p. 445.
IN THE CITY OF WORMS 269
their bishop. They had endured many an interdict, were
fiercely anti-clerical,' and were to a man on Luther's side.
The crowded streets were thronged with princes, their
councillors and their retinues; with high ecclesiastical
dignitaries and their attendant clergy; with nobles and
their " riders " ; with landsknechts, artisans, and peasants.
Spanish, French, and Italian merchants, on their way home-
wards from the Frankfurt fair, could be seen discussing the
last phase of the Lutheran question, and Spanish nobles
and Spanish merchants more than once came to blows in
the narrow thoroughfares. The foreign merchants, espe-
cially the Spaniards, all appeared to take the Lutheran side ;
not because they took much interest in doctrines, but because
they felt bound to stand up for the man who had dared to
say that no one should be burned for his opinions. These
Spanish merchants made themselves very prominent. They
joined in syndicates with the more fervent German partisans
of Luther to buy up and destroy papal pamphlets ; they
bought Luther's writings to carry home. Aleander curses
these marrani} as he calls them, and relates that they
are getting Luther's works translated into Spanish. It is
probable that many of them had Moorish blood in them,
and knew the horrors of the Inquisition. Aleander'a
spies told him that caricatures of himself and other pro-
minent papalists were hawked about, and that pictures of
Luther with the Dove hovering over his head, Luther with
his head crowned with a halo of rays, Luther and Hutten,*
the one with a Bible and the other with a sword, were
eagerly bought in the streets. These pictures were actually
sold in the courts and rooms of the episcopal palace where
the Emperor was lodged. On the steps of the churches,
at the doors of public buildings, colporteurs offered to eager
^ Kalkoff, Die Depeschen, etc. p. 106.
' This was probably the frontispiece of a small book containing four of
Hutten's tracts, and entitled Gesprcich Suchlin : Herr Vlrichu von Sutten.
Feber das Erst : Feher das aiider : Vadiscus, oder die Ro-mische Dreifaltigkeit :
Die Anschawenden ; with the motto, Odivi eeele.siam malignantium. It ia
figured in v. Bezold's Geschichte der dcutschen Reformation, p. 307 (Berlin,
1890).
270 THE DIET OF WORMS
buyers the tracts of Luther against the Pope, and the satu'es
of Ulrich von Hutten in Latin and in German. On the
streets and in open spaces like the Market, crowds of keen
disputants argued about the teaching of Luther, and praised
him in the most exaggerated ways.
Inside the Electoral College opinion was divided. The
Archbishop of Koln, the Elector of Brandenburg, and his
brother the Archbishop of Mainz, were for Luther's con-
demnation, whUe the Elector of Saxony had great influence
over the Archbishop of Trier and the Count Palatine of the
Ehine. The latter, says Aleander, scarcely opened his
mouth during the year, but now " roared like ten bulls " on
Luther's behalf. Aleander had his first opportunity of
addressing the Diet on February 13th. He spoke for
three hours, and made a strong impression. He dwelt on
Luther's doctrinal errors, which he said were those of the
Waldenses, of Wiclif, and of the Hussites. He said that
Luther denied the Presence of Christ in the Holy Supper,
and that he was a second Arius.^ During the days that
followed the members of the Diet came to a common
understanding. They presented a memorial in German
(February 19 th) to the Emperor, in which they reminded
him that no imperial edict could be published against
Luther without their consent, and that to do so before
Luther had a hearing would lead to bloodshed ; they pro-
posed that Luther should be invited to come to Worms
under a safe conduct, and in the presence of the Diet be
asked whether he was the author of the books that were
attributed to him, and whether he could clear himself of the
accusation of denying fundamental articles of the faith ;
that he should also be heard upon the papal claims, and the
Diet would judge upon them ; and, finally, they prayed the
Emperor to deliver Germany from the papal tyranny.* The
Emperor agreed that Luther should be summoned under a
safe conduct and interrogated about his books, and whether
he had denied any fundamental doctrines. But he utterly
refused to permit any discussion on the authority of tha
' Beichstagsaklen, ii. pp. 495 ff. ' Ibid. 516 ff.
IN THE CITY OF WORMS 271
Pope, and declared that he would himself communicate
with His Holiness about the complaints of Germany.^
The documents in the Beichstagsakten reveal not only
that there was a decided difference of opinion between the
Emperor and the majority of the Estates about the way in
which Luther ought to be treated, but that the policy of the
Emperor and his advisers had changed between November
1520 and February 1521. Aleander had found no
diEQculty in persuading Charles and his Flemish councillors
that, so far as the Emperor's hereditary dominions were
concerned, the only thing that the civil power had to do
was to issue an edict homologating the Papal Bull banning
Luther and his adherents, and ordering his books to be
burnt. This had been done in the Netherlands. They
had made difficulties, however, about such summary action
within the German Empire. Aleander was told that the
Emperor could do nothing until after the coronation at
Aachen (October 1520);^ and in November, much to the
nuncio's disgust, the Emperor had written to the Elector of
Saxony (November 28th, 1520) from Oppenheim asking
i^im to bring Luther with him to the Diet.^ At that time
Luther had no great wish to go to the Diet, unless it was
clearly understood that he was summoned not for the
pjirpose of merely making a recantation, but in order that
he might defend his views with full liberty of speech. He
was not going to recant, and he could say so as easily and
clearly at Wittenberg as at Worms. The situation had
changed at Worms. The Emperor had come over to the
nuncio's side completely. He now saw no need for Luther's
appearance. The Diet had nothing to do but to place
Luther under the ban of the Empire, because he had been
declared to be a heretic by the Eoman Pontiff. Aleander
claimed all the credit for this change ; but it is more than
^Beichstagsakten, ii. pp. 518 ff.
^ Brieger, Aleander und Luther 1521 : Die venollstandigten Aleander-
Dejieschen nebst Unlersuchungen liber den Wm-mser Reichstag (Gotha, 1884),
p. 19.
' Deutsche Beichstagsakten unter Kaiser Carl V. (Gotha, 1896), ii. 466 ;
Brieger, Alcamder, etc. pp. 19, 20.
272 THE DIET OF WORMS
probable that the explanation lies ia the shifting imperial
and papal policy. In the end of 1520 the policy of the
Eoman Curia was strongly anti-imperialist. The Emperor's
ambassador at Eome, Don Manuel, had been warning his
master of the papal intrigues against him, and suggesting
that Charles might show some favour to a " certain Martin
Luther " ; and this advice might easily have inspired ths
letter of the 28th of November. At all events the papal
policy had been changing, and showing signs of becoming
less hostile to the Emperor. However the matter be
accounted for, Aleander found that after the Emperor's pre-
sence within Worms it was much more easy for him to press
the papal view about Luther upon Charles and his advisers.^
On the other hand, the Germans in the Diet held
stoutly to the opinion that no countryman of theirs should
be placed xmder the ban of the Empire without being heard
in his defence, and that they and not the Bishop of Eome
were to be the judges in the matter.
The two months before Luther's appearance saw open
opposition between the Emperor and the Diet, and abundant
secret intrigue — an edict proposed against Luther,^ which
the Diet refused to accept ; * an edict proposed to order the
burning of Luther's books, which the Diet also objected
to ; * this edict revised and limited to the seizure of
Luther's writings, which was also found fault with by the
Diet; and, finally, the Emperor issuing this revised edict
on his own authority and without the consent of the Diet.*
1 Of. p. 267, note.
2 The draft was dated Febraary 15th, and will be found in the Eeichs-
tagsakten, ii. 507 ff.
^ The answer of the Diet was dated February 19th, and is to be fourd in
the Reichstagsaitcn, ii. 514 ff., and discussions thereanent, pp. 517, 518 f.
* The second draft edict proposed to summon Luther to make recanta-
tion only, and at the same time ordered his books to be burnt, which was
equivalent to a condemnation, Mcichstagsakten, ii. 520.
" The revised draft edict in its final form was dated March 10th, four
days after the citation and safe conduct, and it is probable that it was finally
issued by the Emperor for the purpose of frightening Luther, and preventing
him obeying the citation and trusting to the safe conduct, Heiclistagsakten,
ii. 529 [f, and notes.
Luther's journey to worms 273
The command to appear before the Diet on April 16th,
1521, and the imperial safe conduct were entrusted to the
imperial herald, Caspar Strum, who delivered them at
Wittenberg on the 26 th of March.^ Luther calmly finished
some literary work, and left for the Diet on April 2nd.
He believed that he was going to his death. " My dear
brother," he said to Melanchthon at parting, " if I do not
come back, if my enemies put me to death, you will go on
teaching and standing fast in the truth ; if you live, my
death will matter little." The journey seemed to the
indignant Papists like a royal progress ; crowds came to
bless the man who had stood up for Germany against the
Pope, and who was going to his death for his courage ;
they pressed into the inns where he rested, and often
found him solacing himself with music. His lute was
always comforting to him in times of excitement. Justus
Jonas, the famous German Humanist, who had turned
theologian much to Erasmus' disgust, joined him at Erfurt.
The nearer he came to Worms, the sharper became the
disputes there. Friends and foes feared that his presence
would prove oil thrown on the flames. The Emperor
began to wish he had not sent the summons. Messengers
were despatched secretly to Sickingen, and a pension
promised to Hutten to see whether they could not prevent
Luther's appearance.^ Might he not take refuge in the
Ebernberg, scarcely a day's journey from Worms ? Was
it not possible to arrange matters in a private con-
ference with Glapion, the Emperor's confessor ? Bucer
was sent to persuade him. The herald significantly
called his attention to the imperial edict ordering
magistrates to seize his writings. But nothing daunted
Luther. He would not go to the Ebernberg; he could
see Glapion at Worms, if .the confessor wished an inter-
' Luther received three safe conducts, one from the Emperor in the
citation, one from the Elector of Saxony, and one from Duke George of
Saxony. Eeichstagsakten, ii. 626 ff.
" Cf. Aleander's letter of April 5th, 1521. Brieger, Aleander v,nd
Luther, etc. jip. 119 ff.
1 8*
274 THE DIET OF WORMS
view ; what he had to say would be said publicly at
Worms.
Luther had reached Oppenheim, a town on the Ehine
about fifteen miles north from Worms, and about twenty
east from the Ebernberg, on April 14th. There he for
the last time rejected the iusidious temptations of his
enemies and the distracted counsels of his friends, that
he should turn aside and seek shelter with Francis von
Sickingen. There he penned his famous letter to Spalatin,
that he would come to Worms if there were as many
devils as tiles on the house roofs to prevent him, and
at the same time asked where he was to lodge.^
The question was important. The Eomanists had
wished that Luther should be placed under the Emperor's
charge as a prisoner of State, or else lodged in the Convent
of the Augustinian Eremites, where he could be under
ecclesiastical surveillance. But the Saxon nobles and their
Elector had resolved to trust no one with the custody of ,
their countryman. The Elector Frederick and part of his
suite had found accommodation at an inn called The Swan,
and the rest of his following were in the House of the
Knights of St. John. Both houses were full ; but it was
arranged that Luther was to share the room of two Saxon
gentlemen, v. Hirschfeld and v. Schott, in the latter
buUding.^ Next morning, Justus Jonas, who had reached
Worms before Luther, after consultation with Luther's
friends, left the town early on Tuesday morning (April
1 6th) to meet the Eeform^r, and tell him the arrangements
made. With him went the two gentlemen with whom
Luther was to lodge.* A large number of Saxon noble-
men with their attendants accompanied them. When it
was known that they had set out to meet Luther, a great
crowd of people (nearly two thousand, says Secretary
Vogler), some on horseback and some on foot, followed to
welcome Luther, and did meet him about two and a half
miles from the town.*
^ Spalatin's Avnahs Eeformatimis (Cyprian's edition), p. 38.
"^ Reichstagsaktcn, ii. 850. ' Ibid. p. 850. •■ Ibid. p. 853, note.
LUTHER IN WORMS 275
§ 4. Luther in Worms.
A little before eleven o'clock the watcher on the tower
by the Mainz Gate blew his horn to announce that the
procession was in sight, and soon afterwards Luther entered
the town. The people of Worms were at their Morgenimhiss
or Fruhmahl, but all rushed to the windows or out into the
streets to see the arrival.^ Caspar Sturm, the herald, rode
first, accompanied by his attendant, the square yellow
banner, emblazoned with the black two-headed eagle,
attached to his bridle arm. Then came the cart, — a
genuine Saxon Rollwegelin, — Luther and three companions
sitting in the straw which half filled it. The waggon had
been provided by the good town of Wittenberg, which had
also hired Christian Goldschmidt and his three horses at
three gulden a day.^ Luther's companions were his sociiLS
itinerarius, Brother Petzensteiner of ZSTiirnberg ; * his
colleague Nicholas Amsdorf ; and a student of Wittenberg,
a young Pomeranian noble, Peter Swaven, who had been
one of the Wittenberg students who had accompanied
Luther with halbert and helmet to the Leipzig Disputation
(July 1519). Justus Jonas rode immediately behind the
waggon, and then followed the crowd of nobles and people
who had gone out to meet the Eeformer.
Aleander in his attic room heard the shouts and the
trampling in the streets, and sent out one of his people to
find out the cause, guessing that it was occasioned by
Luther's arrival. The messenger reported that the pro-
cession had made its way through dense crowds of people,
and that the waggon had stopped at the door of the House
of the Knights of St. John. He also informed the nuncio
that Luther had got out, saying, as he looked round with
his piercing eyes, Detis erit pro me, and that a priest had
' Heichstagsaklen, ii. 863.
^ Lingke, LulJier's SeisegeschicMe, pp. 83 f.
' Every monk when on a journey had to be accompanied by a brother
of the Order. Petzensteiner left his convent and married (July 1522),
Kolde, AnaUcla Lutherana, p. 38. For the entry into Worms, of,
neichstagsaUen, ii. 850, 859 ; Balan, Monumenta, etc. p. 179.
276 THE DIET OF WORMS
stepped forward, received him in his arms, then touched
or kissed his robe thrice with as much reverence as if he
were handling the relicb of a saint. " They will say next,"
says Aleander in his wrath, "that the scoundrel works
miracles." ^
After travel-stains were removed, Luther dined with
ten or twelve friends. The early afternoon brought crowds
of visitors, some of whom had come great distances to see
him. Then came long discussions about how he was to act
on the morrow before the Diet. The Saxon councillors
V. Feilitzsch and v. Thun were in the same house with
him : the Saxon Chancellor, v. Briick, and Luther's friend
Spalatin, were at The Swan, a few doors away. Jerome
Schurf, the Professor of Law in Wittenberg, had been
summoned to Worms by the Elector to act as Luther's
legal adviser, and had reached the town some days before
the Eefdrmer.
How much Luther knew of the secret intrigues that
had been going on at Worms about his affairs it is
impossible to say. He ' probably was aware that the
Estates had demanded that he should have a hearing,
and should be confronted by impartial theologians, and
that the complaints of the German nation against Eome
should 'be taken up at the same time ; also that the
Emperor had refused to allow any theological discussion,
or that the grievances against Eome should be part of
the proceedings. All that was public property. The
imperial summons and safe conduct had not treated him
as a condemned heretic.^ He had been addressed in it as
Ehrsamer, lieber, andachtiger — terms which would not have
been used to a heretic, and which were ostentatiously
omitted from the safe conduct sent him by Duke George of
Saxony.* He knew also that the Emperor had nevertheless
published an edict ordering the civil authorities to seize his
' Brieger, Aleander, etc. p. 143 ; Zeitschrifl f. KirchmigescTiichte, iv. 326.
" Reichstagsakten, ii. 669 ; Fovstemann, UrkundeTihuch, 68 f., TisckreiUn,
iy. 349 ; Brieger, Aleander, etc. p. 146.
^ Eeiehslagsaklcii, ii. 514, 519 f., 526,
LUTHER IN WORMS 277
books, and to prevent more from being printed, published,
or sold, and that such an edict threw doubts upon the
value of the safe conduct.''^ But he probably did not know
that this edict was a third draft issued by the Emperor
without consulting the Diet. Nor is it likely that he
knew how Aleander had been working day and night to
prevent his appearance at the Diet from being more than
a mere formality, nor how far the nuncio had prevailed
with the Emperor and with his councillors. His friends
could tell him all this — though even they were not aware
until next morning how resolved the Emperor was that
Luther should not be permitted to make a speech.^ They
knew enough, however, to be able to impress on Luther
that he must restrain himself, and act in such a way as to
force the hands of his opponents, and gain permission to
speak at length in a second audience. The Estates wished
to hear him if the Emperor and his entourage had resolved
to prevent him from speaking. These consultations probably
settled the tactics which Luther followed on his first appear-
ance before the Diet.*
Next morning (Wednesday, April 17th), Ulrich von
Pappenheim, the marshal of ceremonies, came to Luther's
room before ten o'clock, and, greeting him courteously and
with all respect, informed him that he was to appear before
the Emperor and the Diet that day at four o'clock, when
he would be informed why he had been summoned.*
Immediately after the marshal had left, there came an
urgent summons from a Saxon noble, Hans von Minkwitz,
who was dying in his lodgings, that Luther would come to
hear his confession and administer the sacrament to him.
Luther instantly went to soothe and comfort the dying
man, notwithstanding his own troubles.^ We have no
' EeichslagsaMen, ii. 573.
' Ibid. p. 891, where it is said that the imperial entourage and the
dependants of the Curia hated a public appearance of Luther worse than
foreigners dislike " Einbeoker beer."
' Cf. Luther's letters to Cranach (April 21st, 1521), and to the Elector
Frederick, De Wette, Dr. Martin LutJiers Briefe, etc. i. 588, 599.
* BeichstagsakUn, ii. 545. ' Ibid. p. 869.
278 THE DIET OF WORMS
information how the hours between twelve and four were
spent. It is almost certain that there must have been
another consultation. Spalatin and Briick had discovered
that the conduct of the audience was not to be in the
hands of Glapion, the confessor of the Emperor, as they
had up to that time supposed, but in those of John Eck,
the Orator or Official of the Archbishop of Trier.^ This
looked badly for Luther. Eck had been officiously busy
in burniag Luther's books at Trier ; he lodged in the same
house and in the room next to the papal nuncio.^ Aleander,
indeed, boasts that Eck was entirely devoted to him, and
that he had been able to draft the question which Eck
put to Luther during the first audience.*
§ 5. Jywthers first Appearance iefore the Diet of Worms.^
A Httle before four o'clock, the marshal and Caspar
Sturm, the herald, came to Luther's lodging to escort
him to the audience hall. They led the Eeformer into
the street to conduct him to the Bishop's Palace, where
the Emperor was living along with his younger brother
Ferdinand, afterwards King of the Eomans and Emperor,
and where the Diet met.^ The streets were thronged;
faces looked down from every window ; men and women
had crowded the roofs to catch a glimpse of Luther as
he passed. It was difficult to force a way through the
crowd, and, besides, Sturm, who was responsible for
Luther's safety, feared that some Spaniard might deal the
■* The terms Orator and Official have a great many meanings in Mediaeval
ecclesiastical Latin. They probably mean here the president of the Arch-
bishop's. Ecclesiastical Court. John Eck was a Doctor of Canon Law.
Archbishop Parker'signed himself the Orator of Cecil {Caletidar of State
Papers, Elizabeth, Foreign Series, 1669-1560, p. 84).
^ Brieger, Aleander, etc. p. 145. ' Ibid. p. 145.
* This paragraph and the succeeding one are founded on the following
sources : The ofiBcial report written by John Eck of Trier ; the Acta Wm-macuB,
a narrative in the hand^vl•iting of Spalatin ; and the statements of fourteen
persons, Germans, Italians, and a Spaniard, all present in the Diet on the
17th and 18th of April 1521.
" Eeichstagsakten, ii. 574.
FIEST APPEARANCE BEFORE THE DIET 279
Eeformer a blow with a dagger in the crowd. So the
three turned into the court of the Swan Hotel ; from it
they got into the garden of the House of the Knights of
St. John ; and, as most of the courts and gardens of the
houses communicated with each other, they were able to
get into the court of the Bishop's Palace without again
appearing on the street.^
The court of the Palace was full of people eager to see
Luther, most of them evidently friendly. It was here
that old General Frundsberg, the most illustrious soldier in
Germany, who was to be the conqueror in the famous fight
at Pavia, clapped Luther kindly on the shoulder, and said
words which have been variously reported. " My poor
monk ! my little monk ! thou art on thy way to make a
stand as I and many of my knights have never done in our
toughest battles. If thou art sure of the justice of thy
cause, then forward in the name of God, and be of good
courage : God will not forsake thee." From out the crowd,
" here and there and from every corner, came voices say-
ing, ' Play the man ! Fear not death ; it can but slay the
body : there is a life beyond.' " ^ They went up the stair
and entered the audience hall, which was crammed. While
the marshal and the herald forced a way for Luther, he
passed an old acquaintance, the deputy from Augsburg.
" Ah, Doctor Peutinger," said Luther, " are you here too ? "^
Then he was led to where he was to stand before the
Emperor ; and these two lifelong opponents saw each other
for the first time. " The fool entered smiling," says
Aleander (perhaps the lingering of the smile with which
he had just greeted Dr. Peutinger) : " he looked slowly
round, and his face sobered." " When he faced the
Emperor," Aleander goes on to say, " he could not hold
his head still, but moved it up and down and from side
to side." * All eyes were fixed on Luther, and many an
account was written describing his appearance. " A man
of middle height," says an imsigned Spanish paper pre-
' Reichatagsakten, ii. 547. ° IWd. p. 549.
* Ibid. p. 862. * Brieger, Aleander, etc. p. 147.
280 THE DIET OP WORMS,
served in the British Museum, " with a strong face, a
sturdy build of body, with eyes that scintillated and were
never still. He was clad ia the robe of the Augustinian
Order, but with a belt of hide, with a large tonsure,
newly shaven, and a coronal of short thick hair."^ All
noticed his gleaming eyes ; and it was remarked that when
his glance fell on an Italian, the man moved uneasily in
his seat, as if " the evil eye was upon him." Meanwhile,
in the seconds before the silence was broken, Luther was
making his observations. He noticed the swarthy Jewish-
looking face of Aleander, with its gleam of hateful triimiph.
" So the Jews must have looked at Christ," he thought.^
He saw the young Emperor, and near him the papal nuncios
and the great ecclesiastics of the Empire. A wave of pity
passed through him as he looked. " He seemed to me,"
he said, " like some poor lamb among swine and hounds." *
There was a table or bench with some books upon it. When
Luther's glance fell on them, he saw that they were his own
writings, and could not help wondering how they had got
there.* He did not know that Aleander had been collecting
them for some weeks, and that, at command of the Emperor,
he had handed them over to John Eck, the Official of Trier,
for the purposes of the audience.^ Jerome Schurf made
his way to Luther's side, and stood ready to assist in legal
difficulties.
The past and the future faced each other — the young
Emperor in his rich robes of State, with his pale, vacant-
looking face, but " carrying more at the back of his head
than his countenance showed," the descendant of long lines
of kings, determined to maintain the beliefs, rites, and rules
of that Mediaeval Church which his ancestors had upheld ;
and the monk, with his wan face seamed with the traces
of spiritual conflict and victory, in the poor dress of his
' SeiclistagsaJcten, ii. 632.
" De Wette, Dr. Martin Luthers Briefe. eto. i. 689.
' Luther's Works (Erlangen edition), xxiv. 322.
*Jhid. Ixiv. 369.
" Brieger, Aleander, eto. p. 146.
FIRST APPEARANCE BEFORE THE DIET 281
Order, a peasant's son, resolute to cleave a way for the new
faith of evangelical freedom, the spiritual birthright of all
men.
The strained silence^ was broken by the Official of
Trier, a man of lofty presence, saying, in a clear, ringing
voice so that all could hear distinctly, first in Latin and
then in German :
" ' Martin Luther, His Imperial Majesty, Sacred and
Victorious (sacra et invicta), on the advice of all the
Estates of the Holy Eoman Empire, has ordered you to be
summoned here to the throne of His Majesty, in order that
you may recant and recall, according to the force, form, and
meaning of the citation-mandate decreed against you by
His Majesty and communicated legally to you, the books,
both in Latin and in German, pubHshed by you and spread
abroad, along with their contents : Wherefore I, in the name
of His Imperial Majesty and of the Princes of the Empire,
ask you : First, Do you confess that these books exhibited
in ^our presence (I show him a bundle of books written
in Latin and in German) and now named one by one, which
have been circulated with your name on the title-page, are
yours, and do you acknowledge them to be yours ? Secondly,
Do you wish to retract and recall them and their contents,
or do you mean to adhere to them and to reassert them ? '" *
The books were not named ; so Jerome Schurf called
out, " Let the titles be read." ^ Then the notary, Maximilian
Siebenberger (called Transilvanus),* stepped forward and,
taking up the books one by one, read their titles and
briefly described their contents.^ Then Luther, having
briefly and precisely repeated the two questions put to
him, said :
^ BeichslagsaTcten, ii. 633. ' Ibid. p. 588.
'iJid. p. 547. <i6M?. p. 633.
' The names of the hooks collected and placed on the tahle have been
curiously preserved on a scrap of paper stored in the archives of the Vatican
Library ; they were all editions published by Frobenius of Basel {Seichstags-
akten, ii. 548 and note). It may be suffacient to say that among them
(twenty-five or so) were the appeal To the Christian Nobility of the German
Nation, the tract On the Liberty of a Christian Man, The Babylonian Cap-
tivity of the Church of Christ, Against the Execrable Bull of Antichrist, some
commentaries, and some tracts on religious subjects "not contentious," says
the official record.
282 ' THE DIET OP WORMS
" ' To which I answer as shortly and correctly as I am
able. I cannot deny that the books named are mine, and I
will never deny any of them : ^ they are all my offspring ;
and I have written some others which have not been named.^
But as to what follows, whether I shall reaffirm in the same
terms all, or shall retract what I may have uttered beyond
the authority of Scripture, — because the matter involves a
question of faith and of the salvation of souls, and because it
concerns the Word of God, which is the greatest thing in
heaven and on earth, and which we all must reverence, — it
would be dangerous and rash in me to make any unpre-
meditated declaration, because in unpremeditated speech I
might say something less than the fact and something more
than the truth ; besides, I remember the saying of Christ
when He declared, " Whosoever shall deny Me before men,
him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven,
and before His angels." For these reasons I beg, with
all respect, that your Imperial Majesty give me time to
deliberate, that I may answer the question without injury
to the Word of God and without peril to my own soul.' " *
Luther made his answer in a low voice — so low that
the deputies from Strassburg, who were sitting not far
from him, said that they could not hear him distinctly.*
Many present inferred from the low voice that Luther's
spirit was broken, and that he was beginning to be afraid.
But from what followed it is evident that Luther's whole
procedure on this first appearance before the Diet was in-
tended to defeat the intrigues of Aleander, which had for
^ This was probably an answer to the suggestion made by Glapion to
Chancellor Briick, that if Luther would only deny the authorship of the
Babylonian Captivity of the Church of Christ, which had been published
anonymously, matters might be arranged.
' The sentence, " Apd I have written some others which have not been
named," was an aside spoken in a lower tone, but distinctly (Eeichstagsakteiv,
ii. 589, 860).
• BeicJistagsaJcten, ii. 548. In Eok's ofBcial report Luther's answer is
given very briefly ; instead of Luther's words the OfBcial says : " As to the
other part of the question, whether he wished to retract their contents and
to sing another tune {palinodiam canere), he began to invent a chain of idle
reasons (cawsas nectere) and to seek means of escape [diffugias gucerere) " ■
{Seichstagsakten, ii. 589).
* Seichstagsakten, ii. 851, 863 : "Wir habent den Luther nit wol horen
reden, dann er mit niederer stim geredet" (Kolde, Aiialecta, p. 30 n.).
FIRST APPEARANCE BEFORE THE DIET 283
their aim to prevent the Eeformer addressing the Diet in
a long speech ; and in this he succeeded, as Briick and
Spalatin hoped he would.
The Estates then proceeded to deliberate on Luther's
request. Aleander says that the Emperor called his
councillors about him ; that the Electors talked with each
other ; and that the separate Estates deliberated separately.^
We are informed by the report of the Venetian ambassadors
that there was some difficulty among some of them in
acceding to Luther's request. But at length the Official
of Trier again addressed Luther :
" ' Martin, you were able to know from the imperial man-
date why you were summoned here, and therefore you do
not really require any time for further deliberation, nor is
there any reason why it should be granted. Yet His Im-
perial Majesty, moved by his natural clemency, grants you
one day for deliberation, and you will appear here to-
morrow at the same hour, — but on the understanding that
you do not give your answer in writing, but by word of
mouth.' "2
The sitting, which, so far as Luther was concerned, had
occupied about an hour, was then declared to be ended,
and he was conducted back to his room by the herald.
There he sat down and wrote to his friend Cuspinian in
Vienna " from the midst of the tumult " :
"This hour I have been before the Emperor and his
brother, and have been asked whether I would recant my
books. I have said that the books were really mine, and
' Brieger, Aleander, etc. p. 146.
^ Heichstagsakten, ii. 549. Aleander, writing to Kome, says that the
Official went on to say in the name of the Emperor that Luther ought to
bear it in mind that he had written many things against the Pope and the
Apostolic Chair, and had scattered recklessly many heretical statements
which had caused great scandal, and which, if not speedily ended, would
kindle such a great conflagration as neither Luther's recantation nor the
imperial power could extinguish ; and that he exhorted Luther to be miudlul
of this (Brieger, Aleander, p. 147). In Eck's official report these remarks are
given as the opinions of those princes who did not wish that Luther's request
should be granted ; but they must have been included in his speech, for
Peutinger confirms the nuncio's report {Eeichstagsakien, ii. 689 f. , 860).
284 THE DIET OF WORMS
have asked for some delay about recantation. They have
given me no longer space and time than till to-morrow for
deliberation. Christ helping me, I do not mean to recant
one jot or tittle." ^
§ 6. Luther's Second Appearance hefore the Diet.
The next day, Thursday, April 18 th, did not afford much
time for deliberation. Luther was besieged by visitors.
Familiar friends came to see him in the morning ; German
nobles thronged his hostel at midday; Bucer rode over
from the Ebernberg in the afternoon with congratulations
on the way that the first audience had been got through,
and bringing letters from Ulrich von Hutten. His friends
were almost astonished at his cheerfulness. " He greeted
me and others," said Dr. Peutinger, who was an early caller,
" quite cheerfully — ' Dear Doctor,' he said, ' how is yom-
wife and child ? ' I have never found or seen him other
than the right good fellow he is." ^ George Vogler and
others had " much pious conversation " with him, and
wrote, praising his thorough heroism.^ The German nobles
greeted Luther with a bluff heartiness — "Herr Doctor,
How are you ? People say you are to be burnt ; that will
never do ; that would ruin everything." *
The marshal and the herald came for Luther a little
after four o'clock, and led him by the same private devious
ways to the Bishop's Palace. The crowds on the streets
were even larger than on the day before. It was said
that more than five thousand people, Germans and
foreigners, were crushed together in the street before the
Palace. The throng was so dense that some of the dele-
gates, like Oelhafen from Niiruberg, could not get through
it.* It was six o'clock before the Emperor, accompanied
' De Wette, Dr. Martin Luthers Briefe, i. 687.
^ Reichslagsakten, ii. 862. ' IbM. p. 853.
^ Heichstagsakten, ii. 549 n. ; Luther's Works (Erlangen edition), Ixiv. 869.
° " I was on my way to the audience to hear (Luther's) speech, but the
throng was so dense that I could not get through " (Sixtus Oelhafen to Hector
Pomer, Heichstagsakten, ii. 854).
SECOND APPEARANCE BEFORE THE DIET 285
by the Electors and princes, entered the hall. Luther and
the herald had been kept waiting in the court of the Palace
for more than an hour and a half, bruised by the dense
moving crowd. In the hall the throng was so great that
the princes had some difficulty in getting to their seats,
and found themselves uncomfortably crowded when they
reached them.^ Two notable men were absent. The papal
nuncios refused to be present when a heretic was permitted
to speak. Such proceedings were the merest tomfoolery
(ribaldaria), Aleander said. When Luther reached the
door, he had still to wait ; the princes were occupied in
reaching their places, and it was not etiquette for him to
appear until they were seated.^ The day was darkening,
and the gloomy hall flamed with torches.^ Observers re-
marked Luther's wonderful cheerful countenance as he
made his way to his place.*
The Emperor had intrusted the procedure to Aleander,
to his confessor Glapion, and to John Eck, who had con-
ducted the audience on the previous day.* The Official
was again to have the conduct of matters in his hands.
As soon as Luther was in his place, Eck " rushed into
words " (prorupit in verha).^ He began by recapitulating
what had taken place at the first audience ; and in saying
that Luther had asked time for consideration, he insinuated
that every Christian ought to be ready at all times to give
a reason for the faith that is in him, much more a learned
theologian like Luther. He declared that it was now time
for Luther to answer plainly whether he adhered to the
contents of the books he had acknowledged to be his, or
whether he was prepared to recant them. He spoke first
in Latin and then in German, and it was noticed that his
speech in Latin was very bitter.^
Then Luther delivered his famous speech before the
Diet. He had freed himself from the web of intrigue that
> SeichstagsaUen, ii. 864. ' Waloh, xv. 2301.
' Hid. p. 2233. * ReichstagsaHen, ii. 863.
• Brieger, Aleander, etc. p. 172. • Beiehstagsahten, ii. 549.
' IMd. p. 550.
286 THE DIET OF WORMS
Aleander had been at such pains to weave round him to
compel him to silence, and stood forth a free German to
plead his cause before the most illustrious audience the
Fatherland could offer to any of its sons.
Before him was the Emperor and his brother Ferdinand,
Archduke of Austria, destined to be King of the Eomans
and Emperor in days to come, and beside them, seated, all
the Electors and the great Princes of the Empii-e, lay and
ecclesiastical, among them four Cardinals. All round him
standing, for there was no space for seats, the Counts, Free
Nobles and Knights of the Empire, and the delegates of
the great cities, were closely packed together.^ Ambas-
sadors and the political agents of almost all the countries
in Europe were there to swell the crowd — ready to report
the issue of this momentous day. For all believed that
whatever weighty business for Germany was discussed
at this Diet, the question raised by Luther was one of
European importance, and affected the countries which
they represented. The rumour had gone about, founded
mainly on the serene appearance of Luther, that the
monk was about to recant ; ^ and most of the political
agents earnestly hoped it might be true. That and that
only would end, they believed, the symptoms of disquiet
which the governments of every land were anxiously
watching.
The diligence of Wrede has collected and printed in
the Reichstagsakten^ several papers, all of which profess
to give Luther's speech ; but they are mere summaries,
some longer and some shorter, and give no indication of
the power which thrilled the audience. Its effect must be
sought for in the descriptions of the hearers.
The specimens of his books which had been collected
by Aleander were so representative that Luther could speak
of all his writings. He divided them into three classes.
He had written books for edification which he could truly
say had been approved by all men, friends and foes alike,
' Myoonius, Historia Kefm-mationis (Leipzig, 1718), p. 39.
"^ Beichstagsajcten, ii, 578, '^ Jbid. pp. 550 ff,, 557 ff,, 591 ff, etc,
SECOND APPEARANCE BEFORE THE DIET 287
and it was scarcely to be expected that he, the author,
should be the only man to recant the contents of such
writings as even the Papal Bull had commended. In a
second class of writings he had attacked the papal tyranny
which all Germany was groaning under ; to recant the
contents of these books would be to make stronger and
less endurable the monstrous evil he had protested against ;
he therefore refused to recall such writings ; no loyal
German could do so. He had also written against indi-
vidual persons who had supported the Papacy ; it was pos-
sible that he had written too strongly in some places and
against some men ; he was only a man and not God, and
was liable to make mistakes ; he remembered how Christ,
who could not err, had acted when He was accused, and
imitating Him, he was quite ready, if shown to be wrong,
by evangelical or prophetic witnesses, to renounce his
errors, and if he were convinced, he assured the Emperor
and princes assembled that he would be the first to throw
his books into the fire. He dwelt upon the power of the
word of God which must prevail over everything, and
showed that many calamities in times past had fallen upon
nations who had neglected its teachings and warnings.
He concluded as follows :
" I do not say that there is any need for my teaching
or warning the many princes before me, but the duty I owe
to my Germany will not allow me to recant. With these
words I commend myself to your most serene Majesty and to
your principalities, and humbly beg that you will not permit
my accusers to triumph over me causelessly. I have spoken
(Z)m)."
Luther had spoken in Latin ; he was asked to repeat
what he had said in German. The Hall ha,d been packed ;
the torches gave forth warmth as well as light. Luther
steamed with perspiration, and looked wan and overpowered;
the heat was intense. Friends thought that the further
effort would be too much for his strength. The Saxon
councillor, Frederick von Thun, regardless of etiquette,
called out loudly, " If you cannot do it you have done
288 THE DIET OF WORMS
enough, Herr Doctor." ^ But Luther went on and finished
his address in German. His last words were, "Here I
stand (Hie lin Ich)."
Aleander, the papal nuncio, who was not present, relates
that while Luther was speaking of the books in which he
had attacked the Papacy, and was proceeding " with great
venom " to denounce the Pope,^ the Emperor ordered him
to pass from that subject and to proceed with his other
matters. The Emperor had certainly told the Estates that
he would not allow the question of Luther's orthodoxy and
complaiats against the Holy See to be discussed together;
and that lends some support to Aleander's statement.^ But
when it is seen that not one of the dozen deputies present
who write accounts of the scene mentions the interruption ;
when it is not found in the official report ; when it is
remembered that Charles could not understand either
German or Latin, the story of the interruption is a very
unlikely one. Aleander was not remarkable for his veracity
— "a man, to say the least, not bigotedly truthful (wo»
superstitiose verax)," says Erasmus ; * and the nuncio on one
occasion boasted to his masters in Eome that he coid.d He
well when occasion required it.^
Several letters descriptive of the scene, written by men
who were present in the Diet, reveal the intense interest
taken by the great majority of the audience in the appear-
ance and speech of Luther. His looks, his language, the
attitude in which he stood, are all described. When artists
portray the scene, either on canvas or in bronze, Luther
is invariably represented standing upright, his shoulders
squared, and his head thrown back. That was not how
he stood before Charles and the Diet. He was a monk,
' Luther's Works (Erlangen edition), Ixiv. 370.
