This volume constitutes the first part of
THE HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION
by Philip Schaff
It is included as Volume VII in the 8-volume
HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
Volume VIII in this series, on the Swiss
Reformation, completes the 2-volume unit
on he The History of the Reformation
HISTORY
of the
CHRISTIAN CHURCH Schaff, Philip, History of the Christian
Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997. This
material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended
(according to the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The
Electronic Bible Society, Dallas, TX, 1998.
by
PHILIP SCHAFF
professor of church history in the union theological seminary
new york
Christianus sum: Christiani nihil a me alienum puto
VOLUME VII.
MODERN CHRISTIANITY
THE GERMAN REFORMATION
This is a reproduction of the Second Edition, Revised
PREFACE.
I publish the history of the Reformation in advance of the concluding volume on the Middle Ages, which will follow in due time.
The Reformation was a republication of primitive
Christianity, and the inauguration of modern Christianity. This makes
it, next to the Apostolic age, the most important and interesting
portion of church history. The Luther and Zwingli celebrations of 1883
and 1884 have revived its memories, and largely increased its
literature; while scholars of the Roman Church have attempted, with
great ability, an ultramontane reconstruction of the history of Germany
and Europe during the period of the Reformation. The Cultur-Kampf is
still going on. The theological battles of the sixteenth century are
being fought over again in modern thought, with a slow but steady
approach to a better understanding and filial settlement. Protestantism
with its freedom can afford to be fair and just to Romanism, which is
chained to its traditions. The dogma of papal infallibility is fatal to
freedom of investigation. Facts must control dogmas, and not dogmas
facts. Truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is the aim of
the historian; but truth should be told in love (
The signs of the times point to a new era in the ever onward March of Christ’s kingdom. God alone foreknows the future, and sees the end from the beginning. We poor mortals know only "in part," and see "in a mirror, darkly." But, as the plans of Providence unfold themselves, the prospect widens, old prejudices melt away, and hope and charity expand with our vision. The historian must be impartial, without being neutral or indifferent. He must follow the footsteps of Divine Providence, which shapes our ends, and guides all human events in the interest of truth, righteousness, and peace.
I have collected much material for a comprehensive history of the Reformation, in the libraries of Europe, during several summer visits (thirteen in all), and digested it at home. I have studied the Luther literature in Berlin, the Zwingli literature in Zuerich, the Calvinistic literature in Geneva and Paris, the English and Scotch Reformation in London, Oxford, and Edinburgh. Two years ago I revisited, with great satisfaction, the classical localities made memorable by the Reformation,—Wittenberg, Eisleben, Eisenach, the Wartburg, Halle, Leipzig, Jena, Weimar, Erfurt, Gotha, Heidelberg, Zuerich, Geneva,—and found kind friends and Christian brethren everywhere. At Marburg, Coburg, Augsburg, I had been before. By way of contrast I made in the same year an interesting tour through Roman-Catholic Spain, the land of Ferdinand and Isabel, Charles V., Philip II., and Ignatius Loyola, and compared her former and present state with the Protestant North. In Italy I have been three times, including a three-months sojourn in Rome. A visit to the places of events brings one nearer to the actors, and puts one almost into the position of a witness.
This volume embraces, besides a general introduction to modern church history, the productive period of the German Reformation, from its beginning to the Diet of Augsburg (1530), and the death of Luther (1546), with a concluding estimate of the character and services of this extraordinary man. I have used the new Weimar edition of his works as far as published; for the other parts, Walch and the Erlangen edition. Of modern Protestant historians I have chiefly consulted Ranke (my teacher), and Koestlin (my friend), with whose views, on Luther and the Reformation I am in essential harmony. I have also constantly compared the learned Roman-Catholic works of Doellinger, and Janssen, besides numerous monographs. The reader will find classified lists of the sources and literature in all leading sections (e.g., pp. 94, 99, 183, 272, 340, 399, 421, 494, 579, 612, 629, 695, 706), and occasional excursions into the field of the philosophy of church history (as in the introductory chapter, and in §§ 49, 56, 63, 79, 87, 99, etc.). In these I have endeavored to interpret the past in the light of the present, and to make the movements of the sixteenth century more intelligible through their results in the nineteenth. For we must judge the tree by its fruits. "God’s mills grind slowly, but wonderfully fine."
I am conscious of the defects of this new attempt to reproduce the history of the Reformation, which has so often been told by friend and foe, but too often in a partisan spirit. I have done the best I could. God expects no more from his servants than faithfulness in the use of their abilities and opportunities.
New York, September, 1888.
HISTORY
of
MODERN CHRISTIANITY
THE REFORMATION.
FROM A.D. 1517 TO 1648.
CHAPTER I.
ORIENTATION.
Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.—2 Cor. 3:17.
§ 1. The Turning Point of Modern History.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century is, next to the introduction of Christianity, the greatest event in history. It marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. Starting from religion, it gave, directly or indirectly, a mighty impulse to every forward movement, and made Protestantism the chief propelling force in the history of modern civilization.
The age of the Reformation bears a strong resemblance to the first century. Both are rich beyond any other period in great and good men, important facts, and permanent results. Both contain the ripe fruits of preceding, and the fruitful germs of succeeding ages. They are turning points in the history of mankind. They are felt in their effects to this day, and will be felt to the end of time. They refashioned the world from the innermost depths of the human soul in its contact, with the infinite Being. They were ushered in by a providential concurrence of events and tendencies of thought. The way for Christianity was prepared by Moses and the Prophets, the dispersion of the Jews, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the language and literature of Greece, the arms and laws of Rome, the decay of idolatry, the spread of skepticism, the aspirations after a new revelation, the hopes of a coming Messiah. The Reformation was preceded and necessitated by the corruptions of the papacy, the decline of monasticism and scholastic theology, the growth of mysticism, the revival of letters, the resurrection of the Greek and Roman classics, the invention of the printing press, the discovery of a new world, the publication of the Greek Testament, the general spirit of enquiry, the striving after national independence and personal freedom. In both centuries we hear the creative voice of the Almighty calling light out of darkness.
The sixteenth century is the age of the renaissance in religion, literature, and art. The air was stirred by the spirit of progress and freedom. The snows of a long winter were fast, melting before the rays of the vernal sun. The world seemed to be renewing its youth; old things were passing away, all things were becoming new. Pessimists and timid conservatives took alarm at the threatened overthrow of cherished notions and institutions, and were complaining, fault-finding and desponding. A very useless business. Intelligent observers of the signs of the times looked hopefully and cheerfully to the future. "O century!" exclaimed Ulrich von Hutten, "the studies flourish, the spirits are awake, it is a luxury to live." And Luther wrote in 1522: "If you read all the annals of the past, you will find no century like this since the birth of Christ. Such building and planting, such good living and dressing, such enterprise in commerce, such a stir in all the arts, has not been since Christ came into the world. And how numerous are the sharp and intelligent people who leave nothing hidden and unturned: even a boy of twenty years knows more nowadays than was known formerly by twenty doctors of divinity."
The same may be said with even greater force of the nineteenth century, which is eminently an age of discovery and invention, of enquiry and progress. And both then as now the enthusiasm for light and liberty takes two opposite directions, either towards skepticism and infidelity, or towards a revival of true religion from its primitive sources. But Christianity triumphed then, and will again regenerate the world.
The Protestant Reformation assumed the helm of the liberal tendencies and movements of the renaissance, directed them into the channel of Christian life, and saved the world from a disastrous revolution. For the Reformation was neither a revolution nor a restoration, though including elements of both. It was negative and destructive towards error, positive and constructive towards truth; it was conservative as well as progressive; it built up new institutions in the place of those which it pulled down; and for this reason and to this extent it has succeeded.
Under the motherly care of the Latin Church, Europe had been Christianized and civilized, and united into a family of nations under the spiritual government of the Pope and the secular government of the Emperor, with one creed, one ritual, one discipline, and one sacred language. The state of heathenism and barbarism at the beginning of the sixth century contrasts with the state of Christian Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century as midnight darkness compared with the dawn of the morning. But the sun of the day had not yet arisen.
All honor to the Catholic Church and her inestimable services to humanity. But Christianity is far broader and deeper than any ecclesiastical organization. It burst the shell of mediaeval forms, struck out new paths, and elevated Europe to a higher plane of intellectual, moral and spiritual culture than it had ever attained before.
§ 2. Protestantism and Romanism.
Protestantism represents the most enlightened and active of modern church history, but not the whole of it.
Since the sixteenth century Western Christendom is divided and runs in two distinct channels. The separation may be compared to the Eastern schism of the ninth century, which is not healed to this day; both parties being as firm and unyielding as ever on the doctrinal question of the Filioque, and the more important practical question of Popery. But Protestantism differs much more widely from the Roman church than the Roman church differs from the Greek, and the Protestant schism has become the fruitful mother of minor divisions, which exist in separate ecclesiastical organizations.
We must distinguish between Catholicism and Romanism. The former embraces the ancient Oriental church, the mediaeval church, and we may say, in a wider sense, all the modern evangelical churches. Romanism is the Latin church turned against the Reformation, consolidated by the Council of Trent and completed by the Vatican Council of 1870 with its dogma of papal absolutism and papal infallibility. Mediaeval Catholicism is pre-evangelical, looking to the Reformation; modern Romanism is anti-evangelical, condemning the Reformation, yet holding with unyielding tenacity the oecumenical doctrines once sanctioned, and doing this all the more by virtue of its claim to infallibility.
The distinction between pre-Reformation Catholicism and post-Reformation Romanism, in their attitude towards Protestantism, has its historical antecedent and parallel in the distinction between pre-Christian Israel which prepared the way for Christianity, and post-Christian Judaism which opposed it as an apostasy.
Catholicism and Protestantism represent two distinct types of Christianity which sprang from the same root, but differ in the branches.
Catholicism is legal Christianity which served to the barbarian nations of the Middle Ages as a necessary school of discipline; Protestantism is evangelical Christianity which answers the age of independent manhood. Catholicism is traditional, hierarchical, ritualistic, conservative; Protestantism is biblical, democratic, spiritual, progressive. The former is ruled by the principle of authority, the latter by the principle of freedom. But the law, by awakening a sense of sin and exciting a desire for redemption, leads to the gospel; parental authority is a school of freedom; filial obedience looks to manly self-government.
The characteristic features of mediaeval Catholicism are intensified by Romanism, yet without destroying the underlying unity.
Romanism and orthodox Protestantism believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and in one divine-human Lord and Saviour of the race. They accept in common the Holy Scriptures and the oecumenical faith. They agree in every article of the Apostles’ Creed. What unites them is far deeper, stronger and more important than what divides them.
But Romanism holds also a large number of "traditions of the elders," which Protestantism rejects as extra-scriptural or anti-scriptural; such are the papacy, the worship of saints and relics, transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, prayers and masses for the dead, works of supererogation, purgatory, indulgences, the system of monasticism with its perpetual vows and ascetic practices, besides many superstitious rites and ceremonies.
Protestantism, on the other hand, revived and developed the Augustinian doctrines of sin and grace; it proclaimed the sovereignty of divine mercy in man’s salvation, the sufficiency of the Scriptures as a rule of faith, and the sufficiency of Christ’s merit as a source of justification; it asserted the right of direct access to the Word of God and the throne of grace, without human mediators; it secured Christian freedom from bondage; it substituted social morality for monkish asceticism, and a simple, spiritual worship for an imposing ceremonialism that addresses the senses and imagination rather than the intellect and the heart.
The difference between the Catholic and Protestant
churches was typically foreshadowed by the difference between Jewish
and Gentile Christianity in the apostolic age, which anticipated, as it
were, the whole future course of church history. The question of
circumcision or the keeping of the Mosaic law, as a condition of church
membership, threatened a split at the Council of Jerusalem, but was
solved by the wisdom and charity of the apostles, who agreed that Jews
and Gentiles alike are "saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus"
(
The Reformation began simultaneously in Germany and Switzerland, and swept with astonishing rapidity over France, Holland, Scandinavia, Bohemia, Hungary, England and Scotland; since the seventeenth century it has spread by emigration to North America, and by commercial and missionary enterprises to every Dutch and English colony, and every heathen land. It carried away the majority of the Teutonic and a part of the Latin nations, and for a while threatened to overthrow the papal church.
But towards the close of the sixteenth century the triumphant march of the Reformation was suddenly arrested. Romanism rose like a wounded giant, and made the most vigorous efforts to reconquer the lost territory in Europe, and to extend its dominion in Asia and South America. Since that time the numerical relation of the two churches has undergone little change. But the progress of secular and ecclesiastical history has run chiefly in Protestant channels.
In many respects the Roman Church of to-day is a great improvement upon the Mediaeval Church. She has been much benefited by the Protestant Reformation, and is far less corrupt and far more prosperous in Protestant than in Papal countries. She was driven to a counter-reform which abolished some of the most crying abuses and infused new life and zeal into her clergy and laity. No papal schism has disgraced her history since the sixteenth century. No pope of the character of Alexander VI. or even Leo X. could be elected any more. She lives chiefly of the past, but uses for her defence all the weapons of modern warfare. She has a much larger membership than either the Greek or the Protestant communion; she still holds under her sway the Latin races of both hemispheres; she satisfies the religious wants of millions of human beings in all countries and climes; she extends her educational, benevolent and missionary operations all over the globe; she advances in proportion as Protestantism degenerates and neglects its duty; and by her venerable antiquity, historical continuity, visible unity, centralized organization, imposing ritual, sacred art, and ascetic piety she attracts intelligent and cultured minds; while the common people are kept in ignorance and in superstitious awe of her mysterious authority with its claim to open the gates of heaven and hell and to shorten the purgatorial sufferings of the departed. For good and evil she is the strongest conservative force in modern society, and there is every reason to believe that she will last to the end of time.
Thus the two branches of Western Christendom seem to hold each other in check, and ought to stimulate each other to a noble rivalry in good works.
The unhappy divisions of Christendom, while they
are the source of many evils, have also the good effect of multiplying
the agencies for the conversion of the world and facilitating the free
growth of every phase of religious life. The evil lies not so much in
the multiplicity of denominations, which have a mission to fulfil, as
in the spirit of sectarianism and exclusivism, which denies the rights
and virtues of others. The Reformation of the sixteenth century is not
a finale, but a movement still in progress. We may look hopefully
forward to a higher, deeper and broader Reformation, when God in His
overruling wisdom and mercy, by a pentecostal effusion of His Holy
Spirit upon all the churches, will reunite what the sin and folly of
men have divided. There must and will be, in the fullest sense of
Christ’s prophecy, "one flock, one Shepherd" ( We say "one flock" (μία
ποίμνη) not "one fold" (which would
require μία
αὐλή). The latter is a strange
mistranslation which has passed from the Latin version (ovile)
into King James’s version, and has often been abused
as an argument for the papacy and ecclesiastical uniformity. It is
corrected in the Revision. The two flocks, Jews and Gentiles, became
one flock in the one Shepherd (ποίμην), not by entrance into
the αὐλή of the Jews. There may be one flock
in many folds or ecclesiastical organizations. The prophecy was no
doubt already fulfilled in the Apostolic Church (
§3. Necessity of a Reformation.
The corruption and abuses of the Latin church had long been the complaint of the best men, and even of general councils. A reformation of the head and the members was the watchword at Pisa, Constance, and Basel, but remained a pium desiderium for a whole century.
Let us briefly review the dark side in the condition of the church at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
The papacy was secularized, and changed into a selfish tyranny whose yoke became more and more unbearable. The scandal of the papal schism had indeed been removed, but papal morals, after a temporary improvement, became worse than ever during the years 1492 to 1521. Alexander VI. was a monster of iniquity; Julius II. was a politician and warrior rather than a chief shepherd of souls; and Leo X. took far more interest in the revival of heathen literature and art than in religion, and is said to have even doubted the truth of the gospel history.
No wonder that many cardinals and priests followed
the scandalous example of the popes, and weakened the respect of the
laity for the clergy. The writings of contemporary scholars, preachers
and satirists are full of complaints and exposures of the ignorance,
vulgarity and immorality of priests and monks. Simony and nepotism were
shamefully practiced. Celibacy was a foul fountain of unchastity and
uncleanness. The bishoprics were monopolized by the youngest sons of
princes and nobles without regard to qualification. Geiler of
Kaisersberg, a stern preacher of moral reform at Strassburg (d. 1510),
charges all Germany with promoting ignorant and worldly men to the
chief dignities, simply on account of their high connections. Thomas
Murner complains that the devil had introduced the nobility into the
clergy, and monopolized for them the bishoprics. In his Narrenbeschwörung (1512): "Aber seit der
Teufel hat Den
Adel bracht in Kirchenstat, Seit
man kein’ Bischof mehr will han Er sei
denn ganz ein Edelmann," etc.
Discipline was nearly ruined. Whole monastic establishments and orders had become nurseries of ignorance and superstition, idleness and dissipation, and were the objects of contempt and ridicule, as may be seen from the controversy of Reuchlin with the Dominicans, the writings of Erasmus, and the Epistolae Virorum Obscurorum.
Theology was a maze of scholastic subtleties, Aristotelian dialectics and idle speculations, but ignored the great doctrines of the gospel. Carlstadt, the older colleague of Luther, confessed that he had been doctor of divinity before he had seen a complete copy of the Bible. Education was confined to priests and nobles. The mass of the laity could neither read nor write, and had no access to the word of God except the Scripture lessons from the pulpit.
The priest’s chief duty was to perform, by his magic words, the miracle of transubstantiation, and to offer the sacrifice of the mass for the living and the dead in a foreign tongue. Many did it mechanically, or with a skeptical reservation, especially in Italy. Preaching was neglected, and had reference, mostly, to indulgences, alms, pilgrimages and processions. The churches were overloaded with good and bad pictures, with real and fictitious relics. Saint-worship and image-worship, superstitious rites and ceremonies obstructed the direct worship of God in spirit and in truth.
Piety which should proceed from a living union of the soul with Christ and a consecration of character, was turned outward and reduced to a round of mechanical performances such as the recital of Paternosters and Avemarias, fasting, alms-giving, confession to the priest, and pilgrimage to a holy shrine. Good works were measured by the quantity rather than the quality, and vitiated by the principle of meritoriousness which appealed to the selfish motive of reward. Remission of sin could be bought with money; a shameful traffic in indulgences was carried on under the Pope’s sanction for filthy lucre as well as for the building of St. Peter’s Dome, and caused that outburst of moral indignation which was the beginning of the Reformation and of the fearful judgment on the Church of Rome.
This is a one-sided, but not an exaggerated description. It is true as far as it goes, and needs only to be supplemented by the bright side which we shall present in the next section.
Honest Roman Catholic scholars, while maintaining
the infallibility and consequent doctrinal irreformability of their
church, admit in strong terms the decay of discipline and the necessity
of a moral reform in the sixteenth century. So
Bellarmine and Bossuet. Möhler also (in his
Kirchengesch. III. 99) says: "We do not believe that the period before the
Reformation was a flourishing period of church history, for we hear
from it a thousand voices for a reformation in the head and members
(wir
hören aus derselben den tausendstimmigen Ruf nach einer
Verbesserung anHaupt und Gliedern uns
entgegentönen)" Even Janssen, the eulogist of mediaeval Germany, devotes
the concluding section of the first volume of his Geschichte des deutschen
Volkes (p.
594-613) to a consideration of some of the crying evils of those
times.
The best proof is furnished by a pope of
exceptional integrity, Adrian VI., who made an extraordinary confession
of the papal and clerical corruption to the Diet of Nürnberg
in 1522, and tried earnestly, though in vain, to reform his court. The
Council of Trent was called not only for the extirpation of heresy, but
in part also "for the reformation of the clergy and Christian
people;" Sess.
I. (held Dec. 13, 1545): "ad extirpationem haeresium , ad pacem et
unionem ecclessiae, ad reformationem cleri et populi Christiani."
See Smets, Concilii Trident. Canones et Decreta,
p.10. "Ad
plurimas et perniciosissimas haereses extirpandas, ad corrigendos
mores, et restituendam ecclesiasticam disciplinam" etc. See Smets,
l.c. 209.
On the other hand, it must be admitted that the church was more than once in a far worse condition, during the papal schism in the fourteenth, and especially in the tenth and eleventh centuries; and yet she was reformed by Pope Hildebrand and his successors without a split and without an alteration of the Catholic Creed.
Why could not the same be done in the sixteenth century? Because the Roman church in the critical moment resisted reform with all her might, and forced the issue: either no reformation at all, or a reformation in opposition to Rome.
The guilt of the western schism is divided between the two parties, as the guilt of the eastern schism is; although no human tribunal can measure the share of responsibility. Much is due, no doubt, to the violence and extravagance of the Protestant opposition, but still more to the intolerance and stubbornness of the Roman resistance. The papal court used against the Reformation for a long time only the carnal weapons of political influence, diplomatic intrigue, secular wealth, haughty pride, scholastic philosophy, crushing authority, and bloody persecution. It repeated the course of the Jewish hierarchy, which crucified the Messiah and cast the apostles out of the synagogue.
But we must look beyond this partial justification, and view the matter in the light of the results of the Reformation.
It was evidently the design of Providence to develop a new type of Christianity outside of the restraints of the papacy, and the history of three centuries is the best explanation and vindication of that design. Every movement in history must be judged by its fruits.
The elements of such an advance movement were all at work before Luther and Zwingli protested against papal indulgences.
§ 4. The Preparations for the Reformation.
C. Ullmann: Reformatoren vor der Reformation. Hamburg, 1841, 2d ed. 1866, 2 vols. (Engl. trans. by R. Menzies, Edinb. 1855, 2 vols.). C. de Bonnechose: Réformateurs avant réforme du xvi. siècle. Par. 1853, 2 vols. A good résumé by Geo. P. Fisher: The Reformation. New York, 1873, ch. III. 52–84; and in the first two lectures of Charles Beard: The Reformation, London, 1883, p. 1–75. Comp., also the numerous monographs of various scholars on the Renaissance, on Wiclif, Hus, Savonarola, Hutten, Reuchlin, Erasmus, etc. A full account of the preparation for the Reformation belongs to the last chapters of the History of Mediaeval Christianity (see vol. V.). We here merely recapitulate the chief points.
Judaism before Christ was sadly degenerated, and those who sat in Moses’ seat had become blind leaders of the blind. Yet "salvation is of the Jews;" and out of this people arose John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, the Messiah, and the Apostles. Jerusalem, which stoned the prophets and crucified the Lord, witnessed also the pentecostal miracle and became the mother church of Christendom. So the Catholic church in the sixteenth century, though corrupt in its head and its members, was still the church of the living God and gave birth to the Reformation, which removed the rubbish of human traditions and reopened the pure fountain of the gospel of Christ.
The Reformers, it should not be forgotten, were all born, baptized, confirmed, and educated in the Roman Catholic Church, and most of them had served as priests at her altars with the solemn vow of obedience to the pope on their conscience. They stood as closely related to the papal church, as the Apostles and Evangelists to the Synagogue and the Temple; and for reasons of similar urgency, they were justified to leave the communion of their fathers; or rather, they did not leave it, but were cast out by the ruling hierarchy.
The Reformation went back to first principles in order to go forward. It struck its roots deep in the past and bore rich fruits for the future. It sprang forth almost simultaneously from different parts of Europe and was enthusiastically hailed by the leading minds of the age in church and state. No great movement in history—except Christianity itself—was so widely and thoroughly prepared as the Protestant Reformation.
The reformatory Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel; the conflict of the Emperors with the Popes; the contemplative piety of the mystics with their thirst after direct communion with God; the revival of classical literature; the general intellectual awakening; the biblical studies of Reuchlin, and Erasmus; the rising spirit of national independence; Wiclif, and the Lollards in England; Hus, and the Hussites in Bohemia; John von Goch, John von Wesel, and Johann Wessel in Germany and the Netherlands; Savonarola in Italy; the Brethren of the Common Life, the Waldenses, the Friends of God,—contributed their share towards the great change and paved the way for a new era of Christianity. The innermost life of the church was pressing forward to a new era. There is scarcely a principle or doctrine of the Reformation which was not anticipated and advocated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Luther made the remark that his opponents might charge him with having borrowed everything from John Wessel if he had known his writings earlier. The fuel was abundant all over Europe, but it required the spark which would set it ablaze.
Violent passions, political intrigues, the ambition and avarice of princes, and all sorts of selfish and worldly motives were mixed up with the war against the papacy. But they were at work likewise in the introduction of Christianity among the heathen barbarians. "Wherever God builds a church, the devil builds a chapel close by." Human nature is terribly corrupt and leaves its stains on the noblest movements in history.
But, after all, the religious leaders of the Reformation, while not free from faults, were men of the purest motives and highest aims, and there is no nation which has not been benefited by the change they introduced.
§ 5. The Genius and Aim of the Reformation.
Is. Aug. Dorner: On the formal, and the material Principle of the Reformation. Two essays, first published in 1841 and 1857, and reprinted in his Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin, 1883, p. 48–187. Also his History of Protestant Theology, Engl. trans. 1871, 2 vols.
Phil. Schaff: The Principle of Protestantism, Chambersburg, Penn., 1845 (German and English); Protestantism and Romanism, and the Principles of the Reformation, two essays in his "Christ and Christianity," N. York, 1885. p. 124–134. Also Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I. 203–219.
Dan. Schenkel: Das Princip des Protestantimus. Schaffhausen, 1852 (92 pages). This is the concluding section of his larger work, Das Wesen des Protestantismus, in 3 vols.
K. F. A. Kahnis: Ueber die Principien des Protestatismus. Leipzig, 1865. Also his Zeugniss von den Grundwahrheiten des Protestantismus gegen Dr. Hengstenberg. Leipzig, 1862.
Charles Beard: The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge. Hibbert Lectures for 1883. London, 1883. A Unitarian view, written with ample learning and in excellent spirit.
Henry Wace and C. A. Buchheim: First Principles of the Reformation, or the 95 Theses and three Primary Works of Dr. M. Luther. London, 1885.
The literature on the difference between Lutheran and Reformed or Calvinistic Protestantism is given in Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, l. 211.
The spirit and aim of evangelical Protestantism is best expressed by Paul in his anti-Judaistic Epistle to the Galatians: "For freedom did Christ set us free; stand fast, therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage." Christian freedom is so inestimable a blessing that no amount of abuse can justify a relapse into a state of spiritual despotism and slavery. But only those who have enjoyed it, can properly appreciate it.
The Reformation was at first a purely religious
movement, and furnishes a striking illustration of the all-pervading
power of religion in history. It started from the question: What must a
man do to be saved? How shall a sinner be justified before God, and
attain peace of his troubled conscience? The Reformers were supremely
concerned for the salvation of the soul, for the glory of Christ and
the triumph of his gospel. They thought much more of the future world
than of the present, and made all political, national, and literary
interests subordinate and subservient to religion. What
Dr. Baur, the critical Tübingen historian, says of Luther,
is equally applicable to all the other Reformers: "Dass für Luther
die Reformation zur eigensten Sache seines Herzens geworden war, dass
er sie in ihrem reinsten religiösen Interesse auffasste,
getrennt von allen ihr fremdartigen blos äusserlichen
Motiven, dass es ihm um nichts anderes zu thun war, alsum die Sache des
Evangeliums und seinerseligmachenden Kraft, wie er sie an sich selbst
in seinem innern Kampf um die Gewissheit der Sündenvergebung
erfahren hatte, diess ist es, was ihn zum Reformator
machte."Gesch. der Christl. Kirche, vol. IV. 5 (ed. by his son, 1863). Froude
says of Luther: "He revived and maintained the spirit of piety and
reverence in which, and by which alone, real progress is
possible."Luther, Preface, p. vi.
Yet they were not monks, but live men in a live age, not pessimists, but optimists, men of action as well as of thought, earnest, vigorous, hopeful men, free from selfish motives and aims, full of faith and the Holy Ghost, equal to any who had preceded them since the days of the Apostles. From the centre of religion they have influenced every department of human life and activity, and given a powerful impulse to political and civil liberty, to progress in theology, philosophy, science, and literature.
The Reformation removed the obstructions which the papal church had interposed between Christ and the believer. It opened the door to direct union with him , as the only Mediator between God and man, and made his gospel accessible to every reader without the permission of a priest. It was a return to first principles, and for this very reason also a great advance. It was a revival of primitive Christianity, and at the same time a deeper apprehension and application of it than had been known before.
There are three fundamental principles of the
Reformation: the supremacy of the Scriptures over tradition, the
supremacy of faith over works, and the supremacy of the Christian
people over an exclusive priesthood. The first may be called the
objective, the second the subjective, the third the social or
ecclesiastical principle. German
writers distinguish usually two principles of the Reformation, the
authority of the Scriptures, and justification by faith, and call the
first the formal principle (or Erkenntnissprincip, principium cognoscendi), the second the material principle
(principium essendi); the third they omit, except Kahnis, who
finds a third principle in the idea of the invisible church, and calls
this the Kirchenprincip. The Lutheran Church gives to the doctrine of justification by
faith the first place; and the Formula of Concord calls it
"articulus praecipuus in tota doctrina Christiana." But the
Reformed confessions give the first place to the doctrine of the
normative authority of Scripture, from which alone all articles of
faith are to be derived, and they substitute for the doctrine of
justification by faith the ulterior and wider doctrine of election and
salvation by free grace through faith. The difference is
characteristic, but does not affect the essential
agreement.
They resolve themselves into the one principle of evangelical freedom, or freedom in Christ. The ultimate aim of evangelical Protestantism is to bring every man into living union with Christ as the only and all-sufficient Lord and Saviour from sin and death.
§ 6. The Authority of the Scriptures.
The objective principle of Protestantism maintains that the Bible, as the inspired record of revelation, is the only infallible rule of faith and practice; in opposition to the Roman Catholic coordination of Scripture and ecclesiastical tradition, as the joint rules of faith.
The teaching of the living church is by no means rejected, but subordinated to the Word of God; while the opposite theory virtually subordinates the Bible to tradition by making the latter the sole interpreter of the former and confining interpretation within the limits of an imaginary consensus patrum. In the application of the Bible principle there was considerable difference between the more conservative Lutheran and Anglican Reformation, and the more radical Zwinglian and Calvinistic Reformation; the former contained many post-scriptural and extra-scriptural traditions, usages and institutions, which the latter, in its zeal for primitive purity and simplicity, rejected as useless or dangerous; but all Reformers opposed what they regarded as anti-scriptural doctrines; and all agreed in the principle that the church has no right to impose upon the conscience articles of faith without clear warrant in the Word of God.
Every true progress in church history is conditioned by a new and deeper study of the Scriptures, which has "first, second, third, infinite draughts." While the Humanists went back to the ancient classics and revived the spirit of Greek and Roman paganism, the Reformers went back to the sacred Scriptures in the original languages and revived the spirit of apostolic Christianity. They were fired by an enthusiasm for the gospel, such as had never been known since the days of Paul. Christ rose from the tomb of human traditions and preached again his words of life and power. The Bible, heretofore a book of priests only, was now translated anew and better than ever into the vernacular tongues of Europe, and made a book of the people. Every Christian man could henceforth go to the fountain-head of inspiration, and sit at the feet of the Divine Teacher, without priestly permission and intervention. This achievement of the Reformation was a source of incalculable blessings for all time to come. In a few years Luther’s version had more readers among the laity than ever the Latin Vulgate had among priests; and the Protestant Bible societies circulate more Bibles in one year than were copied during the fifteen centuries before the Reformation.
We must remember, however, that this wonderful progress was only made possible by the previous invention of the art of printing and by the subsequent education of the people. The Catholic Church had preserved the sacred Scriptures through ages of ignorance and barbarism; the Latin Bible was the first gift of the printing press to the world; fourteen or more editions of a German version were printed before 1518; the first two editions of the Greek Testament we owe to the liberality of a Spanish cardinal (Ximenes), and the enterprise of a Dutch scholar in Basel (Erasmus); and the latter furnished the text from which, with the aid of Jerome’s Vulgate, the translations of Luther and Tyndale were made.
The Roman church, while recognizing the divine
inspiration and authority of the Bible, prefers to control the laity by
the teaching priesthood, and allows the reading of the Scriptures in
the popular tongues only under certain restrictions and precautions,
from fear of abuse and profanation. Pope Innocent III. was of the
opinion that the Scriptures were too deep for the common people, as
they surpassed even the understanding of the wise and learned. Several
synods in Gaul, during the thirteenth century, prohibited the reading
of the Romanic translation, and ordered the copies to be burnt.
Archbishop Berthold, of Mainz, in an edict of January 4th, 1486,
threatened with excommunication all who ventured to translate and to
circulate translations of sacred books, especially the Bible, without
his permission. The Council of Constance (1415), which burnt John Hus
and Jerome of Prague, condemned also the writings and the hopes of
Wiclif, the first translator of the whole Bible into the English
tongue, to the flames: and Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury and
chancellor of England, denounced him as that "pestilent wretch of
damnable heresy who, as a complement of his wickedness, invented a new
translation of the Scriptures into his mother tongue." Pope Pius IV.
(1564), in the conviction that the indiscriminate reading of Bible
versions did more harm than good (plus detrimenti quam utilitiatis),
would not allow laymen to read the sacred book except by special
permission of a bishop or an inquisitor. Clement VIII. (1598) reserved
the right to grant this permission to the Congregation of the Index.
Gregory XV. (1622), and Clement XI. (in the Bull Unigenitus, 1713),
repeated the conditional prohibition. Benedict XIV., one of the liberal
popes, extended the permission to read the Word of God in the
vernacular to all the faithful, yet with the proviso that the
translation be approved in Rome and guarded by explanatory notes from
the writings of the fathers and Catholic scholars (1757). This
excludes, of course, all Protestant versions, even the very best. They
are regarded as corrupt and heretical and have often been committed to
the flames in Roman Catholic countries, especially in connection with
the counter-Reformation of the Jesuits in Bohemia and elsewhere. The
first edition of Tyndale’s New Testament had to be
smuggled into England and was publicly burnt by order of Tunstall,
bishop of London, in St. Paul’s church-yard near the
spot from which Bibles are now sent to all parts of the globe. The
Bible societies have been denounced and condemned by modern popes as a
"pestilence which perverts the gospel of Christ into a gospel of the
devil." The Papal Syllabus of Pius IX. (1864), classes "Societates
Biblicae" with Socialism, Communism, and Secret Societies, calls them
"pests frequently rebuked in the severest terms," and refers for proof,
to several Encyclicals from November 9th, 1846, to August 10th, 1863. Schaff,
Creeds of Christendom, II. 218; Köllner,
Symbolik II. 351, sqq.; Hase, Handbuch der Protestant.
Polemik, fourth
ed., 1878, p. 68 sqq. There were indeed vernacular translations of the
Bible long before the Reformation; but it is a most astounding
exaggeration when Perrone, as quoted by Hase, asserts (Praelect.
Theol. III. § 317): "Per idem tempus 800plus
minus editiones Bibliorum aut N. T. ante Reformationem prodierant, ac
per universam Europam catholicam circumferebantur, antequam vel
protestantis nomen agnosceretur. Et ex his 200 versiones in linguis
vernaculis diversarum gentium omnium manibus libere
versabantur."
Such fulminations against Protestant Bible
societies might be in some measure excused if the popes favored
Catholic Bible societies, which would be the best proof of zeal for the
spread of the Scriptures. But such institutions do not exist.
Fortunately papal bulls have little effect in modern times, and in
spite of official prohibitions and discouragements, there are zealous
advocates of Bible reading among modern Catholics, as there were among
the Greek and Latin fathers. See L.
Van Ess,Auszüge über das nothwendige und
nützliche Bibellesen aus den Kirchenvätern und
anderen kathol. Schriften, second ed., 1816; also the preface to his translation of
the New Testament.
Modern Protestant theology is much more just to ecclesiastical tradition than the Reformers could be in their hot indignation against the prevailing corruptions and against the papal tyranny of their day. The deeper study of ecclesiastical and secular history has dispelled the former ignorance on the "dark ages," so called, and brought out the merits of the fathers, missionaries, schoolmen, and popes, in the progress of Christian civilization.
But these results do not diminish the supreme value of the sacred Scripture as an ultimate tribunal of appeal in matters of faith, nor the importance of its widest circulation. It is by far the best guide of instruction in holy living and dying. No matter what theory of the mode and extent of inspiration we may hold, the fact of inspiration is plain and attested by the universal consent of Christendom. The Bible is a book of holy men, but just as much a book of God, who made those men witnesses of truth and sure teachers of the way of salvation.
§ 7. Justification by Faith.
The subjective principle of Protestantism is the
doctrine of justification and salvation by faith in Christ; as distinct
from the doctrine of justification by faith and works or salvation by
grace and human merit. Luther’s formula is sola fide.
Calvin goes further back to God’s eternal election, as
the ultimate ground of salvation and comfort in life and in death. But
Luther and Calvin meant substantially the same thing, and agree in the
more general proposition of salvation by free grace through living
faith in Christ ( Only
in this sense can it be called Augustinian; for otherwise
Augustin’s conception of justificatio is
catholic, and he identifies it with sanctificatio. Moreover he
widely differs from the Protestant conception of the church and its
authority. Luther felt the difference in his later
years.
Luther assigned to his solifidian doctrine of
justification the central position in the Christian system, declared it
to be the article of the standing or falling (Lutheran) church, and was
unwilling to yield an inch from it, though heaven and earth should
collapse. Articuli Smalcaldici, p. 305 (ed. Rechenb., or 310 ed.
Müller): "De hoc articulo [solam fidem nos
justificare] cedere or aliquid contra illum largiri aut
permittere nemo piorum potest etiamsi coelum et terra et omnia
corruant. (
The Protestant doctrine of justification differs from the Roman Catholic, as defined (very circumspectly) by the Council of Trent, chiefly in two points. Justification is conceived as a declaratory and judicial act of God, in distinction from sanctification, which is a gradual growth; and faith is conceived as a fiducial act of the heart and will, in distinction from theoretical belief and blind submission to the church. The Reformers derived their idea from Paul, the Romanists appealed chiefly to James (2:17–26); but Paul suggests the solution of the apparent contradiction by his sentence, that "in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love."
Faith, in the biblical and evangelical sense, is a vital force which engages all the powers of man and apprehends and appropriates the very life of Christ and all his benefits. It is the child of grace and the mother of good works. It is the pioneer of all great thoughts and deeds. By faith Abraham became the father of nations; by faith Moses became the liberator and legislator of Israel; by faith the Galilean fishermen became fishers of men; and by faith the noble army of martyrs endured tortures and triumphed in death; without faith in the risen Saviour the church could not have been founded. Faith is a saving power. It unites us to Christ. Whosoever believeth in Christ "hath eternal life." "We believe," said Peter at the Council of Jerusalem, "that we shall be saved through the grace of God," like the Gentiles who come to Christ by faith without the works and ceremonies of the law. "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved," was Paul’s answer to the question of the jailor: "What must I do to be saved?"
Protestantism does by no means despise or neglect
good works or favor antinomian license; it only subordinates them to
faith, and measures their value by quality rather than quantity. They
are not the condition, but the necessary evidence of justification;
they are not the root, but the fruits of the tree. The same faith which
justifies, does also sanctify. It is ever "working through love" (
The Lutheran doctrine of Christian freedom and
justification by faith alone, like that of St. Paul on which it was
based, was made the cloak of excesses by carnal men who wickedly
reasoned, "Let us continue in sin that grace may abound" (
The fact is undeniable, that the Reformation in
Germany was accompanied and followed by antinomian tendencies and a
degeneracy of public morals. It rests not only on the hostile
testimonies of Romanists and separatists, but Luther and Melanchthon
themselves often bitterly complained in their later years of the abuse
of the liberty of the gospel and the sad state of morals in Wittenberg
and throughout Saxony. The
weight of Döllinger’s three volumes on the
Reformation (1848) consists in the collection of such
unfavorable testimonies from the writings of Erasmus, Wizel, Haner,
Wildenauer, Crotus Rubeanus, Biblicanus, Staupitz, Amerpach,
Pirkheimer, Zasius, Frank, Denk, Hetzer, Schwenkfeld, Luther,
Melanchthon, Spalatin, Bugenhagen, and others. They give, indeed, a
very gloomy, but a very one-sided picture of the times. Janssen makes
good use of these testimonies. But both these Catholic historians whose
eminent learning is undeniable, wrote with a polemic aim, and make the
very truth lie by omitting the bright side of the Reformation. Comp. on
this subject the controversial writings of Köstlin and
Ebrard against Janssen, and Janssen’s
replies, An meine Kritiker, Freiburg i. B. 1883 (Zehntes Tausend, 227 pages),
and Ein
zweites Wort an meine Kritiker, Freib. 1883 (Zwölftes Tausend, 144
pages).
But we should remember, first, that the degeneracy
of morals, especially the increase of extravagance, and luxury with its
attending vices, had begun in Catholic times in consequence of
discoveries and inventions, the enlargement of commerce and wealth. Even
Janssen admits this, but is silent about the greater corruption in
Rome. See his Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes I. 375 sqq. Comp. his Ein zweites Wort an meine
Kritiker, p.
82.
§ 8. The Priesthood of the Laity.
The social or ecclesiastical principle of Protestantism is the general priesthood of believers, in distinction from the special priesthood which stands mediating between Christ and the laity.
The Roman church is an exclusive hierarchy, and assigns to the laity the position of passive obedience. The bishops are the teaching and ruling church; they alone constitute a council or synod, and have the exclusive power of legislation and administration. Laymen have no voice in spiritual matters, they can not even read the Bible without the permission of the priest, who holds the keys of heaven and hell.
In the New Testament every believer is called a saint, a priest, and a king. "All Christians," says Luther, "are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone. As St. Paul says, we are all one body, though each member does its own work, to serve the others. This is because we have one baptism, alike; one gospel, one faith, and are all Christians for baptism, gospel and faith, these alone make spiritual and Christian people." And again: "It is faith that makes men priests, faith that unites them to Christ, and gives them the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, whereby they become filled with all holy grace and heavenly power. The inward anointing—this oil, better than any that ever came from the horn of bishop or pope—gives them not the name only, but the nature, the purity, the power of priests; and this anointing have all they received who are believers in Christ."
This principle, consistently carried out, raises the laity to active co-operation in the government and administration of the church; it gives them a voice and vote in the election of the pastor; it makes every member of the congregation useful, according to his peculiar gift, for the general good. This principle is the source of religious and civil liberty which flourishes most in Protestant countries. Religious liberty is the mother of civil liberty. The universal priesthood of Christians leads legitimately to the universal kingship of free, self-governing citizens, whether under a monarchy or under a republic.
The good effect of this principle showed itself in the spread of Bible knowledge among the laity, in popular hymnody and congregational singing, in the institution of lay-eldership, and in the pious zeal of the magistrates for moral reform and general education.
But it was also shamefully perverted and abused by the secular rulers who seized the control of religion, made themselves bishops and popes in their dominion, robbed the churches and convents, and often defied all discipline by their own immoral conduct. . Philip of Hesse, and Henry VIII. of England, are conspicuous examples of Protestant popes who disgraced the cause of the Reformation. Erastianism and Territorialism whose motto is: cujus regio, ejus religio, are perversions rather than legitimate developments of lay-priesthood. The true development lies in the direction of general education, in congregational self-support and self-government, and in the intelligent co-operation of the laity with the ministry in all good works, at home and abroad. In this respect the Protestants of England, Scotland, and North America, are ahead of the Protestants on the Continent of Europe. The Roman church is a church of priests and has the grandest temples of worship; the Lutheran church is a church of theologians and has most learning and the finest hymns; the Reformed church is a church of the Christian people and has the best preachers and congregations.
§ 9. The Reformation and Rationalism.
G. Frank: De Luthero rationalismi praecursore. Lips., 1857.
S. Berger: La Bible an seizième siècle; étude sur les origines de la critique. Paris, 1879.
Charles Beard: The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in relation, to Modem Thought and Knowledge (Hibbert Lectures). London, 1883. Lect. V.
Comp. also Lecky: History of Rationalism in Europe. London, 4th ed. 1870, 2 vols. George P. Fisher: Faith and Rationalism. New York, 1879, revised 1885 (191 pages).
The Roman Catholic Church makes Scripture and
tradition the supreme rule of faith, laying the chief stress on
tradition, that is, the teaching of an infallible church headed by an
infallible Pope, as the judge of the meaning of both. "I am
the tradition" (la tradizione son io), said Pope Pius IX.,
during the Vatican Council which substituted an infallible papacy for
an infallible council, in conflict both with oecumenical councils and
popes who officially denounced Pope Honorius III. as a Monotheletic
heretic. See vol. IV. 500 sqq.
Evangelical, Protestantism makes the Scripture alone the supreme rule, but uses tradition and reason as means in ascertaining its true sense.
Rationalism raises human reason above Scripture and tradition, and accepts them only as far as they come within the limits of its comprehension. It makes rationality or intelligibility the measure of credibility. We take the word Rationalism here in the technical sense of a theological system and tendency in distinction from rational theology. The legitimate use of reason in religion is allowed by the Catholic and still more by the Protestant church, and both have produced scholastic systems in full harmony with orthodoxy. Christianity is above reason, but not against reason.
The Reformation is represented as the mother of Rationalism both by Rationalistic and by Roman Catholic historians and controversialists, but from an opposite point of view, by the former to the credit, by the latter to the disparagement of both.
The Reformation, it is said, took the first step in the emancipation of reason: it freed us from the tyranny of the church. Rationalism took the second step: it freed us from the tyranny of the Bible. "Luther," says Lessing, the champion of criticism against Lutheran orthodoxy, "thou great, misjudged man! Thou hast redeemed us from the yoke of tradition: who will redeem us from the unbearable yoke of the letter! Who will at last bring us a Christianity such as thou would teach us now, such as Christ himself would teach!"
Roman Catholics go still further and hold
Protestantism responsible for all modern revolutions and for infidelity
itself, and predict its ultimate dismemberment and dissolution. This
charge is sanctioned by several papal Encyclicals; it is implied,
negatively, in the Syllabus of Pius IX. (1864), and, positively, though
cautiously, in the Encyclical of Leo XIII Immortale Dei (Nov. 1,
1885), which characterizes the Reformation movements (without naming
them) as "those pernicious and deplorable revolutionary tendencies
which were aroused in the sixteenth century, and which, after
introducing confusion into Christendom, soon, by a natural course,
entered the domain of philosophy, and from philosophy into all the
lines of civil society. Hasak, in his book—Dr. M.
Luther (Regensburg, 1881), takes as his motto: " Be reconciled to
the Church of God, the old mother church, which, for these eighteen
hundred years, has been the preserver of the eternal truth, before the
bloody flood of atheism and the socialistic republic breaks upon us as
a true judgment of the world."
The Reformation checked the skepticism of the renaissance, and the anarchical tendencies of the Peasants’ War in Germany and of the Libertines in Geneva. An intelligent faith is the best protection against infidelity; and a liberal government is a safeguard against revolution.
The connection of the Reformation with Rationalism is a historical fact, but they are related to each other as the rightful use of intellectual freedom to the excess and abuse of it. Rationalism asserts reason against revelation, and freedom against divine as well as human authority. It is a one-sided development of the negative, protesting, antipapal and antitraditional factor of the Reformation to the exclusion of its positive, evangelical faith in the revealed will and word of God. It denies the supernatural and miraculous. It has a superficial sense of sin and guilt, and is essentially Pelagian; while the Reformation took the opposite Augustinian ground and proceeded from the deepest conviction of sin and the necessity of redeeming grace. The two systems are thus theoretically and practically opposed to each other. And yet there is an intellectual and critical affinity between them, and Rationalism is inseparable from the history of Protestantism. It is in the modern era of Christianity what Gnosticism was in the ancient church—a revolt of private judgment against the popular faith and church orthodoxy, an overestimate of theoretic knowledge, but also a wholesome stimulus to inquiry and progress. It is not a church or sect (unless we choose to include Socinianism and Unitarianism), but a school in the church, or rather a number of schools which differ very considerably from each other.
Rationalism appeared first in the seventeenth century in the Church of England, though without much effect upon the people, as Deism, which asserted natural religion versus revealed religion; it was matured in its various phases after the middle of the eighteenth century on the Continent, especially in Protestant Germany since Lessing (d. 1781) and Semler (d. 1791), and gradually obtained the mastery of the chairs and pulpits of Lutheran and Reformed churches, till about 1817, when a revival of the positive faith of the Reformation spread over Germany and a serious conflict began between positive and negative Protestantism, which continues to this day.
1. Let us first consider the relation of the Reformation to the use of reason as a general principle.
The Reformation was a protest against human authority, asserted the right of private conscience and judgment, and roused a spirit of criticism and free inquiry in all departments of knowledge. It allows, therefore, a much wider scope for the exercise of reason in religion than the Roman church, which requires an unconditional submission to her infallible authority. It marks real progress, but this progress is perfectly consistent with a belief in revelation on subjects which lie beyond the boundary of time and sense. What do we know of the creation, and the world of the future, except what God has chosen to reveal to us? Human reason can prove the possibility and probability of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, but not the certainty and necessity. It is reasonable, therefore, to believe in the supernatural on divine testimony, and it is unreasonable to reject it.
The Reformers used their reason and judgment very
freely in their contest with church authority. Luther refused to recant
in the crisis at Worms, unless convinced by testimonies of the
Scriptures and "cogent arguments." "Scripturae sacrae testimoniis vel evidenti ratione," or
"evidentissimis rationibus; in the German form, as repeated by him on the
occasion, "durch Zeugnisse der heil. Schrift und durch helle
Gründe."See Köstlin II. 452 sq. and 800. The words seem to
assign to reason an independent position by, the side of the
Scriptures, but in case of conflict Luther always allowed the decision
to the Scriptures. Briefe, ed. de Wette, III. 189: "Ego sane ... plus tota hebdomada in
morte et inferno jactatus, ita ut toto corpore laesus adhuc tremam
membris," etc. Comp. Luther’s letters to Spalatin,
July 10th and Aug. 19th, 1527, l.c. III. 187,
191.