' Brieger, Aleander, etc. p. 152.
' Beichstagsakten, ii. 630.
* Desiderii Erasmi RoUrodami Opera Omnia (Leyden, 1703), iii. 1095 :
"Jam audio multia persuasum, ex meis soriptis exstitisse totam hano
Eoclesise procellam : cojus veiissimi rumoris prseoipuus auotor fuit Hierony-
mus Aleander, homo, ut nihil aliud dicam, non superstitiose verax."
° Brieger, Aleander, etc. p. 41.
SECOND APPEARANCE BEFORE THE DIET 289
trained in the conventional habits of monl^ish humility.
He stood with a stoop of the head and shoulders, with the
knees slightly bent, and without gestures. The only trace of
, bodily emotion was betrayed by bending and straightening his
knees.i He addressed the Emperor and the Estates with
all respect, — "Most serene Lord and Emperor, most illus-
trious Princes, most clement Lords," — and apologised for
any lack of etiquette on the ground that he was convent -
bred and knew nothing of the ways of Courts ; but it was
noticed by more than one observer that he did not address
the spiritual princes present.^ Many a witness describes
the charm of his cheerful, modest, but undaunted bearing.^
The Saxon official account says, " Luther spoke simply,
quietly, modestly, yet not without Christian courage and
fidelity — in such a way, too, that his enemies would have
doubtless preferred a more abject spirit and speech " ; and
it goes on to relate that his adversaries had confidently
counted on a recantation, and that they were correspond-
ingly disappointed.* Many expected that, as he had never
before been in such presence, the strange audience would
have disconcerted him ; but, to their surprise and delight,
he spoke "confidently, reasonably, and prudently, as if
he were in his own lecture-room."^ Luther himself was
surprised that the unaccustomed surroundings affected him
so little. " When it came to my turn," he says, " I just
went on." * The beauty of his diction pleased his audience
— "many fair and happy words," say Dr. Peutinger and
others.'
When Luther had finished, the Official, mindful that it
was his duty to extract from Luther a distinct recantation,
addressed him in a threatening' manner {increpdbundo
similis), and told him that his answer had not been to the
point. The question was that Luther, in some of his books,
denied decisions of Councils : Would he reaffirm or recant
what he had said about these decisions ? the Emperor
1 JteichstagmMen, ii. 860 n. " Ibid. p. 860. » Ibid. p. 853.
■• Ibid. pp. 550, 551. " Myconius, Eistoria Beformationis, p. 39.
• Waloh, XV. 233. ' Meichstagsakten, ii, 861.
1 9*
290 THE DIET OF WORMS
demanded a plaiu (non cornutum) answer. " If His Imperidl
Majesty desires a plain answer," said Lnther, " I will give
it to him, neque cornutum rieqv^ dentatum, and it is this :
It is impossible for me to recant unless I am proved to be
in the wrong by the testimony of Scripture or by evident
reasoning; I cannot trust either the decisions of Councils
or of Popes, for it is plain that they have not only erred,
but have contradicted each other. My conscience is thirled
to the word of God, and it is neither safe nor honest to act
against one's conscience. God help me ! Amen ! " ^
When he had finished, the Emperor and the princes
consulted together; then at a sign from Charles,^ the
Official addressed Luther at some length. He told him
that in his speech he had abused the clemency of the
Emperor, and had added to his evil deeds by attacking the
Pope and Papists (pajjisice) before the Diet. He briefly
recapitulated Luther's speech, and said that he had not suffi-
ciently distinguished between his books and his opinions ;
there might be room for discussion had Luther brought
forward anything new, but his errors were old — the errors
of the Poor Men of Lyons, WicUf, of John and Jerome
Huss (the learned Official gave Huss a brother unknown
to history),^ which were decided upon at the Council of
Constance, where the whole German nation had been
gathered together; he again asked him to retract such
opinions. To this Luther replied as before, that General
Councils had erred, and that his conscience did not allow
him to retract. By this time the torches had burnt to
their sockets, and the hall was growing dark.* Wearied
with the crowd and the heat, numbers were preparing to
leave. The Official, making a last effort, called out loudly,
" Martin, let your conscience alone ; recant your errors and
you will be safe and sound ; you can never show that a
Council has erred." Luther declared that Councils had
erred, and that he could prove it.^ Upon this the Emperor
' Reiclistagsakten, ii. 555. ^ Ibid. p. 591. ' Ihid. p. 861 n.
* Cochlaeus, Commentarius, etc. p. 34.
" licichstoffsakten, ii. 666-558, 581, 582, 591-594.
SECOND APPEARANCE BEFORE THE DIET 291
made a sign to end the matter.^ The last words Luther
was heard to say were, " God come to my help " {Got kmn
mir zu. Mlf)?
It is evident from almost all the reports that from the
time that Luther had finished his great speech there was a
good deal of confusion, and probably of conversation, among
the audience. All that the greater portion of those present
heard was an altercation between Luther and the Official,
due, most of the Germans thought, to the overbearing
conduct of Eck, and which the Italians and Spaniards
attributed to the pertinacity of Luther.^ " Luther asserted
that Councils had erred several times, and had given
decisions against the law of God. The Official said No ;
Luther said Yes, and that he could prove it. So the matter
came to an end for that time."* But all understood that
there was a good deal said about the Council of Constance,
The Emperor left his throne to go to his private
rooms; the Electors and the princes sought their hotels.
A number of Spaniards, perceiving that Luther turned to
leave the tribunal, broke out into hootings, and followed
"the man of God with prolonged bowlings."^ Then the
Germans, nobles and delegates from the towns, ringed him
^ Aleander wrote that the Emperor said that he did not wish to hear
more : et allora fii detio per Cesar, che lasiava et che non mleva piu udir, ex
quo questui Tiegava li Concilii (Brieger, Aleander, etc. p. 153).
^ Eeichstagsakten, ii. 862 (Dr. Peutinger to the Council of Augsburg).
The famous ending : HU stehe ich, ich harm nicht anders thun, Goit helfe
mir. Amen, which gives such a dramatic finish to the whole scene, is not
to b'e found in the very earliest records. It first appeared in an account
published in Wittenberg without date, but which is probably very early,
and also In the 1546 edition of Luther's Works. Various versions are given
of the last words Luther uttered — Gott helf mir. Amen, in the Acta Worm-
aciee {Seichstagsakten, ii. 557), which are believed to have been corrected by
Luther himself ; So helf mir Gott, denn kein widerspruch kan ich nicht thun.
Amen, is given bySpalatin in his Annates (p. 41). Every description of the
scene coming from contemporary sources shows that there was a great deal
of confusion; it is most likely that in the excitement men carried awaj
only a general impression and not an exact recollection of the last words »<;
Luther. If it were not for Dr. Peutinger's very definite statement written
almost immediately after the event, there seems to be no reason why the
dramatic ending should not have been the real one.
" Eeichstagsakten,, ii. 636. " Ibid. p. 862. » Ibid. p. 558.
292 THE DIET OF WORMS
round to protect him, and as they passed from the hall
they^aU at once, and Luther in the midst of them, thrust
forward arms and raised hands high above their heads, in
the way that a German knight was accustomed to do when
he had unhorsed his antagonist in the tourney, or that a
German landsknecht did when he had struck a victorious
blow. The Spaniards rushed to the door shouting after
Luther, " To the fire with him, to the fire ! " ^ The crowd
on the street thought that Luther was being sent to prison,
and thought of a rescue.^ Luther calmed them by saying
that the company were escorting him home. Thus, with
hands held high in stern challenge to Holy Eoman Empire
and mediaeval Church, they accompanied Luther to his
lodging.
Friends had got there before him — Spalatin, ever
faithful ; Oelhafen, who had not been able to reach his
place in the Diet because of the throng. Luther, with
beaming face, stretched out both his hands, exclaiming,
" I am through, I am through ! " ^ In a few minutes
Spalatin was called away. He soon returned. The old
Elector had summoned him only to say, " How well, father.
Dr. Luther spoke this day before the Emperor and the
Estates ; but he is too bold for me." The sturdy old German
prince wrote to his brother John, " From what I have
heard this day, I will never believe that Luther is a heretic " ;
and a few days later, "At this Diet, not only Annas and
Caiaphas, but also PUate and Herod, have conspired against
Luther." Frederick of Saxony was no Lutheran, like his
brother John and his nephew John Frederick ; and he
was the better able to express what most German princes
were thinking about Luther and his appearance before the
' ReichsiagsaMcn, ii. 636. Aleander says tliat Luther alone raised his
hand and made this gesture ; ho was not present ; the Spaniard who
recounts the incident as given above was a spectator of the scene.
^ Lutlier's Worlcs (Erlangen edition), Ixiv. 370 ; "Wranipelmeyer, Tage-
huch ilber Dr. Martin Lutlier, ge/iihrt von Dr. Conrad CordaUis, p. 477 ;
et descendi de pretorio conduclus, do sprangen Ocsclhn lierfur, die saglen,
" JFic, fart yhr ]ilin ge/augsii? Das must nhht scin."
^ Reichslagsaklcn, ii. S53.
THE CONFERENCES 293
Diet. Even Duke George was stirred to a momentary
admiration ; and Duke Eric of Brunswick, who had taken
the papal side, could not sit down to supper without sending
Luther a can of Einbecker beer from his own table.-' As for
the commonalty, there was a wild uproar in the streets of
Worms that night — men cursing the Spaniards and Italians,
and praising Luther, who had compelled the Emperor and
the prelates to hear what he had to say, and who had
voiced the complaints of the Fatherland against the Eoman
Curia at the risk of his life. The voice of the people found
utterance in a placard, which next morning was seen posted
up on the street corners of the town, " Woe to the land
whose king is a child." It was the beginning of the
disillusion of Germany. The people had believed that
they were securing a German Emperor when, in a fit of
enthusiasm, they had called upon the Electors to choose
the grandson of Maximilian. They were beginning to find
that they had selected a Spaniard.
§ 7. The Conferences.
Next day (April 19th) the Emperor proposed that
Luther should be placed imder the ban of the Empire.
The Estates were not-satisfied, and insisted that something
should be done to effect a compromdse. Luther had not
been treated as they had proposed in their memorandum of
the 19 th February. He had been peremptorily ordered to
retract. The Emperor had permitted Aleander to regulate
the order of procedure on the day previous (April 18th),
and the result had not been satisfactory. Even the Elector
of Brandenburg and his brother, the hesitating Archbishop
of Mainz, did not wish matters to remain as they were.
They knew the feelings of the German people, if they were
ignorant of the Emperor's diplomatic dealings with the
Pope. The Emperor gave Way, but told them that he would
let them hear his own view of the matter. He produced
a sheet of paper, and read a short statement prepared by
' Selneoker, Sistoria . . . D. M. Lutheri (1575), p. 108.
294 THE DIET OF WORMS
himself in the French tongue — the language with which
Charles was most familiar. It was the memorable declara-
tion of his own religious position, which has been referred
to already.! Aleander reports that several of the princes
became pale as death when they heard it.^ In later
discussions the Emperor asserted with warmth that he
would never change one iota of his declaration.
\ Nevertheless, the Diet appointed a Commission (April
22nd) to confer with Luther, and at its head was placed
the Archbishop of Trier, who was perhaps the only one
among the higher ecclesiastics of Germany whom Luther
thoroughly trusted. They had several meetings with the
Eeformer, the first being on the 24th of April All the
members of the Commission were sincerely anxious to
arrange a compromise ; but after the Emperor's declaration
that was impossible, as Luther himself clearly saw. No set
of resolutions, however skilfully framed, could reconcile the
Emperor's belief that a General Council was infallible and
Luther's phrase, " a conscience bound to the Holy Scrip-
tures." No proposals to leave the final decision to the
Emperor and the Pope, to the Emperor alone, to the
Emperor and the Estates, to a future General Council (all
of which were made), could patch up a compromise between
two such contradictory standpoints. Compromise must
fail in a fight of faiths, and that was the nature of the
opposition between Charles v. and Luther throughout their
lives. What divided them was no subordinate question
about doctrine or ritual ; it was fundamental, amounting to
an entirely different conception of the whole round of
rehgion. The moral authority of the individual conscience
confronted the legal authority of an ecclesiastical assembly.
In after days the monk regretted that he had not spoken
out more boldly before the Diet. Shortly before his death,
^ Cf. p. 264-5. The complete text of the Emperor's declaration is to be
found in the BeichstagsaTcten, ii. 594 ;' Forsteraann, Xeiies Urkundenbmch
stir Oeschickte der evangelisclien Kirchen-Riformation (Hamburg, 1842), i. 75 ;
Armstrong, The Emperor Charles V., i. 70 (London. 1902).
^ Brieger, Aleander und Luther 1521, p. 154 (Gotha, 1884): Dove rrtoltx
riinasero piiipallidi che sefosscro stati morti.
Luther's disappearance 295
the Emperor expressed his regret that he had not burned
the obstinate heretic. When the Commission had failed,
Luther asked leave to reveal his whole innermost thoughts
to the Archbishop of Trier, under the seal of confession,
and the two had a memorable private interview. Aleander
fiercely attacked the Archbishop for refusing to disclose
what passed between them ; but the prelate was a German
bishop with a conscience, and not an unscrupulous
dependant on a shameless Curia. No one knew what
Luther's confession was. The Commission had to report
that its efforts had proved useless. Luther was ordered to
leave Worms and return to Wittenberg, without preaching
on the journey ; his safe conduct was to expire in twenty-
one days after the 26 th of April. At their expiry he was
liable to be seized and put to death as a pestilent heretic.
There remained only to draft and publish the. edict con-
taining the ban. The days passed, and it did not appear.
Suddenly the startling news reached Worms that
Luther had disappeared, no one knew where. Aleander, as
usual, had the most exact information, and gives the fullest
account of the rumours which were flying about. Coch-
laeus, who was at Frankfurt, sent him a man who had
been at Eisenach, had seen Luther's uncle, and had been
told by him about the capture. Five horsemen had dashed
at the travelling waggon, had seized Luther, and had ridden
off with him. Who the captors were or by whose authority
they had acted, no one could tell, " Some blame me," says
Aleander, " others the Archbishop of Mainz : would God it
were true ! " Some thought that Sickingen had carried
him off to protect him ; others, the Elector of Saxony ;
others, the Count of Mansfeld. One persistent rumour
declared that a personal enemy of the Elector of Saxony,
one Hans Beheim, had been the captor ; and the Emperor
rather believed it. On May 14th a letter reached Worms
saying that Luther's body had been found in a silver-mine
pierced with a dagger. The news flew over Germany and
beyond it that Luther had been done to death by emissaries
of the Eoman Curia ; and so persistent was the belief, that
296 THE DIET OF WORMS
Aleander prepared to justify the deed by alleging that the
Eeformer had broken the imperial safe conduct by preaching
at Eisenach and by addressing a concourse of people at
Frankfurt.^ Albert Diirer, in Ghent, noted down in his
private diary that Luther, "the God-inspired man," had
been slain by the Pope and his priests as our Lord had
been put to death by the priests in Jerusalem. " God,
if Luther is dead, who else can expound the Holy Gospel
to us ! " * Friends wrote distracted letters to Wittenberg
imploring Luther to teU them whether he was alive or
imprisoned.^ The news created the greatest consternation
and indignation ia Worms. The Emperor's decision had
been little liked even by the princes most incensed against
Luther. Aleander could not get even the Archbishop of
Mainz to promise that he would publish it. When the
Commission of the Diet had failed to effect a compromise,
the doors of the Eathhaus and of other pubHe buildings
in Worms had been placarded with an intimation that
four hundred knights had sworn that they would not
leave Luther unavenged, and the omiaous words JSundschuh,
Bundschuh, Bwndsehuh had appeared on it. The Emperor
had treated the matter lightly ; but the German Eomanist
princes had been greatly alarmed.* They knew, if he did
not, that the union of peasants with the lower nobility had
been a possible soui-ce of danger to Germany for nearly a
century; they remembered that it was this combination
which had made the great Bohemian rising successfuL
Months after the Diet had risen, Eomanist partisans in
Germany sent anxious communications to the Pope about
1 Brieger, Luther und Aleander ISSl (Gotha, 1884), pp. 208 £F. j Kalkoff,
Die Depeschen, des Nwniius Aleander vom Wormser Beichstage 15S1 (Halle,
1897), pp. 235 ff.
^ Leitschuh, Alhrecht Diirer's Tagebuch der Beise in die Niederlande
(Leipzig, 1884), pp. 82-84.
' Kolde, Analecta Lutherana (Gotha, 1883), pp. 31, 32 : " Quare, mi
doctissime Luthere, si me amas, si religuos, qui adhuc mecum curam tui
habent, ETangeliique Dei, per te tanto labore, tanta oiira, tot sudoribus, tot
periculis prsedicati fac sciainns, an vivas, an captus sis."
* Brieger, Luther und Aleairdcr 15^1 (Gotha, 1884), p. 15S ; Kalkoff, Di»
Dcpeachen des Nuntius Aleander (Halle, 1897), p. 182.
THE BAN 297
the dangers of a combination of the lesser nobility with the
peasants.^ The condition of Worms had been bad enough
before, and when the news of Luther's murder reached the
town the excitement passed all bounds. The whole of the
Imperial Court was in an uproar. When Aleander was
in the royal apartments the highest nobles in Germany
pressed round him, telling him that he would be murdered
even if he were " clinging to the Emperor's bosom." Men
crowded his room to give him information of conspiracies to
slay both himself and the senior Legate CaracciolL* The
excitement abated somewhat, but the wiser German princes
recognised the abiding gravity of the situation, and how
little the Emperor's decision had done to end the Lutheran
movement. The true story of Luther's disappearance was
not known until long afterwards. After the failure of the
conferences, the Elector of Saxony summoned two of his
councillors and his chaplain and private secretary, Spalatin,
and asked them to see that Luther was safely hidden until
the immediate danger was past. They were to do what
they pleased and inform him of nothing. Many weeks
passed before the Elector and his brother John knew that
Luther was safe, living in their own castle on the Wart-
burg. This was his " Patmos," where he doffed his monkish
robes, let the hair grow over his tonsure, was clad as a
knight, and went by the name of Junker Georg. His
disappearance did not mean that he ceased to be a
great leader of men ; but it dates the beginning of the
national opposition to Eome.
§ 8. The Ban.
After long delay, the imperial mandate against Luther /
was prepared. It was presented (May 25 th) to ah informal /
meeting of some members of the Diet after the Elector of /
Saxony and many of Luther's staunchest supporters had |
' Of. Letter of Coohlseus to the Pope (June 19tli) in Brieger's Zeitschrift
fiir Kirehengeschickte, xviii. p. 118.
* Brieger, Luther vmd Aleander 16S1 (Gotha, 1884), p. 211.
298 THE DIET OF WORMS
left Worms.^ Aleander, who had a large share in drafting
it, brought two copies, one in Latin and the other in
German, and presented them to Charles on a Sunday
(May 26th) after service. The Emperor signed them
before leaving the church. " Are you contented now ? "
said Charles, with a smile to the Legate ; and Aleander
overflowed with thanks. Few State documents, won by so
much struggling and scheming, have proved so futile. The
uproar in Germany at the report of Luther's death had
warned the German princes to be chary of putting the
edict into execution.
The imperial edict against Luther threatened aU his
sympathisers with extermination. It practically proclaimed
an Albigensian war in Germany. Charles had handed it to
Aleander with a smile. Aleander despatched the document
to Eome with an exultation which could only find due'
expression in a quotation from Ovid's Art of Love. Pope
Leo celebrated the arrival of the news by comedies and
musical entertainments. But calm observers, foreigners in
Germany, saw little cause for congratulation and less for
mirth. Henry vm. wrote to the Archbishop of Mainz
congratulating him on the overthrow of the " rebel against
Christ"; but Wolsey's agent at the Diet informed his
master that he believed there were one hundred thousand
Grermans who were stUl ready to lay down their lives in
Luther's defence.* Velasco, who had struck down the
Spanish rebels in the battle of Villalar, wrote to the
Emperor that the victory was God's gratitude for his deal-
ings with the heretic monk ; but Alfonso de Vald^s, the
Emperor's secretary, said in a letter to a Spanish corre-
spondent :
"Here you have, as some imagine, the end of this
tragedy ; but I am persuaded it is not the end, but the
^ The Important clauses in the Edict of Worms are printed in Emil
Reich's Select Documents illustrating Mediceval and Modem History (London,
1905), p. 209.
^ Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Seign of Henry VIII. ,
HI. i. p. cocxxxviii. Letter from Tunstal to Wolsey of date January 21st,
1621.
THE BAN 299
beginning of it. For I see that the minds of the Germans
are greatly exasperated against the Eoman See, and they do
not seem to attach great importance to the Emperor's edicts ;
for since their publication, Luther's books are sold with
impunity at every step and corner of the streets and market-
places. Prom this you will easily guess what will happen
when the Emperor leaves. This evil might have been cured
with the greatest advantage to the Christian common-
wealth, had not the Pope refused a General Council, had he
preferred the public weal to his own private interests. But
while he insists that Luther shall be condemned and burnt, I
see the whole Christian commonwealth hurried to destruc-
tion unless God Himself help us."
Valdfes, like Gattinara and other councillors of Charles,
was a follower of Erasmus. He lays the blame of all on
the Pope. But what a disillusion this Diet of Worms
ought to have been to the Erasmians ! The Humanist
young sovereigns and the Humanist Pope, from whom so
much had been expected, congratulating each other on
Luther's condemnation to the stake !
The foreboding of Alfonso de Valdfes was amply justi-
fied. Luther's books became more popular than ever, and
the imperial edict did nothing to prevent their sale either
within Germany or beyond it. Aleander was soon to learn
this. He had retired to the Netherlands, and busied himself
with auto-da-fis of the prohibited writings ; but he had to
confess that they were powerless to prevent the spread of
Luther's opinions, and he declared that the only remedy
would be if the Emperor seized and burnt half a dozen
Lutherans, and confiscated all their property.^ The edict
had been published or repeated in lands outside Germany
and in the family possessions of the House of Hapsburg,
Henry Viii. ordered Luther's books to be burnt in England ; ^
the Estates of Scotland prohibited their introduction into
the realm under the severest penalties in 1525.* But such
1 Brieger, Aleander und Luther 162 1 (Gotha, 1884), p. 263 ; cf. pp. 249 ff.
^ Letters a/nd Pa;pers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII. ,
iii. 449, 485.
8 Aa. Pari. Scot. ii. 296.
300 THE DIET OF WORMS
edicts were easily evaded, and the prohibited writings found
their way into Spain, Italy, France, Flanders, and elsewhere,
concealed in bales of merchandise. In Geimany there was
no need for concealment; the imperial edict was not
merely disregarded, but was openly scouted. The great
Strassburg publisher, Gruniger, apologised to his customers,
not for publishing Luther's books, but for sending forth
a book against him ; and Cochlseus declared that printers
gladly accepted any MS. against the Papacy, printed it
gratis, and spent pains ia issuing it with taste, while every
defender of the established order had to pay heavily to
get his book printed, and sometimes could not secure a
printer at any cost.
§ 9. Popular Literature
The Eeformation movement may almost be said to
have created the German book trade. The earliest German
printed books or rather booklets were few in number, and
of no great importance — little books of private devotion,
of popular mediciae, herbals, almanacs, travels, or public
proclamations. Up to 1518 they barely exceeded fifty
a year. But in the years 1518—1523 they increased
enormously, and four-fifths of the iacrease were contro-
versial writings prompted by the national antagonism to
the Eoman Curia. This increase was at first due to Luther
alone ;^ but from 1521 onwards he had disciples, fellow-
* T. Eauke in tis Deutsche Qeschichte im Zeitdlter der Reformatum
(2nd ed., Leipzig, 1882), ii. 56, and Dr. Burkhardt, archivist at Weimar,
in the ZeUschrift fur die historische Theologie (Gotha) for 1862, p. 456 —
both founding on the confessedly imperfect information to be found in
Panzer's Annalen der dlteren deutschen LUteratur (1788-1802) — have made
the following calculations : — the number of printed books issued in the
German language, and within Germany, from 1480-1500, did not exceed
forty a year ; the years 1500-1512 show about the same average ; in the
year 1513 the number of books and booklets issued from German presses in
the German language was 35 ; in 1514 it was 47 ; in 1515, 46 ; in 1516, 55 ;
in 1517, 37 ; then Luther's printed appeals to the German people began to
appear in the shape of sermons, tracts, controversial writings, etc., and the
German publications of the year 1518 rose to 71, of which no less than 20
POPULAR LITERATURE 301
workers, opponents, all using in a popular way the German
language, the effective literary power of which had been
discovered by the Eeformer.^ These writers spread the
new ideas among the people, high and low, throughout
Germany.*
There are few traces of combined action in the anti-
Eomanist writings in the earlier stages of the controversy ;
it needed literary opposition to give them a semblance of
unity. Each writer looks at the general question from
his own individual point of view. Luther is the hero with
nearly all, and is spoken about in almost extravagant
terms. He is the prophet of Germany, the Elias that was
to come, the Angel of the Eevelation " flying through the
mid-heaven with the everlasting Gospel in his hands," the
national champion who was brought to Worms to be silenced,
and yet was heard by Emperor, princes, and papal nuncios.
Some of the authors were still inclined to make Erasmus
their leader, and declared that they were fighting under
the banner of that " Knight of Christ " ; others looked on
Erasmus and Luther as fellow-workers, and one homely
pamphlet compares Erasmus to the miller who grinds the
flour, and Luther to the baker who bakes it into bread
to feed the people. Perhaps the most striking feature of
were from Luther's pen ; in 1519 the total number was 111, of which 50
were Luther's; in 1520 the total was 208, of which 133 were Luther's; in
1521 (when Luther was in the Wartburg), Luther published 20 separate
booklets ; in 1622, 130 ; and in 1523 the total number was 498, of which
180 were Luther's ; cf. "Weller, Bepertorium Typographicum (Nordlingen,
1864-1874), for further information. From Luther's Letter to the Ntlrnberg
Council (Enders, v. 244), it may be inferred that the first edition of each of
his writings was usually sold out in seven or eight weeks.
' It was Luther's appeal to 'the Christian NoWlUy of the German Nation
which taught Ulrich Ton Huttrn the powers of the Gorman language ;
Strauss, Ulrich von Hutten, His Life and Times (London, 1874), p. 241.
' A number of the more important of these controversial writings have
been reprinted under the title Flugschriflen aus der Beformationszeit in
the very useful series NeudrucTce deutseher LitteraturwerJce, in the course of
publication by Niemeyer of Halle ; cf. also Kuczynski, Thesaurus libel-
lorum hisioriam Beformatorum illustraniium (Leipzig, 1870) ; 0. Schade,
Salircn und Pasquillen aus der Beformationszeit, 3 vols. (Hanover, 1856-
1858).
302 THE DIET OF WORMS
the times was the appearance of numberless anonymous
pamphlets, purporting to be written by the unlearned for
the imlearned. They are mostly in the form of dialogues,
and the scene of the conversations recorded was often
the village alehouse, where burghers, peasants, weavers,
tailors, and shoemakers attack and vanquish in argument
priests, monks, and even bishops. One striking feature of
this new popular literature is the glorification of the
German peasant. ~ He is always represented as an upright,
simple-minded, reflective, and intelligent person, skilled ia
Bible lore, and even in Church history, and knowing as
much of Christian doctrine "as three priests and more."
He may be compared with the idealised peasant of the
pre-revolution literature in France, although he lacks the
refinement, and knows nothing of high-flown moral senti-
ment; but he is much Hker the Jak Upland or Piers
Plowman of the days of the English Lollards. Jak Upland
and Hans Mattock (Karstham), both hate the clergy and
abominate the monks and the begging friars, but the
German exhibits much more ferocity than the Englishman.
The Lollard describes the fat friar of the earlier English
days with his swollen dewlap wagging under bis chin
" like a great goose-egg," and contrasts him with the pale,
poverty-stricken peasant and his wife, going shoeless to
work over ice-bound roads, their steps marked with the
blood which oozed from the cut feet; the German pam-
phleteer pours out an endless variety of savage nicknames
— cheese-hunters, sausage-villains, begging-sacks, sournulk
crocks, the devil's fat pigs, etc. etc. It is interesting
to note that most of this coarse controversial literature,
which appeared between 1518 and 1523, came from those
regions in South Germany where the social revolution had
found an almost permanent establishment from the year
1503. It was the sign that the old spirit of communist
and religious enthusiasm, which had shown itself spasmodi-
cally since the movement under Hans Bohm, had never
been extinguished, and it was a symptom that a peasants'
war might not be far off. Very little was needed to
POPULAR LITERATURE 303
kindle afresh the smouldering hatred of the peasant against
the priests.^ When German patriots declaimed against the
exactions of the Eoman Curia, the peasant thought of the
great and lesser tithes, of the marriage, baptismal, and
burial fees demanded from him by his own parish priest.
When Keformers and popular preachers denounced the
scandals and corruptions in the Church, the peasant applied
them to some drunken, evil - living, careless priest whom
he knew. It should be remembered that the character ? ■? c> p
Karsthans was invenjie_d_ in 1520, not by a Lutheran • • • •
sympathiser, but by ThOTna^^Mumer, one of Luther's most
determined opponents,^ when he was still engaged in writing
against the clerical disorders of the times. This virulent
attack on priests and monks had other sources than the
sympathy for Luther.^ It was the awakening of old
memories, prompted partly by an underground ceaseless
Hussite propaganda, and partly, no doubt, by the new ideas
so universally prevalent.
Some of this coarse popular literature had a more
direct connection with the Lutheran movement. A
booklet which appeared in 1521, entitled The New
and the Old God, and which had an ~ immense circulation,
may be taken as an example. Like many of its kind,
it had an illustrated title-page, which was a graphic
summary of its contents. There appeared as the repre-
sentatives of the New God, the Pope, some Church
Fathers, and beneath them, Cajetan, Silvester Prierias,
Eck, and Faber ; over-against them were the Old God as
the Trinity, the four Evangelists, St. Paul vsdth a sword,
and behind him Luther. It attacked the ceremonies, the
elaborate services, the obscure doctrines which had been
thrust on the Church by bloody persecutions, and had
■* Murner was in England in 1523 hoping for an audience from Henry
VIII., in whose defence he had written against Luther. "The king desires
out of pity that he should return to Germany, for he was one of the chief
stays against the faction of Luther, and ordered Wolsey to pay him £100."
Cf. Letter of Sir Thomas More to Wolsey : Letters and Papers, Foreign wnd
Domestic, Henry VIII., iii, ii. 3270.
' Compare chapter on Social Conditions, pp. 96 ff.
304 THE DIET OF WORMS
changed Christianity into Judaism, and contrasted them
with the unchanging Word of the Old God, with its simple
story of salvation and its simple doctrines of faith, hope,
and love. To the same class belong the writings of the
voluminous controversialist, John Eberlin of Giinzburg,
whom his opponents accused of seducing whole provinces,
so effective were his appeals to the " common " man. He
began by a pamphlet addressed to the young Emperor, and
published, either immediately before or during the earlier
sitting of the Diet of Worms in 1521, a daring appeal, in
which Luther and Ulrich von Hutten are called the
messengers of God to their generation. It was the first
of a series of fifteen, all of which were in circulation before
the beginning of November of the same year.^ They were
called the "Confederates" {BuTidsgenossen). The contents
of these and other pamphlets by Eberlin may be guessed
from their titles — Of the forty days' fast iefore Easter and
others which pitifully oppress Chi-istian folk. An exhorta-
tion to all Christians that they take pity on Nuns. How
very dangerous it is that priests have not wives (the frontis-
piece represents the marriage of a priest by a bishop, in
the background the marriage of two monks, and two
musicians on a raised seat). Why there is no money in
the couTitry. Against the false clergy, haref^ooted monies,
and Franciscans, etc., etc He exposes as trenchantly as
Luther did the systematic robbery of Germany to benefit
the Eoman Curia-^300,000 gulden sent out of the country
every year, and a million more given to the begging friars.
He wrote fiercely against the monks who take to this life,
because they were too lazy to work like honest people, and
called them all sorts of nicknames — cloister swine, the
Devil's landsknechts, etc., twenty-four thousand of them
sponge on Germany and four hundred thousand on the
rest of Europe. He tells of a parish priest who thought
that he must really begin to read the Scriptures: his
' Eberlin's most important pamphlets have been edited by Enders and
published in Xicnieyei-'s Fhigei-hn/ten axis dcr HcfiirmaHfmszeit, and form
Nos. xi. XV. and xviii. of the series (Halle, 1896, 19C0, 1S02).
THE SPREAD OF LUTHEr's TEACHING 305
parishioners are reading it, the mothers to the children
and the house-fathers to the household; they trouble
him with questions taken from it, and he is often at
his wit's end to answer; he asked a friend where he
ought to begin, and was told that there was a good
deal about priests and their duties in the Epistles to
Timothy and Titus ; he read, and was horrified to find
that bishops and priests ought to be " husbands of one
wife," etc. Eberlin had been a Franciscan monk, and was
true to the revolutionary traditions of his Order. He
preached a social as well as an evangelical reformation.
The Franciscan Order sent forth a good many Eeformers :
men like Stephen Kampen, who had come to adopt views
like those of Eberlin without any teaching but the leadings
of his heart; or John Brissmann, a learned student of the
Scholastic Theology, who like Luther had found that it did
not satisfy the yearnings of his soul; or like Frederick
Mecum (Myconius), whose whole spiritual development was
very similar to that of Luther. Pamphlets Uke those of
Eberhn, and preaching like that of Kampen, had doubtless
some influence in causing popular risings against the priests
that were not uncommon throughout Germany in 1521,
after the Diet of Worms had ended its sittings — the Erfurt
tumult, which lasted during the months of April, May,
June, and July, may be instanced as an example.
§ 1 0. The Spread of Luther's Teaching.
It may be said that the very year in which the
imperial edict against Luther was published (1521) gave
evidence that a silent movement towards the adoption of
the principles for which Luther was testifying had begun
among monks of almost all the different Orders. The
Augustinian Eremites, Luther's own Order, had been
largely influenced by him. Whole communities, with
the prior at their head, had declared for the Eeformation
both in Germany and in the Low Countries. No other
monastic Order was so decidedly upon the side of the
306 THE DIET OF WORMS
Eeformer, but monks of all kinds joined in preaching and
teaching the new doctrines. Martin Bucer had been a
Dominican, Otto Braunfells a Carthusian, Ambrose Blauer a
Benedictine. The case of Oecolampadius (John Hussgen (?)
Hausschein) was peculiar. He had been a distinguished
Humanist, had come under serious religious impressions,
and had entered the Order of St. Bridget ; but he was not
long there when he joined the ranks of the Eeformers, and
was sheltered by Franz von Sickingen in his castle at
Ebernberg.^ Urban Ehegius, John Eck's most trusted
and most talented student at Ingolstadt, had become a
Carmelite, and had quitted his monastery to preach the
doctrines of Luther. John Bugenhagen belonged to the
Order of the Praemonstratenses. He was a learned
theologian. Luther's struggle agaiost Indulgences had
displeased him. He got hold of The Babylonian Captivity
of the Christian Church, and studied it for the purpose
of refuting it. The study so changed him that he felt
that "the whole world may be wrong, but Luther is
right " ; he won over his prior and most of his companions,
and became the Eeformer of Pomerania.
Secular priests all over Germany declared for the new
evangelical doctrines. The Bishop of Samlund in East
Prussia boldly avowed himself to be on Luther's side, and
was careful to have the Lutheran doctrines preached
throughout his diocese ; and other bishops showed them-
selves favourable to the new evangehcal faith. Many of
the most influential parish priests did the like, and their
congregations followed them. Sometimes the superior
clergy forbade the use of the church, and the people
followed their pastor while he preached to them in the
fields. Sometimes (as in the case of Hermann Tast) the
priest preached under the lime trees in the churchyard, and
^ Oecolampadius is thought by Bbcking to have heen the author of the
celebrated pamphlet, Neukarsthans (Summer, 1521), often attributed to
Hutten. Sickingen is one of the speakers ; the author shows an ac-
quaintance with Scripture and with theology which Hutten could scarcely
command ; and the idea of ecclesiastical polity sketched seems to be biken
from Marsilius of Padua.
THE SPREAD OF LUTHER's TEACHING 307
his parishioners came irmed to protect him. If priests
were lacking to preach the Lutheran doctrines, laymen
came forward. If they could not preach, they could sing
hymns. Witness the poor weaver of Magdeburg, who took
his stand near the statue of Kaiser Otto in the market-
place, and sang two of Luther's hymns, "Aus tiefer Not schrei
Ich zu dir," and " Es woll' uns Gott gnadig sein," while the
people crowded round him on the morning of May 6 th,
1524. The Biirgermeister coming from early Mass heard
him, and ordered him to be imprisoned, but the crowd
rescued him. Such was the beginning of the feeformation
in Magdeburg.^ When men dared not, women took their
place. Argula Grunbach, a student of the Scriptures and
of Luther's writings, challenged the University of Ingol-
stadt, under the eyes of the great Dr. Eck himself, to a
public disputation upon the truth of Luther's position.
Artists lent their aid to spread the new ideas, and
many cartoons made the doctrines and the aims of the
Eeformers plain to the common people. These pictures
were sometimes used to illustrate the title-pages of the
controversial literature, and were sometimes published as
separate broadsides. In one, Christ is portrayed standing
at the door oi a house, which represents His Church. He
invites the people to enter by the door; and Popes,
cardinals, and monks are shown climbing the walls to get
entrance in a clandestine fashion.^ In another, entitled
the Triumph of Truth, the common folk of a German town
are represented singing songs of welcome to honour an
approaching procession. Moses, the patriarchs, the prophets,
and the apostles, carry on their shoulders the Ark of the Holy
Scriptures. Hutten comes riding on his warhorse, and to
' Htilsse, Die Mnfilhrung der Seformation in der Stadt Magdeburg
(Magdeburg, 1883), p. 46.
' The woodcut wa.? first used to illustrate Hans Sachs' poem, "Der gut
Hirt und der boss Hiit, Johaunis am Zehenden Capitel " ; and is given in a
facsimile reproduction of several of Hans Sachs' poems, sacred and secular,
entitled Ha/ris Sachs m Oewande seiiier Zeit, Gotha, 1821. The poems were
originally issued as Isrge broad-sheets illustrated with a single woodcut, and
were meant to be fixed ou the walls of rooms.
308 THE DIET OF WORMS
the tail of the horse is attached a chain which encloses a
crowd of ecclesiastics — an archbishop with his mitre fallen
off, the Pope with his tiara in the act of tumbling and his
pontifical staff broken ; after them, cardinals, then monks
figured with the heads of cats, pigs, calves, etc. Then comes
a triumphal car drawn by the four living creatures, who
represent the four evangelists, on one of which rides
an angel. Carlstadt stands upright in the front of the
car ;, Luther strides alongside. In the car, Jesus sits say-
ing, / am the Way, and the Truth, arid the Life. Holy
martyrs, follow singing songs of praise. German burghers
are spreading their garments on the road, and boys and girls
are strewing the path with flowers.^ Perhaps the most
important work of this kind was the Passional Christi et
Antichristi} Luther planned the book, Luke Cranach
designed the pictures, and Melanchthon furnished the texts
from Scripture and the quotations from Canon Law. It is
a series of pairs of engravings representing the lives of our
Lord and of the Pope, so arranged that wherever the book
opened two contrasting pictures could be seen at the same
time. The contrasts were such as these : — Jesus washing
the disciples' feet; the Pope holding out his toe to be
kissed : Jesus healing the wounded and the sick ; the Pope
presiding at a tournament : Jesus bending under His Cross ;
the Pope carried in state on men's shoulders : Jesus driving
the money-changers out of the Temple; the Pope and his
servants turning a church into a market for Indulgences,
and sitting surrounded with strong boxes and piles of coin.
It was a " good book for the laity," Luther said.
One of the signs of the times was the enthusiasm
displayed in the imperial cities for the cause of Luther.
The way had been prepared. Burgher songs had for long
described the ecclesiastical abuses, and had borne witness
' Many of these Reformation cartoons are' to be found in G. Hii'th,
Kulturgeschichtliches Bilderbuch aus drei Jahrliunderten, i. ii. (Munich,
1896), and one or two in the illustrations in von Bezold, OeschicMe der
devlsclun Seformaiion (Berlin, 1890).
^ The Passional Christi et AntichrisU has been reproduced in facsimile
by W. Schcrer (Berlin, 1885).
THE SPREAD OF LUTHEr's TEACHING 309
to the widespread hatred of the clergy shared in by the
townsfolk. Wolfgang Capito and Frederick Mecum
(Myconius), both sons of burghers, inform us that their
fathers taught them when they were boys that Indulgences
were nothing but a speculation on the part of cunning
priests to get their hands into the pockets of simple-
minded laity. Keen observers of the trend of public
feeling like Wimpheling and Pirkheimer had noticed with
some alarm the gradual spread of the Hussite propaganda
in the towns, and had made the fact one of their reasons
for desiring and insisting on a reformation of the Church.
The growing sympathy for the Hussite opinions in the
cities is abundantly apparent. Some leading Kefofflners,
Capito for instance, told their contemporaries that they had
frequently listened to Hussite discourses when they were
boys ; and the libraries of burghers not infrequently con-
tained Hussite pamphlets. Men in ' the towns had been
reading, thinking, and speaking in private to their familiar
friends about the disorders in the life and doctrine of the
Church of their days, and were eager to welcome the first
symptoms of a genuine attempt at reform.
The number of editions of the German Vulgate, rude
as many of these versions were, shows what a Bible-
reading people the German burghers had become, enables
us to wonder less at the way in which the controversial
writers assume that the laity knew as much of the
Scriptures as the clergy, and lends credibility to con-
temporary assertions that women and artisans knew their
Bibles better than learned men at the Universities.
These things make us understand how the towns-
men were prepared to welcome Luther's simple scriptural
teaching, how his writings found such a sale all over
Germany, how they could say that he taught what all
men had been thinking, and said out boldly what all men
had been whispering in private. They explain how the
burghers of Strassburg nailed Luther's Ninety-five Theses
to the doors of every church and parsonage in the city in
1518; how the citizens of Constance drove away with
310 THE DIET OF WORMS
threats the imperial messenger who came to publish the
Edict of Worms in their town ; how the people of Basel
applauded their pastor when he carried a copy of the
Scriptures instead of the Host in the procession on Corpus
Christi Day; how the higher clergy of Strassburg could
not expel the nephew and successor of the famed GeUer
of Keysersberg although he was accused of being a follower
of Luther; and how his friend Matthew Zell, when he
was prohibited from preaching in the pulpit from which
GeUer had thundered, was able to get carpenters to erect
another in a corner of the great cathedral, from which he
spoke to the people who crowded to hear him. When the
clergy persuaded the authorities in many towns (Goslar,
Danzig, Worms, etc.) to close the churches agains' the
evangelical preachers, the townspeople listened to their
sermons in the open air ; but generally from the first the
civic authorities sided with the people in welcoming a
powerful evangelical preacher. Matthew Zell and, after
him, Martin Bucer became the Eeformers of Strassburg;
Kettenbach and Eberlin, of Ulm ; Oecolampadius and
Urbanus Ehegius, of Augsburg; Andrew Osiander, of
Niirnberg ; John Brenz, of Hall, in Swabia ; Theobald
Pellicanus (PeUicanus, i.e. of Yilligheim), of Nordlingen ;
Matthew Alber, of Eeutlingen; John Lachmann, of
Heilbron ; John Wanner, of Constance ; and so on. The
gUds of Mastersingers welcomed the Eeformation. The
greatest of the civic poets, Hans Sachs of Nlirnberg, was
a diligent collector and reader of Luther's books. He
published in 1523 his famous poem, "The Wittenberg
Mghtingale" {Die Wittembergisch Nachtigall, Die man jetz
horet uberall). The nightingale was Luther, and its song
told that the moonlight with its pale deceptive gleams and
its deep shadows was passing away, and the glorious sun
was rising The author praises the utter simplicity of
Luther's scriptural teaching, and contrasts it with the
quirks and subtleties of Eomish doctrine. Even a peasant,
he says, can understand and know that Luther's teaching
is good and sound. In a later short poem he contrasts
ANDREW BODENSTEIN OF CARLSTADT 311
evangelical and Eomish preaching. The original edition was
illustrated by a woodcut showing two preachers addressing
their respective audiences. The one is saying, Thvs saith
the Lord ; and the other, Thios saith the Pope.
§ 11. Andrew Bodenstein of Garlstadt}
Every great movement for reform bears within it the
seeds of revolution, of the " tumult," as Erasmus called it,
and Lather's was no exception to the. general rule. Every
Eeformer who would carry through his reforming ideas
successfully has to struggle against men and circumstances
making for the " tumult," almost as strenuously as against
the abuses he seeks to overcome. We have already seen
how these germs of revolution abounded in Germany, and
how the revolutionists naturally allied themselves with the
Eeformer, and the cause he sought to promote.
While Luther was hidden away in the Wartburg, the
revolution seized on Wittenberg. At first his absence did
not seem to make any difference. The number of students
had increased until it was over a thousand, and the town
itself surprised eye-witnesses who were acquainted with
other University towns in Germany. The students went
about unarmed; they mostly carried Bibles under their
arms ; they saluted each other as " brothers at one in
Christ." No rift had yet appeared among the band of
leaders, although his disappointment ia not obtaining the
Provostship of All Saints had begun to isolate Andrew
Bodenstein of Garlstadt. Unanimity did not mean dulness ;
Wittenberg was seething with intellectual life. Since its
foundation the University had been distinguished for weekly
Public Disputations in which students and professors took
part. In the earlier years of its existence the theses dis-
cussed had been suggested by the Scholastic Theology and
Philosophy in vogue ; but since 1518 the new questions
which were stirring Germany had been the subjects of
debate, and this had given a life and eagerness to the
' H. Barge, Andreas Bodenstein von JCarlstadC, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 19rJ6}.
312 THE DIET OF WORMS
University exercises. When Justus Jonas came to "Witten-
berg from Erfurt, he wrote enthusiastically to a friend
about the " unbelievable wealth of spiritual iaterests in
the little town of Wittenberg." None of the professors
took a keener interest in these Public Discussions than
Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadt. He had been a very
successful teacher ; had come under Luther's magnetic in-
fluence ; and had accepted the main ideas of the new
doctrines. He had not the fuU-blooded humanity of
Luther, nor his sympathetic tact, nor his practical insight
into how things would work. He lacked altogether
Luther's solid basis of conservative feeliag, which made
biTTi know by instinct that new ideas and new things could
only flourish and grow if they were securely rooted in what
was old. It was enough for Carlstadt that his own ideas,
however hastUy evolved, were clear, and his aims beneficent,
to make him eager to see them at once reduced to practice.
He had the temperament of a revolutionary rather than that
of a Eeformer.
He was strongly impressed with the funda menta I_con-
tradictions which he beHeved to exist between the new
evangehcal doctrines preached by Luther and tlie_the6nes
_snd practices of the mediaeval rehgious life and worship.
This led him to attack earnestly and bitterly monastic
vows, celibacy, a distinctive dress for the clergy, the idea
of a propitiatory sacrifice in the Mass, and the presence
and use of images and pictures in the churches. He intro-
duced all these questions of practical interest into the
University weekly Public Discussions ; he published theses
upon them ; he printed two books — one on monastic vows
and the other on the Mass — which had an extensive circula-
tion both in German and in Latin (four editions were speedily
exhausted). The prevailing idea in all these publications,
perhaps implied rather than expressed, was that the new
evangelical liberty could only be exercised when everything
which suggested the ceremonies and usages of the medieval
religious life was swept away. His strongest denunciations
were reserved for the practice of celibacy ; he dwelt on the
ZWILLING AND CARLSTADT 313
divine institution of marriage, its moral and spiritual neces-
sity, and taught that the compulsory marriage of the clergy
was better than the enforced celibacy of the mediaeval .
Church. Zwilling, a yopng Augustinian Eremite, whose:
preaching gifts had been praised by Luther, went eveni
further than Carlstadt in his fiery denunciation of the;
Mass as an idolatrous practice.
The movement to put these exhortations in practice
began first among the clergy. Two priests in parishes
near Wittenberg married ; several monks left their cloisters
and donned lay garments ; Melanchthon and several of his
students, in semi-public fashion, communicated in both
kinds in the parish church on Michaelmas Day (Sept. 29th),
1521, and his example seems to have been followed by
other companies.
Zwilling's fiery denunciations of the idolatry of the
Mass stirred the commonalty of the town. On Christmas
Eve (Dec. 24—25), 1521, a turbulent crowd invaded the
parish church and the Church of All Saints. In the
former they broke the lamps, threatened the priests, and
in mockery of the worship of praise they sang folk-
songs, one of which began : " There was a maid who lost
a shoe " — so the indignant clergy complained to the
Elector.!
Next day, Christmas, Carlstadt, who was archdeacon,
' conducted the service in All Saints' Church. He had
doffed his clerical robes, and wore the ordinary dress of a
layman. He preached and then dispensed the Lord's
Supper in an " evangelical fashion." He read the usual
service, but omitted everything which taught a propitiatory
sacrifice ; he did not elevate the Host ; and he placed the
Bread in the hands of every communicant, and gave the
Cup into their hands, On the following Sundays and fes-
tival days the Sacrament of the Supper was dispensed in
the same manner, and we are told that " hie ptene urbs et
cuncta civitas communicavit sub utraque specie."
' Cf. Barge, Andreas Bodemtein von' Karlstadt, i. 357 ; the letter is
printed in ii. 558-569.
314 THE DIET OP WORMS
During the closing days of the year 1521, so full of
excitement for the people of Wittenberg, three men,
known in history as the Zwickau Prophets, came to the
town (Dec. 27 th). Zwickau, lying about sixty-four miles
south of Wittenberg, was the centre of the weaving trade
of Saxony, and contained a large artisan population. We
have seen that movements of a religious-communistic kind
had from time to time appeared among the German
artisans and peasants since 1476. Nicolaus Storch, a
weaver in Zwickau, proclaimed that he had visions of the
Angel Gabriel, who had revealed to him : " Thou shalt sit
with me on my throne." He began to preach. Thomas
Mtinzer, who had been appointed by the magistrates to
be town preacher in St. Mary's, the principal church in
Zwickau, praised his discourses, declaring that Storch ex-
pounded the Scriptures better than any priest. Some
writers have traced the origin of this Zwickau movement
to Hussite teachings. Miinzer allied himself with the ex-
treme Hussites after the movement had begun, and paid
a visit to Bohemia, taking with him some of his intimates ;
but our sources of information, which are scanty, do not
warrant any decided opinion about the origin of the out-
break in Zwickau. After some time _StQxch- and others
were forced to leave the town. Three of them went to
Wittenberg — Storch himself, the seer of heavenly visions,
another weaver, and Marcus Thoma Stu-bner; who had once
been a pupil of Melanchthon, and was therefore able to
introduce his companions to the Wittenberg circle of Ee-
formers. Their arrival and addresses increased the excite-
ment both in the town and in the University. Melanchthon
welcomed his old pupil, and was impressed by the presence
of a certain spiritual power in Stubner and in his com-
panions. Some of their doctrines, howeTer,"especially their
rejection of infant baptism, repelled him, and he gradually
withdrew from their companionship.
Carlstadt took advantage of the strong excitement in
Wittenberg to press on the townspeople and on the magis-
trates his scheme of reformation; and on Jan. 24th, 1522,
THE WITTENBERG ORDINANCE 315
the authorities of the town of Wittenberg published their
famous ordinance.
This^ocument, the first of numerous civic and terri-
^riaL- attempts to express the new evangelical ideas in
legislatioiv-jdeee-r-ves careful study.^ It concerns itself
almost exclusively with the reform of social life and of
public worship. It enjoins the institution of a common
chest~t6 be under the charge of two of the magistrates,
two of the townsmen, and a public notary. Into this the
revenues from ecclesiastical foundations were to be placed,
the annual revenues of the guilds of workmen, and other
specified monies. Definite salaries were to be paid to
the priests, and support for tlie poor and for the monks
was to be taken from this common fund. Begging,
whether by ordinary beggars, monks, or poor students, was
strictly prohibited. If the common chest was not able
to afford suflficient for the support of the helpless and
orphans, the townsfolk had to provide what was needed.
No houses of ill-fame were allowed within the town. '
Churches were places for preaching ; the town contained
enough for the population ; and the building of small
chapels was prohibited. The service of the Mass was
shortened, and made to express the evangelical meaning of^--^'
the sacrament, and the elements were to be placed in the
hands of the communicants. All this was made law within
the town of Wittenberg ; and the reformation was to be
enforced. Not content with these regulations, Carlstadt
engaged in a crusade against the use of pictures and
images in the churches (the regulations had permitted
three altars in every church and one picture for each
altar). Everything which recalled the older religious
usages was to be done away with, and flesh was to be
eaten on fast days.
This excitement bred fanaticism. Voices were raised
' The ordinance is printed in Eicliter's Die evangelischen Kirchen-
ordnungen des seehszeJmten Jahrhtmderts (Weimar, 1846), ii. 484 ; and, with
a more correct text, in Sehling's Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des
leten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig), 1902, i. i, 697.
316 THE DIET OF WORMS
declaring that, as all true Christians were taught by the
Spirit of God, there was no need either for civil rulers or
for carnal learning. It is believed by many that Carlstadt
shared these fancies, and it has been said that in his desire
to " simplify " himself, he dressed as a peasant and worked
as a labourer (he had married) on his father-in-law's farm.
It is more probable that he found himself unable to rule
the storm his hasty measures had raised, and that he saw
many things proposed with which he had no sympathy.
§ 12. Luther hack in Wittenberg.
Melanchthon felt himself helpless in presence of the
" tumult," declared that no one save Luther himself could
quell the excitement, and eagerly pressed his return. The
revolutionary movement was extending beyond Wittenberg,
in other towns in Electoral Saxony such as Grimma and
Altenberg. Duke George of Saxony, the strenuous defender
of the old faith, had been watching the proceedings ' from
the beginning. As early as Nov. 21st, 1521, he had
iwritten to John Duke of Saxony, the brother of the Elector,
Iwaming him that, against ecclesiastical usage, the Sacrament
jaf the Supper was being dispensed in both kinds in Witten-
perg; he had informed him (Dec. 26 th) that priests were
threatened while saying the Mass ; he had brought the
" tumultuous deeds " ia Electoral Saxony before the Beichs-
regiment in January, with the result that imperial mandates
were sent to the Elector Frederick and to the Bishops of
Meissen, Merseburg, and Naumburg, requiring them to take
measures to end the disturbances. The Elector was seriously
disquieted. His anxieties were increased by a letter from
Duke George (Feb. 2nd, 1522), declaring that Carlstadt
and Zwilling were the instigators of all the riotous proceed-
ings. He had commissioned one of his councillors, Hugold
of Einsiedel, to try to put matters right ; but the result had
been small. It was probably in these circumstances that
he wrote his Instruction to Oswald, a burgher of Eisenach,
with the intention that the contents should be communicated
LUTHER BACK IN WITTENBERG 317
to Luther in the Wartburg. The Instruction may have been
the reason why Luther suddenly left the asylum where he
had remained since his appearance at Worms by the com-
mand and under the protection of his prince.^
If this Instruction did finally determine him, it was
only one of many things urging Luther to leave his soli-
tude. He cared little for the influence of the Zwickau
Prophets,^ estimating them at their true value, but the
weakness of Melanchthon, the destructive and dangerous
impetuosity of Carlstadt, the spread of the tumult beyond
Wittenberg, the determination of Duke George to make
use of these outbursts to destroy the whole movement for
reformation, and the interference of the Reiclisregiment
with its mandates, made him feel that the decisive moment
had come when he must be again among his own people.
He started on his lonely journey, most of it through an
enemy's country, going by Erfurt, Jena, Borna, and Leipzig.
He was dressed as "Junker Georg," with beard on his
chin and sword by his side. At Erfurt he had a good-
humoured discussion -with a priest in the inn ; and Kessler,
the Swiss student, tells how he met a stranger sitting in
the parlour of the " Bear " at Jena with his hand on the
hilt of his sword, and reading a small Hebrew Psalter.
He got to Wittenberg on Friday, March 7 th ; spent that
afternoon and the next day in discussing the situation with
his friends Amsdorf, Melanchthon, and Jerome Schurf.*
On Sunday he appeared in the pulpit, and for eight
successive days he preached to the people, and the plague
was stayed. Many things in the movement set agoing by
Carlstadt met with his approval. He had come to believe
in the marriage of the clergy ; he disapproved strongly of
' This Instruction will be found in Enders, Dr. Martin Luthers Brief-
wecksel, iii. 292-295. Its effect on Luther's return to Wittenberg is dis-
cussed at length by von Bezold (Zeitschri/tfiir Kirchengeschichle, xx. 186 ff.),
Kawerau (Lnther's Ruckkehr, etc., Halle, 1902), and by Barge [Andreas
Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Leipzig, 1906, p. 432 ff.).
' See his letters to Spalatin in Enders, Dr. Martin LutJvers Brief wechsel,
iv. 271, 286.
' Johann Kessler, Sahhata (edited by Egli and Schoch, St. Gall, 1902).
318 THE DIET OP WORMS
private Masses; he had grave doubts on the subject of
monastic vows ; but he disapproved of the violence, of the
importance attached to outward details, and of the use of
force to advance the Eeformation movement :
" The Word created heaven and earth and all things ;
the same Word wiU also create now, and not we poor sinners.
Summa summarum, I will preach it, I will talk about it, I
will write about it, but I will not use force or compulsion
with anyone ; for faith must be of freewill and unconstrained
and must be accepted without compulsion. To marry, to
do away with images, to become monks or nuns, or for
monks and nuns to leave their convents, to eat meat on
Friday or not to eat it, and other like things — all these are
open questions, and should not be forbidden by any man.
If I employ force, what do I gain ? Changes in demeanour,
outward shows, grimaces, shams, hypocrisies. But what
becomes of the sincerity of the heart, of faith, of Christian
love ? All is wanting where these are lacking ; and for the
rest I would not give the stalk of a pear. What we want
is the heart, and to win that we must preach the gospel.
Then the word will drop into one heart to-day, and to-morrow
into another, and so will work that each will forsake the
Mass."
He made no personal references; he blamed no in-
dividuals ; and in the end he was master of the situation.
When he had won back Wittenberg he made a tour of
those places in Electoral Saxony where the Wittenberg
example had been followed. He went to Zwickau, to
Altenberg, and to Grimma — preaching to thousands of
people, calming them, and bringing them back to a con-
servative reformation.
CHAPTER IV.
FROM THE DIET OF WORMS TO THE CLOSE OF
THE PEASANTS' WAR.
§ 1. The continued spread of Lutheran 'leaching.
The imperial edict issued against Luther at the Diet of
Worms could scarcely have been stronger than it was,^ and
yet, like many another edict of Emperor and Diet, it
was whoUy ineffective. It could only be enforced by the
individual-Estates, who for the most part showed great
reluctance to put it into operation. It was published in
the territories of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, of the
Elector of Brandenburg, of Duke George of Saxony, and of
the Dukes of Bavaria ; but none of these princes, except
the Archduke and Duke George, seemed to care much for
the old religion. In most of the ecclesiastical States the
' authorities were afraid of riots following the publication,
^ The edict said : " In the first place, we command that all, particularly
all princes, estates, and subjects, shall not, after the expiry of the above
twenty days, which terminate on the 14th of the present month of May,
offer to Luther either shelter, food, or drink, or help him in any way with
words or deeds, secretly or openly. On the contrary, wherever you get
possession of him, you shall at once put him in prison and send him to me,
or, at anyrate, inform me thereof without any delay. For that holy work
you shall be recompensed for your trouble and expenses. Likewise you
ought, in virtue of the holy constitution and ban of our Empire, to deal in
the following way with all the partisans, abettors, and patrons of Luther.
You shall put them down, and confiscate their estates to your own profit,
unless the said persons can prove that they have mended their ways and
asked for papal absolution. Furthermore, we command, under the afore-
said penalties, that nobody shall buy, sell, read, keep, copy, or print any
of the writings of Martin Luther which have been condemned by our holy
father the Pope, whether in Latin or in German, nor any other of h's wicked
writings."
819
320 THE PEASANTS WAR
and did nothing. Thus, in Bremen, we are told that as
la,te as December 1522 the people had never seen the
edict. The^ities treated it as carelessly. The authorities
in Nlirnberg, Ulm, Augsburg, and Strassburg posted it up
publicly as an official document, and took no further
trouble. In Strassburg the printers went on issuing
Luther's books and tracts as fast as their printing-presses
could produce them ; and at Constance the populace
drove the imperial commissioners from the town when
they came to pubHsh the edict.
The action of the newly constituted Beichsregiment was
asu indecisive. When the disturbances broke^out at Witten-
berg, under Carlstadt and the Zwickau Prophets, Duke
George, by playing on the fears of a spread of Hussitism,
could get mandates issued to the Elector of Saxony and
neighbouring bishops to inquire into and crush the dis-
orders ; but after Luther's return and the restoration of
tranquillity his pleadings were ineffectual. It was in vain
that he insisted that Luther's presence in Wittenberg was^
an insult to the Empire. He was told that the Beichs-
regiment was able to judge for itself what were insults, and
that when they saw them they would punish. Archduke
Ferdinand, the President, doubtless sympathised with Duke
George, but he was powerless ; the Elector of Saxony had
the greatest influence, and it was always exerted on the
side of Luther.
j In January 1522 a new Pope had been chosen, who
took the title of Adrian vi. His election was a triumph
for the party that confessed the urgent need of reforms,
and thought that they ought to be effected by the
hierarchy and from within the Church. Adrian was a
pious man according to his lights, one who felt deeply the
corruption which was degrading the Church. He believed
that the revolt of Luther was a punishment sent by God
fof the sins of the generation. He had been the tutor of
Charles v., and ascended the papal throne with the deter-
mination to reform corruptions, and to begin his reforms
by attacking the source of all — the Koman Curia. But he
THE DIET OF 1523 321
was a Dominican monk, and had all the Dominican ideas
! about the need of maintaining mediaeval theology intact,
and about the strict maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline.
He was as ignorant as his predecessor of the state of
matters in Germany, and regarded Luther as another
Mahomet, who was seducing men from the higher Chris-
tian life by pandering to their fleshly appetites.
The Beichsregiment met with the Diet at Nlirnberg in
1522—1523, and to this Diet the Pope sent, as nuncio,
Francesco Chieregati, Bishop of Terramo, in the kingdom
of Naples. The nuncio was given lengthy instructions,
which set forth the Pope's opinion of the corruptions in
the Church and his intention to cure them, but which
demanded the delivery of Luther into the hands of the
Eoman Curia, and the punishment of priests, monks, and
nuns who had broken their vows of celibacy.^ Chieregati
was no sooner in Germany than he understood that it
would be impossible for him to get the Pope's demand
carried out, and he informed his master of the state of
matters. When he met the Diet and presented the papal
requests, he was practically answered that Germany had
grievances against Eome, and that they would need to be
set right ere the Curia could expect to get its behests
fulfilled. They intimated that since the Pope had admitted
the corruptions in the Church, it was scarcely to be
expected that they should blame Luther for having pointed
them out. They presented the nuncio with a list of one
hundred German grievances against the Eoman Curia ; ^
and suggested that the most convenient way of settling
them would be for the Pope to make over immediately,
for the public use of Germany, the German annates^ and
that a German Council should be held on German soil, and
within one of the larger 'German cities.
' The Pope's instructions to his nuncio will be found in Wrede, Deutsche
Meichstagsakten unter Kaiser Karl V., iii. 393 ff.
^ Compare Gebhardt, Die Oravamina der Deulschen Nation, 2nd ed. ,
Breslau, 1895.
' The annates were the first year's stipend of an ecclesiastical benefice,
usually reckoned at a fixed rate,
21*
322 THE peasants' WAR
The practical result of this fencing ,at the Diet of
1522, repeated in 1523, was that the progress of the
Lutheran movement was not checked. How deeply the
people of Germany had drunk in the teaching of Luther
may be learnt from the letters of the nuncio to the Curia,
and from those of the Archduke Ferdinand to the Emperor.
Both use the same expression, that " among a thousand
men scarcely one could be found untainted by Lutheran
^.teaching."
Adrian vi. died suddenly after a few months' reign,
and the next Pope, Clement vii., a Medici and completely
under the influence of the French king, belonged to the
old unreforming party, whose only desire was to maintain
all the corrupting privileges of the Eoman Curia. He
selected and sent to Germany, as his nuncio, Lorenzo
Campeggio, one of the ablest of Italian diplomatists, to
negotiate with the Beichsregiment and the Diet which met
at Speyer in 1524.
Campeggio, like his predecessor, found that the German
Nation was determinedly hostile to Eome. When he made
his official entry into Augsburg, and raised his hands to
give the usual benediction to the crowds of people, they
received the blessing with -open derision. He was so im-
pressed vith their attitude, that when he reached Niirn-
berg he doffed his official robes and entered the town as
quietly as possible ; indeed, he received a message from the
authorities asking him " to avoid making the sign of the
cross, or using the benedicti|On, seeing how matters then
stood." The presence of the Legate seemed to increase the
anti-papal zeal of the people. The Pope was openly spoken
, of as Antichrist. Planitz, the energetic commissary of the
Elector of Saxony, reckoned that nearly four thousand
people in the city partook of the Sacrament of the Supper
in both kinds, and informs us that among them were
members of the Beichsregiment, and Isabella, Queen of
Sweden, the sister of the Emperor.
Yet the experienced Italian diplomatist thought that
he could discern signs more favourable fco his master than
THE LEGATE CAMPEGGIO 323
the previous Diet had exhibited, The Reichsreqi ment.
which had hitherto shielded the Lutheran movement, had
los^t the confidence of man,y classes of people, and was
tottering to its fall. It had showed itself unable to enforce
the Lands-Peace. It was the princes who had defeated the
rising of the Free Nobles under Franz von Sickingen ; it
was the Swabian League, an association always devoted to
the House of Austria, that had crushed the Franconian
robber nobles ; and both princes and League were irritated
at the attempts of the Beichsregiment, which had endeavoured
to rob them of the fruits of their successes. The cities had
been made to bear all the taxation needed to support the
central government, and the system of monopolies arising
from combinations among the great commercial houses had
been threatened. The cities and the capitalists had made
a secret agreement with the Emperor, and von Hannart
had"~iieeH-^eTit by the Emperor from Spain to the Diet of
1524 to work along with the towns for the overthrow of
the central government. The Diet itself had passed a vote
of no confidence in the government. In these troubled
waters a crafty fisher might win some success.
His success was more apparent than real. The Diet of
152-4; did not absolutely refuse to enforce the Edict of
Worms against Luther and his followers ; they promised
to execute it " as well as they were able, and as far as was
possible," and the cities had made it plain that the enforce-
ment was impossible. They renewed their demand for a
GpneMrl-Gasincil to meet in a suitable German town to
settle the affairs of the Qhurch in Germany, and again
declared that meanwhile nothing should be preached
contrary to the Word of God and the Holy Gospel. They
went further, and practically resolved that a National
Council, to deliberate on the condition of the Church in
Germany, should meet at Speyer in November and make
an interim settlement of its ecclesiastical affairs, to last
until the meeting of a General Council. It is true that,
owing to the exertions of the nuncio and of von Hannart,
the phrase National Synod was omitted, and the meeting
324 THE peasants' war
was to be one of the Estates of Germany at which the
councillors and learned divines of the various princes were
to formulate all the disputed points, and to consider anew
the grievances of the German nation against-^he" Papicy ;
but neither the nuncio nor von Hannart deceived them-
selves as to the real meaning of the resolution. " It will
be a National Council for Germany," said Hannart in his
report. Nothing could be more alarming to the Pope.
There was always a possibility of managing a General
" Council; but a German National Synod, including a large
number of lay representatives, meeting in a German town,
foreshadowed an independent National German Church
which would insist on separation from the Roman See.
I The Pope wrote to Henry vin. of England asking him to
i^arass the German merchants ; he induced the Emperor
to forbid the proposed meeting of the German States;
and, what was more important, he instfueted'"Eis nuncio
to take steps secretly to form a league of German princes
who were still favourable to maintaining the mediaeval
Church with its doctrines, ceremonies, and usages. This
inaugurated the religious divisions of Germany.
§ 2. The beginnings of Division in Germany.
~The Diet of Speyer (1524) may perhaps be taken as
the beginning of the separation of "Germany into two
opposite camps of Protestant and Eoman Catholic, although
the real parting of the ways actually occurred after the
Peasants' War. The overthrow, or at least __diserediting
,' of the Beichsregiment, placed the management of everything,
including^ the ~ settlement of the religious question, in the
;, hands of the princes, none of whom, with the exception
of the Elector of Saxony, cared much for the idea of
nationality ; while some of them, however anxious they
were, or once had been, for ecclesiastical reforms, were
genuinely afraid of the " tumult " which they believed
might lurk behind any conspicuous changes in religious
usages. Duke George of Saxony, who was keenly alive to
DIVISIONS IN GERMANY 325
the corruptions in the Church, dreaded above all things the
beginnings of a Hussite movement in Germany. He knew
that an assiduous, penetrating, secret Hussite, or rather
Taborite propaganda had been going on in Germany for
long. As early as the Leipzig Disputation (1519), when
John Eck had skilfully forced Luther into the avowal that
he approved of some, things in the Hussite revolt, Duke
George was seen to put his arms akimbo, to wag his long
beard, and was heard to ejaculate, " God help us ! The
plague ! " A fear of Hussite revolution displays itself in his
correspondence, and very notably in his letters to Duke
John of Saxony and to the Elector about the disturbances
in Wittenberg. It was a triumph for the Eoman Curia
when its partisans, from Eck" onwards, were able to fix the
stigma of Hussitism on the Lutheran movement ; and the
cal-eer of the Zwickau Prophets, notwithstanding their sup-
pression by Luther, was, to many, an indication of what
might lie behind the new preaching. When thfi- Peasants'
War_camein 1525, many of the earlier sympathisers with
Luther saw in it an indication of the dangers into which
they fancied that Luther was leading Germany. It is also
to be noticed that many of the Humanists now began to
desert the Lutheran cause ; his Augustinian theology made
them think that he was bent on creating a new Scholastic
which seemed to them almost as bad as the old, which they
^had been delighted to see him attack.
The Eoman Curia was quick to take advantage of all
these alarms. Its efforts were so successful, that it was
soon able to create a Eoman Catholic Party among the
South German princes, and to secure its steadfastness by pro-
mising a few concessions, and by permitting the authorities
to retain for the secular uses of their States about one-fifth
of the ecclesiastical revenues in each State. The leading
States in this Eoman Catholic federation were Austria and
Bavaria, and so long as Duke George lived, DucSl~Saxony.
in middle Germany. This naturally called forth a dis-
tinctly Lutheran party, no longer national, which included
the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Mar-
326 THE peasants' war
graf of Brandenburg, his brother Albert, and jaany others.
Albert was at the head^oF the Teutonic Order in East
Prussia. He secidarised his semi-ecclesiastical principality,
became the first Duke of Prussia, and his State from the
beginning adopted the evangelical faith.
It was not until the Peasants' War was over that this
division was clearly manifested. The Eeformation had
spread in simple natural fashion, without any attempt at
concerted action, or any design to impose a new and
uniform order of public worship, or to make changes ia
ecclesiastical government. Luther himself was not without
hopes that the great ecclesiastical priucipalities might
become secular lordships, that the bishops would assume
the lead in ecclesiastical reform, and that there would be ,
a great National Church in Germany, with little external
change — enough only to permit the evangelical preaching
and teaching. It is true that the Emperor had shown
clearly his position by sending martyrs to the stake in the
Netherlands, and that symptoms of division had begun to
manifest themselves during 1524, as we have seen. Still
these things did not prevent such an experienced statesman
as the Elector of Saxony from confidently expecting a
peaceful and, so far as Germany was concerned, a
unanimous and hearty solution of the religious difficulties.
The storm burst suddenly which was to shatter these
optimistic expectations, and to change fundamentally the
whole course of the Lutheran Eeformation. This was the
Peasants' War.
§ 3. The Peasants' War}
From one point of view this insurrection was simply
the last, the most extensive, and the most disastrous of
' Sources : Baumann, Quellen zur OeschichU des Bauernkriegts in
Oier-Schwa^en (Stuttgart, 1877) ; Die Zwolf Artikel der obersehvxibisehen
.Bauem (Kempten, 1896) ; Akten zur Oeschichte dfs Smternkrieges aus Ober-
Schwaben (Freiburg, 1881) ; Beger, Zur Oeschichte des: Bauerntrieges nach
Urkunden zu Karlsruhe (in Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, vols,
xxi.-xxii., Gbttingen, 1862) ; Ryhiner, Chrnnik des Bav/imkrieges {Basler
Chroniken, vi., 1902); AValdau, MateriaUcti zur Geschichte des Bauem-
THE peasants' WAR 327
those revolts which, we have already seen, had been
almost chronic in Germany during the later decades of the
fifteenth and in the beginning of the sixteenth century.
All the social and economic causes which produced them '
were increasingly active in 1524—1525. It is easy to
show, as many Lutheran Church historians have done with
elaborate care, that the Eeformation under Luther had
nothing in common with the sudden and unexpected revolt,|
— as easy as to prove that there was little in common:
between the " Spiritual Poverty " of Francis of Assisi and '
the vulgar communism of the Brethren and Sisters of the |
Free Spirit, between the doctrines of WicHf and the
gigantic labour strike headed by Wat Tyler and Priest
Ball, between the teaching of Huss and the extreme Taborite
fanatics. But the fact remains that the voice of Luther
awoke echoes whereof he never dreamt, and that its effects
cannot be measured by some changes in doctrine, or by a
reformation in ecclesiastical organisation. The times of
the Eeformation were ripe for revolution, and the words
of the bold preacher, coming when all men were restless
and most men were oppressed,^appealing especially to those
who felt the burden heavy and the yoke galling, were
followed by far-resounding reverberations. Besides, Luther's
message was democratic. It destroyed the aristocracy of
the saints, it levelled the barriers between the layman and
the priest, "it" taught the equality of all men before God,
and the right of every man of faith to stand in God's
presence whatever be his rank and condition of life. He
had not confined himself to preaching a new theology.
His message was eminently practical. In his Appeal to
krieges (Chemnitz, 1791-1794) ; Vogt, Die Korrespondenz des Schwdbischm
Bundes-Ecmptmanns, 16^4^15^7 (Augsburg, 1879-1883).
Latek Books : Zimniermann, Allgemtine Qeschiehie des grossen Bauem-
krieges, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1856) ; E. Belfort Bax, The Feasants' War in
Oermany (London, 1899) ; Kautsky, Gommunism in Central Europe in the
time of the Eeformatim, (London, 1897) ; Stern, Die Socialisten der Beforma-
tionsseU (Berlin, 1883). Tlie literature on the Peasants' War is very
extensive.
' Compare above, p. 106.'
328 THE peasants' war
the NoUlity of the German Nation, Luther had voiced all
the "grievances of Germany, had touched upon almost all
the open sores of the time, and had foretold disasters not
very far off.
Nor must it be forgotten that no great leader ever
flung about wild words in such a reckless way. Luther had
the gift of strong smiting-phrases, of words which seemed
to cleave-to- the' very heart of things, of images which lit
up a subject with the vividness of a flash of lightning
He launched tracts and pamphlets from the press about
almost everything, — written~for the most part on the spur
of the moment, and when the fire burned. His words fell
into souls full of the fer-menting passions of the times.
They drank in with eagerness the thoughts that_aU_men
were equal before God, and that there are divine com-
mands about the brotherhood of mankind of more
importance than all human legislation. They refused to
believe that such golden ideas belonged to the realm of
spiritual life alone, or that the .only prescriptions which
denied the rights of the common man were the desrees
of the Eoman Curia. The successful revolts of the Swiss
peasants, the wonderful victories of Zisca, the people's
leader, in the near Bohemian lands, were illustrations, they
thought, of how Luther's sledge-hammer words could be
translated into corresponding deeds.