In such trials and temptations he clung all the more mightily to the Scriptures and to faith which believes against reason and hopes against hope. "It is a quality of faith," he says in the explanation of his favorite Epistle to the Galatians, "that it wrings the neck of reason and strangles the beast, which else the whole world, with all creatures, could not strangle. But how? It holds to God’s Word, and lets it be right and true, no matter how foolish and impossible it sounds. So did Abraham take his reason captive and slay it, inasmuch as he believed God’s Word, wherein was promised him that from his unfruitful and as it were dead wife, Sarah, God would give him seed."
This and many similar passages clearly show the
bent of Luther’s mind. He knew the enemy, but overcame
it; his faith triumphed over doubt. In his later years he became more
and more a conservative churchman. He repudiated the mystic doctrine of
the inner word and spirit, insisted on submission to the written letter
of the Scriptures, even when it flatly contradicted reason. He traced
the errors of the Zwickau prophets, the rebellious peasants, the
Anabaptists, and the radical views of Carlstadt and Zwingli, without
proper discrimination, to presumptuous inroads of the human reason into
the domain of faith, and feared from them the overthrow of religion. He
so far forgot his obligations to Erasmus as to call him an Epicurus, a
Lucian, a doubter, and an atheist. Much as he valued reason as a
precious gift of God in matters of this world, he abused it with
unreasonable violence, when it dared to sit in judgment over matters of
faith. He
called reason "the mistress of the devil,"" the ugly
devil’s bride,"" a poisonous beast with many
dragons’ heads," "God’s bitterest
enemy." The coarsest invective against this gift of God is found in the
last sermon he preached at Wittenberg, in the year of his death (1546),
on
Certainly, Luther must first be utterly divested of his faith, and the authorship of his sermons, catechisms and hymns must be called in question, before he can be appealed to as the father of Rationalism. He would have sacrificed his reason ten times rather than his faith.
Zwingli was the most clear-headed and
rationalizing among the Reformers. Luther
felt this when he told him at Marburg: "You have a different
spirit."
Calvin was the best theologian and exegete among the Reformers. He never abused reason, like Luther, but assigned it the office of an indispensable handmaid of revelation. He constructed with his logical genius the severest system of Protestant orthodoxy which shaped French, Dutch, English and American theology, and fortified it against Rationalism as well as against Romanism. His orthodoxy and discipline could not keep his own church in Geneva from becoming Socinian in the eighteenth century, but he is no more responsible for that than Luther for the Rationalism of Germany, or Rome for the infidelity of Voltaire. Upon the whole, the Reformed churches in England, Scotland and North America, have been far less invaded by Rationalism than Germany.
2. Let us now consider the application of the
principle of free inquiry to the Bible. Comp.
here the Critical Introductions to the Bible, and especially
Reuss, Histoire du Canon des Saintes
Écritures, Strasbourg, 1863. Ch. XVI. p. 308 sqq.;
Hunter’s Engl. transl. (1884) p. 290
sqq.
The Bible, its origin, genuineness, integrity, aim, and all its circumstances and surroundings are proper subjects of investigation; for it is a human as well as a divine book, and has a history, like other literary productions. The extent of the Bible, moreover, or the Canon, is not determined by the Bible itself or by inspiration, but by church authority or tradition, and was not fully agreed upon till the close of the fourth century, and even then only by provincial synods, not by any of the seven oecumenical Councils. It was therefore justly open to reinvestigation.
The Church of Rome, at the Council of Trent,
settled the Canon, including the Apocrypha, but without any critical
inquiry or definite theological principle; it simply confirmed the
traditional usage, and pronounced an anathema on every one who does not
receive all the books contained in the Latin Vulgate. Sess.
IV. (April 8th, 1546): "Si quis autem libros ipsos integros cum
omnibus suis partibus, prout in ecclesia catholica legi consueverunt,
et in veteri Vulgata Latina editione habentur, pro sacris et canonicis
non susceperit et traditiones praedictas sciens et prudens
contempserit, anathema sit." Schaff, Creeds II. 82. There
were, however, protesting voices in the council: some desired to
recognize the old distinction between Homologumena and
Antilegomena; others simply an enumeration of the sacred books
used in the Catholic church, without a dogmatic definition. Sarpi
censures the council for its decision, and there are Catholic divines
(as Sixtus Senensis, Du Pin, Jahn), who, in spite of the decision, make
a distinction between protocanonical and deuterocanonical
books.
The Reformers re-opened the question of the extent of the Canon, as they had a right to do, but without any idea of sweeping away the traditional belief or undermining the authority of the Word of God. On the contrary, from the fulness of their faith in the inspired Word, as contained in the Scriptures, they questioned the canonicity of a few books which seem to be lacking in sufficient evidence to entitle them to a place in the Bible. They simply revived, in a new shape and on doctrinal rather than historical grounds, the distinction made by the Hebrews and the ancient fathers between the canonical and apocryphal books of the Old Testament, and the Eusebian distinction between the Homologumena and Antilegomena of the New Testament, and claimed in both respects the freedom of the ante-Nicene church.
They added, moreover, to the external evidence,
the more important internal evidence on the intrinsic excellency of the
Scripture, as the true ground on which its authority and claim to
obedience rests; and they established a firm criterion of canonicity,
namely, the purity and force of teaching Christ and his gospel of
salvation. They did not reject the testimonies of the fathers, but they
placed over them what Paul calls the "demonstration of the Spirit and
of power" (
Luther was the bold pioneer of a higher criticism,
which was indeed subjective and arbitrary, but, after all, a criticism
of faith. He made his central doctrine of justification by faith the
criterion of canonicity. "This," he says in the Preface to the Epistle of James, " is the
true touchstone (der rechte Prüfstein) of all books, whether they make Christ
their sole topic and aim" [literally " drive Christ,"Christum
treiben], " or not; since all Scripture shows Christ (
He made a distinction, moreover, between the more
important and the less important books of the New Testament, according
to the extent of their evangelic purity and force, and put Hebrews,
James, Jude, and Revelation at the end of the German Bible. In
this distinction Carlstadt had preceded him in his book, De Canon.
Scripturis (Wittenb. 1520, reprinted in
Credner’s Zur Gesch. des Kanons, 1847, p. 291-412). Carlstadt divided
the books of the canon into three ordines: (1) libri summae
dignitatis (the Pentateuch, though not written by Moses, and the
Gospels); (2) secundae dignitatis (the Prophets and 15
Epistles); (3) tertiae dignitatis (the Jewish Hagiographa and
the seven Antilegomena of the New Testament).
He states his reason in the Preface to the Hebrews as follows: "Hitherto we have had the right and genuine books of the New Testament. The four that follow have been differently esteemed in olden times." He therefore appeals to the ante-Nicene tradition, but his chief objection was to the contents.
He disliked, most of all, the Epistle of James
because he could not harmonize it with Paul’s teaching
on justification by faith without works, He
rejects the epistle first of all, "because it gives righteousness to
works in flat contradiction to Paul and all other Scriptures;"
secondly, "because, while undertaking to teach Christian people, it
does not once mention the passion, the resurrection, the Spirit of
Christ; it names Christ twice, but teaches nothing about him; it calls
the law a law of liberty, while Paul calls it a law of bondage, of
wrath, of death and of sin." He offered his doctor’s
cap to any who could harmonize James and Paul on the subject of
justification, and jests about the trouble Melanchthon took to do it.
He made the contradiction unnecessarily stronger by inserting
his allein (sola) before durch den Glauben in The
comparison must not be overlooked. He says: gegen sie, i.e., as
compared with the Epistles of Paul, Peter and John, previously
mentioned. See the passage in full below. He could not be blind to the
merits of James as a fresh, vigorous teacher of practical
Christianity.
He objected to the Epistle to the Hebrews because
it seems to deny (in Bleek,
de Wette, Tholuck, Lünemann, Kendrick (in Lange),
Hilgenfeld, de Pressensé, Davidson, Alford, Farrar, and
others.
He called the Epistle of Jude an "unnecessary epistle," a mere extract from Second Peter and post-apostolic, filled with apocryphal matter, and hence rejected by the ancient fathers.
He could at first find no sense in the mysteries of the Apocalypse and declared it to be "neither apostolic nor prophetic," because it deals only with images and visions, and yet, notwithstanding its obscurity, it adds threats and promises, "though nobody knows what it means"; but afterwards he modified his judgment when the Lutheran divines found in it welcome weapons against the church of Rome.
The clearest utterance on this subject is found at
the close of his preface to the first edition of his German version of
the New Testament (1522), but it was suppressed in later editions. See
note at the end of this section. His Table Talk contains bold
and original utterances on Esther, Ecclesiastes and other books of the
Old Testament; see Reuss on the Canon, 330 sqq. While Luther on
the one hand limited the canon, he seemed disposed on the other hand to
extend it, when he declared Melanchthon’s Loci
Theologici to be worthy of a place in the canon. But this was
merely an extravagant compliment.
Luther’s view of inspiration was
both strong and free. With the profoundest conviction of the divine
contents of the Bible, he distinguished between the revealed truth
itself and the human wording and reasoning of the writers. He says of
one of the rabbinical arguments of his favorite apostle: "My dear
brother Paul, this argument won’t stick." Comp.
his comments on the allegory of Sarah and Hagar in his Latin Com. on
Luther was, however, fully aware of the subjective and conjectural character of these opinions, and had no intention of obtruding them on the church: hence he modified his prefaces in later editions. He judged the Scriptures from an exclusively dogmatic, and one-sidedly Pauline standpoint, and did not consider their gradual historical growth.
A few Lutheran divines followed him in assigning a
subordinate position to the seven Antilegomena of the New Testament; Brentius, Flacius, Urbanus Regius, the authors of the Magdeburg
Centuries, and Chemnitz. None
of the symbolical books of the Lutheran church gives a list of the
canon, but the Formula of Concord (p. 570) declares that the
"prophetica et apostolica scripta V. et N. T. " are the
"unica regula et norma secundum quam omnia dogmata omnesque doctores
aestimari et judicari opporteat."
The Reformed divines were more conservative than Luther in accepting the canonical books, but more decided in rejecting the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. The Reformed Confessions usually enumerate the canonical books.
Zwingli objected only to the Apocalypse and made
no doctrinal use of it, because he did not deem it an inspired book,
written by the same John who wrote the fourth Gospel. "Us Apocalypsi nehmend wir kein Kundschafft an, denn es nit ein
biblisch Buch ist." Werke, ed. Schuler and Schulthess, II. 1. p. 169. In another
place he says: "Apocal. liber non sapit os et ingenium Joannis." De
clar. Verbi Dei, p. 310. See
Reuss, p. 315 sq. Eng. ed.
Calvin had no fault to find with James and Jude,
and often quotes Hebrews and Revelation as canonical books, though he
wrote no commentary on Revelation, probably because he felt himself
incompetent for the task. He is silent about Second and Third John. He
denies, decidedly, the Pauline authorship, but not the canonicity, of
Hebrews. In the
introduction to his Com. on Hebrews: "Ego ut Paulum auctorem
agnoscam adduci nequeo." His reasons are, the difference of style
and of the docendi ratio, and because the writer counts himself
with the disciples of the Apostles ( In
Argum. Ep. Sec. Petri, he notes "manifestum discrimen"
between the first and second Epistle, and adds: "Sunt et aliae
probabiles conjecturae ex quibus colligere licet alterius esse potius
quam Petri," but he sees in it, "nihil Petro
indignum"
Calvin clearly saw the inconsistency of giving the
Church the right of determining the canon after denying her right of
making an article of faith. He therefore placed the Canon on the
authority of God who bears testimony to it through the voice of the
Spirit in the hearts of the believer. The eternal and inviolable truth
of God, he says, is not founded on the pleasure and judgment of men,
and can be as easily distinguished as light from darkness, and white
from black. In the same line, Peter Vermilius denies that "the
Scriptures take their authority from the Church. Their certitude is
derived from God. The Word is older than the Church. The Spirit of God
wrought in the hearts of the bearers and readers of the Word so that
they recognized it to be truly divine." This view is clearly set forth
in several Calvinistic Confessions. The
Second Helvetic confession, c. 1 and 2, and the Belgic Confession, art.
5, combine the testimony of tradition and that of the Holy Spirit, but
lay chief stress upon the latter. So the Gallican Conf., art. 4: "We
know these books to be canonical and the sure rule of our faith, not
so much by the common accord and consent of the church (non tant
par le, commun a ord et consentement de l’eglise),
as by the testimony and inward illumination of the Holy Spirit, which
enables us to distinguish them from other ecclesiastical books, upon
which, however useful, we cannot found any articles of faith." The
Westminster Confession, ch. I. 4, sets aside the testimony of
tradition, saying: "The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it
ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the
testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is
truth itself), the Author thereof; and therefore it is to be received,
because it is the Word of God." The Scripture proofs given are, "Ego evangelio non crederem, nisi me moveret ecclesiae
auctoritas," Contra Ep. Fundam., c. 5. A thoroughly Roman catholic
principle in opposition to the Manichaen heresy. But the testimony of
the church is indispensable only in the history of the origin of the
several books, and the formation of the canon.
3. The liberal views of the Reformers on inspiration and the canon were abandoned after the middle of the sixteenth century, and were succeeded by compact and consolidated systems of theology. The evangelical scholasticism of the seventeenth century strongly resembles, both in its virtues and defects, the catholic scholasticism of the Middle Ages which systematized and contracted the patristic theology, except that the former was based on the Bible, the latter on church tradition. In the conflict with Romanism the Lutheran and Calvinistic scholastics elaborated a stiff, mechanical theory of inspiration in order to set an infallible book against an infallible pope. The Bible was identified with the Word of God, dictated to the sacred writers as the penmen of the Holy Ghost. Even the classical purity of style and the integrity of the traditional text, including the Massoretic punctuation, were asserted in the face of stubborn facts, which came to light as the study of the origin and history of the text advanced. The divine side of the Scriptures was exclusively dwelled upon, and the human and literary side was ignored or virtually denied. Hence the exegetical poverty of the period of Protestant scholasticism. The Bible was used as a repository of proof texts for previously conceived dogmas, without regard to the context, the difference between the Old and New Testaments, and the gradual development of the divine revelation in accordance with the needs and capacities of men.
4. It was against this Protestant bibliolatry and symbololatry that Rationalism arose as a legitimate protest. It pulled down one dogma after another, and subjected the Bible and the canon to a searching criticism. It denies the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, except in a wider sense which applies to all works of genius, and treats them simply as a gradual evolution of the religious spirit of Israel and the primitive Christian Church. It charges them with errors of fact and errors of doctrine, and resolves the miracles into legends and myths. It questions the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch, the genuineness of the Davidic Psalms, the Solomonic writings, the prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah and Daniel, and other books of the Old Testament. It assigns not only the Eusebian Antilegomena, but even the Gospels, Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and several Pauline Epistles to the post-apostolic age, from a.d. 70 to 150.
In its later developments, however, Rationalism
has been obliged to retreat and make several concessions to orthodoxy.
The canonical Gospels and Acts have gained by further investigation and
discovery; Thus
Mark is regarded by many Rationalists as the primitive Gospel based on
Peter’s sermons. Matthew has received valuable
testimonies from the discovery of the Greek Barnabas who quotes him
twice, and from the discovery of the Didache of the Apostles, which
contains about twenty reminiscences from the first Gospel. On the
Johannean question the Tübingen critics have been forced to
retreat from 170 to 140, 120, 110, almost to the life time of John. The
Acts have received new confirmation of their historical credibility
from the excavations in Cyprus and Ephesus, and the minute test of the
nautical vocabulary of chapter 27 by an experienced seaman. On all
these points see the respective sections in the first volume of this
History, ch. XII. p. 569 sqq.; 715 sqq.; 731 sqq; and 853
sqq.
Rationalism was a radical revolution which swept like a flood over the Continent of Europe. But it is not negative and destructive only. It has made and is still making valuable contributions to biblical philology, textual criticism, and grammatico-historical exegesis. It enlarges the knowledge of the conditions and environments of the Bible, and of all that belongs to the human and temporal side of Christ and Christianity. It cultivates with special zeal and learning the sciences of Critical Introduction, Biblical Theology, the Life of Christ, the Apostolic and post-Apostolic Ages.
5. These acquisitions to exegetical and historical theology are a permanent gain, and are incorporated in the new evangelical theology, which arose in conflict with Rationalism and in defense of the positive Christian faith in the divine facts of revelation and the doctrines of salvation. The conflict is still going on with increasing strength, but with the sure prospect of the triumph of truth. Christianity is independent of all critical questions on the Canon, and of human theories of inspiration; else Christ would himself have written the Gospels, or commanded the Apostles to do so, and provided for the miraculous preservation and inspired translation of the text, . His "words are spirit, and are life." "The flesh profiteth nothing." Criticism and speculation may for a while wander away from Christ, but will ultimately return to Him who furnishes the only key for the solution of the problems of history and human life. "No matter," says the world-poet Goethe in one of his last utterances, "how much the human mind may progress in intellectual culture, in the science of nature, in ever-expanding breadth and depth: it will never be able to rise above the elevation and moral culture which shines in the Gospels."
Notes.
The famous close of the Preface of Luther’s edition of the German New Testament was omitted in later editions, but is reprinted in Walch’s ed. XIV. 104 sqq., and in the Erlangen Frankf. ed. LXIII. (or eleventh vol. of the Vermischte Deutsche Schriften), p. 114 sq. It is verbatim as follows:
"Aus diesem allen kannst du nu recht urtheilen unter allen Büchern, und Unterschied nehmen, welchs die besten sind. Denn, naemlich, ist Johannis Evangelion, und St. Pauli Episteln, sonderlich die zu den Römern, und Sanct Peters erste Epistel der rechte Kern und Mark unter allen Büchern; welche auch billig die, ersten sein sollten, und einem jeglichen Christen zu rathen wäre, das er dieselben am ersten und allermeisten läse, und ihm durch täglich Lesen so gemein mächte, als das täglich Brod.
"Denn in diesen findist [findest] du nicht viel Werk und Wunderthaten Christi beschrieben; du findist aber gar meisterlich ausgestrichen, wie der Glaube an Christum Sünd, Tod und Hölle überwindet, und das Leben, Gerechtigkeit und Seligkeit gibt. Welchs die rechte Art ist des Evangelii, wie du gehöret hast.
"Denn wo ich je der eins mangeln sollt, der Werke
oder der Predigt Christi, so wollt ich lieber der Werke denn seiner
Predigt mangeln. Denn die Werke helfen mir nichts; aber seine Worte,
die geben das Leben, wie er selbst sagt (
"Summa, Sanct Johannis Evangel. und seine erste Epistel, Sanct Paulus Epistel(n), sonderlich die zu den Römern, Galatern, Ephesern, und Sanct Peters erste Epistel. das sind die Bücher, die dir Christum zeigen, und alles lehren, das dir zu wissen noth und selig ist ob du sohon kein ander Buch noch Lehre nummer [nimmermehr] sehest and horist [hörest]. Darumb ist Sanct Jakobs Epistel ein recht strohern(e) Epistel, gegen sie, denn sie doch kein(e) evangelisch(e) Art an ihr hat. Doch davon weiter in andern Vorreden."
§ 10. Protestantism and Denominationalism. Denominationalism is, I believe, an American term of
recent origin, but useful and necessary to express the fact, without
praise or blame, that Protestant Christianity exists in various
ecclesiastical organizations, some of which are large, others small,
some differing in doctrine, others only in polity and worship, some
liberal and catholic, others contracted and exclusive. I use it in this
neutral sense, in preference to Confessionalism which implies
confessional or doctrinal difference, and Sectarianism which
implies bigotry and is a term of reproach.
The Greek Church exists as a patriarchal hierarchy based on the first seven oecumenical Councils with four ancient local centres: Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople; to which must be added, since 1725, St. Petersburg where the Holy Synod of orthodox Russia resides. The patriarch of Constantinople claims a primacy of honor, but no supremacy of jurisdiction over his fellow-patriarchs.
The Roman Church is an absolute monarchy, headed by an infallible pope who claims to be vicar of Christ over all Christendom and unchurches the Greek and the Protestant churches as schismatical and heretical.
The Reformation came out of the bosom of the Latin Church and broke up the visible unity of Western Christendom, but prepared the way for a higher spiritual unity on the basis of freedom and the full development of every phase of truth.
Instead of one organization, we have in Protestantism a number of distinct national churches and confessions or denominations. Rome, the local centre of unity, was replaced by Wittenberg, Zurich, Geneva, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh. The one great pope had to surrender to many little popes of smaller pretensions, yet each claiming and exercising sovereign power in his domain. The hierarchical rule gave way to the caesaropapal or Erastian principle, that the owner of the territory is also the owner of its religion (cujus regio, ejus religio), a principle first maintained by the Byzantine Emperors, and held also by the Czar of Russia, but in subjection to the supreme authority of the oecumenical Councils. Every king, prince, and magistrate, who adopted the Reformation, assumed the ecclesiastical supremacy or summepiscopate, and established a national church to the exclusion of Dissenters or Nonconformists who were either expelled, or simply tolerated under various restrictions and disabilities.
Hence there are as many national or state churches as there are independent Protestant governments; but all acknowledge the supremacy of the Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice, and most of them also the evangelical confessions as a correct summary of Scripture doctrines. Every little principality in monarchical Germany and every canton in republican Switzerland has its own church establishment, and claims sovereign power to regulate its creed worship, and discipline. And this power culminates not in the clergy, but in the secular ruler who appoints the ministers of religion and the professors of theology. The property of the church which had accumulated by the pious foundations of the Middle Ages, was secularized during the Reformation period and placed under the control of the state, which in turn assumed the temporal support of the church.
This is the state of things in Europe to this day, except in the independent or free churches of more recent growth, which manage their own affairs on the voluntary principle.
The transfer of the episcopal and papal power to the head of the state was not contemplated by the Reformers, but was the inevitable consequence of the determined opposition of the whole Roman hierarchy to the Reformation. The many and crying abuses which followed this change in the hands of selfish and rapacious princes, were deeply deplored by Melanchthon, who would have consented to the restoration of the episcopal hierarchy on condition of the freedom of gospel preaching and gospel teaching.
The Reformed church in Switzerland secured at first a greater degree of independence than the Lutheran; for Zwingli controlled the magistrate of Zurich, and Calvin ruled supreme in Geneva under institutions of his own founding; but both closely united the civil and ecclesiastical power, and the former gradually assumed the supremacy.
Scandinavia and England adopted, together with the Reformation, a Protestant episcopate which divides the ecclesiastical supremacy with the head of the state; yet even there the civil ruler is legally the supreme governor of the church.
The greatest Protestant church-establisbments or national churches are the Church of England, much weakened by dissent, but still the richest and most powerful of all; the United Evangelical Church of Prussia which, since 1817, includes the formerly separated Lutheran and Reformed confessions; the Lutheran Church of Saxony (with a Roman Catholic king); the Lutheran Churches of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway; the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, and Holland; and the Reformed or Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Originally, all evangelical Protestant churches were embraced under two confessions or denominations, the Lutheran which prevailed and still prevails in Germany and Scandinavia, and the Reformed which took root in Switzerland, France, Holland, England and Scotland, and to a limited extent also in Germany, Bohemia and Hungary. The Lutheran church follows the larger portion of German and Scandinavian emigrants to America and other countries, the Reformed church in its various branches is found in all the Dutch and British colonies, and in the United States.
From these two confessions should be distinguished
the Anglican Church, which the continental historians from defective
information usually count with the Reformed Church, but which stands
midway between evangelical Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and may
therefore be called Anglo-Catholic. She is indeed moderately Reformed
in her doctrinal articles, The
Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, as revised under Elizabeth (1563 and
1571), are borrowed in part, verbatim, from the Augsburg Confession of
1530 and the Würtemberg Confession of 1552, but are
moderately Calvinistic in the doctrine of the Lord’s
Supper, and on predestination; the five Lambeth Articles of 1595, and
the Irish Articles of Archbishop Ussher (1615) are strongly
Calvinistic, and the latter furnished the basis of the Westminster
Confession. But the Lambeth Articles and the Irish Articles were
gradually forgotten, and the Book of Common Prayer which is based on
the office of Sarum, has practically much greater influence than even
the Thirty-nine Articles. See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom vol.
I. 624 sqq., 630 sqq., 658 sqq., 662 sqq.
The confessional division in the Protestant camp arose very early. It was at first confined to a difference of opinion on the eucharistic presence, which the Marburg Conference of 1529 could not remove, although Luther and Zwingli agreed in fourteen and a half out of fifteen articles of faith. Luther refused any compromise. Other differences gradually developed themselves, on the ubiquity of Christ’s body, predestination, and baptismal regeneration, which tended to widen and perpetuate the split. The union of the two Confessions in Prussia and other German states, since 1817, has not really healed it, but added a third Church, the United Evangelical, to the two older Confessions which, still continue separate in other countries.
The controversies among the Protestants in the
sixteenth century roused all the religious and political passions and
cast a gloom over the bright picture of the Reformation. Melanchthon
declared that with tears as abundant as the waters of the river Elbe he
could not express his grief over the distractions of Christendom and
the "fury of theologians." Calvin also, when invited, with Melanchthon,
Bullinger and Buzer, in 1552, by Archbishop Cranmer to Lambeth Palace
for the purpose of framing a concensus-creed of the Reformed churches,
was willing to cross ten seas for the cause of Christian union. See
the correspondence in Cranmer’s Works publ. by
the Parker Society, Vol.II. 430-433.
Much as we must deplore and condemn sectarian strife and bitterness, it would be as unjust to charge them on Protestantism, as to charge upon Catholicism the violent passions of the trinitarian, christological and other controversies of the Nicene age, or the fierce animosity between the Greek and Latin Churches, or the envy and jealousy of the monastic orders of the Middle Ages, or the unholy rivalries between Jansenists and Jesuits, Gallicans and Ultramontanists in modern Romanism. The religious passions grow out of the selfishness of depraved human nature in spite of Christianity, whether Greek, Roman, or Protestant., and may arise in any denomination or in any congregation. Paul had to rebuke the party spirit in the church at Corinth. The rancor of theological schools and parties under one and the same government is as great and often greater than among separate rival denominations. Providence overrules these human weaknesses for the clearer development of doctrine and discipline, and thus brings good out of evil.
The tendency of Protestantism towards individualism did not stop with the three Reformation Churches, but produced other divisions wherever it was left free to formulate and organize the differences of theological parties and schools. This was the case in England, in consequence of what may be called a second Reformation, which agitated that country during the seventeenth century, while Germany was passing through the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War.
The Toleration Act of 1689, after the final overthrow of the semi-popish and treacherous dynasty of the Stuarts, gave the Dissenters who were formerly included in the Church of England, the liberty to organize themselves into independent denominations under the names of Presbyterians, Independents or Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers; all professing the principles of the Reformation, but differing in minor points of doctrine, and especially in discipline, and the mode of worship.
The Methodist revival of religion which shook England and the American colonies during the eighteenth century, gave rise to a new denomination which spread with the enthusiasm of an army of conquest and grew into one of the largest and most influential communions in English-speaking Christendom.
In Scotland, the original unity of the Reformed Kirk was likewise broken up, mostly on the question of patronage and the sole headship of Christ, so that the Scotch population is now divided chiefly into three branches, the Established Church, the United Presbyterian Church, and the Free Church of Scotland; all holding, however, to the Westminster standards.
In Germany, the Moravian brotherhood acquired a legal existence, and fully earned it by its missionary zeal among the heathen, its educational institutions, its pure discipline and stimulating influence upon the older churches.
All these Churches of Great Britain and the Continent were transplanted by emigration to the virgin soil of North America, where they mingle on a basis of equality before the law and in the enjoyment of perfect religious freedom. But few communions are of native growth. In America, the distinction between church and sect, churchmen and dissenters, has lost its legal meaning. And even in Europe it is weakened in the same proportion in which under the influence of modern ideas of toleration and freedom the bond of union of church and state is relaxed, and the sects or theological parties are allowed to organize themselves into distinct communities.
Thus Protestantism in the nineteenth century is divided into half a dozen or more large denominations, without counting the minor divisions which are even far more numerous. The Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Methodists, and the Baptists, are distinct and separate families. Nor is the centrifugal tendency of Protestantism exhausted, and may produce new denominations, especially in America, where no political power can check its progress.
To an outside spectator, especially to a Romanist and to an infidel, Protestantism presents the aspect of a religious chaos or anarchy which must end in dissolution.
But a calm review of the history of the last three centuries and the present condition of Christendom leads to a very different conclusion. It is an undeniable fact that Christianity has the strongest hold upon the people and displays the greatest vitality and energy at home and abroad, in English-speaking countries, where it is most divided into denominations and sects. A comparison of England with Spain, or Scotland with Portugal, or the United States with Mexico and Peru or Brazil, proves the advantages of living variety over dead uniformity. Division is an element of weakness in attacking a consolidated foe, but it also multiplies the missionary, educational, and converting agencies. Every Protestant denomination has its own field of usefulness, and the cause of Christianity itself would be seriously weakened and contracted by the extinction of any one of them.
Nor should we overlook the important fact, that the differences which divide the various Protestant denominations are not fundamental, and that the articles of faith in which they agree are more numerous than those in which they disagree. All accept the inspired Scriptures as the supreme rule of faith and practice, salvation by grace, and we may say every article of the Apostles’ Creed; while in their views of practical Christianity they unanimously teach that our duties are comprehended in the royal law of love to God and to our fellow-men, and that true piety and virtue consist in the imitation of the example of Christ, the Lord and Saviour of all.
There is then unity in diversity as well as diversity in unity.
And the tendency to separation and division is counteracted by the opposite tendency to Christian union and denominational intercommunion which manifests itself in a rising degree and in various forms among Protestants of the present day, especially in England and America, and on missionary fields, and which is sure to triumph in the end. The spirit of narrowness, bigotry and exclusiveness must give way at last to a spirit of evangelical catholicity, which leaves each denomination free to work out its own mission according to its special charisma, and equally free to co-operate in a noble rivalry with all other denominations for the glory of the common Master and the building up of His Kingdom.
The great problem of Christian union cannot be solved by returning to a uniformity of belief and outward organization. Diversity in unity and unity in diversity is the law of God in history as well as in nature. Every aspect of truth must be allowed room for free development. Every possibility of Christian life must be realized. The past cannot be undone; history moves zig-zag, like a sailing vessel, but never backwards. The work of church history, whether Greek, Roman, or Protestant, cannot be in vain. Every denomination and sect has to furnish some stones for the building of the temple of God.
And out of the greatest human discord God will bring the richest concord.
§ 11. Protestantism and Religious Liberty.
Comp. Ph. Schaff: The Progress of Religious Freedom as shown in the History of Toleration Acts, N. York, 1889. (126 pages.)
The Reformation was a grand act of emancipation from
spiritual tyranny, and a vindication of the sacred rights of conscience
in matters of religious belief. Luther’s bold stand at
the Diet of Worms, in the face of the pope and the emperor, is one of
the sublimest events in the history of liberty, and the eloquence of
his testimony rings through the centuries. Froude
says (Luther, p. 38): "The appearance of Luther before the Diet
on this occasion, is one of the finest, perhaps it is the very finest,
scene in human history."
If liberty, both civil and religious, has since made progress, it is due in large measure to the inspiration of that heroic act. But the progress was slow and passed through many obstructions and reactions. "The mills of God grind slowly, but wonderfully fine."
It seems one of the strangest inconsistencies that the very men who claimed and exercised the right of protest in essentials, should have denied the same right to others, who differed from them in nonessentials. After having secured liberty from the yoke of popery, they acted on the persecuting principles in which they had been brought up. They had no idea of toleration or liberty in our modern sense. They fought for liberty in Christ, not from Christ, for liberty to preach and teach the gospel, not to oppose or pervert it. They were as intensely convinced of their views as their Roman opponents of theirs. They abhorred popery and heresy as dangerous errors which should not be tolerated in a Christian society. John Knox feared one Romish mass in Scotland more than an army of ten thousand French invaders. The Protestant divines and princes of the sixteenth century felt it to be their duty to God and to themselves to suppress and punish heresy as well as civil crimes. They confounded the law with the gospel. In many cases they acted in retaliation, and in self-defense. They were surrounded by a swarm of sects and errorists who claimed to be the legitimate children of the Reformation, exposed it to the reproach of the enemies and threatened to turn it into confusion and anarchy. The world and the church were not ripe for a universal reign of liberty, nor are they even now.
Religious persecution arises not only from bigotry and fanaticism, and the base passions of malice, hatred and uncharitableness, but also from mistaken zeal for truth and orthodoxy, from the intensity of religious conviction, and from the alliance of religion with politics or the union of church and state, whereby an offence against the one becomes an offence against the other. Persecution is found in all religions, churches and sects which had the power; while on the other hand all persecuted religions, sects, and parties are advocates of toleration and freedom, at least for themselves. Some of the best as well as the worst men have been persecutors, believing that they served the cause of God by fighting his enemies. Saul of Tarsus, and Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic saint and philosopher on the throne of the Caesars, have in ignorance persecuted Christianity, the one from zeal for the law of Moses, the other from devotion to the laws and gods of Rome. Charlemagne thought he could best promote Christianity among the heathen Saxons by chasing them through the river for wholesale baptism. St. Augustin, Thomas Aquinas, and Calvin were equally convinced of the right and duty of the civil magistrate to punish heresy. A religion or church established by law must be protected by law against its enemies. The only sure guarantee against persecution is to put all churches on an equal footing before the law, and either to support all or none.
Church history is lurid with the infernal fires of persecutions, not only of Christians by heathens and Mohammedans, but of Christians by Christians.
But there is a silver lining to every cloud, and an overruling Providence in all human wickedness. The persecutions test character, develop moral heroism, bring out the glories of martyrdom, and sow the bloody seed of religious liberty. They fail of their object when the persecuted party has the truth on its side, and ultimately result in its victory. This was the case with Christianity in the Roman empire, and to a large extent with Protestantism. They suffered the cross, and reaped the crown.
Let us now briefly survey the chief stages in the history of persecution, which is at the same time a history of religious liberty.
1. The New Testament furnishes not a single passage in favor of persecution. The teaching and example of Christ and the Apostles are against it. He came to save the world, not to destroy it. He declared that His kingdom is not of this world. He rebuked the hasty Peter for drawing the sword, though it was in defense of his Master; and he preferred to suffer and to die rather than to call the angels of God to aid against his enemies. The Apostles spread the gospel by spiritual means and condemned the use of carnal weapons.
For three hundred years the church followed their
example and advocated freedom of conscience. She suffered persecution
from Jews and Gentiles, but never retaliated, and made her way to
triumph through the power of truth and a holy life sealed by a heroic
death. Justin
Martyr, Tertullian, and Lactantius made some of the strongest pleas in
favor of religious liberty. See vol. II. 35 and 825.
2. The change began with the union of church and state under Constantine the Great, in the East, and Charles the Great, in the West. Both these emperors represent the continuation of the old Roman empire under the dominion of the sword and the cross.
The mediaeval theory of the Catholic Church
assumes a close alliance of Caesar and Pope, or the civil and
ecclesiastical power, in Christian countries, and the exclusiveness of
the Catholic communion out of which there can be no salvation. The
Athanasian Creed has no less than three damning clauses against all who
dissent from the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation.
From this point of view every heresy, i.e., every departure from
catholic orthodoxy, is a sin and a crime against society, and
punishable both by the church and the state, though in different ways.
"The church does not thirst for blood " Ecclesia non sitit sanguinem,"a maxim held by the Catholic
church even in the darkest days of persecution. When the first blood of
heretics was shed by order of the Emperor Maximus who punished some
Priscillianists in Spain by the sword in 388, St. Ambrose of Milan and
St. Martin of Tours loudly protested against the cruelty and broke off
communion with the bishops who had approved it.
The leading divines of the church gave sanction to
this theory. St. Augustin, who had himself been a heretic for nine
years, was at first in favor of toleration. He
begins his anti-Manichaean work, Adv. Epistolam Manichaei quam
vocant fundamenti, written in 397, with these noble Christian
sentiments: "My prayer to the one true, almighty God, of whom and by
whom and in whom are all things, has been and is now, that in opposing
and refuting the heresy of you Manichaeans, as you may after all be
heretics more from thoughtlessness than from malice, He would give me a
calm and composed mind, aiming at your recovery rather than your
discomfiture. For, while the Lord by his servants overthrows the
kingdoms of error, his will concerning erring men, as far as they are
men, is that they should be restored rather than destroyed. And in
every case where, previous to the final judgment, God inflicts
punishment ... we must believe that the designed effect is the recovery
of men, and not their ruin; while there is a preparation for the final
doom in the case of those who reject the means of recovery," And in ch.
3 he says to the Manichaeeans, remembering his own former connection
with them: I can on no account treat you angrily; for I must bear with
you now as formerly I had to bear with myself, and I must be as patient
with you as my associates were with me, when I went madly and blindly
astray in your beliefs." De
Correct. Donatist, c. 6, § 24: "The Lord himself ( "Credere non potest homo nisi volens." See his
Tract. XXVI. in Joan. c. 2, where he says: "A man can
come to church unwillingly, can approach the altar unwillingly, partake
of the sacrament unwillingly; but he can not believe unless he is
willing. If we believed with the body, men might be made to believe
against their will. But believing is not a thing done with the body." I
am pleased to find an approving reference to this sentence in the
Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII. of Nov. 1, 1885. In a
letter to Proconsul Donatus (Ep. C.) he adjured him by Jesus Christ,
not to repay the Donatists in kind, and says: "Corrigi eos cupimus,
non necari."
Thomas Aquinas, next to Augustin, the highest
authority among the canonized doctors of the Latin church, went a step
further. He proved, to the satisfaction of the Middle Ages, that the
rites of idolaters, Jews, and infidels ought not to be tolerated, Summa Theol. Secunda Secundae, Quaest. x., Art.
11. Ibid. Quaest. xi., Art. 3, where he says of heretics:
"Meruerunt non solum ab ecclesia per excommunicationem seperari, sed
etiam per mortem a mundo excludi ... Si falsarii pecuniae vel alii
malefactores statim per saeculares principes juste morti traduntur,
multo magis haeretici statim ex quo de haerisi convincuntur, possunt
non solum excommunicari, sed et juste occidi."
The persecution of heretics reached its height in
the papal crusades against the Albigenses under Innocent III., one of
the best of popes; in the dark deeds of the Spanish Inquisition; and in
the unspeakable atrocities of the Duke of Alva against the Protestants
in the Netherlands during his short reign
(1567–1573). Gibbon
asserts that "the number of Protestants who were executed [by the
Spaniards] in a single province and a single reign, far exceeded that
of the primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries, and in the
Roman empire?" Decline and Fall, Ch. xvi., towards the close.
Grotius, to whom he refers, states that the number of Dutch martyrs
exceeded 100,000; Sarpi reduces the number to 50,000. Alva himself
boasted that during his six years’ rule as the agent
of Philip II., he had caused 18,000 persons to be executed, but this
does not include the much larger number of those who perished by siege,
battle, and in prisons. At the sack of Haarlem, 300 citizens, tied two
and two and back to back, were thrown into the lake, and at Zutphen 500
more, in the same manner, were drowned in the Yssel. See
Motley’, Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. II.
504: "The barbarities committed amid the sack and ruin of those blazing
and starving cities are almost beyond belief; unborn infants were torn
from the living bodies of their mothers; women and children were
violated by the thousands; and whole populations burned and hacked to
pieces by soldiers in every mode which cruelty, in its wanton
ingenuity, could devise."
The horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew (Aug. 24,
1572) was sanctioned by Pope Gregory XIII., who celebrated it by public
thanksgivings, and with a medal bearing his image, an avenging angel
and the inscription, Ugonottorum strages. See De
Thou, Hist. lib. LXIII.; Gieseler, IV. 304 (Am. ed,);
Wachler, Die Pariser Bluthochzeit., 2d ed., Leipzig, 1828; Henry White, Massacre of St.
Bartholomew, N. Y., 1868; Henry M. Baird, History of the Rise of
the Huguenots, New York, 1879; Henri Bordier, La
Saint-Barthélemy et la Critique
moderne, Paris,
1879; H. Baumgarten, Vor der Bartholomaeusnacht, Strassburg,
1882. The number of victims of that massacre in Paris and throughout
France, is variously stated from 10,000 to 100,000; De Thou and Ranke
give 20,000 as the most moderate estimate (2,000 in Paris). Roman
Catholic writers defend the pope on the ground of ignorance; but he had
abundant time to secure full information from his nuncio and others
before the medals were struck. It is said that Philip II. of Spain, for
the first time in his life, laughed aloud when he heard of the
massacre.
The infamous dragonnades of Louis XIV. were a
continuation of the same politico-ecclesiastical policy on a larger
scale, aiming at the complete destruction of Protestantism in France,
in violation of the solemn edict of his grandfather (1598, revoked
1685), and met the full approval of the Roman clergy, including Bishop
Bossuet, the advocate of Gallican liberties. See
the French histories of Martin, Benoit, Michelet, De Félice,
Ranke, Soldan, Von Polenz, and other works quoted by H. M. Baird in
Schaff-Herzog II., 1037. The number of French refugees is estimated as
high as 800,000; Baird reduces it to 400,000. Martin thinks, that
taking all in all, "France lost the activity of more than a million of
men, and of the men that produced most." Many of the descendants of the
refugees whom the Elector Frederic William of Prussia so hospitably
invited to Berlin, fought against France in the Napoleonic wars, and
aided in the terrible retribution of 1870.
The most cruel of the many persecutions of the innocent Waldenses in the valleys of Piedmont took place in 1655, and shocked by its boundless violence the whole Protestant world, calling forth the vigorous protest of Cromwell and inspiring the famous sonnet of Milton, his foreign secretary:
These persecutions form the darkest, we may say, the satanic chapters in church history, and are a greater crime against humanity and Christianity than all the heresies which they in vain tried to eradicate.
The Roman church has never repented of her
complicity with these unchristian acts. On the contrary, she still
holds the principle of persecution in connection with her doctrine that
there is no salvation outside of her bosom. The papal Syllabus of 1864
expressly condemns, among the errors of modern times, the doctrine of
religious toleration. Among
the errors condemned are these, § X., 78 and 79: "In the
present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion shall
be held as the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all
other modes of worship.""Whence it has been wisely provided by law,
that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise
of their own worship." The condemnation of toleration implies the
approval of intolerance. See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, II.,
232. Janssen, while he condemns the Protestant persecutions of
Catholics, approves the Catholic persecutions of Protestants in the
time of the Reformation. He says: "Für die katholische
Geistlichkeit, die katholischen Fürsten und Magistrate und
das katholsche Volk war es ein Kampf der Sebsterhaltung, wenn sie Alles
aufboten, um dem Protestantismus den Eingang in ihre Gebiete zu wehren
und ihn, wenn er eingedrungen war, daraus wieder zu entfernen."
-Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, III., 193. After
glorifying the Middle Ages and the hierarchical rule of the church over
the state, Leo XIII. in that Encyclical proceeds to say: "No doubt the
same excellent state of things would have continued, if the agreement
of the two powers had continued, and greater things might rightfully
have been expected, if men had obeyed the authority, the teaching
office, and the counsels of the church with more fidelity and
perseverance. For that is to be regarded as a perpetual law which Ivo,
of Chartres, wrote to Pope Paschal II.: ’When kingship
and priesthood are agreed, the world is well ruled, the church
flourishes and bears fruit. But when they are at variance, not only do
little things not grow, but even great things fall into miserable ruin
and decay.’ " Then the pope rejects among the evil
consequences of the "revolution" of the sixteenth century (meaning, of
course, the Reformation) the erroneous opinion that "no religion should
be publicly professed [by the state]; nor ought one to be preferred to
the rest; nor ought there to be any inquiry which of many is alone
true; nor ought one to be specially favored, but to each alike equal
rights ought to be assigned, provided only, that the social order
incurs no injury from them." This is probably aimed at Italy and
France, but implies also a condemnation of the separation of church and
state as it exists in the United States. Further on, the pope
approvingly refers to the Encyclical Mirari Vos of Gregory XVI.
(Aug. 15, 1832), which condemns the separation of church and state, and
to the Syllabus of Pius IX., who "noted many false opinions and ordered
them to be collected together in order that in so great a conflux of
errors Catholics might have something which they might follow without
stumbling." Thus,
in 1852, the Madiai family were imprisoned in Florence for holding
prayer meetings and reading the Bible, and in 1853, Matamoras, Carrasco
and their friends were imprisoned and condemned to the galleys at
Madrid for the same offense, and were only released after a powerful
protest of an international deputation of the Evangelical Alliance. No
public worship except the Roman Catholic was tolerated in the
city of Rome before 1870.
3. The Protestant theory and practice of persecution and toleration.
(a) The Lutheran Reformers and Churches.
Luther was the most advanced among the Reformers
in the ideas of toleration and liberty. He clearly saw the far-reaching
effect of his own protest against Rome, and during his storm- and
pressure-period, from 1517 to 1521, he was a fearless champion of
liberty. He has left some of the noblest utterances against
coërcion in matters of conscience, which contain almost
every essential feature of the modern theory on the subject. He draws a
sharp line between the temporal power which is confined to the body and
worldly goods, and the spiritual government which belongs to God. He
says that "no one can command or ought to command the soul, except God,
who alone can show it the way to heaven;" that "the thoughts and mind
of man are known only to God;" that "it is futile and impossible to
command, or by force to compel any man’s belief;" that
"heresy is a spiritual thing which no iron can hew down, no fire burn,
no water drown;" that "belief is a free thing which cannot be
enforced." See
his tract, written in 1523, Von weltlicher Obrigkeit, wie weit man ihr Gehorsam schuldig
sei? In Walch X.
426-479, especially the second part, col. 451 sqq. "Der Seelen kann und soll
niemand gebieten, er wisse denn ihr den Weg zu weisen gen Himmel. Das
kann aber kein Mensch thun, sondern Gott allein. Darum in den Sachen,
die der Seelen Seligkeit betreffen, soll nichts denn Gottes Wort
gelehret und angenommenwerden" (453). Es ist ein frei Werk um den Glauben, dazu man
niemand kann zwingen ... Zum Glauben kann und soll man niemand
zwingen" (455
sq.). He justly confines the duty of obedience taught in Von der Wiedertaufe, an zwei
Pfarrherrn,
written in Dec., 1527 or Jan., 1528, and addressed to two pastors in a
Roman Catholic country (probably under the rule of Duke George of
Saxony). See Walch XVII., 2644, and the Erl. Frankf. ed. xxvi., or of
the Reformations-historische Schriften III. (2d ed. 1885), p. 283, from which I quote
the whole passage: "Doch ist’s nicht recht, und ist mir
wahrlich leid, dass man solche elende Lente so jämmerlich
ermordet, verbrennet und greulich umbringt; man sollte, ja einen
jeglichen lassen gläuben, was er wollt. Gläubet
er unrecht, so hat er gnug Strafen an dem ewigen Feur in der
Höllen. Warumb will man sie denn auch noch zeitlich martern,
so ferne sie allein im Glauben irren, und nicht auch daneben
aufruhrisch oder sonst der Oeberkeit widerstreben? Lieber Gott, wie
bald ists geschehen, dass einer irre wird und dem Teufel in Strick
fället! Mit der Schrift und Gottes Wort sollt man ihn wehren
und widerstehen; mit Feuer wird man wenig
ausrichten." Briefe, de Wette III., 347 sq.: "Quod quaeris, an
liceat magistratui accidere pseudoprophetas? Ego ad judiciam sanguinis
tardus sum, etiam ubi meritum abundat ... Nullo modo possum admittere,
falsos doctores occidi; satis est eos relegari." He gives as a
reason that the law of the death penalty among the Jews and Papists was
made a pretext for killing true prophets and saints.
To this extent, then, he favored punishment of
heretics, but no further. He wanted them to be silenced or banished by
the government. He spent his violence in words, in which he far
outstripped friends and foes, and spared neither papists, nor
Zwinglians, nor Anabaptists, nor even temporal princes like Henry
VIII., Duke George of Saxony, and Duke Henry of Brunswick. His
coarse attack on Henry VIII., "by God’s disfavor (or
disgrace, Ungnade) king of England," is well known. In his
book, Von weltlicher Obrigkeit, which is dedicated to his own prince, Duke John, he
ventures the opinion that wise and pious rulers have from the beginning
of the world been rare birds, and that princes are usually the greatest
fools or worst boobies on earth (sie sind gemeiniglich die
grössten Narren oder die ärgsten Buben auf
Erden). Walch X.,
460 and 464."Es sind gar wenig Fürsten, die man nicht
für Narren und Buben hält. Das macht, sie
bewiesen sich auch also, und der gemeine Mann wird
verständig."Ibid., 464. In a
letter to Albrecht of Brandenburg, a. 1532, after he heard of
Zwingli’s death. De Wette IV., 349-355. In the same
letter he speaks of Zwingli’s salvation only
problematically, as having possibly occurred in the last moment! He
lays there the greatest stress on the real presence as a fundamental
article of faith.
A few words on his views concerning the toleration
of the Jews who had to suffer every indignity from Christians, as if
they were personally responsible for the crime of the crucifixion.
Luther was at first in advance of public opinion. In 1523 he protested
against the cruel treatment of the Jews, as if they were dogs, and not
human beings, and counseled kindness and charity as the best means of
converting them. If the apostles, he says, who were Jews, had dealt
with the heathen, as we heathen Christians deal with the Jews, no
heathen would ever have been converted, and I myself, if I were a Jew,
would rather become anything else than a Christian. See
his tract entitled Dass Jesus Christus ein geborner Jude
sei, in the Erl.
Frkf. ed. Bd. XIX., p. 45-75. He says that if I were a Jew and suffered
what the Jews had to suffer from popes, bishops and monks,
"so
wäre ich eher eine Sau worden denn ein Christ. Denn sie
haben mit den Juden gehandelt, als wären es Hunde, und nicht
Menschen" (p.