Other teachings besides Luther's were listened to.
Many of the Humanists, professed disciples of Plato,
expounded to friends or in their class-rooms the-_com-
munistic dreams of the Republic, and published Utopias
like the brilliant sketch of the ideal commonwealtlTwhich
came from the pen of Thomas More. These speculations
" of the Chair " were listened to by the " wandering,
students," and were retailed, with forcible illustrations, in
a way undreamt of by their scholarly authors, to audiences
of artisans and peasants who were more than ready to give
them unexpected applications.'^
^ Lindsay, Luther and tlie German Reformation (Edinburgh, 1900), 169 ff. •
Stern, Die Soaialisten der Seformationszeit, Berlin, 1883.
THE peasants' WAR 329
The influence of popular astrology must not be
forgotten ; for the astrologisfs" were powerful among all
classes of society, in the palaces of the princes, in the
houses of the burghers, and at the peasant market
gatherings and church ales. In these days they were
busy pointing out heavenly portents, and foretelUng
calamities and popular risings.^
The missionaries of the movement belonged to all sorts
and conditions of men— poor priests sympathising with
the grievances of their parishioners ; wandering monks
who had deserted their convents, especially those belonging
to the Franciscan Order; poor students on their way from
University to University ; artisans, travelling in German
fashion from one centre of their trade to another. They
found their audiences on the village greens under the lime
trees, or in the public-houses in the lower parts of the
towns. They talked the rude language of the people, and
garnished their discourse with many a scriptural quotation.
They read to excited audiences small pamphlets and
broadsides, printed in thick letters on coarse paper, which
discussed the burning questions of the day.
The revolt began unexpectedly, and without any pre-
concerted preparation or formulation of demands, in June
1524, when a thousand peasants belonging to the estate
of Count Sigismund of Lupfen rose in rebellion against
their lord at Stiihlingen, a few miles to the north-west of
Schaifhausen, and put themselves under the leadership of
Hans Miiller, an old landsknecht. Milller ledhis peasants,
one of them carrying a flag blazoned with the imperial
colours of red, black, and yellow, to the little town of
Waldshut, about half-way between Schaffhausen and Basel.
The people of ihe town fraternised with the peasants, and
the formidable " Evangelical Brotherhood " was either
formed then or the roots of it were planted. The news
spread fast, east and west. The peasants of the districts
round about the Lake of Constance — in the AUgau, the
' Friedrich, Astrologie und Beformation, oder die Aslrologen als Prediyer
der Reformaticm wnd Urheber des Bauernkrieges, Mlinchen, 1864.
330 THE peasants' war
Klettgau, the Hegau, and Villingen — rose in rebellion.
The revolt spread northwards into Lower Swabia, and the
peasants of Leiphen, led by Jacob Wehe, were joined by
some of the troops of Truchsess, the genei'al of the Swabian
League. The peasants of Salzburg, Styria, and the Tyrol
rose. These three eastern risings had most staying power
in them. The Salzburg peasants besieged the Cardinal
Archbishop in his castle ; they were not reduced till the
spring of 1526, and only after having extorted conces-
sions from their over-lords. The Tyrolese peasants, under
their wise leader, Michael Gaismeyer, shut up Archduke
Ferdinand in Innsbruck, and in the end gained substantial
concessions. The fising in Styria was a very strong one ;
it lasted tiU 1526, and was eventually put down by bring-
ing Bohemian troops into the country. From Swabia the
flames of insurrection spread iato Franconia, where a por-
tion of the insurgents were led by an escap^. criminal, the
notorious Jaklein Eohrbach. It was this band which per-
petrated the wanton massacre of Weinsberg, the one out-
standing atrocity of the insurrection. The band and the
deed were repudiated by the rest of the insurgents. Thomas
Miinzer, who, banished from Zwickau and then from
Alstedt, had settled in Miihlhausen, his heart aflame with
the wrongs of the commonalty, preached insurrection to the
peasants in Thiiringen. He issued fiery proclamations :
" Arise ! Fight the battle of the Lord ! On ! On ! On I
The wicked tremble when they hear of you. On ! On ! On !
Be pitiless although Esau gives you fair words (Gen. xxxiii.).
Heed not the groans of the godless ; they will beg, weep,
and entreat you for pity like children. Show them no
mercy, as God commanded to Moses (Deut. vii.), and as He
has revealed the same to us. Eouse up the towns and the
villages ; above all, rouse the miners. ... On ! On ! On !
while the fire is burning let not the blood cool on your
swords ! Smite pinke-pank on the anvil of Nimrod ! Over-
turn their towers to the foundation; while one of th^m
lives you will not be free from the fear of man. While
they reign over you it is of no use to speak of the fear of
God. On ! while it is day 1 God is with you."
THE TWELVE ARTICLES 331
The words were meant to rouse the miners of Mansfeld.
They failed in their original intention, but they sent bands
of armed insurgents through Thiiringen and the Harz, and
within fourteen days about forty convents and monasteries
were destroyed, and the inmates (many of them poor
women with no homes to return to) were sent adrift.
The revolt spread like a conflagration; one province
catching fire from another, until in the early spring
months of 1525 almost all Germany was in uproar. The
only districts which escaped were Bavaria in the south,
Hesse, and the north and north-east provinces. The insur-
gents were not peasants only. The poorer population of
many of the towns fraternised with the insurgents, and com-
pelled the civic authorities to admit them within their walls.
§ 4. The Twelve Articles.
Statements of grievances were published which, natur-
ally, bore a strong resemblance to those issued in the
earlier social uprisings. The countrymen complained of
the continuous appropriation of the woodlands by the pro-
prietors, and that they were not allowed to fish in the
streams or to kill game in their fields. They denounced
the proprietors' practice of compelling his peasants to do all
manner of unstipulated service for him without payment
— to repair his roads, to assist at his hunts, to draw his
fish-ponds. They said that their crops were ruined by
game which they were not allowed to kill, and by hunters
in pursuit of game ; that the landlord led his streams
across their meadow land, and deprived them of water for
irrigation. They protested against arbitrary punishments,
unknown to the old consuetudinary village law-courts
(^Haingerichte).
They formulated their demands for justice in various
series of articles, all of which had common features, but
contained some striking differences. Some dwelt more on
the grievances of the peasants, others voiced the demands
of the working classes of the towns, others again contained
332 THE peasants' war
traces of the political aspirations of the more educated
leaders of the movement Almost all protest that they
ask for nothing contrary to the requirements of just
authority, whether civil or ecclesi^tical, nor to the gospel
of Christ. The peasants declared that each village com-
munity should be at liberty to choose its own pastor,
and to dismiss him if he proved to be unsatisfactory ;
that while ther were wUling to pay the great tithes
(i.e. a tenth of the produce of the crops), the lesser tithes
(i.e. a tenth of the eggs, lambs, foals, etc.) should no
longer be exacted ; that these great tithes should be
reserved to pay the village priest's stipend, and that
what remained over should go to support the poor ; that,
since God had made all men free, serfdom should be
abolished ; and that, while they were willin g to obey lawful
authority, peasants ought not to be called on to submit
to the arbitrary commands of then* lEtndlords. They
insisted that they had a right to fish in the streams (not
in fish-ponds), to kill game and wild birds, for these were
public property. They demanded that the woodlands,
meadows, and ploughlands which had once belonged to
the village community, but which had been appropriated
by the landlords, should be restored. They insisted that
arbitrary services of every kind should be abolished, and
that whatever services, beyond the old feudal dues, were
demanded, should be paid for in wages. They called for
the abolition of the usage whereby the landlord was per-
mitted, in the name of death -duty, to seize on the most
valuable chattel of the deceased tenant ; and for the crea-
tion of impartial courts of justice in the country distiicts.
They concluded by asking that all their demands should
be tested by the word of God, and that if any of them
should be found to be opposed to its teaching, it should be
rejected.^
The townspeople asked that all class privileges should
be abolished in civic and ecclesiastical appointments ; that
>Cf. "The Twelve Peasant Articles" in Emil Beich, Select Documenta
iiluiirating Mediwval and Modem History, p. 212.
THE TWELVE ARTICLES 333
the administration of justice in the town's courts should
be improved ; that the local taxation should be readjusted ;
that all the inhabitants should be permitted to vote for
the election of the councillors ; and that better provision
should be made for the care of the poor. Sonle of the
more ambitious manifestoes contained demands for a
thorough reconstruction of the entire administration of the
Empire, on a scheme which involved the overthrow of all
feudal courts of justice, and contemplated a series of im-
perial judicatories, rising from revived Communal Courts
to a central Imperial Court of Appeal for the whole
Empire. Some manifestoes demanded a unification of the
coiuage, weights, and measures througliout the Empire ; a
confiscation of ecclesiastical endowments for the purpose
of lessening taxation, and for the redemption of feudal
dues ; a uniform rate of taxes and customs duties ; re-
straint to be placed on the operations of the great capital-
ists ; the regulation of commerce and trade by law ; and
the admission of representatives from all classes in the
community into the public administration. In every case
the Emperor was regarded as the Lord Paramount. There
were also declarations of the sovereignty of the people,
made in such a way as to suggest that the writings of
MarsiKus of Padua had been studied by some of the leaders
among the insurgents. The most_ famous of all these
declarations was the Twelve Articles. The document
was adopted by delegates from several of the insurrec-
tionary bands, which met at Memmingen in Upper Swabia,
to unite upon a common basis of action. If not actually
drafted by Schappeler, a friend of Zwingli, the articles
were probably inspired by him. These Twelve Articles
gave something like unity to the movement ; althoiigh it
must be remembered that documents bearing the title do
not always agree. The main thought with the peasant
was to secure a fair share of the iaxiTl, security of tenure,
and diminution of feudal servitudes ; and the idea of the
artisan was to obtain full civic privileges and an adequate
representation of his class on the city council.
334 THE peasants' war
§ 5. The Suppression of the Revolt.
During the earlier months of 1525 the rising carried
everything before it. Many of the smaller towns made
common cause with the peasants; indeed, it was feared
that all the towns of Swabia might unite in supporting
the movement. Prominent nobles were forced to join the
" Evangelical Brotherhood " which had been formally con- ~
stituted at Memmingen (March 7 th). Princes, like the
Cardinal Elector of Maiaz and the Bishop of Wiirzburg,
had to come to terms with the iasurgents. Germany had
been denuded of soldiers, drafted to take part in the
Italian wars of Charles v. The ruling powers engaged
the insurgents in negotiations simply for the purpose of
gaining time, as was afterwards seen. But the rising bad
no solidity in it, nor did it produce, save iu the Tyrol, any
leader capable of effectually controlling his followers and
of giving practical result to their efforts. The insurgents
became demoralised after their first successes, and the
whole movement had begun to show signs of dissolution
before the priuces had recovered from their terror. Phihp
of Hesse aided the Elector of Saxony (John, for Prederick
had died during the insurrection) to crush Miinzer at
Frankenhausen (May 15th, 1525), the town of Miihl-
hausen was taken, and deprived of its privileges as an
imperial city, and the revolt was crushed in North
Germany.
George Truchsess, the general of the Swabian League,
his army strengthened by mercenaries returning to Ger-
many after the battle of Pavia, mastered the bands in
Swabia and in Franconia. The Elsass revolt was sup-
pressed with great ferocity by Duke Anthony of Lorraine.
None of the German princes showed any consideration or
mercy to their revolting subjects save the old Elector
Frederick and Philip of Hesse. The former, on his death-
bed, besought his brother to deal leniently with the
misguided people; PhiUp's peasantry had fewer matters
to complain of than had those of any other province,
LUTHER AND THE PEASANTS 335
the Landgrave discussed their grievances with them, and
made concessions which effectually prevented any revolt.
Everywhere else, save in the Tyrol, the revolt was crushed
with merciless severity, and between 100,000 and 150,000
of the insurgents perished on the field or elsewhere. The
insurrection maintained itself in the Tyrol, in Salzburg,
and in Styria until the spring of 1526; in all other dis-
tricts of Germany the insui-gents were crushed before the ',
close of 1525. No attempt was made to cure the ills-
which led to the rising. The oppression of the peasantry
was intensified. The last vestiges of local self-government
were destroyed, and the unfortunate people were doomed
for generations to exist in the lowest degradation. The
year 1525 was one of the saddest in the annals of the
German Fatherland.
The Peasants' War had a profound, lasting, and disas-
( trous effect on the Eeformation movement in Germany. It
I affected Luther personally, and that in a way which could
not fail to react upon the cause which he conspicuously
led. It checked the spread of the Reformation throughout
the whole of Germany. It threw the guidance of the
movement into the hands of the evangelical princes, and
destroyed the hope that it might give birth to aTreforored
National German Church.
§ 6. Luther and the Peasants' War.
The effect of the rising upon Luther's own character
and future conduct was too important for us to entirely
pass over his personal relations to the peasants and their
revolt. He was a peasant's son. " My father, my grand-
father, my forebears, were all genuine peasants," he was
accustomed to say. He had seen and pitied the oppression
of the peasant class, and had denounced it. in. his own
trenchant fashion. He had reproved the greed of the
landlords, when he said that if the peasant's land produced
as many coins as ears of corn, the profit would go to the
landlord only. He had publicly expressed his approval of
336 THE peasants' war
many of the proposals in the Twelve Articles long before
they had been formulated and adopted at Memmingen in
March 1525, and had advocated a return to the old com-
munal laws or usages of Germany. He formally declared his
[ agreement with the substance of the Twelve Articles after
1 they had become the " charter " of the revolt. But Luther,
rightly or wrongly, held that no real good could come from
(armed insurrection. He Felieved with all the tenacity of
his nature, that while there might be two roads to reform,
the way of peace, and the way of war, the pathway of
peace was the only one which would lead to lasting benefit.
After the - storm burst he risked his life over and over
again in visits he paid to the disaffected districts, to warn
the people of the dangers they were running. After
Miinzer's attempt to rouse the miners of Mansfeld, and
carry fire and sword into the district where his parents
were living, Luther made one last attempt to bring the
misguided people to a more reasonable course. He made a
preaching tour through the disaffected districts. He went
west from Eisleben to Stolberg (April 21st, 1525); thence
to Nordhausen, where Miinzer's sympathisers rang the
bells to drown his voice; south to Erfurt (April 28th);
north again to the fertile valley of the Golden Aue
and to Wallhausen (May 1st); south again to Weimar
(May 3rd), where news reached him that his Elector
was dying, and that he had expressed the wish to see
'' him, — a message which reached him too late. " It was
on this journey, or shortly after his return to Witten-
\ berg (May 6th), that Luther wrote his vehement tract,
' Against the murdering, thieving hordes of Peasants. He
i wrote it while his mind was full of Miinzer's calls to
\ slaughter, when the danger was at its height, with aU
\ the sights and sounds of destruction and turmoil in eye
and ear, while it still hung in the balance whether the
insurgent bands might not carry all before them. In
this terrible pamphlet Luther hounded on the princes to
crush the rising. It is this pamphlet, all extenuating"
circumstances being taken into account, which must
LUTHER AND THE PEASANTS 337
ever remain an ineffaceable stain on his noble life and
career.^
As for himself, the Peasants' War imprinted in him
a deep distrust of all who had any connection with the
rising. He had not forgotten Carlstadt's action at Witten-
berg in 1521-1522, and when Carlstadt was found
attempting to preach the insurrection in Pranconia and
Swabia, Luther never forgave him. His deep-rooted and
unquenchable suspicion of Zwingli may be traced back to
his discovery that friends of the Zurich Eeformer had
been at Memmingen, had aided the revolutionary delegates
to draft the Twelve Articles, and had induced them to
shelter themselves under the shield of a religious Eeforma-
tion. What is perhaps more important, the Peasants' War
gave to Luther a deep and abiding distrust of the " common
man " which was altogether lacking in the earlier stages
of his career, which made him prevent every effort to
give anything like a democratic ecclesiastical organisation
to the Evangelical Church, and which led him to bind his
Eeformation in the chains of secular control to the extent
of regarding the secular authority as possessing a quasi-
episcopal function.^ It is probably true that he saved
the Eeformation in Germany by cutting it loose from the
revolutionary movement ; but the wrench left marks on
his own character as well as on that of the movement he
headed. Luther's enemies were quick to make capital out
of his relations with the peasants, and Emser compared
him to Pilate, who washed his hands after betraying Jesus
to the Jews.
' After speaking about the duties of the authorities, he proceeds : "In
the case of an insurgent, every man is both judge and executioner. There-
fore, whoever can should knock down, strangle, and stab such publicly or
privately, and think nothing so venomous, pernicious, and devilish as an
insurgent. . . . Such wonderful times are these, that a prince can merit
heaven better with bloodshed than another with prayer."
^ Luther dissuaded the Landgrave of Hesse from permanently adopting
the democratic ecclesiastical constitution drafted by Francis Lambert for
the Church of Hesse in 1526. The lejected constitution has been printed
by Richter in his Die evangel ischcn Kirchenordnungen des scchssehnten
Jahrhnudi- lis (Weimar, 1846), i. 56,
338 THE peasants' war
§ 7. Germany divided into two separate Camps.
The insurrection, altogether apart from its personal
effects on Luther, had a profound influence on the whole of
the German Eeformation. Some princes who had hitherto
favoured the Eomanist side were confirmed ia their opposi-
tion ; others who had hesitated, definitely abandoned the
cause of Eeform. Por both, it seemed that a social revolu-
tion of a desperate kind lay behind the Protestant Ee-~
formation. Many an innocent preacher of the new faith
perished in the disturbances — sought out and slain by the
princes as an instigator of the rebellion. Duke Anthony
of Lorraine, for example, in his suppression of the revolt
in Elsass, made no concealment of his belief that evangelical
preachers were the cause of the rising, and butchered them
without mercy when he could discover them. The Curia
found that the Peasants' War was an admirable text to preach
from when they insisted that Luther was another Huss, and
that the movement which he led was a revival of the
ecclesiastical and social communism of the extre me Hussites
(Taborites); that all who attacked the Chitrch of Eorie
were engaged in attempting to destroy the bases of society.
It was after the Peasants' War that_the^omaii. Catholic
League of princes grew strong in numbers and in cohesion.
The result of the war also showed that the ,Qnfi_aliIOBg_
political element in Germany was the jprinGedeeh The
Meichsregiment, whicTi still preserved a precarious existence,
had shown that it had no power to cope with the dis-
turbances, and its attempts at mediation Ead been treated
with cojitempt. From this year, 1525, t he political desti ny
of the land was distinctly seen to be definitely shaping for
territorial centralisation round the greater princes and
nobles. It was inevitable that the conservative^ireligious
Eeformation should follow the lines of political growth,
with the result that there could not be a National
Evangelical Church of Germany. It could only find,
outcome in territorial Churches under the rule and pro-
tection of those princes who from motives of religion
THE peasants' WAR 339
and conscience had adopted the principles which Luther
preached.
The more radical religious movement broke up into
fragments, and reappeared in the guise of the maligned
and persecuted Anabaptists, — a name which embraced a
very wide variety of religious opinions, — some of whom
appropriated to themselves the aspirations of the social
revolution which had been crushed by the princes. The
conservative and Lutheran Eeformation found its main
elements of strength in the middle classes of Germany;
while the Anabaptists had their largest following among
the artisans and working men of the towns.
The terrors of the time separated Germany into two
hostile camps — the one accepting and the other rejecting
the ecclesiastical Eeformation, which ceased to be a national
movement in any real sense of the word.
CHAPTER V.
FROM THE DIET OF SPEYER, 1526, TO THE
RELIGIOUS PEACE OF AUGSBURG, 1555.
§ 1. The Diet of Speyer, 1626}
When Germany emerged from the social revolution in the
end of 1525, it soon became apparent that the religious
question remained unsettled, and was dividing the country
into two parties whose differences had become visibly
accentuated, and that both held as strongly as ever to
their distinctive principles. Perhaps one of the reasons
for the increased strain was the conduct of many of the
Eomanist princes in suppressing the rebellion. The
victories of the Swabian League in South Germany were
everywhere followed by religious persecution. Men were
condemned to confiscation of goods or to death, not for
rebellion, for they had never taken part in the rising, but
for their confessed attachment to Lutheran teaching. The
Lutheran preache];s were special objects of attack. Aichili,
who acted as a provost-marshal to the Swabian League,
made himself conspicuous by plundering, mulettag, and
' SouECEs (besides those given in earlier chapters) : Ifey, " Analecten zur
Gesohichte des Keichstags zu Speier ira Jahr 1526 " (Zeitschrift fur Kirchen-
(jeschichte, viii. ix. xii.) ; Friedeusburg, Beitrdge zum Bri'/wechsel zmschen
Hertzog Gcorg von Sachsen v.nd Landgraf Philip von Hessen (Keuier Archiv
fur Sachs. Oesch. vi.) ; Balan, Olementis VII. Epistoloe (vol. i. o( Monumenta
ScDcnUxvi. Uistoriain illiidrantia, Innsbruck, 1885); Casanova, £ette;'C rft
Carlo V. and Clements VII. 1637-1633 (Florence, 1893) ; Lanz, Oorrespondcnz
des Kaisers Karl V. (Leipzig, 1846); Bradford, Cmrespondence of Charles V.
(London, 1850).
Later Books ; Sohomburgk, Die Pack'sehen Handel (Maiirenbreoher's
Hist. Taschenbuch, Leipzig, 1882) ; Stoy, JErsle Bilndnisbestrebungen evangt-
lischen Stdnde (Jena, 1888) ; Cambridge Modern History, ii. vi.
340
THE DIET OP SPEYER, 1526 341
putting them to death. It is said that he hung forty
Lutheran pastors on the trees by. the roadside in one small
district. The Eoman Catholic princes had banded them-
selves together for mutual defence as early as July 1525.
The more influential members of this league were Duke
George of Saxony, the Electors of Brandenburg and Mainz,
and Duke Henry of Brunswick-Wolf enbiittel. Duke Henry
was selected to inform the Emperor of what they had done,
rand to secure his sympathy and support. He told Charles v.
that the league had been formed " against the Lutherans in ,
case they should attempt by force or cunning to gain them i
over to their unbeHef." ;
On the other hand, the Protestant princes had a mutual
imderstanding — it does not seem to have been a definite
league — to defend one another against any attack upon
their faith. The leaders were John of Saxony, PhiUp of
Hesse, Dukes Otto, Ernest, and Francis of Brunswick-
Liineberg, and the Counts of Mansfeld. Philip of Hesse
was the soul of the union. They could count on the
support of many of the imperial cities, some of them, such
as Niimberg, being in districts where the country lying
around was ruled by Romanist princes.
The Diet, which met at Augsburg in 1525, was very
thinly attended, and both parties waited for the Diet which
was to be held at Speyer in the following year.
There never had been any doubt about the position and
opinions of the Emperor on the religious question. He
had stated them emphatically at the Diet of Worms. He
had been educated in the beliefs of mediseval Catholicism ;
he valued the ceremonies and usages of the mediaeval
worship ; he understood no other ecclesiastical polity ; he
believed that the Bishop of Eome was the head of the
Church on earth ; he had consistently persecuted Protestants
in his hereditary dominions from the beginning ; he desired
the execution of the Edict of Worms against Luther. If
he had remained in Germany, all his personal and official
influence would have been thrown into the scale against
the evangelical faith. Troubles in Spain, and the prosecu-
342 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
tion of the war against Francis of France had prevented
his presence in Germany after his first brief visit. He
had now conquered and taken Francis prisoner at the
battle of Pavia. The terms of the Treaty of Madrid
bound Francis to assist Charles in suppressing Lutheranism
and other pernicious sects in Germany, and when it was
signed the Emperor seemed free to crush the German
Protestants. But his very success was against him;
papal diplomacy wove another web aroimd him; he was
still unable to visit the Fatherland, and the rehgious
question had to be discussed at Speyer in his absence.
When the Diet met, the national hostility to Eome
showed no signs of abatement. The subject of German
grievances against the Curia was again revived, and it was
alleged that the chief causes of the Peasants' War were the
merciless exactions of clerical landholders. Perhaps this
opinion was justified by the fact that the condition of
the peasantry on the lands of monasteries and of bishops
J was natoriously worse than that of those under secular
V proprietors ; and that, while the clerical landholders had
done little to subdue the rebels, they had been merciless
after the insurgents had been subdued. There was truth
enough in the charge to make it a sufficient answer to the
accusation that the social revolution had been the outcome
of Luther's teaching.
Ferdinand of Austria presided in his brother's absence,
and, "^acting on the Emperor's iastructions, he demanded
\ the enforcement of the Edict of^ Worms and a decree of
1 the Diet to forbid all innovations in worship and in doc-
trine. He promised that if these imperial demands were
granted, the Emperor would induce the Pope to call a
General Council for the definite settlement of the religious
difficulties. But the Diet was not inclined to adopt the
suggestions. The Emperor was at war~^with the Pope.
Many of the clerical members felt themselves to be in a
delicate position, and did not attend. The Lutheran sym-
pathisers were in a majority, and the delegates from the
cities insisted that it was impossible to enforce the Edict
THE DIET OF 1526 343
of Worms. The Committee of Princes ^ proposed to settle
the religioui) question by a compromise which was almost
wholly favourable to the Eeformation. They suggested
that the marriage of priests, giving the cup to the laity,
the use of German as well as Latin in the baptismal and
communion services, should be recognised ; that all private
Masses should be abolished ; that the number of ecclesi-
astical holy days should be largely reduced ; and that in the
exposition of Holy Writ the rule ought to be that scripture
should be interpreted by scripture. After a good deal of
tencing, the Diet finally resolved on a deliverance which
provided that the word of God should be preached with-
out disturbance, that indemnity should be granted for past
offences against the Edict of Worms, and that, until the
meeting of a General CoimcQ to be held in a German city,
each State should so live as it hoped to answer for its con-
duct to God and to the Emperor.
The decision was a triumph for the territorial system
as well as for the Eeformation, and foreshadowed the per-
manent religious peace of Augsburg (1555). It is difficult
to see how either Charles or Ferdinand could have accepted
it. Their acquiescence was probably due to the fact that
the Emperor was then at war with the Pope (the sack of
Eome under the Constable Bourbon took place on May
6th, 1527), and that the threat of a German ecclesiastical
revolt was a good weapon to use against His Holiness.
Ferdinand was negotiating for election to the crowns of
Hungary and Bohemia, and dared not offend his German
subjects. Both brothers looked on any concessions to the
German Lutherans as temporary compromises to be with-
drawn as soon as they were able to enforce their own
views.
The Protestant States and cities at once interpreted
|this decision of the Diet to mean that they had the legal
right to organise territorial Churches and to introduce such
^''Tlie Diet was accustomed to appoint a Committee of Princes to put in
shape their more important ordinances. The ordinance was called a
"recess."
344 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
changes into public worship as would bring it into harmony
with their evangelical beliefs.^ The latent evangelical feel-
ing at once manifested itself. Almost all North Germany,
except Brandenburg, Ducal Saxony, and Brunswick- Wolfen-
biittel, became Lutheran within three years. Still it has to
be noticed that the legal recognition was accorded to the
secular authorities, and that a ruling prince, who had no
very settled religious convictions, might change the religion
of his principality from political or selfish motives. It
became evident in 1529 that political feeling or fear of the
Emperor was much stronger than resolutions to support
the evangelical Eeformation.
Soon after the Diet, Philip of Hesse committed a
political blunder which, in the opinion of many of his
evangelical friends, involved disloyalty to the Fatherland,
made them chary of associating themselves with him, and
greatly weakened the Protestant party. For most of these
North German princes, in spite of their clinging to the
disruptive territorial principle, had a rugged conscientious
patriotism which made them feel that no good German
should seek the aid of France or make alliance with a
Czech. Many of the Eoman Catholic princes, irritated at
the spread and organisation of Lutheranism which followed
the decision of the Diet of 1526, had been persecuting by
confiscation of goods and by death their Lutheran subjects.
The Landgrave had married the daughter of Duke George
of Saxony, and he knew that his father-in-law was con-
tinually uttering threats against the Elector of Saxony.
Brooding over these things, Philip became gradually con-
vinced that the Eomanist princes were planning a deadly
assault on the Lutherans, and that first the Elector and
then he himself would be attacked and their territories
partitioned among the conquerors. He had no proof, but
his suspicions were strong. Chance brought him in contact
with Otto von Pack, the steward of the Chancery of Ducal
Saxony, who,- on being questioned, admitted that the sus-
^ A description of the changes in organisation and worship introduced
after the decision of the Diet of 1526 is reserved for a separate chapter.
THE DIET OF 1529 345
picions of Philip were correct, and promised to procure a
copy of the treaty. Pack was a scoundrel. No such
^ treaty existed. He forged a document which he declared
to be a copy of a genuine treaty, and got 4000 gulden for
his pains. Philip took the forgery to the Elector of Saxony
and to Luther, both of whom had no doubt of its genuine
character. They both, however, refused to agree to PhiUp's
plan of seeking assistance outside the Empire. The Land-
grave believed the situation too dangerous to be faced
passively. He tried to secure the assistance of Francis of
France and of Zapolya, the determined opponent of the
House of Austria in Bohemia. It was not until he had
fully committed himself that the discovery was made that
the document he had trusted in was nothing but a forgery.
His hasty action in appealing to France and Bohemia to
interfere in the domestic concerns of the Empire was
rresented by his co-reUgionists. When the Diet met at
Speyer, the Lutherans were divided and discredited. On
1 the other hand, the Pope and the Emperor were no longer
/ at war, and the clerical members flocked to the Diet in
large numbers.
At this memorable Diet of Speyer (1529), a compact
Eoman Catholic majority faced a weak Lutheran minority.
TEe_ Emperor, through his commissioners, declared at the
outset that he abolished, "by his imperial and absolute
authority (Machtvollkommenheit)," the clause in the ordinance
of 1 5 2 6 on which the Lutherans had reUed when they founded
their territorialjChurches ; it had been the cause, he said, " of
much" ill counsel and misunderstanding." The majority of
the Diet upheld the Emperor's decision, andTThe practical"
effect of the ordinance which was voted was to rescind
that of 1526. It declared that the German States which
had accepted the Edict of Worms should continue to do
so; which meant that there was to be no toleration for
Lutherans in Eomanist districts. It said that in districts
which had departed from the Edict no further, inaovations
were to be made, save that no one was to.,b& prevented
from hearing Mass ; that sects which denied the sacrament
346 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
of the true Body and Blood of Christ (Zwinglians) should
no more be tolerated than Anabaptists. What was most
important, it declared that no ecclesiastical Jbodx_§llQllLd
be deprived of its authority _ or revenues. It was this
last clause which destroyed all possibility of creating
Lutheran Churches ; for it meant that the mediaeval ecclesi-'
astical rule was everywhere to be restored, and with it
the right of bishops to deal with all preachers within their
dioceses.
§ 2. The Protest}
It was this ordinance which called forth the celebrated
Protest, from which comes the name Protestant. The
Protest was read in the Diet on the day (April 19th, 1529)
when- all concessions to the Lutherans had been refused.
Ferdinand and the other imperial commissioners wdiild^not
permit its publication in the " recess," and the protesters
had a legal instrument drafted and published, in which they
embodied the Protest, with all the necessary documents
annexed. The legal position taken was that the unanim-
ous decision of one Diet (1526) could not be rescinded
by a majority in a second Diet (1529). The Protesters
declared that they meant to abide by the " recess " of
1526; that the "recess" of 1529 was not to be held
binding on them, because they were not consenting parties.
When forced to make their choice between obedience to
God and obedience to the Emperor, they were compelled
to choose the former ; and they appealed, from the wrongs
done to them at the Diet, to the Emperor, to the next free
General Council of Holy Christendom, or to an ecclesi-
astical congress of the German nation. The document
was signed by the Elector John of Saxony, Margrave
George of Brandenburg, Dukes Ernest and Francis of
Brunswick-Liineburg, Landgrave Philip of Hesse, and Prince
Wolfgang of Anhalt. The fourteen cities which adhered
were Strassburg, Niirnberg, Ulm, Constance, Lindau, Mem-
■' Ney, Geschichte des Heuhstages zu Speier in 15B9 (Hamburg, 1880) I
Tittmann, Die Frotestation zu Sjieyer (Leipzig, 1829).
THE PROTEST 347
mingen, Kempten, Nordlingen, Heilbronn, Eeutlingen, Isny,
St. Gallen, Wissenberg, and Windsheim. Many of these
cities were Zwinglian rather than Lutheran ; but all united
^ in face of the common danger.
The Protest at Speyer embodied the principle, not a
new one, that a minority of German States, when they felt
themselves oppressed by a majority, could entrench them-
! selves behind the laws of the Empire ; and the idea is
j seen at work onward to the Diet of 1555, when it was
j definitely recognised. Such a minority, to maintain a suc-
cessful defence, had to be united and able to protect itself
by force if necessary. This was at once felt ; and three
days after the Protest had been read in the Diet (April,
22nd), Electoral Saxony, Hesse, and the cities of Strass-
burg, Ulm, and Niirnberg had concluded a " secret and
particular _treaty." They pledged themselves to mutual
defenceTf attacked on account of God's word, whether the
onslaught came from the Swabian League, from the Eeichs-
regiment, or from the Emperor himself. Soon after the
Diet, proposals were brought forward to make the compact
effective and extensive, — one drafted by representatives
of the cities and the other by the Elector of Saxony, —
which provided very thoroughly for mutual support ; but
neither took into account the differences which lay behind
the Protest. These divergences were strong enough to
wreck the union.
The differences which separated the German Protestants
were not wholly theological, although their doctrinal dis-
putes were most in evidence.
§ 3. Luther and Zwingli,
A movement for reformation, which owed little or
nothing to Wittenberg, had been making rapid progress in
Switzerland, and two of the strongest cantons, Zurich and
Bern, had revolted from the Eoman Church. Its leader,
Huldreich Zwingli, was utterly unhke Luther in tempera-
ment, training, and environment.
348 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
He had never gone through the terrible spiritual con-
flicts which had marked Luther for life, and had made him
the man that he was. No de ep s ense.,ofjersonal sin had
ever haunted him, to make his early manhooH~ar"burden to
him. Long after he had become known as a Eeformer, he
was able to combine a stro ng sense of mpraL responsibility
with some laxity in priyateJife. Unlike both Luther and
Calvin, he was not the_ty_pe„of _man to be leader in a
deeply spiritual revival. ~
He had been subjected to the influences o£ Human ism
from his childhood. His uncle, Bartholomew Zwingli,
parish priest at Wildhaus, and the dean of Wesen, under
whose charge the boy was placed, had a strong sympathy
for the New Learning, and the boy imbibed it. His
young intellect was fed on Homer and Pindar and Cicero ;
and all his life he esteemed the great pagans of antiquity
as highly as he did any Christian saint. If it can be said
that he bent before the dominating influence of any one
man, it was Erasmus and not Luther who compelled him
to admiration. He had for a teacher Thomas Wyttenbach,
who was half Eeforjner and half disciple of Erasmus ; and
learned from him to study the Scriptures and the writings
of such earlier Church Fathers as Origen, Jerome, and
Chrysostom. Like many another Humanist north of the
Alps, the mystical Christian Platonism of Pico della
Mirandola had some influence on him. He had never
studied the Scholastic Theology, and knew nothing of the
spell it cast over men who had been trained in it. Of all
the Reformers, Luther was the least removed from the
mediaeval way of looking at religion, and Zwingli had
wandered farthest from it.
His earliest ecclesiastical surroundings were also different
from Luther's. He had never been Jaaight_in childhood to
consider the Church to be the Pope's House, in which the
Bishop of Eome was entitled to the reverence and obedience
due to the house-father. In his land the people had been
long accustomed to manage their own ecclesiastical affairsT
The greater portion of Switzerland had known but little
ZWINGLI AND LUTHER 849
either of the benefits or disadvantages of mediaeval episcopal
rule. Church property paid its share of the communal
taxes, and even the monasteries and convents were liable
to civil inspection. If a stray tourist at the present day
wanders into the church which is called the Cathedral
in that survival of ancient mediaeval republics, San Marino,
he will find that the seats of the " consuls " of the little
republic occupy the place where he expects to find the
bishop's chair. The civil power asserted its supremacy
over the ecclesiastical in most things in these small
mediaeval repubUcs. The Popes needed San Marino to
be a thorn in the side of the Malatesta of Eimini, they
hired most of their soldiers from the Swiss cantons, and
therefore tolerated many things which they would not have
permitted elsewhere.
The social environment of the Swiss Keformer was very
different from that of Luther. He was a free Swiss who
had listened in childhood to tales of the heroic fights of
Morgarten, Sempach, Morat, and Nancy, and had imbibed
the hereditary hatred of the House of Hapsburg. He had
no fear of the " common man," Luther's bugbear after
the Peasants' War. Orderly democratic life was the air he
breathed, and what reverence Luther had for the Emperor
" who protected poor people against the Turk," and for the
lords of the soil, Zwingli paid to the civic fathers elected
by a popular vote. When the German Eeformer thought
of ZwingU he was always muttering what Archbishop
Parker said of John Knox — "God keep us from such
visitations as ^nockes hath attempted in Scotland ; the
people to be orderers of things ! " ^
Owing doubtless to this repubUcan training, Zwingli
had none of that aloofness from political affairs which was
a marked characteristic of Luther. He believed that his
mission had as much to do with politics as with religion,
and that religious reformation was to be worked out by
political forces, whether in the more limited sphere of
^ Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the reign of Mizabeth,
1569-1660, p. 84.
350 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
Switzerland or in larger Germany. He had never taken
a step forward until he had carried along with him the
civic authorities of Zurich. His advance had always heen
calculated. Luther's Theses (November 1517) had been
the volcanic outburst of a conscience troubled by the sight
of a great rehgious scandal, and their author had no inten-
tion of doing more than protesting against the one great
evil ; he had no idea at the time where his protest was
leading him. Zwingli's Theses (January 1523) were the
carefully drafted programme of a Eeformation which he
meant to accomplish by degrees, and through the assistance
of the Council of Zurich. His mind was f ull of political
combinations for the purpose of carrying out his plans of
reformation. As early as 1524 he was in correspondence
with Pirkheimer about the possibility of a league between
Niirnberg and Ziu'ich — two powerful Protestant towns.
This league did not take shape. But in 1527 a rehgious
and pohtical league (das christliche Biirgerrecht) was con-
cluded between Zurich and Constance, an imperial German
town; St. Gallen joined in 1528; Biel, Mtihlhausen, and
Basel in 1529; even Strassburg, afraid of the growing
power of the House of Hapsburg, was included in 1530.
The feverish political activity of Zwingli commended him
to Philip of Hesse almost as strongly as it made him
disliked, and even feared, by Ferdinand of Austria. The
Elector of Saxony and Luther dreaded his influence over
" the young man of Hesse."
Melanchthon was the first to insist on the evil influences
of Zwingli's activity for the peace of . the Empire. He
persuaded himself that had the LutKerans stood alone at
Speyer, the Eomanists would have been prepared to make
concessions which would have made the Protest needless.
He returned to Wittenberg full of misgivings. The Protest
might lead to a defiance of the Emperor, and to a subversion
of the Erdpire. Was'it r ight for_ "subjects to defend them
selves by war against the civil power^which was ordained of
God ? " My conscience," he wrote, " is disquieted because
of this thing ; I am half dead with thinking about it."
ZWINGLI AND LUTHER 851
He found Luther only too sympathetic ; resolute to
maintain that if thB 'prince coinmancled anything which
was contrary to the word of God, it^was the duty of the
subject to offer what passive resistance he was able, but
that it was never right to oppose him actively by force
of arms. Still less was it the duty of a Christian man to
ally himself for such resistance with those who did not
hold " the whole truth of God." Luther would therefore
have nothing to do with an alliance offensive and defensive
against the Emperor with cities who shared in what he
believed to be the errors of ZwingU.
This meant a great deal more than a break with the
Swiss. The south German towns of Strassburg, Memmin-
gen, Constance, Lindau, and others were more Zwinglian
than Lutheran. It was not only that they were inclined
to the more radical theology of the Swiss Eeformer ; they
found that his method of organising a reformed Church,
drafted for the needs of Zuiich, suited their municipal
institutions better than the territorial organisations being
adopted by the Lutheran Churches of North Germany.
To Luther, whose views of the place of the " common man "
in tie Church had been changed by the Peasants' War,
this was of itself a danger which threatened the welfare
of the infant Churches. It made ecclesiastical government
too democratic ; and it did this in the very centres where
the democracy was most dangerous. He could not forget
that the mob of these German towns had taken part in
the recently suppressed social revolution, that their working-
class population was still the recruiting ground of the Ana-
baptist sectaries, and that at Memmingen itself Zwinglian
partisans had helped to organise the revolution, and to link
it on to the religious awakening. Besides, the attraction
which drew these German cities to the Swiss might lead
to larger political consequences which seemed to threaten
what unity remained to the German Empire. It might
result in the detachment of towns from the German Father-
land, and in the formation of new cantons cut adrift from
Germany to increase the strength of the Swiss Confederation.
352 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
§ 4. The Marburg Golloguy}
All these thoughts were in the miiids of Luther and
of his fellow theologians, and had their weight with the
Elector of Saxony, when their refusal to join rendered the
proposed defensive league impossible. No one was more
disappointed than the Landgrave of Hesse, the ablest
political leader whom the German Eeformation produced.
He knew more about ZwiugK than his fello\v princes in
N^orth Germany ; he had a keen interest in theological
questions ; he sympathised to some extent with the special
opinions of Zwingli ; and he had not the dread of demo-
cracy which possessed Luther and his Elector. He believed,
rightly as events showed, that differences or suspected dif-
ferences ia theology were the strongest causes of separation ;
he was correct in supposing that the Lutheran divines
through ignorance magnified those points of difference ; and
he hoped that if the Lutherans and the Swiss could be
brought together, they would leam to know each other
better. So he tried to arrange for a religious -cenferenee
in his castle at Marburg. He had many a difficulty
to overcome so fax as the Lutherans were concerned.
Neither Luther nor Melanchthon desired to meet ZwinglL
Melanchthon thought that if a conference was to be
held, it would be much better to~meet-Oeeolampadius and
perhaps some learned Eomanists. ZwingU, on the^other-,
hand, was eager to meet Luther. He responded at once.
• SoTJKCES : Schirrmacher, Briefe und Aden zu der GescJiichte des Seli-
gionsgespraches zu Marburg, 15S9, und des Seichstages zu Augsburg, 1530
(Gotha, 1876) ; Biicer, SistoriscJie Nachricht vcm dem Gesprach zu Marburg
{Simler, Sammlung, 11. ii. 471 ff.); Rudolphi CoUini, "Summa CoUoquii
Marpiirgensis," printed in Hospinian, Historia sacramentaria, ii 1236-1266,
and in Zwinglii Opera, iv. 175-180 (Zurich, 1841) ; Brieger in ZeUschrift
fiir Kirchcngeschichte, i. 62S ff.
Later Books : Ebvard, Das Dog'ina vom Tieiligen Abendmahl wad seine
Oesehichte, vol. ii. (Frankfurt a. M. 1846 ; the author has classified the
accounts of the persons present at the conference, and given a comhined
description of the discussion, pp. 308 n. and 314 ff.); Erichson, Das Marburger
rieligio7isgesprach{StrasshuTg, 1880) ; Bess, Luther in Marburg, 1529 {Preuss.
Jahrbiicher, civ. 418-431, Berlin, 1901).
THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 353
He came, without waiting for leave to be given by the
Zurich Council, across a country full of enemies. The
conference met from October 30th to November 5th, 1529.
Luther was accompanied by Melanchthon, Justus Jonas,
and Cruciger, Frederick Mecum from Gotha, Osiander from
Nlirnberg, Brenz from Hall, Stephan Agricola from Augs-
burg, and others. With Zwingli came Oecolampadius,
Bucer, and Hedio from Strassburg, Eudolph Collin (who
has left the fullest account of the discussion), two coun-
cillors from Basel and from Zurich, and Jacob Sturm from
Strassburg. After a preliminary conference between Zwingli
and Melanchthon on the one hand, and Luther and Oecol-
ampadius on the other, the real discussion took place in
the great hall of the Castle. The tourist is still shown
the exact spot where the table which separated the dis-
_putants was placed.
This Marburg Colloquy, as the conference was called, had
important results for good, although it was unsuccessful in
fulfilUng the expectations of the Landgrave. It showed a
"real and substantial harmony between the two sets of
theologians on all points save one. Fifteen theological
articles {The Marburg Articles) stated the chief heads of
the Christian faith, and fourteen were signed by Luther
and by Zwingli. The one subject on which they could
not come to an agreement was the relation of the Body
of Christ to the elements Bread and Wine in the Sacra-
ment of the Supper. It was scarcely to be expected that
there could be harmony on a doctrinal matter on which
there had been such a long and embittered controversy.
~~ Both theologians found in the mediaeval doctrine of
the Sacrament of the Supper what they believed to be an
overwhelming error destructive to the spiritual life. It
presupposed that a priest, in virtue of mysterious powers
conferred in ordination, could give or withhold from the
Christian people the benefits conveyed in the Sacrament.
It asserted that the priest could change the elements Bread
and Wine into the very Body and Blood of Christ, and
that unless this change was made there was no presence
23*
354 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
of Christ in the sacrament, and no possibility of sacramental
grace for the communicant. Luther attacked the problem
as a mediaeval Christian, content, if he was able to purge
the ordinance of this one fault, to leave aU else as he found
it. ZwingU came as a Humanist, whose fundamental rule
was to get beyond the mediaeval theology altogether, and
attempt to discover how the earlier Church Fathers
could aid him to solve the problem. This difference in
mental attitude led them to approach the subject from
separate sides ; and the mediaeval way of looking at the
whole subject rendered difference of approach very easy.
The mediaeval Church had divided the Sacrament of the
Lord's Supper into two distinct parts — -the Mass and the
Eucharist.^ The Mass was inseparably connected with the
thought of the great Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross,
and the Eucharist with the thought of the believer's com-
munion with the Eisen Living Christ. ZwingU attacked
the Eomanist doctrine of the Mass, and Luther sought to
give an evangelical meaning to the mediaeval conception of
the Eucharist. Hence the two Protestant antagonists were
never exactly facing each other.
Luther's convent studies in D'Ailly, Biel, and their
common master, William of Occam, enabled him to show
that there might be the presence of the Glorified Body of
Christ, extended in space, in the elements Bread and Wine
in a natural way, and without any priestly miracle : and
that satisfied him; it enabled him to deny the priestly
miracle and keep true in the most literal way to the words
of the institution, " This is My Body." _
Zwingli, on the other hand, iasisted that the primary
reference in the Lord's Supper was to the death of Christ,
and that it was above all things a commemorative rite.
He transformed the mediaeval Mass into an evangelical
sacrament, by placing the idea of commemoration where
the mediaeval theologian had put that of repetition, and
held that the means of appropriation was faith and not
^ In the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent the Sacrifice of the
Mass is defined in the 22nd Session, and the Eucharist in the 13th Session.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE EUCHARIST 355
eating with the mouth. This he held to be a return to
the laelief of the early centuries, before the conception of
the saci-ament had been corrupted by pagan ideas.
Like Luther, he served himself heir to the work of
earlier theologians ; but he did not go to Occam, Biel, or
D'Ailly, as the German Eeformer had done. Erasmus, who
had no liking for the priestly miracle in the Mass, and
cared little for a rigid literal interpretation of the words
of the institution, had declared that the Sacrament of the
Supper was the symbol of commemoration, of a covenant
with God, and of the fellowship of all believers in Christ,
and tl IS commended itself to Zwingli's conception of the
social character of Christianity ; but he was too much a
Christian theologian to be contented with such a vague
idea of the rite. Many theologians of the later Middle
Ages, when speculation was more free than it could be
after the stricter definitions of the Council of Trent,
had tried to purify and spiritualise the beliefs of the
Church about the meaning of the central Christian rite.
Foremost among them was John Wessel (c. 1420—1489),
with his long and elaborate treatise. Be Sacramento Eucha-
risticB. He had taught that the Lord's Supper is the rite
in which the death of Christ is presented to and appro-
priated by the believer; that it is above all things a
commemoration of that death and a communion or par-
ticipation in the benefits which followed ; that communion
with the spiritual presence of Jesus is of far more im-
portance than any corporeal contact with the Body of
Christ; and that this communion is shared in through
faith. These thoughts had been taken over by Christopher
Honius, a divine of the Netherlands, who had enforced
them by insisting that our Lord's discourse in the 6 th
chapter of St. John's Gospel had reproved any materialistic
conception of the Lord's Supper ; and that therefore the
words of the institution must not be taken in their rigid
literal meaning. He had been the first to suggest that
the word is in "This is My Body" must mean signifies.
Wessel and Honius were the predecesscrs of Zwingli, and
356 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, isns
he wove their thoughts into his doctrine of the Lard's
Supper. It should be remembered that Luther had also
been acquainted with the labours of Wessel and of Honius,
and that so far from attracting they had repelled him,
simply because he thought they failed to give the respect
due to the literal meaning of the words of the institution.
It must not be forgotten that Luther knew Zwingli
only as in some way connected with Andrew Bodenstein
of Carlstadt. Carlstadt had professed to accept the theory
of Honius about the nature of the relation of the Presence
of Christ to the elements of Bread and Wine — saying that
the latter were signs, and nothing more, of the former. A
controversy soon raged in Wittenberg to the scandal of
German Protestantism. Luther insisted more and more on
the necessity of the Presence in the elements of the Body
of Christ " corporeally extended in space " ; while Carlstadt
denied that Presence in any sense whatsoever. Luther
insisted with all the strength of language at his command
that the literal sense of the words of the institution must
be preserved, and that the words " This is My Body "
must refer to the Bread and to the Wine ; while Carlstadt ,
thought it was more likely that while using the words our
Lord pointed to His own Body, or if not, that religious
conviction compelled another interpretation than the one
on which Luther insisted.
The dust of all this controversy was in the eyes of:
the theologians when they met at Marburg, and prevented ,
them carefully examining each other's doctrinal position.
In all essential matters Luther and Zwingli were not so far
apart as each supposed the other to be. Their respective
theories, put very shortly, may be thus summed up.
Zwingli, looking mainly at the mediaeval doctrine of
the Mass, taught: (i) The Lord's Supper is not a repetitior,
of the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, but a commemoratior.
of that sacrifice once offered up ; and the elements are
not a newly offered Christ, but the signs of the Body and
Blood of the Christ who was once for all offered on Cal-1
vary. (2) That forgiveness for sin is not won hj partaJcin
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ECCHARIST 357
in a newly oft'eied Chiist, but by heluving in a Christ once
offered up. (3) That the benefits of the work of Christ
are always appropriated by faith, and that the atonement
is so appropriated iu the sacrament, whereby Christ be-
comes our food ; but the food, being neither carnal nor
corporeal, is not appropriated by the mouth, but by faith
indwelling in the soul Therefore there is a Seal Presence
j of Christ in the sacrament, but it is a spiritual Presence,
I not a corporeal one. A real and living faith always
i_j5Kolves the union of the believer with Christ, and there-
fore the Eeal Presence of Christ ; and the Presence of
Christ, which is in every act of faith, is in the sacrament
to the faithful partaker. (4) That while the Lord's Supper
primarily refers to the sacrifice of Christ, and while the
elements. Bread and Wine, are the symbols of the crucified
Body of Christ, the partaking of the elements is also a
symbol and pledge of an ever-renewed living union with
the Eisen Christ. (5) That as our Lord Himself has
specially warned His followers against thinking of feeding
on TTim in any corporeal or carnal manner (John vL), the
words of the institution cannot be taken in a strictly literal
fashion, and the phrase " This is My Body " means " This
signifies My Body." The fourth position had been rather
implicitly held than explicitly stated.
Luther, looking mainly at the mediaeval doctrine of the
Eucharist, taught: (1) That the primary use of the sacra-
ment was to bring believing communicants into direct
touch with the Living Eisen Christ. (2) That to this end
there must be in the Bread and "Wine the local Presence
of the Glorified Body of Christ, which he always conceived
as " body extended in space " ; the communicants, coming
into touch with this Body of Christ, have communion with
Him, such as His disciples had on earth and as His saints
now have in heaven. (3) That this local Presence of
Christ does not presuppose any special priestly miracle, for,
in virtue of its rMquity, the Glorified Body of Christ is
everywhere naturally, and therefore is in the Bread and in
the Wine ; this natural Presence becomes a sacramental
358 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
Presence because of the promise of God attached to the re-
verent and believing partaking of the sacrament. (4) That
communion with the Living Kisen Christ implies the
appropriation of the Death of Christ, and of the Atonement
won by this death ; but this last thought of Luther's,
which is Zwingli's first thought, lies implicitly in his
teaching without being dwelt upon.
The two theories, so far as doctrinal teaching goes,
are supplementary to each other rather than antagonists.
Each has a weak point. Luther's depends on a question-
able mediaeval idea of ubiquity, and Zwingli's on a somewhat
shallow exegests: — -Ifr' was unfortunate, but only natural,
that when the two theological leaders were brought together
at Marburg, instead of seeking the mutual points of agree-
ment, each should attack the weak point in the other's
theory. Luther began by chalking the words Hoc est
Corpus Meum on the table before him, and by saying, " I
take these words literally ; if anyone does not, I shall not
■argue but contradict " ; and Zwingli spent aU his argumen-
tative powers in disputing the doctrine of ubiquity. The
long debate went circling round these two points and could
never be got away from them. Zwingli maintained that
the Body of Christ was at the Eight Hand of God, and
could not be present, extended in space, in the elements,
which were signs representing what was absent. Luther
argued that the Body of Christ was in the elements, as, to
use his own illustration, the sword is present in the sheath.
As a soldier could present his sheathed sword and say,
truly and literally. This is my sword, although nothing but
the sheath was visible ; so, although nothing could be seen
or felt but Bread and Wine, these elements in the Holy
Supper could be literally and truly called the Body and
Blood of Christ.
The substantial harmony revealed in the fourteen
articles which they all could sign showed that the Germans
and the Swiss had one faith. But Luther insisted that
their difference on the Sacrament of the Supper pre-
vented them becoming one visible brotherhood, and the
THE EMPEROR IN GERMANY 359
immediate purpose of the Landgrave of Hesse was not
fulfilled.
Undaunted by his defeat, Philip next attempted a less
comprehensive union. If Luther and Zwingli could not be
included within the one brotherhood, might not the German
cities of the south and the Lutheran princes be brought
together ? Another conference was arranged at Schwabach
(October 1529), when a series of theological articles were
to be presented for agreement. Luther prepared seventeen
articles to be set before the conference. They were based
on the Marburg Articles ; but as Luther had stated his
own doctrine of the Holy Supper in its most uncompro-
mising form, it is not to be wondered at that the delegates
from the southern cities hesitated to sign. They said that
bhe confession (for the articles took that form) was not in
conformity with the doctrines preached among them, and
that they would need to consult their fellow-citizens before
committing them to it. Thus Philip's attempts to unite
the Protestants of Germany failed a second time, and a
divided Protestantism awaited the coming of the Emperor,
who had resolved to solve the religious difficulty in person.
§ 5. The Emperor in Germany.
Charles v. was at the zenith of his power. The sickly
looking youth of Worms had become a grave man of
thirty, whose nine years of unbroken success had made him
the most commanding figure in Europe. He had quelled
the turbulent Spaniards ; he had crushed his brilliant rival
of Prance at the battle of Pavia ; he had humbled the Pope,
and had taught His Holiness in the Sack of Eome the
danger of defying the Head of the Holy Eoman Empire ;
and he had compelled the reluctant Pontiff to invest him
with the imperial crown. He had added to and con-
solidated the family possessions of the House of Hapsburg,
and but lately his brother Ferdinand had won, in name at
least, the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary. He was now
determined to visit Germany, and by his personal presence
360 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
and influence to end the religious difiBcultv which was
distracting that portion of his vast dominions. He also
meant to secure the succe^on to the Empire for his
brother Ferdinand, bv procuring his election as King of the
Eomans.
Charles came from Italy over the Brenner Pass in the
spring time, and was magnificently received by the Tyrolese,
eager to do all honour to the grandson of their beloved
Kaiser Max. His letters to his brother, written on the
stages of the joumev, reveal as folly as that reserved soul
could unbosom itself, his plans for the pacification of
Germany. He meant to use every persuasion possible,
to make what compromises his conscience permitted (for
Catholicism was a faith with Charles), to effect a peaceful
settlement. But if these failed, he was determined to
crush the Keformation by force. He never seems to have
doubted that he would succeed. Xever a thought crossed
his mind that he was about to encounter a ^%at spiritual
force whose depth and intensity he was unable to measure,
and which was slowly creating a new world unknown to
himself and to his contemporaries. While at Innsbruck he
invited the Elector of Saxony to visit him, and was some-
what disappointed that the Lutheran prince did not
accept ; but this foretaste of trouble did not give him any
uneasiness.
The summons to the Diet, commanding the Electors,
princes, and all the Estates of the Empire to meet at
Augsburg on the Sth of April 1530, had been issued when
Charles was at Bologna. Xo threats marred the invitation.
The Emperor announced that he meant to leave all past
errors to the judgment of the Saviour : that he wished to
give a charitable hearing to every man's opinions, thoughts,
and ideas ; and that his only desire was to secure that all
might live under the one Christ, in one Commonwealth,
one Church, and one Unity.^ He left Innsbruck on the
6th of June, and, travelling slowly, reached the bridge on
^ ScluiTmacher. Brif/f und Aden :u dfr GesiAiehU des SfJiffioiofg-
^radus :.. Mjrbi.rj und dis SeiehstJfffs m Aug^yrg, iAJC, pp. 38, 34.
THE EMPEROR IN GERMANY 361
the Lech, a little distance from Augsburg, on the evening
of the 15th. There he found the great princes of the
Empire, who had been waiting his arrival from two o'clock
in the afternoon. They alighted to do him reverence, and
he graciously dismounted also, and greeted them with all
courtesy. Charles had brought the papal nuncio. Cardinal
Campeggio, in his train. Most of the Electors knelt to
receive the cardinal's blessing ; but John of Saxony stood
bolt upright, and refused the prolfered benediction.
The procession — one of the most gorgeous Germany
had ever seen — was marshalled for the ceremonial entry
into the town. The retinues of the Electors were all in
their appropriate colours and arms — Saxony, by ancient
prescriptive right, leading the van. Then came' the
Emperor alone, a baldachino carried over his head. He
had wished the nuncio and his brother to ride beside him
under the canopy ; but the Germans would not suffer it ;
no Pope's representative was to be permitted to ride
shoulder to shoulder with the head of the German Empire
entering the most important of his imperial cities.^
Augsburg was then at the height of its prosperity.
It was the great trading centre between Italy and the
Levant and the towns of Northern Europe. It was the
home of the Welsers and of the Fuggers, the great capitalists
of the later mediaeval Europe. It boasted that its citizens
were the equals of princes, and that its daughters, in that
age of deeply rooted class distinctions, had married into
princely houses. To this day the name of one of its streets
— Philippine Welser Strasse — commemorates the wedding
of an heiress of the Welsers with an archduke of Austria ;
and the wall decorations of the old houses attest the
ancient magnificence of the city.^
At the gates of the town, the clergy, singing Advenisti
' There are several contemporary aocoiinta of thia meeting at the hridge
of the Lech, and of the procession ; for one, see Sohirrmaoher, Briefe vmd
Aden, etc. pp. 54-57.
^ It was a somewhat doubtful honour for a city to be chosen as the meet-
ing place of a Diet. The burghers of Augsburg hired 2000 landskneohts to
protect them during the session (Schirrmaclier, Britfe imd Aden, p. 62).
362 FROM SPETEB, 1526, TO ArGSBrKG, 1555
d(-?id<Kihu'.?. met the procession. All. Emperor, cleigr,
princes, and rheir retinues, entered the cathedral The
Ti Ik.un was sung, and the Emperor received rhe benedic-
tion. Then the prcvcession was re-formed, and accompanied
Charles to Ms lodgings in the Bishcp's Palaee,
There the Emperor made his first attempt on his
Lutheran subjects. He invited the Elector of Saxonr.
Geori:^ of Brandenb'jTir. Philip of Hesse, and Francis of
Luneburg to acoC'icjianT him to his private apartments.
He t<>ld them that he had been informed that thev had
bromrht rbeir Lutbemn preaobeis with them to Augsburg,
and that he would expect rhem to keep them silent during
the sittings of the I>iet Thev refused. Then CSiarles
asked them to prohibit controTersisl sermons. This request
was also refused. In the end Charles reminded them that
his demand was sTTiedv within the decision of 1526 ; that
the Emperor was lord over the imperial ciries ; and he
promised them that he would appoint the preachers himself,
and that there would be no sernions — onlv the reading of
Scriptore without comment. This was agreed to. He
next asked Tbem to join him in the Corpus Christi proces-
sion on the following dav. Thev refused — Philip of Hesse
with arguments listened to bv Ferdinand with indignation,
and bv Charles with indifference, probablT because he did
not understand Grerman. The Emperor insisted. Then
old GJeorge of Brandenburg stood forth, and told His
Majesty that he could not, and would not obey. It was a
short, rugged speech, though eminently respectful, and
ended with these words, which flew over GJermany, kiudhng
hearts as fire lights flax i " Before I would deny my God
and His Evangel. I would rather kneel down here before
your Majesty and have my head struck off,' — suid the
old man hit the side of his neck with the edge of his hand.
Charles did not need to know German to understand.
" Xot head off, dear prince, not head off," he said kindly in
bis Flemish-German (Xit Kop ab, locfr Fiv-^f. nit £^op ab\
Charles walked in procession thix)ugh the streets of Augs-
burg on a blaziag hot day, stooping under a heavy purple
THE DIET OF AUGSBDRG 363
mantle, with a superfluous candle sputtering in his hand;
but the evangelical princes remained in their lodgings.^
§ 6. The Diet of Augsburg IBSO?
The Diet was formally opened on June 20th (1530),
and in the Proposition or Speoch from the Throne it was
announced that the Assembly would be invited to discuss
armament against the Turk, and that His Majesty was
anxious, " by fair and gentle means," to end the religious
differences which were distracting Germany. The Pro-
testants were again invited to give the Emperor in writing
their opinions and difficulties. It was resolved to take
the religious question first. On June 24th the Lutherans
were ready with their " statement of their grievances and
opinions relating to the faith." Next day (June 25th) the
Diet met in the hall of the Episcopal Palace, and what is
known as the Augsburg Confession was read by the Saxon
Chancellor, Dr. Christian Bayer, in such a clear resonant
voice that it was heard not only by the audience within
the chamber, but also by the crowd which thronged the
court out.side.* When the reading was ended, Chancellor
Briick handed the document and a duplicate in Latin to
the Emperor. They were signed by the Elector of Saxony
and his son John Frederick, by George, Margrave of
Brandenburg, the Dukes Ernest and Francis of Liineburg,
the Landgrave of Hesse, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, and
the delegates of the cities of Niirnberg and Keutlingen.
These princes knew the danger which threatened them in
putting their names to the Confession. The theologians
of Saxony besought their Elector to permit their names
' Fbrstemann, Urlcundeniuch, etc. i. 268, 271 ; Schimnaolier, Brie/e und
Aden, etc. \>. 69 and note.
' SouiiOKs : Scliirrniachcr, Briffc und Aden ; FiJrBtemann, Urkwnden-
buck zu der Oe.irMchl^ das Reichsljujn zu Augsburg, 2 vols. (Halle, 1833-
1835) ; and Archivfllr die OescMMe ilr-r kirchl. Jieformalion (Halle, 1831).
Later Books : Moritz Faoius, (Jcachichle des ICeichstags zu Augsburg
(Leipzig, 1830).
• Sohiirmaclier, Brie/e und Aden, etc. p. 90.
364 PROM SPEYER, 1526, TO ArGSBURG, 1555
to stand alone : but he answered calmly, /, too, wiU confess?
my Christ. He was not a brilliant man like PhUip of
Hessa He was unpretentious, peace-loving, and retiring
by nature — John the Steadfast, his people called him.
Recent historians have dwelt on the conciliatory attitude
and judicial spirit manifested by the Emperor at this Diet,
and they are justified iu doing so ; but the mailed hand
sometimes showed itself. Charles refused to invest John
with his Electoral dignities in the usual feudal fashion,
and his entourage whispered that if the Elector was not
amenable to the Emperor's arguments, he might find the
electorate taken from him and bestowed on the kindred
House of Ducal Saxony, wliieh iu the person of Duke
Greorge so stoutly supported the old religion.^ While
possessing that "laudable, if crabbed constitutionalism
which was the hereditary quality of the Ernestine line of
Saxony,'- he had a genuine afiection for the Emperor.
Both recognised that this Diet of Augsburg had separated
them irrevocably. " Unde, TJncle," said Charles to Elector
John at their parting interview, " I did not expect this
from yoiu" The Elector's eyes filled with tears : he could
not speak ; he turned away in silence and left the city soon
afterwards.*
§ 7. The Augsburg Confession*
The Augsburg Confession (Confessio Augustana) was
what it claimed to be, a statement of " opinion and griev-
ances," and does not pretend to be a full exposition of
doctrinal tenets. The men who wrote it (Melanchthon
was responsible for the phraseology") and presented it to
^ The threat is recorded iu Anhiv fur ScJticeizerisehe Oeschichts %md
Landeskunde, i. 27S.
* Armstrong, TA« Emperor Charles Y., i. •Hi.
' Fdrstemann, Ardiir, p. 206.
' Sehaff, The Creeds of the £mngeiical Pi-e^eslani Christian Churches
(London, 1S77\ p. 3; of. History of the Cretds of Christendom (London,
1877\ pp. 220 ff. ; MilUer, Dif Bekentitnisschr^len der JUfonnierten Kirche
(Leipzig, 1903), pp. 55-100; Tscbukert, Die A uy^urgische Koi^ession,
(Leipzig, 1901).
THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 365
the Diet, claimed to belong to the ancient and visible
Catholic Church, and to believe in all the articles of faith
set forth by the Universal Church, and particularly in the
Apostles' and Nicene Creech ; but they maintained that
abuses had crept in which obscured the ancient doctrines.
The Confession showed why they could not remain in con-
nection with an unreformed Church. Their position is
exactly defined in the opening sentence of the second part
of the Confession. " Inasmuch as the Churches among us
dissent in no articles of faith from the Holy Scriptm'es
nor the Church Catholic, and only omit a few of certain
abuses, which are novel, and have crept in with time partly
and in part have been introduced by violence, and contrary
to the purport of the canons, we beg that your Imperial
Majesty would clemently hear both what ought to be
changed, and what are the reasons why people ought not
to be forced against their conscience to observe these abuses."
The Confession is often represented as an attempt to
minimise the differences between Lutherans and Eomanists
and exaggerate those between Lutherans and Zwinglians,
and there are some grounds for the statement. Melanchthon
had come back from the Diet of Speyer (1529) convinced
that if the Lutherans had separated themselves more
thoroughly from the cities of South Germany there would
have been more chance of a working compromise, and it
is only natural to expect that the idea should colour his
sketch of the Lutheran position at Augsburg. Yet in the
main the assertion is wrong. The distinctively Protestant
conception of the spiritual priesthood of all believers in-
spires the whole document ; and this can never be brought
into real harmony with the Eomauist position and claims.
It is not diiBcult to state Eomanist and Protestant doc-
trine in almost identical phrases, provided this one great
dogmatic difference be for the moment set on one side.
The conferences at Eegensburgin 1541 (April 27-May 22)
proved as much. No one will believe that Calvin would be
inclined to minimise the differences between Protestants and
Eomanists, yet he voluntarily signed the Augsburg Con-
366 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
fession, and did so, he says, in the sense in which the
author (Melanchthon) understood it. This Augsburg Con-
fession and Luther's Short Catechism are the symbolical
books still in use in all Lutheran churches.
TJTP. Augsburg Confession (Oonfessio Augustana) is
divided into two parts, the first expressin^^he views^ held
by those who signed it, and the„second stating the errora
they protested against. The form and language aUka
show that the authors had no intention of framing an
exhaustive syllabus of theological opinions or of imposing
its articles as a changeless system of dogmatic truth
They simply meant to express what they united in be-
lieving. Such phrases as our Churches teach, it is taught,
such and such opinions are falsely attributed to us, make
that plain. In the first part the authors show how much
they hold in common with the mediaeval Church ; how they
abide by the teaching of St. Augustine, the great theo-
logian of the West; how they difi'er from more radical
Protestants like the Zwinglians, and repudiate the teachings
of the Anabaptists. The Lutheran doctrine of Justification
by Faith is given very clearly and briefly in a section by
itself, but it is continually referred to and shown to ba
the basis of many portions of their common system of
belief. In the second part they state what things compel
them to dissent from the views and practices of the
mediaeval Church — the enforced celibacy of the clergy, the
sacrificial character of the Mass, the necessity of auriculai
confession, monastic vows, and the confusion of spiritual
and secular authority exhibited in the German episcopate.
The origin of the document was this. When the
Emperor's proclamation summoning the Diet reached
Saxony, Chancellor Gregory Briick suggested that tho
Saxon theologians should prepare a statement of theii
opinions which might be presented to the Emperor ii
called for.^ This was done. The theologians went to the
^ Forstemann, Urhundenbuch, i. 39 : the worthy Chancellor thought that
the document shonld be drafted "mit griindlicher bewertmg derselbigon am
gottlioher schrifift."
THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 367
Schwabach Articles, and Melanehthon revised them, re-
^stated them, and made them as inoffensive as he could.
\ The document was meant to give the minimum for which
I the Protestants contended, and Melanchthon's concilia-
' tory spirit shows itself throughout. It embalms at the
same time some of Luther's trenchant phrases : " Chris-
tian perfection is this, to fear God sincerely ; and again, to
conceive great faith, and to trust assuredly that God is
pacified towards us for Christ's sake ; to ask, and certainly
to look for, help from God in all our affairs according to
our calling ; and outwardly to do good works diligently,
and to attend to our vocation. In these things doth true
perfection and the true worship of God consist : it doth not
consist in being unmarried, in going about begging, nor in
wearing dirty clothes." His indifference to forms of
Church government and his readiness to conserve the old
appears in the sentence : " Now our meaning is not to have
rule taken from the bishops ; but this one thing only is
requested at their hands, that they would suffer the gospel
to be purely taught, and that they would relax a few
observances, which cannot be observed without sin."
When the Eomanist theologians presented their Con-
futation of this Confession to the Emperor, it was again
left to Melanehthon to draft an answer — the Apology of
the Aiigshurg Confession. The Apology is about seven
times longer than the Confession, and is a noble and
learned document. The Emperor refused to receive it,
and Melanehthon spent a long time over it before it was
allowed to be seen.
After taking counsel with the Eomanist princes {die
Chur und Fursten so iepstisch gewesen)^ it was resolved to
hand the Confession to a committee of Eomanist theo-
logians whom the cardinal nuncio ^ undertook to bring to-
' Schimnacher, Briefe und Aden, etc. p. 98.
* Charles knew well that the nuncio would exert all hia influence to
prevent a settlement. In anticipation of the Diet the Emperor had
privately asked Melanehthon to give him a statement of the minimum of
concessions which would content the Lutherans. Melanehthon seems to
have answered (our source of information is not very definite) : the Eucharist
368 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
gether, to examine and answer it. Among them were John
Eck of Ingolstadt, Faber, and Cochlaeus. There was little
hope of arriving at a compromise with such champions
on the papal side ; and Charles was soon to discover that
his strongest opponents in effecting a peaceful solution were
the nuncio and his committee of theologians. Five times
they produced a confutation, and five times the Emperor
and the Diet returned their work, asking them to redraft it
in milder and in less uncompromising terms.^ The sixth
draft went far beyond the wishes of Charles, but the
Emperor had to accept it and let it appear as the state-
ment of his beliefs. It made reconciliation hopeless.
§ 8. The Be/ormation to he crushed.
The religious difficulty had not been removed by com-
promise. There remained force — the other alternative
foreshadowed by the Emperor. The time seemed to be
opportune. Protestantism was divided, and had flaunted
its differences in the Emperor's presence. Philip of Hesse
had signed the Augsburg Confession with hesitation, not
because he did not believe its statements, but because it
seemed to shut the door on a complete union among all
the parties who had joined in the Protest of 1529. The
four cities of Strassburg, Constance, Lindau, and Mem-
mingen had submitted a separate Confession (the Gonfesdo
TetrapolitaTia) to the Emperor; and the Eomanist theo-
logians had written a confutation of it also. Zwingli
had sent a third.
Luther was not among the theologians present at the
in both kinds ; marriage of priests permitted ; the omission of the canon of
the Mass ; concession of the Churcli lands already sequestrated ; and the
decision of the other matters in dispute at a free General Council. Charles
had sent the document to Rome ; it had been debated at a conolave of
cardinals, who had decided that none of the demands could be granted.
' One document says : " Es war aber zum ersten die confutation wol bey
zweiliundert und achtzig blotter lang gewesen, aber die key. Maj. hat sia
selbst also gereuttert und gerobt, das es nioht mehr denn zwblf bletter
geblieben sind. Solohs soil Doctor Eck sehr verdrossen und wee gethan
haben," — (Schirrmaoher, Sriefe und Aden, etc. p. Ii37.)
THE REFORMATION TO BE CRUSHED 369
Diet of Augsburg. Technically he was still an outlaw, for
the ban of the Diet of Worms had n^ver been legally
removed. The Elector had asked him to stay at his Castle
of Coburg. There he remained, worried and anxious, chafiug
like a caged eagle. He feared that Melanchthon's con-
ciliatory spirit might make him barter away some in-
dispensable parts of evangelical truth ; he feared the
impetuosity of the Landgrave of Hesse and his known
Zwinglian sympathies. His secretary wrote to Wittenberg
that he was fretting himself ill ; he was longing to get
back to Wittenberg, where he could at least teach, his
students. It was then that Catharine got their friend
Lucas Cranach to paint their little daughter Magdalena,
just twelve months old, and sent it to her husband that he
might have a small bit of home to cheer him. Luther
hung the picture up where he could always see it from his
chair, and he tells us that the sweet little face looking
down upon him gave him courage during his dreary months
of waiting. Posts brought him news from the Diet : that
the Confession had been read to the Estates; that the
Eomanists were preparing a Confutation ; that their reply
was ready on A'ugust 3rd ; that Philip of Hesse had left
the Diet abruptly on the 6 th, to raise troops to fight the
Emperor, it was reported; that Melanchthon was being
entangled in conferences, and was giving up everything.
His strong ardent nature pours itself forth in his letters
from Coburg (April 18th— Oct. 4th) — urging his friends to
tell him how matters are going ; warning Melanchthon to
stand firm ; taking comfort in the text, " Be ye angry, and
sin not " ; comparing the Diet to the rooks and the rookery
in the trees below his window.^ It was from Coburg that
he wrote his charming letter to his small son.^ It was there
that he penned the letter of encouragement to the tried
and loyal Chancellor Briick :
" I have lately seen two wonders : the first as I was
looking out of my window and saw the stars in heaven and
all that beautiful vault of God, and yet I saw no pillars on
' De Wette, Luther'i BrUfe, etc. iv. 1-182. = Ibid. iv. 41.
370 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
which the Master-Builder had fixed this vault; yet the
heavens fell not, and the great vault stood fast. Now there
are some who search for the pillars, and want to touch and
to grasp them ; and when they cannot, they wonder and
tremble as if the heaven must certainly fall, just because
they cannot grasp its pillars. If they could only lay their
hands on them, they think that the heaven would stand
firm!
" The second wonder was : I saw great clouds rolling over
us with such a ponderous weight that they seemed like a
great ocean, and yet I saw no foundation on which they
rested or were based, and no shore which bounded them ;
yet they fell not, but frowned on us and flowed on. But
when they had passed by, then there shone forth both their
floor and our roof, which had kept them back — a rainbow !