47). Von den Jüden und ihren
Lügen,
Wittenb., 1543, and Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht
Christi,
Wittenb., 1543. In the Erl. Frkf. ed. Bd. XXXII., 99-274, and
275-358. "Ein Jüde oder jüdisch Herz ist so
stock-stein-eisen-teufel-hart, dass es mit keiner Weise zu bewegen ist
... Summa, es sind junge Teufel, zur Höllen
verdammt"
(l.c. p. 276). He had no hope of the future conversion of the
Jews, which some justly derived from "Vermahnung wider die Jüden," 1546, Erl. ed. LXV., 186-188. He
concludes: Wollen sich die Jüden zu uns bekehren und von ihrer
Lästerung und was sie uns sonst gethan haben,
aufhören, so wollen wir es ihnen gerne vergeben: wo aber
nicht, so sollen wir sie auch bei uns nicht dulden noch
leiden."This
reminds one of the way in which Prince Bismarck in the year 1886
proposed to deal with the Poles in Posen as enemies of Prussia and
Germany: to buy them out, and expel them from the land of their birth.
In several other respects, both favorable and unfavorable, that great
statesman may be called the political Luther of the nineteenth
century.
Melanchthon, the mildest of the Reformers,
went—strange to say—a step further
than Luther, not during his lifetime, but eight years after his death,
and expressly sanctioned the execution of Servetus for blasphemy in the
following astounding letter to Calvin, dated Oct. 14, 1554: "Reverend
sir and dearest brother: I have read your work in which you have
lucidly refuted the horrible blasphemies of Servetus, and I thank the
Son of God, who has been the arbiter (brabeuthv") of this your contest.
The church, both now and in all generations, owes and will owe you a
debt of gratitude. I entirely assent to your judgment. (Tuo judicio
prorsus adsentior.) And I say, too, that your magistrates did right in
that, after solemn trial, they put the blasphemer (hominem blasphemum)
to death." Corpus Reform. Opera Mel. VIII., 362. Comp. H.
Tollin, Ph. Melanchthon und M. Servet. Eine
Quellen-Studie.
Berlin, 1876 (198 pages). Tollin wrote several monographs on Servetus
in his various relations. Ibid., IX., 133: "Dedit vero et Genevensis Reipubl.
Magistratus ante annos quatuor punitae insanabilis blasphemiae adversus
Filium Dei, sublato Serveto Arragone, pium et memorabile ad omnem
posteritatem exemplum." Luther
knew only the Servetus of 1531, and once refers to him in his
Table-Talk, as a fanatic who mastered theology by false
philosophy. See Tollin, Luther und Servet, Berlin, 1875 (61 pages).
The other Lutheran Reformers agreed essentially
with the leaders. They conceded to the civil ruler the control over the
religious as well as political opinions of their subjects. Martin Bucer
went furthest in this direction and taught in his "Dialogues" (1535)
the right and the duty of Christian magistrates to reform the church,
to forbid and punish popish idolatry, and all false religions,
according to the full rigor of the Mosaic law. See
Tollin, Butzer’s Confutatio der Libri VII. De Trinitatis
Erroribus, in the
"Studien
und Kritiken" for
1875; and Michael Servet und Martin Butzer, Berlin, 1880; Baum, Capito und
Butzer (1860),
pp. 489 sq., 478, and 495 sq.; also Janssen, Gesch. des deutschen
Volkes, vol.
III., 194.
In accordance with these views of the Lutheran
Reformers the Roman Catholics in Lutheran countries were persecuted,
not, indeed, by shedding their blood as the blood of Protestants was
shed in Roman Catholic countries, but by the confiscation of their
church property, the prohibition of their worship, and, if it seemed
necessary, by exile. In the reorganization of the church in Electoral
Saxony in 1528, under the direction of the Wittenberg Reformers, the
popish priests were deprived of their benefices, and even obstinate
laymen were forced to sell their property and to leave their country.
"For," said the Elector, "although it is not our intention to bind any
one to what he is to believe and hold, yet will we, for the prevention
of mischievous tumult and other inconveniences, suffer neither sect nor
separation in our territory." "Denn wiewohl unsere Meinung nicht ist, jemand zu verbinden, was
er glauben und halten soll, so wollen wir doch zur Verhütung
schädlicher Aufruhre und anderer Unrichtigkeiten keine
Sekten noch Trennung in unseren Landen dulden." Köstlin II., 29. What a
difference between this restriction and the declaration of Frederick
the Great, that in his dominions every body may be saved after his own
fashion (nach seiner eigenen Façon).
The Protestant dissenters fared no better in
Lutheran Saxony. The Philippists (Melanchthonians) or Crypto-Calvinists
were outlawed, and all clergymen, professors and school teachers who
would not subscribe the Formula of Concord, were deposed (1580). Dr.
Caspar Peucer, Melanchthon’s son-in-law, professor of
medicine at Wittenberg and physician to the Elector Augustus of Saxony,
was imprisoned for ten years (1576–1586) for no other
crime than "Philippism" (i.e. Melanchthonianism), and Nicolas Crell,
the chancellor of Saxony, was, after ten years’
confinement, beheaded at Dresden for favoring Crypto-Calvinism at home
and supporting the Huguenots abroad, which was construed as high
treason (1601). Fr.
Koch, De Vita Caspar. Peuceri Marburg, 1856.
Richard, Der churfürstl. sächs. Kanzler Dr. Nic.
Krell. Dresden,
1859, 2 vols. Henke, Kaspar Peucer und Nik. Krell, Marburg, 1865. Calinich, Kampf und Untergang des
Melathonismus in Kursachsen, Leipzig, 1866; Zwei sächsische
Kanzler,
Chemnitz, 1868. The
following lines were familiar during the seventeenth
century: "Gottes Wort und
Lutheri Schrift Sind
des Papst’s und Calvini Gift."
In other Lutheran countries, Zwinglians and
Calvinists fared no better. John a Lasco, the Reformer of Poland and
minister of a Protestant congregation in London, when fleeing with his
followers, including many women and children, from the persecution of
the bloody Mary, was not allowed a resting place at Copenhagen, or
Rostock, or Lübeck, or Hamburg, because he could not accept
the Lutheran doctrine of the real presence, and the poor fugitives were
driven from port to port in cold winter, till at last they found a
temporary home at Emden (1553). Hermann Dalton (of St. Petersburg), in his Johannes a
Laasco (Gotha, 1881), pp. 427-438, gives a graphic description of
what he calls Laski’s "martyrdom in Denmark and North
Germany." Calvin raised his indignant protest against this cruel
treatment of his brethren, but in the same year Servetus was made to
suffer death for heresy and blasphemy under Calvin’s
eye!
In Scandinavia every religion except the Lutheran was forbidden on pain of confiscation and exile, and these laws were in force till the middle of the nineteenth century. Queen Christina lost her Swedish crown by her apostasy from Lutheranism, which her father had so heroically defended in the Thirty Years’ War.
(b) The Swiss Reformers, though republicans, were not behind the Germans in intolerance against Romanists and heretics.
Zwingli extended the hand of brotherhood to
Luther, and hoped to meet even the nobler heathen in heaven, but had no
mercy on the Anabaptists, who threatened to overthrow his work in
Zürich. After trying in vain to convince them by successive
disputations, the magistrate under his control resorted to the Cruel
irony of drowning their leaders (six in all) in the Limmat near the
lake of Zürich (between 1527 and 1532). Bullinger, Reformationsgeschichte, I., 382. Comp.
his Von
der Wiedertäufer Ursprung, etc., 1560. Hagenbach, Kirchengesch., III. 350 sqq. Emil Egli, Die Züricher
Wiedertäufer zur Reformatiosszeit, Zürich, 1884.
Nitsche, Gesch. der Wiedertäufer in der
Schweiz,
Einsiedeln, 1885.
Zwingli counselled, at the risk of his own life,
the forcible introduction of the Reformed religion into the territory
of the Catholic Forest Cantons (1531); forgetting the warning of Christ
to Peter, that they who take the sword shall perish by the sword. The
statue erected to his memory at Zürich, August 25th, 1885,
represents him as holding the Bible in his right hand and the sword
with his left. Dr. Alex. Schweizer protested (as he informed me)
against the sword, and took no part in the festivities of the
dedication of the monument.
Calvin has the misfortune rather than the guilt of pre-eminence for intolerance among the Reformers. He and Servetus are the best abused men of the sixteenth century; and the depreciation of the good name of the one and the exculpation of the bad name of the other have been carried far beyond the limits of historic truth and justice. Both must be judged from the standpoint of the sixteenth, not of the nineteenth, century.
The fatal encounter of the champion of orthodoxy
and the champion of heresy, men of equal age, rare genius, and fervent
zeal for the restoration of Christianity, but direct antipodes in
doctrine, spirit and aim, forms the most thrilling tragedy in the
history of the Reformation. The contrast between the two is almost as
great as that between Simon Peter and Simon Magus. Servetus probably imagined himself to represent the Apostle when
he called Calvin "Simon Magus." He did identify himself with the
archangel Michael fighting against the dragon, i.e. the Pope of
Rome,
Leaving the historical details and the doctrinal
aspect for another chapter, Together with the extensive literature.
Impartial history must condemn alike the
intolerance of the victor and the error of the victim, but honor in
both the strength of conviction. Calvin should have contented himself
with banishing his fugitive rival from the territory of Geneva, or
allowing him quietly to proceed on his contemplated journey to Italy,
where he might have resumed his practice of medicine in which he
excelled. But he sacrificed his future reputation to a mistaken sense
of duty to the truth and the cause of the Reformation in Switzerland
and his beloved France, where his followers were denounced and
persecuted as heretics. He is responsible, on his own frank confession,
for the arrest and trial of Servetus, and he fully assented to his
condemnation and death "for heresy and blasphemy," except that he
counselled the magistrate, though in vain, to mitigate the legal
penalty by substituting the sword for the fire. Servetus appeared on a Sunday morning, August 13th, 1553, in one
of the churches at Geneva and was recognized by one of the worshippers,
who at once informed Calvin of the fact, whereupon he was thrown into
prison. "Nec sane dissimulo," says Calvin (Opera, vol.
VIII., col. 461, ed. Baum, Reuss, etc.), "mea opera consilioque jure
in carcerem fuisse conjectum." Beza, in his Vita Calv.,
reports the fact as providential that Servetus, "a quodam agnitus,
Calvino Magistratum admonente," was arrested. Servetus had
previously applied for a safe-conduct from Vienne to Geneva, but Calvin
refused it, and wrote to Farel, February 13th, 1546: "Si venerit,
modo valeat mea auctoritas, vivum exire numquam patiar." During the
process, he expressed the hope, in a letter to Farel (August 2nd,
1553), that Servetus might be condemned to death, but that the sentence
be executed in a milder form (Opera xiv., col. 590): "Spero
capitale saltem fore judicium, poenae vero atrocitatem
[ignem] remitti cupio." In the same letter he gives a
sketch of the system of Servetus as teaching a pantheistic diffusion of
the deity in wood, stone, and even in devils.
But the punishment was in accordance with the
mediaeval laws and wellnigh universal sentiment of Catholic and
Protestant Christendom; it was unconditionally counselled by four Swiss
magistrates which had been consulted before the execution (Zurich,
Berne, Basel, and Schaffhausen), and was expressly approved by all the
surviving reformers: Bullinger, Farel, Beza, Peter Martyr, and (as we
have already seen) even by the mild and gentle Melanchthon. And strange
to say, Servetus himself held, in part at least, the theory under which
he suffered: for he admitted that incorrigible obstinacy and malice
deserved death, "Hoc crimen," he says in the 27th of his letters to Calvin
(Opera VIII., 708), "est morte simpliciter dignum."
Calvin refers to this admission of Servetus (VIII., 462) and charges
him with inconsistency.
Nor should we overlook the peculiar aggravation of
the case. We may now put a more favorable construction on
Servetus’ mystic and pantheistic or panchristic
Unitarianism than his contemporaries, who seemed to have misunderstood
him, friends as well as foes; but he was certainly a furious fanatic
and radical heretic, and in the opinion of all the churches of his age
a reckless blasphemer, aiming at the destruction of historic
Christianity. He was thus judged from his first book (1531), De
Trinitatis Erroribus Libri Sept. Per michaelem Serveto,
aliàs Reves ab Aragonia Hispanum. Anno M. D. XXXI. No
place of publication is given in the copy before me, but it was printed
at Hagenau in the Alsace, as appears from the trial at Geneva. The book
excited the greatest indignation in Oecolampadius and Bucer. Luther
called it an awfully wicked book (ein gräulich
bös Buch). Bucer thought the author ought to be torn to
pieces. Christianismi Restitutio ... MDLIII., secretly printed at
Vienne in France, with his initials on the last page, M. S. V. (i
e.: Villanovanus). Such
blasphemy of the Trinity appeared to be blasphemy of the Deity itself.
Hence Beza calls Servetus "ille sacrae Triadis, id est omnis verae
Deitatis hostis, adeoque monstrum ex omnibus quantumvis rancidis et
portentosis haeresibus conflatum."Calv. Vita, ad a. 1553. He
charges his book with being "full of blasphemies." Servetus called
Jesus "the Son of the eternal God," but obstinately refused to call him
"the eternal Son of God," in other words, to admit his eternal
divinity. "The
year 1553," says Beza in Calvini Vita, ad a. 1553, "by the
impatience and malice of the factious [the Libertines] was a year so
full of trouble that not only the church, but the republic of Geneva,
came within a hair’s breadth of ruin ... All power had
fallen into their hands, that nothing seemed to hinder them from
attaining the ends for which they had so long been striving." Then he
mentions the trial of Servetus as the other danger, which was
aggravated by the first.
Considering all these circumstances
Calvin’s conduct is not only explained, but even
justified in part. He acted in harmony with the public law and orthodox
sentiment of his age, and should therefore not be condemned more than
his contemporaries, who would have done the same in his position. H.
Tollin, a Reformed clergyman of Magdeburg, the most enthusiastic and
voluminous advocate of Servetus and his system, admits this, saying
(Charakterbild M. Servet’s, Berlin, 1876, p.
6): "Nicht Calvin ist schuldig der That, sondern der Protestantismus
seiner Zeit."
Another apologist, Dardier (in Lichtenberger’s
"Encyclopédie " XI. 581), says the
same: C’est la Réforme tout
entière qui est coupable."The famous Christian philosopher, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, went further. In one of his last utterances, in his
Table-Talk, sub Jan. 3, 1834 (to which a friend directed my
attention), he expressed his views as follows: " I have known books
written on tolerance, the proper title of which would
be—intolerant or intolerable books on tolerance.
Should not a man who writes a book expressly to inculcate tolerance
learn to treat with respect, or at least with indulgence, articles of
faith which tens of thousands ten times told of his fellow-subjects or
his fellow-creatures believe with all their souls, and upon the truth
of which they rest their tranquillity in this world, and their hopes of
salvation in the next,—those articles being at least
maintainable against his arguments, and most certainly innocent in
themselves?—Is it fitting to run Jesus Christ in a
silly parallel with Socrates—the Being whom thousand
millions of intellectual creatures, of whom I am an humble unit, take
to be their Redeemer, with an Athenian philosopher, of whom we should
know nothing except through his glorification in Plato and
Xenophon?—And then to hitch Latimer and Servetus together! To be sure, there was a stake and a fire in each case,
but where the rest of the resemblance is I cannot see. What ground is
there for throwing the odium of Servetus’s death upon
Calvin alone?—Why, the mild Melanchthon wrote to
Calvin, expressly to testify his concurrence in the act, and no doubt
he spoke the sense of the German Reformers; the Swiss churches
advised the punishment in formal letters, and I rather think
there are letters from the English divines, approving
Calvin’s conduct!—Before a man deals
out the slang of the day about the great leaders of the Reformation, he
should learn to throw himself back to the age of the Reformation, when
the two great parties in the church were eagerly on the watch to fasten
a charge of heresy on the other. Besides, if ever a poor fanatic thrust
himself into the fire, it was Michael Servetus. He was a rabid
enthusiast, and did everything he could in the way of insult and
ribaldry to provoke the feeling of the Christian church. He called the
Trinitytriceps monstrum et Cerberum quemdam tri-partitum, and so
on!’
But all the humane sentiments are shocked again by the atrocity, of the execution; while sympathy is roused for the unfortunate sufferer who died true to his conviction, reconciled to his enemies, and with the repeated prayer in the midst of the flames: "Jesus, thou Son of the eternal God, have mercy upon me!"
The enemies of Calvin raised, in anonymous and pseudonymous pamphlets, a loud protest against the new tribunal of popery and inquisition in Geneva, which had boasted to be an asylum of all the persecuted. The execution of Servetus was condemned by his anti-trinitarian sympathizers, especially the Italian refugees in Switzerland, and also by some orthodox Christians in Basel and elsewhere, who feared that it would afford a powerful argument to the Romanists for their persecution of Protestants.
Calvin felt it necessary, therefore, to come out
with a public defense of the death-penalty for heresy, in the spring of
1554. Defensio orthodoxae fidei de sacra trinitate contra
prodigiosos errores Michaelis Serveti Hispani ubi ostenditur haereticos
jure gladii örcendos esse. In Calvin’s
Opera, ed. Reuss, etc., vol. VIII. 483-644. Bullinger urged him
to the task in a letter of December 12th, 1553 (Opera, XIV.
698): "Vide, me Calvine, ut diligenter et, pie omnibus piis
describas Servetum cum suo exitu, ut omnes abhorreant a
bestia."
Beza also defended, with his usual ability, in a
special treatise, the punishment of heretics, chiefly as a measure of
self-defense of the state which had a right to give laws and a duty to
protect religion. He derived the doctrine of toleration from scepticism
and infidelity and called it a diabolical dogma. De
haeriticis a civili magistratu puniendis, adversus Martini Bellii
(an unknown person) farraginem et novorum academicorum sectam.
Geneva (Oliva Rob. Stephani), 1554; second ed. 1592; French translation
by Nic. Colladon, 1560. See Heppe’s Beza, p. 38
sq.
The burning of the body of Servetus did not destroy his soul. His blood was the fruitful seed of the doctrine of toleration and the Unitarian heresy, which assumed an organized form in the Socinian sect, and afterward spread in many orthodox churches, including Geneva.
Fortunately the tragedy of 1553 was the last spectacle of burning a heretic in Switzerland, though several years later the Anti-trinitarian, Valentine Gentile, was beheaded in Berne (1566).
(c) In France the Reformed church, being in the minority, was violently and systematically persecuted by the civil rulers in league with the Roman church, and it is well for her that she never had a chance to retaliate. She is emphatically a church of martyrs.
(d) The Reformed church in Holland, after passing through terrible trials and persecutions under Spanish rule, showed its intolerance toward the Protestant Arminians who were defeated by the Synod of Dort (1619). Their pastors and teachers were deposed and banished. The Arminian controversy was, however, mixed up with politics; the Calvinists were the national and popular party under the military lead of Prince Maurice; while the political leaders of Arminianism, John Van Olden Barneveldt and Hugo Grotius, were suspected of disloyalty for concluding a truce with Spain (1609), and condemned, the one to death, the other to perpetual banishment. With a change of administration the Arminians were allowed to return (1625), and disseminated, with a liberal theology, principles of religious toleration.
§ 12. Religious Intolerance and Liberty in England and America.
The history of the Reformation in England and Scotland is even more disfigured by acts of intolerance and persecution than that of the Continent, but resulted at last in greater gain for religious freedom. The modern ideas of well regulated, constitutional liberty, both civil and religious, have grown chiefly on English soil.
At first it was a battle between persecution and mere toleration, but toleration once legally secured prepared the way for full religious liberty.
All parties when persecuted, advocated liberty of conscience, and all parties when in power, exercised intolerance, but in different degrees. The Episcopalians before 1689 were less intolerant than the Romanists under Queen Mary; the Presbyterians before 1660 were less intolerant than the Episcopalians; the Independents less intolerant (in England) than the Presbyterians (but more intolerant in New England); the Baptists, Quakers, Socinians and Unitarians consistently taught freedom of conscience, and were never tempted to exercise intolerance. Finally all became tolerant in consequence of a legal settlement in 1689, but even that was restricted by disabling clauses. The Romanists used fire and sword; the Episcopalians fines, prisons, pillories, nose-slittings, ear-croppings, and cheek-burnings; the Presbyterians tried depositions and disabilities; the Independents in New England exiled Roger Williams, the Baptist (1636), and hanged four Quakers (two men and two women, 1659, 1660 and 1661) in Boston, and nineteen witches in Salem (1692). But all these measures of repression proved as many failures and made persecution more hateful and at last impossible.
1. The first act of the English Reformation, under Henry VIII., was simply the substitution of a domestic for a foreign popery and tyranny; and it was a change for the worse. No one was safe who dared to dissent from the creed of the despotic monarch who proclaimed himself "the supreme head of the Church of England." At his death (1547), the six bloody articles were still in force; but they contained some of the chief dogmas of Romanism which he held in spite of his revolt against the pope.
2. Under the brief reign of Edward VI. (1547–1553), the Reformation made decided progress, but Anabaptists were not tolerated; two of them, who held some curious views on the incarnation, were burnt as obstinate heretics, Joan Bocher, commonly called Joan of Kent, May 2, 1550, and George Van Pare, a Dutchman April 6, 1551. The. young king refused at first to sign the death-warrant of the woman, correctly thinking that the sentence was "a piece of cruelty too like that which they had condemned in papists;" at last he yielded to Cranmer’s authority, who argued with him from the law of Moses against blasphemy, but he put his hand to the warrant with tears in his eyes and charged the archbishop with the responsibility for the act if it should be wrong.
3. The reign of the bloody Queen Mary (1553–1558) was a fearful retaliation, but sealed the doom of popery by the blood of Protestant martyrs, including the Reformers, Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, who were burnt in the market place at Oxford.
4. Queen Elizabeth (1558–1603), by virtue of her office, as "Defender of the Faith, and supreme governor of the Church" in her dominions, permanently established the Reformed religion, but to the exclusion of all dissent. Her penal code may have been a political necessity, as a protection against domestic treason and foreign invasion, but it aimed systematically at the annihilation of both Popery and Puritanism. It acted most severely upon Roman Catholic priests, who could only save their lives by concealment or exile. Conformity to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer was rigidly enforced; attendance upon the Episcopal service was commanded, while the mass and every other kind of public worship were forbidden under severe penalties. The rack in the tower was freely employed against noblemen suspected of disloyalty to the queen-pope. The statute de haereticis comburendis from the reign of Henry IV. (1401) remained in force, and two Anabaptists were burnt alive under Elizabeth, and two Arians under her successor. The statute was not formally abolished till 1677. Ireland was treated ecclesiastically as well as politically as a conquered province, and England is still suffering from that cruel polity, which nursed a hereditary hatred of the Catholic people against their Protestant rulers, and made the removal of the Irish grievances the most difficult problem of English statesmanship.
Popery disappeared for a while from British soil, and the Spanish Armada was utterly defeated. But Puritanism, which fought in the front rank against the big pope at Rome, could not be defeated by the little popes at home. It broke out at last in open revolt against the tyranny of the Stuarts, and the cruelties of the Star Chamber and High-Commission Court, which were not far behind the Spanish Inquisition, and punished freedom of speech and of the press as a crime against society.
5. Puritanism ruled England for about twenty years
(1640 to 1660), which form the most intensely earnest and excited
period in her history. It saved the rights of the people against the
oppression of their rulers, but it punished intolerance with
intolerance, and fell into the opposite error of enforcing Puritan, in
the place of Episcopal, uniformity, though with far less severity. The
Long Parliament abolished the Episcopal hierarchy and liturgy (Sept.
10, 1642), expelled about two thousand royalist clergymen from their
benefices, and executed on the block Archbishop Laud (1644) and King
Charles I. (1649), as traitors; thus crowning them with the glory of
martyrdom and preparing the way for the Restoration. Episcopalians now
became champions of toleration, and Jeremy Taylor, the Shakespeare of
the English pulpit, raised his eloquent voice for the Liberty of
Prophesying (1647), which, however, he afterward recalled in part when
he was made a bishop by Charles II. (1661). Coleridge regards this revocation as the only blot on
Taylor’s character. His second wife was a natural
daughter of Charles I.
The Westminster Assembly of Divines
(1643–1652), which numbered one hundred and twenty-one
divines and several lay-deputies and is one of the most important
ecclesiastical meetings ever held, was intrusted by Parliament with the
impossible task of framing a uniform creed, discipline and ritual for
three kingdoms. The extraordinary religious commotion of the times gave
rise to all sorts of religious opinions from the most rigid orthodoxy
to deism and atheism, and called forth a lively pamphlet war on the
subject of toleration, which became an apple of discord in the
Assembly. Thomas Edwards, in his Gangraena (1645), enumerated, with
uncritical exaggeration, no less than sixteen sects and one hundred and
seventy-six miscellaneous "errors, heresies and blasphemies," exclusive
of popery and deism. For
the extensive literature on the subject see the list of Dr. Dexter,
The Congregationalism of the last three hundred years as seen in its
Literature (N. York, 1880), Appendix, pp. 49-82. The Hansard
Knollys (Baptist) Society has published, in 1846 at London, a series of
Tracts on Liberty of Conscience and Persecution, written from
1614-1661. I mention only those which I have myself examined in the
rich McAlpin Collection of the Union Theol. Seminary, N.
York.
There were three theories on toleration, which may
be best stated in the words of George Gillespie, one of the Scottish
commissioners of the Assembly. Wholesome Severity reconciled with Christian Liberty, or the true
Resolution of a present Controversie concerning Liberty of Conscience.
Here you have the question stated, the middle way between Popish
tyrannie and Schismatizing Liberty approved, and also confirmed from
Scripture, and the testimonies of Divines, yea, of whole churches ...
And in conclusion a Paraenetick to the five Apologists for choosing
Accommodation rather than Toleration. London, 1645 (40 pages). Dexter
(p. 56) assigns the pamphlet, which is anonymous, to Gillespie, and its
sentiments agree with those he expressed in a sermon he preached before
the House of Lords, August 27, 1645.
(a) The theory of the "Papists who hold it to be not only no sin, but good service to God to extirpate by fire and sword all that are adversaries to, or opposers of, the Church and Catholic religion." Under this theory John Hus and Jerome of Prague were burnt at the Council of Constance. Gillespie calls it., in the Preface, "the black devil of idolatry and tyranny."
(b) "The second opinion doth fall short as far as
the former doth exceed: that is, that the magistrate ought not to
inflict any punishment, nor put forth any coërcive power
upon heretics and sectaries, but on the contrary grant them liberty and
toleration." This theory is called "the white devil of heresy and
schism," and ascribed to the Donatists (?), Socinians, Arminians and
Independents. But the chief advocate was Roger Williams, the Baptist,
who became the founder of Rhode Island. He
wrote "The Bloody Tenent of Persecution," etc., 1644 (248 pp.),
and "The Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody," etc., 1652 (373 pp.).
Among the anonymous pamphlets on the same side, we mention The
Compassionate Samaritane, Unbinding the Conscience, and pouring oyle
into the wounds which have been made upon the Separation, etc.,
1644 (84 pp.). Dr.
Dexter asserts (p. 101) that "Robert Browne is entitled to the proud
pre-eminence of having been the first writer clearly to state and
defend in the English tongue the true and now accepted doctrine of the
relation of the magistrate to the church," in his Treatise of
Reformation, published in 1582. Comp. Dexter, p. 703 sq., and
Append. p. 8. But this is an error. Bishop John Hooper of Gloucester,
who suffered martyrdom under Queen Mary (1555), says in one of his
earliest treatises: "As touching the superior powers of the earth, it
is well known to all that have readen and marked the Scripture that it
appertaineth nothing unto their office to make any law to govern the
conscience of their subjects in religion."Early Writings of Bishop
Hooper, p. 280, quoted by Dr. Mitchell, The Westminster
Assembly, p. 16, where may be found a still stronger passage in,
Latin to the same effect: "Profecto Christus non ignem non carceres,
non vincula, non violentiam, non bonorum confiscationem, non regineae
majestatis terrorem media organa constituit quibus veritas verbi sui
mundo promulgaretur; sed miti ac diligenti praedicatione evangelii sui
mundum ab errore et idolatria converti praecepit."Later Writings
of Bp. Hooper, p. 386. The same principle found expression among
Mennonites and Anabaptists of the Reformation period, and may be traced
back to the Apostolic and the Ante-Nicene period, when Christianity had
no connection whatever with politics and secular
government.
(c) "The third opinion is that the magistrate may
and ought to exercise his coërcive power in suppressing and
punishing heretics and sectaries less or more, according as the nature
and degree of the error, schism, obstinacy, and danger of seducing
others may require." For this theory Gillespie quotes Moses, St.
Augustin, Calvin, Beza, Bullinger, Voëtius, John Gerhard,
and other Calvinistic and Lutheran divines. It was held by the
Presbyterians in England and Scotland, including the Scottish
commissioners in the Assembly, and vigorously advocated by Dr. Samuel
Rutherford, Professor of Divinity in St. Andrews, He
wrote A Free Disputation against pretended Liberty of
Conscience tending to resolve Doubts moved by Mr. John Goodwin, John
Baptist, Dr. Jer. Taylor, the Belgick Arminians, Socinians, and other
authors contending for lawless Liberty, or licentious Toleration of
sects and Heresies. London, 1649. 410 pages. He calls the advocates
of toleration "Libertines." The
author of Reasons against Independent Government of Particular
Congregations: as also against the Toleration of such churches to be
erected in this kingdom. Presented to the House of Commons. London,
1641 (56 pp.). Antapologia; or, a Full Answer to the Apologetical
Narration of Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, Mr. Sympson, Mr. Burroughs, Mr.
Bridge, Members of the Assembly of Divines. Wherein many of the
controversies of these times are handled. London, 1646 (259 pp.).
The First and Second Part of Gangraena; or, A Catalogue and
Discovery of many of the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies and pernicious
Practices of the Sectaries of this time, vented and acted in England in
these four last years, etc. London, 1646. The first part has 116,
the second part 178 pages. They were followed by The Third Part of
Gangraena; or, A New and Higher Discovery of Errors, etc. London,
1646 (295 pp.), and by The Casting down of the last and strongest
hold of Satan; or, A Treatise against Toleration and pretended Liberty
of Conscience. London, 1647 (218 pp.).—"The
ministers of Christ within the province of London," December 14, 1647,
sent out a Testimony of the Truth of Jesus Christ, and to our Solemn
League, and Covenant; as also Against the Errors, Heresies and
Blasphemies of these times, and the Toleration of them. London,
1648 (38 pp.). Dr.
M’Crie, in his Annals of English Presbytery
(pp. 190, 191), says: "It admits of being shown that even the
hypothetical intolerance of our Presbyterian fathers differed
essentially from Romish and Prelatic tyranny .... In point of fact it
never led them to persecute, it never applied the rack to the flesh, or
slaked its vengeance in blood or the maiming of the
body."
The Westminster Confession of Faith, in its
original shape, declares, on the one hand, the great principle of
religious liberty, that "God alone is Lord of the conscience," but
also, on the other hand, that dangerous heretics "may lawfully be
called to account, and proceeded against by the censures of the church,
and by the power of the civil magistrate." Chapter XX., 2, 4. The clause "and by the power of the civil
magistrate," is omitted in the American recension of the Westminster
Confession. Ch.
XXIII., 3; Comp. Ch. XXXI., 1, 2. These sections were changed and
adapted to the separation of Church and State by the united Synod of
Philadelphia and New York which met at Philadelphia, May 28, 1787. See
the comparative statement in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom vol.
I., 807 sq. and III., 607, 653 sq., 668 sq. The Presbyterian churches
in Scotland, England and Ireland adhere to the original Confession, but
with an express disavowal of persecuting sentiments. Schaff, I., 799
sq.
6. The five Independent members of the Assembly
under the lead of Dr. Goodwin protested against the power given to the
civil magistrate and to synods. Goodwin wrote several pamphlets in favor of toleration: An
Apologeticall Narration, Humbly submitted to the Hon. Houses of
Partiament (by, Goodwin, Nye, Bridge, Simpson, and Burroughes).
London, 1643 (32pp.). Θεομαχία; or the grand imprudence of men
running the hazard of fighting against God in suppressing any way,
doctrine or practice concerning which they know not certainly whether
it be from God or no, 1644 (52 pp.).
Innocencie’s Triumph, 1644 (64 pp.).
Cretensis; or, a brief Answer to Mr. T. Edwards, his Gangraena,
1646. Anapologesiates Antapologias; or, the Inexcusableness of that
grand Accusation of the Brethren, called Antapologia ... proving the
utter insufficiency of the Antapoloogist for his great undertaking in
behalf of the Presbyterian cause: with answers to his arguments or
reasons (so call’d) for the support thereof ...
especially in the point of Non-toleration ... Publ. by Authoritie.
London, 1646 (253 pp.); with a long Preface, dated "From my studie in
Coleman street, July 17, 1646; " chiefly directed against
Edwards. Hagiomastix; or, the Scourge of the Saints displayed in his
colours of Ignorance and Blood, etc. London, 1646 (134 pp.). A
Postscript or Appendix to a treatise intituled, Hagiomastix.
London, 1646 (28 pp.). The Apologist condemned; or, a Vindication of
the Thirty Queries (with their author)concerning the
power of the Civil Magistrate in Matters of Religion. London, 1653
(32 pp.). Peace Protected and Discontent Disarmed, etc. London,
1654 (78 pp.). Συγκρήτισμος; or Dis-Satisfaction Satisfied.
London, 1654 (24 pp.). See
Schaff, vol. I., 829 sq. and III., 718-723.
But the toleration of the Independents, especially
after they obtained the ascendancy under Cromwell’s
protectorate differed very little from that of the Presbyterians. They
were spoiled by success. Dexter
(p. 660) says: "During the short protectorate of that wonderful man,
these lowly Independents came into relations so close with the ruling
religious power, that—in order to fill important
places—some of them were led to do violence to their
noblest fundamentals." Several leading Baptists were guilty of the same
inconsistency. See
Alex. F. Mitchell, The Westminster Assembly, its History and
Standards. London, 1883, pp. 203 and 493. "Owen, Goodwin, Simpson,
and Nye were chiefly concerned in drawing up a list of fundamentals
which the parliament of 1654 wished to impose on all who claimed
toleration. Neal gives sixteen of them. The Journal of the House of
Commons speaks of twenty."
Had Cromwell reigned longer, the Triers and the Savoy Conference which he reluctantly appointed, would probably have repeated the vain attempt of the Westminster Assembly to impose a uniform creed upon the nation, only with a little more liberal "accommodation" for orthodox dissenters except "papists" and "prelatists"). Their brethren in New England where they had full sway, established a Congregational theocracy which had no room even for Baptists and Quakers.
7. Cromwell’s reign was a brief experiment. His son was incompetent to continue it. Puritanism had not won the heart of England, but prepared its own tomb by its excesses and blunders. Royalty and Episcopacy, which struck their roots deep in the past, were restored with the powerful aid of the Presbyterians. And now followed a reaction in favor of political and ecclesiastical despotism, and public and private immorality, which for a time ruined all the good which Puritanism had done.
Charles II., who "never said a foolish thing and
never did a wise one," broke his solemn pledges and took the lead in
intolerance and licentiousness. The Act of Uniformity was re-enacted
May 19, 1662, and went into operation on St.
Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1662, made hideous by
the St. Bartholomew Massacre, nearly a hundred years before. "And now
came in," says Baxter, one of the most moderate as well as most learned
and pious of the Nonconformists, "the great inundation of calamities,
which in many streams overwhelmed thousands of godly Christians,
together with their pastors." All Puritan ministers were expelled from
their livings and exposed to starvation, their assemblies forbidden,
and absolute obedience to the king and conformity to episcopacy were
enforced, even in Scotland. The faithful Presbyterians in that country
(the Covenanters) were subjected by the royal dragonnades to all manner
of indignities and atrocities. "They were hunted"—says
an English historian Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe, II., 48 (N. Y.
ed.).
The period of the Restoration is, perhaps, the most immoral and disgraceful in English history. But it led at last to the final overthrow of the treacherous and semi-popish dynasty of the Stuarts, and inaugurated a new era in the history of religious liberty. Puritanism was not dead, but produced some of its best and most lasting works—Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress—in this period of its deepest humiliation and suffering.
8. The act of Toleration under the reign of William and Mary, 1689, made an end to violent persecutions in England. And yet it is far from what we now understand by religious liberty. Toleration is negative, liberty positive; toleration is a favor, liberty a right; toleration may be withdrawn by the power which grants it, liberty is as inalienable as conscience itself; toleration is extended to what cannot be helped and what may be in itself objectionable, liberty is a priceless gift of the Creator.
The Toleration of 1689 was an accommodation to a limited number of Dissenters—Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists and Quakers, who were allowed liberty of separate organization and public worship on condition of subscribing thirty-six out of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. Roman Catholics and Unitarians were excluded, and did not acquire toleration in England till the nineteenth century, the former by the Act of Emancipation passed April 13, 1829. Even now the Dissenters in England labor under minor disabilities and social disadvantages, which will continue as long as the government patronizes an established church. They have to support the establishment, in addition to their own denomination. Practically, however, there is more religious liberty in England than anywhere on the Continent, and as much as in the United States.
9. The last and most important step in the
progress of religious liberty was taken by the United States of America
in the provision of the Federal Constitution of 1787, which excludes
all religious tests from the qualifications to any office or public
trust. The first amendment to the Constitution (1789) enacts that
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Ph.
Schaff, Church and State in the United States, New York,
1888.
Thus the United States government is by its own free act prevented from ever establishing a state-church, and on the other hand it is bound to protect freedom of religion, not only as a matter of opinion, but also in its public exercise, as one of the inalienable rights of an American citizen, like the freedom of speech and of the press. History had taught the framers of the Constitution that persecution is useless as well as hateful, and that it has its root in the unholy alliance of religion with politics. Providence had made America a hospitable home for all fugitives from persecution,—Puritans, Presbyterians, Huguenots, Baptists, Quakers, Reformed, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, etc.—and foreordained it for the largest development of civil and religious freedom consistent with order and the well-being of society. When the colonies, after a successful struggle for independence, coalesced into one nation they could not grant liberty to one church or sect without granting it to all. They were thus naturally driven to this result. It was the inevitable destiny of America. And it involved no injustice or injury to any church or sect.
The modern German empire forms in some measure a parallel. When it was formed in 1870 by the free action of the twenty or more German sovereignties, it had to take them in with their religion, and abstain from all religious and ecclesiastical legislation which might interfere with the religion of any separate state.
The constitutional provision of the United States in regard to religion is the last outcome of the Reformation in its effect upon toleration and freedom, not foreseen or dreamed of by the Reformers, but inevitably resulting from their revolt against papal tyranny. It has grown on Protestant soil with the hearty support of all sects and parties. It cuts the chief root of papal and any other persecution, and makes it legally impossible. It separates church and state, and thus prevents the civil punishment of heresy as a crime against the state. It renders to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and renders to God the things that are God’s. It marks a new epoch in the history of legislation and civilization. It is the American contribution to church history. No part of the federal constitution is so generally accepted and so heartily approved as that which guarantees religious liberty, the most sacred and most important of all liberties. It is regarded almost as an axiom which needs no argument.
Religious liberty has thus far been fully justified by its effects. It has stimulated the fullest development of the voluntary principle. The various Christian churches can live in peace and harmony together, and are fully able to support and to govern themselves without the aid of the secular power. This has been proven by the experience of a century, and this experience is the strongest argument in favor of the separation of church and state. Christianity flourishes best without a state-church.
The separation, however, is peaceful, not hostile,
as it was in the Ante-Nicene age, when the pagan state persecuted the
church. Nor is it a separation of the nation from Christianity. The
government is bound to protect all forms of Christianity with its day
of rest, its churches, its educational and charitable institutions. The
government even indirectly supports it in part by exempting church
buildings, hospitals, colleges and theological seminaries from public
taxation, and by appointing chaplains for the army and navy and for
Congress, in deference to the Christian sentiment of the
people.
There are three important institutions in which church and state touch each other even in the United States, and where a collision of interests may take place: education in the public schools, marriage, and Sunday as a day of civil and sacred rest. The Roman Catholics are opposed to public schools unless they can teach in them their religion which allows no compromise with any other; the Mormons are opposed to monogamy, which is the law of the land and the basis of the Christian family; the Jews may demand the protection of their Sabbath on Saturday, while infidels want no Sabbath at all except perhaps for amusement and dissipation. But all these questions admit of a peaceful settlement and equitable adjustment, without a relapse into the barbarous measures of persecution.
The law of the United States is supreme in the
Territories and the District of Columbia, but does not forbid any of
the States to establish a particular church, or to continue a previous
establishment. The Colonies began with the European system of
state-churchism, only in a milder form, and varying according to the
preferences of the first settlers. In the New England
Colonies—except Rhode Island founded by the Baptist
Roger Williams—orthodox Congregationalism was the
established church which all citizens were required to support; in
Virginia and the Southern States, as also in New York, the Episcopal
Church was legally established and supported by the government. A
Presbyterian minister, Francis Makemie, was arrested on a warrant of
the Episcopal Governor Cornby of New York, Jan. 20, 1707, for preaching
in a private house, without permission, and although he was ably
defended in a public trial and acquitted on the ground that he had been
licensed to preach under the Act of Toleration, he had to pay the costs
of the prosecution as well as the defence to the large amount of
£83 7s. 6d. See Briggs, American Presbyterianism, New
York, 1885, pp. 152-154. Comp.
Dr. Charles J. Stillé, Religious Tests in Provincial
Pennsylvania. A paper read before the, Hist. Soc. of Penna., Nov.
9, 1885. Philada., 1886. 58 pp. "It is hard to believe," he says, p.
57, "that a man like Franklin, for instance, would at any time have
approved of religious tests for office; yet Franklin’s
name is attached over and over again in the Qualification Books to the
Declaration of Faith, which he was forced to make when he entered upon
the duties of the various offices which be held. He must have been
literally forced to take such a test; for we find him on the first
opportunity, when the people of this commonwealth determined to declare
their independence alike of the Penn family and of the Crown of Great
Britain, raising his voice against the imposition of such tests as had
been taken during the Provincial period. Franklin was the president and
the ruling spirit of the convention which framed the State Constitution
of 1776, and to his influence has generally been ascribed the very mild
form of test which by that instrument was substituted for the old
one."
The great revolution of legislation began in the
Colony of Virginia in 1776, when Episcopacy was disestablished, and all
other churches freed from their disabilities. The
act of 1776 was completed by an act of October, 1785. See Hening,
Collection of the Laws of Virginia, vol. XII.
84.
The example of the United States exerts a silent, but steady and mighty influence upon Europe in raising the idea of mere toleration to the higher plane of freedom, in emancipating religion from the control of civil government, and in proving the advantages of the primitive practice of ecclesiastical self-support and self-government.
The best legal remedy against persecution and the best guarantee of religious freedom is a peaceful separation of church and state; the best moral remedy and guarantee is a liberal culture, a comprehensive view of the many-sidedness of truth, a profound regard for the sacredness of conscientious conviction, and a broad and deep Christian love as described by the Apostle Paul.
§ 13. Chronological Limits.
The Reformation period begins with Luther’s Theses, a.d. 1517, and ends with the Peace of Westphalia, a.d. 1648. The last event brought to a close the terrible Thirty Years’ War and secured a legal existence to the Protestant faith (the Lutheran and Reformed Confession) throughout Germany.
The year 1648 marks also an important epoch in the history of English and Scotch Protestantism, namely, the ratification by the Long Parliament of the doctrinal standards of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643 to 1652), which are still in use among the Presbyterian Churches in England, Scotland, Ireland and the United States.
Within this period of one hundred and thirty-one years there are several minor epochs, and the dates vary in different countries.
The German Reformation, which is essentially Lutheran, divides itself naturally into four sub-periods:1. From 1517 to the Augsburg Diet and Augsburg Confession, 1530. 2. From 1530 to the so-called "Peace of Augsburg," 1555. 3. From 1555 to the "Formula of Concord," 1577, which completed the Lutheran system of doctrine, or 1580 (when the "Book of Concord" was published and enforced). 4. From 1580 to the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War, 1648.
The Scandinavian Reformation followed closely in the path of the Lutheran Reformation of Germany, and extends, likewise, to the Thirty Years’ War, in which Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, took a leading part as defender of Protestantism. The Reformation triumphed in Sweden in 1527, in Denmark and Norway in 1537.
The Swiss Reformation was begun by Zwingli and completed by Calvin, and is accordingly divided into two acts: 1. The Reformation of German Switzerland to the death of Zwingli, 1517 to 1531. 2. The Reformation of French Switzerland to the death of Calvin, 1564, or we may say, to the death of Beza, 1605.
The introduction of the Reformed church into Germany, especially the Palatinate, falls within the second period.
In the stormy history of French Protestantism, the years 1559, 1598 and 1685, mark as many epochs. In 1559, the first national synod was held in Paris and gave the Reformed congregations a compact organization by the adoption of the Gallican Confession and the Presbyterian form of government. In 1598, the Reformed church secured a legal existence and a limited measure of freedom by the edict of Nantes, which King Henry IV. gave to his former fellow-religionists. But his bigoted grandson, Louis XIV., revoked the edict in 1685. Since that time the French Reformed church continued like a burning bush in the desert; while thousands of her sons reluctantly left their native land, and contributed, by their skill, industry and piety, to the prosperity of Switzerland, Holland, Germany, England, and North America.
The Reformation in Holland includes the heroic war of emancipation from the Spanish yoke and passed through the bloody bath of martyrdom, until after unspeakable sufferings under Charles V. and Philip II., the Utrecht Union of the seven Northern Provinces (formed in 1579), was reluctantly acknowledged by Spain in 1609. Then followed the internal theological war between Arminianism and Calvinism, which ended in the victory of the latter at the National Synod of Dort, 1619.
The progressive stages of the English Reformation, which followed a course of its own, were influenced by the changing policy of the rulers, and are marked by the reigns of Henry VIII., 1527–1547; of Edward VI., 1547–1553; the papal reaction and period of Protestant martyrdom under Queen Mary, 1553–1558; the re-establishment of Protestantism under Queen Elizabeth, 1558–1603. Then began the second Reformation, which was carried on by the people against their rulers. It was the struggle between Puritanism and the semi-popery of the Stuart dynasty. Puritanism achieved a temporary triumph, deposed and executed Charles I. and Archbishop Laud; but Puritanism as a national political power died with Cromwell, and in 1660 Episcopacy and the Prayer Book were restored under Charles II., till another revolution under William and Mary in 1688 made an end to the treacherous rule of the Stuarts and gave toleration to the Dissenters, who hereafter organized themselves in separate denominations, and represent the left wing of English Protestantism.
The Reformation in Scotland, under the lead of John Knox (1505–1572), the Luther of the North, completed its first act in 1567 with the legal recognition and establishment by the Scotch Parliament. The second act was a struggle with the papal reaction under Queen Mary of Scots, till 1590. The third act may be called the period of anti-Prelacy and union with English Puritanism, and ended in the final triumph of Presbyterianism in 1690. Since that time, the question of patronage and the relation of church and state have been the chief topics of agitation and irritation in the Church of Scotland and gave rise to a number of secessions; while the Westminster standards of faith and discipline have not undergone any essential alteration.
The Reformed faith secured a partial success and toleration in Poland, Hungary, Transylvania, Bohemia and Moravia, but suffered severely by the Jesuitical reaction, especially in Bohemia. In Italy and Spain the Reformation was completely suppressed; and it is only since the overthrow of the temporal rule of the Pope in 1871, that Protestants are allowed to hold public worship in Rome and to build churches or chapels.
§ 14. General Literature on the Reformation.
SOURCES.
I. On The Protestant Side: (1) The works of the Reformers, especially Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox. They will be quoted in the chapters relating to their history.
(2) Contemporary Historians: Joh. Sleidan (Prof. of law in Strassburg, d. 1556): De Statu Religionis et Reipublicae Carolo V. Caesare commentarii. Libri XXVI. Argentor. 1555 fol., best ed. by Am Ende, Francof. ad M. 1785–86, 3 vols. Engl. transl. by Bohun, London, 1689, 3 vols. fol. French transl. with the notes of Le Courayer, 1767. Embraces the German and Swiss Reformation.
The Annales Reformationis of Spalatin, and the Historia Reformationis of Fr. Myconius, refer only to the Lutheran Reformation. So, also, Löscher’s valuable collection of documents, 3 vols. See below § 15.
II. Roman Catholic: (1) Official documents. Leonis X. P. M. Regesta, ed. by Cardinal Hergenröther under the auspices of Pope Leo XIII., from the Vatican archives. Freiburg i. B. 1884 sqq., 12 fascic. The first three parts contain 384 pages to a.d. 1514.—Monumenta Reformationis Lutheranae ex tabulariis secretioribus S. Sedis, 1521–’25, ed. by Petrus Balan, Ratisbonae, 1884 (589 pages). Contains the acts relating to the Diet of Worms, with the reports of Aleander, the papal legate, and the letters of Clement VII. from 1523–’25. It includes a document of 1513, heretofore unknown, which disproves the illegitimate birth of Clement VII. and represents him as the son of Giuliano de Medici and his wife, Florets. Monumenta Saeculi XVI. Historiam illustrantia, ed. by Balan, vol. I. Oeniponte, 1885 (489 pages).
(2) Controversial writings: Joh. Eck (d. 1563): Contra Ludderum, 1530. 2 Parts fol. Polemical treatises on the Primacy, Penance, the Mass, Purgatory etc. Jo. Cochlaeus (canon of Breslau, d. 1552): Commentaria de Actis et Scriptis Lutheri ab Anno Dom. 1517 ad A. 1547 fideliter conscripta. Mogunt. 1549 fol.; Par. 1565; Colon. 1568.—Laur. Surius (a learned Carthusian, d. at Cologne, 1578): Commentarius rerum in orbe gestarum ab a. 1500–1564. Colon. 1567. Against Sleidan.
Historical Representations.
I. Protestant Works.
(1) The respective sections in the General Church Histories of Schröckh (Kirchengesch. seit der Reformation, Leipzig, 1804–’12, 10 vols.), Mosheim, Gieseler (Bd. III. Abth. I. and II., 1840 and 1852; Engl. transl. N. Y. vols. IV. and V., 1862 and 1880), Baur (Bd. IV. 1863), Hagenbach (vol. III., also separately publ. 4th ed. 1870; Engl. transl. by Miss Eveline Moore, Edinburgh, 1878, 2 vols.; especially good on the Zwinglian Reformation). More briefly treated in the compends of Guericke, Neidner, Hase (11th ed. 1886), Ebrard, Herzog (vol. IIIrd), Kurtz (10th ed. 887, vol. IInd).