A frail, thin floor and roof which soon melted into the
clouds, and was more like a shadowy prism, such as we see
through coloured glass, than a strong, firm foundation,
and we might well distrust the feeble rampart which kept
back that fearful weight of waters. Yet we found that this
unsubstantial prism was able to bear up the weight of
waters, and that it guarded us safely ! But there are some
who look more to the thickness and massive weight of the
waters and the clouds than at this thin, light, narrow bow
of promise. They would like to feel the strength of that
shadowy vanishing arch, and because they cannot do this,
they are always fearing that the clouds will bring back the
flood." 1
The Protestants never seemed to be in a worse plight ;
but, as Luther wrote, the threatened troubles passed away
— for this time at least.
Campeggio was keen to crush the Eeformation at once.
His letters to the Curia insist that the policy of the strong
arm is the only effectual way of dealing with the Lutheran
princes. But Charles found that some of the South German
princes who were eager that no compromise should be made
with the Lutherans, were very unwilhng to coerce them by
force of arms. They had no wish to see the Emperor all-
powerful in Germany. The Romanist Dukes of Bavaria (the
Wittelsbachs) were as strongly anti-Hapsburg as Philip of
' De Wette, LuiJier's Briefe, etc. iv. 128.
THE REFORMATION TO BE CRUSHED 371
Hesse himself ; and Charles had no desire to stir the anti-
Hapsburg feeling. Instead, conferences ^ were proposed to
see whether some mutual understanding might not after all
be reached ; and the Diet was careful to introduce laymen,
in the hope that they would be less uncompromising than
the Komanist theologians. The meetings ended without
any definite result. The Protestant princes refused to
make the needful concessions, and Charles found his plans
thwarted on every side. Whereupon the Komanist majority
of the Diet framed a "recess," which declared that the
Protestants were to be allowed to exist unmolested until
April 15 th, 1531; and were then to be put down by
force. Meanwhile they were ordered to make no more
innovations in worship or in doctrine ; they were to refrain
' from molesting the Eomanists within their territories ; and
; they were to aid the Emperor and the Eomanist princes in
stamping out the partisans of Zwingli and the Anabaptists.
This resolution gave rise to a second Protest, signed by the
Lutheran princes and by the fourteen cities.
Nothing had stirred the wrath of Charles so much as
the determined stand taken by the cities. He conceived
that he, the Emperor, was the supreme Lord within an
imperial city ; and he employed persuasion and threats to
make their delegates accept the " recess." Even Augsburg
refused.
Having made their Protest, the Lutheran princes and
the delegates from the protesting towns left the Diet,
careless of what the Eomanist majority might further do.
In their absence an important ordinance was passed. The
Diet decided that the Edict of Worms was to be executed ;
that the_ecclesiastical jurisdictioris were to be preserved,
' The whole time of the members of the Diet was not spent in theo-
logical discuseions. We read of banquets, where Lutherans and Romanists
sat side by side ; of dances that went on far into the night ; of what may
be called a garden party in a "fair meadow," where a wooden house wiis
built for the accommodation of the ladies ; and of tournaments. At one of
them, Ferdinand, the Emperor's brother, was thrown and liis hoi-se rolled
over him ; and Melanchthon wrote to Luther that six men had been killed
at one of these " gentle and joyous " passages of arms.
372 FROM SPEYER, 1526, lO AUGSBURG, 1555
and all Church property to be restored; and, what was
most important, that the Trnperial Court of Appeals for al l^
disputed legal cases within the Empire (the Beichskammers-~
gericM) should be restored.- The last provision indicated
a new way of fighting the extending Protestantism by
harassing legal prosecutions, which, from the nature_oJ the
court, were always to be decided against the dissenters from
the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the mediaeval Empire.^ All
instances of seizure of ecclesiastical benefices, all defiances
of episcopal decisions, could be appealed against to this
central court ; and as the legal principles on which it gave
its decisions and the controlling authorities which it re-
cognised were mediaeval, the Protestants could, never, hope
for a decision in their favour. The Lutheran Church in
Saxony, for example, with its pastors and schoolmasters,
was supported by moneys taken from the old ecclesiastical
foundations. According to this decision of the Diet, every
case of such transfer of property could be appealed to this
central court, which from its constitution was bound to
decide against the transfer. If the Protestant princes
disregarded the decisions of the central court, the Emperor
was within his rights in treating them as men who had
outraged the constitution of the Empire.^
Ghailesjnet.. at Augsburg the first great check in his
hitherto successful career, but he was tenacious of purpose,
aud never cared to hurry matters to an irrevocable con-
clusion. He carefully studied the problem, and three ways
of dealing with the religious difficulty shaped themselves
in his mind at Augsburg — by compromise, by letting the
Protestants alone for a period longer or shorter, and by
a General Council which would be free. It would seem
^ The Romanist majority had resolved to fight the Protestant minority,
not in the battlefield, but in the law-courts— «tc7i</ecA<era somfera recAfeM,
was the phrase.
^ When the religious war did begin in 1545, Charles justified the use of
force on the gi-ounds that the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse
had violated the constitution of the Empire, had repudiated the decisUms of
the Reichskammersgencht, and had protested against the decisions of the
Piet,
THE SCHMALKALD LEAGUE 373
that at Augsburg he first seriously resolved that the condi-
tion of Europe was such that the Pope must be compelled
to sumnion__a_._Cfluxicil,_a_nd to allow it freedom of deljate
and action. Charles tried all three plans in Germany
during the fifteen years that followed.
§ 9. The Schmalkald League.^
The Emperor published the decision of the Diet on the
19th of November, and the Protestants had to arrange
some common plan of facing the situation. They met,
princes and delegates of cities, in the little upland town
of Schmalkalden, lying on the south-west frontier of Elec-
toral tsaxony, circled by low hills which were white with
snow (December 22-31). They had to face at once
harassing litigation, and, after the 15 th of April, tne tnreat
'that ttiey Would be stamped out by force of arms. Were
they stUl to m aintain their doc tm^.of passive resistance ?
The queStion'was earnestly debated. Think of these earnest
German princes and burghers, their lives and property at
stake, debating this abstract question day after day, resolute
to set their own consciences right before coming to any
resolution to defend themselves ! The lawyers were all on
the side of active defence. The terms of the bond were
drafted. The Emperor's name was carefully omitted; and
the causes which compelled them to take action were rather
alluded to vaguely than stated with precision. The Elector
of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Duke of Liineburg,
the Prince of Anhalt, the two Counts of Mansfeld, and the
delegates from Magdeburg and Bremen signed. Pious old
George of Brandenburg was not convinced that it was
lawful to resist the Emperor; the deputies of Niirnberg
had grave doubts also. Many others who were present felt
that they must have time to make up their minds. But the
league was started, and was soon to assume huge proportions.
' Soliinidt, Zur Geschichte des Schmalkaldisehen Bundes (Forsch. mi/r Deut-
schen Geschichte, xxv.); Zangemeiater, Die SchmaXlcaldischen Artikel von
15S7 (Heidelberg, 1883) ; Corpus Reformatorum, iii. 973 ff.
374 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
The confederates had confessed the new doctrines, and
had published their Confession. They now resolve d -iibat_
they would defend themselves if attacked by litigation or
otherwise,,: There was no attempt to exclude the South
German cities; and Charl es' expectations that theologi cal
differences would prey eot Protestant union within G-e rmany
were frustrated. Zwing F s heroic death at Cappe l (October
11th, 1531) softened all Protestant__ hearts t owards his
followers. The South., German citjes followed the, lead
of Bucer, who_was_.__anxiQUSu_iQr_umon. Many of these
tov7ns "now j"ippd. the Schmalkald League. Brunswick
joined. Hamburg and Eostock In the iar north, Goslar
^ndr-Gflttingen in the centre, joined. Al most all North
Germany and— tbfi_ _more importan t imperi al towns in
the South were united in one strong confederacy by this
Schmalkald League. It became one of the European Powers.
\ Denmark wished to join. Thomas Cromwell was anxious
that England should join. The league was necessarily
anti-Hapsburg, and the Emperor had to reckon with it.
"~"Its power appe ared at the Diet- of "N'tirnberg in 1532.
The dreaded day (April 15th, 1531) on which the Pro-
testants were to be reduced by fire and sword passed quietly
by. Charles was surrounded with difficulties which ^ made
it impossible for him to carry out the threats he had
publisihed on November 19th, 1530. Tbp. ;i'nri? s were
menacing Vienna and the Duchy of Austria ; th e Pope
was ready to, take advantage of any signs of imperial
weakness ; France wasJtreconcilable ; England was hostile ;
and the Bavar ian duk es were doing what they could to
lessen jtheHapsburg power in Germany.
When the Diet met^at^^Nurnberg in 1532, the Emperor
knew that he was unable to__coerce^ the_ Luth^aas^ and
retumedriar^his" earlier courteous way of treating them.
They were more patriotic than the German EbmanisEsTor
whom he had done so much. Luther declared ""roundly
that the Turks must be met and driven back, and fcharfTCll
Gerijians must support the Emperor in repelling the in-
vasion. At the Diet a " recess " was proposed, in which the
THE SCHMALKALD LEAGUE 375
religious__irttGe_ was. Jlldefinitelj_exte ; the processes
agaffist the Protestants in the Beichskammersgericht were to
be quashed, and no State was to be proceeded against in
matters arising out of religious, differences. The Eomanist
members refused to accept it ; the " recess " was never pub-
lished. But t he Protestant State a-declared that they would
trust in the imperial word of honouTj and furnished the
Emperor with troops for the defence of Vienna, and the
invasion was repelled. __
The history of the struggle in Germany between the
Diet of 1532 and the outbreak of war in 1546 is very
intricate, and cannot be told as a simple contest between
Reformation and anti-Eeformation.
In the sixteenth century, almost all thoughtful and
earnest-minded men desired a Eeformation of the Church.
The Eoman Curia was the only opponent to all reforms of
any kind. But two different ideas of what Eeformation
I ought to be, divided the men who longed for reforms,
ae one desired to see the benumbed and formalist
mediaeval Church filled with a new religious life, while
it retained its notable characteristics of a sacerdotal
ministry and a visible external unity under a uniform
.hierarchy culminating in the Papacy. The other wished
to free the human spirit from the fetters of a merely \(X^
ecclesiastical authority, and to rebuild the Church on the
principle of the spiritual priesthood of all believing men
and women. In the' struggle in Germany the Emperor
Charles may be taken as the embodiment of the first, as
Luther represented the second. To the one it seemed
essential to maintajn the external unity and authority of
the Church according to the mediaeval ideal ; the other
could content himself with seeing the Church of the
Middle Ages broken up into territorial Churches, each of
which heUoateaded was a portion of the one visible Catholic
Church. Charles 'had no difficulty in accepting many
changes in doctrine and usages, provided a genuine and
lasting~conrpromise could be arrived at, which would retain
all within the one ecclesiastical organisation. He con-
376 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
sented once and again to suspend the struggle ; but he
would never have made himself responsible for a permanent
religious settlement which recognised the Lutheran Churches.
He had no objection to a truce, but would never accept a
lasting peace. If the Lutherans could not be brought back
within the mediaeval Church by compromise, then he was
prepared to go to all extremes to compel them to return.
Of course, he was the ruler over many lands ; he was keen
to extend and consolidate the family possessions of his
House, — as keen as the most grasping of the petty territorial
princes, — and he had to be an opportunist. But he never
deviated in the main from his idea of how the religious
difficulty should be solved.
But all manner of political and personal motives were
at work on both sides in Germany (as elsewhere). Philip
of Hesse combined a strenuous acceptance of the principles
of the Lutheran Eeformation with as thorough a hatred of
the House of Hapsburg and of its supremacy in Germany.
The Dukes of Bavaria, who were the strongest partisans of
the Eomanist Church in Germany, were the hereditary
enemies of the House of Austria. The religious pacifica-
tion of the Fatherland was made impossible to Charles, ~
not merely by his insistence on maintaining the conceptions
of the mediaeval Church, but also by open and secret
reluctance to see the imperial authority increased, and
by jealousies aroused by the territorial aggrandisement
of the House of Hapsburg. The incompatibihty be-
tween the aims of the Emperor and those of his
indispensable ally, the Pope, added to the difiBculties of
the situation.
In 1534, Philip jjL. Hesse persuaded the Schmalkald
League to espouse the cause oil the banished Duke of
Wuf temberg. His territories had been Incorporated into
the family possessions of the Hapsburgs, and the people
groaned under the imperial administration. The Swabian
League, which had been the, maiBstay„o.f Ihe-TEpeSaEst
and Eomanist cause in South Germany, was persuaded to
remain neutral by the Dukes of Bavaria, and Phihp had
THE WITTENBERG CONCORD 377
little difficulty in defeatingFerdinand, and driving the
IniperiaTists out of tHe Duchy! UlricIT' was " restored,
declared~"tn farrour "oF the Xutheran Eeformation, and
Wiirtemberg was added to the list of Protestant States.
By the terms of the Peace of Cadan (Jime 1534),
Ferdinand publicly engaged to carry out Charles' private
assurance that no Protestant was to be dragged before the
Eeichskammersgericht for anything connected with religion.^
"""Another important consequence followed. The Swabian
League was dissolved in 1536. This left the Schmalkald
League of Protestant States and cities -the only formidable
confederation in Germany.
— The political union among the Protestants suggested a
closer approximation. The South German pastors asked
to meet Luther and discuss their theological differences.
They met at Wittenberg, and after prolonged discussion it
was found that all were agreed save on one small point —
ithe presence, extended in space, of the Body of Christ in the
elements in the Holy Supper. It was agreed that this
might be left an open question ; and what was caUed
the Wittenberg Concord was signed, which united all
German Protestants (May and June 1536).^
Three years later (1539), Duke George of Saxony died,
the most honest and disinterested of the Eomanist princes.
His brother Henry, who succeeded him, with the joyful
consent of his subjects, pronounced for the Evangelical
faith. Nothing would content him but that Luther should
come to Leipzig to preside clerically on so auspicious an
occasion. Luther preached in the great hall of the Castle,
where twenty years earlier he had confronted Eck, and
had heard Duke George declare that his opinions were
pestilential.
In the same year the new Elector of Brandenburg also
came over to the Evangelical side amid the rejoicings of
his people ; and the two great Eomanist States of North
1 Winckelmann, " Die Vertrage von Kadan und Wion " (Zeitsdhrifl filr
Kirehengeschichle, xi. 212 fF. ).
' Of.' Kolde, Analecta., pp. 216 ff., 231 f., 262 f., 278 f., eta
378 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
Germany, Electoral Brandenburg and Ducal Saxony, became
Protestant] ' " "" ~
The " t ide flowed so strongly that the three clerical
Electors, the Archbishops of Mainz^Kolnj_and^_Trier, and
some of the bishops^ contemplated secularisIng~Tiieir
principalities, ^in3~~becem-ing Pro testants. This alarmed
Charles thoroughly. If the proposed secularisation took
place, there would be a large Protestant majority in the
Eleetoral^Gollege, and the next_Em-perQr_ would be a
Protestant. ~~"^ -
Charles had been anxiously watching the gradual
decadence of the power of the Eomanist princes in
Germany ; and reports convinced him that the advance
of the Eeformation among the people was still more
marked. The Eoman Catholic Church seemed to be in
the agonies of dissolution even' in places where it had
hitherto been strong. Breslau, once strongly Eomanist,
was now almost fanatically Lutheran ; in Vienna, Bishop
Faber wrote, the population was entirely Lutheran, save
himself and the Archduke. The Eomanist Universities
were almost devoid of students. In Bavaria, it was said
that there were more monasteries than monks. Candidates
for the priesthood had diminished in a very startling way:
the nuncio Yergerio reported that he could find none in
Bohemia except a few paupers who could not pay their
ordination fees.
The_;Eolicy_of_ thePope (Paul m., 1534-1549) had
disgusted the German Eomanist prince^. He subordinated
Tihe"welfare of the Church in their dominions to his anti-
Hapsburg Italian schemes, and had actually allied himself
with Prancis of France, who was intriguing with the Turks,
in order to thwart the Emperor ! The action and speeches
of Henry viii. had been watched and studied by the
German TRomanist leaders. Could they not imitate Mm.
in Germaiiy7"~aiid create a ^ Naitiraalist Church, true to
mediaeval doctrine, hierarchy, and ritual, and yet inde-
pendent of the Pope, who cared so little for them ?
All these things made Charles and Ferdinand revise
TRUCE WITH THE PROTESTANTS 379
iheir policy. The Emperor began to consider seriously
whetKer the way out of the religious difficulty might not
be, either to grant a prolonged truce to the Lutherans
(which might," Ttlongh he hopedTiot, becdme~permanent),
or to work energetically for the creation of a German
JsTational Church, which. By means of some working com-
promise in^octrines and ceremonies, might be called into
existence by a_ German National Council assembled in
defiance of the Pope.
It was with these thoughts in his mind that he sent
his Chancellor Held into Germany to strengthen the
Komanist cause there. His agent soon abandoned the
larger ideas of his master, if he ever comprehended them,
and contented himself with announcing publicly that the
private promise given by Charles at Niirnberg, and
conHfmed 5y Ferdinand at_ttie_Peace of^ Cadan, was
wrtEdrawn. ' TEe- lawsuits brought against the Protestants
in the Eeichskammer^ricEr'wei'e not to be quashed, but
were to be prosecuted_to_ the bitter end. He also con-
trived at Niirnberg (June 1538) to form a league of
Romanist princes, ostensibly for defence, but reaEy to
force_jthe Protestants to submit..to -fche-decisions of the
BeichsJcammers^ericM- Z^TEese measures did not make for
peace ; they almost produced a civil war,_which was only
avoided by the direct interposition of the Emperor.
Chancellor Held wasTecalled, and the E mperor sen t
the__Archbishop of Lund to find out what terms the
Protestants woui^-accept. These proved larger than the
Emperor could grant, but the result of the intercourse
was that the Protestants were granted a truce 'which was
to~laat fo r ten yea rs. "
The proposed secularisation of the ecclesiastical Elec-
t orates made Charles see that he dared not wait_.for the
conclusion of this truce. He set himself earnestly to
discover wliethgr" compromises in doctrine and ceremonies
were not possible. Conferences were held between Lutheran
and Kbiilanist theologians and laymen, at Hagenau (June
1540), at Worms (November 1540), and at Eegensburg
380 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1565
(Ratisbon, April 1541).^ The last was the most im-
^jortant. The discussions showed that it was possible
to state Eomanist and Lutheran doctrine in ambiguous
propositions which could be accepted by the theologians of
both Confessions ; but that there was a great gulf between
them which the Evangelic^ would hevef~Te=eress Ihe
spiritual priesthood of all bel ievers could ne ver be reconcile d
with tb fi~RpficTaT^isRTnTf>nd nf tbg_JTLe fl i iTvyRTfiTfirg y! ^is
was Charles' last utteiiipt at a compromise which would
unite of thelr^ owir-free-"wiiribhe German Lutherans""with
the_fierman Eomanists. He saw that the Lutherans^ would
never return to the mediaeval Churck jinless compeHed
by -foTceT^ndTF^was" impossible to use force unless the
Schmalkald League was broken up _altQgether or seamed
with divisions. ^ "' "
\ § 1 0- ^Tke Bigamy of Philip of Hesse?
The opportunity arrived. The triumphant Protestantism
received its severest blow in the bigamy of Philip of Hesse,
which involved the reputations of Bucer, Luther, and
Melanchthon, as well as of the Landgrave.
Philip had married when barely nineteen a daughter
of Duke George of Saxony. Latterly, he declared that it
was impossible to maiataiu conjugal relations with her;
that continence was impossible for him ; that the condi-
tion in which he found himself harassed his whole life, and
prevented him coming to the Lord's Table. In a case like
his, Pope Clement vrr. only a few years previously had
permitted the husband to take a second wife, and why
should not the Protestant divines permit him ? He
* Spiegel, "Johanoes Timannns Amsterodanras und die Colloqiiien zu
Worms und Eegensburg, 1540-1541" (Zeitschrift fur hist. Theologie, xlii.
(1872) 36ff.) ; Moses, Die JReligionsverhandlungen in JB'agenau und Worms,
1540-1S41 (Jena, 1889).
" Heppe, " UrKundliohe Beitrage zur Geschiohte der Doppelehe des Land-
grafen Philip v. Hessen " {Zeitschrift fur die historische Theologie, xxii.
(1852) 263 flf.), cf. xxxviii. 445 H'. ; Sohultze, Luther und die Doppelehe des
Landgrafffn v. Hessen (Paderborn (1869)).
THE BIGAMY OF PHILIP OF HESSE 381
prepared a case for himself which he submitted to the
theologians, and got a reply signed by Bueer, Melan.hthon,
and Luther, which may be thus summarised : —
According to the original commandment of God, marriage
is between one man and one woman, and the twain shall
become one flesh, and this original precept has been con-
firmed by our Lord; but sin brought it about that first
Lamech, then the heathen, and then Abraham, took more
than one wife, and this was permitted by the law. We are
now living under the gospel, which does not give prescribed
rules for the regulation of the external life, and it has not
expressly prohibited bigamy. The existing law of the land
has gone back to the original requirement of God, and the
plain duty of the pastorate is to insist on that original
requirement of God, and to denounce bigamy in every way.
Nevertheless the pastorate, in individual cases of the direst
need, and to prevent worse, may sanction bigamy in a purely
exceptional way ; such a bigamous marriage is a true
marriage (the necessity being proved) in the sight of God
and of conscience ; but it is not 4 true marriage with refer-
ence to public law or custom. Therefore such a marriage
ought to be kept secret, and the dispensation which is given
for it ought to be kept under the seal of confession. If it
be made known, the dispensation becomes eo ipso InvaHd,
and the marriage becomes mere concubinage.
Such was the strange and scandalous document to which
Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer appended their names.
Of course the thing _could not be kept secret, and
the moral effect of the revelation was disastrous among
friends and foes. The Evangelical princes were especially
aggrieved; and it was proposeithat the Landgrave should
be tried for bigamy and punished according to the laws of
the_Empixe] When the matter was brought before the
Emperor, he decided that no marriage had taken place,
and the sole effect of the decision of the theologians was
to deceive a poor maiden.-'
' Luther's action is usually attributed to his desire not to offend a
powerful Protestant leader. A careful study of the original documents
in the case — correspondence and papers — does not confirm this view. To
my mind, they show on Luther's part a somewhat sullen and crabbed con-
.aag^ FROM SPEYEB, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
Philip, humiliated and sore, isolated from his friends,
i was an instrument ready to the Emperor's hand in his plan
I to weaken and, if possible, destroy the Schmalkald League.
jThe opportunity soon arrived. The father of William
Duke of Cleves Juliers and Berg had been elected by
the Estates of Guelders to be their sovereign, in defiance
of a treaty which had secured the succession to Charles.
The father died, and the son succeeded almost imme-
diately after the treaty had been signed. This created
a powerful anti-Hapsburg State in close proximity to the
Emperor's possessions in the Netherlands. William of
Cleves had married his sister Sibylla to John Frederick,
the Elector of Saxony, and naturally gravitated towards
the Schmalkald League. In 1541 an arrangement was
come to between the Emperor and Philip, according to
which Philip guaranteed to prevent the Duke of Cleves
from joining the League, or at least from being supported
jby4i against the Emperor, and in return Philip was pro-
mised indemnity for all past deeds, and advancement in
{the Emperor's service. Young Maurice of Ducal Saxony,
I who had succeeded his father in the Duchy (August 18 th,
1541), and had married Philip's daughter, also joined in
ithis bargain. The Emperor had thus divided the great
jProtestant League ; for the Elector of Saxony refused to
iiesert his brother-in-law. In 1543 the Emperor fell
^pon the. unbefriended Duke, totally def^±ed- him, and
look Guelders from him, while, the JSerman Protestants,
soientious fidelity to a conviction which he always maintained. With all
his reverence for the word of God, he could never avoid giving a very large
authority to the traditions of the Church when they did not plainly contra-
dict a positive and direct divine commandment. The Church had been
accustomed to say that it possessed a dispensing power in matrimonial cases
of extreme difficulty ; and, in spite of his denunciations of the dispensations
granted by the Roman Curia, Luther never denied the power. On the
contrary, he thought honestly that the Church did possess this power of
dispensation even to the length of tampering with a fundamental law of
Christian society, provided it did not contradict a positive scriptural
commandment to the contrary. The crime of the Curia, in his eyes, was
not issuing (Kspensations in necessary cases, but in giving them in cases
without proved necessity, and/or money.
THE COUNCIL OF TRENT 383
hinderedby Philij)^_saw one of their most important allies
overthrown. This gave rise to recriminations, which effectu-
ally weakened the Protestant cause.
In 15 44. Charle s concluded a peace with France (the
Peace of Cr^py, NovemBeFTSth), and: was free to turn his
attention to affairs in Germany. He forced the Pope in the
sam6~SBaoa%h''''?o~gIvi~wayTCbeut a General Council, which
was fixed to meet~iii March 1^45^ The EiSpetor meant
this Council to_be_an_ instrument in his hands to subdue
both tBB'Pfotestants and the Pope. He meant it to
reform the Chur ch in the sense of freeing it from many of
the corfiTptlons^yhich Jia,d found their way into it, and
especially in diminishing the power of the Eoman Curia ;
and in this he was supported by the Spanish bishops and
by the greater part of Latin Christendom. But the Pape
was the more skilful diplomatist, and out^genejaUed the
Emperor. Tha_Council was summoned to meet at Trent,
a purely Italian town, though nominally within Germany.
It was arranged that aU its members must be present
pgrsonally and notty_deputies, which meant that the
Italian ^isBops^EadTa permanent majority ; and the choice
of DonunTcans and Jesuits as the leadingtheologians^jnade^
-it^ain that no doctrmai concessions woSdlbe ^made-to the
-iroteS^te! Froffi" the feBCTEeTProtestauts refused to be
boun d in gflywa^ by its-deeisieHier and Gharlea- soon per-
ceived that the instrument he had counted on had broken
in His^hands. ' if-ecclesiasfical unity was to be maintained
in Germany, it could only hejry t he u se of force. There is
no doubt that the Emperor was loath to proceed to this
last extremity; but his correspondence with his sister
Mary and with his brother Ferdinand shows that he had
come to regard it as a necessity by the middle of 1545.
His first endeavour was to break up the Protestant
League, which was once more united. He attempted again
to detach Philip of Hesse, but without success. He was
able, ho-ffifiifiivto induce the Elector of Brandenburg and
the Margrave of Brandenburg- Culmbach and some others to
remain neutral — the Elector by promising in any event
384 FROM SPEYEB, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
that the religious settlement which had been effected in
Brandenburg (1541) should remain unaltered; and, what
served him best, he persuaded young Maurice of Ducal
Saxony to become his active ally.
§ 11. Maurice of Saxony.
Maurice of Saxony was one of the most interesting,
because one of the most perplexing personalities of his
time, which was rich in interesting personalities. He was a
Protestant from conviction, and never wavered from his
faith ; yet in the conflict between the Eomanist Emperor
and the Protestant princes he took the Emperor's side, and
contributed more than any one else to the overthrow of his
fellow Protestants. His bargain with Charles was that the
Electorate should, Jje^transf erred from the Ernestine Saxon
family to his own, the Albertrriej^ that he should get Magde-
burg and Halberstadt, and that neither he nor his people
should be subject to the decrees of the Council of Trent.
r"Then, when he had despoiled the rival family of the
I Electorate, he planned and carried through the successful
revolt of the Protestant princes against the Emperor, and
was mainly instrumental in securing the public recognition
of Lutheranism in Germany and in gaining the permanent
Religious Peace of 1555.^
_— — § 12. Luther's Death.
It was in these months, while the alarms of war were
threatening Germany, that Luther passed away. He had
^ Ranke has an interestiijg study of the character of Maurice in his
Deutsche Qeschichte im Zeitalter de/r Reformation, bk. ix. chap. vi. (vol. v.
pp. 161 S. of the 6th ed., Leipzig, 1882) ; but perhaps the best is given in
Maurenbrecher, Studien und Skizzen zur Oeschichte der Beformaiionszeii
(Leipzig, 1874), pp. 135 if. A man's deep religious convictions can tolerate
strange company in most ages, and .the fact that we find Romanist champions
in France plunging into the deepest profligacy the one week and then under-
going the agonies of repentance the next, or that Lutheran leaders combined
occasional conjugal infidelities and diinking bouts with zeal for evangelical
principles, demands deeper study in psychology than can find expression, in
the fashion of some modern English historians, in a few cheap sneers.
Luther's death 385
been growing weaker year by year, and had never spared
himself for the cause he had at heart. One last bit of
work he thought he must do. The Counts of Mansfeld
had quarrelled over some trifling things in the division
of their property, and had consented to accept Luther's
mediation. This obliged him to journey to Eisleben
in bitterly cold weather (January 1546). "I would
cheerfully lay down my bones in the grave if I could
only reconcile my dear Lords," he said ; and that was
what was required from him. He finished the arbitration
to the satisfaction of both brothers, and received by way of
fee endowments for village schools in the Mansfeld region.
The deeds were aU signed by the I7th of February (1546),
and Luther's work was done at Mansfeld — and for his
generation. He became alarmingly ill that night, and died
on the following morning, long before dawn. " Eeverend
Father," said Justus Jonas, who was with him, " wilt thou
stand by Christ and the doctrine thou hast preached ? " The
dying man roused himself to say " Yes." It was his last word.
Twenty minutes later he passed away with a deep sigh.
Luther died in his sixty-third year — twenty-eight and
a half years after he had, greatly daring, nailed his Theses
to the door of All Saints' in Wittenberg, twenty-seven
after he had discovered the meaning of his Theses during
the memorable days when he faced Eck at Leipzig, and
twenty-five after he had stood before the Emperor and
Diet at Worms, while all Germany had hailed him as its
champion against the Pope and the Spaniard. The years
between 1519 and 1524 were, from an external point of
view, the most glorious of Luther's life. He dominated
and led his nation, and gave a unity to that distracted and
divided country which it had never enjoyed until then.
He spoke and felt like a prophet. " I have the gospel,
not from men, but from heaven through our Lord Jesus
Christ, so that I might have described myself and have
glorified in being a minister and an evangelist." The
position had come, to him in no sudden visionary way.
He had been led into it step by step, forced forward slowly
25*
386 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
by a power stronger than his own ; and the knowledge
had kept him humble before his God. During these years
it seemed as if his dream — an expectation shared by his
wise Elector, the most experienced statesman in Germany
— of a Germany united under one National Church,
separated from the bondage of Eome, repudiating her blas-
phemies, rejectiug her traditions which had corrupted the
religion of the ancient and purer days, and disowning her
presumptuous encroachments on the domain of the civil
power ordained of God, was about to come true.
Then came the disillusionment of the Peasants' War,
when the dragon's teeth were sown broadcast over Ger-
many, and produced their crop of gloomy suspicions and
black fears. After the iusurrection had spent itself, and
in spite of the almost irretrievable damage which it, and
the use made of it by papal diplomatists, did to the
Eef ormation movement, Luther regained his serene courage,
and recovered much of the ground which had been lost.
But the crushiug blow had left its mark upon him. He
had the same trust in God, but much more distrust of man,
fearing the "tumidt," resolute to have nothing to do with
anyone who had any connection, however slight, with those
who had instigated the misguided peasants. He rallied
the forces of the Eeformation, and brought them back to
discipline by the faith they had iu hiniself as their leader.
His personality dominated those kinglets of Germany,
possessed with as strong a sense of their dignity and
autocratic rights as any Tudor or Valois, and they sub-
mitted to be led by him. Electoral Saxony, Hesse, Liine-
burg, Anhalt, East Prussia, and Mansfeld, and some score
of imperial cities, had followed him loyally from the first ;
and as the years passed. Ducal Saxony and Wtirtemberg in
the centre and south, and Brandenburg in the north, had
declared themselves Protestant States. These larger princi-
palities brought in their train all the smaller satellite States
which clustered round them. It may be said that before
Luther's death the much larger portion of the German
Empire had been won for evangelical religion, — a tenikeirf^
THE PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION 387
to be roughly described as a great triangle, whose base was
th e iihureb uf tins Dc dtie-Sea from the Netherlands on the
west to the eastern limits of East Prussia, and whose apex
was Switzerland. Part of this land was occupied by
ecclesiasticaT^rincipalities which had remained Eoman
Catholic, — the districts surrounding Koln on the west, and
the territories of Paderborn, Fulda, and many others in the
centre, — but, on the other hand, many stoutly Protestant
cities, like Niirnberg, Constance, and Augsburg, were planted
on territories which were outside these limits. The extent
and power of t his Protesta nt Germany was sufficient to
resist any^attempt on the part of the Emperor and the
Cathohc princeiTo""overcome it by force of arms, provided
only its rulers remained true to each other.
Over thts wide extent of country Evangelical Churches
had been established, and provisions had been made for the
^^ducation of children and for the support of the poor in
ordinances issued by the supreme secular authorities who ^
ruled over its multitudinous divisions. Iiia.^Mass, with v^
its supposed substitutionary sacrifice and a mediatorial
prieitEoody had been abolished. The German tongue had
displaced' medJseyal^Latia. in public worship, and the wor-
shippers could take part in the services with full under- v'?
standing of the solemn acts in which they were engaged.
A German Bible lay on every pulpit, and the people had
their copies in the pews. Translations of the Psalms and
German evangelical hymns were sung, and sermons in -^
German were preached. Pains were taken to provide an( ^ i
educated evangeli cal ministry who wouId~pfeach the gospel^
faithfully, and conscientiously fulfil all the duties connected
with the "dure of souls." The ecclesiastical property of
the mediaeval Church was largely used for evangelical ir )
purposes. There was no mechanical uniform ity in these
new arrangements. Luther refused to act the part of an
ecclesiastical autocrat : he advised when called upon to
give" advice, 'Ee'never' commanded. No Wittenberg " use "
was to confront the Eoman " use " and be the only mode
of service and ecclesiastical organisation.
388 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
The movement Luther had inaugurated had gone far
beyond Germany before 1546. Every country in Europe
had felt its pulsations. As early as 1519 (April), learned
men in Paris had been almost feverishly studying his
writings.^ They were eagerly read in England before
1521.^ Aleander, writing from Worms to the Curia,
complains that Spanish merchants were getting transla-
tions of Luther's books made for circulation in Spain.'
They were being studied with admiration in Italy even
earlier. The Scottish Parliament was vainly endeavouring
to prevent their entrance into that country by 1525.*
The Lutheran Eeformation had been legally established in
Denmark, Norway, and Sweden long before Luther passed
away.
Luther was the one great man of his generation, stand-
ing head and shoulders above everyone else. This does
not mean that he absorbed in his individual personality
everything that the age produced for the furtherance of
humanity. Many impulses for good existed in that
sixteenth century which Luther never recognised ; for an
age is always richer than any one man belonging to it.
He stood outside the great artistic movement. He might
have learned much from Erasmus on the one hand, and
from the leaders of the Peasants' War on the other, which
rema,ined hidden from him. He is greatest in the one
sphere of religion only — in the greatest of all spheres.
His conduct towards Zwingli and the strong language he
used in speaking of opponents make our generation dis-
cover a strain of intolerance we would fain not see in so
great a man; but his contemporaries did not and could
not pass the same judgment upon him. In such a divided
Germany none but a man of the widest tolerance could
have held together the Protestant forces as Luther did;
^ Henninjard, Gorrespondance des Reformateurs dans Us pays de langiu
fran(;aise (Geneva and Paris, 1866-1897), i. 47, 48.
^ Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII.,
iii. 284.
' Kalkoff, Die Depeschen des Nuntius Aleander (Halle, 1897), p. 106,
* Acta of the Parliament of Scotland for 1525 and 1527.
THE RELIGIOUS WAR 389
and we can see what he was when we remember the sad
effects of the petty orthodoxies of the Amsdorfs and the
Osianders who came after him.
It is the fate of most authors of revolutions to be
devoured by the movement which they have called into
being. Luther occasioned the greatest revolution which
Western Europe has ever seen, and he ruled it till
his death. History shows no kinglier man than this
Thuringian miner's son.
§ 13. The Religious War}
The war began soon after Luther's death. Tha Emperor
brough t^ into Ger maTiY hia Spanish infa.nt^^ry^ the beginning
of what was to be a curse to that, cnn ntrv for many genera-
tions, and various manceuvrings and skirmishes took place,
the most important of which was Maurice of Saxony's
invasion of the Electorate. At last the Emperor met the
Elector in battle at Miihlberg (April 24th, 1547), where
John Frederick was completely defeated and taken prisoner.
Wittenberg, stoutly defended by Sibylla, soon after sur-
rendered. This was the end. Philip was induced to
surrender on promise of favourable treatment, made by the
Electors who had remained on the Emperor's side. Charles
refused to be bound by the promise made in his name, and
the Landgrave was also held captive. AUGermany, save
Constance in the south and some of the Baltic lan3s^'
lay prostr ate at the Em peror's„ feet. It remained to be
seen what use„iie~wo»ld-fflark©.Qf^his victory.
In'^due time he set himself to bring about what he
conceived to_be_a reasonable compromise which would
enable all Germany to remain within one National Church.
HeTned at first to induce the separate parties to work
' Maurenbrecher, Karl V. und die deutachen Protestanten 154S-1555
(Diisseldorf, 1865) ; J#hn, GescAicMe des SchmalMldischen Krieges (Leipzig,
1837) ; Le Mang, Die Varstellung des Schmalkaldischen Krieges in den
Denkwiirdigkeiten Karls V. (Jena, 1890, 1899, 1900) ; Brandenburg, Miyritz
von Sachsen (Leipzig, 1898).
390 FROM SPEYEE, 1526, TO AtTGSBtTRG, 1556
it out among themselves; and, when this was found to
be hopeless, h e, like a sesoni_Jjistinian,-jeBel¥ed.---to--conji,,
struct a creed_and to impose it by force upon all, especially
upon'the Lutherans. To "Begin with, he had Jp_ defy the
Pope and slight the General Council for which he had
been mainly responsible. He formally demanded that
the CouncilshoiM^tjmi_^to (it had been
transferred to"Boiogna), and, when this was refused, he
protested against its existence and, Uke.the-Gterffian Pro-
testants he was coercing, declared ^ that he would not
submit, to its- decrees. He next selected ^EBfee theo-
logians, Mic hael Helding, JuUus v o n Pflug, and Agricola^^^a
mediaevalist, an Erasmian, and a very conservative Lutheran
— to construct what was called the Aicgsburg Interim.