All these works pay special attention to the Continental Reformation, but very little to that of England and Scotland.
Neander comes down only to 1430; his lectures on modern church history (which I heard in 1840) were never published. Gieseler’s work is most valuable for its literature down to 1852, and extracts from the sources, but needs an entire reconstruction, which is contemplated by Prof. Brieger at Leipzig.
(2) Jean Henri Merle d’aubigne (usually miscalled D’Aubigné, which is simply an addition indicating the place of his ancestors, d. 1872): Histoire de la reformation du 16. siècle, Paris, 1835–’53, 5 vols., 4th ed. 1861 sqq.; and Histoire de la réformation en Europe au temps du Calvin, Par., 1863–’78, 8 vols. (including a posthumous vol.). Also in German by Runkel (Stuttgart, 1848 sqq.), and especially in English (in several editions, some of them mutilated). Best Engl. ed. by Longman, Green & Co., London, 1865 sqq.; best Am. ed. by Carter, New York, 1870–’79, the first work in 5, the second in 8 vols. Merle’s History, owing to its evangelical fervor, intense Protestantism and dramatic eloquence, has had an enormous circulation in England and America through means of the Tract Societies and private publishers.
H. Stebbing: History of the Reformation, London, 1836, 2 vols.
G. Waddington (Anglican, d. 1869): A History of the Reformation on the Continent. London, 1841, 3 vols. (Only to the death of Luther, 1546.)
F. A. Holzhauzen: Der Protestantismus nach seiner geschichtl. Entstehung, Begründung und Fortbildung. Leipzig, 1846–’59, 3 vols. Comes down to the Westphalian Treaty. The author expresses his standpoint thus (III. XV.): "Die christliche Kirche ist ihrer Natur nach wesentlich Eine, und der kirchliche Auflösungs-process, welcher durch die Reformation herbeigeführt worden ist, kann keinen anderen Zweck haben, als ein neues höhes positives Kirchenthum herzustellen."
B. Ter Haar (of Utrecht) Die Reformationsgeschichte in Schilderungen. Transl. from the Dutch by C. Gross. Gotha, 5th ed. 1856, 2 vols.
Dan. Schenkel (d. 1885): Die Refomatoren und die Reformation. Wiesbaden. 1856. Das Wesen des Protestantismus aus den Quellen des Ref. zeitalters. Schaffhausen, 1862, 3 vols.
Charles Hardwick: (Anglican, d. 1859): A History of the Christian Church during the Reformation. Cambridge and London, 1856. Third ed. revised by W. Stubbs (bishop of Chester), 1873.
J. Tulloch: (Scotch Presbyt., d. 1886): Leaders of the Reformation: Luther, Calvin, Latimer, Knox. Edinb., 1859; 3d ed. 1883.
L. Häusser (d. 1867): Geschichte des Zeitalters der Reformation, 1517–1648. ed. by Oncken, Berlin, 1868 (867 pages). Abridged EngI. transl. by Mrs. Sturge, N. Y., 1874.
E. L. Th. Henke (d. 1872): Neuere Kirgesch. ed. by Dr. Gass, Halle, 1874, 2 vols. The first vol. treats of the Reformation.
Fr. Seebohm: The Era of the Protestant Revolution. London and N. York, 1874.
J. A. Wylie: History of Protestantism. London, 1875–77, 3 vols.
George P. Fisher (Prof. of Church History in Yale College): The Reformation. New York, 1873. A comprehensive work, clear, calm, judicial, with a useful bibliographical Appendix (p. 567–591).
J. M. Lindsay (Presbyt.): The Reformation. Edinb., 1882. (A mere sketch.)
Charles Beard (Unitarian): The Reformation in its relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge. Hibbert Lectures. London, 1883; 2d ed., 1885. Very able. German translation by F. Halverscheid. Berlin, 1884.
John F. Hurst (Method. Bishop): Short History of the Reformation. New York, 1884 (125 pages).
Ludwig Keller: Die Reformation und die älteren Reformparteien. Leipz., 1885 (516 pages). In sympathy with the Waldenses and Anabaptists.
Two series of biographies of the Reformers, by a number of German scholars the Lutheran series in 8 vols., Elberfeld, 1861–’75, and the Reformed (Calvinistic) series in 10 vols., Elberfeld, 1857–’63. The Lutheran series was introduced by Nitzsch, the Reformed by Hagenbach. The several biographies will be mentioned in the proper places.
(3) For the general history of the world and the church during and after the period of the Reformation, the works of Leopold von Ranke (d. 1886) are of great importance, namely: Fürsten und Völker von Südeuropa im 16. und 17. Jahrh. (Berlin 1827, 4th ed. enlarged 1877); Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494–1514 (3d ed. 1885); Die römischen Päpste, ihre Kirche und ihr Staat im 16. und 17. Jahrh. (Berlin, 8th ed. 1885, 3 vols. Engl. trans. by Sarah Austin, Lond. 4th ed. 1867, 3 vols.); Französische Geschichte im 16. und 17. Jahrh. (Stuttgart, 1852, 4th ed. 1877, 6 vols.); Englische Geschichte vornehmlich im 16. u. 17. Jahrh. (4th ed. 1877, 6 vols.; Engl. transl. publ. by the Clarendon Press); and especially his classical Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (Berlin, 1839–’43, 6th ed. 1880–’82, in 6 vols.; transl. in part by S. Austin, 1845–’47, 3 vols.). Ranke is a master of objective historiography from the sources in artistic grouping of the salient points, and is in religious and patriotic sympathy with the German Reformation; while yet he does full justice to the Catholic church and the papacy as a great power in the history of religion and civilization. In his 85th year he began to dictate in manly vigor a Universal History down to the time of Emperor Henry IV. and Pope Gregory VII., 1881–86; to which were added 2 posthumous vols. by Dove and Winter, 1888, 9 vols. in all. His library was bought for the University in Syracuse, N. Y.
For the general literature see Henry Hallam: Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries. London, 1842, etc. N. York ed., 1880, in 4 vols.
II. Roman Catholic Works.
(1) The respective sections in the General Church Histories of Möhler (d. 1838, ed. from lectures by Gams, Regensburg, 1867–1868, 3 vols.; the third vol. treats of the Reformation), Alzog (10th ed. 1882, 2 vols.; Engl. transl. by Pabish and Byrne, Cincinnati, 1874 sqq., 3 vols.), Kraus (2d ed. 1882), and Cardinal Hergenröther (third ed. 1885). Comp. also, in part, the Histories of the Council of Trent by Sarpi (d. 1623), and Pallavicini (d. 1667).
(2) Thuanus (De Thou, a moderate Catholic, d. 1617); Historiarum sui Temporis libri 138. Orleans (Geneva), 1620 sqq., 5 vols. fol. and London, 1733, 7 vols. fol.; French transl. London, 1734, 16 vols. 4to. Goes from 1546 to 1607.
Louis Maimbourg (Jesuit, d. at Paris, 1686): Histoire du Lutheranisme Paris, 1680; Histoire du Calvinisme, 1682. Controversial, and inspired by partisan zeal; severely handled by R. Bayle in his Critique générale de l’histoire du Calvinisme de M., Amsterd., 1684.
Bp. Bossuet (d. 1704): Histoire des variations des églises protestantes. Paris, 1688, 2 vols. and later edd., also in his collected works, 1819 sqq. and 1836 sqq. English transl., Dublin, 1829, 2 vols. German ed. by Mayer, Munich. 1825, 4 vols. A work of great ability, but likewise polemical rather than historical. It converted Gibbon to Romanism, but left him at last a skeptic, like Bayle, who was, also, first a Protestant, then a Romanist for a short season.
Kaspar Riffel: Kirchengesch. Der Neusten Zeit. Mainz, 1844–47, 3 vols.
Martin John Spalding (since 1864 Archbishop of Baltimore, d. 1872): History of the Protest. Reformation in Germany and Switzerland, and in England, Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, France., and Northern Europe. Louisville, 1860; 8th ed., revised and enlarged. Baltimore, 1875, 2 vols. No Index. Against Merle D’Aubigné. The Archbishop charges D’Aubigné (as he calls him) with being a "bitter partisan, wholly unreliable as an historian," and says of his work that it is "little better than a romance," as he "omits more than half the facts, and either perverts or draws on his imagination for the remainder." His own impartiality and reliableness as an historian may be estimated from the following judgments of the Reformers: "Luther, while under the influence of the Catholic Church, was probably a moderately good man; he was certainly a very bad one after he left its communion "(I. 72)."Heu! quantum mutatus ab illo!" (77). "His violence often drove him to the very verge of insanity .... He occasionally inflicted on Melanchthon personal chastisement" (87). Spalding quotes from Audin, his chief authority (being apparently quite ignorant of German): "Luther was possessed not by one, but by a whole troop of devils" (89). Zwingli (or Zuingle, as he calls him) he charges with "downright paganism" (I. 175), and makes fun of his marriage and the marriages of the other Reformers, especially Bucer, who "became the husband of no less than three ladies in succession: and one of them had been already married three times—all too, by a singular run of good luck, in the reformation line" (176). And this is all that we learn of the Reformer of Strassburg. For Calvin the author seems to draw chiefly on the calumnies of Audin, as Audin drew on those of Bolsec. He describes him as "all head and no heart;" "he crushed the liberties of the people in the name of liberty;" "he combined the cruelty of Danton and Robespierre with the eloquence of Murat and Mirabeau, though he was much cooler, and therefore more successful than any one of them all; he was a very Nero." Spalding gives credit to Bolsec’s absurd stories of the monstrous crimes and horrible death of Calvin, so fully contradicted by his whole life and writings and the testimonies of his nearest friends, as Beza, Knox, etc. (I. 375, 384, 386, 388, 391). And such a work by a prelate of high character and position seems to be the principal source from which American Roman Catholics draw their information of the Reformation and of Protestantism!
The historico-polemical works of Döllinger and Janssen belong to the history of
the German Reformation and will be noticed in the next section.
BOOK 1.
THE GERMAN REFORMATION TILL THE DIET OF
AUGSBURG, a.d. 1530.
––––––––––
CHAPTER II.
LUTHER’S TRAINING FOR THE REFORMATION, A.D. L483–1517.
§ 15. Literature of the German Reformation.
Sources.
I. Protestant Sources:
(1) The Works of the Reformers, especially Luther and Melanchthon. See § § 17, 32. The reformatory writings of Luther, from 1517–1524, are in vol. XV. of Walch’s ed., those from 1525–1537 in vol. XVI., those from 1538–1546 in vol. XVII. See also the Erlangen ed., vols. 24–32 (issued separately in a second ed. 1883 sqq.), and the Weimar ed., vol. I. sqq.
(2) Contemporary writers:
G. Spalatin (Chaplain of Frederick the Wise and Superintendent in Altenburg, d. 1545): Annales Reformationis oder Jahrbücher von der Reform. Lutheri (to 1543). Ed. by Cyprian, Leipz., 1718.
Frid. Myconius (or Mekum, Superintendent at Gotha, d. 1546): Historia Reformationis vom Jahr Christi 1518–1542. Ed. by Cyprian, Leipzig, 1718.
M. Ratzeberger (a physician, and friend of Luther, d. 1559): Luther und seine Zeit. Ed. from MS. in Gotha by Neudecker, Jena, 1850 (284 pp.).
(3) Documentary collections:
V. E. Löscher (d. 1749): Vollständige Reformations=Acta und Documenta (for the years 1517–’19). Leipzig, 1720–’29, 3 vols.
Ch. G. Neudecker: Urkunden aus der Reformationszeit, Cassel, 1836; Actenstücke aus der Zeit der Reform., Nürnberg, 1838; Neue Beiträge, Leipzig, 1841.
C. E. Förstemann: Archiv. f. d. Gesch. der Reform., Halle, 1831 sqq.; Neues Urkundenbuch, Hamburg, 1842.
Th. Brieger: Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Reformation. Gotha, 1884 sqq. (Part I. Aleander und Luther, 1521.)
II. Roman Catholic Sources . See § 14, p. 89.
Histories.
I. Protestant Historians :
Lud. A Seckendorf (a statesman of thorough education and exemplary integrity, d. 1692): Commentarius historicus et apologeticus de Lutheranismo. Francof. et Lips., 1688; Lipsiae, 1694, fol. Against the Jesuit Maimbourg.
Chr. A. Salig (d. 1738): Vollständige Historie der Augsburger Confession (from 1517–1562). Halle, 1730–’35. 3 vols.
G. J. Planck (d. 1833): Geschichte der Entstehung, der Veränderungen und der Bildung unseres protest. Lehrbegriffs bis zur Einführung der Concordienformel. Leipzig, 2d ed., 1791–1800, 6 vols. Important for the doctrinal controversies in the Luth. Church. Followed by the Geschichte der protest. Theologie von der Konkordienformel an his in die Mitte des achtzehnten Jahrh. Göttingen, 1831, 1 vol.
H. G. Kreussler: D. Mart. Luthers Andenken in Münzen nebst Lebensbeschreibungen merkwürdiger Zeitgenossen desselben. Mit 47 Kupfern und der Ansicht Wittenbergs und Eisenachs zu Luthers Zeit. Leipzig, 1818. Chiefly interesting for the numerous illustrations.
Phil. Marheinecke (d. 1846): Geschichte der teutschen Reformation. Berlin, 2d ed., 1831, 4 vols. One of the best books, written in Luther-like popularity of style.
K. Hagen: Deutschlands literar. und relig. Verhältnisse im Reformationszeitalter. Erlangen, 1841–’44, sqq., 3 vols.
CH. G. Neudecker: Gesch. des evang. Protestantismus in Deutschland. Leipzig, 1844, sq., 2 vols.
C. Hundeshagen (d. 1873): Der deutsche Protestantismus. Frankfurt, 1846, 3d ed. 1850. Discusses the genius of the Reformation as well as modern church questions.
H. Heppe (German Reformed, d. 1879): Gesch. des deutschen Protestantismus in den Jahren 1555–’85. Marburg, 1852 sqq., 4 vols., 2d ed., 1865 sq. He wrote, also, a number of other books on the Reformation, especially in Hesse.
Merle d’Aubigné’s History of the Reformation, see § 14. The first division treats of the German Reformation and is translated into German by Runkel, Stuttgart, 1848–1854, 5 vols., republ. by the American Tract society. Several English editions; London and New York.
Wilh. Gass: Geschichte der protestantischen Dogmatik. Berlin, 1854–’67, 4 vols.
G. Plitt: Geschichte der evang. Kirche bis 1530. Erlangen, 1867.
Is. A. Dorner (d. 1884): Geschichte. der protestantischen Theologie, besonders in Deutschland. München, 1867. The first Book, pp. 1–420, treats of the Reformation period of Germany and Switzerland. English translation, Edinburgh, 1871, 2 vols.
Ch. P. Krauth (d. 1882): The Conservative Reformation. Philadelphia, 1872. A dogmatico-historical vindication of Lutheranism.
K. F. A. Kahnis (d. 1888): Die deutsche Reformation. Leipzig, vol. I. 1872 (till 1520, unfinished).
G. Weber: Zur Geschichte des Reformationszeitalters. Leipzig, 1874.
Fr. v. Bezold: Gesch. der deutschen Reformation. Berlin, 1886.
The Elberfeld series of biographies of the Lutheran Reformers, with extracts from their writings, 1861–1875. It begins with C. Schmidt’s Melanchthon, and ends with Köstlin’s Luther (the large work in 2 vols., revised 1883).
Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte. Halle, 1883 sqq. A series of monographs on special topics in the Reformation history, especially that of Germany, published by a Society formed in the year of the Luther celebration for the literary defence of Protestantism against Romanism. Kolde, Benrath, Holdewey, Bossert, Walther, are among the contributors. The series includes also an essay on Wiclif by Buddensieg (1885), one on the Revocation of the edict of Nantes by Theod. Schott (1885), and one on Ignatius of Loyola by E. Gothein (1885).
Of Secular histories of Germany during the Reformation period, comp. especially, Leopold von Ranke: Deutsche Gesch. im Zeitalter der Reformation (6th ed., 1881, 6 vols.), a most important work, see § 14. Also, Karl Ad. Menzel (d. 1855): Neuere Geschichte der Deutschen seit der Reformation. Berlin, 2d ed., 1854 sq., 6 vols. Wolfgang Menzel (d. 1873): Geschichte der Deutschen, 6th ed., 1872 sq., 3 vols. L. Stacke: Deutsche Geschichte. Bielefeld u. Leipzig, 1881, 2 vols. (Vol. II. by W. Boehm, pp. 37–182.) Gottlob Egelhaaf (Dr. Phil., Prof. in the Karls-Gymnasium at Heilbronn): Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation. Gekrönte Preisschrift des Allgemeinen Vereins für Deutsche Literatur. Berlin, 1885. In the spirit of Ranke’s great work on the same topic, with polemic reference to Janssen. It extends from 1517 to the Peace of Augsburg, 1555. (450 pages.)
II. Roman Catholic Historians. See the Lit. in § 14.
Ignatius Döllinger (Prof. of Ch. Hist. in Munich, since 1870 Old Catholic): Die Reformation, ihre innere Entwicklung und ihre Wirkung im Umfange des Luther. Bekenntnisses. Regensburg, 1846–’48, 3 vols.; 2d ed., 1853. A learned collection of testimonies against the Reformation and its effects from contemporary apostates, humanists, and the Reformers themselves (Luther and Melanchthon), and those of their followers who complain bitterly of the decay of morals and the dissensions in the Lutheran church. The author has, nevertheless, after he seceded from the Roman communion, passed a striking judgment in favor of Luther’s greatness.
Karl Werner: Geschichte der kathol. Theologie in Deutschland. München, 1866.
Joh. Janssen: Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters. Freiburg, i. B. 1876–’88, 6 vols. (down to 1618). This masterpiece of Ultramontane historiography is written with great learning and ability from a variety of sources (especially the archives of Frankfurt, Mainz, Trier, Zürich, and the Vatican), and soon passed through twelve editions. It called out able defences of the Reformation by Kawerau (five articles in Luthardt’s "Zeitschrift für kirchliche Wissenschaft und Kirchl. Leben," 1882 and 1883), Köstlin, Lenz, Schweizer, Ebrard, Baumgarten, and others, to whom Janssen calmly replied in An meine Kritiker, Freiburg, i. B., tenth thousand, 1883 (227 pp.), and Ein Wort an meine Kritiker, Freib. i. B., twelfth thousand, 1883 (144 pp.). He disclaims all "tendency," and professes to aim only at the historical truth. Admitted, but his standpoint is false, because he views the main current of modern history as an apostasy and failure; while it is an onward and progressive movement of Christianity under the guidance of Divine providence and the ever present spirit of its Founder. He reads history through the mirror of Vatican Romanism, and we need not wonder that Pope Leo XIII. has praised Janssen as "a light of historic science and a man of profound learning."
Janssen gives in each volume, in alphabetical order, very full lists of books and pamphlets, Catholic and Protestant, on the different departments of the history of Germany from the close of the fifteenth to the close of the sixteenth century. See vol. I. xxvii.-xliv.; vol. II. xvii.-xxviii.; vol. III. xxv.-xxxix.; vol. IV. xviii.-xxxi.; vol. V. xxv.-xliii.
For political history: Fr. v. Buchholz: Ferdinand I. Wien, 1832 sqq., 9 vols. Hurter: Ferdinand II. Schaffhausen, 1850 sqq.
§ 16. Germany and the Reformation.
Germany invented the art of printing and produced the Reformation. These are the two greatest levers of modern civilization. While other nations sent expeditions in quest of empires beyond the sea, the Germans, true to their genius of inwardness, descended into the depths of the human soul and brought to light new ideas and principles. Providence, it has been said, gave to France the dominion of the land, to England the dominion of the sea, to Germany the dominion of the air. The air is the region of speculation, but also the necessary condition of life on the land and the sea.
The characteristic traits which Tacitus ascribes to the heathen Germans, contain already the germ of Protestantism. The love of personal freedom was as strong in them as the love of authority was in the Roman race. They considered it unworthy of the gods to confine them within walls, or to represent them by images; they preferred an inward spiritual worship which communes directly with the Deity, to an outward worship which appeals to the senses through forms and ceremonies, and throws visible media between the finite and the infinite mind. They resisted the aggression of heathen Rome, and they refused to submit to Christian Rome when it was forced upon them by Charlemagne.
But Christianity as a religion was congenial to
their instincts. They were finally Christianized, and even thoroughly
Romanized by Boniface and his disciples. Yet they never felt quite at
home under the rule of the papacy. The mediaeval conflict of the
emperor with the pope kept up a political antagonism against foreign
rule; the mysticism of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries nursed
the love for a piety of less form and more heart, and undermined the
prevailing mechanical legalism; dissatisfaction with the pope increased
with his exactions and abuses, until at last, under the lead of a Saxon
monk and priest, all the national forces combined against the
anti-christian tyranny and shook it of forever. He carried with him the
heart of Germany. No less than one hundred grievances against Roman
misrule were brought before the Diet of Nürnberg in 1522. The
famous "centum gravamina adversus sedem Romanam totumque
ecclesiastcum ordinem." "Totus illi magno consensu applausit." In a letter of Dec.
12, 1524, to Duke George of Saxony who was opposed to the
Reformation.
Next to Germany, little Switzerland, Holland, Scandinavia, England and Scotland, inhabited by kindred races, were most active in completing that great act of emancipation from popery and inaugurating an era of freedom and independence.
Nationality has much to do with the type of Christianity. The Oriental church is identified with the Greek and Slavonic races, and was not affected by the Reformation of the sixteenth century; hence she is not directly committed for or against it, and is less hostile to evangelical Protestantism than to Romanism, although she agrees, in doctrine, discipline and worship, far more with the latter. The Roman Catholic Church retained her hold upon the Latin races, which were, it first superficially touched by the Reformation, but reacted, and have ever since been vacillating between popery and infidelity, or between despotism and revolution. Even the French, who under Henry IV. were on the very verge of becoming Protestant, are as a nation more inclined to swing from Bossuet to Voltaire than to Calvin; although they will always have a respectable minority of intelligent Protestants. The Celtic races are divided; the Welsh and Scotch became intensely Protestant, the Irish as intensely Romanist. The Teutonic or Germanic nations produced the Reformation chiefly, but not exclusively; for the French Calvin was the greatest theologian among the Reformers, and has exerted a stronger influence in shaping the doctrine and discipline of Protestantism outside of Germany than any of them.
§ 17. The Luther Literature.
The Luther literature is immense and has received large additions since 1883. The richest collections are in the Royal Library at Berlin (including Dr. Knaake’s); in the public libraries of Dresden, Weimar, Wittenberg, Wolfenbüttel, München; in America, in the Theol. Seminary at Hartford (Congregationalist), which purchased the Beck collection of over 1,200 works, and in the Union Theol. Sem., New York, which has the oldest editions.
For the Luther literature comp. J. A. Fabricius: Centifolium Lutheranum, Hamburg, 1728 and 1730, 2 Parts; Vogel: Bibliotheca biographica Lutherana, Halle, 1851, 145 pages; John Edmands: Reading Notes on Luther, Philada., 1883; Beck (publisher): Bibliotheca Lutherana, Nördlingen, 1883; (185 pages, with titles of 1236 books, now at Hartford), 1884: Bibliographie der Luther-Literatur des J. 1883, Frankf. a. M. 1884, enlarged ed. 1887 (52 and 24 pages, incomplete).
luther’s works.
Oldest editions: Wittenberg, 12 German vols., 1539–’59, and 7 Latin, 1545–’58; Jena, 8 German and 4 Latin vols., 1555–’58, with 2 supplements by Aurifaber, 1564–’65; Altenburg, 10 vols., 1661–’64; Leipzig, 22 vols., 1729–’40, fol.—The three best editions are:
(1) The Halle edition by Johann Georg Walch, Halle, 1740–1750, in 24 vols., 4to. Republished with corrections and additions by Dr. Walther, Stöckhardt, Kähler, etc., Concordia College, St. Louis, 1880 sqq., 25 vols.
(2) The Erlangen-Frankfurt ed. by Plochmann, Irmischer, and Enders, etc., Erlangen, and Frankfurt a. M., 1827 sqq., 2d ed., 1862–1883, 101 vols. 8vo. (not yet finished). German writings, 67 vols.; Opera Latina, 25 vols.; Com. in Ep. and Gal., 3 vols.; Opera Latina varii argumenti ad reformationis Hist. pertinentia, 7 vols. The most important for our purpose are the Reformations-historische Schriften (9 vols., second ed., 1883–’85), and the Briefwechsel (of which the first vol. appeared in 1884; 6 vols. are promised).
(3) The Weimar edition (the fourth centennial memorial ed., patronized by the Emperor of Germany), by Drs. Knaake, Kawerau, Bertheau, and other Luther scholars, Weimar, 1883 sqq. This, when completed, will be the critical standard edition. It gives the works in chronological order and strict reproduction of the first prints, with the variations of later edd., even the antiquated and inconsistent spelling, which greatly embarrasses the reader not thoroughly familiar with German. The first volume contains Luther’s writings from 1512–1518; the second (1884), the writings from 1518–1519; vols. III. and IV. (1885–’6), the Commentaries on the Psalms; vol. VI. (1888), the continuation of the reformatory writings till 1520; several other vols. are in press.
I have usually indicated, from which of these three editions the quotations are made. The last was used most as far as it goes, and is quoted as the "Weimar ed."
The first collected ed. of Luther’s German works appeared in 1539 with a preface, in which he expresses a wish that all his books might be forgotten and perish, and the Bible read more instead. (See Erl. Frkf. ed. I., pp. 1–6.)
Selections of Luther’s Works by Pfizer (Frankf., 1837, sqq.); Zimmermann (Frankf., 1846 sq.); Otto von Gerlach (Berlin, 1848, 10 vols., containing the Reformatorische Schriften).
The Letters of Luther were separately edited by De Wette, Berlin, 1825, sqq., 5 vols.; vol. VI. by J. C. Seidemann, 1856 (716 pp., with an addition of Lutherbriefe, 1859); supplemented by C. A. H. Burkhardt, Leipz., 1866 (524 pp.); a revised ed. with comments by Dr. E. L. Enders (pastor at Oberrad near Frankfurt a. M.), 1884 sqq. (in the Erl. Frankf ed.). The first volume contains the letters from 1507 to March, 1519. For selection see C. Alfred Hase: Lutherbriefe in Auswahl und Uebersetzung, Leipzig, 1867 (420 pages). Th. Kolde: Analecta Lutherana, Briefe und Actenstücke zur Geschichte Luther’s. Gotha, 1883. Contains letters of Luther and to Luther, gathered with great industry from German and Swiss archives and libraries.
Additional Works of Luther:
The Table Talk of Luther is best edited by Aurifaber, 1566, etc. (reprinted in Walch’s ed. vol. xxii.); by Förstemann and Bindseil, Leipzig, 1844–’48, 4 vols. (the German Table Talk); by Bindseil: Martini Lutheri Colloquia, Latina, etc., Lemgoviae et Detmoldae, 1863–’66, 3 vols.; and in the Frankf. Erl. ed., vols. 57–62. Dr. Conr. Cordatus: Tagebuch über Dr. Luther geführt, 1537, first edited by Dr. Wrampelmeyer, Halle, 1885, 521 pages. Last and best edition by Hoppe, St. Louis, 1887 (vol. xxii. of Am. ed. of Walch).
Georg Buchwald: Andreas Poach’s handschriftl. Sammlung ungedruckter Predigten D. Martin Luthers aus den Jahren 1528 bis 1546. Aus dem Originale zum ersten Mal herausgegeben. Leipzig, 1884, to embrace 3 vols. (Only the first half of the first vol., published 1884, and the first half of the third vol., 1885; very few copies sold.) The MS. collection of Andreas Poach in the public library at Zwickau embraces nine volumes of Luther’s sermons from 1528–1546. They are based on stenographic reports of Diaconus Georg Rörer of Wittenberg (ordained by Luther 1525, d. at Halle, 1557), who took full Latin notes of Luther’s German sermons, retaining, however, in strange medley a number of German words and phrases.
P. Tschackert: Unbekannte Predigten u. Scholien Luthers, Berlin, 1888. MSS. of sermons from Oct. 23, 1519, to April 2, 1521, discovered in the University Library at Königsberg. They will be publ. in the Weimar edition.
II. Biographies of Luther :
(1) By contemporaries, who may be included in the sources.
Melanchthon wrote Vita Lutheri, a brief but weighty sketch, 1546, often reprinted, translated into German by Matthias Ritter, 1555, with Melanchthon’s account of Luther’s death to the students in the lecture room, the funeral orations of Bugenhagen and Cruciger (157 pages); a new transl. by Zimmermann, with preface by G. J. Planck, Göttingen, 1813; ed. of the original in Vitae quatuor Reformatorum., Lutheri a Melanchthone, Melanchthonis a Camerario, Zwinglii a Myconio, Calvini a Beza, prefaced by Neander, Berlin, 1841. Justus Jonas gives an account of Luther’s last sickness and death as an eye-witness, 1546. Mathesius (Luther’s pupil and friend, d. 1561) preached seventeen sermons on Luther’s life, first published 1565, and very often since, though mostly abridged, e.g., an illustrated popular ed. with preface by G. H. v. Schubert, Stuttgart, 1846; jubilee edition, St. Louis and Dresden, 1883. Joh. Cochlaeus, a Roman Cath. antagonist of Luther, wrote Commentaria de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri Saxonis, chronographica, ex ordine ab anno Dom. 1517 usque ad annum 1546 (inclusive), fideliter conscripta. Mayence, 1549 fol.
(2) Later Biographies till 1875 (the best marked *) by
*Walch (in his ed. of L.’s Works,
vol. XXIV. pp. 3–875); Keil (4 parts in 1 vol.,
Leipz., 1764); Schröckh (Leipz., 1778); Ukert (Gotha, 2
vols., 1817); Pfizer (Stuttgart, 1836); Stang (with illustrations,
Stuttg., 1836); Jaekel (Leipz., 1841, new ed. Elberfeld, 1871); *Meurer
(Dresden, 1843–’46, 3 vols. with
illustrations, abridged in 1 vol., 1850, 3d ed., 1870, mostly in
Luther’s own words); *Juergens (Leipz.,
1846–’47, 3 vols., reaching to 1517,
very thorough, but unfinished); J. M. Audin (Rom. Cath., Hist. de la
vie, des ouvrages et des doctrines de M. Luth., Paris, 1839, 7th ed.,
revue et corrigée, 1856, 3 vols.—a
storehouse of calumnies, also in German and English); Audin
wrote also the Lives of Calvin, of Henry VIII., and of Leo X.
(published between 1839 and 1847), with the same French vivacity and
Roman Catholic hostility; yet, while he does not understand Luther as a
Protestant Christian and a reformer, he tries to do justice to him as a
man and a genius. He says (III., 380): "Luther est le grand predicateur de
la réforme. Il eut presque tous les dons de
l’orateur; une inèpuisable
fécondité de pensées, une imagination
aussi prompte à recevoir qu’à
produire ses impressions, une abondance et une suplesse de style
inexprimables. Sa voix était claire et retentissante, son
oeil brillant de flamme, sa téte antique, sa poitrine large,
ses mains d’unerare beauté, son geste ample
et rich .... C’était à la fois
Rabelais et Montaigne: Rabelais avec sa verve drolatique de style,
Montaigne avec ses tournures qui burinent et
cisètent." The editor of the 7th ed., in his introductory notice (p.
xviii.), says that those biographies of Audin have given to the
Reformation "le coup de grace," and thus finished the work of Bossuet’s
Variations; but Protestantism still lives, even in Catholic and infidel
France. Michelet lets Luther tell his own story as far as possible, and
compares this story with the Confessions of Augustin and of Rousseau,
which it unites."Dans saint Augustin" (he says, I., 6), "la passion, la nature,
l’individuaté humaine,
n’apparaissent que pour étre immolees
à la grâce divine. C’est
l’histoire d’une crise de
l’ame, d’une renaissance,
d’une Vita nuova; le saint eût rouqi de
nous faire mieux connaître l’autre vie
qu’il avait quitté. Dans Rousseau,
c’est tous le contraire; il ne s’agit
plus de la grace; la nature règne sans partage, elle
triomphe, elle s’étale; cela va quelquefois
jusqu ’au dégout. Luther a
présenté, non pas
l’equilibré de la grâce et de la
nature, mais leur plus douloureux combat. Les luttes de la
sensibilité, les tentations plus hautes du donte, bien
d’autres hommes en eut suffert; Pascal les eut
évidemment, il les étouffa et il en mourat.
Luther n’a rien caché, il ne
s’est pu contenir. Il a donné à
voir en lui à sonder, la plaie profonde de notre nature.
C’est le seul homme peut-âtre où
l’on puisse étudier à
plaisircette terrible anatomie."
(3) Recent Biographies, published since 1875, by
Jul. Koestlin (Elberfeld, 1875, 2 vols., 2d ed. revised 1883; 3d ed. unchanged; upon the whole the best German biography; also an abridged ed. for popular use with 64 illustrations, 3d ed., 1883. English transl. of the small ed. by an anonymous writer with the author’s sanction, Lond. and N. Y., 1883; another by Morris, Philad., 1883; comp. also Koestlin’s art. Luther in Herzog, 2d ed., vol. IX.; his Festschrift, 1883, in several edd., transl. by Eliz. P. Weir: Martin Luther the Reformer, London, 1883; and his polemic tract: Luther und Janssen, der Deutsche Reformator und ein ultramontaner Historiker, Halle, 3d ed., 1883); V. Hasak (R. Cath., Regensb., 1881); Rein (Leipz., 1883, English transl. by Behringer, N. Y., 1883); Rogge, (Leipz., 1883); *Plitt and Petersen (Leipzig, 1883); *MAx Lenz (2nd ed. Berlin, 1883); P. Kuhn (Luther, sa vie et son oeuvre, Paris, 3 vols.); C. Burk (4th ed., Stuttg., 1884); *Th. Kolde (M. Luther, Gotha, 1884, 2 vols.); J. A. Froude (Luther, a Short Biography, Lond. and N. Y., 1883); John Rae (M. Luth.: Lond., 1884); Paul Martin, i.e., M. Rade of Schönbach (Dr. M. Luther’s Leben, etc., Neusalza, 1885–87, 3 vols.); Peter Bayne (M. Luth.: his Life and Times, Lond. and N. Y., 1887, 2 vols.).
On Luther’s wife and his domestic life: W. Beste: Die Gesch. Catherina’s von Bora. Halle, 1843 (131 pp.). G. Hofmann: Katharina von Bora, oder M. L. als Gatte, und Vater. Leipzig, 1846. John G. Morris: Life of Cath. von Bora, Baltimore, 1856. Mor. Meurer: Katherina Luther geborne von Bora. Dresden, 1854; 2d ed., Leipzig, 1873.
III. Luther’s Theology .
W. Beste: Dr. M. Luther’s Glaubenslehre. Halle, 1845 (286 pp.). Theodos. Harnack (senior): L.’s Theologie, Bd I. Erlang., 1862, Bd. II., 1886. *Jul. Koestlin: L.’s Theologie. Stuttg., 1863, 2d ed., 1883, 2 vols. By the same: Luther’s Lehre von der Kirche, 1853, new ed., Gotha, 1868. Ch. H. Weisse; Die Christologie Luthers, Leipz., 1852 (253 pp.). Luthardt: Die Ethik Luthers, Leipz., 1867, 2d ed., 1875. Lommatzsch: Luther’s Lehre von ethisch-relig. Standpunkt aus, Berlin, 1879). H. C. Moenckeberg: Luther’s Lehre von der Kirche. Hamburg, 1870. Hering: Die Mystik Luther’s. Leipz., 1879. Kattenbusch: Luther’s Stellung z. den ökumenischen Symbolen. Giessen, 1883.
IV. Luther as Bible Translator.
G. W. Panzer: Entwurf einer vollständigen Gesch. der deutschen Bibelübers. Dr. M. Luther’s von 1517–1581. Nürnberg, 1783. H. Schott: Gesch. der teutschen Bibelübers. Dr. M. Luther’s. Leipz., 1835. Bindseil: Verzeichniss der Original-Ausgaben der Luther. Uebersetzung der Bibel. Halle, 1841. Moenckeberg and Frommann: Vorschläge zur Revision von M. L.’s Bibelübers. Halle, 1861–62. Theod. Schott: Martin Luther und die deutsche Bibel. Stuttgart, 1883. E. Riehm (Prof. in Halle and one of the Revisers of the Luther-Bible): Luther als Bibelübersetzer. Gotta. 1884. Comp. the Probebibel of 1883 (an official revision of Luther’s version), and the numerous pamphlets for and against it.
V. Luther as a Preacher.
E. Jonas: Die Kanzelberedtsamkeit Luther’s. Berlin, 1852 (515 pp.). Best ed. of his sermons by G. Schlosser: Dr. Martin Luther’s Evangelien-Predigten auf alle Sonn-und Festtage des Kirchenjahres aus seiner Haus-und Kirchenpostille, Frankfurt a. M., 1883; 4th ed., 1885.
VI. Luther as Poet and Musician .
A. J. Rambach: Luther’s Verdienst um den Kirchengesang. Hamburg, 1813 Aug. Gebauer: Martin Luther und seine Zeitgenossen als Kirchenliederdichter. Leipzig, 1828 (212 pp.). C. von Winterfeld: Dr. M. Luth. deutsche geistliche Lieder nebst den wahrend seines Lebens dazu gebräuchlichen Stimmweisen. Leipzig, 1840 (132 pp., 4to). B. Pick: Luther as a Hymnist, Philad., 1875; Ein feste Burg (in 21 languages), Chicago, 1883. Bacon and Allen: The Hymns of Martin Luther with his original Tunes. Germ. and Eng., N. Y., 1883. Dr. Danneil: Luther’s Geistliche Lieder nach seinen drei Gesangbüchern von 1524, 1529, 1545. Frankfurt a. M., 1883. E. Achelis: Die Entstehungszeit v. Luther’s geistl. Liedern. Marburg, 1884.
VII. Special Points in Luther’s Life and Work.
John G. Morris: Quaint Sayings and Doings concerning Luther. Philadelphia, 1857. Tuzschmann: Luther in Worms. Darmstadt, 1860. Koehler: Luther’s Reisen. Eisenach, 1872. W. J. Mann and C. P. Krauth: The Great Reformation and the Ninety-five Theses. Philad., 1873. Zitzlaff. L. auf der Koburg. Wittenberg, 1882. Kolde. L. auf dem Reichstag zu Worms. Halle, 1883. Glock: Grundriss der Pädagogik Luther’s. Karlsruh, 1883.
VIII. Commemorative Addresses of 1883 and 1884.
Festschriften zur 400 jährigen Jubelfeier der Geburt Dr. Martin Luther’s, herausgegeben vom königl. Prediger-Seminar in Wittenberg. Wittenberg, 1883. (Addresses by Drs. Schmieder, Rietschel, and others.) P. Kleinert: L. im Verhältniss zur Wissenschaft (Academic oration). Berlin, 1883 (35 pp.). Ed. Reuss: Akad. Festrede zur Lutherfeier. Strassburg, 1883. Th. Brieger: Neue Mittheilungen über Luther in Worms. Marburg, 1883, and Luther und sein Werk. Marb., 1883. Ad. Harnack: M. Luther in seiner Bedeutung für die Gesch. der Wissenschaft und der Bildung. Giessen, 1883 (30 pp.). Vid Upsala Universitets Luthersfest, den 10 Nov., 1883, with an oration of K. H. Gez. von Scheele (Prof. of Theol. at Upsala, appointed Bishop of Visby in Gothland, 1885). Upsala, 1883. G. N. Bonwetsch: Unser Reformator Martin Luther. Dorpat, 1883. Appenzeller, Ruetschi, Oettli, and others: Die Lutherfeier in Bern. Bern, 1883. Prof. Salmond (of Aberdeen): Martin Luther. Edinburgh, 1883. J. M. Lindsay: M. Luther, in the 9th ed. of "Encyclop. Brit.," vol. XV. (1883), 71–84. Jean Monod: Luther j’usqu’en 1520. Montauban, 1883. J. B. Bittinger: M. Luth. Cleveland, 1883. E. J. Wolf, and others: Addresses on the Reformation. Gettysburg, 1884. The Luther Document (No. XVII.) of the American Evang. Alliance, with addresses of Rev. Drs. Wm. M. Taylor and Phillips Brooks. N. Y., 1883. Symposiac on Luther, seven addresses of the seven Professors of the Union Theol. Seminary in New York, held Nov. 19, 1883. Jos. A. Seiss: Luther and the Reformation (an eloquent commemorative oration delivered in Philad., and New York). Philad. 1884. S. M. Deutsch: Luther’s These vom Jahr 1519 über die päpstliche Gewalt. Berlin, 1884. H. Cremer: Reformation und Wissenschaft. Gotha, 1883
IX. Roman Catholic Attacks .
The Luther-celebration gave rise not only to innumerable Protestant glorifications, but also to many Roman Catholic defamations of Luther and the Reformation. The ablest works of this kind are by Janssen (tracts in defence of his famous History of Germany, noticed in § 15), G. G. Evers, formerly a Lutheran pastor (Katholisch oder protestantisch? Hildesheim, 4th ed., 1883; Martin Luther’s Anfänge, Osnabrück, 3d ed., 1884; Martin Luther, Mainz, 1883 sqq., in several vols.), Westermayer. (Luther’s Werk im Jahr 1883), Germanus, Herrmann, Roettscher, Dasbach, Roem, Leogast, etc. See the "Historisch-politische Blätter" of Munich, and the "Germania" of Berlin, for 1883 and 1884 (the chief organs of Romanism in Germany), and the Protestant review of these writings by Wilh. Walther: Luther in neusten römischen Gericht. Halle, 1884 (166 pages).
§ 18. Luther’s Youth and Training.
In order to understand the genius and history of the German Reformation we must trace its origin in the personal experience of the monk who shook the world from his lonely study in Wittenberg, and made pope and emperor tremble at the power of his word.
All the Reformers, like the Apostles and Evangelists, were men of humble origin, and gave proof that God’s Spirit working through his chosen instruments is mightier than armies and navies. But they were endowed with extraordinary talents and energy, and providentially prepared for their work. They were also aided by a combination of favorable circumstances without which they could not have accomplished their work. They made the Reformation, and the Reformation made them.
Of all the Reformers Luther is the first. He is so closely identified with the German Reformation that the one would have no meaning without the other. His own history is the formative history of the church which is justly called by his name, and which is the incarnation and perpetuation of his genius. No other Reformer has given his name to the church he reformed, and exercised the same controlling influence over its history. We need not discuss here the advantages and disadvantages of this characteristic difference; we are only concerned with the fact.
Martin Luther was born Nov. 10, 1483, an hour
before midnight, at Eisleben in Prussian Saxony, where he died, Feb.
18, 1546. His
name is differently spelled: Luder, Ludher, Lutter, Luttherr,
Luther. The Reformer himself varied. In his first book, on the
Penitential Psalms, 1517, he signed his name after the preface
Martinus Luder, but soon afterward he adopted the spelling
Luther. In the University records of Erfurt he was inscribed as
Ludher in the Wittenberg records, first as Luder and
Lüder. He derived his name from lauter, clear,
afterward from Lothar, which means laut (hlut),
renowned, according to others Leutherr, i.e.: Herr der Leute,
lord of the people. See Erfurter Matrikel; Album Acad.
Viteberg., and Lib. Decanorum facultatis theol. Acad. Viteb.
ed. Förstemann; Walch, L.’s Werke
I., 46 sqq.; Jürgens I., 11-13: Knaake, in "Zeitschr, f.
hist. Theol.," 1872, p. 465; Köstlin, Mart. Luther,
I. 21 (2d ed. 1883). The year of Luther’s birth rests
on the testimony of his brother James; his mother distinctly remembered
the day and the hour, but not the year. Melanchthon’s
Vita Luth. 2; Köstlin, 1. 25 and
776.
On the day following he was baptized and received the name of the saint of the day.
His parents had recently removed to that town The
story that they went to the fair at Eisenach cannot be
proven.
Luther was never ashamed of his humble, rustic
origin. "I am," he said with pride to Melanchthon, "a
peasant’s son; my father, grandfather, all my
ancestors were genuine peasants." "Ich bin eines Bauern Sohn; mein Vater, Grossvater, Ahnherr sind
rechte Bauern gewest. Darauf ist mein Vater gen Mansfeld gezogen und
ein Berghauer worden: daher bin ich." Mathesius wisely remarks with reference to
the small beginnings of Luther: "Wass gross soll werden, muss klein
angehen; und wenn die Kinder zärtlich und herrlich erzogen
werden, schadet es ihnen ihr Leben lang." Köstlin, I., 26; II., 498. In his small biography, pp.
6 and 7 (Engl. ed.), Köstlin gives the pictures of Hans and
Margaret Luther. There is a striking resemblance between Luther and his
mother, whom Melanchthon describes as a modest, God-fearing, and devout
woman. Her maiden name was Ziegler (not Lindemann, as usually given).
Luther’s father is said to have escaped by flight
trial for murdering a peasant at Möhra in a fit of anger;
but this tradition rests only on the testimony of J. Wicel (Epist.
libri quatuor, Lips., 1537), who fell away from Protestantism. It
is discredited by Köstlin (I., 24). Janssen (II. 66) leaves
it in doubt.
Luther had a hard youth, without sunny memories,
and was brought up under stern discipline. His mother chastised him,
for stealing a paltry nut, till the blood came; and his father once
flogged him so severely that he fled away and bore him a temporary
grudge; Table Talk (Erl. Frkf. ed. LXI. 213): "Man soll die Kinder nicht zu
hart staüpen; denn mein Vater stäupet mich einmal
so sehr, dass ich ihn flohe und ward ihm gram, bis er mich wieder zu
ihm gewöhnete."
In the school the discipline was equally severe, and the rod took the place of kindly admonition. He remembered to have been chastised no less than fifteen times in one single morning. But he had also better things to say. He learned the Catechism, i.e.: the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, and several Latin and German hymns. He treasured in his memory the proverbial wisdom of the people and the legendary lore of Dietrich von Bern, of Eulenspiegel and Markolf.
He received his elementary education in the schools of Mansfeld, Magdeburg, and Eisenach. Already in his fourteenth year he had to support himself by singing in the street.
Frau Ursula Cotta, the wife of the wealthiest
merchant at Eisenach, immortalized herself by the benevolent interest
she took in the poor student. She invited him to her table "on account
of his hearty singing and praying," and gave him the first impression
of a lady of some education and refinement. She died, 1511, but he kept
up an acquaintance with her sons and entertained one of them who
studied at Wittenberg. From her he learned the word: "There is nothing
dearer in this world than the love of woman." He
says in his Table-Talk: "Darumb sagte meine Wirthin zu
Eisenach recht, als ich daselbst in die Schule
ging: ’Es ist kein lieber Ding auf
Erden Als
Frauenlieb’, wem sie mag werden.’ " See Works, Erl.
Frkf. ed. LXI., 212; Jürgens, I., 281 sqq.; Kolde, I., 36;
Janssen, II., 67. The relation of Luther to this excellent lady has
been made the subject of a useful religious novel by Mrs. Eliz.
Charles, under the title: Chronicles of the
Schönberg-Cotta Family. By two of themselves. London and
New York (M. W. Dodd), 1864. The diary is fictitious.
The hardships of Luther’s youth and the want of refined breeding show their effects in his writings and actions. They limited his influence among the higher and cultivated classes, but increased his power over the middle and lower classes. He was a man of the people and for the people. He was of the earth earthy, but with his bold face lifted to heaven. He was not a polished diamond, but a rough block cut out from a granite mountain and well fitted for a solid base of a mighty structure. He laid the foundation, and others finished the upper stories.
§ 19. Luther in the University of Erfurt.
At the age of eighteen, in the year 1501, he entered,
as "Martinus Ludher ex Mansfeld," the University of Erfurt, which had
been founded a hundred years before (1392) and was then one of the best
in Germany. See
the description by Jürgens, I., 351 sqq.; and
Kampschulte, Die Universität Erfurt in ihrem Verh. z. Humanismus u.
Reformation,
Trier, 1358. Two parts. The university was abolished in
1816.
He studied chiefly scholastic philosophy, namely:
logic, rhetoric, physics and metaphysics. His favorite teacher was
Truttvetter, called "Doctor Erfordiensis." See
Kampschulte, l.c. I., 43 sqq., and G. Plitt, Jodocus Truttvetter, der
Lehrer Luthers,
1876.
On the other hand the humanistic studies were
reviving all over Europe and opened a new avenue of intellectual
culture and free thought. The first Greek book in Greek letters (a
grammar) which was published in Germany, appeared in Erfurt. John
Crotus Rubeanus (Jäger) who studied there since 1498 and
became rector of the University in 1520 and 1521, was one of the
leaders of humanism and the principal author of the first part of the
famous anti-monkish Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1515); he was at
first an intimate friend of Hutten and Luther, and greeted the latter
on his way to Worms (1521) as the man who "first after so many
centuries dared to strangle the Roman license with the sword of the
Scripture," but afterward he fell away from the Reformation (1531) and
assailed it bitterly.
Jürgens, I., 449;
Kampschulte, De Johanne Croto Rubiano, 1862.
Luther did not neglect the study of the ancient
classics, especially Cicero, Vergil, Plautus, and Livy. O. G.
Schmidt, Luther’s Bekanntschaft mit den alten
Classikern,
1883.
Beside his literary studies he cultivated his early love for music. He sang, and played the lute right merrily. He was a poet and musician as well as a theologian. He prized music as a noble gift of God, as a remedy against sadness and evil thoughts, and an effective weapon against the assaults of the devil. His poetic gift shines in his classical hymns. He had a rich font of mother wit and quaint humor.
His moral conduct was unblemished; and the mouth of slander did not dare to blacken his reputation till after the theological passions were roused by the Reformation. He went regularly to mass and observed the daily devotions of a sincere Catholic. He chose for his motto: to pray well is half the study. He was a devout worshipper of the Virgin Mary.
In his twentieth year he first saw a complete
(Latin) Bible in the University Library, and was surprised and rejoiced
to find that it contained so much more than was ever read or explained
in the churches. Da ich zwanzig Jahre alt war, hatte ich noch keine Bibel
gesehen; ich meinte, es wären keim Evangelien und Episteln
mehr, denn die in den Postillen sind." Werke, Erl. ed., LX., 255. This was
partly his own fault, for several editions of the Latin Vulgate and the
German Bible were printed before 1500.
In 1502 he was graduated as Bachelor of Arts, in 1505 as Master of Arts. This degree, which corresponds to the modern Doctor of Philosophy in Germany, was bestowed with great solemnity. "What a moment of majesty and splendor," says Luther, "was that when one took the degree of Master, and torches were carried before him. I consider that no temporal or worldly joy can equal it." His talents and attainments were the wonder of the University.
According to his father’s ambitious wish, Luther began to prepare himself for the profession of law, and was presented by him with a copy of the Corpus juris. But he inclined to theology, when a remarkable providential occurrence opened a new path for his life.
§ 20. Luther’s Conversion.
In the summer of 1505 Luther entered the Augustinian convent at Erfurt and became a monk, as he thought, for his life time. The circumstances which led to this sudden step we gather from his fragmentary utterances which have been embellished by legendary tradition.
He was shocked by the sudden death of a friend
(afterward called Alexius), who was either killed in a duel, Mathesius: "da ihm ein guter Gesell erstochen
ward." In a
letter which Crotus wrote to Luther from Bologna, Nov., 1519:
"Perge, ut coepisti, relinque exemplum posteris. Nam ista facis non
sine numine divum. Ad haec respexit divina providentia, cum te
redeuntem a parentibus coeleste fulmen veluti alterum Paulum ante
oppidum Erfurdianum in terram prostravit, atque inter Augustiana septa
compulit e nostro consortio." Döllinger I.
139.
On the sixteenth of July he assembled his friends who in vain tried to change his resolution, indulged once more in social song, and bade them farewell. On the next day they accompanied him, with tears, to the gates of the convent. The only books he took with him were the Latin poets Vergil and Plautus.
His father almost went mad, when he heard the news. Luther himself declared in later years, that his monastic vow was forced from him by terror and the fear of death and the judgment to come; yet he never doubted that God’s hand was in it. "I never thought of leaving the convent: I was entirely dead to the world, until God thought that the time had come."
This great change has nothing to do with Luther’s Protestantism. It was simply a transition from secular to religious life—such as St. Bernard and thousands of Catholic monks before and since passed through. He was never an infidel, nor a wicked man, but a pious Catholic from early youth; but he now became overwhelmed with a sense of the vanity of this world and the absorbing importance of saving his soul, which, according to the prevailing notion of his age, he could best secure in the quiet retreat of a cloister.
He afterward underwent as it were a second conversion, from the monastic and legalistic piety of mediaeval Catholicism to the free evangelical piety of Protestantism, when he awoke to an experimental knowledge of justification by free grace through faith alone.
§ 21. Luther as a Monk.
The Augustinian convent at Erfurt became the cradle of the Lutheran Reformation. All honor to monasticism: it was, like the law of Israel, a wholesome school of discipline and a preparation for gospel freedom. Erasmus spent five years reluctantly in a convent, and after his release ridiculed monkery with the weapons of irony and sarcasm; Luther was a monk from choice and conviction, and therefore all the better qualified to refute it afterward from deep experience. He followed in the steps of St. Paul, who from a Pharisee of the Pharisees became the strongest opponent of Jewish legalism.
If there ever was a sincere, earnest,
conscientious monk, it was Martin Luther. His sole motive was concern
for his salvation. To this supreme object he sacrificed the fairest
prospects of life. He was dead to the world and was willing to be
buried out of the sight of men that he might win eternal life. His
latter opponents who knew him in convent, have no charge to bring
against his moral character except a certain pride and combativeness,
and he himself complained of his temptations to anger and envy. Köstlin, I., 88 sq., 780.
It was not without significance that the order which he joined, bore the honored name of the greatest Latin father who, next to St. Paul, was to be Luther’s chief teacher of theology and religion; but it is an error to suppose that this order represented the anti-Pelagian or evangelical views of the North African father; on the contrary it was intensely catholic in doctrine, and given to excessive worship of the Virgin Mary, and obedience to the papal see which conferred upon it many special privileges.
St. Augustin, after his conversion, spent several weeks with some friends in quiet seclusion on a country-seat near Tagaste, and after his election to the priesthood, at Hippo in 391, he established in a garden a sort of convent where with like-minded brethren and students he led an ascetic life of prayer, meditation and earnest, study of the Scriptures, yet engaged at the same time in all the public duties of a preacher, pastor and leader in the theological controversies and ecclesiastical affairs of his age.
His example served as an inspiration and furnished a sort of authority to several monastic associations which arose in the thirteenth century. Pope Alexander IV. (1256) gave them the so-called rule of St. Augustin. They belonged to the mendicant monks, like the Dominicans, Franciscans and Carmelites. They laid great stress on preaching. In other respects they differed little from other monastic orders. In the beginning of the sixteenth century they numbered more than a hundred settlements in Germany.
The Augustinian congregation in Saxony was founded in 1493, and presided over since 1503 by John von Staupitz, the Vicar-General for Germany, and Luther’s friend. The convent at Erfurt was the largest and most important next to that at Nürnberg. The monks were respected for their zeal in preaching, pastoral care, and theological study. They lived on alms, which they collected themselves in the town and surrounding country. Applicants were received as novices for a year of probation, during which they could reconsider their resolution; afterward they were bound by perpetual vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience to their superiors.
Luther was welcomed by his brethren with hymns of joy and prayer. He was clothed with a white woollen shirt, in honor of the pure Virgin, a black cowl and frock, tied by a leathern girdle. He assumed the most menial offices to subdue his pride: he swept the floor, begged bread through the streets, and submitted without a murmur to the ascetic severities. He said twenty-five Paternosters with the Ave Maria in each of the seven appointed hours of prayer. He was devoted to the Holy Virgin and even believed, with the Augustinians and Franciscans, in her immaculate conception, or freedom from hereditary sin—a doctrine denied by the Dominicans and not made an article of faith till the year 1854. He regularly confessed his sins to the priest at least once a week. At the same time a complete copy of the Latin Bible was put into his hands for study, as was enjoined by the new code of statutes drawn up by Staupitz.
At the end of the year of probation Luther
solemnly promised to live until death in poverty and chastity according
to the rules of the holy father Augustin, to render obedience to
Almighty God, to the Virgin Mary, and to the prior of the monastery. He
was sprinkled with holy water, as he lay prostrate on the ground in the
form of a cross. He was greeted as an innocent child fresh from
baptism, and assigned to a separate cell with table, bedstead, and
chair. The
cell and furniture were destroyed by fire, March 7, 1872. The cell was
reconstructed, and the convent is now an orphan-asylum
(Martinsstift).
The two years which followed, he divided between
pious exercises and theological studies. He read diligently the
Scriptures, and the later schoolmen,—especially
Gabriel Biel, whom he knew by heart, and William Occam, whom he
esteemed on account of his subtle acuteness even above St. Thomas and
Duns Scotus, without being affected by his sceptical tendency. He
acknowledged the authority of Aristotle, whom he afterward denounced
and disowned as "a damned heathen." "Der vermaladeite Heide Aristoteles." Luther’s attitude to
scholasticism and the great Greek philosopher changed again when, in
support of the eucharistic presence, he had to resort to the scholastic
distinctions between various kinds of presence. Comp. Fr. Aug. Berthold
Nitzsch, Luther und Aristoteles . Kiel, 1883.
His heart was not satisfied with brain work. His chief concern was to become a saint and to earn a place in heaven. "If ever," he said afterward, "a monk got to heaven by monkery, I would have gotten there." He observed the minutest details of discipline. No one surpassed him in prayer, fasting, night watches, self-mortification. He was already held up as a model of sanctity.
But he was sadly disappointed in his hope to escape sin and temptation behind the walls of the cloister. He found no peace and rest in all his pious exercises. The more he seemed to advance externally, the more he felt the burden of sin within. He had to contend with temptations of anger, envy, hatred and pride. He saw sin everywhere, even in the smallest trifles. The Scriptures impressed upon him the terrors of divine justice. He could not trust in God as a reconciled Father, as a God of love and mercy but trembled before him, as a God of wrath, as a consuming fire. He could not get over the words: "I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God." His confessor once told him: "Thou art a fool, God is not angry with thee, but thou art angry with God." He remembered this afterward as "a great and glorious word," but at that time it made no impression on him. He could not point to any particular transgression; it was sin as an all-pervading power and vitiating principle, sin as a corruption of nature, sin as a state of alienation from God and hostility to God, that weighed on his mind like an incubus and brought him at times to the brink of despair.
He passed through that conflict between the law of
God and the law of sin which is described by Paul (
§ 22. Luther and Staupitz.
The mystic writings of Staupitz have been republished in part by Knaake in Johannis Staupitii Opera. Potsdam, 1867, vol. I. His "Nachfolge Christi" was first published in 1515; his book "Von der Liebe Gottes" (especially esteemed by Luther) in 1518, and passed through several editions; republ. by Liesching, Stuttgart, 1862. His last work "Von, dem heiligen rechten christlichen Glauben," appeared after his death, 1525, and is directed against Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith without works. His twenty-four letters have been published by Kolde: Die Deutsche Augustiner Congregation und Johann von Staupitz. Gotha, 1879, p. 435 sqq.
II. On Luther and Staupitz: Grimm: De Joh. Staupitio
ejusque in sacr. instaur. meritis, in Illgen’s
"Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol.," 1837 (VII,
74–79). Ullmann: Die Reformatoren vor der Reformation,
vol. II., 256–284 (very good, see there the older
literature). Döllinger: Die Reformation, I.,
153–155. Kahnis: Deutsche Reformat., I., 150 sqq.
Albr. Ritschl: Die Lehre v. der Rechtfertigung und
Versöhnung, 2d ed., I., 124–129 (on
Staupitz’s theology). Mallet: in Herzog,2 XIV.,
648–653. Paul Zeller: Staupitz. Seine relig. dogmat.
Anschauungen und dogmengesch. Stellung, in the "Theol. Studien und
Kritiken," 1879. Ludwig Keller: Johann von Staupitz, und das
Waldenserthum, in the "Historische Taschenbuch," ed. by W.
Maurenbrecher, Leipzig, 1885, p. 117–167; also his
Johann von Staupitz und die Anfänge der Reformation,
Leipzig, 1888. Dr. Keller connects Staupitz with the Waldenses and
Anabaptists, but without proof. Kolde: Joh. von Staup. ein Waldenser
und Wiedertäufer, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift
für Kirchengesch." Gotha, 1885, p. 426–447.
Dieckhoff: Die Theol. des
In this state of mental and moral agony, Luther was comforted by an old monk of the convent (the teacher of the novices) who reminded him of the article on the forgiveness of sins in the Apostles’ Creed, of Paul’s word that the sinner is justified by grace through faith, and of an incidental remark of St. Bernard (in a Sermon on the Canticles) to the same effect.
His best friend and wisest counsellor was Johann
von Staupitz, Doctor of Divinity and Vicar-General of the Augustinian
convents in Germany. Staupitz was a Saxon nobleman, of fine mind,
generous heart, considerable biblical and scholastic learning, and deep
piety, highly esteemed wherever known, and used in important missions
by the Elector Frederick of Saxony. He belonged to the school of
practical mysticism or Catholic pietism, which is best represented by
Tauler and Thomas a Kempis. He cared more for the inner spiritual life
than outward forms and observances, and trusted in the merits of Christ
rather than in good works of his own, as the solid ground of comfort
and peace. The love of God and the imitation of Christ were the ruling
ideas of his theology and piety. In his most popular book, On the Love
of God, It
passed through three editions between 1518 and 1520. See Knaake, I., 86
sq. Keller says that it was often republished by the Anabaptists, whom
he regards as the successors of the mediaeval Waldenses, or
"Brethren."
Staupitz was Luther’s spiritual
father, and "first caused the light of the gospel to shine in the
darkness of his heart." "Per quem primum coepit Evangelii lux de tenebris splendescere
in cordibus nostris." So Luther says in his letter to Staupitz,
Sept. 17, 1518 (DeWette II., 408 sq.), where he addresses him as
"reverendus in Christo pater," and signs himself "filius tuus
Martinus Lutherus." In a
letter of comfort to Hieronymus Weller, Nov. 6, 1530 (DeWette, IV.,
187), Luther says, that in his sadness and distress in the convent he
consulted Staupitz and opened to him his "horrendas et terrificas
cogitationes," and that he was told by him: "Nescis Martine,
quam tibi illa tenatio sit utilis et necessaria. Non enim temere te sic
exercet Deus, videbis, quod ad res magnas gerendas te ministro
utetur."
He encouraged Luther to enter the priesthood
(1507), and brought him to Wittenberg; he induced him to take the
degree of Doctor of Divinity, and to preach. He stirred him up against
popery, Luther: "D. Staupitius me incitabat contra papam (al.
papatum)." In Colloquia, ed. Bindseil, III.,
188.
But when Luther broke with Rome, and Rome with
Luther, the friendship cooled down. Staupitz held fast to the unity of
the Catholic Church and was intimidated and repelled by the excesses of
the Reformation. In a letter of April 1, 1524, First
published by K. Krafft, in "Briefe und Documente aus der Zeit der
Reformation,"
Elberfeld (1876), p. 54 sq. "Ad liberatum carnis video innumeros abuti
evangelio." Extracts from these sermons were first published by
Kolde. Knaake, l.c., I., 130 sqq.; Keller, Reform., 346
sq. It must have been this book which Link sent to Luther in the year
1525, and which Luther returned with a very unfavorable judgment.
Döllinger (l.c. I., 155) thinks that Luther looked
upon the death of Staupitz as a sort of divine judgment, as he looked
afterward upon the death of Zwingli.
Staupitz withdrew from the conflict, resigned his
position, 1520, left his order by papal dispensation, became abbot of
the Benedictine Convent of St. Peter in Salzburg and died Dec. 28,
1524) in the bosom of the Catholic church which he never intended to
leave. Neverthless his books were put in the Index by the Council of
Trent, 1563, and were burnt as heretical with all his correspondence by
order of his successor, Abbot Martin of St. Peter, in the court of the
convent at Salzburg in 1584. See Fr. Hein. Reusch (Old
Cath.),Der Index der verbotenen Bücher, Bd. I. (Bonn, 1883), p. 279:
"Staupitius ist in den Index gekommen, weil Cochlaeus bei dem
Jahre 1517ihn neben Luther als Gegner Tetzels erwähnt. Er ist in
der 1.
Classe geblieben bis auf diesen Tag, obschon man in Rom oder wenigstens
in Trient, jedenfalls Benedict XIV. wohl hätte wissen
können, dass er als guter Katholik, als Abt von St. Peter zu
Salzburg gestorben." This is only one of several hundred errors in this papal
catalogue of heretical books. Or,
as Luther expressed it in his letter to Staupitz of Feb. 9, 1521, he
wavered between Christ and the Pope: "Ich fürcte, ihr
möchtet zwischen Christo und dem Papste in der Mitte
schwaben, die ihr doch in heftigem Streit sehet." He told him in the same letter that he
was no more that preacher of grace and of the cross
(ein
solcher Gnaden-und Kreuzdiger) as formerly.
§ 23. The Victory of Justifying Faith.
(Comp. § 7.)
The secret of Luther’s power and influence lies in his heroic faith. It delivered him from the chaos and torment of ascetic self-mortification and self-condemnation, gave him rest and peace, and made him a lordly freeman in Christ, and yet an obedient servant of Christ. This faith breathes through all his writings, dominated his acts, sustained him in his conflicts and remained his shield and anchor till the hour of death. This faith was born in the convent at Erfurt, called into public action at Wittenberg, and made him a Reformer of the Church.
By the aid of Staupitz and the old monk, but
especially by the continued study of Paul’s Epistles,
be was gradually brought to the conviction that the sinner is justified
by faith alone, without works of law. He experienced this truth in his
heart long before he understood it in all its bearings. He found in it
that peace of conscience which he had sought in vain by his monkish
exercises. He pondered day and night over the meaning of "the
righteousness of God "(
The Pauline doctrine of justification as set forth
in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, had never before been
clearly and fully understood, not even by Augustin and Bernard, who
confound justification with sanctification. Luther himself felt how widely he differed in this doctrine from
his favorite Augustin. He said afterward in his Table Talk:
"Principio Augustinum vorabam, non legebam; aber da mir in Paulo
die Thür aufging, dass ich wusste was justificatio fidei
wär, ward es aus mit ihm." Köstlin, I., 780. Yet if we
reduce the doctrine of justification by faith to the more general term
of salvation by free grace, it was held as clearly and strongly by
Augustin and, we may say, is held by all true Christians. Janssen (II.,
71) says: "Of all the books recognized and used by the (Catholic)
Church, whether learned or popular, there is not one which does not
contain the doctrine of justification by Christ alone
(die
Lehre von der Rechtfertigung durch Christus
allein)." But the
question between the Roman church and Luther turned on the subjective
appropriation of the righteousness of Christ which is the objective
ground of justification and salvation; while faith is the
subjective condition. Modern exegesis has justified this view of δικαιόω
and δικαίωσις, according to Hellenistic usage,
although etymologically the verb may mean to make just, i.e., to
sanctify, in accordance with verbs in όω
(e.g. δηλόω
φανεφόω,
τυφλόω, (i.to make manifest, etc.). See the Commentaries on Romans
and Galatians.
This experience acted like a new revelation on Luther. It shed light upon the whole Bible and made it to him a book of life and comfort. He felt relieved of the terrible load of guilt by an act of free grace. He was led out of the dark prison house of self-inflicted penance into the daylight and fresh air of God’s redeeming love. Justification broke the fetters of legalistic slavery, and filled him with the joy and peace of the state of adoption; it opened to him the very gates of heaven.
Henceforth the doctrine of justification by faith
alone was for him to the end of life the sum and substance of the
gospel, the heart of theology, the central truth of Christianity, the
article of the standing or falling church. By this standard he measured
every other doctrine and the value of every book of the Bible. Hence
his enthusiasm for Paul, and his dislike of James, whom he could not
reconcile with his favorite apostle. He gave disproportion to
solifidianism and presented it sometimes in most unguarded language,
which seemed to justify antinomian conclusions; but he corrected
himself, he expressly condemned antinomianism, and insisted on good
works and a holy life as a necessary manifestation of faith. The
boldest and wildest utterance of Luther on justification occurs in a
letter to Melanchthon (De Wette’s ed. II. 37), dated
Aug. 1, 1521, where he gives his opinion on the vow of celibacy and
says: "Esto peccator et pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide (crede) et
gaude in Christo, qui victor est peccati, mortis et mundi." But it
loses all its force as an argument against him and his doctrine, first
by being addressed to Melanchthon, who was not likely to abuse it, and
secondly by implying an impossibility; for the fortius crede and
the concluding ora fortiter neutralize the fortiter
pecca. Paul, of course, could never have written such a passage. He
puts the antinomian inference: "Let us continue in sin that grace may
abound" into the form of a question, and answers it by an
indignant μὴ
γένοιτο.
Thus the monastic and ascetic life of Luther was a
preparatory school for his evangelical faith. It served the office of
the Mosaic law which, by bringing the knowledge of sin and guilt, leads
as a tutor to Christ (
In one word, Luther passed through the experience of Paul. He understood him better than any mediaeval schoolman or ancient father. His commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians is still one of the best, for its sympathetic grasp of the contrast between law and gospel, between spiritual slavery and spiritual freedom.
Luther held this conviction without dreaming that it conflicted with the traditional creed and piety of the church. He was brought to it step by step. The old views and practices ran along side with it, and for several years he continued to be a sincere and devout Catholic. It was only the war with Tetzel and its consequences that forced him into the position of a Reformer and emancipated him from his old connections.
§ 24. Luther Ordained to the Priesthood.
In the second year of his monastic life and when he was still in a state of perplexity, Luther was ordained to the priesthood, and on May 2, 1507, he said his first mass. This was a great event in the life of a priest. He was so overwhelmed by the solemnity of offering the tremendous sacrifice for the living and the dead that he nearly fainted at the altar.
His father had come with several friends to witness the solemnity and brought him a present of twenty guilders. He was not yet satisfied with the monastic vows. "Have you not read in Holy Writ," he said to the brethren at the entertainment given to the young priest, "that a man must honor father and mother?" And when he was reminded, that his son was called to the convent by a voice from heaven, he answered: "Would to God, it were no spirit of the devil." He was not fully reconciled to his son till after he had acquired fame and entered the married state.
Luther performed the duties of the new dignity with conscientious fidelity. He read mass every morning, and invoked during the week twenty-one particular saints whom he had chosen as his helpers, three on each day.
But he was soon to be called to a larger field of influence.
§ 25. Luther in Rome. Luther’s dicta about Rome and his Roman journey
are collected in Walch’s ed., vol. XXII.,
2372-2379; Köhler: Luther’s Reisen (1872), p.
2-20; Jürgens, II., 266-358; Koestlin, I.,
100-107; Lenz,
45-47; Kolde, I.,
73-79; and in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für
Kirchengesch," II., 460 sqq. Comp. also, on the R. Cath. side, the
brief account of Janssen, II., 72. Audin devotes his third chapter to the Roman journey (I.,
52-65).
An interesting episode in the history of Luther’s training for the Reformation was his visit to Rome. It made a deep impression on his mind, and became effective, not immediately, but several years afterward through the recollection of what he had seen and heard, as a good Catholic, in the metropolis of Christendom.
In the autumn of the year 1510, The
chronology is not quite certain. The date 1511 is adopted by
Köstlin and Kolde. Others date the Rome journey back to 1510
(Mathesius, Seckendorf, Jürgens, and Luther himself, in his
tract Against Popery invented by the Devil, Erl. ed. XXVI., 125,
though once he names the year 1511).
In company with another monk and a lay brother, as the custom was, he traveled on foot, from convent to convent, spent four weeks in Rome in the Augustinian convent of Maria del popolo, and returned to Wittenberg in the following spring. The whole journey must have occupied several months. It was the longest journey he ever made, and at the same time, his pilgrimage to the shrines of the holy apostles where he wished to make a general confession of all his sins and to secure the most efficient absolution.
We do not know whether he accomplished the object
of his mission. Kolde
(I., 81) conjectures that the decision of Rome in the controversy among
the Augustinians went against Staupitz, who soon after 1512 left
Wittenberg. He
passed through Suabia and Bavaria, as we may judge from his description
of the people (Walch, XXII., 2359): "Wenn ich viel reisen sollte,
wollte ich nirgends lieber, denn durch Schwaben und Baierland ziehen;
denn sie sind freundlich und gutwillig, herbergen gerne, gehen Freunden
und Wandersleuten entgegen, und thun den Leuten gütlich, und
gute Ausrichtung um ihr Geld." He seems to have seen Switzerland also of which he says
(ib., p. 2360): "Schweiz ist ein dürr und bergig Land, darum
sind sie endlich und hurtig, müssen ihre Nahrung underswo
suchen." We
seek in vain for descriptions of natural scenery among the ancient
classics, but several Hebrew Psalms celebrate the glory of the Creator
in his works. The Parables of our Lord imply that nature is full of
spiritual lessons. The first descriptions of the beauties of nature in
Christian literature are found in the Epistles of St. Basil, Gregory of
Nazianzum and Gregory of Nyssa. See this Ch. Hist., vol. III., 896 sqq.
The incomparable beauties of Switzerland were first duly appreciated
and made known to the world by Albrecht von Haller of Bern (in his
poem, "Die Alpen"), Goethe Schweizereise), and Schiller (in Wilhelm Tell, where he gives the
most charming picture of the Lake of the Four Cantons, though he never
was there).
In his later writings and Table-Talk, Luther left some interesting reminiscences of his journey. He spoke of the fine climate and fertility of Italy, the temperance of the Italians contrasted with the intemperate Germans, also of their shrewdness, craftiness, and of the pride with which they looked down upon the "stupid Germans" and "German beasts," as semi-barbarians; he praised the hospitals and charitable institutions in Florence; but he was greatly disappointed with the state of religion in Rome, which he found just the reverse of what he had expected.
Rome was at that time filled with enthusiasm for the renaissance of classical literature and art, but indifferent to religion. Julius II., who sat in Peter’s chair from 1503 to 1513, bent his energies on the aggrandizement of the secular dominion of the papacy by means of an unscrupulous diplomacy and bloody wars, founded the Vatican Museum, and liberally encouraged the great architects and painters of his age in their immortal works of art. The building of the new church of St. Peter with its colossal cupola had begun under the direction of Bramante; the pencil of Michael Angelo was adorning the Sixtine chapel in the adjoining Vatican Palace with the pictures of the Prophets, Sibyls, and the last judgment; and the youthful genius of Raphael conceived his inimitable Madonna, with the Christ-child in her arms, and was transforming the chambers of the Vatican into galleries of undying beauty. These were the wonders of the new Italian art; but they had as little interest for the German monk as the temples and statues of classical Athens had for the Apostle Paul.
When Luther came in sight of the eternal city he
fell upon the earth, raised his hands and exclaimed, "Hail to thee,
holy, Rome! "Salve! Sancta Roma." "Auch ich war ein so toller Heiliger," he said, "lief durch alle Kirchen und
Kluften, glaubte alles was daselbst erlogen und erstunken
ist." This
interesting incident rests on the authority of his son Paul, who heard
it from the lips of his father in 1544. Modern Popes, Pius VII. and
Pius IX., have granted additional indulgences to those who climb up the
Scala Santa.
Thus at the very height of his mediaeval devotion he doubted its efficacy in giving peace to the troubled conscience. This doubt was strengthened by what he saw around him. He was favorably struck, indeed, with the business administration and police regulations of the papal court, but shocked by the unbelief, levity and immorality of the clergy. Money and luxurious living seemed to have replaced apostolic poverty and self-denial. He saw nothing but worldly splendor at the court of Pope Julius II., who had just returned from the sanguinary siege of a town conducted by him in person. He afterward thundered against him as a man of blood. He heard of the fearful crimes of Pope Alexander VI. and his family, which were hardly known and believed in Germany, but freely spoken of as undoubted facts in the fresh remembrance of all Romans. While he was reading one mass, a Roman priest would finish seven. He was urged to hurry up (passa, passa!), and to "send her Son home to our Lady." He heard priests, when consecrating the elements, repeat in Latin the words: "Bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain; wine thou art, and wine thou shalt remain." The term "a good Christian" (buon Christiano) meant "a fool." He was told that "if there was a hell, Rome was built on it," and that this state of things must soon end in a collapse.
He received the impression that "Rome, once the
holiest city, was now the worst." He compared it to Jerusalem as
described by the prophets. "Es gehet uns wie den Propheten, die klagen auch über
Jerusalem, und sagen: Die feine gläubige Stadt is zur Hure
geworden. Denn aus dem Besten kommt allezeit das Aergste, wie die
Exempel zeigen zu allen Zeiten." Walch, XXII., 2378. This
was the topic of one of his last and most abusive works:
"Wider
das Papstthum zu Rom vom Teufel gestiftet." March, 1545.
Hence he often declared that he would not have missed "seeing Rome for a hundred thousand florins; for I might have felt some apprehension that I had done injustice to the Pope; but as we see, so we speak."
Six years after his visit the building of St. Peter’s Dome by means of the proceeds from papal indulgences furnished the occasion for the outbreak of that war which ended with an irrevocable separation from Rome.
In the Pitti Gallery of Florence there is a famous
picture of Giorgione which represents an unknown monk with strongly
Teutonic features and brilliant eyes, seated between two Italians,
playing on a small organ and looking dreamily to one side. This central
figure has recently been identified by some connoisseurs as a portrait
of Luther taken at Florence a few months before the death of Giorgione
in 1511. The identity is open to doubt, but the resemblance is
striking. Comp."Revista Christiana," Firenze, 1883, p. 422. The picture on
the opposite page (in the text) is from a photograph made in
Florence.
§ 26. The University of Wittenberg.
Grohmann: Annalen der Universität zu Wittenberg, 1802, 2 vols. Muther: Die Wittenberger Universitäts und Facultätsstudien v. Jahr 1508. Halle, 1867. K. Schmidt: Wittenberg unter Kurfürst Friedrich dem Weisen. Erlangen, 1877. Juergens: II, 151 sqq. and 182 sqq. (very thorough). Koestlin, I., 90 sqq. Kolde: Friedrich der Weise und die Anfänge der Reformation, Erlangen, 1881; and his Leben Luther’s, 1884, I., 67 sqq.
In the year 1502 Frederick III., surnamed the Wise, Elector of Saxony ( b. 1463, d. 1525), distinguished among the princes of the sixteenth century for his intelligence, wisdom, piety, and in cautious protection of the Reformation, founded from his limited means a new University at Wittenberg, under the patronage of the Virgin Mary and St. Augustin. The theological faculty was dedicated to the Apostle Paul, and on the anniversary of his conversion at Damascus a mass was to be celebrated and a sermon preached in the presence of the rector and the senate.
Frederick was a devout Catholic, a zealous collector of relics, a believer in papal indulgences, a pilgrim to the holy land; but at the same time a friend of liberal learning, a protector of the person of Luther and of the new theology of the University of Wittenberg, which he called his daughter, and which be favored to the extent of his power. Shortly before his death he signified the acceptance of the evangelical faith by taking the communion in both kinds from Spalatin, his chaplain, counsellor and biographer, and mediator between him and Luther. He was unmarried and left no legitimate heir. His brother, John the Constant (1525–1532), and his nephew, John Frederick the Magnanimous (1532–1547), both firm Protestants, succeeded him; but the latter was deprived of the electoral dignity and part of his possessions by his victorious cousin Moritz, Duke of Saxony, after the battle of Mühlberg (1547). The successors of Moritz were the chief defenders of Lutheranism in Germany till Augustus I. (1694–1733) sold the faith of his ancestors for the royal crown of Poland and became a Roman Catholic.
Wittenberg Probably, Weissenberg, from the white sand hills on the Elbe. So
Jürgens II., 190. The original inhabitants of the region
were Slavs (Wends), but expelled or absorbed by the Saxons. The town
dates from the twelfth century. "In termino civilitatis."
The university was opened October 18, 1502. The organization was intrusted to Dr. Pollich, the first rector, who on account of his extensive learning was called "lux mundi," and who had accompanied the Elector on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (1493), and to Staupitz, the first Dean of the theological faculty, who fixed his eye at once upon his friend Luther as a suitable professor of theology.
Wittenberg had powerful rivals in the neighboring, older and better endowed Universities of Erfurt and Leipzig, but soon overshadowed them by the new theology. The principal professors were members of the Augustinian order, most of them from Tübingen and Erfurt. The number of students was four hundred and sixteen in the first semester, then declined to fifty-five in 1505, partly in consequence of the pestilence, began to rise again in 1507, and when Luther and Melanchthon stood on the summit of their fame, they attracted thousands of pupils from all countries of Europe. Melanchthon heard at times eleven languages spoken at his hospitable table.
§ 27. Luther as Professor till 1517.
Luther was suddenly called by Staupitz from the Augustinian Convent of Erfurt to that of Wittenberg with the expectation of becoming at the same time a lecturer in the university. He arrived there in October, 1508, was called back to Erfurt in autumn, 1509, was sent to Rome in behalf of his order, 1510, returned to Wittenberg, 1511, and continued there till a few days before his death, 1546.
He lived in the convent, even after his marriage. His plain study, bed-room and lecture-hall are still shown in the "Lutherhaus." The lowliness of his work-shop forms a sublime contrast to the grandeur of his work. From their humble dwellings Luther and Melanchthon exerted a mightier influence than the contemporary popes and kings from their gorgeous palaces.
Luther combined the threefold office of sub-prior,
preacher and professor. He preached both in his convent and in the
town-church, sometimes daily for a week, sometimes thrice in one day,
during Lent in 1517 twice everyday. He was supported by the convent. As
professor he took no fees from the students and received only a salary
of one hundred guilders, which after his marriage was raised by the
Elector John to two hundred guilders. "Wäre es nicht geschehen," says Luther, "so hatte ich nach meiner
Verheirathung mir vorgenommen, für Honorar zu lesen. Aber da
mir Gott zuvorkam, so habe ich mein Leben lang kein
Exemplar [he
means, of his writings] verkauft noch gelesen um Lohn, will auch den Ruhm,
will’s Gott, mit mir ins Grab
nehmen."
Jürgens, II., 248 sq.
He first lectured on scholastic philosophy and
explained the Aristotelian dialectics and physics. But he soon passed
through the three grades of bachelor, licentiate, and doctor of
divinity (October 18th and 19th, 1512), and henceforth devoted himself
exclusively to the sacred science which was much more congenial to his
taste. Staupitz urged him into these academic dignities, Luther remembered the pear tree under which Staupitz overcame his
objections to the labors and responsibilities of the doctorate. He
thought himself unable to endure them with his frail body, but Staupitz
replied playfully and in prophetic anticipation of the great work in
store for him: "In Gottes Namen! Unser Herr Gott hat grosse
Geschäfte; Er bedarf droben auch kluger Leute; wenn Ihr nun
sterbet, so müsset Ihr dort sein Rathgeber
sein." See
K. F. Th. Schneider, Luther’s Promotion zum Doctor und
Melanchthon’s zum Baccalaureus der
Theologie, Neuwied, 1860 (38 pp.). He gives Luther’s Latin
oration which he delivered in honor of theology on the text: "I will
give you a mouth and wisdom" ( See
his utterances on the importance of his doctorate in Mathesius (I. and
XV.) and Jürgens (II., 405-408). Jürgens points
out and explains (p. 424 sqq.) the inconsistency of Luther in his
appeal to human authority and overestimate of the official title. Every
step in his public career was accompanied by scruples of conscience
which he had to solve the best way he could. Köstlin says (Engl. transl. of the short biography, p.
65): "Obedience to the Pope was not required at Wittenberg, as it was
at other universities." But it is implied in obedience to the Roman
church. The university was chartered by the Emperor Maximilian, but the
Elector had not neglected to secure the papal sanction. See
Jürgens II. 207.
With the year 1512 his academic teaching began in earnest and continued till 1546, at first in outward harmony with the Roman church, but afterward in open opposition to it.
He was well equipped for his position, according
to the advantages of his age, but, very poorly, according to modern
requirements, as far as technical knowledge is concerned.Although a
doctor of divinity, he relied for several years almost exclusively on
the Latin version of the Scriptures. Very few professors knew Greek,
and still less, Hebrew. Luther had acquired a superficial idea of
Hebrew at Erfurt from Reuchlin’s Rudimenta Hebraica. This
book, published at Pforzheim, 1506, at the author’s
expense, is the first Hebrew grammar written by a Christian, and broke
the path for Hebrew learning in Germany. So far Reuchlin was right in
calling it a monumentum aere perennius. DeWette, I. 34: "Petimus a te, Graece, ut controversiam
nostram dissolvas, quae sit distantia inter anathema per epsilon, et
anathema per η ...
Nescio figuras literarum pingere." In his Table Talk he
says: "Ich kann weder griechisch noch hebräisch; ich will
aber dennoch einem Griechen und Hebräer ziemlich
begegnen." Comp.
on his linguistic studies and accomplishments, Jürgens, I.
470 sqq.; II. 428 sqq.
Luther opened his theological teaching with David and Paul, who became the pillars of his theology. The Psalms and the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians remained his favorite books. His academic labors as a commentator extended over thirty-three years, from 1513 to 1546, his labors as a reformer embraced only twenty-nine years, from 1517 to 1546. Beginning with the Psalms, 1513, he ended with Genesis, November 17th, 1545) three months before his death.
His first lectures on the Psalms are still extant
and have recently been published from the manuscript in
Wolfenbüttel. He
had the Latin text of the Psalms printed, and wrote between the lines
and on the margin his notes in very small and almost illegible letters.
Köstlin gives a facsimile page in
Luther’s Leben, p. 72 (Engl. ed. p. 64). The
whole was published with painstaking accuracy by Kawerau in the third
volume of the Weimar ed. (1885). The
innumerable references to the Hebraeus are never intended for
the original, but for Jerome’s Psalterium juxta
Hebraeos. Paul de Lagarde has published an edition, Lips.,
1874. Luther illustrates this double four-fold scheme of exegesis by
the following table (Weimar ed. III. 11): Litera
Occidens hystorice terra
Canaan Mons Zion Allegorice
Synagoga vel persona eminens
in eadem tropologice
Justitia phari- saica et
legalis anagogice Gloria
futura secundum
carnem SpiritusVivificans de corpore hystorice populus
in Zion exis- tens Babylonico
Ecclesiastico Mons Zion Allegorice
Ecclesia vel
quilibit doctor Episcopus eminens Tropologice
Justitia fidei vel alia excellen
... Anagogice
gloria eterna in
celis. Econtra Vallis Cedron per oppositum. This
fanciful allegorizing and spiritualizing method of interpreting the
Psalms by which they are made to teach almost anything that is pious
and edifying, is still popular even in some Protestant churches,
especially the Church of England. Comp. e.g. Dr. Neale and Dr.
Littledale’s Commentary on the Psalms from
primitive and mediaeval writers. London, fourth ed., 1884, 4 vols.
The celebrated Baptist preacher, Spurgeon, has written a commentary on
the Psalms, in seven volumes, which is likewise full of allegorizing
interpretation, but mostly derived from older Protestant and Puritan
sources. Hence
the saying: "Si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherus non
saltasset." Ed.
by Dr. Bertheau in the fourth vol. of the Weimar ed.
(1886).
From the Psalms he proceeded to the Epistles of
Paul. Here be had an opportunity to expound his ideas of sin and grace,
the difference between the letter and the spirit, between the law and
the gospel, and to answer the great practical question, how a sinner
may be justified before a holy God and obtain pardon and peace. He
first lectured on Romans and explained the difference between the
righteousness of faith and the righteousness of works. He never
published a work on Romans except a preface which contains a masterly
description of faith. His lectures on Galatians he began October 27th,
1516, and resumed them repeatedly. They appeared first in Latin,
September, 1519, and in a revised edition, 1523, with a preface of
Melanchthon. See
the first ed. in the Weimar ed. of his works, vol. II. 436-618. This
commentary of 1519 must be distinguished from the larger work of 1535
which has the same title, but rests on different
lectures. In
December, 1531: "Epistola ad Galatas ist meine Epistola, der ich mich
vertraut habe, meine Kethe von Bora." Weimar ed. II. 437. Melanchthon called
Luther’s commentary the thread of Theseus in the
labyrinth of N. T. exegesis.
These exegetical lectures made a deep impression. They were thoroughly evangelical, without being anti-catholic. They reached the heart and conscience as well as the head. They substituted a living theology clothed with flesh and blood for the skeleton theology of scholasticism. They were delivered with the energy of intense conviction and the freshness of personal experience. The genius of the lecturer flashed from his deep dark eyes which seem to have struck every observer. "This monk," said Dr. Pollich, "will revolutionize the whole scholastic teaching." Christopher Scheurl commended Luther to the friendship of Dr. Eck (his later opponent) in January, 1517, as "a divine who explained the epistles of the man of Tarsus with wonderful genius." Melanchthon afterward expressed a general judgment when he said that Christ and the Apostles were brought out again as from the darkness and filth of prison.
§ 28. Luther and Mysticism. The Theologia Germanica.
In 1516 Luther read the sermons of Tauler, the mystic revival preacher of Strassburg (who died in 1361), and discovered the remarkable book called "German Theology," which he ascribed to Tauler, but which is of a little later date from a priest and custos of the Deutsch-Herrn Haus of Frankfort, and a member of the association called "Friends of God." It resembles the famous work of Thomas a Kempis in exhibiting Christian piety as an humble imitation of the life of Christ on earth, but goes beyond it, almost to the very verge of pantheism, by teaching in the strongest terms the annihilation of self-will and the absorption of the soul in God. Without being polemical, it represents by its intense inwardness a striking contrast to the then prevailing practice of religion as a mechanical and monotonous round of outward acts and observances.
Luther published a part of this book from an
imperfect manuscript, December, 1516, and from a complete copy, in
1518, with a brief preface of his own. Both
prefaces are printed in the Weimar ed. of his works I. 153 and 378 sq.
The book itself has gone through many editions; the best is by Franz
Pfeiffer, Theologia deutsch, Stuttgart. 1851, third ed. 1855. There is a English translation
by Susanna Winkworth, Theologia Germanica, with additions by
Canon Kingsley and Chevalier Bunsen, (London, 1854, new ed. 1874;
reprinted at Andover, 1846). Several characteristic mystic terms,
as Entwerdung, Gelassenheit, Vergottung, are hardly
translatable.
There are various types of mysticism, orthodox and
heretical, speculative and practical. Ed.
von Hartmann, the pessimist says (Die Philos. des
Unbewussten,
Berlin, 1869, p. 276): "Die Mystik ist eine Schlingpflanze, die an jedem Stabe
emporwuchert und sich mit den extremsten Gegensätzen
gleichgut abzufinden weiss." See
Hermann Hering, Die Mystik Luthers im Zusammenhange seiner Theologieund in
ihrem Verh. zur älteren Mystik. Leipzig, 1879. He distinguishes three periods
in Luther’s relation to mysticism: (1)
Romanisch-mystische Periode; (2) Germanisch-mystische
Periode; (3) Conflict with the false mysticism of
Münzer, Carlstadt, the Zwickau Prophets, and
Schwenkfeldt.
§ 29. The Penitential Psalms. The Eve of the Reformation.
The first original work which Luther published was a
German exposition of the seven Penitential Psalms, 1517. Weimar ed., vol. I. 154-220. A Latin copy had appeared already in
1513 and is preserved in the library at Wolfenbüttel, from
which Prof. E. Riehm of Halle published it: Initium theologiae
Lutheri. S. exempla scholiorum quibus D. Lutherus Psalterium
interpretari coepit. Part. I. Septem Psalms paenitentiales. Textum
originalem nunc primum de Lutheri autographo exprimendum curavit.
Halle, 1874. Luther’s closing lectures of 1516 exist
likewise in MS. at Dresden, from which they were published by J. C.
Seidemann in: Doctoris M. Lutheri scholae ineditae de Psalmis
annis 1513-1516. Dresden, 1876, in 2 vols.
Luther was now approaching the prime of manhood.
He was the shining light of the young university, and his fame began to
spread through Germany. But he stood not alone. He had valuable friends
and co-workers such as Dr. Wenzeslaus Link, the prior of the convent,
and John Lange, who had a rare knowledge of Greek. Carlstadt also, his
senior colleague, was at that time in full sympathy with him. Nicolaus
von Amsdorf, of the same age with Luther, was one of his most faithful
adherents, but more influential in the pulpit than in the chair.
Christoph Scheurl, Professor of jurisprudence, was likewise intimate
with Luther. Nor must we forget Georg Spalatin, who did not belong to
the university, but had great influence upon it as chaplain and
secretary of the Elector Frederick, and acted as friendly mediator
between him and Luther. The most effective aid the Reformer received,
in 1518, in the person of Melanchthon. On
the early colleagues of Luther, see Jürgens, II.
217-235.
The working forces of the Reformation were thus
fully prepared and ready for action. The scholastic philosophy and
theology were undermined, and a biblical, evangelical theology ruled in
Wittenberg. It was a significant coincidence, that the first edition of
the Greek Testament was published by Erasmus in 1516, just a year
before the Reformation. Luther made good use of it for his translation, but was not
pleased with the writings of Erasmus. As early as March 1, 1517, he
wrote to John Lange: "I now read our Erasmus, but he pleases me less
every day. It is well enough that he should constantly and learnedly
refute the monks and priests, and charge them with a deep-rooted and
sleepy ignorance. But I fear he does not sufficiently promote Christ
and the grace of God, of which he knows very little. He thinks more of
the human than the divine .... Not every one who is a good Greek and
Hebrew, is also for this reason a good Christian. The blessed Jerome
with his five tongues did not equal the one-tongued Augustin, although
Erasmus thinks differently."—Briefe, ed. De
Wette, I. 52.
Luther had as yet no idea of reforming the Catholic church, and still less of separating from it. All the roots of his life and piety were in the historic church, and he considered himself a good Catholic even in 1517, and was so in fact. He still devoutly prayed to the Virgin Mary from the pulpit; he did not doubt the intercession of saints in heaven for the sinners on earth; he celebrated mass with full belief in the repetition of the sacrifice on the cross and the miracle of transubstantiation; he regarded the Hussites as "sinful heretics" for breaking away from the unity of the church and the papacy which offered a bulwark against sectarian division.
But by the leading of Providence he became innocently and reluctantly a Reformer. A series of events carried him irresistibly from step to step, and forced him far beyond his original intentions. Had he foreseen the separation, he would have shrunk from it in horror. He was as much the child of his age as its father, and the times molded him before he molded the times. This is the case with all men of Providence: they are led by a divine hand while they are leading their fellow-men.
NOTES.
The works of Luther written before the 95 Theses (reprinted in the Weimar ed., I. 1–238, III., IV.) are as follows: Commentary on the Psalms; a number of sermons; Tractatus de his, qui ad ecclesias confugiunt (an investigation of the right of asylum; first printed 1517, anonymously, then under Luther’s name, 1520, at Landshut; but of doubtful genuineness); Sermo praescriptus praeposito in Litzka, 1512 (a Latin sermon prepared for his friend, the Provost Georg Mascov of Leitzkau in Brandenburg); several Latin Sermons from 1514–1517; Quaestio de viribus et voluntate hominis sine gratia disputata, 1516; Preface to his first edition of "German Theology," 1516; The seven Penitential Psalms, 1517; Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam, 1517. The last are 97 theses against the philosophy of Aristotle, of whom he said, that he would hold him to be a devil if he had not had flesh. These theses were published in September, 1517, and were followed in October by the 95 Theses against the traffic in Indulgences.
The earliest letters of Luther, from April 22, 1507, to Oct. 31, 1517, are addressed to Braun (vicar at Eisenach), Spalatin (chaplain of the Elector Frederick), Lohr (prior of the Augustinian Convent at Erfurt), John Lange, Scheurl, and others. They are printed in Latin in Löscher’s Reformations-Acta, vol. . 795–846; in De Wette’s edition of Luther’s Briefe, I. 1–64; German translation in Walch, vol. XXI. The last of these ante-Reformation letters is directed to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, and dated from the day of the publication of the Theses, Oct. 31, 1517 (DeWette I. 67–70). The letters begin with the name of "Jesus."
CHAPTER III.
THE GERMAN REFORMATION FROM THE PUBLICATION OF LUTHER’S THESES TO THE DIET OF WORMS, a.d. 1517–1521.
§ 30. The Sale of Indulgences.
St. Peter’s Dome is at once the
glory and the shame of papal Rome. It was built over the bones of the
Galilaean fisherman, with the proceeds from the sale of indulgences
which broke up the unity of Western Christendom. The magnificent
structure was begun in 1506 under Pope Julius II., and completed in
1626 at a cost of forty-six millions scudi, and is kept up at an annual
expense of thirty thousand scudi (dollars). On St. Peter’s church, see the
archaeological and historical works on Rome, and especially Heinr. von
Geymüller, Die Entwürfe für Sanct Peterin
Rom, Wien (German
and French); and Charles de Lorbac, Saint-Pierre de Rome,
illustré de plus de 130 gravures sur
bois, Rome, 1879
(pp. 310).
Jesus began his public ministry with the expulsion of the profane traffickers from the court of the temple. The Reformation began with a protest against the traffic in indulgences which profaned and degraded the Christian religion.
The difficult and complicated doctrine of
indulgences is peculiar to the Roman Church. It was unknown to the
Greek and Latin fathers. It was developed by the mediaeval schoolmen,
and sanctioned by the Council of Trent (Dec. 4, 1563), yet without a
definition and with an express warning against abuses and evil gains. The Council incidentally admits that these evil
gains have been the most prolific source of
abuses,—"unde plurima in Christiano populo abusuum
causa fluxit,"—and hence it ordained that they are
to be wholly abolished: "omnino abolendos esse."(Schaff,
Creeds of Christendom, II. 205 sq.) A strong proof of the effect
of the Reformation upon the Church of Rome.
In the legal language of Rome, indulgentia is a
term for amnesty or remission of punishment. In ecclesiastical Latin,
an indulgence means the remission of the temporal (not the eternal)
punishment of sin (not of sin itself), on condition of penitence and
the payment of money to the church or to some charitable object. It
maybe granted by a bishop or archbishop within his diocese, while the
Pope has the power to grant it to all Catholics. The practice of
indulgences grew out of a custom of the Northern and Western barbarians
to substitute pecuniary compensation for punishment of an offense. The
church favored this custom in order to avoid bloodshed, but did wrong
in applying it to religious offenses. Who touches money touches dirt;
and the less religion has to do with it, the better. The first
instances of such pecuniary compensations occurred in England under
Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury (d. 690). The practice rapidly spread
on the Continent, and was used by the Popes during and after the
crusades as a means of increasing their power. It was justified and
reduced to a theory by the schoolmen, especially by Thomas Aquinas, in
close connection with the doctrine of the sacrament of penance and
priestly absolution. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol., Pars III.
Quaest. LXXXIV., De Sacramento Poenitentiae; and in the
supplement to the Third Part, Quaest. XXV.-XXVIL, De
Indulgentia. Comp. literature in vol. IV. 381.
The sacrament of penance includes three elements,—contrition of the heart, confession by the mouth (to the priest), and satisfaction by good works, such as prayer, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimages, all of which are supposed to have an atoning efficacy. God forgives only the eternal punishment of sin, and he alone can do that; but the sinner has to bear the temporal punishments, either in this life or in purgatory; and these punishments are under the control of the church or the priesthood, especially the Pope as its legitimate head. There are also works of supererogation, performed by Christ and by the saints, with corresponding extra-merits and extra-rewards; and these constitute a rich treasury from which the Pope, as the treasurer, can dispense indulgences for money. This papal power of dispensation extends even to the departed souls in purgatory, whose sufferings may thereby be abridged. This is the scholastic doctrine.