§ 14. The Augsburg Interim}
This document taught the dogma of Trans ubstantiation^
the sgyfiJi.Sacraments, adoration of the Blesse d Virgin _a nd
the .Saints, jetained^ most of the mediaeval ceremonies and
usages, and declared the Pope to be the Head~of~the
Church. This was to please the Eomanists. It appealed to
-the Lutherans by adopting the (Joctrine of Justification by
^ Faith in a modified form,_the marriage of priegjiaZSEithjOTiro*
reservations, the use of the Cup by the laity in the HoIy~
SuppefTand by considerably modifying the doctrine o f the
sacrificial character of the Mass. Of course all its pro-
portions were ambi guous, and could be read in two ways.
This was probably the intention of the framers ; if so, they
_were highly successful.
Nothing that Charles ever undertook proved such a
di sma l failure as this patchwork creed made from snippets
from two Confessions. However Hfeless creeds may become,
they all — real ones — have grown out of the living Christian
' Schmidt, " Agenda and Letters relating to the Interim" in Zeitschrift
filr Mslorisch. Theologie, xxxviii. (1868) pp. 431 ff., 461 ff. ; Beutel, Uber den
Ursprung des Augsburger Interim (Leipzifr, 1888) ; Meyer, Der Augsburger
Reichstag nach einem fiirstlichen Tagehuch (Preus. Jahrb. 1898, pp. 206-242).
THE AUGSBURG INTe'rIM 391
experience of their framers, and have contained the very
life-blood of their hearts as well as of their brains. It is
a hopeless task to construct creeds as a tailor shapes and
stitches coats.
Charles, however, was proud of his creed, and_did_his
best to enforce it The Diet of 1548 showed him his
diflSculties." Tlie Interim was accepted and proclaimed as
an edict by this Diet (May 1 5), but oidy after the Em-
peror, very unwillingly, ' declared practically that it was
meant for the Protestants alone. " The Emperor," said a
member of the Diet, " is fighting for rehgion against the
Pope, whom he acknowledges to be its head, and against
the two parts of Christendom in Germany — the mass of
the Protestants and the ecclesiastical princes." J!luia_f232ia_„-
the beginning what was to be an instrument to, unite
Gerroan^CEristendom was transformed into a " strait-waist-
coat lor the Lutherans " ; and this did not make it more
palatable for'ffiem. At first the strong measures taken by
the Emperor compelled its nomrnaT acceptance by many of
the Pro testant -g rinces.^ The cities which' seemed to be
most refractoryhaJ~their Councils purged of their demo-
cratic members, and their Lutheran preachers sent into
banishment — Matthew Alber from Eeutlingen, Wolfgang
Musculus from Augsburg, Brenz from Hall, Osiander from
Ntirnberg, Schnepf from Tubingen. Bucer and Fagius had
to flee from Strassburg and take refuge in England. The
city of Constance was besieged and fell after a heroic
defence; it was deprived of its privileges as an imperial
city, and was added to the family possessions of the Houfee
of Austria. Its pastor, Blarer, was sent into banishment.
Four hundred Lutheran divines were driven from their
If Charles, backed by his Spanish and Italian troops,
could secure a nominal submission to his Interim, he could
noLcoerce the people into accepting it. The churchiss^od
empty in "AugiKrg,~inr Ulm, ~and"TB~~other cities. The
' Maurice of Saxony was permitted to make some alterations on the
Interim for his dominions, and his edition was called the Leipzig Interim.
392 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
people met it by an almost universal passive resistance — if
singing doggerel verses in moclterf of the Tnt^rim may be
called passive. When the Emperor ordered Duke Christopher
of Wlirtemberg to drive Brenz out of his refuge in his State,
the Duke answered him that he could not banish his whole
population. The popular feeling, as is usual in such cases,
found vent in all manner of satirical songs, pamphlets, and
even catechisms. As in the times before the Peasants' War,
this coarse popular literature had an immense circulation.
Much of it took the form of rude broadsides with a picture,
. generally satirical, at the top, and the song, sometimes with
the music score, printed below.^ Wandering preachers,
whom no amount of police supervision could check, went
inveighing against the Interim, distributing the rude litera-
ture through the villages and among the democracy in the
V~"~tDwns. Soon the creed and the edict which enforced it
1 became practically a dead letter throughout the greater
I part of Germany.
\ The presence of „ the Emperor's^ Spanish troops on the
soil of the FaEEierland irritated the |eeling8~of Germans,
whether Eomanists or Protestants ; the insolence an^'SJc-"
cesses of "fhese— soldiers "Htung the common people ; and
. their e mployment to enforce the hatted Jwferjm_on__the
Protestants was an a'Sditioiial ulsult:" The citizens of one
rnipenai city were" told tba1rTf"they did not accept the
Interim they must be taught theology by Spanish troops,
and of another that they would yet learn to speak the
language of Spain. While the popular _ odium against
Charles was slowly growing in intensity, he contrived to
increase it by aj3ro20s al tha t his son Philip-^hould_haye
the imperi aj^rown after his brother Ferdinand. Charles'
own election had been caused by a patriotic sentiment.
The people thought that a German was better than a
Frenchman, and they had found out too late that they had
not got a German but a Spaniard. Ferdinand-had Jived
in Germany long enough to know its wants, and his son
' One of these broadsides is reproduced in von Bezold's Oeschichte der
deutschen Reformation (Berlin, 1890), p. 806.
THE AUGSBURG INTERIM 393
Maximilian had shown that he possessed many qualities
which appealed to the German character. The proposal
to Bubstitute _ Philip , however natural from Charles' point
of view, and consistent with his earlier idea that the House
of Hapsburg should have one head, meant to the Germans
to still further "hispani olate" Ger many. This unpopularity
of Charles amrag_j,ll_ranljs_ and^lasses of Germans "greV
rapidly between 1548 and 1552; and during the same
years "Eis "forei gn prestige w a§_|aali,:ffianing. He remained
in Germany, with the exception of a short visit to the
jNe&erlands; but in spite of his presence jthe_anarchy
grew worse and worse. The revolt which came migEE""
have arisKQ^much sobnet had the Protestants been able to
overcome their hatred and suspicion of Maurice of Saxony,
whose co-operation was almost essential. It is unnecessary
to describe the intrigues which went on around the Emperor,
careless though not unforewamed.
Maurice had completed his arrangements with his
German allies and with France early in 1552. The Em-
peror had retired from Augsburg to Innsbruck. Maurice
seized the Pass of Ehrenberg on the nights of May 18 th,
1 9th, and pressed on to Innsbruck, hoping to " run the old
fox to earth." Charles escapedby a few hours, and, accom-
panied by his brother Ferdinand, fled over the Brenner Pass
amid a storm of snow and rain. It was the road by which
he had entered Germany in fair spring weather when he came
in 1530, in the zenith of his power, to settle, as he had
confidently expected, the religious difficulties in Germany.
He reached Villach in Carinthia in safety, and there waited
the issue of events.
The German prince s gathered in great numbers at
Fassau (Aug. 1552lJa— discuss the position and arrive at
a settlement. _M§jiB£a_Eas_ostensibly Jhe_mafiter.-.otlhe
situati on, for his troops and those of his wild ally Albert
Alcibiades of Brandenburg- Culmbach were in the town,
and many a prince felt "as if they had a hare in their
breast." His demands for the public good were moderate
and statesmanlike. He asked for the immediate release of
5iI4^ FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
his ffiher-in-law the Landgrave of Hesse ; for a settlement
of the religious question on a basis that would be permanent,
at a meeting of German princes fairly representative of the
two parties — no Council summoned and directed by the
Pope would ever give fair-play to the Protestants, he said,
nor could they expect to get it from the Diet where the
I large number of ecclesiastical members gave an undue pre-
I ponderance to the Eomanist side ; and for a settlement of
•- some constitutional questions. The princes present, and
Nith. them Ferdinand, King of the Eomans, were inclined to
accept these demands. But when they were referred to
Charles at Villach, he absolutely refused to permit the
religious or the constitutionar~qTI^ton to be settled by
any assembly^ but the JDiet of the^mpire. Nothing would
move him from his opinion, neither the entreaties of his
brother nor his own personal danger. He still counted on
the divisions among the Protestants, and believed that he
had only to support the " born Elector " of Saxony against
the one of his own creation to deprive Maurice of his
strength. It may be that Maurice had his own fears, it
may be that he was glad to have the opportunity of show-
ing that the " Spaniard " was the one enemy to a lasting
peace in Germany. He contented himself with the acqui-
escence of John Frederick in the permanent loss of the
Electorate as arranged at the Peace of Wittenberg (1547).
Charles was then free to come back to Augsburg, where
he had the petty satisfaction of threatening the Lutheran
preachers who had returned, and of again overthrowing
the democratic government of the city. He then went to
assume the command of the German army which was
opposing the French. His failure to take the city of
Metz was followed by his practical abandonment of the
direction of the affairs of Germany, which were left in the
hands of Ferdinand. The disorders of the time dela^^'
the meeting of -the Diet until 1 555__(.opened Feb. 5th).
'^he Elector and the "born Elector" of Saxony were both
dead — John Frederick, worn out by misfortune and im-
prisonment (March 3rd, 1554), and sympathised with by
THE RELIGIOUS PEACE OP AUGSBURG S95
friends and foes alike ; and Maurice, only thirty-two years
of age, killed in the moment of victory at Sievershausen
(July 9th, 1553).
It was in the summer of 1554 that the Emperor had
handed over, in a carefully limited manner, the manage-
ment of German affairs to his brother Ferdinand, the King
of the Eomans. The terms of devolution of authority imply""
that this was done by Chadea. to aySi^LJ'^^ humi liatio n of
being personally responsible for acquiescence^ m what^was
to him a hateful necessity, and the confession of failure
in" his 'management of Germany from ; r530. EverycTne
recognised that peace was necessary at almost any price,
but Ferdinand and the higher ecclesiastical princes shrunk
from facing the inevitable. The King of the Eomans still
cherished some vague hopes of a conrpromise which would
preserve the unity of the mediaeval German Church, and
the selfish ^oHcy of many of the Protestant princes en-
couraged" him. Elector Joachim of Brandenburg wished
the archbishopric of Magdeburg and the bishopric of
Halberstadt for his son Sigismund, and declared that he
would be content with the Interim] Christopher of
Wiirtemberg cherished similar designs on ecclesiastical
properties. Augustus of Saxony, Maurice's brother and
successor, wished the bishopric of Meissen. All these
designs could be more easily fulfilled if the external unity
of the mediaeval Church remained unbroken.
§ 15. Beligious Peace of Augsburg}
The Diet had been summoned for Nov. 13th (1554),
but when Ferdinand reached Augsburg about the end of
the year, the Estates had not gathered. He was able
to open the Diet formally on Feb. 5th (1555), but none
of the Electors, and only two of the great ecclesiastical
princes, the Cardinal Bishop of Augsburg and the Bishop
1 Wolf, Der Augsburger Religionsfriede (Stuttgart, 1890) ; Brandi, Der
Augsburger Religionsfriede (Munich, 1896) ; Druffel, Beitrdge zur Reichs-
geschicUe, lSBS-1555 (Munich, 1896).
396 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
of Eichstadt, were present in person. While the Diet
dragged on aimlessly^ the Protestant prinp.ea gaFfiered tcT
aT great Council of their own at Naumburg (March 3rd,
1555) to concert a common policy. Among those present
were the Eletitors of "Brandenburg and Saxony, the sons
of John Frederick, the ill-fated "born Elector," and the
Landgrave of Hesse — sixteen princes and a great number
of magnates. After long debates, the assembly decided
(March 13th) that they^wquld stand by the Augsburg
Oonfessim_of^ 1 5 3 Oj_ jiiid that the mi nority would unite
with the majority in carrying out one common policy.
Even " fat old Interim," as Elector Joachim oflBrandenhufg
had be en nicknamed, was compelled to submit; and the
Protestants stood on a firm basis with a definite programme,
and pledged to support each other.
This memorable meeting at Naumburg forced the hands
of tFe" members of the Diet. Every member7 saVB~ the
Cardinal BTsFop' of Augsburg, desired a permeme7vt~ne^e-
ment of the religious question, and their zeal appeared in
the multiplicity of adjectives used "to expressTEe pre-
dominant thought — "lestdndiger, beharrlicher, unhedingter,
fur und fur ewig wahrender " was the phrase. The meet-
ing at Naumburg showed them that this could nonie
secured without the recognition of Lutheranism as a legal
religion within the German Empire.
When the Protestant-ilamands were formally placed
before the Diet, they were found to include — security
"under the Public Law of the Empire for all who professed
the Augsburg Confession, and for all who in future might
make the same profession ; liberty to hold legally all the
ecclesiastical property which had been or might in the
future be secularised ; coniplete toleration for all Lutherans
who were resident in Eomanist States without correspond-
ing toleration for Komanists in Lutheran States. These
demands went much further than any which Luther him-
self had formulated, and really applied to Eomanists some
of the provisions of the "recess" of Speyer (1529) which,
\ when applied to Lutherans, had called forth the Protest.
THE RELIGIOUS PEACE OF AUGSBURG 397
They were vehemently ol^cted to by the Eomanist members
of the Diet ; '^nd, asToth parties seemed- uawilliflg to yield
anything to the other, there was some danger of the religious
§ breaking out again. The mediation of Ferdinand for
Elomanists and Frederick of Saxony for the Protestants
ght a compromise after months of debate. It was agreed
the L utbefanTetigion should be legalised within the
E mpire, and that all Lutheran princes should ■ have full
security for the praclTce~of—fcheif- faith-; - that thfe mediaeval
episcopal juriiclietion should cease' within their lands; and
that they were^ to retain all eoelesiaetieal possessions which
had been secularised before the pass.ing of the Treaty of
Passau_(1552). Future changes of faith were to be deter-
jain ed by th e principle cujus regioyusrelA^. — The secular
territorial ruler~might choose— b o twdon - the Eomanist or
the Lutheran faith, and his decision was to bind all his
subjects. If a subject professed another religion from his
prince, he was to be allowed to emigrate without molesta-
tion. These provisions were agreed upon by all, and
embodied in the "recess." Two very important matters
remained unsettled. The Eomanists demanded that any
eccles iastical p rince who changed his faith should thereby
f orfeit lan d" arnOtgrnrhmR — t.hp " ppp1psifl«tnpa-)- reservation."
This was embodied in the " recess,' but tne~ rioLesLauLs
declared that they would not be bound by it. Oa^ the
other hand, the^fiotestants demanded^toleration for all
Lutherans jiving wit hin jthe teiritories of Eomanist princes.
This was not embodied in the " recess," ^though ^Ferdinand"
promised that he wQu]d^ae£--it---carxied-jSut in practice.^
Such was the famous Peace of Augsburg. There was no
reason why it should not have ' come"~years earlier and
without the wild war-storm which preceded it, save the
fact that, in an unfortunate fit of enthusiasm, the Germans
had elected the young King of Spain to be their Emperor.
They had chosen the grandson of the genial Maxmilian,
believing him to be a real German, and they got a man
' These two unsettled questions became active in the disputes which
began the Thirty Years' War.
398 FROM SPEYER, 1526, TO AUGSBURG, 1555
whose attitude to religion "was half-way between the
genial orthodoxy of his grandfather MaxmiUan and the
gloomy fanaticism of his son Philip ii.," and whose " mind
was always travelling away from the former and towards
the latter position." ^ The longer he lived the more
Spanish he became, and the less capable of understanding
Germany, either on its secular or religious side. His
whole public Hfe, so far as that country was concerned,
was one disastrous failure. He succeeded only when he
used his imperial position to increase and consolidate the
territorial possessions of the House of Hapsburg ; for the
charge of dismembering the Empire can be brought home to
Charles as effectually as to the most selfish of the princes
of Germany.
TEie Eeligious Peace of Augsburg was contained in
the decisions of Speyer in 1526, and it was repeated in
every one of the truces which the Emperor made with his
Lutheran subjects from 1530 to 1544.^ Had any one of
^ these been made permanOT;b^he^_ religious war,, with its
^ PoUard, Camtridge Modem History, ii. 144.
' The Religious Peace of Augsburg had important diplomatic consequences
beyond Gennany. The Lutheran form of faith was recognised to be a religio
licita (to use the old Roman phrase) within the Holy Roman Empire, which,
according to the legal ideas of the day, included all Western Christendom ;
and Popes could no longer excommunicate Protestants simply because they
were Protestants, without striking a serious blow at the constitution of
the Empire. No one perceived this sooner than the sagacious young woman
who became the first Protestant Queen of England. In the earlier and
unsettled years of her reign, Elizabeth made full use of the protection that a
profession of the Lutheran Creed gave to shield her from excommunication.
She did so when the Count de Feria, the ambassador of Philip ii. , threatened
her with the fate of the King of Navarre {Calendar of Letters and State
Papers relating to English Affairs, preserved principally in the Archives of
Simancas, i. 61, 62) ; she suppressed all opinions which might be supposed
to conflict with the Lutheran Creed in the Thirty-eight Articles of 1563 ;
she kept crosses and lights on the altar of her chapel in Lutheran fashion.
When the Pope first drafted a Bull to excommunicate the English Queen,
and submitted it to the Emperor, he was told that it would be an act of
folly to publish a document which would invalidate the Emperor's own
election ; and when Elizabeth was finally excommunicated in 1570, the
charge against her was not being a Protestant, but sharing in "the impious
mysteries of Calvin " — the Reformed or Calvinist Churches being outside
the Peace of Augsburg.
THE RELIGIOUS PEACE OF AUGSBURG 399
outcome in wild anarchy, in embittered religious antagon-
isms, and its seed of internecine strife, to be reaped in
the Thirty Years' War, would never have occurred. But
Charles, whose mission, he fancied, was to preserve the
unity " of the seamless robe of Christ," as he phrased it,
could only make the attempt by drenching the fields of
Germany with blood, and perpetuating and accentuating
the religious antagonisms of the country which had chosen
him for its Protector.
This Eeligious Peace of Augsburg has been claimed,
and rightly, as a victory for religious liberty.
From one point of view the victory was not a great
one. Tbft-.Qnly Confession tolera-tcd was the Augsburg.
The SwissJReformation and its adherents were outside
tHe~"scope of the religious peace. What grew to be the
E eformed or Calyini^ic ,. Chuxcli was also outside. It
was limited solely to_t ^ Luthera n, or, as it was called,
the EvanggliQ§il_.cregd..-/ -Nor was there ..much gain to.
the personal liberty of conscience. It may be said with
truth that there was "less freedom of conscience under the
Lutheran territorial system of Churches, and also under
the Koman Catholic Church reorganised under the canons
and decrees of Trent, than there was in the mediaeval
Church.
The victory lay in this, that the first blow had been
struck to free mankind from the fetters of Eomanist ab-
solutism ; that the first faltering step had been taken on
the road to religious liberty ; and the first is valuable not
for what it is in itself, but for what it represents and for
what comes after it. The Eeligious Peace of Augsburg
did not concede much according to modern standards ; but
it contained the potency and promise of the future. It is
always the first step which counts.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ORGANISATION OF LUTHERAN CHURCHES.*
Two conceptions, the second being derived from the first,
lay at the basis of everything which Luther said or did
about the organisation of the Christian fellowship into
churches.
, -i The priniaryand_j3aXiij^al__^doctriae, which was the
i[ foundation of everything, was _the__S2iritual priest hood of all
believers. This, he believed, implied that preaching, dis-
"peiising the sacraments, ecclesiastical discipline , and so
forth were not the exclusive possession of a special ca ste of
men to whom they had been committed by (jrod, and who
therefore were mediators between G-od and man. These
divine duties belonged to the whole community as a Jellow-
ship of believing men and women ; but as a division of
labour was necessary, and as each individual Christian
cannot undertake such duties without disorder ensuing,
the community must seek out and set apart certain of its
members to perform them in its name.
' SoTTECBS : Richter, Die evangelischen Kirclumordnungen des sechszehrUen
Jahrhunderts (Weimar, 1846) ; Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnuiigen
des ISten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1902); Kins, "Das Stipendiumwesen in
Wittenberg und Jena . . . im 16ten Jahrhundert" (Zeitschrift fiir historische
Theologie, xxxv. (1865) pp. 96 ff.); G. Solimidt, "Eine Kirchenvisitation
im Jahre 1525 " (ZeUschriftfur die hist. Theol. xxxv. 291 £f. ) ; Winter, " Die
Kirehenvisitation von 1528 im Wittenberger Kreise" {Zeitsch. filr hist.
Theol. xxxiii. (1863) 295 ff.); Muther, "Drei Urkunden zur Reformations-
geschiohte" {Zeitschr. filr hist. Theol. xxx. (1860) 452 ff.); Albrccht, Der
Kleine Catechismus filr die gemeine Pfarher und Prediger (facsimile reprint
of edition of 1536 ; Halle a. S. 1905).
Later Books: Kastner, Die Kinderfragen : Der erste deutsche Ki'Je-
chismus (Leipzig, 1902) ; Burkliardt, Oeschichte der deiUschen Kirchen- und
Schulrisitation im Zeilalter der Seformaticm (Leipzig, 1879) ; Berlit, Lutlixr^
Muriwr wid d«s Kirchenlied des 16ten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1899).
400
&
ORGANISATION OF LUTHERAN CHURCHES 401
The g econd conception was that secular government
is an ordinance ordained of God, and that the special rule
claimed by the Eoman Pontiif over things secular and
sacred was a usurpation of the powers committed by God
to the secular authority. This Luther understood to mean
that the Christian magistra cy might well represent the
Christian community of believers, and, in its name or
associated with it, undertake the organisation and super-
intendence of the Chuxck civic or territorial.
In his earlier writings, penned before the outbreak of
the Peasants' War, Luther dwells most on the thought of
the community of believers, their rights and powers; in
the later ones, when the fear of the common man had
taken possession of him, the secular authority occupies his
whole field of thought. But although, before the Peasants'
War, Luther does not give such a fixed place to the secular
magistracy as the one soiu'ce of authority or supervision
over the Church, the conception was in his mind from the
first.
Among the various duti^_which belong to the com-
pany of believers, Luther selected three as the most out-
standing, — those connected with the pastorate, including [t j
preaching, dispensing the sacraments, and so forth; the ^,
service of Christian charity ; and the duty of seeing that
the children belonging to _the community, and especially --'::-
" poor, ISisefaBIe^ and deserted children," were properly
educated and trained to become useful members of the
commonwealth.
In the few instances of attempts made before the
Peasants' War to formulate those conceptions into regula-
tions for communities organised according to evangelical
principles, we find the.j2ommunity^nd the magistracy com-
bining to.look afE^the public worship, the poor, and educa-
tion. Illustrations may be seen in the Wittenberg ordinance
of""l*522 (Carlstadt), and the ordinances of Leisnig (1523)
and Magdeburg (1524).i All three are examples of the
' Of. for the Wittenberg ordinance, Richter, Die evmigclischen Kirchen-
ordnungen des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts (Weimar, 1846), ii. 484, and
26*
402 ORGANISATION OF LUTHERAN CHURCHES
local authority within a small community endeavouring,
at the prompting of preachers and peoplej_to expressji
definite "regulations some of the demands of the new
evangelical life.
tutfier himself thought these earlier regulations prema-
ture, and insisted that the Wittenberg ordinance should be
cancelled. He knew that changes must come; but he
hoped to see them make their way gradually, almost im-
perceptibly, commending themselves to everyone without
special enactment prescribed by external authority. Ha
published suggestions for the dispensation of the Lord's
Supper and of Baptism in the churches in Wittenberg as
early as 1523 ; he collected and issued a small selection
of evangelical hymns which might be srmg in Public
Worship (1524); during the same year he addressed the
burgomasters and councillors of all German towns on the
erection and maintenance of Christian schools ; and he
congratulated more than one mimicipality on provisions
made for the care of the poor.^ Above all, he had, while
in Wartburg, completed a translation of the Xew Testa-
ment which, after revision by Melanchthon and other
friends, was published in 1522 (Sept. 21st), and went
through sixteen revised editions and more than fifty re-
impressions before 15.34. The translation of the Old
Testament was made by a band of scholars at Wittenberg,
published in instalments, and finally in complete form in
1534.
He always cherished the hope that the evangelical
faith would spread quietly all over his dear Fatherland if
only room were made for the preaching of the gospel
Sehling, Die exangelischen Kirchenordnungen des 16ten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig,
1902), I. i. 697 ; for Leisnig, Eicliter, i. 10. An account of the Uagde-
burg ordinance is to be found in Funk, MiUheUungen axis der GeschichU
des evangelisehen Kirchemcesens in Magdeiburg (Magdeburg, 1842), p. 210,
and Richter, i. 17.
' Luther's early suggestions about the dispensation of the sacrament!
have been collected by SehUng, I. i. 2, 18. A portion of the hymn-book
has been reproduced in facsimile in von Bezold's GeschichU der deutschen
E^formalion, Berlin, 1S90, p. 5G6.
ORGANISATION OF LUTHERAN CHURCHES 403
This of itself, he thought, would in due time effect a
peaceful transformation of the ecclesiastical life and wor-
ship. The Diets of Niirnberg and Speyer had provided
a field, always growing wider, for this quiet transformation.
Luther was as indifferent to forms of Church government
as John Wesley, and, like "Wesley, every step he took in
providing for a separate organisation was forced upon him
as a practical necessity. To the very last he cherished
the hope that there might be no need for any great change
in the external government of the Church. The Augsburg
Confession itself (1530) concludes with the words: "Our
meaning is not to have rule taken from the bishops ;
but this one thing only is requested at their hands, that
they would suffer the gospel to be purely taught, and
that they would relax a few observances, which cannot be
held without sin. But if they will remit none, let them
look how they will give account to God for this, that by
their obstinacy they afford cause of division and schism,
which it were yet fit they should aid in avoiding." ^ It was
not that he believed that the existence of the visible Catholic
Church depended on what has been ambiguously called an
apostolic succession of bishops, who, through gifts conferred
in ordination, create priests, who in turn make Christians
out of natural heathen by the sacraments. He did not
believe that ordination needed a bishop to confer it ; he
made his position clear upon this point as early as 1525,
and ordination was practised without bishops from that
date. But he had no desire to make changes for the sake
of change. The Danish Church is at once episcopal and
Lutheran to this day.
It ought also to be remembered that Luther and all
the Eeformers believed and held firmly the doctrine of a
visible Catholic Church of Christ, and that the evangelical
movement which they headed was the outcome of the
centuries of saintly life within that visible Catholic-i
Church. They never for a moment supposed that in 1
withdrawing themselves from the authority of the Bishop 1
^ Schaff, The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches, p. 72. I
4^i.4 ORGANISATION OF LUTHERAN CHURCHUS
of Eome they were separating themselves from the visible
Church. Nor did they imagine that in making provisioS7
temporary or permanent, for preaching the word, the dis-
pensation of the sacraments, the exercise of discipline, and
so forth, they were founding a new Church, or severing
themselves from that visible Church within which they had
been baptized. They refused,^to concede the term Catholic
to their opponents, and in the vaiioas confieiSnces whicE
they had with them, the Eoman Catholics were always
officially designated " the adherents of the old religion,"
while they were termed " the associates of the Augsburg
Confession."
Luther cherished the hope, as late as 1545, that there
might not jaeed_to-be a perman ent change in the ex ternal
form of the Church in Germany ; and this gives all the
earlier schemes for the organisation of communities pro-
fessing the evangelical faith somewhat of a makeshift and
temporary appearance, which they in truth possessed.
Th e Die t_of. Speyer of 1526 ga ve the evangelical
princes and towns the right, they beHeyedj^to reorgaiiise
public worship and^ecclesiastical organisation within their^
dominions, and this right wasT^argely taken _advantage
of. Correspondents from all quarters asked Luther's
advice and co-operation, and we can learn from his
answers that he was anxious there should be_as much
local freedom as possible, — that communities should try
to ^nd out whaFsuited them best, and that the " use " of
Wittenberg should not be held to regulate the custom of
all other places.
It was less difficult for the authorities in the towns to take
over the charge of the ecclesiasticaT'arrangementsr" "They
had during mediaeval times some experience in the matter;
and cityjife was so compact that it was easy to regulate
the ecclesiastical, portion. The prevailing type exhibfted in
the number of " ordinances " which have come down to us,
collected by Eichter and Sehling, is that a sup erintenden t^
one of the city clergy, was placed over the city churches,,
and that he was more or less responsible to the city fathers
VISITATIONS 405
for the ecclesiastical life and rule within the domains of
t"he city.
The ecclesiastical organisation of the territories of the
princes was a much more difficult task. Luther proposed
to the'Elector of SasonjC-Jhat- a ..careful., visitation of his
principality should be made, district by district, in order
t6'"Sn3'out the state of matters and what required to be
done.
The correspondence of Luther during the years 1525—
1527 shows how urgent the need of such a visitation
appeared to him. He had been through the country
several times. Parish priests had laid their difficulties
before him and had asked his advice. His letters describe
graphically their abounding poverty, a poverty increased
by the fact that the only application of the new evangelical
liberty made by many of the people was to refuse to pay
all clerical dues. He came to the conclusion that the
" common man " respected neither priest nor preacher, that
there was no ecclesiastical supervision in the country dis-
tricts, and no exercise of authority to maintain even the
necessary ecclesiastical buildings. He expressed the fear
that if things were allowed to go on as they were doing,
there would be soon neither priest's house nor schools nor
scholars in many a parish. The reports of the first Saxon
Visitation showed that Luther had not exaggerated matters.^
The district about Wittenberg was in much better order
than the others ; but in the outlying portions a very bad
state of things was disclosed. In a village near Torgau
the Visitors discovered an old priest who was hardly able
to repeat the Creed or the Lord's Prayer,^ but who was
* Winter, "Die Kirchenvisitation von 1528 im Wittenberger Kreise"
[Zeitschrift filr die historische Theologie, xxxiii. pp. 295-322) ; and VisitatioTis
Protocolle in Neuen Mittheilungen des thuring. -sacks. Geschichts- Verein z«
Halle, IX. ii. pp. 78 ff.
^ The Visitation of Biabop Hooper of the diocese of Gloucester, made in
1551, disclosed a worse state of matters in England. The Visitor put these
simple questions to his clergy: "How many commandments are there?
Where are they to be found ? Repeat them. What are the Articles of the
Christian Faith (the Apostles' Creed) ? Repeat them. Prove them from
Scripture. Repeat the Lord's Prayer. How do you know that it is the
406 ORGANISATION OF LUTHERAN CHURCHES
held in high esteem as an exorcist, and who derived a good
income from the exercise of his skill in combating the evil
influences of witches. Priests had to be evicted for gross
immoralities. Some were tavern-keepers or practised other
worldly callings. VOlage schools were rarely to be found.
Some of the peasants complained that the Lord's Prayer
was so long that they could not learn it ; and in one place
the Visitors found that not a single peasant knew any
pra;jej:,Jwinctsoever.
/"""■" This Saxon Visitation was the model for similar ones
made in almost every evangelical principality, and its re-
ports serve to show what need there was for inquiry and
reorganisation. The lands of Electoral Saxony were divided
ThtoTour •' circles," and a commission of theologians and
lawyers was appointed to undertake the duties in each
circle. The Visitation of the one " circle " of Wittenberg,
with its thirty-eight parishes, may be taken as an example
of how the work was done, and what kinds of alterations
were suggested. The commissioners or Visitors were Martin
Luther and Justus Jonas, theologians, with Hans Metzsch,
Benedict Pauh, and Johann v. Taubenheim, jurists. They
began in October 1528, and spent two months over their
task. It was a strictly business proceeding. There is no
account of either Luther or Jonas preaching while on tour.
The Visitors went about their work with great energy,
holding conferences with the parish priests and with the
representatives of the community. They questioned the
priests about the religious condition of the people — whether
there was any gross and open immorality, whether the
people were regular in their attendance at church and in
comiQg to the communion. They asked the people how
the priests did their work among them — in the towns their
conferences were with the Rath, and in the comitry dis-
Lord's? Where is it to be found?" Three hundred and eleven clergymen
were asked these questions, and only fifty answered them all ; out of the
fifty, nineteen are noted as having answered mediocriter. Eight could not
answer a single one of them ; and while one knew that the number of the
commandments was ten, he knew nothing else [English ffistorical Eefiew
for 1904 (Jan.), pp. 98 ff.].
THE SAXON VISITATION 407
fcricts and villages with the male heads of families. Their
common work was to find out what was being done for the
" cure of souls," the instruction of the youth, and the care
of the poor. By " cure of souls " (Seelsorge) they meant
preaching, dispensation of the sacraments, catechetical
instruction, and the pastoral visitation of the sick. It
belonged to the theologians to estimate the capacities of
the pastors, and to the jurists to estimate the available
income, to look into all legal difficulties that might arise,
and especially to clear the entanglements caused by the
supposed jurisdiction of convents over many of the parishes.
This small district was made up of three outlying por-
tions of the three dioceses of Brandenburg, Magdeburg, and
Meissen. It had not been inspected within the memory
of man, and the results of episcopal negligence were mani-
fest. At Klebitz the peasants had driven away the parish
clerk and put the village herd in his bouse. At Biilzig
there was neither parsonage nor house for parish clerk, and
the priest was non-resident. So at Danna ; where the
priest held a benefice at Coswig, and was, besides, a chaplain
at Wittenberg, while the clerk lived at Zahna. The par-
sonages were all in a bad state of repair, and the local
authorities could not be got to do anything. Eoofs were
leaking, walls were crumbling, it was believed that the
next winter's frost would bring some down bodily. At
Pratau the priest had buUt all himself — parsonage, out-
houses, stable, and byre. All these things were duly
noted to be reported upon. As for the priests, the com-
plaints made against them were very few indeed. In one
case the people said that their priest drank, and was con-
tinually seen in the public-house. Generally, however, the
complaints, when there were any, were that the priest was
too old for his work, or was so utterly uneducated that he
could do little more than mumble the Mass. There was
Scanty evidence that the people understood very clearly
the evangelical theology. Partaking the Lord's Supper in
both " kinds," or in one only, was the distinction recognised
and appreciated between the new and the old teaching ;
408 ORGANISATION OF LUTHERAN CHUECHKS
and when they had the choice the people universally pre-
ferred the new. In one case the parishioners complained
that their priest iasisted on saying the Mass in Latin and
not in G-erman. In one case only did the Visitors find
any objection taken to the evangelical service. This was
at Meure, where the parish clerk's wife was reported to be
an enemy of the new pastor because he recited the service
in German. It turned out, however, that her real objection
was that the pastor had displaced her husband. At Bleddin
the peasants told the Visitors that their pastor, Christopher
Eichter, was a learned and pious man, who preached regu-
larly on all the Sundays and festival days, and generally
four times a week in various- parts of the parish. It
appeared, however, that their adnliration for him did not
compel them to attend his ministrations with very great
regularity. The energetic pastors were all young men
trained at Wittenberg. The older men, peasants' sons all
of them, were scarcely better educated than their parish-
ioners, and were quite unable to preach to them. The
Visitors found very few parishes indeed where three, four,
five or more persons were not named to them who never
attended church or came to the Lord's Table ; in some
parishes men came regularly to the preaching who never
would come to the Sacrament. What impressed the
Visitors most was the ignorance, the besotted ignorance,
of the people. They questioned them directly ; found out
whether they knew the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Conmiand-
ments, and the Lord's Prayer ; and then questioned them
about the meanings of the words ; and the answers were
disappointing.
Luther came back from the Visitation in greatly de-
pressed spirits, and expressed his feelings in his usual
energetic language. He says in his introduction to his
Small Catechism, a work he began as soon as he returned
from the Visitation :
" In setting forth this Catechism or Christian doctrine
in such a simple, concise, and easy form, I have been com-
pelled and driven by the wretched and lamentable state of
THE SAXON VISITATION 409
affairs which I discovered lately when I acted as a Visitor.
Merciful God, what misery have I seen, the common people
knowing nothing at all of Christian doctrine, especially in
the villages ! and unfortunately many pastors are well-nigh
unskilled and incapable of teaching; and although all are
called Christians and partake of the Holy Sacrament, they
know neither the Lord's Prayer, nor the Creed, nor the Ten
Commandments, but live like poor cattle and senseless swine,
though, now that the gospel is come, they have learnt well
enough how they may abuse their liberty. Oh, ye bishops,
how will ye ever answer for it to Christ that ye have so
shamefully neglected the people, and have not attended for
an instant to your office ? May all evil be averted from
you! (Das euch alles ungliick fliche). Ye forbid the taking
of the Sacrament in one kind, and insist on your human
laws, but never inquire whether they know the Lord's
Prayer, the Belief, the Ten Commandments, or any of the
words of God. Oh, woe be upon you for evermore ! "
The Visitors found that few books were to be seen in
the parsonages. They record one notable exception, the
parsonage of Schmiedeberg, where the priest had a library
of twelve volumes. It could not be expected that such
uneducated men could preach to much edification ; and
one of the recommendations of the Visitors was that copies
of Luther's Postils or short sermons on the Lessons for the
Day should be sent to all the parishes, with orders that they
should be read by the pastors to their congregations.
They did not find a trace anywhere of systematic
pastoral visitation or catechising.
In their practical suggestions for ending the priestly
inefficiency, the Visitors made simple and homely arrange-
ments. To take one example, — at Liessnitz, the aged pastor
Conrad was quite unable from age and ignorance to perform
his duties; but he was a good, inoffensive old man. It
was arranged that he was to have a coadjutor, who was to be
boarded by the rich man of the parish and get the fees, while
the old pastor kept the parsonage and the stipend, out of
which he was to pay fourteen gulden annually to his coadjutor.
The Visitors found that schools did not exist in most
of the villages, and they were disappointed with the con-
410 ORGANISATION OF LUTHERAN CHURCHES
dition of the schools they found in the smaller towns. It
was proposed to make the parish clerks the village school-
masters ; but they were wholly incompetent, and the
Visitors saw nothing for it but to suggest that the pastors
must become the village schoolmasters. The parish clerks
were ordered to teach the children to repeat the Small
Catechism by rote, and the pastors to test them at a cate-
chising on Sunday afternoons. In the towns, where the
churches usually had a cantor or precentor, this ofl&cial was
asked to train the children to sing evangelical hymns.