The granting of indulgences degenerated, after the time of the crusades, into a regular traffic, and became a source of ecclesiastical and monastic wealth. A good portion of the profits went into the papal treasury. Boniface VIII. issued the first Bull of the jubilee indulgence to all visitors of St. Peter’s in Rome (1300). It was to be confined to Rome, and to be repeated only once in a hundred years, but it was afterwards extended and multiplied as to place and time.
The idea of selling and buying by money the remission of punishment and release from purgatory was acceptable to ignorant and superstitious people, but revolting to sound moral feeling. It roused, long before Luther, the indignant protest of earnest minds, such as Wiclif in England, Hus in Bohemia, John von Wesel in Germany, John Wessel in Holland, Thomas Wyttenbach in Switzerland, but without much effect.
The Lateran Council of 1517 allowed the Pope to collect one-tenth of all the ecclesiastical property of Christendom, ostensibly for a war against the Turks; but the measure was carried only by a small majority of two or three votes, and the minority objected that there was no immediate prospect of such a war. The extortions of the Roman curia became an intolerable burden to Christendom, and produced at last a successful protest which cost the papacy the loss of its fairest possessions.
§ 31. Luther and Tetzel.
I. On the Indulgence controversy: Luther’s Works, Walch’s ed., XV. 3–462; Weim. ed. I. 229–324. Löscher: Reformations-Acta. Leipzig, 1720. Vol. I. 355–539. J. Kapp: Schauplatz des Tetzelschen Ablass-krams. Leipzig, 1720. Jürgens: Luther, Bd. III. Kahnis: Die d. Ref., I. 18 1 sqq. Köstlin I. 153 sqq. Kolde, I. 126 sqq. On the Roman-Catholic side, Janssen: Geschichte, etc., II. 64 sqq.; 77 sqq.; and An meine Kritiker, Freiburg-i.-B., 1883, pp. 66–81.—On the editions of the Theses, compare Knaake, in the Weimar ed. I. 229 sqq.
Edw. Bratke: Luther’s 95 Thesen und ihre dogmengesch. Voraussetzungen. Göttingen, 1884 (pp. 333). Gives an account of the scholastic doctrine of indulgences from Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas down to Prierias and Cajetan, an exposition of Luther’s Theses, and a list of books on the subject. A. W. Dieckhoff (of Rostock): Der Ablassstreit. Dogmengeschichtlich dargestellt. Gotha, 1886 (pp. 260).
II. On Tetzel in particular: (1) Protestant biographies and tracts, all very unfavorable. (a) Older works by G. Hecht: Vita Joh. Tetzeli. Wittenberg, 1717. Jac. Vogel: Leben des päpstlichen Gnadenpredigers und Ablasskrämers Tetzel. Leipzig, 1717, 2d ed., 1727. (b) Modern works: F. G. Hofmann: Lebensbeschreibung des Ablasspredigers Tetzel. Leipzig, 1844. Dr. Kayser: Geschichtsquellen über Den Ablasspred. Tetzel Kritisch Beleuchtet. Annaberg, 1877 (pp. 20). Dr. Ferd. Körner: Tetzel, der Ablassprediger, etc. Frankenberg-i.-S. 1880 (pp. 153; chiefly against Gröne). Compare also Bratke and Dieckhoff, quoted above.
(2) Roman-Catholic vindications of Tetzel by Val. Gröne (Dr. Th.): Tetzel und Luther, oder Lebensgesch. und Rechtfertigung des Ablasspredigers und Inquisitors Dr. Joh. Tetzel aus dem Predigerorden. Soest und Olpe, 1853, 2d ed. 1860 (pp. 237). E. Kolbe: P. Joh. Tetzel. Ein Lebensbild dem kathol. Volke gewidmet. Steyl, 1882 (pp. 98, based on Gröne). K. W. Hermann: Joh. Tetzel, der päpstl. Ablassprediger. Frankf. -a.-M., 2te Aufl. 1883 (pp. 152). Janssen: An meine Kritiker, p. 73 sq. G. A. Meijer, Ord. Praed. (Dominican): Johann Tetzel, Aflaatprediker en inquisiteur. Eene geschiedkundige studie. Utrecht, 1885 (pp. 150). A calm and moderate vindication of Tetzel, with the admission (p. 137) that the last word on the question has not yet been spoken, and that we must wait for the completion of the Regesta of Leo X. and other authentic publications now issuing from the Vatican archives by direction of Leo XIII. But the main facts are well established.
The rebuilding of St. Peter’s Church
in Rome furnished an occasion for the periodical exercise of the papal
power of granting indulgences. Julius II. and Leo X., two of the most
worldly, avaricious, and extravagant Popes, had no scruple to raise
funds for that object, and incidentally for their own aggrandizement,
from the traffic in indulgences. Both issued several bulls to that
effect. See the papal documents in Pallavicini, in
Löscher (I. 369-383), and Walch, L.’s
Werke, XV. 313 sqq. Compare Gieseler, IV. 21 sq. (New York ed.);
Hergenröther’s Regesta Leonis X.
(1884 sqq.).
Spain, England, and France ignored or resisted these bulls for financial reasons, refusing to be taxed for the benefit of Rome. But Germany, under the weak rule of Maximilian, yielded to the papal domination.
Leo divided Germany into three districts, and
committed in 1515 the sale for one district to Albrecht, Archbishop of
Mainz and Magdeburg, and brother of the Elector of Brandenburg. J. May: Der Kurfürst Albrecht.
II. von Mainz,
München, 1875, 2 vols.
This prelate (born June 28, 1490, died Sept. 24,
1545), though at that time only twenty-five years of age, stood at the
head of the German clergy, and was chancellor of the German Empire. He
received also the cardinal’s hat in 1518. He was, like
his Roman master, a friend of liberal learning and courtly splendor,
worldly-minded, and ill fitted for the care of souls. He had the
ambition to be the Maecenas of Germany. He was himself destitute of
theological education, but called scholars, artists, poets,
free-thinkers, to his court, and honored Erasmus and Ulrich von Hutten
with presents and pensions. "He had a passionate love for music," says
an Ultramontane historian, "and imported musicians from Italy to give
luster to his feasts, in which ladies often participated. Finely
wrought carpets, splendid mirrors adorned his halls and chambers;
costly dishes and wines covered his table. He appeared in public with
great pomp; he kept a body-guard of one hundred and fifty armed
knights; numerous courtiers in splendid attire followed him when he
rode out; he was surrounded by pages who were to learn in his presence
the refinement of cavaliers." The same Roman-Catholic historian
censures the extravagant court of Pope Leo X., which set the example
for the secularization and luxury of the prelates in Germany. Janssen, II. 60, 64: "Das Hofwesen so mancher
geistlichen Fürsten Deutschlands, insbesondere das des
Erzbischofs Albrecht von Mainz, stand in schreiendem Widerspruch mit
dem eines kirchlichen Würdeträgers, aber der Hof
Leo’s X., mit seinem Aufwand für Spiel und
Theater und allerlei weltliche Feste entsprach noch weniger der
Bestimmung eines Oberhauptes der Kirche. Der Verweltlichung und
Ueppigkeit geistlicher Fürstenhöfe in Deutschland
ging die des römischen Hofes voraus, und erstere
wäre ohne diese kaum möglich
gewesen." He
quotes (II. 76) Emser and Cardinal Sadolet against the abuses of
indulgences in the reign of Leo X. Cardinal Hergenröther, in
the dedicatory preface to the Regesta Leonis X. (Fasc. I. p.
ix), while defending this Pope against the charge of religious
indifference, censures the accumulation of ecclesiastical benefices by
the same persons, as Albrecht, and the many abuses resulting
therefrom.
Albrecht was largely indebted to the rich banking-house of Fugger in Augsburg, from whom he had borrowed thirty thousand florins in gold to pay for the papal pallium. By an agreement with the Pope, he had permission to keep half of the proceeds arising from the sale of indulgences. The agents of that commercial house stood behind the preachers of indulgence, and collected their share for the repayment of the loan.
The Archbishop appointed Johann Tetzel (Diez) of the Dominican order, his commissioner, who again employed his sub-agents.
Tetzel was born between 1450 and 1460, at Leipzig,
and began his career as a preacher of indulgences in 1501. He became
famous as a popular orator and successful hawker of indulgences. He was
prior of a Dominican convent, doctor of philosophy, and papal
inquisitor (haereticae pravitatis inquisitor). At the end of 1517 he
acquired in the University of Frankfurt-on-the-Oder the degree of
Licentiate of Theology, and in January, 1518, the degree of Doctor of
Theology, by defending, in two disputations, the doctrine of
indulgences against Luther. Löscher (I. 505-523) gives both
dissertations, the first consisting of 106, the second of 50 theses,
and calls them "Proben von den stinkenden Schäden des
Papstthutms." He
ascribes, however, the authorship to Conrad Wimpina, professor of
theology at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, who afterwards published them as his
own, without mentioning Tetzel, in his Anacephalaiosis Sectarum
errorum, etc., 1528 (Löscher, I. 506, II. 7). Gieseler,
Köstlin, and Knaake are of the same opinion.
Gröne and Hergenröther assign them to
Tetzel. Mathesius, Myconius, and Luther (Wider Hans
Wurst, 1541, in the Erl. ed. XXVI. 51) ascribe to him also the
blasphemous boast that he had the power by letters of indulgence to
forgive even a carnal sin against the Mother of God ("wenn einer gleich die
heil. Jungfrau Maria, Gottes Mutter, hätte
geschächt und geschwängert"). Luther alludes to such a monstrous
saying in Thes. 75, and calls it insane. But Tetzel denied, and
disproved the charge as a slander, in his Disp. I. 99-101
("Subcommissariis ac praedicatoribus veniarum
Imponere, ut si quis per impossibile Dei genetricem
semper virginein violasset ... Odio Agitari Ac Fratrum Suorum Sanguinem
Sitire"), and in his
letter to Miltitz, Jan. 31, 1518. See Köstlin, I. 160 and
785, versus Körner and Kahnis. Kayser also
(l.c. p. 15) gives it up, although he comes to the conclusion
that Tetzel was "ein unverschämter und sittenloser
Ablassprediger"
(p. 20). In Theses 55 and 56 of his first Disputation
(1517), he says that the soul, after it is purified
(anima
purgata, ist eine Seele gereinigt), flies from purgatory to the vision of God
without hinderance, and that it is an error to suppose that this cannot
be done before the payment of money into the indulgence box. See the
Latin text in Löscher, I. 509. "Auch hatte er zwei Kinder." The letter of Miltitz is printed in
Löscher, III. 20; in Walch, XV. 862; and in Kayser,
l.c. 4 and 5. Tetzel’s champions try to
invalidate the testimony of the papal delegate by charging him with
intemperance. But drunkards, like children and fools, usually tell the
truth; and when he wrote that letter, he was sober. Besides, we have
the independent testimony of Luther, who says in his book against Duke
Henry of Brunswick (Wider Hans Wurst, p. 50), that in 1517
Tetzel was condemned by the Emperor Maximilian to be drowned in the Inn
at Innsbruck ("for his great virtue’s sake, you may
well believe"), but saved by the Duke Frederick, and reminded of it
afterwards in the Theses-controversy, and that he confessed the
fact.
Tetzel traveled with great pomp and circumstance
through Germany, and recommended with unscrupulous effrontery and
declamatory eloquence the indulgences of the Pope to the large crowds
who gathered from every quarter around him. He was received like a
messenger from heaven. Priests, monks, and magistrates, men and women,
old and young, marched in solemn procession with songs, flags, and
candles, under the ringing of bells, to meet him and his fellow-monks,
and followed them to the church; the papal Bull on a velvet cushion was
placed on the high altar, a red cross with a silken banner bearing the
papal arms was erected before it, and a large iron chest was put
beneath the cross for the indulgence money. Such chests are still
preserved in many places. The preachers, by daily sermons, hymns, and
processions, urged the people, with extravagant laudations of the
Pope’s Bull, to purchase letters of indulgence for
their own benefit, and at the same time played upon their sympathies
for departed relatives and friends whom they might release from their
sufferings in purgatory "as soon as the penny tinkles in the box." Sobald der Pfennig im Kasten
klingt, Die
Seel’ aus dem Fegfeuer springt." Mathesius and Johann Hess, two contemporary witnesses,
ascribe this sentence (with slight verbal modifications) to Tetzel
himself. Luther mentions it in Theses 27 and 28, and in his book
Wider Hans Wurst (Erl. ed. xxvi. 51).
The common people eagerly embraced this rare offer of salvation from punishment, and made no clear distinction between the guilt and punishment of sin; after the sermon they approached with burning candles the chest, confessed their sins, paid the money, and received the letter of indulgence which they cherished as a passport to heaven. But intelligent and pious men were shocked at such scandal. The question was asked, whether God loved money more than justice, and why the Pope, with his command over the boundless treasury of extra-merits, did not at once empty the whole purgatory for the rebuilding of St. Peter’s, or build it with his own money.
Tetzel approached the dominions of the Elector of
Saxony, who was himself a devout worshiper of relics, and had great
confidence in indulgences, but would not let him enter his territory
from fear that he might take too much money from his subjects. So
Tetzel set up his trade on the border of Saxony, at
Jüterbog, a few hours from Wittenberg. Jüterbog is now a Prussian town of
about seven thousand inhabitants, on the railroad between Berlin and
Wittenberg. In the Nicolai church, Tetzel’s chest of
indulgences is preserved.
There he provoked the protest of the Reformer, who had already in the summer of 1516 preached a sermon of warning against trust in indulgences, and had incurred the Elector’s displeasure by his aversion to the whole system, although he himself had doubts about some important questions connected with it.
Luther had experienced the remission of sin as a free gift of grace to be apprehended by a living faith. This experience was diametrically opposed to a system of relief by means of payments in money. It was an irrepressible conflict of principle. He could not be silent when that barter was carried to the very threshold of his sphere of labor. As a preacher, a pastor, and a professor, he felt it to be his duty to protest against such measures: to be silent was to betray his theology and his conscience.
The jealousy between the Augustinian order to which he belonged, and the Dominican order to which Tetzel belonged, may have exerted some influence, but it was certainly very subordinate. A laboring mountain may produce a ridiculous mouse, but no mouse can give birth to a mountain. The controversy with Tetzel (who is not even mentioned in Luther’s Theses) was merely the occasion, but not the cause, of the Reformation: it was the spark which exploded the mine. The Reformation would have come to pass sooner or later, if no Tetzel had ever lived; and it actually did break out in different countries without any connection with the trade in indulgences, except in German Switzerland, where Bernhardin Samson acted the part of Tetzel, but after Zwingli had already begun his reforms.
§ 32. The Ninety-five Theses. Oct. 31, 1517.
Lit. in § 31.
After serious deliberation, without consulting any of his colleagues or friends, but following an irresistible impulse, Luther resolved upon a public act of unforeseen consequences. It may be compared to the stroke of the axe with which St. Boniface, seven hundred years before, had cut down the sacred oak, and decided the downfall of German heathenism. He wished to elicit the truth about the burning question of indulgences, which he himself professed not fully to understand at the time, and which yet was closely connected with the peace of conscience and eternal salvation. He chose the orderly and usual way of a learned academic disputation.
Accordingly, on the memorable thirty-first day of
October, 1517, which has ever since been celebrated in Protestant
Germany as the birthday of the Reformation, at twelve
o’clock he affixed (either himself or through another)
to the doors of the castle-church at Wittenberg, ninety-five Latin
Theses on the subject of indulgences, and invited a public discussion.
At the same time he sent notice of the fact to Archbishop Albrecht of
Mainz, and to Bishop Hieronymus Scultetus, to whose diocese Wittenberg
belonged. He chose the eve of All Saints’ Day (Nov.
1), because this was one of the most frequented feasts, and attracted
professors, students, and people from all directions to the church,
which was filled with precious relics. The wooden doors of the Schlosskirche were burnt in 1760, and replaced in 1858 by metal doors, bearing,
the original Latin text of the Theses. The new doors are the gift of
King Frederick William IV., who fully sympathized with the evangelical
Reformation. Above the doors, on a golden ground, is the Crucified,
with Luther and Melanchthon at his feet, the work of Professor von
Klöber. In the interior of the church are the graves of
Luther and Melanchthon, and of the Electors Frederick the Wise and John
the Constant. The Schlosskirche was in a very dilapidated condition, and undergoing
thorough repair, when I last visited it in July, 1886. It must not be
confounded with the Stadtkirche of Wittenberg, where Luther preached so often, and where,
in 1522, the communion was, for the first time, administered in both
kinds.
No one accepted the challenge, and no discussion
took place. The professors and students of Wittenberg were of one mind
on the subject. But history itself undertook the disputation and
defence. The Theses were copied, translated, printed, and spread as on
angels’ wings throughout Germany and Europe in a few
weeks. Knaake (Weim. ed. I. 230) conjectures that the
Theses, as affixed, were written either by Luther himself or
some other hand, and that he had soon afterwards a few copies printed
for his own use (for Agricola, who was in Wittenberg at that time,
speaks of a copy printed on a half-sheet of paper): but that
irresponsible publishers soon seized and multiplied them against his
will. Jürgens says (III. 480) that two editions were printed
in Wittenberg in 1517, on four quarto leaves, and that the Berlin
Library possesses two copies of the second edition. The Theses were
written on two columns, in four divisions; the first three divisions
consisted of twenty-five theses each, the fourth of twenty. The German
translation is from Justus Jonas. The Latin text is printed in all the
editions of Luther’s works, in
Löscher’s Acts, and in
Ranke’s Deutsche Geschichte (6th ed., vol. VI. 83-89, literally copied from
an original preserved in the Royal Library in Berlin). The
semi-authoritative German translation by Justus Jonas is given in
Löscher, Walch (vol. XVIII.), and O. v. Gerlach (vol. I.),
and with a commentary by Jürgens (Luther, III. 484 sqq.). An
English translation in Wace and Buchheim, Principles of the
Reformation, London, 1883, p. 6 sqq. I have compared this
translation with the Latin original as given by Ranke, and in the
Weimar edition, and added it at the end of this section with some
alterations, insertions, and notes.
The rapid circulation of the Reformation literature was promoted by the perfect freedom of the press. There was, as yet, no censorship, no copyright, no ordinary book-trade in the modern sense, and no newspapers; but colportors, students, and friends carried the books and tracts from house to house. The mass of the people could not read, but they listened attentively to readers. The questions of the Reformation were eminently practical, and interested all classes; and Luther handled the highest themes in the most popular style.
The Theses bear the title, "Disputation to explain the Virtue of Indulgences." They sound very strange to a modern ear, and are more Catholic than Protestant. They are no protest against the Pope and the Roman Church, or any of her doctrines, not even against indulgences, but only against their abuse. They expressly condemn those who speak against indulgences (Th. 71), and assume that the Pope himself would rather see St. Peter’s Church in ashes than have it built with the flesh and blood of his sheep (Th. 50). They imply belief in purgatory. They nowhere mention Tetzel. They are silent about faith and justification, which already formed the marrow of Luther’s theology and piety. He wished to be moderate, and had not the most distant idea of a separation from the mother church. When the Theses were republished in his collected works (1545), he wrote in the preface: "I allow them to stand, that by them it may appear how weak I was, and in what a fluctuating state of mind, when I began this business. I was then a monk and a mad papist (papista insanissimus), and so submersed in the dogmas of the Pope that I would have readily murdered any person who denied obedience to the Pope."
But after all, they contain the living germs of a
new theology. The form only is Romish, the spirit and aim are
Protestant. We must read between the lines, and supply the negations of
the Theses by the affirmations from his preceding and succeeding books,
especially his Resolutiones, in which he answers objections, and has
much to say about faith and justification. The Theses represent a state
of transition from twilight to daylight. They reveal the mighty working
of an earnest mind and conscience intensely occupied with the problem
of sin, repentance, and forgiveness, and struggling for emancipation
from the fetters of tradition. They might more properly be called "a
disputation to diminish the virtue of papal indulgences, and to magnify
the full and free grace of the gospel of Christ." They bring the
personal experience of justification by faith, and direct intercourse
with Christ and the gospel, in opposition to an external system of
churchly and priestly mediation and human merit. The papal opponents
felt the logical drift of the Theses much better than Luther, and saw
in them an attempt to undermine the whole fabric of popery. . The
irresistible progress of the Reformation soon swept the indulgences
away as an unscriptural, mediaeval tradition of men. Jürgens (III. 481) compares the
Theses to flashes of lightning, which suddenly issued from the
thunder-clouds. Hundeshagen (in Piper’s "Evangel.
Kalender" for 1859, p. 157), says: "Notwithstanding the limits within
which Luther kept himself at that time, the Theses express in many
respects the whole Luther of later times: the frankness and honesty of
his soul, his earnest zeal for practical Christianity, the sincere
devotion to the truths of the Scriptures, the open sense for the
religious wants of the people, the sound insight into the abuses and
corruptions of the church, the profound yet liberal piety."
Ranke’s judgment of the Theses is brief, but pointed
and weighty: "Wenn man diese Sätze liest, sieht man, welch ein
kühner, grossartiger und fester Geist in Luther arbeitet.
Die Gedanken sprühen ihm hervor, wie unter dem Hammerschlag
die Funken."—Deutsche Gesch., vol. I. p. 210.
The first Thesis strikes the keynote: "Our Lord
and Master when he says, ’Repent,’ Luther gives the Vulgate rendering
of μετανοεῖτε, poenitentiam agite, do penance,
which favors the Roman Catholic conception that repentance consists in
certain outward acts. He first learned the true meaning of the
Greek μετάνοια
a year later from Melanchthon, and
it was to him like a revelation. "Dominus et magister noster Jesus Christus
dicendo ’Poenitentiam agite,’
etc. [
We have thus set before us in this manifesto, on the one hand, human depravity which requires lifelong repentance, and on the other the full and free grace of God in Christ, which can only be appropriated by a living faith. This is, in substance, the evangelical doctrine of justification by faith (although not expressed in terms), and virtually destroys the whole scholastic theory and practice of indulgences. By attacking the abuses of indulgences, Luther unwittingly cut a vein of mediaeval Catholicism; and by a deeper conception of repentance which implies faith, and by referring the sinner to the grace of Christ as the true and only source of remission, he proclaimed the undeveloped principles of evangelical Protestantism, and kindled a flame which soon extended far beyond his original intentions.
NOTES.
THE NINETY-FIVE THESES.
DISPUTATION OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER CONCERNING PENITENCE AND INDULGENCES.
In the desire and with the purpose of elucidating
the truth, a disputation will be held on the underwritten propositions
at Wittenberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin
Luther, Monk of the Order of St. Augustin, Master of Arts and of Sacred
Theology, and ordinary Reader of the same in that place. The German translation inserts here the name of
Tetzel (wider Bruder Johann Tetzel, Prediger Ordens), which does
not occur in the Latin text.
1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ in saying:
"Repent ye" [lit.: Do penance, poenitentiam agite], etc., intended that
the whole life of believers should be penitence [poenitentiam]. The first four theses are directed against the
scholastic view of sacramental penitence, which emphasized isolated,
outward acts; while Luther put the stress on the inward change
which should extend through life. As long as there is sin, so
long is there need of repentance. St. Augustin and St. Bernard spent
their last days in deep repentance and meditatation over the
penitential Psalms. Luther retained the Vulgate rendering, and did not
know yet the true meaning of the Greek original (ματάνοια, change of mind, conversion). The
Theses vacillate between the Romish and the Evangelical view of
repentance.
2. This word poenitentia cannot be understood of sacramental penance, that is, of the confession and satisfaction which are performed under the ministry of priests.
3. It does not, however, refer solely to inward penitence; nay, such inward penitence is naught, unless it outwardly produces various mortifications of the flesh [varias carnis mortificationes].
4. The penalty [poena] thus continues as long as the hatred of self—that is, true inward penitence [poenitentia vera intus]—continues; namely, till our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.
5. The Pope has neither the will nor the power to
remit any penalties, except those which he has imposed by his own
authority, or by that of the canons. This thesis reduces the indulgence to a mere
remission of the ecclesiastical punishments which refer only to this
life. It destroys the effect on purgatory. Compare Thesis
8.
6. The Pope has no power to remit any guilt, except by declaring and warranting it to have been remitted by God; or at most by remitting cases reserved for himself: in which cases, if his power were despised, guilt would certainly remain.
7. God never remits any man’s guilt, without at the same time subjecting him, humbled in all things, to the authority of his representative the priest [sacernoti suo vicario].
8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and no burden ought to be imposed on the dying, according to them.
9. Hence the Holy Spirit acting in the Pope does well for us in that, in his decrees, he always makes exception of the article of death and of necessity.
10. Those priests act unlearnedly and wrongly, who, in the case of the dying, reserve the canonical penances for purgatory.
11. Those tares about changing of the canonical penalty into the penalty of purgatory seem surely to have been sown while the bishops were asleep.
12. Formerly the canonical penalties were imposed not after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition.
13. The dying pay all penalties by death, and are already dead to the Canon laws, and are by right relieved from them.
14. The imperfect soundness or charity of a dying person necessarily brings with it great fear, and the less it is, the greater the fear it brings.
15. This fear and horror is sufficient by itself, to say nothing of other things, to constitute the pains of purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair.
16. Hell, purgatory, and heaven appear to differ as despair, almost despair, and peace of mind [securitas] differ.
17. With souls in purgatory it seems that it must needs be that, as horror diminishes, so charity increases.
18. Nor does it seem to be proved by any reasoning or any scriptures, that they are outside of the state of merit or the increase of charity.
19. Nor does this appear to be proved, that they are sure and confident of their own blessedness, at least all of them, though we may be very sure of it.
20. Therefore the Pope, when he speaks of the plenary remission of all penalties, does not mean simply of all, but only of those imposed by himself.
21. Thus those preachers of indulgences are in error who say that, by the indulgences of the Pope, a man is loosed and saved from all punishment.
22. For, in fact, he remits to souls in purgatory no penalty which they would have had to pay in this life according to the canons.
23. If any entire remission of all the penalties can be granted to any one, it is certain that it is granted to none but the most perfect, that is, to very few.
24. Hence the greater part of the people must needs be deceived by this indiscriminate and high-sounding promise of release from penalties.
25. Such power as the Pope has over purgatory in general, such has every bishop in his own diocese, and every curate in his own parish, in particular.
26. [In the Latin text, I.] The Pope acts most rightly in granting remission to souls, not by the power of the keys (which is of no avail in this case), but by the way of suffrage [per modum suffragii].
27. They preach man, who say that the soul flies out of purgatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles [ut jactus nummus in cistam tinnierit].
28. It is certain, that, when the money rattles in the chest, avarice and gain may be increased, but the suffrage of the Church depends on the will of God alone.
29. Who knows whether all the souls in purgatory
desire to be redeemed from it, according to the story told of Saints
Severinus and Paschal? These saints were reported to have preferred to
suffer longer in purgatory than was necessary for their salvation, in
order that they might attain to the highest glory of the vision of
God.
30. No man is sure of the reality of his own contrition, much less of the attainment of plenary remission.
31. Rare as is a true penitent, so rare is one who truly buys indulgences—that is to say, most rare.
32. Those who believe that, through letters of pardon, they are made sure of their own salvation, will be eternally damned along with their teachers.
33. We must especially beware of those who say that these pardons from the Pope are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to God.
34. For the grace conveyed by these pardons has respect only to the penalties of sacramental satisfaction, which are of human appointment.
35. They preach no Christian doctrine, who teach that contrition is not necessary for those who buy souls out of purgatory, or buy confessional licenses.
36. Every Christian who feels true compunction has of right plenary remission of pain and guilt, even without letters of pardon.
37. Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has a share in all the benefits of Christ and of the Church, given him by God, even without letters of pardon.
38. The remission, however, imparted by the Pope, is by no means to be despised, since it is, as I have said, a declaration of the Divine remission.
39. It is a most difficult thing, even for the most learned theologians, to exalt at the same time in the eyes of the people the ample effect of pardons, and the necessity of true contrition.
40. True contrition seeks and loves punishment; while the ampleness of pardons relaxes it, and causes men to hate it, or at least gives occasion for them to do so.
41. Apostolical pardons ought to be proclaimed with caution, lest the people should falsely suppose that they are placed before other good works of charity.
42. Christians should be taught that it is not the mind of the Pope, that the buying of pardons is to be in any way compared to works of mercy.
43. Christians should be taught, that he who gives to a poor man, or lends to a needy man, does better than if he bought pardons.
44. Because, by a work of charity, charity increases, and the man becomes better; while, by means of pardons, he does not become better, but only freer from punishment.
45. Christians should be taught that he who sees any one in need, and, passing him by, gives money for pardons, is not purchasing for himself the indulgence of the Pope, but the anger of God.
46. Christians should be taught, that, unless they have superfluous wealth, they are bound to keep what is necessary for the use of their own households, and by no means to lavish it on pardons.
47. Christians should be taught, that, while they are free to buy pardons, they are not commanded to do so.
48. Christians should be taught that the Pope, in granting pardons, has both more need and more desire that devout prayer should be made for him, than that money should be readily paid.
49. Christians should be taught that the Pope’s pardons are useful if they do not put their trust in them, but most hurtful if through them they lose the fear of God.
50. [Lat. text XXV.] Christians should be taught, that, if the Pope were acquainted with the exactions of the preachers of pardons, he would prefer that the Basilica of St. Peter should be burnt to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep.
51. [I.] Christians should be taught, that as it would be the wish of the Pope, even to sell, if necessary, the Basilica of St. Peter, and to give of his own to very many of those from whom the preachers of pardons extract money.
52. Vain is the hope of salvation through letters of pardon, even if a commissary—nay, the Pope himself—were to pledge his own soul for them.
53. They are enemies of Christ and of the Pope, who, in order that pardons may be preached, condemn the word of God to utter silence in other churches.
54. Wrong is done to the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or longer time is spent on pardons than on the words of the gospel [verbis evangelicis].
55. The mind of the Pope necessarily is that if pardons, which are a very small matter [quod minimum est], are celebrated with single bells, single processions, and single ceremonies, the gospel, which is a very great matter [quod maximum est], should be preached with a hundred ceremonies.
56. The treasures of the Church, whence the Pope
grants indulgences, are neither sufficiently named nor known among the
people of Christ. This and the following theses destroy the
theoretical foundation of indulgences, namely, the scholastic fiction
of a treasury of supererogatory merits of saints at the disposal of the
Pope.
57. It is clear that they are at least not temporal treasures; for these are not so readily lavished, but only accumulated, by many of the preachers.
58. Nor are they the merits of Christ and of the saints; for these, independently of the Pope, are always working grace to the inner man, and the cross, death, and hell to the outer man.
59. St. Lawrence said that the treasures of the Church are the poor of the Church, but he spoke according to the use of the word in his time.
60. We are not speaking rashly when we say that the keys of the Church, bestowed through the merits of Christ, are that treasure.
61. For it is clear that the power of the Pope is alone sufficient for the remission of penalties and of reserved cases.
62. The true treasure of the Church is the holy gospel of the glory and the grace of God [Verus thesaurus ecclesiae est sacrosanctum Evangelium gloriae et gratiae Dei].
63. This treasure, however, is deservedly most hateful [merito odiosissimus; der allerfeindseligste und verhassteste], because it makes the first to be last.
64. While the treasure of indulgences is deservedly most acceptable, because it makes the last to be first.
65. Hence the treasures of the gospel are nets, wherewith of old they fished for the men of riches.
66. The treasures of indulgences are nets, wherewith they now fish for the riches of men.
67. Those indulgences, which the preachers loudly proclaim to be the greatest graces, are seen to be truly such as regards the promotion of gain [denn es grossen Gewinnst und Geniess trägt].
68. Yet they are in reality the smallest graces when compared with the grace of God and the piety of the cross.
69. Bishops and curates are bound to receive the commissaries of apostolical pardons with all reverence.
70. But they are still more bound to see to it with all their eyes, and take heed with all their ears, that these men do not preach their own dreams in place of the Pope’s commission.
71. He who speaks against the truth of apostolical pardons, let him be the anathema and accursed (sit anathema et maledictus; der sei ein Fluch und vermaladeiet].
72. But he, on the other hand, who exerts himself against the wantonness and license of speech of the preachers of pardons, let him be blessed.
73. As the Pope justly thunders [Lat., fulminat; G. trs., mit Ungnade und dem Bann schlägt] against those who use any kind of contrivance to the injury of the traffic in pardons;
74. Much more is it his intention to thunder against those who, under the pretext of pardons, use contrivances to the injury of holy charity and of truth.
75. [XXV.] To think that papal pardons have such power that they could absolve a man even if—by an impossibility—he had violated the Mother of God, is madness.
76. [I.] We affirm, on the contrary, that papal pardons [veniae papales] can not take away even the least venial sins, as regards the guilt [quoad culpam].
77. The saying that, even if St. Peter were now Pope, he could grant no greater graces, is blasphemy against St. Peter and the Pope.
78. We affirm, on the contrary, that both he and
any other Pope has greater graces to grant; namely, the gospel, powers,
gifts of healing, etc. (
69. To say that the cross set up among the insignia of the papal arms is of equal power with the cross of Christ, is blasphemy.
80. Those bishops, curates, and theologians who allow such discourses to have currency among the people, will have to render an account.
81. This license in the preaching of pardons makes it no easy thing, even for learned men, to protect the reverence due to the Pope against the calumnies, or, at all events, the keen questionings, of the laity;
82. As, for instance: Why does not the Pope empty purgatory for the sake of most holy charity and of the supreme necessity of souls,—this being the most just of all reasons,—if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of that most fatal thing, money, to be spent on building a basilica—this being a slight reason?
83. Again: Why do funeral masses and anniversary masses for deceased continue, and why does not the Pope return, or permit the withdrawal of, the funds bequeathed for this purpose, since it is a wrong to pray for those who are already redeemed?
84. Again: What is this new kindness of God and the Pope, in that, for money’s sake, they permit an impious man and an enemy of God to redeem a pious soul which loves God, and yet do not redeem that same pious and beloved soul, out of free charity, on account of its own need?
85. Again: Why is it that the penitential canons, long since abrogated and dead in themselves in very fact, and not only by usage, are yet still redeemed with money, through the granting of indulgences, as if they were full of life?
86. Again: Why does not the Pope, whose riches are at this day more ample than those of the wealthiest of the wealthy, build the one Basilica of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with that of poor believers?
87. Again: Why does the Pope remit or impart to those who, through perfect contrition, have a right to plenary remission and participation?
88. Again: What greater good would the Church receive if the Pope, instead of once as he does now, were to bestow these remissions and participations a hundred times a day on any one of the faithful?
89. Since it is the salvation of souls, rather than money, that the Pope seeks by his pardons, why does he annul the letters and pardons granted long ago, since they are equally efficacious?
90. To repress these scruples and arguments of the laity by force alone, and not to solve them by giving reasons, is to expose the Church and the Pope to the ridicule of their enemies, and to make Christian men unhappy.
91. If, then, pardons were preached according to the spirit and mind of the Pope, all these questions would be resolved with ease; nay, would not exist.
92. Away then with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Peace, peace," and there is no peace.
93. Blessed be all those prophets, who say to the people of Christ, "The cross, the cross," and there is no cross.
94. Christians should be exhorted to strive to follow Christ their head through pains, deaths, and hells;
95. [Lat. Text, XX.] And thus trust to enter heaven through many tribulations, rather than in the security of peace [per securitatem pacis].
PROTESTATION.
I, Martin Luther, Doctor, of the Order of Monks at Wittenberg, desire to testify publicly that certain propositions against pontifical indulgences, as they call them, have been put forth by me. Now although, up to the present time, neither this most celebrated and renowned school of ours nor any civil or ecclesiastical power has condemned me, yet there are, as I hear, some men of headlong and audacious spirit, who dare to pronounce me a heretic, as though the matter had been thoroughly looked into and studied. But on my part, as I have often done before, so now too I implore all men, by the faith of Christ, either to point out to me a better way, if such a way has been divinely revealed to any, or at least to submit their opinion to the judgment of God and of the Church. For I am neither so rash as to wish that my sole opinion should be preferred to that of all other men, nor so senseless as to be willing that the word of God should be made to give place to fables devised by human reason.
§ 33. The Theses-Controversy. 1518.
Luther’s Sermon vom Ablass und Gnade, printed in February, 1518 (Weimar ed. I. 239–246; and in Latin, 317–324); Kurze Erklärung der Zehn Gebote, 1518 (I. 248–256, in Latin under the title Instructio pro Confessione peccatorum, p. 257–265); Asterisci adversus Obeliscos Eckii, March, 1518 (I. 278–316); Freiheit des Sermons päpstlichen Ablass und Gnade belangend, June, 1518, against Tetzel (I. 380–393); Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute, August, 1518, dedicated to the Pope (I. 522–628). Letters of Luther to Archbishop Albrecht, Spalatin, and others, in De Wette, I. 67 sqq.
Tetzel’s Anti-Theses, 2 series, one of 106, the other of 50 sentences, are printed in Löscher’s Ref. Acta, I. 505–514, and 518–523. Eck’s Obelisci, ibid. III. 333.
On the details of the controversy, see Jürgens (III. 479 sqq.), Köstlin (I. 175 sqq.), Kolde (I. 126 sqq.), Bratke, and Dieckhoff, as quoted in § 31.
The Theses of Luther were a tract for the times. They
sounded the trumpet of the Reformation. They found a hearty response
with liberal scholars and enemies of monastic obscurantism, with German
patriots longing for emancipation from Italian control, and with
thousands of plain Christians waiting for the man of Providence who
should give utterance to their feelings of indignation against existing
abuses, and to their desire for a pure, scriptural, and spiritual
religion. "Ho, ho! "exclaimed Dr. Fleck, "the man has come who will do
the thing." Reuchlin thanked God that "the monks have now found a man
who will give them such full employment that they will be glad to let
me spend my old age in peace." The prophetic dream of the Elector, so often
told, is a poetic fiction. Köstlin discredits it, I. 786 sq.
The Elector Frederick dreamed, in the night before Luther affixed the
Theses, that God sent him a monk, a true son of the Apostle Paul, and
that this monk wrote something on the door of the castle church at
Wittenberg with a pen which reached even to Rome, pierced the head and
ears of a lion (Leo), and shook the triple crown of the Pope. Merle
d’Aubigné relates the dream at great length
as being, "beyond reasonable doubt, true in the essential parts." He
appeals to an original MS., written from the dictation of Spalatin, in
the archives of Weimar, which was published in 1817. But that MS.,
according to the testimony of Dr. Burkhardt, the librarian, is only a
copy of the eighteenth century. No trace of such a dream can be found
before 1591. Spalatin, in his own writings and his letters to Luther
and Melanchthon, nowhere refers to it.
But, on the other hand, the Theses were strongly
assailed and condemned by the episcopal and clerical hierarchy, the
monastic orders, especially the Dominicans, and the universities, in
fact, by all the champions of scholastic theology and traditional
orthodoxy. Luther himself, then a poor, emaciated monk, was at first
frightened by the unexpected effect, and many of his friends trembled.
One of them told him, "You tell the truth, good brother, but you will
accomplish nothing; go to your cell, and say, God have mercy upon
me." Albert Krantz of Hamburg, who died Dec. 7,
1517. Köstlin, I. 177.
The chief writers against Luther were Tetzel of Leipzig, Conrad Wimpina of Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, and the more learned and formidable John Eck of Ingolstadt, who was at first a friend of Luther, but now became his irreconcilable enemy. These opponents represented three universities and the ruling scholastic theology of the Angelic Doctor St. Thomas Aquinas. But they injured their cause in public estimation by the weakness of their defence. They could produce no arguments for the doctrine and practice of indulgences from the Word of God, or even from the Greek and Latin fathers, and had to resort to extravagant views on the authority of the Pope. They even advocated papal infallibility, although this was as yet an open question in the Roman Church, and remained so till the Vatican decree of 1870.
Luther mustered courage. In all his weakness he
was strong. He felt that he had begun this business in the name and for
the glory of God, and was ready to sacrifice life itself for his honest
conviction. He took comfort from the counsel of Gamaliel. In several
letters of this period he subscribed himself Martinus Eleutherios
(Freeman), but added, vielmehr Knecht (rather, Servant): he felt free
of men, but bound in Christ. When his friend Schurf told him, "They
will not bear it;" he replied, "But what, if they have to bear it?" He
answered all his opponents, directly and indirectly, in Latin and
German, from the pulpit and the chair, and through the press. He began
now to develop his formidable polemical power, especially in his German
writings. He had full command over the vocabulary of common sense, wit,
irony, vituperation, and abuse. Unfortunately, he often resorted to
coarse and vulgar expressions which, even in that semi-barbarous age,
offended men of culture and taste, and which set a bad example for his
admirers in the fierce theological wars within the Lutheran Church. He said of Tetzel, that he dealt with the Bible
"wie die
Sau mit dem Habersack" (as the hog with the meal-bag); of the learned Cardinal
Cajetan, that he knew as little of spiritual theology as "the donkey of
the harp;" he called Alveld, professor of theology at Leipzig, "a most
asinine ass," and Dr. Eck "Dreck:" for which he was in turn
styled luteus, lutra, etc. Such vulgarities were common in that
age, but Luther was the roughest of the rough, as he was the strongest
of the strong. His bark, however, was much worse than his bite, and
beneath his abusive tongue and temper dwelt a kind and generous heart.
His most violent writings are those against Emser (An den Emserschen
Steinbock), King
Henry VIII., Duke Henry of Brunswick (Wider Hans Wurst), and his
last attack upon popery as "instituted by the Devil" (1545), of which
Döllinger says (Luther, p. 48), that it must have
been written "im Zustande der Erhitzung durch berauschende
Getränke."
The discussion forced him into a conflict with the
papal authority, on which the theory and traffic of indulgences were
ultimately made to rest. The controversy resolved itself into the
question whether that authority was infallible and final, or subject to
correction by the Scriptures and a general Council. Luther defended the
latter view; yet he protested that he was no heretic, and that he
taught nothing contrary to the Scriptures, the ancient fathers, the
oecumenical Councils, and the decrees of the Popes. He still hoped for
a favorable hearing from Leo X., whom he personally respected. He even
ventured to dedicate to him his Resolutiones, a defence of the Theses
(May 30, 1518), with a letter of abject humility, promising to obey his
voice as the very voice of Christ. "Beatissime Pater," he says in the
dedication, "prostratum me pedibus tuae Beatitudinis offero cum
omnibus, quae sum et habeo. Vivifica, occide, roca, revoca, approba,
reproba, ut placuerit: vocem tuam vocem Christi in te praesidentis et
loquentis agnoscam. Si mortem merui, mori non recusabo. Dominienim est
terra et plenitudo ejus, qui est benedictus in saecula, Amen, qui et te
servet in aceternum, Amen. Anno MDXVIII."Works (Weimar ed.),
I. 529; also in De Wette, Briefe, I. 119-122.
Such an anomalous and contradictory position could not last long.
In the midst of this controversy, in April, 1518,
Luther was sent as a delegate to a meeting of the Augustinian monks at
Heidelberg, and had an opportunity to defend, in public debate, forty
conclusions, or, "theological paradoxes," drawn from St. Paul and St.
Augustin, concerning natural depravity, the slavery of the will,
regenerating grace, faith, and good works. He advocates the theologia
crucis against the theologia gloriae, and contrasts the law and the
gospel. "The law says, ’Do
this,’ and never does it: the gospel says,
’Believe in Christ,’ and all is
done." The last twelve theses are directed against the Aristotelian
philosophy. Weim. ed., I. 350-376. Comp.
Köstlin, I. 185 sqq.
He found considerable response, and sowed the seed of the Reformation in the Palatinate. Among his youthful hearers were Bucer (Butzer) and Brentz, who afterwards became distinguished reformers, the one in Strassburg and England, the other in the duchy (now kingdom) of Würtemberg.
§ 34. Rome’s Interposition. Luther and Prierias. 1518.
R. P. Silvestri Prieratis ordinis praedicatorum et s. theol. professoris celeberrimi, s. palatii apostolici magistri, in praesumptuosas Martini Lutheri conclusiones de potestate papae dialogus. In Löscher, II. 13–39. Knaake (Werke, I. 644) assigns the first edition to the second half of June, 1518, which is more likely than the earlier date of December, 1517, given by Löscher (II. 12) and the Erlangen ed. He mentions five separate editions, two of which were published by Luther without notes; afterwards he published an edition with his refutation.
Ad Dialogum Silvestri Prierati de potestate papae responsio. In Löscher, II. 3; Weim. ed. I., 647–686, II. 48–56. German translation in Walch, XVIII. l20–200.
Pope Leo X. was disposed to ignore the Wittenberg movement as a contemptible monkish quarrel; but when it threatened to become dangerous, he tried to make the German monk harmless by the exercise of his power. He is reported to have said first, "Brother Martin is a man of fine genius, and this outbreak is a mere squabble of envious monks;" but afterwards, "It is a drunken German who wrote the Theses; when sober he will change his mind."
Three months after the appearance of the Theses, he directed the vicar-general of the Augustinian Order to quiet down the restless monk. In March, 1518, he found it necessary to appoint a commission of inquiry under the direction of the learned Dominican Silvester Mazzolini, called from his birthplace Prierio or Prierias (also Prieras), who was master of the sacred palace and professor of theology.
Prierias came to the conclusion that Luther was an ignorant and blasphemous arch-heretic, and hastily wrote a Latin dialogue against his Theses, hoping to crush him by subtile scholastic distinctions, and the weight of papal authority (June, 1518). He identified the Pope with the Church of Rome, and the Church of Rome with the Church universal, and denounced every departure from it as a heresy. He said of Luther’s Theses, that they bite like a cur.
Luther republished the Dialogue with a reply, in which he called it "sufficiently supercilious, and thoroughly Italian and Thomistic "(August, 1518).
Prierias answered with a Replica (November, 1518). Luther republished it likewise, with a brief preface, and sent it to Prierias with the advice not to make himself any more ridiculous by writing books.
The effect of this controversy was to widen the breach.
In the mean time Luther’s fate had already been decided. The Roman hierarchy could no more tolerate such a dangerous man than the Jewish hierarchy could tolerate Christ and the apostles. On the 7th of August, 1518, he was cited to appear in Rome within sixty days to recant his heresies. On the 23d of the same month, the Pope demanded of the Elector Frederick the Wise, that he should deliver up this "child of the Devil" to the papal legate.
But the Elector, who was one of the most powerful and esteemed princes of Germany, felt unwilling to sacrifice the shining light of his beloved university, and arranged a peaceful interview with the papal legate at the Diet of Augsburg on promise of kind treatment and safe return.
§ 35. Luther and Cajetan. October, 1518.
The transactions at Augsburg were published by Luther in December, 1518, and are printed in Löscher, II. 435–492; 527–551; in Walch, XV. 636 sqq.; in the Weim. ed., II. 1–40. Luther’s Letters in De Wette, I. 147–167. Comp. Kahnis, I. 215–235; Köstlin, I. 204–238 (and his shorter biogr., Eng. trans., p. 108).
Luther accordingly proceeded to Augsburg in humble garb, and on foot, till illness forced him within a short distance from the city to take a carriage. He was accompanied by a young monk and pupil, Leonard Baier, and his friend Link. He arrived Oct. 7, 1518, and was kindly received by Dr. Conrad Peutinger and two counselors of the Elector, who advised him to behave with prudence, and to observe the customary rules of etiquette. Everybody was anxious to see the man who, like a second Herostratus, had kindled such a flame.
On Oct. 11, he received the letter of safe-conduct; and on the next day he appeared before the papal legate, Cardinal Cajetan (Thomas de Vio of Gaëta), who represented the Pope at the German Diet, and was to obtain its consent to the imposition of a heavy tax for the war against the Turks.
Cajetan was, like Prierias, a Dominican and zealous Thomist, a man of great learning and moral integrity, but fond of pomp and ostentation. He wrote a standard commentary on the Summa of Thomas Aquinas (which is frequently appended to the Summa); but in his later years, till his death (1534),—perhaps in consequence of his interview with Luther,—he devoted himself chiefly to the study of the Scriptures, and urged it upon his friends. He labored with the aid of Hebrew and Greek scholars to correct the Vulgate by a more faithful version, and advocated Jerome’s liberal views on questions of criticism and the Canon, and a sober grammatical exegesis against allegorical fancies, without, however, surrendering the Catholic principle of tradition.
There was a great contrast between the Italian cardinal and the German monk, the shrewd diplomat and the frank scholar; the expounder and defender of mediaeval scholasticism, and the champion of modern biblical theology; the man of church authority, and the advocate of personal freedom.
They had three interviews (Oct. 12, 13, 14).
Cajetan treated Luther with condescending courtesy, and assured him of
his friendship. Luther received at first a favorable
impression, and wrote in a letter to Carlstadt, Oct. 14 (De Wette, I.
161): "The cardinal calls me constantly his dear son, and assures
Staupitz that I had no better friend than himself. … I
would be the most welcome person here if I but spoke this one word,
revoco. But I will not turn a heretic by revoking the opinion
which made me a Christian: I will rather die, be burnt, be exiled, be
cursed." Afterwards he wrote in a different tone about Cajetan, e.g.,
in the letter to the Elector Frederick, Nov. 19 (I. 175 sqq.), and to
Staupitz, Dec. 13 (De Wette, I. 194). "Ego nolo amplius cum hac bestia loqui.
Habet enim profundos oculos et mirabiles speculationes in capite
suo." This characteristic dictum is not reported by Luther, but by
Myconius, Hist. Ref. p. 73. Comp. Löscher, II. 477.
The national antipathy between the Germans and the Italians often
appears in the transactions with Rome, and continues to this day.
Monsignor Eugenio Cecconi, Archbishop of Florence, in his tract
Martino Lutero, Firenze, 1883, says: "Lutero non amava
gi’ italiani, e gl’ italiani non
hanno mai avuto ne stima ne amore per quest’ uomo. Il
nostro popolo, col suo naturale criterio, lo ha giudicato da un
pezzo." He
declared the proposal to celebrate Luther’s fourth
centennial at Florence to be an act of insanity.
Under these circumstances, Luther, with the aid of
friends who provided him with an escort, made his escape from Augsburg,
through a small gate in the city-Wall, in the night of the 20th of
October, on a hard-trotting hack, without pantaloons, boots, or spurs.
He rode on the first day as far as the town of Monheim In Bavaria; not Mannheim, as Kahnis (I. 228)
has it. "Dr. Staupitz" (says Luther, In his
Table-Talk) "hatte mir ein Pferd verschafft und gab mir den Rath, einen
alten Ausreuter zu nehmen, der die Wege wüsste, und half mir
Langemantel (Rathsherr) des Nachts durch ein klein Pförtlein
der Stadt. Da eilte ich ohne Hosen, Stiefel, Sporn, und Schwert, und
kam his gen Wittenberg. Den ersten Tag ritt ich acht
(German) Meilen und wie ich des Abends in
die Herberge kam, war ich so müde, stieg, im Stalle ab,
konnte nicht stehen, fiel stracks in die Streu."
He reached Wittenberg, in good spirits, on the first anniversary of his Ninety-five Theses. He forthwith published a report of his conference with a justification of his conduct. He also wrote (Nov. 19) a long and very eloquent letter to the Elector, exposing the unfairness of Cajetan, who had misrepresented the proceedings, and demanded from the Elector the delivery of Luther to Rome or his expulsion from Saxony.
Before leaving Augsburg, be left an appeal from
Cajetan to the Pope, and "from the Pope ill informed to the Pope to be
better informed "(a papa male informato ad papam melius informandum).
Soon afterwards, Nov. 28, he formally and solemnly appealed from the
Pope to a general council, and thus anticipated the papal sentence of
excommunication. He expected every day maledictions from Rome, and was
prepared for exile or any other fate. Letter to Spalatin, Nov. 25 and Dec. 2. De
Wette, 1. 188 sqq. "Mittam ad te nugas meas, ut videas, an
recte divinem Antichristum illum verum juxta Paulum in Romana curia
regnare: pejorem Turcis esse hodie, puto me demonstrare posse."
DeWette, I. 193.
§ 36. Luther and Miltitz. January, 1519.
Löscher, II. 552–569; III. 6–21, 820–847. Luther’s Werke, Walch, XV. 308 sqq.; Weimar ed., II. 66 sqq. Letters in De Wette: I. 207 sqq., 233 sqq.
Joh. K. Seidemann: Karl Von Miltitz .... Eine chronol. Untersuchung. Dresden, 1844 (pp. 37). The respective sections in Marheineke, Kahnis (I. 235 sqq.), and Köstlin (I. 238 sqq. and 281 sqq.).
Before the final decision, another attempt was made to silence Luther by inducing him to revoke his heresies. Diplomacy sometimes interrupts the natural development of principles and the irresistible logic of events, but only for a short season. It usually resorts to compromises which satisfy neither party, and are cast aside. Principles must work themselves out.
Pope Leo sent his nuncio and chamberlain, Karl von
Miltitz, a noble Saxon by birth, and a plausible, convivial
gentleman, He was charged with intemperance, and is
reported to have fallen from the boat in crossing the Rhine or the Main
near Mainz in a state of intoxication, a. 1529. See the reports in
Seidemann, l.c. p. 33 sqq.
Miltitz discovered on his journey a wide-spread
and growing sympathy with Luther. He found three Germans on his side,
especially in the North, to one against him. He heard bad reports about
Tetzel, and summoned him; but Tetzel was afraid to travel, and died a
few months afterwards (Aug. 7, 1519), partly, perhaps, in consequence
of the severe censure from the papal delegate. Luther wrote to his
opponent a letter of comfort, which is no more extant. Unmeasured as he
could be in personal abuse, he harbored no malice or revenge in his
heart. He speaks generously of Tetzel in a letter to
Spalatin, Feb. 12, 1519 (De Wette, I. 223): "Doleo Tetzelium et
salutem suam in eam necessitatem venisse ... multo mallem, si posset,
servari cum honore," etc.
Miltitz held a conference with Luther in the house of Spalatin at Altenburg, Jan. 6, 1519. He was exceedingly polite and friendly; he deplored the offence and scandal of the Theses-controversy, and threw a great part of the blame on poor Tetzel; he used all his powers of persuasion, and entreated him with tears not to divide the unity of the holy Catholic Church.
They agreed that the matter should be settled by a German bishop instead of going to Rome, and that in the mean time both parties were to keep silence. Luther promised to ask the pardon of the Pope, and to warn the people against the sin of separating from the holy mother-church. After this agreement they partook of a social supper, and parted with a kiss. Miltitz must have felt very proud of his masterpiece of ecclesiastical diplomacy.
Luther complied with his promises in a way which seems irreconcilable with his honest convictions and subse-quent conduct. But we must remember the deep conflicts of his mind, the awful responsibility of his undertaking, the critical character of the situation. Well might he pause for a while, and shrink back from the idea of a separation from the church of his fathers, so intimately connected with his religious life as well as with the whole history of Christianity for fifteen hundred years. He had to break a new path which became so easy for others. We must all the more admire his conscientiousness.
In his letter to the Pope, dated March 3, 1519, he expressed the deepest personal humility, and denied that he ever intended to injure the Roman Church, which was over every other power in heaven and on earth, save only Jesus Christ the Lord over all. Yet he repudiated the idea of retracting his conscientious convictions.
In his address to the people, he allowed the value of indulgences, but only as a recompense for the "satisfaction" given by, the sinner, and urged the duty of adhering, notwithstanding her faults and sins, to the holy Roman Church, where St. Peter and St. Paul, and many Popes and thousands of martyrs, had shed their blood.
At the same time, Luther continued the careful
study of history, and could find no trace of popery and its
extraordinary claims in the first centuries before the Council of
Nicaea. He discovered that the Papal Decretals, and the Donation of
Constantine, were a forgery. He wrote to Spalatin, March 13, 1519, "I
know not whether tho Pope is anti-christ himself, or his apostle; so
wretchedly is Christ, that is the truth, corrupted and crucified by him
in the Decretals." De Wette, I. 239.
§ 37. The Leipzig Disputation. June 27-July 15, 1519.
I. Löscher, III. 203–819. Luther’s Works, Walch, XV. 954 sqq.; Weim. ed. II. 153–435 (see the literary notices of Knaake, p. 156). Luther’s letters to Spalatin and the Elector, in De Wette:, I. 284–324.
II. Joh. K. Seidemann: Die Leipziger Disputation im Jahre 1519. Dresden and Leipzig, 1843 (pp. 161). With important documents (pp. 93 sqq.) The best book on the subject. Monographs on Carlstadt by Jäger (Stuttgart, 1856), on Eck by Wiedemann (Regensburg, 1865), and the relevant sections in Marheineke, Kahnis (I. 251–285), Köstlin, Kolde, and the general histories of the Reformation. The account by Ranke (I. 277–285) is very good. On the Roman side, see Janssen, II. 83–88 (incomplete).
The agreement between Miltitz and Luther was only a short truce. The Reformation was too deeply rooted in the wants of the age to be suppressed by the diplomacy of ecclesiastical politicians. Even if the movement had been arrested in one place, it would have broken out in another; indeed, it had already begun independently in Switzerland. Luther was no more his own master, but the organ of a higher power. "Man proposes, God disposes."
Before the controversy could be settled by a
German bishop, it was revived, not without a violation of promise on
both sides, Eck was the chief originator of the
disputation, and not Luther (as Janssen endeavors to show). Seidemann,
who gives a full and authentic account of the preliminary
correspondence, says (p. 21): "Es ist entschieden, dass Eck die Disputation
antrug, und zwar zunächst nur mit Karlstadt. Aber auch
Luther’s Absehen war auf eine Disputation
gerichtet."
The disputation began with the solemnities of a mass, a procession, an oration of Peter Mosellanus, De ratione disputandi, and the singing of Veni, Creator Spiritus. It ended with a eulogistic oration by the Leipzig professor John Lange, and the Te Deum.
The first act was the disputation between Eck and Carlstadt, on the freedom of the human will, which the former maintained, and the latter denied. The second and more important act began July 4, between Eck and Luther, chiefly on the subject of the papacy.
Dr. Eck (Johann Mair), professor of theology at
Ingolstadt in Bavaria, was the champion of Romanism, a man of great
learning, well-stored memory, dialectical skill, ready speech, and
stentorian voice, but overconfident, conceited, and boisterous. He
looked more like a butcher or soldier than a theologian. Many regarded
him as a mere charlatan, and expressed their contempt for his audacity
and vanity by the nicknames Keck (pert) and Geck (fop), which date from
this dispute. As he complained twenty years later: see
Seidemann, p. 80.
Carlstadt (Andreas von Bodenstein),
Luther’s impetuous and ill-balanced friend and
colleague, was an unfortunate debater. Luther calls him an infelicissimus
disputator.
Luther was inferior to Eck in historical learning
and flowing Latinity, but surpassed him in knowledge of the Bible,
independent judgment, originality, and depth of thought, and had the
law of progress on his side. While Eck looked to the fathers, Luther
went back to the grandfathers; he ascended from the stream of church
history to the fountain of God’s Word; yet from the
normative beginning of the apostolic age he looked hopefully into the
future. Though pale and emaciated, he was cheerful, wore a little
silver ring, and carried a bunch of flowers in his hand. Peter
Mosellanus, a famous Latinist, who presided over the disputation, thus
describes his personal appearance at that time: In a letter to Julius Pflug, a young Saxon
nobleman. Mosellanus describes also Carlstadt and Eck, and the whole
disputation. See Löscher, III. 242-251 (especially p. 247);
Walch, XV. 1422; Seidemann, 51 and 56. I find the description also in
an appendix to Melanchthon’s Vita Lutheri,
Göttingen, 1741, pp. 32-44.
"Luther is of middle stature; his body thin, and
so wasted by care and study that nearly all his bones may be counted. "Ut omnia pene ossa liceat dinumerare."
But in later years Luther grew stout and fleshy. "Ut haud facile credas, hominem tam ardua
sine numine Divûm moliri."
The chief interest in the disputation turned on the subject of the authority of the Pope and the infallibility of the Church. Eck maintained that the Pope is the successor of Peter, and the vicar of Christ by divine right; Luther, that this claim is contrary to the Scriptures, to the ancient church, to the Council of Nicaea,—the most sacred of all Councils,—and rests only on the frigid decrees of the Roman pontiffs.
But during the debate he changed his opinion on
the authority of Councils, and thereby injured his cause in the
estimation of the audience. Being charged by Eck with holding the
heresy of Hus, he at first repudiated him and all schismatic
tendencies; but on mature reflection he declared that Hus held some
scriptural truths, and was unjustly condemned and burnt by the Council
of Constance; that a general council as well as a Pope may err, and had
no right to impose any article of faith not founded in the Scriptures.
When Duke George, a sturdy upholder of the Catholic creed, heard Luther
express sympathy with the Bohemian heresy, he shook his head, and,
putting both arms in his sides, exclaimed, so that it could be heard
throughout the hall, "A plague upon it!" "Das walt’ die
Sucht!"
From this time dates Luther’s connection with the Bohemian Brethren.
Luther concluded his argument with these words: "I am sorry that the learned doctor only dips into the Scripture as the water-spider into the water-nay, that he seems to flee from it as the Devil from the Cross. I prefer, with all deference to the Fathers, the authority of the Scripture, which I herewith recommend to the arbiters of our cause."
Both parties, as usual, claimed the victory. Eck
was rewarded with honors and favors by Duke George, and followed up his
fancied triumph by efforts to ruin Luther, and to gain a
cardinal’s hat; but he was also severely attacked and
ridiculed, especially by Willibald Pirkheimer, the famous humanist and
patrician of Nürnberg, in his stinging satire, "The Polished
Corner." "Der algehobelte Eck." The book appeared first anonymously in
Latin, Eccius dedolatus, at Erfurt, March, 1520. Hagen, in
his Der
Geist der Reformation (Erlangen, 1843), I. p. 60 sqq., gives a good summary of this
witty book. Luther sent it to Spalatin, March 2, 1520 (De Wette, I.
426), but expressed his dissatisfaction with this "mode of raging
against Eck," and preferred an open attack to a "bite from behind the
fence."
Luther himself was greatly dissatisfied, and regarded the disputation as a mere waste of time. He made, however, a deep impression upon younger men, and many students left Leipzig for Wittenberg. After all, he was more benefited by the disputation and the controversies growing out of it, than his opponents.
The importance of this theological tournament lies in this: that it marks a progress in Luther’s emancipation from the papal system. Here for the first time he denied the divine right and origin of the papacy, and the infallibility of a general council. Henceforward he had nothing left but the divine Scriptures, his private judgment, and his faith in God who guides the course of history by his own Spirit, through all obstructions by human errors, to a glorious end. The ship of the Reformation was cut from its moorings, and had to fight with the winds and waves of the open sea.
From this time Luther entered upon a revolutionary crusade against the Roman Church until the anarchical dissensions in his own party drove him back into a conservative and even reactionary position.
Before we proceed with the development of the
Reformation, we must make the acquaintance of Melanchthon, who had
accompanied Luther to the Leipzig disputation as a spectator,
suggesting to him and Carlstadt occasional arguments, This excited the anger of Eck, who broke out,
"Tace tu, Philippe, ac tua studia cura, ne me
perturba."
§ 38. Philip Melanchthon. Literature (Portrait).
The best Melanchthon collection is in the Royal Library of Berlin, which I have consulted for this list (July, 1886). The third centenary of Mel.’s death in 1860, and the erection of his monument in Wittenberg, called forth a large number of pamphlets and articles in periodicals.
I. Works of Melanchthon. The first ed. appeared at Basel, 1541, 5 vols. fol.; another by Peucer (his son-in-law), Wittenberg, 1562–64, 4 vols. fol.; again 1601. Selection of his German works by Köthe. Leipzig, 1829–30, 6 vols. *Best ed. of Opera omnia (in the "Corpus Reformatorum") by Bretschneider and Bindseil. Halle, 1834–60, 28 vols. 4°. The most important vols. for church history are vols. i.-xi. and xxi.-xxviii. The last vol. (second part) contains Annates Vitae (pp. 1–143), and very ample Indices (145–378).
Add to these: Epistolae, Judicia, Consilia, Testimonia, etc., ed. H. E. Bindseil. Halle, 1874. 8°. A supplement to the "Corpus Reform." Compare also Bindseil’s Bibliotheca Melanthoniana. Halis 1868 pp. 28). Carl Krause: Melanthoniana, Regesten und Briefe über die Beziehungen Philipp Mel. zu Anhalt und dessen Fürsten. Zerbst, 1885. pp. 185.
II. Biographies of Mel. An account of his last days by the Wittenberg professors: Brevis narratio exponens quo fine vitam in terris suam clauserit D. Phil. Mel. conscripta a professoribus academiae Vitebergensis, qui omnibus quae exponuntur interfuerunt. Viteb. 1560. 4°. The same in German. A funeral oration by Heerbrand: Oratio in obitum Mel. habita in Academia Tubingensi die decima quinta Maji. Vitebergae, 1560. *Joachim Camerarius: Vita Mel. Lips. 1566; and other edd., one with notes by Strobel. Halle, 1777; one with preface by Neander in the Vitae quatuor Reformatorum. Berlin, 1841.
Strobel: Melanchthoniana. Altdorf, 1771: Die Ehre Mel. gerettet, 1773; and other works. A. H. Niemeyer: Phil. Mel. als Praeceptor Germaniae. Halle, 1817. Fr. Aug. Cox: Life of Mel., comprising an account of the Reform. Lond. 1815, 2d ed. 1817. G. L. Fr. Delbrück: Ph. Mel. der Glaubenslehrer. Bonn, 1826. Heyd: Mel. und Tübingen, 1512–18. Tüb. 1839. *Fr. Galle: Characteristik Melanchth. als Theol. und Entw. seines Lehrbegr. Halle, 1840. *Fr. Matthes: Ph. Mel. Sein Leben u. Wirken aus den Quellen. Altenb. 1841. 2d ed. 1846. Ledderhose: Phil. Mel. nach seinem aüsseren u. inneren Leben dargestellt. Heidelberg, 1847 (English translation by Dr. Krotel. Phila. 1855). By the same: Das Leben des Phil. Mel. für das Volk. Barmen, 1858. *Mor. Meurer: Phil. Mel.’s Leben. Leipzig u. Dresden, 1860. 2d ed. 1869. Heppe: Phil. Mel. der Lehrer Deutschlands. Marburg, 1860. *Carl Schmidt: Philipp Melanchthons Leben und ausgewählte Schriften. Elberfeld, 1861 (in the "Reformatoren der Luth. Kirche"). * Herrlinger: Die Theologie Mel.’s in ihrer geschichtl. Entwicklung. Gotha, 1879.
III. Brief sketches, by Neander, in Piper’s "Evang.-Kalender" for 1851. By Nitzsch, in the "Deutsche Zeitschrift für christl. Wissenschaft," 1855. Is. Aug. Dorner: Zum dreihundertjährigen Gedächtniss des Todes Melanchthons, 1860. Volbeding: Mel. wie er liebte und lebte (Leipz. 1860.). Kahnis: Rede zum Gedächtniss Mel.’s (Leipz. 1860). Wohlfahrt: Phil. Mel. (Leipzig, 1860). W. Thilo: Mel. im Dienste der heil. Schrift (Berlin, 1860). Paul Pressel: Phil. Mel. Ein evang. Lebensbild (Stuttg. 1860). Festreden zur Erinnerung an den 300 jährigen Todestag Phil. Mel.’s und bei der Grundsteinlegung zu dessen Denkmal zu Wittenberg, herausgeg. von Lommatzch (Wittenb. 1860). Henke: Das Verhältniss Luthers und Mel. zu einander (Marburg, 1860), and Memoria B. Phil. Mel. (Marburg, 1860). Ad. Planck: Mel. Praeceptor Germ. (Nördlingen, 1860). Tollin: Ph. Mel. und Mich. Servet. Eine Quellenstudie (Berlin, 1876). Landerer: Mel., in Herzog1 and Herzog2 ix. 471–525, revised by Herrlinger. Thiersch: Mel. (Augsburg, 1877, and New York, Am. Tract Soc. 1880). Luthardt: Melanchthon’s Arbeiten im Gebiete der Moral (Leipz. 1884). Wagenmann: Ph. Mel. (in the "Allgem. Deutsche Biographie"). Paulsen in "Gesch. des gelehrten Unterrichts "(Leipz. 1885. pp. 34 sqq.). Schaff in St. Augustin, Melanchthon, Neander (New York and London, 1886. pp. 107–127).
IV. On Mel.’s Loci, see Strobel: Literärgesch. von Ph. Mel.’s locis theologicis. Altdorf and Nürnberg, 1776. Plitt: Melanchthons Loci in ihrer Urgestalt. Erlangen, 1864.
§ 40. Melanchthon’s Early Labors.
Although yet a youth of twenty-one years of age,
Melanchthon at once gained the esteem and admiration of his colleagues
and hearers in Wittenberg. He was small of stature, unprepossessing in
his outward appearance, diffident and timid. But his high and noble
forehead, his fine blue eyes, full of fire, the intellectual expression
of his countenance, the courtesy and modesty of his behavior, revealed
the beauty and strength of his inner man. His learning was undoubted,
his moral and religious character above suspicion. His introductory
address, which he delivered four days after his arrival (Aug. 29), on
"The Improvement of the Studies of Youth," De Corrigendis Adolescentium
Studiis, in the
"Corpus
Reformatorum," XI. 15
sqq. See Schmidt, l.c. 29 sq. He wrote to his friend Camerarius, Jan. 22,
1525 (" Corp. Ref." I. 722): "Ego mihi ita conscius sum, non aliam
ob causam unquam τεθεολογηκέναι, nisi ut vitam
emendarem."
He at first devoted himself to philological pursuits, and did more than any of his contemporaries to revive the study of Greek for the promotion of biblical learning and the cause of the Reformation. He called the ancient languages the swaddling-clothes of the Christ-child: Luther compared them to the sheath of the sword of the Spirit. Melanchthon was master of the ancient languages; Luther, master of the German. The former, by his co-operation, secured accuracy to the German Bible; the latter, idiomatic force and poetic beauty.
In the year 1519 Melanchthon graduated as Bachelor of Divinity; the degree of Doctor he modestly declined. From that time on, he was a member of the theological faculty, and delivered also theological lectures, especially on exegesis. He taught two or three hours every day a variety of topics, including ethics, logic, Greek and Hebrew grammar; he explained Homer, Plato, Plutarch, Titus, Matthew, Romans, the Psalms. In the latter period of his life he devoted himself exclusively to sacred learning. He was never ordained, and never ascended the pulpit; but for the benefit of foreign students who were ignorant of German, he delivered every Sunday in his lecture-room a Latin sermon on the Gospels. He became at once, and continued to be, the most popular teacher at Wittenberg. He drew up the statutes of the University, which are regarded as a model. By his advice and example the higher education in Germany was regulated.
His fame attracted students from all parts of Christendom, including princes, counts, and barons. His lecture-room was crowded to overflowing, and he heard occasionally as many as eleven languages at his frugal but hospitable table. He received calls to Tübingen, Nürnberg, and Heidelberg, and was also invited to Denmark, France, and England; but he preferred remaining in Wittenberg till his death.
At the urgent request of Luther, who wished to hold him fast, and to promote his health and comfort, he married (having no vow of celibacy to prevent him) as early as August, 1520, Catharina Krapp, the worthy daughter of the burgomaster of Wittenberg, who faithfully shared with him the joys and trials of domestic life. He had from her four children, and was often seen rocking the cradle with one hand, while holding a book in the other. He used to repeat the Apostles’ Creed in his family three times a day. He esteemed his wife higher than himself. She died in 1557 while he was on a journey to the colloquy at Worms: when he heard the sad news at Heidelberg, he looked up to heaven, and exclaimed, "Farewell! I shall soon follow thee."
Next to the "Lutherhaus" with the "Luthermuseum," the most interesting dwelling in the quaint old town of Wittenberg on the banks of the Elbe is the house of Melanchthon in the Collegienstrasse. It is a three-story building, and belongs to the Prussian government, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. having bought it from its former owner. Melanchthon’s study is on the first story; there he died. Behind the house is a little garden which was connected with Luther’s garden. Here, under the shade of the tree, the two Reformers may often have exchanged views on the stirring events of the times, and encouraged each other in the great conflict. The house bears in German the inscription on the outer wall: —
§ 41. Luther and Melanchthon.
P. Schaff: Luther und Melanchthon, In his "Der Deutsche Kirchenfreund," Mercersburg, Pa., vol. III. (1850), pp. 58–64. E. L. Henke: Das Verhältniss Luthers und Melanchthons zu einander. Festrede am 19 April, 1860. Marburg (28 pages). Compare also Döllinger: Die Reformation, vol. i. 349 sqq.
In great creative epochs of the Church, God associates congenial leaders for mutual help and comfort. In the Reformation of the sixteenth century, we find Luther and Melanchthon in Germany, Zwingli and Oecolampadius, Farel and Viret, Calvin and Beza in Switzerland, Craniner, Latimer, and Ridley in England, Knox and Melville in Scotland, working together with different gifts, but in the same spirit and for the same end. The Methodist revival of the eighteenth century was carried on by the co-operation of the two Wesleys and Whitefield; and the Anglo-Catholic movement of the nineteenth, by the association of Pusey, Newman, and Keble.
Immediately after his arrival at the Saxon
University, on the Elbe, Melanchthon entered into an intimate relation
with Luther, and became his most useful and influential co-laborer. He
looked up to his elder colleague with the veneration of a son, and was
carried away and controlled (sometimes against his better judgment) by
the fiery genius of the Protestant Elijah; while Luther regarded him as
his superior in learning, and was not ashamed to sit humbly at his
feet. He attended his exegetical lectures, and published them, without
the author’s wish and knowledge, for the benefit of
the Church. Melanchthon declared in April, 1520, that "he would rather
die than be separated from Luther;" and in November of the same year,
"Martin’s welfare is dearer to me than my own life."
Luther was captivated by Melanchthon’s first lecture;
he admired his scholarship, loved his character, and wrote most
enthusiastically about him in confidential letters to Spalatin,
Reuchlin, Lange, Scheurl, and others, lauding him as a prodigy of
learning and piety. Lutherus ad Reuchlinum, Dec. 14, 1518:
"Philippus noster Melanchthon, homo admirabilis, imo pene nihil
habens, quod non supra hominem sit, familiarissimus tamen et
amicissimus mihi." To Billikan he wrote in 1523 (De Wette, II.
407): "Den Philippus achte ich nicht anders als mich selbst, ausgenomnen
in Hinsicht auf seine Gelehrsamkeit und die Unbescholtenheit seines
Lebens, wodurch er mich, dass ich nicht blos sage,
übertrifft." In his humorous way he once invited him (Oct. 18, 1518) to
supper under the address: "Philippo Melanchthoni, Schwarzerd,
Graeco, Latino, Hebraeo, Germano, nunquam Barbaro." The testimonies
of Luther on Mel. are collected in the first and last vols. of the
"Corp. Reform." (especially XXViiib. 9 and
10).
The friendship of these two great and good men is
one of the most delightful chapters in the religious drama of the
sixteenth century. It rested on mutual personal esteem and hearty
German affection, but especially on the consciousness of a providential
mission intrusted to their united labors. Although somewhat disturbed,
at a later period, by slight doctrinal differences and occasional
ill-humor, Melanchthon hints also, in one of his
confidential letters, at female influence, the γυναικοτυράννις, as an incidental element in the
disturbance. Corp. Ref.," III. 398.
Melanchthon descended from South Germany, Luther from North Germany; the one from the well-to-do middle classes of citizens and artisans, the other from the rough but sturdy peasantry. Melanchthon had a quiet, literary preparation for his work: Luther experienced much hardship and severe moral conflicts. The former passed to his Protestant conviction through the door of classical studies, the latter through the door of monastic asceticism; the one was fore-ordained to a professor’s chair, the other to the leadership of an army of conquest.
Luther best understood and expressed the
difference of temper and character; and it is one of his noble traits,
that he did not allow it to interfere with the esteem and admiration
for his younger friend and colleague. "I prefer the books of Master
Philippus to my own," he wrote in 1529. In his preface to
Melanchthon’s Commentary on
Colossians.
Luther was incomparably the stronger man of the two, and differed from Melanchthon as the wild mountain torrent differs from the quiet stream of the meadow, or as the rushing tempest from the gentle breeze, or, to use a scriptural illustration, as the fiery Paul from the contemplative John. Luther was a man of war, Melanchthon a man of peace. Luther’s writings smell of powder; his words are battles; he overwhelms his opponents with a roaring cannonade of argument, eloquence, passion, and abuse. Melanchthon excels in moderation and amiability, and often exercised a happy restraint upon the unmeasured violence of his colleague. Once when Luther in his wrath burst out like a thunderstorm, Melanchthon quieted him by the line, —
Luther was a creative genius, and pioneer of new paths; Melanchthon, a profound scholar of untiring industry. The one was emphatically the man for the people, abounding in strong and clear sense, popular eloquence, natural wit, genial humor, intrepid courage, and straightforward honesty. The other was a quiet, considerate, systematic thinker; a man of order, method, and taste, and gained the literary circles for the cause of the Reformation. He is the principal founder of a Protestant theology, and the author of the Augsburg Confession, the chief symbol of the Lutheran Church. He very properly represented the evangelical cause in all the theological conferences with the Roman-Catholic party at Augsburg, Speier, Worms, Frankfort, Ratisbon, where Luther’s presence would only have increased the heat of controversy, and widened the breach. Luther was unyielding and uncompromising against Romanism and Zwinglianism: Melanchthon was always ready for compromise and peace, as far as his honest convictions would allow, and sincerely labored to restore the broken unity of the Church. He was even willing, as his qualified subscription to the Articles of Smalcald shows, to admit a certain supremacy of the Pope (jure humano), provided he would tolerate the free preaching of the gospel. But Popery and evangelical freedom will never agree.
Luther was the boldest, the most heroic and
commanding; Melanchthon, the most gentle, pious, and conscientious, of
the Reformers. Melanchthon had a sensitive and irritable temperament,
though under good control, and lacked courage; he felt, more keenly and
painfully than any other, the tremendous responsibility of the great
religious movement in which he was engaged. He would have made any
personal sacrifice if he could have removed the confusion and divisions
attendant upon it. Der Schmerz der Kirchenspaltung
ist tief durch seine schuldlose Seele gegangen."Hase, Kirchengesch., 11th ed. (1886), p. 372.
The two Wittenberg Reformers were brought together by the hand of Providence, to supply and complete each other, and by their united talents and energies to carry forward the German Reformation, which would have assumed a very different character if it had been exclusively left in the hands of either of them.
Without Luther the Reformation would never have taken hold of the common people: without Melanchthon it would never have succeeded among the scholars of Germany. Without Luther, Melanchthon would have become a second Erasmus, though with a profounder interest in religion; and the Reformation would have resulted in a liberal theological school, instead of giving birth to a Church. However much the humble and unostentatious labors and merits of Melanchthon are overshadowed by the more striking and brilliant deeds of the heroic Luther, they were, in their own way, quite as useful and indispensable. The "still small voice" often made friends to Protestantism where the earthquake and thunder-storm produced only terror and convulsion.
Luther is greatest as a Reformer, Melanchthon as a Christian scholar. He represents in a rare degree the harmony of humanistic culture with biblical theology and piety. In this respect he surpassed all his contemporaries, even Erasmus and Reuchlin. He is, moreover, the connecting link between contending churches, and a forerunner of Christian union and catholicity which will ultimately heal the divisions and strifes of Christendom. To him applies the beatitude: "Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God."
The friendship of Luther and Melanchthon drew into its charming circle also some other worthy and remarkable residents of Wittenberg,—Lucas Cranach the painter, who lent his art to the service of the Reformation; Justus Jonas, who came to Wittenberg in 1521 as professor and provost of the castle church, translated several writings of Luther and Melanchthon into German, and accompanied the former to Worms (1521), and on his last journey to Eisleben (1546); and Johann Bugenhagen, called Doctor Pomeranus, who moved from Pomerania to Wittenberg in 1521 as professor and preacher, and lent the Reformers most effective aid in translating the Bible, and organized the Reformation in several cities of North Germany and in Denmark.
§ 42. Ulrich von Hutten and Luther.
Böcking’s edition of Ulrichi Hutteni equitis Germani Opera. Lips, 185–1861. 5 vols. with three supplements, 1864–1870. Davie, Friedrich Strauss (the author of the Leben Jesu): Gespräche von Ulrich von Hutten, übersetzt und erläutert, Leipz. 1860, and his biography of Ulrich von Hutten, 4th ed., Bonn, 1878 (pp. 567). A masterly work by a congenial spirit. Compare K. Hagen, Deutschlands liter. und Rel. Verh. in Reformationszeitalter, II. 47–60; Ranke, D. Gesch. I. 289–294; Janssen, II. 53 sqq. Werckshagen: Luther u. Hutten, 1888.
While Luther acquired in Melanchthon, the head of the Christian and theological wing of the humanists, a permanent and invaluable ally, he received also temporary aid and comfort from the pagan and political wing of the humanists, and its ablest leader, Ulrich von Hutten.
This literary Knight and German patriot was descended from an ancient but impoverished noble family of Franconia. He was born April 21, 1488, and began life, like Erasmus, as an involuntary monk; but he escaped from Fulda in his sixteenth year, studied humanities in the universities of Erfurt, Cologne, and Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, law at Pavia and Bologna, traveled extensively, corresponded with the most prominent men of letters, was crowned as poet by the Emperor Maximilian at Augsburg (1517), and occupied an influential position at the court of Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz (1517–1520), who had charge of the sale of indulgences in Germany.
He took a lively part in
Reuchlin’s conflict with the obscurantism of the
Dominicans of Cologne. Triumphus Capnionis (κάπνιος
= Reuchlin), a poem written in
1514, but not published till 1518 under the pseudo-name of Eleutherius
Byzenus. Works, III. 413-447; Strauss, U. v. H., 155
sq. First published 1515 [at Hagenau], and 1517 at
Basel; best ed. by Böcking, in Hutten’s
Opera, Suppl. i. Lips. (1864), and commentary in Suppl. ii.
(1869); an excellent critical analysis by Strauss, l.c. 165 sqq.
He compares them with Don Quixote. The first book of the Epist.
is chiefly from Crotus, the second chiefly from Hutten. The comic
impression arises in great part from the barbarous Latinity, and is
lost in a translation. There is, however, a good German translation by
Dr. Wilhelm Binder: Briefe von Dunkelmännern. Stuttgart, 1876. The translator says he
knew twenty-seven Latin editions, but no translation. "The die is cast. I have ventured it." An
allusion to the exclamation of Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon, and
marched to Rome.
He republished in 1518 the tract of Laurentius
Valla on the Donation of Constantine, with an embarrassing dedication
to Pope Leo X., and exposed on German soil that gigantic fraud on which
the temporal power of the papacy over all Christian Europe was made to
rest. But his chief and most violent manifesto against Rome is a
dialogue which he published under the name "Vadiscus, or the Roman
Trinity," in April, 1520, a few months before Luther’s
"Address to the German Nobility" (July) and his "Babylonian Captivity"
(October). He here groups his experiences in Rome under several triads
of what abounds in Rome, of what is lacking in Rome, of what is
forbidden in Rome, of what one brings home from Rome, etc. He puts them
into the mouth of a Roman consul, Vadiscus, and makes variations on
them. Here are some specimens: Strauss, U. v. H., p. 285 sqq., 289; and
his translation, in Hutten’s Gespr. p. 94 sqq.,
114 sqq. I have omitted the interlocutories in the dialogue. Vadiscus
is Hutten’s friend Crotus of Erfurt (also
Luther’s friend); and Ernhold is his friend Arnold
Glauberger, with whom he had been in Rome.
"Three things keep Rome in power: the authority of the Pope, the bones of the saints, and the traffic in indulgences.
"Three things are in Rome without number: strumpets, priests, and scribes.
"Three things abound in Rome: antiquities, poison, and ruins.
"Three things are banished from Rome: simplicity, temperance, and piety (or, in another place: poverty, the ancient discipline, and the preaching of the truth).
"Three things the Romans trade in: Christ, ecclesiastical benefices, and women.
"Three things everybody desires in Rome: short masses, good gold, and a luxurious life.
"Three things are disliked in Rome: a general council, a reformation of the clergy, and the fact that the Germans begin to open their eyes.
"Three things displease the Romans most: the unity of the Christian princes, the education of the people, and the discovery of their frauds.
"Three things are most valued in Rome: handsome women, fine horses, and papal bulls.
"Three things are in general use in Rome: luxury of the flesh, splendor in dress, and pride of the heart.
"Three things Rome can never get enough of: money
for the episcopal pallium, monthly, and annual incomes from vacant
benefices. Allusion to the papal claims to fill the
ecclesiastical vacancies which occurred during the long months
(January, March, etc.), and to receive the annates,i.e,
the first year’s income from every spiritual living
worth more than twenty-four ducats per annum. Luther, in his Address to
the German Nobility, characterizes this papal avarice as downright
robbery.
"Three things are most praised and yet most rare in Rome. devotion, faith and innocence.
"Three things Rome brings to naught: a good conscience, devotion, and the oath.
"Three things are necessary in Rome to gain a lawsuit: money, letters of recommendation, and lies.
"Three things pilgrims usually bring back from Rome: a soiled conscience, a sick stomach, and an empty purse.
"Three things have kept Germany from getting wisdom: the stupidity of the princes, the decay of learning, and the superstition of the people.
"Three things are feared most in Rome: that the princes get united, that the people begin to open their eyes, and that Rome’s frauds are coming to light.
"Three things only could set Rome right: the determination of the princes, the impatience of the people, and an army of Turks at her doors."
This epigrammatic and pithy form made the dialogue popular and effective. Even Luther imitated it when, in his "Babylonian Captivity," he speaks of three walls, and three rods of the Papists. Hutten calls the Roman court a sink of iniquity, and says that for centuries no genuine successor of Peter had sat on his chair in Rome, but successors and imitators of Simon Magus, Nero, Domitian, and Heliogabalus.
As a remedy for these evils, he advises, not indeed the abolition of the papacy, but the withdrawal of all financial support from Germany, a reduction of the clerical force, and the permission of clerical marriage; by these means, luxury and immorality would at least be checked.
It is characteristic of the church of that age, that Hutten was on terms of intimacy with the first prelate of Germany, even while he wrote his violent attacks on Rome, and received a salary, and afterwards a pension, from him. But he lauded Albrecht to the skies for his support of liberal learning. He knew little of, and cared less for, doctrinal differences. His policy was to fight the big Pope of Rome with the little Pope of Germany, and to make the German emperor, princes, and nobles, his allies in shaking off the degrading yoke of foreign tyranny. Possibly Albrecht may have indulged in the dream of becoming the primate of an independent Catholic Church of Germany.
Unfortunately, Hutten lacked moral purity, depth,
and weight. He was Frank, brave, and bold, but full of conceit, a
restless adventurer, and wild stormer; able to destroy, but unable to
build up. In his twentieth year he had contracted a disgusting disease
which ruined him physically, and was used by his Roman opponents to
ruin him morally. He suffered incredibly from it and from all sorts of
quack remedies, for ten years, was attacked by it again after his cure,
and yet maintained the vigor and freshness of his spirit. He himself speaks very frankly of his Morbus
Gallicus, or Malum Franciaeand its horrible effects, without
asserting his innocence. Strauss discusses it fully with a belief in
his guilt, yet pity for his sufferings and admiration for his
endurance. "Er hatte," he says(U. v. H., p.
241),"den Jugendfehler, dessen wir ihn schuldig achten, in einem Grade
zu büssen, welcher selbst des unerbittlichsten
Sittenrichters Strenge in Mitleid verwandeln muss .... Man weiss nicht
was schrecklicher ist, die Beschreibung die uns Hutten von seinem
Zustande, oder die er uns von den Quälereien macht, welche
von unverständigen Aerzten als Curen über ihn
verhängt wurden."
Hutten hailed the Wittenberg movement, though at first only as "a quarrel between two hot-headed monks who are shouting and screaming against each other" and hoped "that they would eat each other up." After the Leipzig disputation, he offered to Luther (first through Melanchthon) the aid of his pen and sword, and, in the name of his noble friend the Knight Franz von Sickingen, a safe retreat at Ebernburg near Kreuznach, where Martin Bucer, Johann Oecolampadius, and other fugitives from convents, and sympathizers with reform, found a hospitable home. He sent him his books with notes, that he might republish them.
But Luther was cautious. He availed himself of the literary and political sympathy, but only as far as his theological and religious position allowed. He respected Reuchlin, Erasmus, Crotus, Mutian, Pirkheimer, Hutten, and the other humanists, for their learning and opposition to monkery and priestcraft; be fully shared the patriotic indignation against Romish tyranny: but he missed in them moral earnestness, religious depth, and that enthusiasm for the pure gospel which was his controlling passion. He aimed at reformation, they at illumination. He did not relish the frivolous satire of the Epistolae obscurorum virorum; he called them silly, and the author a Hans Wurst (Jack Sausage); he would grow indignant, and weep rather than laugh, over the obscurantism and secret vices of the monks, though he had as keen a sense of the ridiculous as Crotus and Hutten. He deprecated, moreover, the resort to physical force in a spiritual warfare, and relied on the power of the Word of God, which had founded the Church, and which must reform the Church. His letters to Hutten are lost, but he wrote to Spalatin (Jan. 16, 1521): "You see what Hutten wants. I would not have the gospel defended by violence and murder. In this sense I wrote to him. By the Word the world was conquered; by the Word the Church was preserved; by the Word she will be restored. Antichrist, as he began without violence, will be crushed without violence, by the Word."
Hutten was impatient. He urged matters to a
crisis. Sickingen attacked the Archbishop and Elector of Trier (Treves)
to force the Reformation into his territory; but he was defeated, and
died of his wounds in the hands of his enemies, May 7, 1522. Within one
month all his castles were captured and mostly burnt by the allied
princes; two of his sons were banished, a third was made prisoner.
Luther saw in this disaster a judgment of God, and was confirmed in his
aversion to the use of force. E. Münch, Fr. v. Sickingen.
Stuttgart, 1827 sqq. 3 vols. Strauss, l.c. p. 488. Ullmann, Franz v.
Sickingen, Leipzig, 1872.
Hutten fled, a poor and sick exile, from Germany
to Basel, and hoped to find a hospitable reception by Erasmus, his
former friend and admirer; but he was coldly refused by the cautious
scholar, and took bitter revenge in an unsparing attack on his
character. He then went to Zürich, and was kindly and
generously treated by Zwingli, who provided him with books and money,
and sent him first to the hot bath of Pfeffers, and then to a quiet
retreat on the island of Ufnau in the Lake of Zürich, under
medical care. But he soon died there, of the incurable disease of his
youth, in August, 1523, in the Prime of life (thirty-five years and
four months of age), leaving nothing but his pen and sword, and the
lesson: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord
of hosts" (
With Hutten and Sickingen the hope of a political reconstruction of Germany through means of the Reformation and physical force was destroyed. What the knights failed to accomplish, the peasants could still less secure by the general revolt two years later. But notwithstanding these checks, the Reformation was bound to succeed with spiritual weapons.
§ 43. Luther’s Crusade against Popery. 1520.
After the disputation at Leipzig, Luther lost all hope of a reformation from Rome, which was preparing a bull of excommunication.
Here begins his storm and pressure period, Sturm- und
Drangperiode is
an expressive German phrase.
Under severe mental anguish he was driven to the
conviction that the papacy, as it existed in his day, was an
anti-christian power, and the chief source and support of abuses in the
Church. Prierias, Eck, Emser, and Alveld defended the most extravagant
claims of the papacy with much learning, but without any discrimination
between fact and fiction. Luther learned from the book of Laurentius
Valla, as republished by Ulrich von Hutten, that the Donation of
Constantine, by which this emperor conferred on Pope Sylvester and his
successors the temporal sovereignty not only over the Lateran Palace,
but also over Rome, Italy, and all the West, was a baseless forgery of
the dark ages. He saw through the "devilish lies," as he called them,
of the Canon law and the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. "It must have been
a plague sent by God," he says (in his "Address to the German
Nobility"), "that induced so many people to accept such lies, though
they are so gross and clumsy that one would think a drunken boor could
lie more skillfully." Genuine Catholic scholars of a later period have
exposed with irrefragable arguments this falsification of history. His
view of the Church expanded beyond the limits of the papacy, and took
in the Oriental Christians, and even such men as Hus, who was burned by
an oecumenical council for doctrines derived from St. Paul and St.
Augustin. Instead of confining the Church, like the Romanists, to an
external visible communion under the Pope, he regarded it now as a
spiritual communion of all believers under Christ the only Head. All
the powers of indignation and hatred of Roman oppression and corruption
gathered in his breast. "I can hardly doubt," he wrote to Spalatin,
Feb. 23, 1520, "that the Pope is the Antichrist." In the same year,
Oct. 11, he went so far as to write to Leo X. that the papal dignity
was fit only for traitors like Judas Iscariot whom God had cast out. In the midst of a Latin letter to Spalatin,
from the beginning of June, 1520 (De Wette, I. 453), he gives vent to
his wrath against popery in these German words:"Ich meine, sie sind zu Rom
alle toll, thöricht, wüthend, unsinnig, Narren,
Stock, Stein, Hölle, und Teufel
geworden." In the
same letter he mentions his intention to publish a book"ad Carolum
et totius Germaniae nobilitatem adversus Romanae curiaetyrannidem et
nequitiam."
Luther was much confirmed in his new convictions by Melanchthon, who had independently by calm study arrived at the same conclusion. In the controversy with Eck, August, 1519, Melanchthon laid down the far-reaching principle that the Scriptures are the supreme rule of faith, and that we must not explain the Scriptures by the Fathers, but explain and judge the Fathers by the Scriptures. He discovered that even Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustin had often erred in their exegesis. A little later (September, 1519), he raised the same charge against the Councils, and maintained that a Catholic Christian could not be required to believe any thing that was not warranted by the Scriptures. He expressed doubts about transubstantiation and the whole fabric of the mass. His estimate of the supreme value of the Scriptures, especially of Paul, rose higher and higher, and made him stronger and bolder in the conflict with mediaeval tradition.
Thus fortified by the learning of Melanchthon,
encouraged by the patriotic zeal of Hutten and Sickingen, goaded by the
fury of his enemies, and impelled, as it were, by a preternatural
impulse, Luther attacked the papal power as the very stronghold of
Satan. Without personal ill-will against anybody, he had a burning
indignation against the system, and transcended all bounds of
moderation. See the remarkable passage in his letter to
Conrad Pellicanus, January or February, 1521 (De Wette, I. 555):
"Recte mones modestiae me: sentio et ipse, sed compos mei non sum;
rapior nescio quo spiritu, cum nemini me male velle conscius sim: verum
urgent etiam illi furiosissime, ut Satanam non satis
observem."
He issued in rapid succession from July till
October, 1520, his three most effective reformatory works: the,
"Address to the German Nobility," the "Babylonian Captivity of the
Church," and the, "Freedom of a Christian Man." L. Lemme: Die drei grossen
Reformationsschriften Luthers vom Jahre 1520. Gotha, 1875, 2d ed., 1884.
Wace and Bucheim: First Principles of the Reformation,
London,
1883.
The sixteenth century was the age of practical soteriology. It had to settle the relation of man to God, to bring the believer into direct communion with Christ, and to secure to him the personal benefits of the gospel salvation. What was heretofore regarded as the exclusive privilege of the priest was to become the common privilege of every Christian. To this end, it was necessary to break down the walls which separated the clergy from the laity, and obstructed the approach to God. This was most effectually done by Luther’s anti-papal writings. On the relation of man to God rests the relation of man to his fellow-men; this is the sociological problem which forms one of the great tasks of the nineteenth century.
§ 44. Address to the German Nobility.
An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation: von des christlichen Standes Besserung. In Walch’s ed., X. 296 sqq.; Erl. ed., XXI. 274–360; Weimar ed., VI. 404. Köstlin (in his shorter biography of Luther, p. 197 New York ed.) gives a facsimile of the title-page of the second edition. Dr. Karl Benrath of Bonn published a separate ed., with introduction and notes, as No. 4 of the "Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte." Halle, 1886 (114 pages).
"The time for silence is gone, and the time for
speaking has come." With these words (based on On that date he informed Wencislaus Link:
"Editur noster libellus in Papam de reformanda ecclesia vernaculus,
ad universam nobilitatem Germaniae, qui summe offensurus est Romam ....
Vale, et ora pro me." De Wette, I. 470.
The book is a most stirring appeal to the German nobles, who, through Hutten and Sickingen, had recently offered their armed assistance to Luther. He calls upon them to take the much-needed Reformation of the Church into their own hands; not, indeed, by force of arms, but by legal means, in the fear of God, and in reliance upon his strength. The bishops and clergy refused to do their duty; hence the laity must come to the front of the battle for the purity and liberty of the Church.
Luther exposes without mercy the tyranny of the Pope, whose government, he says, "agrees with the government of the apostles as well as Lucifer with Christ, hell with heaven, night with day; and yet he calls himself Christ’s Vicar, and the Successor of Peter."
The book is divided into three parts: —
1. In the first part, Luther pulls down what he calls the three walls of Jericho, which the papacy had erected in self-defense against any reformation; namely, the exclusion of the laity from all control, the exclusive claim to interpret the Scriptures, and the exclusive claim to call a Council.
Under the first head, he brings out clearly and
strongly, in opposition to priestcraft, the fundamental Protestant
principle of the general priesthood of all baptized Christians. He
attacks the distinction of two estates, one spiritual, consisting of
Pope, bishops, priests, and monks; and one temporal, consisting of
princes, lords, artificers, and peasants. There is only one body, under
Christ the Head. All Christians belong to the spiritual estate.
Baptism, gospel and faith,—these alone make spiritual
and Christian people. "Was aus der Taufe gekrochen ist, das mag sich
rühmen, dass es schon Priester, Bischof, und Papst geweihet
sei."
Luther represents here the ministerial office as the creature of the congregation; while at a later period, warned by democratic excesses, and the unfitness of most of the congregations of that age for a popular form of government, he laid greater stress upon the importance of the ministry as an institution of Christ. This idea of the general priesthood necessarily led to the emancipation of the laity from priestly control, and their participation in the affairs of the Church, although this has been but very imperfectly carried out in Protestant state churches. It destroyed the distinction between higher (clerical and monastic), and lower morality; it gave sanctity to the natural relations, duties, and virtues; it elevated the family as equal in dignity to virginity; it promoted general intelligence, and sharpened the sense of individual responsibility to the Church. But to the same source may be traced also the undue interference of kings, princes, and magistrates in ecclesiastical matters, and that degrading dependence of many Protestant establishments upon the secular power. Kingcraft and priestcraft are two opposite extremes, equally opposed to the spirit of Christianity. Luther, and especially Melanchthon, bitterly complained, in their later years, of the abuse of the episcopal power assumed by the magistrate, and the avarice of princes in the misappropriation of ecclesiastical property.
The principle of the general priesthood of the laity found its political and civil counterpart in the American principle of the general kingship of men, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are born free and equal."
2. In the second part, Luther chastises the worldly pomp of the Pope and the cardinals, their insatiable greed, and exactions under false pretenses.
3. In the third part, he deals with practical suggestions. He urges sweeping reforms in twenty-seven articles, to be effected either by the civil magistrate, or by a general council of ministers and laymen.
He recommends the abolition of the annates, of the worldly pomp and idolatrous homage paid to the Pope (as kissing his feet), and of his whole temporal power, so that he should be hereafter merely a spiritual ruler, with no power over the emperor except to anoint and crown him, as a bishop crowns a king, as Samuel crowned Saul and David.
He strongly demands the abrogation of enforced clerical celibacy, which destroys instead of promoting chastity, and is the cause of untold misery. Clergymen should be allowed to marry, or not to marry, according to their gift and sense of duty.
Masses for the dead should be abolished, since they have become a solemn mockery, and devices for getting money, thus exciting the anger of God.