In their inquiries about the care of the poor, the Visi-
tors found that there was not much need for anything to
be done in the villages ; but the case was different in the
towns. They found that in most of them there existed
old foundations meant to benefit the poor, and they dis-
covered all manner of misuses and misappropriations of
the funds. Suggestions were made for the restoration of
these funds to their destined uses.
This very condensed account of what took place in the
Wittenberg " circle " shows how the work of the Visitors
was done ; a second and a third Visitation were needed in
Electoral Saxony ere things were properly arranged ; but in
the end good work was accomplished. The Elector refused
to take any of the confiscated convent lands and possessions
for civil purposes, and these, together with the Church
endowments, provided stipends for the pastors, salaries for
the schoolmasters, and a settled provision for the poor.
"When the Visitation was completed and the reports
presented, the Visitors were asked to draft and issue an
Instruction or lengthy advice to the clergy and people of
the " circle " they had inspected. This Instruction was
not considered a regular legal document, but its contents
were expected to be acted upon.
These Visitations and Instructions were the earliest
attempts at the reorganisation of the evangelical Cliurch
in Electoral Saxony. The Visitors remained as a " prindtive
evangelical consistory " to supervise their " circles."
' The Saxon Visitations became a model for most of the
THE SAXON VISITATION 411
North German evangelical territorial Churches, and the In-
structions form the earliest collection of requirements set
forth for the guidance of pastors and Christian people.
The directions are very minute. The pastors are told how
to preach, how to conduct pastoral visitations, what sins
they must specially warn their people against, and what
example they must show them. The care of schools and
of the poor was not forgotten.^
The fact that matrimonial cases were during the Middle
Ages almost invariably tried in ecclesiastical courts, made
it necessary to provide some legal authority to adjudicate
upon such cases when the mediaeval episcopal courts had
either temporarily or permanently lost their authority.
This led to a provisional arrangement for the government
of the Church in Electoral Saxony, which took a regular
legal form. A pastor, called a superintendent, was ap-
pointed in each of the four " circles " into which the
territory had been divided for the purpose of Visitation, to
act along with the ordinary magistracy in all ecclesiastical
matters, including the judging in matrimonial cases.^ This
Saxon arrangement also spread largely through the northern
German evangelical States.
A tljird.Visitation. _Df_JElectoral Saxony was made in
1532, and led to important ecclesiastical changes which
formed the basis of all that came afterwards. As a result
of the reports of the Visitors, of whom Justus Jonas seems
to have been the most energetic, the parishes were re-
arranged, the incomes of parish priests readjusted, and the
whole ecclesiastical revenues of the mediseval Church within
Electoral Saxony appropriated for the threefold evangelical
Uses of supporting the ministry, providing for schools, and
caring for the poor. ThealQctrinejCeremonies, and worship of
the evangelical Church were also settled on a definite basis.'
' Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des ISten Jahrhunderls
(Leipzig, 1902), I. 1. 142 ff. » Ihid. i. i. 49.
' The rites and ceremonies of worship in the Lutheran churches are given
in Daniel, Codex Liturgicus Bcclesia LiUherance in epitomen redaclus, wliich
forms the second volume of his Codex LUurgicus Ecclesice Universce (Leipzig,
1848).
412 ORGANISATION OF LUTHERAN CHURCHES
The Visitors pointed out that hitherto no arrangement
had been made to give the whole ecclesiastical administra-
tion one central authority. The Electoral Prince had
always been regarded- as iJi6..supreme ruler orTB e-'CL ui dr -
within his_^ dominions, but as he could not personally
supermtend everythiiig, there was needed some supreme
court which could act in all ecclesiastical cases as his
representative or instrument. The Visitors suggested the
revival of the mediaeval episcopal consistorial courts modi-
fied to suit the new circumstances. Bishops in the mediaeval
sense of the word might be and were believed to be super-
fluous, but their true function, the/tts episcopate, the right
of oversight, was indispensable. According to Luther's ideas
— ideas which had been gaining ground in Germany from
the last quarter of the fifteenth century- — this jm episcopale
belonged to the supreme secular authority. The mediaeval
bishop had exercised his right of oversight through a con-
sistorial court composed of theologians and canon lawyers
appointed by himself. These mediaeval courts, it was sug-
gested, might be transformed into Lutheran ecclesiastical
courts if the prince formed a permanent council composed
of lawyers and divines to act for him and in his name in
aU ecclesiastical matters, including matrimonial cases. The
Visitors sketched their plan ; it was submitted for revision
to Luther and to Chancellor Briick, and the result was the
Wittenberg Ecclesiastical Consistory established in 1542.^
That the arrangement was stni somewhat provisional ap-
pears from the fact that the court had not jurisdiction
over the whole of the Electoral dominions, and that
other two Consistories, one at Zeitz and the other at
Zwickau, were established with similar powers. But the
thing to be observed is that these courts were modelled on
the old medieval consistorial episcopal courts, and that,
' The ordinance establishing the Wittenberg Consistory will be found
in Ricliter, Die evangeliscJien Kirdteiwrdnunge^i des sechszelinten Jahrhun-
derls (Weimar, 1846), i. 367 ; and in Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchen-
ordnuiigen des ISten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1902), i. i. 200. Seliling sketchi-a
the history of its institution, i. i. 55.
(^ONSISTORIAL COURTS 413
like them, they were compogfi d of lawyers and of theo-
Jogians. "The essential difference was that these Lutheran
jiourts were appointed b^ and,, acted in the.,, name of the
iup£eine_^JSCinaZr"aa£hority. In Electoral Saxony their
ocal bounds of jurisdiction did not correspond to those
of the medijeval courts. It was impossible that they
should. Electoral Saxony, the ordinance erecting the Con-
sistory itself says, consisted of portions of " ten or twelve "
mediaeval dioceses. The courts had different districts
assigned to them ; but in all other things they reproduced
the mediaeval eonsistorial courts.
The constitutions of these courts provided for the
assembhng and holding of Synods to deliberate on the
affai*8-«f-th'e Church. The General Synod consisted of the
Consistory and the superintendents of the various " circles " ;
and particular Synods, which had to do with the Church
affairs of the "circle," of the superintendent, and of all
the clergy of the " circle."
Such were the beginnings of the CQasistorial system
of Church government/ which is a distinctivemarETifTh^
Lutheran Church, and which exhibits some of the indi-
vidual traits of Luther's personality. We can see in it
his desire to make full use of whatever portions of the
mediaeval Church usages could be pressed into the service
of his evangelical Church ; his conception that the one
supreme authority on earth was that of the secular govern-
ment ; his suspicion of the " common " man, and his resolve
to prevent the people exercising any control over the
arrangements . of the Church.
Gradually all the Lutheran Churches have adopted, in
general outline at least, this eonsistorial system ; but it
would be a mistake to think that the Wittenberg " use "
was adopted in all its details. Luther himself, as has
been said, had no desire for anything like uniformity, and
there was none, in the beginning. All the schemes of
ecclesiastical government proceed on the idea that the
jus episcopale or right of ecclesiastical oversight belongs to
the supreme territorial secular authority. All of them
414 ORGANISATION OF LUTHERAN CHURCHES
include within the one set of ordinances, pro\dsions for the
support of the ministry, for the maintenance of schools, and
for the care of the poor — the last generally expressed bj
regulations about the " common chest." The great variety
of forms of ecclesiastical government drafted and adopted
may be studied in Eichter's collection, which includes one
hundred and seventy - two separate ecclesiastical consti-
tutions, and which is confessedly very imperfect. The
gradual growth of the organisation finally adopted in each
city and State can be traced for a portion of Germany in
Sehling's unfinished work.^
The number of these ecclesiastical ordinances is
enormous, and the quantity is to be accounted for partly
by the way in which Germany was split up into numerous
small States in the sixteenth century, and also partly by
the fact that Luther pled strongly for diversity.
The ordinances were promulgated in many different
ways. Most frequently, perhaps, the prince published and
enacted them on his own authority like any other piece of
territorial legislation. Sometimes he commissioned a com-
mittee acting in his name to frame and publish. In
other cases they resulted from a consultation between the
prince and the magistrates of one of the towns within his
dominions. Sometimes, they came from the councUs and
the pastors of the towns to which they applied. In other
instances they were issued by an evangelical bishop. And
in a few cases they are simply the regulations issued by a
single pastor for his own parish, which the secular author-
ities did not think of altering.
Although they are independent, one from another,
they may be grouped in families which resemble each other
closely.*
Some of the territories reached the consistorial system
' The first half of the first part of Sehling's Die evangelischen Kirehen-
ordmungen des 16 Jahrhwnderts appeared in 1902, and the second half of the
first part in 1904.
^ Cf. article on "Kirohen-Ordnung" in the 8rd edition of Herzog'a
Healencyclopadie filr proteslaMische Theologie.
ORGANISATION IN HESSE 415
much sooner thau others. If a principality consisted in
whole or in part of a secularised ecclesiastical State, the
machinery of the consistorial court lay ready to the hand
of the prince, and was at once adapted to the use of the
evangelical Church. The system was naturally slowest to
develop in the imperial cities, most of which at first pre-
ferred an organisation whose outlines were borrowed from
the constitution drafted by Zwingli for Zurich.
Once only do we find an attempt to give an evan-
gelicarl'-Ghtrrch occupying a large territory a democratic
constitution. It was made by Philip^Landgraye.of, Hesse,"
wEo"was never afraid „of the democracy. No German
prince had so thoroughly won the confidence of his com-
monalty. The Peasants' War never devastated his do-
minions. He did not join in the virulent persecution of
the Anabaptists which disgraced the Lutheran as well as
the Eoman Catholic States during the latter half of the
sixteenth century. It was natural that Luther's earlier
ideas about the rights of the Christian community (Gemeinde)
should appeal to him. In 1526 (Oct. 6th), when the Diet
of Speyer had permitted the organisation of evangelical
Churches, Philip summoned a Synod at Homberg, and in-
vited not merely pastors and ecclesiastical lawyers, but
representatives from the nobles and from the towns. A
scheme for ecclesiastical government, which had been drafted
by Francis Lambert, formerly a Franciscan monk, was laid
before the assembly and adopted. It was based on the idea
that the word of God is the only supreme rule to guide
and govern His Church, and that Canoa Law has no place
whatsoever within an evangelical Church. Scripture teaches,
the document explains, that it belongs to the Christian com-
munity itself to select and dismiss pastors and to exercise
discipline by means of excommunication. The latter right
ought to be used in a weekly meeting (on Sundays) of the
congregation and pastor. For the purposes of orderly rule
the Church must have office-bearers, who ought to conform
as nearly as possible to those mentioned in the New Testa-
ment Scriptures. They are bishops (pastors), elders, and
416 ORGANISATION OF LUTHERAN CHURCHES
deacons ; and the deacons are the guardians of the poor
as well as ecclesiastical officials. All these office-bearers
must remember that their function is that of servants,
and in no sense lordly or magisterial. They ought to be
chosen by the congregation, and set apart by the laying
on of hands ^cording to apostolic practiceT" — Ar-bisbop
(pastor) must be' ordaiaed by at least three pastors, and a
deacon by the pastor or by two elders. The government
of the whole Church ought to be in the hands of a Synod,
to consist of all the pastors and a delegate from every
parish. Such in outHne was the democratic ecclesiastical
government proposed for the territory of Hesse and ac-
cepted by the Landgrave.^ He was persuaded, however, by
Luther's strong remonstrances to abandon it. There is no
place for the democratic or representative-filfiment in ffi5~
oi^nisation of the Lutheran Churches.
1 Eichter, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, etc. i, 66 ff.
CHAPTER VII.
THE LUTHERAN REFORMATION OUTSIDE GERMANY.^
The influence of Luther went far beyond Germany. It
was felt in England, France, Scotland, Holland, Poland,
and Scandinavia. England went her own peculiar way;
France, Holland, and Scotland, in the end, accepted the
leadership of Calvin ; the Lutheran Eeformation, outside
Germany, was really confined to Scandinavia alone.
In these Scandinavian lands the religious awakening
was bound up with political and social movements more
than in any other countries. The reformation in the
Church was, indeed, begun by men who had studied under
Luther at Wittenberg, or who had received their first
promptings from his writings ; but it was carried on and
brought to a successful issue by statesmen who saw in it
the means to deliver their land from political anarchy,
caused by the overweening independence and turbulence of
the great ecclesiastical lords, and who were almost com-
pelled to look to the large possessions of the Church as
a means to replenish their exhausted treasuries without
ruining the overburdened taxpayers.
When Eric was crowned King of Denmark, Sweden,
and Norway in 1397, the assembled nobles, representative
' Sources : Baazius, Inventarium Ecdes. Smogothorum (1642) ; Pon-
toppidan, Annales ecclesice Damicce, bks. ii., iii. (Copenhagen, 1744,
1747).
Later Books : Lau, Geschichte der Meformalion in SehUswig-Holstein
(Hamburg, 1867) ; Willson, History of Church and State in Norway (London,
1903) ; Watson, The Swedish Revolution under Oustavus Vasa (Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1889) ; Wiedling, Schwedische Geschichte im Zeitalter der
Befarmation (Gotha, 1882) ; Cambridge Modem History, ii. xvii. (Cambridge,
1903).
27*
418 LUTHERAN REFORMATION OUTSIDE GERM AITS
of the three kingdoms, agreed to the celebrated Union of
Kalmar, which declared that the three lands were to be
for ever united under one sovereign. The treaty was
purely dynastic, its terms were vague, and it was never
very effective. Without going into details, it may be said
that the king Hved in Denmark, and ruled in the interests
of that country ; that he also may be said to have ruled
in Norway ; but that in Sweden his authority was merely
nominal, and sometimes not even that. In Denmark itself,
monarchical government was difficult. The Scandinavian
kingship was elective, and every election was an oppor-
tunity for reducing the privileges, authority, and wealth of
the sovereign, and for increasing those of the nobles and
of the great ecclesiastics, who, being privileged classes, were
freed from contributing to the taxation.
In 1513, Christian ii., the nephew of the Elector of
Saxony, and the brother-in-law of the Emperor Charles V.
(1515), came to the throne, and his accession marks the
beginning of the new era which was to end with the
triumph of the Eeformation in all three countries. Chris-
tian was a man of great natural abUities, with a profound
sense of the miserable condition of the common people
within his realms, caused by the petty tyrannies of the
nobles, ecclesiastical and secular. No reigning prince, save
perhaps George, Duke of Saxony, could compete with him
in learning; but he was cruel, partly from nature and
partly from policy. He had determined to estabUsh his
rule over the three kingdoms whose nominal king he
was, and to free the commonalty from their oppression
by breaking the power of the nobles and of the great
Churchmen. The task was one of extreme difficulty,
and he was personally unsuccessful; but his efforts laid
the foundation on which successors were able to buUd
securely.
He began by conquering rebellious Sweden, and dis-
graced his victory by a treacherous massacre of Swedish
notables at Stockholm (1520), — a deed which, in the end,
led to the complete separation of Sweden from Denmark.
IN DENMARK 419
After having thus, as he imagined, consolidated his power,
he pressed forward his schemes for reform. He took piiins
to encourage the trade and agriculture of Denmark ; he
patronised learning. He wrote to his uncle (1519),
Frederick, the Elector of Saxony, to send him preachers
trained by Luther ; and, in response to his appeal, received
first Martin Eeinhard, and then Andrew Bodenstein of
Carlstadt. These foreigners, who could only address the
people through interpreters, did not make much impression ;
but reformation was pushed forward by the king. He
published, on his own authority, two sets of laws dealing
with the nobles and the Church, and subjecting both to
the sovereign. He enacted that all convents were (;o be
under episcopal inspection. Non-resident and unlettered
clergy were legally aboHshed. A species of kingly consis-
torial court was set up in Copenhagen, and declared to
be the supreme ecclesiastical judicature for the country ;
and appeals to Eome were forbidden. It can scarcely be
said that these laws were ever in operation. A revolt
by the Jutlanders gave a rallying point to the disaffection
caused by the proposed reforms. Christian fled from Den-
mark (1523), and spent the rest of his life in exile or in
prison. His law-books were burnt.
The Jutlanders had called Frederick of Schleswig-
Holstein, Christian's uncle, to the throne, and he was recog-
nised King of Denmark and of Norway in 15 23. He had
come to the kingdom owing to the reaction against the
reforms of his nephew, but in his heart he knew that they
were necessary. He promised to protect the interests of
the nobles, and to defend the Church against the advance
of Lutheran opinions ; but he soon endeavoured to find a
means of evading his pledges. He found it when he pitted
the nobles against the higher clergy, and announced that
he had never promised to support the errors of the Churph
of Eome. At the National Assembly {Herredag) at Odense
he was able to get the marriage of priests permitted, and
a decree that bishops were in the future to apply to the
king and not to the Pope for their Pallium. The Eeforma-
420 LUTHERAN REFORMATION OUTSIDE GERMANY
tion had now native preachers to support it, especially Hans
Tausen, who was called the Danish Luther, and they were
encouraged by the king. At the Herredag at Copenhagen
in 1530, twenty-one of these Lutheran preachers were
summoned, at the instigation of the bishops, and formal
accusations were made against them for preaching heresy.
Tausen and his fellows produced a confession of faith in
forty-three articles, all of which he and his companions
offered to defend. A public disputation was proposed, which
did not take place because the Eomanist party refused to
plead in the Danish language. This refusal was inter-
preted by the people to mean that they were afraid
to discuss in a language which everyone understood.
Lutheranism made rapid progress among all classes of the
population.
On Frederick's death there was a disputed succession,
which resulted ia civil war. In the end Frederick's son
ascended the throne as Christian iii.. King of Denmark
and Norway (1536). The king, who had been present at
the Diet of "Worms, and who had learned there to esteem
Luther highly, was a strong Lutheran, and determined to
end the authority of the Eomish bishops. He proposed
to his council that bishops should no longer have any share
in the government, and that their possessions should be
forfeited to the Crown. This was approved of not merely
by the councU, but also at a National Asssembly which
met at Copenhagen (Oct. 30th, 1536), where it was further
declared that the people desired the holy gospel to be
preached, and the whole episcopal authority done away
with. The king asked Luther to send him some one to
guide his people in their ecclesiastical matters. Bugen-
hagen was despatched, came to Copenhagen (1537), and took
the chief ecclesiastical part in crowning the king. Seven
superintendents (who afterwards took the title of bishops)
were appointed and consecrated. The Eeformation was
carried out on conservative Lutheran lines, and the old
ritual was largely preserved. Tausen's Confession was set ^
aside in favour of the Augsburg Confession and Luther's
IN SWEDEN 421
Small Catechism, and the Lutheran Keformation was
thoroughly and legally established.
The Eeformation also became an accomplished fact in
Norway and Iceland, but its introduction into these lands
was much more an act of kingly authority.
After the massacre of Swedish notables in Stockholm
(Nov. 1520), young Gustaf Ericsson, commonly known as
Gustaf Vasa, from the vasa or sheaf which was on his coat
of arms, raised the standard of revolt against Denmark.
He was gradually able to rally the whole of the people
around him, and the Danes were expelled from the kingdom.
In 1521, Gustaf had been declared regent of Sweden, and
in 1523 he was called by the voice of the people to the
throne. He found himself surrounded by almost insuper-
able difficulties. There had been practically no settled
government in Sweden for nearly a century, and every
great landholder was virtually an independent sovereign.
The country had been impoverished by long wars. Two-
thirds of the land was owned by the Church, and the
remaining third was almost entirely in the hands of the
secular nobles. Both Church and nobles claimed exemp-
tion from taxation. The trade of the country was in the
hands of foreigners — of the Danes or of the Hanse Towns.
Gustaf had borrowed money from the town of Liibeck
for his work of liberation. The city was pressing for
repayment, and its commissioners followed the embarrassed
monarch wherever he went. It was hopeless to expect to
raise money by further taxation of the already depressed
and impoverished peasants.
In these circumstances the king turned to the Church.
He compelled the bishops to give him more than one
subsidy (1522, 1523); but this was inadequate for his
needs. The Church property was large, and the king
planned to overthrow the ecclesiastical aristocracy by the
help of the Lutheran Eeformation.
Lutheranism had been making progress in Sweden.
Two brothers, Olaus and Laurentius Petri, sons of a black-
smith at Orebro, had been sent by their father to study
422 LUTHERAN REFORMATION OUTSIDE GERMANY
in Germany. They had meant to attend the University
of Leipzig ; but, attracted by the growing fame of Luther,
they had gone to "Wittenberg, and had become enthusiastic
disciples of the Eeformer. On their return to Sweden
(1519) they had preached Lutheran doctrine, and had
made many converts — among others, Laurentius Andreas,
Archdeacon at Strengnas. In spite of protests from the
bishops, these three men were protected by the king.'
Olaus Petri was especially active, and made long preach-
ing tours, declaring that he taught the pure gospel which
"Ansgar, the apostle of the North, had preached seven
hundred years before in Sweden."
Gustaf brought Olaus to Stockholm (1524), and made
him town-clerk of the city ; his brother Laurentius was
appointed professor of theology at Upsala ; Laurentius
Andrese was made Archdeacon of Upsala and Chancellor
of Sweden. When the bishops demanded that the Ee-
formers should be silenced, Olaus challenged them to a
public disputation. The challenge was refused ; but in 1524
a. disputation was arranged in the king's palace in Stockhohn
between Olaus and Dr. Galle, who supported the old re-
ligion. The conference, which included discussion of the
doctrines of Justification by Faith, Indulgences, the Mass,
Purgatory, and the Temporal Power of the Pope, had the
effect of strengthening the cause of the Eeformation. In
1525, Olaus defied the rules of the mediaeval Church by
pubUcly marrying a wife. The same year the king called
for a translation of the Scriptures into Swedish, and in
1526 Laurentius Petri published his New Testament. A
translation of the whole Bible was edited by the same
scholar, and published 1540—1541. These translations,
especially that of the New Testament, became very popular,
and the people with the Scripture in their hands were
able to see whether the teaching of the preachers or
of the bishops was most in accordance with the Holy
Scriptures.
There is no reason to belie\^e that the king did not
take the side of the Lutheran Reformation from genuine
IN SWEDEN 423
conviction. He had made the acquaintance of the brothers
Petri before he was called to be the deliverer of his coiintry.
But it is unquestionable that his financial embarrassment
whetted his zeal for the reformation of the Church in
Sweden. Matters were coming to a crisis, which was
reached in 1 527. At the Diet in that year, the Chancellor,
in the name of the king, explained the need for an increased
revenue, and suggested that ecclesiastical property was the
only source from which it could be obtained. The bishops,
Johan Brask, Bishop of Linkoeping, at their head, replied
that they had the Pope's orders to defend the property of
the Church. The nobles supported them. Then Gustaf
presented his ultimatum. He told the Diet plainly that
they must submit to the proposals of the Chancellor or
accept his resignation, pay him for his property, return
him the money he had spent in defence of the kingdom,
and permit him to leave the country never to return. The
Diet spent three days in wrangling, and then submitted
to his wishes. The whole of the ecclesiastical property —
episcopal, capitular, and monastic — which was not absolutely
needed for the support of the Church was to be placed
in the hands of the king. Preachers were meanwhile to
set forth the pure gospel, until a conference held ' in
presence of the Diet would enable that assembly to come
to a decision concerning matters of religion. The Diet
went on, without waiting for the conference, to pass the
twenty-four regulations which made the famous Ordinances
of Vesteras, and embodied the legal Eeformation. They
contained provisions for secularising the ecclesiastical pro-
perty in accordance with the previous decision of the Diet ;
declared that the king had the right of vetoing the deci-
sions of the higher ecclesiastics ; that the appointment of
the parish clergy was in the hands of the bishops, but that
the king could remove them for inefficiency ; that the
pure gospel was to be taught in every school ; and that
auricular confession was no longer compulsory.
While the Ordinances stripped the Swedish Church of
a large amount of its pronerty and made it subject to the
424 LUTHERAN REFORMATION OUTSIDE GERMANY
king, they did not destroy its episcopal organisation, nor
entirely impoverish it. Most of the monasteries were de-
serted when their property was taken away. The king knew
that the peasantry scarcely understood the Eeformed doc-
trines, and had no wish to press them unduly on his people.
For the same reason the old ceremonies and usages which
did not flagrantly contradict the new doctrines were suffered
to remain, and given an evangeUcal meaning. The first
evangeUcal Hymn-book was published in 1530, and the
Swedish "Mass" in 1531, both drafted on Lutheran
models. Lauren tius Andreae was made Archbishop of
Upsala (1527), and a National Synod was held under his
presidency at Orebro (1528), which guided the Eeformation
according to strictly conservative Lutheran ideals. Thus
before the death of Gustaf Vasa, Sweden had joined the
circle of Lutheran Churches, and its people were slowly
coming to understand the principles of the Eeformation.
The Eeformation was a very peaceful one. No one suffered
death for his religious opinions.
The fortunes of the Swedish Church were somewhat
varied under the immediate successors of Gustavus. His
iU-fated son showed signs of preferring Calvinism, and
insisted on the suppression of some of the ecclesiastical
festivals and some of the old rites which had been retained ;
but these attempts ended with his reign. His brother and
successor, Johan m., took the opposite extreme, and coquetted
long with Eome, and with proposals for reunion, — proposals
which had no serious result. When Johan died in 1592,
his son and successor, who had been elected King of Poland,
and had become a Eoman Catholic, aroused the fears of
his Swedish subjects that he might go much further than
his father. The people resolved to make sure of their
Protestantism before their new sovereign arrived in the
country. A Synod was convened at which both lay and
ecclesiastical deputies were present. The members first
laid down the general rule that the Holy Scriptures were
their supreme doctrinal standard, and then selected the
Augsburg Confession as the Confession of the Swedish
IN SWEDEN 425
Church. Luther's Small Catechism, which had been re-
moved from the schools by King Johan in., was restored.
This meeting at Upsala settled for the future the ecclesi-
astical polity of Sweden. The country showed its attach-
ment to the stricter Lutheranism by adopting the Formula
of Concord in 1664.
CHAPTEE VIIL
THE RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES INSPIRING THE
REFORMATION.^
§ 1. The Reformation did not take its rise from a Criticism
of Doctrines.
The whole of Luther's religious history, from his entrance
into the convent at Erfurt to the publication of the
Augsburg Confession, shows that the movement of which
he was the soul and centre did not arise from any merely
intellectual criticism of the doctrines of the mediaeval
Church, and that it resulted in a great deal more than a
revision or reconstruction of a system of doctrinal con-
ceptions.^ There is no trace of any intellectual difficulties
about doctrines or statement of doctrines in Luther's mind
during the supreme crisis of his history. He was driven
out of the world of human life and hope, where he was
well fitted to do a man's work, by the overwhelming
pressure of a great practical religious need — anxiety to
save his soul. He has himself said that the proverb that
douht,maJ:es : a monk was true in his case. He doubted
' Domer, Sistory of Protestant Theology (Edinburgh, 1871) ; Kbstlin,
Luthers Theologie in ihrer geschichtlichen EntwickeluTig und in ihrem inneiii
Zusammenhamge (Stuttgart, 1883) ; Theodor Harnack, Luthers Theologie mit
besonderer Beziehwng auf seine Versohnungs- und Erlbsungslehre (Erlangen,
1862-1886) ; A. Eitsohl, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Secon-
ciliaiion (Edinburgh, 1872) ; A. Harnack, Sistory of Dogma, vii. (Londou,
1899) ; Loofs, Leitfaden eum Studium der Dogmengeschichte '(Halle, 1893) ;
Herrmann, Communion viith God (London, 1895) ; Hering, Die Mystik
Luthers in Zusammenhang seiner Theologie (Leipzig, 1879) ; Denifle, Ltither
und Lutherthum in der ersten Entwictlung, toI. i. (Mainz, 1904), vol. ii.
(1905) ; Walther, FUr Lulher wider Mom (Halle, 1906).
^ Loofs, Leitfaden, etc. p. 345.
426
NOT DOCTRINE BUT RELIGIOUS NEED 427
whether he could save his soul in the world, and was
thBrefQiSIfsrced_k!_.leaTO~Jt; and enter^the convent.
He had lost whatever evangelical teaching he had
learnt in childhood or in Frau Cotta's household at Eise-
nach. He had surrendered himself to the popular belief,
fostered by the whole penitential system of the mediaeval
Church, that man could and must make himself fit to
receive the grace of God which procures salvation. The
self -torturing cry, " Oh, when wilt thou become holy and
fit to obtain the grace of God ? " (0 wenn will tu einmal
fromm werden und genug thun du einen gnadigen Gott
kriegest f), drove him into the convent. Hej.^lieved, and
the almost unanimous opinion of his age agreeawith~him,
that there, if anywhere, he could find the peace he was
seeking with such desperation. ~
Inside the convent he applied himself with all the force
of a strong nature, using every means that the complicated
penitential system of the Church had provided to help
him, to make himself pious and fit to be the receptacle
of the grace of God. He submitted to the orders of his
superiors with the blind obedience which the most rigorous
ecclesiastical statutes demanded; he sought the comforting
consolations which confession was declared to give ; he
underwent every part of the ^om^lgx-.aystem of - expiations
jEhi^ "ffie" medTaevalUhurch recommended ; he made full — .
use_of_theja^rament8, and waited in vain for the mysterious, /
inexplicable experience of the grace which was said to \
accompany and flow from them. He persevered in spite-«f —
eling of continuous failure. " If ajnonk ever reached
heaven—by-flionECTy,'^ "he has said, " I would have^und
my way there also ; all my convenT comrades will bear
witnBS5^o"that." * He gave a still stronger proof of his
loyalty to the medieeval Church and its advice to men in
his mood of mind ; he persevered in spite of the knowledge
that his comrades and his religious superiors believed him
to be a young saint, while he knew that he was far other-
' Luther's Works (Erlangen edition), xxxi. 273 ; in Die ICleine Anlwort
wuf Uerzog Oeorgen ndhestes Buch.
428 RELIGIOUS PEINCIPLES
wise, and that he was no nearer God than he had been
before he entered the monastery, or had begun his quest
after the sense of pardon of sin. The contrast between
what his brethren thought he must be and what his own
experience told him that he was, must have added bitter-
ness to the cup he had to drink during these terrible
months in the Erfurt convent. He says himseli :
" After I had made the profession, I was congratulated
by the prior, the convent, and the father-confessor, because
I was now an innocent child coming pure from baptism.
Assuredly, I would willingly have dehghted in the glorious
fact that I was such a good man, who by his own deeds and
without the merits of Christ's blood had made himself so
fair and holy, and so easily too, and in so short a time. But
although I hstened readily to the sweet praise and glowing
language about myself and my doings, and allowed myself to
be described as a wonder-worker, who could make himseK
holy in such an easy way, and could swallow up death, and
the devil also, yet there was no power in it aU to maintain
me. When even a small temptation came from sin or death
I fell at once, and found that neither baptism nor monkery
could assist me ; I felt that I had long lost Christ and His
baptism. I was the most miserable man on earth ; day and
night there was only waOing and despair, and no one could
restrain me." ^
He adds that all he knew of Christ at this time was
that He was " a stern judge from whom I would fain have
fled and yet could not escape."
"""" during these two years of anguish, Luther believed that
he was battling_^with himself and with__his_sin ; he was
really struggling with the religion of his times and Church.
He was probing it, testing it, examining all its depths,
wrestling with all its means of grace, and finding that
what were meant to be sources of _cjQBifort and consolajion
were simply additional -springs__QL--terror. "He""^^ too
clear-sighted, his spiritual senses were too acute, he was
too much in deadly earnest, not to see that none of l^ese
aids were leading Jiini^o a soJid_^roundjof3fi32H^-fflt-^'
• Luther's Works (Ei-langen edition), xxxi. 278, 279.
FAITH 429
which he could base his hopes for time and for eternity ;
and he was too honest with himself to be persuaded that
he was otherwise than his despair told him.^
At length, guided in very faltering fashion by the
Scriptures, especially by the Psalms and the Epistle to
the Eomans, by the Apostles' Creed, and by fellow monks,
he (to use his own words) came to see- that the righteous-
ness^ of God (Rom. i. 17) is not the righteousness by
whrch" a righteous God punishes the um-ighteous and
sinners, but that by which a merciful God justifies us
through faith (not justitia, qua deus Justus est et peccatores
infustosque punit, but that qiia nos deus misericors justificat
per fidem)} '&J faith, he says. What, then, did he mean
by "faith"? --"' '
He replies :
"There are two kinds of belieying : first, a believing /
about God wEIch roeaiis that I Ibelieve that what is said of I/O'
God is true. This faith is rather a form, of knowledge than^ v"^^
aTMEE There isTsecoUdly, a Believing in_God which means _l
thaJ.I.jaiJBJ-Ji^!^JJ^i^--'^!^^-Si72 iiiyselfjip, to. thinking that I •
I can have dealings with Him^ andJeUeve without . any 1
doiiH' that Hel)nll''|ift"aiid"c[o~to me according to the things J
said of Him. Such faith, which throws itself upon God,
whether in life or "in'dealH, alone makes a Christian man." *
The -f aith which he_pTdzp.rl is that religious_faculiy:jsliic]i_ ,
" throws__itselt,.jipon,_GQd " ; and from the first Luther
recognised that fai^h of this ]s.ifl,d was a. direct, gift from
God. Havin g it wg jiave^ everything ; ^without it we -have
nothing. Here we find something entirely new, or at least
hitherto unexpressed, so far as mediaeval theology was
concerned. Mediaeval theologians had recognised faith in
the sense of what Luther called frigida opinio, and it is
difficult to conceive that they did not also indirectly
' Harnack, History of Dogma, yii. 182.
'' Loofs, Leitfaden, etc. p. 346.
' Luther's Works (Erlangen edition), xxii. 15. Cf. xlviii. 5 : "If thou
holdest faith to be simply a thought concerning God, then that thought il
as little able to give eternal life as ever a monkish cowl could give it."
430 RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES
acknowledge that there must be something like trust oi
fiduda ; but faith with them was simply one among^many
Euinan efforts .all equally necessary in . order to see and
know God. Luther recognised that therejwas„thi&Jaa!Lctf^
faith, which a man begets and brings to pass in hijnself^by
assent to doctrines of some sort. But he did not think Jnuch
of it. He calls it worthless "because it gives us nothing.
" They think that faith is a th ing which they may have
or noyba^e_at^willi,like_any4ither.jtiatoalJiunianT3im so
■""when they arrive at a conclusion and sayP' Truly the
doctrine is correct, and therefore I believe it,' then they
, think that this is faith. Now, when they see and feel that
t[o change has been wrought in^themselves and in others,
and that workfe do not "follow, and they remain as before
in the old nature, then they think that the faith is not
good enough, but that there must be something more and
greater." ^
The real f aith^ the faith which^^is trugt, the di vine gift
1 whi^ impels us to throw ourselves upon_GocLgis£s^us_the
1 living assurance of a living God, who hasxfi-vealed_^mself,
I Boade us see His loving Fatfierly heartJn . Christ Jesus;
I and that is the Christian rejigion in its very core and
centre. He sum of Christianity is — (1) God manifest in
Christ, the God of grace, accessible by every Christian man
and woman ; and (2) unwavering trust in Him who has
given Himself to us in Christ Jesus, — unwavering, because
jChrist with His work has undertaken our cause and made
lit His.
The God we have access to and Whom we can trust
because we have thrown ourselves upon Him and have found
that He sustains us, is no philosophical abstraction, to be
described in definitions and argued about in syllogisms.
He is seen and known, because we see and know Christ
Jesus. " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."
For with Luther and all the Eeformers, Christ fills the
e sphere of God ; an d they do not recognise any~
theology which is not a Christology. ~ ~-
^ Iflif^"^t n^"~?«" f^"'' Vi - U 'n^cr. edition), xiii. 801.
^ FAITH 431
The faith which makes us throw ourselves upon God is
no mood of jaigre mystical abandonment .It is our very
life, as Luther was never tired of saying. It is God within
us, and wells forth in all kinds of activities.
"It is a living, busy, active, powerful thing, jaith; it is
impossible for itriSt~fc©-d«-«g gSotl-coBlinuallyr It never
asks whether good works are to be done ; it has done them
before there is time to ask the question, and it is always
doing them."^
Christianity is therefore an interwoven tissue of
promises and prayers of faith. On the one side there is
the Father, reveaUng Himself, sending down to us His
promises which are yea and amen in Christ Jesus ; and on
the other side there are the hearts of men ascending in
faith to God, receiving, accepting, and resting on the
promises of God, and on God who always gives Himself in
His promises.
This is what came to Luther and ended his long and
terrible struggle. He is unwearied in describing it. The
descriptions are very varied, so far as external form and
expression go, — now texts from the Psalms, the Prophets,
or the New Testament most aptly quoted ; now phrases
borrowed from the picturesque language of the mediaeval
mystics; now sentences of striking, even rugged, origin-
aUty; sometimes propositions taken from the mediaeval
scholastic. But whatever the words, the meaning is always
the same.
V This conception of what is meant by Christianity is the
religious SOul ol the Eeformation. It contains within it all
tbe'ffiimptlVSly'retigious principles which inspired it. It
caS scarcely be called a^^dpgma. ItJi, ,jn^ experience, and
the phrases wEicti set it forth are the descriptions of an
experience which a human soul has gone through. The
thing itself is beyond exact definition — as all deep experi-
ences are. It must _bg.,-felt.._and_^one through to be
known. The Eefbrmation started from this personal
' Luther's Works (Erlangen edition), Ixiii, 125.
432 RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES
experience of the believing Christian, which it declared
to be the one elemental fact in Christianity which cquld_
never be proved by argument and could never be dissolved
away by speculation. It proclaimed the greaTtrutE", which
had' been universally neglected throughout the whole period
of mediaeval theology by everyone except the Mystics, tha^
I in order to know God man must be in living touch with
I God Himself. Therein lay its originality and its power^
Luther rediscovered religion whenjig ^clared tha t-t he ■ tr uI jl
Christian man must cling directly and with a living faith
to the God Who speaks to him in Christ, saymg,"" i am thy
salvation?' The earlier ^iforiners never forgot thliT LutHef~
proclaimed his discovery, he never attempted to prove it by
argument ; it was something self-evident — seen and known
when experienced.
This is always the way with gre