Processions, saints’ days, and most of the public festivals, except Sunday, should be abrogated, since holy days have become most unholy by drinking, gambling, and idling.
Monasteries should be reduced in number, and converted into schools, with freedom to enter and to leave without binding vows.
Certain punishments of the Canon law should cease, especially the interdict which silences God’s word and service,—a greater sin than to kill twenty Popes at once.
Fasts should be voluntary and optional; for whilst
at Rome they laugh at fasts, they let us abroad eat oil which they
would not think fit for greasing their boots, and then sell us the
liberty of eating butter and other things; whereas the apostle says
that the gospel has given us liberty in all such matters (
He also would forbid all begging in Christendom;
each town should support its own poor, and not allow strange beggars to
come in, whether pilgrims or mendicant monks; it is not right that one
should work that another may be idle, and live ill that another may
live well, but "if any would not work, neither should he eat" (
He counsels a reduction of the clerical force, and the prohibition of pluralities. "As for the fraternities, together with indulgences, letters of indulgence, dispensations, masses, and all such things, let them all be drowned and abolished."
He recommends (Art. 24) to do justice to, and make peace with, the Bohemians; for Hus and Jerome of Prague were unjustly burnt, in violation of the safe-conduct promised by the Pope and the Emperor. Heretics should be overcome with books, not with fire; else, the hangmen would be the most learned doctors in the world, and there would be no need of study."
In Art. 25, Luther urges a sound reformation of
the universities, which had become "schools of Greek fashion" and
"heathenish manners" (
He does not spare national vices. He justly rebukes the extravagance in dress, the usury, and especially the intemperance in eating and drinking, for which, he says, "we Germans have an ill reputation in foreign countries, as our special vice, and which has become so common, and gained so much the upper hand, that sermons avail nothing." (His frequent protest against the "Saufteufel" of the Germans, as he calls their love of drink, is still unheeded. In temperance the Southern nations of Europe are far ahead of those of the North.)
In conclusion, he expresses the expectation that he will be condemned upon earth. "My greatest care and fear is, lest my cause be not condemned by men; by which I should know for certain that it does not please God. Therefore let them freely go to work, Pope, bishop, priest, monk, or doctor: they are the true people to persecute the truth, as they have always done. May God grant us all a Christian understanding, and especially to the Christian nobility of the German nation true spiritual courage, to do what is best for our unhappy Church. Amen."
The book was a firebrand thrown into the
headquarters of the papal church. It anticipated a reply to the papal
bull, and prepared the public mind for it. It went right to the heart
of the Germans, in their own language wielded with a force as never
before, and gave increased weight to the hundred grievances of long
standing against Rome. But it alarmed some of his best friends. They
condemned or regretted his biting severity. "Omnes ferme [fere] in me
damnant mordacitatem," he says in letter to Link, Aug. 19,
1520. See his letters to John Lange (Aug. 18, 1520)
and to Wenceslaus Link (Aug. 19) in De Wette, I.
477-479.
NOTES.
The following extracts give a fair idea of Luther’s polemic against the Pope in this remarkable book: —
"The custom of kissing the
Pope’s feet must cease. It is an un-Christian, or
rather an anti-Christian example, that a poor sinful man should suffer
his feet to be kissed by one who is a hundred times better than he. If
it is done in honor of his power, why does he not do it to others in
honor of their holiness? Compare them together: Christ and the Pope.
Christ washed his disciples’ feet, and dried them, and
the disciples never washed his. The Pope, pretending to be higher than
Christ, inverts this, and considers it a great favor to let us kiss his
feet: whereas if any one wished to do so, he ought to do his utmost to
prevent them, as St. Paul and Barnabas would not suffer themselves to
be worshiped as gods by the men at Lystra, saying, ’We
also are men of like passions with you’ (
"It is of a piece with this revolting pride, that the Pope is not satisfied with riding on horseback or in a carriage, but, though he be hale and strong, is carried by men like an idol in unheard-of pomp. I ask you, how does this Lucifer-like pride agree with the example of Christ, who went on foot, as did also all his apostles? Where has there been a king who lived in such worldly pomp as he does, who professes to be the head of all whose duty it is to despise and flee from all worldly pomp—I mean, of all Christians? Not that this need concern us for his own sake, but that we have good reason to fear God’s wrath, if we flatter such pride, and do not show our discontent. It is enough that the Pope should be so mad and foolish, but it is too much that we should sanction and approve it."
After enumerating all the abuses to which the Pope and his Canon law give sanction, and which he upholds with his usurped authority, Luther addresses him in this impassioned style: —
"Dost thou hear this, O Pope! not the most holy,
but the most sinful? Would that God would hurl thy chair headlong from
heaven, and cast it down into the abyss of hell! Who gave you the power
to exalt yourself above God? to break and to loose what he has
commanded? to teach Christians, more especially Germans, who are of
noble nature, and are famed in all histories for uprightness and truth,
to be false, unfaithful, perjured, treacherous, and wicked? God has
commanded to keep faith and observe oaths even with enemies: you dare
to cancel his command, laying it down in your heretical, antichristian
decretals, that you have power to do so; and through your mouth and
your pen Satan lies as he never lied before, teaching you to twist and
pervert the Scriptures according to your own arbitrary will. O Lord
Christ! look down upon this, let thy day of judgment come and destroy
the Devil’s lair at Rome. Behold him of whom St. Paul
spoke (
Janssen (II. 100) calls Luther’s "Address to the German Nobility" "das eigentliche Kriegsmanifest der Lutherisch-Huttenschen Revolutionspartei," and "ein Signal zum gewaltsamen Angriff." But the book nowhere counsels war; and in the letter to Link he says expressly: "nec hoc a me agitur, ut seditionem moveam, sed ut concilio generali libertatem asseram"(De Wette, I. 479). Janssen quotes (p. 103) a very vehement passage from Luther’s contemporaneous postscript to a book of Prierias which he republished (De juridica et irrefragabili veritate Romanae Ecclesiae Romanique Pontificis), expressing a wish that the Emperor, kings, and princes would make a bloody end to Pope and cardinals and the whole rabble of the Romish Sodom. But this extreme and isolated passage is set aside by his repeated declarations against carnal warfare, and was provoked by the astounding assertions of Prierias, the master of the papal palace, that the Pope was the infallible judge of all controversies, the head of all spiritual, the father of all secular princes, the head of the Church and of the whole universe (caput totius orbis universi). Against such blasphemy Luther breaks out in these words: "Mihi vero videtur, si sic pergat furor Romanistarum, nullum reliquum esse remedium, quam ut imperator, reges et principes vi et armis accincti aggrediantur has pestes orbis terrarum, remque non jam verbis, sed ferro decernant .... Si fures furca, si latrones gladio, si haereticos igne plectimus, cur non magis hos magistros perditionis, hos cardinales, hos papas et totam istam romanae Sodomae colluviem, quae ecclesiam Dei sine fine corrumpit, omnibus armis impetimus, et manus nostras in sanguine eorum lavamus? tanquam a communi et omnium periculosissimo incendio nos nostrosque liberaturi." Erl. ed., Opera Latina, II. 107. He means a national resistance under the guidance of the Emperor and rightful rulers.
§ 45. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. October, 1520.
De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae Praeludium D. Martini Lutheri. Wittenb. 1520. Erl. ed. Opera Lat., vol. V. 13–118; German translation (Von der Babylonischen Gefängniss, etc.) by an unknown author, 1520, reprinted in Walch, XIX. 5–153, and in 0. v. Gerlach, IV. 65–199; the Lat. original again in the Weimar ed., vol. V. An English translation by Buchheim in First Principles of the Reformation (London, 1883), pp. 141–245.
In closing the "Address to the Nobility," Luther announces: "I have another song still to sing concerning Rome. If they wish to hear it, I will sing it to them, and sing with all my might. Do you understand, my friend Rome, what I mean?"
This new song, or second war-trumpet, was the book
on the, "Babylonian Captivity of the Church," published in the
beginning of October, 1520. On Oct. 3, 1520, Luther wrote to Spalatin:
"Liber de captivitate Ecclesiae sabbato exibit, et ad te
mittetur." (De Wette, I 491.)
Luther begins by thanking his Romish opponents for
promoting his theological education. "Two years ago," he says, "I wrote
about indulgences when I was still involved in superstitious respect
for the tyranny of Rome; but now I have learned, by the kind aid of
Prierias and the friars, that indulgences are nothing but wicked
devices of the flatterers of Rome. Afterwards Eck and Emser instructed
me concerning the primacy of the Pope. While I denied the divine right,
I still admitted the human right; but after reading the super-subtle
subtilties of those coxcombs in defense of their idol, I became
convinced that the papacy is the kingdom of Babylon and the power of
Nimrod the mighty hunter. Now a learned professor of Leipzig writes
against me on the sacrament in both kinds, and is about to do still
greater wonders. He means Alveld’s Tractatus
de communione sub utraque specie quantum ad laicos, 1520. He
contemptuously omits his name.
1. Luther first discusses the sacrament of the Holy Communion, and opposes three errors as a threefold bondage; namely, the withdrawal of the cup from the laity, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the sacrifice of the mass.
(a) As regards the withdrawal of the cup, he refutes the flimsy arguments of Alveld, and proves from the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul, that the whole sacrament was intended for the laity as well as the clergy, according to the command, "Drink ye all of this." Each writer attaches the mark of universality to the cup, not to the bread, as if the Spirit foresaw the (Bohemian) schism. The blood of Christ was shed for all for the remission of sins. If the laymen have the thing, why should they be refused the sign which is much less than the thing itself? The Church has no more right to take away the cup from the laity than the bread. The Romanists are the heretics and schismatics in this case, and not the Bohemians and the Greeks who take their stand on the manifest teaching of the Word of God. "I conclude, then, that to deny reception in both kinds to the laity is an act of impiety and tyranny, and one not in the power of any angel, much less of any Pope or council whatsoever." ... "The sacrament does not belong to the priests, but to all; nor are the priests lords, but servants, whose duty it is to give both kinds to those who seek them, as often as they seek them." ... "Since the Bishop of Rome has ceased to be a bishop, and has become a tyrant, I fear absolutely none of his decrees; for I know that neither he, nor even a general council, has authority to establish new articles of faith."
(b) The doctrine of transubstantiation is a milder
bondage, and might be held alongside with the other and more natural
view of the real presence, which leaves the elements unchanged. It is
well known that Luther was to the end of life a firm believer in the
real presence, and oral manducation of the very body and blood of
Christ by unworthy as well as worthy communicants (of course, with
opposite effects). He denied a miraculous change of the substance of
the elements, but maintained the co-existence of the body and blood in,
with, and under bread and wine, both being real, the one invisible and
the other visible. This view is usually called consubstantiation;
but Lutherans object to the term in the sense ofimpanation, or
local inclusion, mixture, and circumscription. They mean an illocal
presence of a ubiquitous body. This is not strictly historical.
Transubstantiation was clearly taught by Paschasius Radbertus in the
ninth century, though not without contradiction from Ratramnus. See
Schaff,Ch. Hist., vol. IV. 544 sqq.
(c) The sacrifice of the mass: that is, the offering to God of the very body and blood of Christ by the hands of the priest when he pronounces the words of institution; in other words, an actual repetition of the atoning sacrifice of the cross, only in an unbloody manner. This institution is the very heart of Roman-Catholic (and Greek-Catholic) worship. Luther attacks it as the third bondage, and the most impious of all. He feels the difficulty, and perhaps impossibility, of a task which involves an entire revolution of public worship. "At this day," he says, "there is no belief in the Church more generally received, or more firmly held, than that the mass is a good work and a sacrifice. This abuse has brought in an infinite flood of other abuses, until faith in the sacrament has been utterly lost, and they have made this divine sacrament a mere subject of traffic, huckstering, and money-getting contracts; and the entire maintenance of priests and monks depends upon these things." He goes back to the simplicity of the primitive institution of the Lord’s Supper, which is a thankful commemoration of the atoning death of Christ, with a blessing attached to it, namely, the forgiveness of sins, to be appropriated by faith. The substance of this sacrament is promise and faith. It is a gift of God to man, not a gift of man to God. It is, like baptism, to be received, and not to be given. The Romanists have changed it into a good work of man and an opus operatum, by which they imagine to please God; and have surrounded it with so many prayers, signs, vestments, gestures, and ceremonies, that the original meaning is obscured. "They make God no longer the bestower of good gifts on us, but the receiver of ours. Alas for such impiety!" He proves from the ancient Church that the offering of the eucharist, as the name indicates, was originally a thank-offering of the gifts of the communicants for the benefit of the poor. The true sacrifice which we are to offer to God is our thanks, our possessions, and our whole person. He also objects to the use of the Latin language in the mass, and demands the vernacular.
2. The sacrament of Baptism. Luther thanks God that this sacrament has been preserved uninjured, and kept from "the foul and impious monstrosities of avarice and superstition." He agrees essentially with the Roman doctrine, and considers baptism as a means of regeneration; while Zwingli and Calvin regarded it merely as a sign and seal of preceding regeneration and church-membership. He even makes more of it than the Romanists, and opposes the prevailing view of St. Jerome, that penitence is a second plank of refuge after shipwreck. Instead of relying on priestly absolution, it is better to go back to the remission of sins secured in baptism. "When we rise out of our sins, and exercise penitence, we are simply reverting to the efficacy of baptism and to faith in it, whence we had fallen; and we return to the promise then made to us, but which we had abandoned through our sin. For the truth of the promise once made always abides, and is ready to stretch out the hand and receive us when we return."
As to the mode of baptism, he gives here, as
elsewhere, his preference to immersion, which then still prevailed in
England and in some parts of the Continent, and which was not a point
of dispute either between Romanists and Protestants, or between
Protestants and Anabaptists; while on the question of infant-baptism
the Anabaptists differed from both. "Baptism," he says, "is that
dipping into water whence it takes its name. For, in Greek to baptize
signifies to dip, and baptism is a dipping." "Baptism signifies two
things,—death and resurrection; that is, full and
complete justification. When the minister dips the child into the
water, this signifies death; when he draws him out again, this
signifies life. Thus Paul explains the matter (
Luther’s view of baptismal regeneration seems to be inconsistent with his chief doctrine of justification by faith alone. He says, "It is not baptism which justifies any man, or is of any advantage; but faith in that word of promise to which baptism is added: for this justifies and fulfills the meaning of baptism. For faith is the submerging of the old man, and the emerging of the new man." But how does this apply to baptized infants, who can not be said to have faith in any proper sense of the term, though they have undoubtedly the capacity of faith? Luther here brings in the vicarious faith of the parents or the Church. But he suggests also the idea that faith is produced in the children, through baptism, on the ground of their religious receptivity.
3. Lastly, Luther attacks the traditional number of the sacraments. He allows "only two sacraments in the Church of God, Baptism and Bread; since it is in these alone that we see both a sign divinely instituted, and a promise of remission of sins." In some sense he retains also the sacrament of Penance, as a way and means of return to baptism.
The rest of the seven Roman sacraments—confirmation, marriage, ordination, and extreme unction—he rejects because they can not be proved from Scripture, and are not commanded by Christ.
Matrimony has existed from the beginning of the
world, and belongs to all mankind. Why, then, should it be called a
sacrament? Paul calls it a "mystery," but not a sacrament, as
translated in the Vulgate (
Luther closes with these words: "I hear a report
that fresh bulls and papal curses are being, prepared against me, by
which I am urged to recant, or else to be declared a heretic. If this
is true, I wish this little book to be a part of my future recantation,
that they may not complain that their tyranny has puffed itself up in
vain. I shall also shortly publish, Christ being my helper, such a
recantation as the See of Rome has never yet seen or heard, thus
abundantly testifying my obedience in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Perhaps he means the burning of the
Pope’s bull, rather than, as O. v. Gerlach
conjectures, the appendix to his later book against Ambrosius
Catharinus, in which he tries to prove that the Pope is the Antichrist
predicted by
§ 46. Christian Freedom.—Luther’s Last Letter to the Pope. October, 1520.
Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, Wittenberg, 1520; often reprinted separately, and in the collected works of Luther. See Walch, XIX. 1206 sqq.; Erl. ed., XXVII. 173–200 (from the first ed.); Gerlach’s ed. V. 5–46. The Latin edition, De Libertate Christiana, was finished a little later, and has some additions; see Erl. ed. Opera Lat., IV. 206–255. Luther’s letter to the Pope in Latin and German is printed also in De Wette, I. 497–515. English version of the tract and the letter by Buchheim, l.c. 95–137.
Although Rome had already condemned Luther, the papal delegate Miltitz still entertained the hope of a peaceful settlement. He had extracted from Luther the promise to write to the Pope. He had a final interview with him and Melanchthon at Lichtenberg (now Lichtenburg, in the district of Torgau), in the convent of St. Antony, Oct. 11, 1520, a few days after Luther had seen the bull of excommunication. It was agreed that Luther should write a book, and a letter in Latin and German to Leo X., and assure him that he had never attacked his person, and that Dr. Eck was responsible for the whole trouble. The book was to be finished in twelve days, but. dated back to Sept. 6 in order to avoid the appearance of being occasioned by the Pope’s bull.
This is the origin of two of the most remarkable productions of Luther,—his little book on "Christian Freedom," and a dedicatory letter to Leo X.
The beautiful tract on "Christian Freedom" is a pearl among Luther’s writings. It presents a striking contrast to his polemic treatises against Rome, which were intended to break down the tyranny of popery. And yet it is a positive complement to them, and quite as necessary for a full understanding of his position. While opposing the Pope’s tyranny, Luther was far from advocating the opposite extreme of license. He was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the Epistle to the Galatians, which protests against both extremes, and inspired the keynote to Luther’s Tract. He shows wherein true liberty consists. He means liberty according to the gospel; liberty in Christ, not from Christ; and offers this as a basis for reconciliation. He presents here a popular summary of Christian life. He keeps free from all polemics, and writes in the best spirit of that practical mysticism which connected him with Staupitz and Tauler.
The leading idea is: The Christian is the lord of
all, and subject to none, by virtue of faith; he is the servant of all,
and subject to every one, by virtue of love. Faith and love constitute
the Christian: the one binds him to God, the other to his fellow-man.
The idea is derived from St. Paul, who says, "Though I was free from
all men, I brought myself under bondage to all, that I might gain the
more" (
Man is made free by faith, which alone justifies;
but it manifests itself in love, and all good works. The person must
first be good before good works can be done, and good works proceed
from a good person; as Christ says, "A good tree cannot bring forth
evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit" (
"Who, then, can comprehend the riches and glory of the Christian life? It can do all things, has all things, and is in want of nothing; is lord over sin, death, and hell, and, at the same time, is the obedient and useful servant of all. But alas! it is at this day unknown throughout the world; it is neither preached nor sought after, so that we are quite ignorant about our own name, why we are and are called Christians. We are certainly called so from Christ, who is not absent, but dwells among us, provided we believe in him; and are reciprocally and mutually one the Christ of the other, doing to our neighbor as Christ does to us. But now, in the doctrine of men, we are taught only to seek after merits, rewards, and things which are already ours; and we have made of Christ a task-master far more severe than Moses." ...
"We conclude, then, that a Christian man does not
live in and for himself, but in Christ and in his neighbor, or else is
no Christian; in Christ by faith, in his neighbor by love. By faith he
is carried upwards above himself to God, and by love he descends below
himself to his neighbor, still always abiding in God and his love; as
Christ says, ’Verily I say unto you, hereafter ye
shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and
descending upon the Son of man’ " (
In the Latin text Luther adds some excellent
remarks against those who misunderstand and distort spiritual liberty,
turn it into an occasion of carnal license, and show their freedom by
their contempt of ceremonies, traditions, and human laws. St. Paul
teaches us to walk in the middle path, condemning either extreme, and
saying, "Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let
not him that eateth not judge him that eateth" (
This Irenicon must meet with the approval of every
true Christian, whether Catholic or Protestant. It breathes the spirit
of a genuine disciple of St. Paul. It is full of heroic faith and
childlike simplicity. It takes rank with the best books of Luther, and
rises far above the angry controversies of his age, during which he
composed it, in the full possession of the positive truth and peace of
the religion of Christ. Köstlin(Mart. Luth., vol. I.
395 sq.):"Die Schrift von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen ist ein
tief-religiöser Traktat .... Sie ist ein ruhiges, positives
Zeugnis der Wahrheit, vor welcher die Waffen und Bande der Finsternis
von selbst zu nichte werden müssen. Sie zeigt uns den
tiefsten Grund des christlichen Bewusstseins und Lebens in einer edlen,
seligen Ruhe und Sicherheit, welche die über ihm hingehenden
Wogen und Stürme des Kampfes nicht zu erschüttern
vermögen. Sie zeigt zugleich, wie fest Luther selbst auf
diesem Grunde stand, indem er eben im Höhepunkt des
Kampfgedränges sie zu verfassen fähig
war." It is
perhaps characteristic that Janssen, who gives one-sided extracts from
the two other reformatory works of Luther, passes the tract on
"Christian Liberty" in complete silence. Cardinal
Hergenröther likewise ignores it.
Luther sent the book to Pope Leo X., who was too
worldly-minded a man to appreciate it; and accompanied the same with a
most singular and undiplomatic, yet powerful polemic letter, which, if
the Pope ever read it, must have filled him with mingled feelings of
indignation and disgust. In his first letter to the Pope (1518), Luther
had thrown himself at his feet as an obedient son of the vicar of
Christ; in his second letter (1519), he still had addressed him as a
humble subject, yet refusing to recant his conscientious convictions:
in his third and last letter he addressed him as an equal, speaking to
him with great respect for his personal character (even beyond his
deserts), but denouncing in the severest terms the Roman See, and
comparing him to a lamb among wolves, and to Daniel in the den of
lions. The Popes, he says, are vicars of Christ because Christ is
absent from Rome. "Ein Statthalter ist in
Abwesenheit seines Herrn ein Statthalter."
After some complimentary words about Leo, and protesting that he had never spoken disrespectfully of his person, Luther goes on to say, —
"The Church of Rome, formerly the most holy of all churches, has become the most lawless den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels, the very kingdom of sin, death, and hell; so that not even Antichrist, if he were to come, could devise any addition to its wickedness.
"Meanwhile you, Leo, are sitting like a lamb in the midst of wolves, like Daniel in the midst of lions, and, with Ezekiel, you dwell among scorpions. What opposition can you alone make to these monstrous evils? Take to yourself three or four of the most learned and best of the cardinals. What are these among so many? You would all perish by poison, before you could undertake to decide on a remedy. It is all over with the court of Rome: the wrath of God has come upon her to the uttermost. She hates Councils, she dreads to be reformed, she cannot restrain the madness of her impiety; she fills up the sentence passed on her mother, of whom it is said, ’We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed; let us forsake her.’ It had been your duty, and that of your cardinals, to apply a remedy to these evils; but this gout laughs at the physician’s hand, and the chariot does not obey the reins. Under the influence of these feelings I have always grieved that you, most excellent Leo, who were worthy of a better age, have been made pontiff in this. For the Roman court is not worthy of you and those like you, but of Satan himself, who in truth is more the ruler in that Babylon than you are.
"Oh, would that, having laid aside that glory which your most abandoned enemies declare to be yours, you were living rather in the office of a private priest, or on your paternal inheritance! In that glory none are worthy to glory, except the race of Iscariot, the children of perdition. For what happens in your court, Leo, except that, the more wicked and execrable any man is, the more prosperously he can use your name and authority for the ruin of the property and souls of men, for the multiplication of crimes, for the oppression of faith and truth, and of the whole Church of God? O Leo! in reality most unfortunate, and sitting on a most perilous throne: verily I tell you the truth, because I wish you well; for if Bernard felt compassion for his Anastasius at a time when the Roman See, though even then most corrupt, was as yet ruling with better hope than now, why should not we lament, to whom so much additional corruption and ruin has happened in three hundred years?
Is it not true that there is nothing under the vast heavens more corrupt, more pestilential, more hateful, than the court of Rome? She incomparably surpasses the impiety of the Turks, so that in very truth she, who was formerly the gate of heaven, is now a sort of open mouth of hell, and such a mouth as, under the urgent wrath of God, can not be blocked up; one course alone being left to us wretched men,—to call back and save some few, if we can, from that Roman gulf.
"Behold, Leo my father, with what purpose and on what principle it is that I have stormed against that seat of pestilence. I am so far from having felt any rage against your person, that I even hoped to gain favor with you and to aid in your welfare, by striking actively and vigorously at that your prison, nay, your hell. For, whatever the efforts of all intellects can contrive against the confusion of that impious court will be advantageous to you and to your welfare, and to many others with you. Those who do harm to her are doing your work; those who in every way abhor her are glorifying Christ; in short, those are Christians who are not Romans ....
"In fine, that I may not approach your Holiness
empty-handed, I bring with me this little book, De Libertate Christiana.
"Wittenberg, 6th September, 1520."
§ 47. The bull of Excommunication. June 15, 1520.
The bull "Exurge, Domine," in the Bullarium Romanum, ed. CAR. Cocquelines, Tom. III., Pars III. (ab anno 1431 ad 1521), pp. 487–493, and in Raynaldus (continuator of Baronius): Annal. Eccl., ad ann. 1520, no. 51 (Tom. XX. fol. 303–306). Raynaldus calls Luther "apostatam nefandissimum," and takes the bull from Cochlaeus, who, besides Eck and Ulemberg (a Protestant apostate), is the chief authority for his meager and distorted account of the German Reformation. A copy of the original edition of the bull is in the Astor Library, New York. See Notes.
U. v. Hutten published the bull with biting glosses: Bulla Decimi Leonis contra errores Lutheri et sequacium, or Die glossirte Bulle (in Hutten’s Opera, ed. Böcking, V. 301–333; in the Erl. ed. of Luther’s Op. Lat., IV. 261–304; also in German in Walch, XV. 1691 sqq.; comp. Strauss: U. v. Hutten, p. 338 sqq.). The glosses in smaller type interrupt the text, or are put on the margin. Luther: Von den neuen Eckischen Bullen und Lügen (Sept. 1520); Adv. execrabilem Antichristi bullam (Nov. 1520); Wider die Bullen des Endchrists (Nov. 1520; the same book as the preceding Latin work, but sharper and stronger); Warum des Papsts und seiner Jünger Bücher verbrannt sind (Lat. and Germ., Dec. 1520); all in Walch, XV. fol. 1674–1917; Erl. ed., XXIV. 14–164, and Op. Lat. V. 132–238; 251–271. Luther’s letters to Spalatin and others on the bull of excommunication, in De Wette, I. 518–532.
Ranke: I. 294–301. Merle D’Aubigné, bk. VI. ch. III. sqq. Hagenbach, III. 100–102. Kahnis: I. 306–341. Köstlin: I. 379–382. Kolde: I. 280 sqq. Janssen: II. 108 sqq.
After the Leipzig disputation, Dr. Eck went to Rome,
and strained every nerve to secure the condemnation of Luther and his
followers. As Luther said, to rouse "the abyss of hell"
(Abgrund
der Hölle) against him. Eck seems to have been acting also in the interest
of the banking firm of Fugger in Augsburg, which carried on the
financial transactions between Germany and Italy, including the
transmission of indulgence money. See Ranke, I. 297. Ranke (I. 298) dates the bull from June 16;
Walch (XV. 1691) from June 24; but most historians (Gieseler, Kahnis,
Köstlin, Lenz, Janssen, Hergenröther, etc.) from
June 15. The last is correct, for the bull is dated "MDXX. xvii.
Kal. Julii." According to the Roman mode of reckoning backwards,
counting the day of departure, and adding two to the number of days of
the preceding month, the Kalendae Julii fall on June 15. Ranke probably
overlooked the fact that June had only twenty-nine days in the Julian
Calendar. Janssen refers to an essay of Druffel on the date of the bull
in the "Sitzungsberichte der Bayer Academie." 1880, p. 572; but he does
not give the result.
Nearly three years had elapsed since the publication of Luther’s Ninety-five Theses. In the mean time he had attacked with increasing violence the very foundations of the Roman Church, had denounced popery as an antichristian tyranny, and had dared to appeal from the Pope to a general council, contrary to the decisions of Pius II. and Julius II., who declared such an appeal to be heresy. Between the completion and the promulgation of the bull, he went still further in his, "Address to the German Nobility," and the book on the "Babylonian Captivity," and made a reconciliation impossible except by an absolute surrender, which was a moral impossibility for him. Rome could not tolerate Lutheranism any longer without ceasing to be Rome. She delayed final action only for political and prudential considerations, especially in view of the election of a new German Emperor, and the influential voice of the Elector Frederick, who was offered, but declined, the imperial crown.
The bull of excommunication is the papal counter-manifesto to Luther’s Theses, and condemns in him the whole cause of the Protestant Reformation. Therein lies its historical significance. It was the last bull addressed to Latin Christendom as an undivided whole, and the first which was disobeyed by a large part of it. Instead of causing Luther and his friends to be burnt, it was burnt by Luther. It is an elaborate document, prepared with great care in the usual heavy, turgid, and tedious style of the curia. It breathes the genuine spirit of the papal hierarchy, and mingles the tones of priestly arrogance, concern for truth, abomination of heresy and schism, fatherly sorrow, and penal severity. The Pope speaks as if he were the personal embodiment of the truth, the infallible judge of all matters of faith, and the dispenser of eternal rewards and punishments.
He begins with the words of
For the person of Luther, the Pope professes fatherly love and forbearance, and entreats him once more, by the mercies of God and the blood of Christ, to repent and recant within sixty days after the publication of the bull in the Brandenburg, Meissen, and Merseburg dioceses, and promises to receive him graciously like the prodigal son. But failing to repent, he and his adherents will be cut off, as withered branches, from the vine of Christ, and be punished as obstinate heretics. This means that they shall be burned; for the bull expressly condemns the proposition of Luther which denounces the burning of heretics as "contrary to the will of the Holy Spirit." All princes, magistrates, and citizens are exhorted, on threat of excommunication and promise of reward, to seize Luther and his followers, and to hand him over to the apostolic chair. Places which harbor him or his followers are threatened with the interdict. Christians are forbidden to read, print, or publish any of his books, and are commanded to burn them.
We may infer from this document in what a state of intellectual slavery Christendom would be at the present time if the papal power had succeeded in crushing the Reformation. It is difficult to estimate the debt we owe to Martin Luther for freedom and progress.
The promulgation and execution of the bull were
intrusted to two Italian prelates, Aleander and Caraccioli, and to Dr.
Eck. The personal enemy of Luther, who had been especially active in
procuring the bull, was now sent back in triumph with the dignity of a
papal nuncio, and even with the extraordinary power of including by
name several followers of Luther, among whom he singled out Carlstadt
and Dolzig of Wittenberg, Adelmann of Augsburg, Egranus of Zwickau, and
the humanists Pirkheimer and Spengler of Nürnberg. The
selection of Eck, the most unpopular man in Germany, was a great
mistake of the Pope, as Roman historians admit, and it helped the cause
of the Reformation. Pallavicini and Muratori censure Leo for
commissioning Eck. Janssen says (II. 109):"Es war ein trauriger Missgriff,
dass mit der Verkündigung und Vollstreckung der Bulle in
mehreren deutschen Dioecesen Luther’s Gegner Johann
Eck beauftragt wurde." The same view was previously expressed by Kampschulte
(Die
Universität Erfurt in ihrem Verh. zu dem Humanismus und der
Reformation,
Trier, 1858-60, Th. II., p. 36), although he fully justified the papal
bull as a necessity for the Roman Church, and characterized its tone as
comparatively mild in view of Luther’s
radicale
Umsturzgedanken and his violence of language. Audin and Archbishop Spalding
defend the Pope.
The bull was published and carried out without
much difficulty in Mayence, Cologne, and Louvain; and
Luther’s books were committed to the flames, with the
sanction of the new Emperor. But in Northern Germany, which was the
proper seat of the conflict, it met with determined resistance, and was
defeated. Eck printed and placarded the bull at Ingolstadt, at Meissen
(Sept. 21), at Merseburg (Sept. 25), and at Brandenburg (Sept. 29). But
in Leipzig where a year before he had achieved his boasted victory over
Luther in public debate, he was insulted by the students (one hundred
and fifty had come over from Wittenberg), and took flight in a convent;
the bull was bespattered, and torn to pieces. Letter of Miltitz to Fabian von Feilitzsch,
Oct. 2, 1520. In Walch, XV. 1872. Luther wrote to Spalatin, Oct. 3,
1520 (De Wette, I. 492), that he had just heard of the bad reception
and danger of Eck at Leipzig, and hoped that he might escape with his
life, but that his devices might come to
naught. "Bulla est, in aqua natet." So Luther
reports in a letter to Greffendorf, Oct. 20 (De Wette, I. 520), and in
a letter to Spalatin, Nov. 4 (I. 522 sq.). Kampschulte (l.c. II. 37
sqq.) gives a full account of Eck’s troubles at
Erfurt, from a rare printed placard,Intimatio Erphurdiana pro
Martino Luthero (preserved by Riederer, and quoted also by
Gieseler, III. I. 81, Germ. ed., or IV. 53, Anglo-Am. ed.), to the
effect that the whole theological faculty stirred up all the students,
calling upon them to resist "with hand and foot" the furious Pharisees
and slanderers of Luther, who wished to cast him out of the Church and
into hell. Luther makes no mention of such a strange action of the
faculty, which is scarcely credible as it included strict
Catholics.
Eck sent the bull to the rector of the University of Wittenberg, Oct. 3, 1520, with the request to prohibit the teaching of any of the condemned propositions of Luther, and threatening that, in case of disobedience, the Pope would recall all the liberties and privileges of the university. The professors and counselors of the Elector declined the promulgation for various reasons.
The Elector Frederick was on the way to Aachen to
assist at the coronation of Charles V., but was detained at Cologne by
the gout. There he received the bull from Aleander after the mass, Nov.
4, and was urged with eloquent words to execute it, and to punish
Luther or to send him to Rome; but he cautiously deferred an answer,
and sought the advice of Erasmus in the presence of Spalatin. The
famous scholar gave it as his judgment, that Luther’s
crime consisted in having touched the triple crown of the Pope and the
stomachs of the monks; "Lutherus peccavit in duobus, nempe quod
tetigit coronam Pontificis et ventres monachorum." Spalatin,
Annal. 28 sq. "Bullae saevitia probos omnes offendit, ut
indigna mitissimo Christi vicario." Erasmus soon afterwards called
back his Axiomata pro causa Lutheri, which he had sent to
Spalatin. They were, however, published (Erl. ed. of
Luther’s Op. Lat., vol. V. 238-242). About the
same time he advised the Emperor to submit the case of Luther to
impartial judges of different nations, or to a general council. See
Gieseler, IV. 53 sq., Am. ed.
NOTES.—THE BULL OF EXCOMMUNICATION.
As I do not find the bull in any of the Protestant or Roman-Catholic church histories which I have consulted (except the Annals of Raynaldus), I give it here in full as transcribed from an original copy in possession of the Astor Library, New York (probably the only one on the American Continent), together with facsimiles of titlepage and first page (see preceeding pages in text). The pamphlet contains twenty pages, small quarto, and is printed continuously, like ancient MSS. I have divided it into sections, with headings, and noted the departures of Cocquelines and Raynaldus from the original.
BULLA CONTRA ERRORES MARTINI LUTHERI ET SEQUACIUM.
Leo Episcopus Servus Servorum Dei. The heading is omitted by
Raynaldus.
Ad perpetuam rel memoriam.
[Proömium. The Pope invokes God, St. Peter and St. Paul, and all the saints, against the new enemies of the Church.]
Exurge, Domine, et judica causam tuam, memor esto
improperiorum tuorum, eorum, quae ab insipientibus fiunt
totâ die; inclina aurem tuam ad preces nostras, quoniam
surrexerunt vulpes quaerentes demoliri vineam, cujus tu torcular
calcasti solus, et ascensurus ad Patrem ejus curam, regimen et
administrationem Petro tanquam capiti et tuo vicario, ejusque
successoribus instar triumphantis Ecclesiae commisisti: exterminate
nititur eam aper de silva, et singularis ferus depasci [tur] eam.
Exurge, Petre, et pro pastorali cura praefata tibi (ut praefertur)
divinitus demandata, intende in causam sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae,
Matris omnium ecclesiarum, se fidei magistrae, quam tu, jubente Deo,
tuo sanguine consecrasti, contra quam, sicut tu praemonere dignatus es,
insurgunt magistri mendaces introducentes sectas perditionis, sibi
celerem interitum superducentes, Raynaldus:
superinducentes. Cocquelines omits
suae.
Exurgat denique, Raynaldus omits
denique Raynaldus omits
praefatis.
[The errors of the Greeks and Bohemians revived by Luther and his followers.]
Dudum siquidem Omitted by Raynaldus.
[The Germans, who received the empire from the Pope, were formerly most zealous against heresy, but now give birth to the most dangerous errors.]
Quod eo magis dolemus ibi Omitted by Raynaldus. Raynaldus:
propugnatores.
Pro pastorals igitur officii, divinâ gratiâ, nobis injuncti cura, quam gerimus, praedictorum errorum virus pestiferum ulterius tolerare seu dissimulare sine Christianae, religionis nota, atque orthodoxae fidei injuria nullo modo possumus. Eorum autem errorum aliquos praesentibus duximus inferendos, quorum tenor sequitur, et est talis: —
[Forty-one heretical sentences selected from Luther’s writings.]
I. Haeretica sententia est, sed usitata, Sacramenta novae legis justificantem gratiam illis dare, qui non ponunt obicem.
II. In puero post baptismum negare remanens peccatum, est Paulum et Christum simul conculcare.
III. Fomes peccati, etiam si nullum adsit actuale peccatum, moratur exeuntem a corpore animam ab ingressu coeli.
IV. Imperfecta caritas morituri fert secum necessario magnum timorem, qui se solo satis est facere poenam purgatorii, et impedit introitum regni.
V. Tres esse partes poenitentiae, contritionem, confessionem, et satisfactionem, non est fundatum in sacra scriptura, nec in antiquis sanctis Christianis doctoribus.
VI. Contritio, quae paratus per discussionem,
collectionem, Coequelines readscollationem, contrary
to the original which plainly reads
collectionem.
VII. Verissimum est proverbium, et omnium doctrina de contritionibus hucusque data praestantius, de cetero non facere, summa poenitentia, optima poenitentia, nova vita.
VIII. Nullo modo praesumas confiteri peccata venialia, sed nec omnia mortalia, quia impossibile est, ut omnia mortalia cognoscas: unde in primitiva Ecclesia solum manifesta mortalia confitebantur.
IX. Dum volumus omnia pure confiteri, nihil aliud facimus, quam quod misericordiae Dei nihil volumus relinquere ignoscendum.
X. Peccata non sunt illi remissa, nisi remittente sacerdote credat sibi remitti; immo peccatum maneret nisi remissum crederet; non enim sufficit remissio peccati et gratiae donatio, sed oportet etiam credere esse remissum.
XI. Nullo modo confidas absolvi propter tuam
contritionem, sed propter verbum Christi: "Quodcumque solveris." etc.
Sic, inquam, confide, si sacerdotis obtinueris absolutionem, et crede
fortiter te absolutum; et absolutus vere eris, Cocquelines: et absolutum vere esse.Raynaldus
is right here, according to the original.
XII. Si per impossibile confessus non esset contritus, aut sacerdos non serio, sed joco absolveret, si tamen credat se absolutum, verissime est absolutus.
XIII. In sacramento poenitentiae se remissione culpae non plus facit Papa aut episcopus, quam infimus sacerdos; immo ubi non est sacerdos, aeque tantum quilibet Christianus, etiam si mulier, aut puer esset.
XIV. Nullus debet sacerdote respondere, se esse
contritum, nec ·Cocquelines:
sed.
XV. Magnus est error eorum, qui ad sacramenta
Eucharistiae accedunt huic innixi, quod sint confessi, quod non sint
sibi conscii alicujus peccati mortalis; quod praemiserint orationes
suas et praeparatoria; omnes illi ad Raynaldus omits ad.
XVI. Consultum videtur, quod Ecclesia in communi
concilio Rayn. omits concilio. · Rayn. omits
specie.
XVII. Thesauri Ecclesiae, unde Papa dat indulgentias, non sunt merita Christi et sanctorum.
XVIII. Indulgentiae sunt piae fraudes fidelium, et remissiones bonorum onerum, et sunt de numero eorum, quae licent, et non de numero eorum, quae expediunt.
XIX. Indulgentiae his, qui veraciter eas consequuntur, non valent ad remissionem poenae pro peccatis actualibus debitae ad divinam justitiam.
XX. Seducuntur credentes indulgentias esse salutares, et ad fructum spiritûs utiles.
XXI. Indulgentiae necessariae sunt solum publicis criminibus, et proprie conceduntur duris solummodo et impatientibus.
XXII. Sex generibus hominum indulgentiae nec sunt necessariae, nec utiles; videlicet mortuis seu morituris, infirmis, legitime impeditis, his qui non commiserunt crimina, his qui crimina commiserunt, sed non publica, his qui meliora operantur.
XXIII. Excommunicationes sunt tantum externae poenae, nec privant hominem communibus spiritualibus Ecclesiae orationibus.
XXIV. Docendi sunt Christiani plus diligere excommunicationem quam timere.
XXV. Romanus Pontifex, Petri successor, non est Christi vicarius super omnes mundi ecclesias ab ipso Christo in beato Petro institutus.
XXVI. Verbum Christi ad Petrum: "Quodcumque solveris super terram," etc., extenditur duntaxat ad ligata ab ipso Petro.
XXVII. Certum est in manu Ecclesiae aut Papae prorsus non esse statuere articulos fidei, immo nec leges morum, seu bonorum operum.
XXVIII. Si Papa cum magna parte Ecclesiae sic vel sic sentiret, nec etiam erraret, adhuc non est peccatum aut haeresis contrarium sentire, praesertim in re non necessaria ad salutem, donec fuerit per Concilium universale alterum reprobatum, alterum approbatum.
XXIX. Via nobis facta est enarrandi auctoritatem Conciliorum, et libere contradicendi eorum gestis, et judicandi eorum decreta, et confidenter confitendi quidquid verum videtur, sive probatum fuerit, sive reprobatum a quocunque concilio.
XXX. Aliqui articuli Joannis Husz condemnati in concilio Constantiensi sunt Christianissimi, verissimi et evangelici, quos non universalis Ecclesia posset damnare.
XXXI. In omni opere bono Justus peccat.
XXXII. Opus bonum optime factum veniale est peccatum.
XXXIII. Haereticos comburi est contra voluntatem
Spiritûs. This is an indirect approval of the burning of
heretics. Rome never has disowned this theory.
XXXIV. Praeliari adversus Turcas est repugnare Deo visitanti iniquitates nostras per illos.
XXXV. Nemo est certus se non semper peccare mortaliter propter occultissimum superbaa vitium.
XXXVI. Liberum arbitrium post peccatum est res de solo titulo, et dum facit quod in se est, peccat mortaliter.
XXXVII. Purgatorium non potest probari ex sacra scriptura, quae sit in canone.
XXXVIII. Animae in purgatorio non sunt securae de
earum salute, saltem omnes; nec probatum est ullis aut rationibus aut
scripturis, ipsas esse extra statum merendi, aut Cocquelines reads nec
—nec for aut. Raynaldus is right
here.
XXXIX. Animae in purgatorio peccant sine intermissione, quamdiu quaerunt requiem, et horrent poenas.
XL. Animae ex purgatorio liberatae suffragiis viventium minus beantur, quam si per se satisfecissent.
XLI. Praelati ecclesiastica et principes seculares
non malefacerent si omnes saccos mendicitatis Raynaldus: medicitatis (a typographical
error).
[These propositions are condemned as heretical, scandalous, offensive, and contrary to Catholic truth.]
Qui quidem errores respective quam sint pestiferi, quam perniciosi, quam scandalosi, quam piarum et simplicium mentium seductivi, quam denique sint contra omnem charitatem, ac sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae matris omnium fidelium et magistrae fidei reverentiam atque nervum ecclesiasticae disciplines, obedientiam scilicet, quae fons est et origo omnium virtutum, sine qua facile unusquisque infidelis esse convincitur, nemo sanae mentis ignorat. Nos Igitur in praemissis, utpote gravissimis, propensius (ut decet) procedere, necnon hujusmodi pesti morboque canceroso, ne in agro Dominico tanquam vepris nociva ulterius serpat, viam praecludere cupientes, habita super praedictis erroribus, et eorum singulis diligenti trutinatione, discussione, ac districto examine, maturaque deliberatione, omnibusque rite pensatis ac saeepius ventilatis cum venerabilibus fratribus nostris sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalibus, ac regularium ordinum Prioribus, seu ministris generalibus, plurisbusque aliis sacrae theologiae, necnon utriusque juris professoribus sive magistris, et quidem peritissimis, reperimus eosdem errores respective (ut praefertur) aut articulos non esse catholicos, nec tanquam tales esse dogmatizandos, sed contra Ecclesivae Catholicae doctrinam sive traditionem, atque ab ea veram divinarum scripturarum receptam interpretationem, cujus auctoritati ita acquiescendum censuit Augustinus, ut dixerit, se Evangelio non fuisse crediturum, nisi Ecclesiae Catholicae intervenisset auctoritas. Nam ex eisdem erroribus, vel eorum aliquo, vel aliquibus, palam sequitur, eandem Ecclesiam, quae Spiritu sancto regitur, errare, et semper errasse. Quod est utique contra illud, quod Christus discipulis suis in ascensione sua (ut in sancto Evangelio Matthaei legitur) promisit dicens: "Ego vobiscum sum usque ad consummationem seculi;" necnon contra Sanctorum Patrum determinationes, Conciliorum quoque et summorum Pontificum expressas ordinationes seu canones, quibus non obtemperasse omnium haeresum et schismatum, teste Cypriano, fomes et causa semper fuit.
De eorundem itaque venerabilium fratrum nostrorum
consilio et assensu, se omnium et singulorum praedictorum
maturâ deliberatione praedicta, auctoritate omnipotentis
Dei, et beatorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, et nostra, praefatos omnes
et singulos articulos seu errores, tanquam (ut praemittitur) respective
haereticos, aut scandalosos, aut falsos, aut piarum aurium offensivos,
vel simplicium mentium seductivos, et veritate Catholicae obviantes,
damnamus, reprobamus, ac omnino rejicimus, ac pro damnatis, reprobatis,
et rejectis ab omnibus utriusque sexûs Christi fidelibus
haberi debere, harum serie decernimus et declaramus. Raynaldus (fol. 305) omits all the
specifications of punishments from here down to the next section
beginning Insuper.
[Prohibition of the defence and publication of these errors.]
Inhibentes in virtute sanctae obedientiae ac sub
majoris excommunicationis latae sententiae, necnon quoad Ecclesiasticas
et Regulares personas, Episcopalium omnium, etiam Patriarchalium,
Metropolitanarum et aliarum Cathedralium Ecclesiarum, Monasteriorum
quoque et Prioratuum etiam Conventualium et quarumcunque The original reads quorumcnq. (an
o for an a).
[The writings of Luther are forbidden, and ordered to be burnt.]
Insuper quia errores praefati, et plures alii continentur in libellis seu scriptis Martini Luther, dictos libellos, et omnia dicti Martini scripta, seu praedicationes in Latino, vel quocumque alio idiomate reperiantur, in quibus dicti errores, seu eorum aliquis continentur, similiter damnamus, reprobamus, atque omnino rejicimus, et pro damnatis, reprobatis, ac rejectis (ut praefertur) haberi volumus, mandantes in virtute sanctae obedientiae et sub poenis praedictis eo ipso incurrendis, omnibus et singulis utriusque sexûs Christifidelibus superius nominatis, ne hujusmodi scripta, libellos, praedicationes, seu schedulas, vel in eis contenta capitula, errores, aut articulos supradictos continentia legere, asserere, praedicare, laudare, imprimere, publicare, sive defendere per se vel alium, seu alios directe vel indirecte, tacite vel expresse, publice vel occulte, aut in domibus suis sive aliis publicis vel privatis locis tenere quoquo modo praesumant; quinimmo illa statim post harum publicationem ubicumque fuerint, per ordinaries et alios supradictos diligenter quaesita, publice et solemniter in praesentia cleri et populi sub omnibus et singulis supradictis poenis comburant.
[Martin Luther was often warned with paternal charity to desist from these errors, and cited to Rome with the promise of safe-conduct.]
Quod vero ad ipsum Martinum attinet, (bone Deus) quid praetermisimus, quid non fecimus, quid paternae charitatis omisimus, ut eum ab hujusmodi erroribus revocaremus? Postquam enim ipsum citavimus, mitius cum eo procedere volentes, illum invitavimus, atque tam per diversos tractatus cum legato nostro habitos, quam per literas nostras hortati fuimus, ut a paedictis erroribus discederet, aut oblato etiam salvo conductu et pecuniâ ad iter necessariâ, sine metu seu timore aliquo quem perfecta charitas foras mittere debuit, veniret, ac Salvatoris nostri Apostolique Pauli exemplo, non occulto, sed palam et in facie loqueretur. Quod si fecisset, pro certe (ut arbitramur) ad cor reversus errores suos cognovisset, nec in Romana curia, quam tantopere vanis malevolorum rumoribus plusquam oportuit tribuendo vituperat, tot reperisset errata; docuissemusque cum luce clarius, sanctos Romanos Pontifices, quos praeter omnem modestiam injuriose lacerat, in suis canonibus, seu constitutionibus, quas mordere nititur, nunquam errasse; quia juxta prophetam, nec in Galahad resina, nec medicus deest. Sed obaudivit semper, et praedicta citatione omnibus et singulis supradictis spretis venire contempsit, ac usque in praesentem diem contumax, atque animo indurate censuras ultra annum sustinuit: et quod deterius est, addens mala malis, de citatione hujusmodi notitiam habens, in vocem temerariae appellationis prorupit ad futurum concilium contra constitutionem Pii Secundi ac Julii Secundi, praedecessorum nostrorum, qua cavetur, taliter appellantes haereticorum poenâ plectendos (frustra etiam Consilii auxilium imploravit, qui illi se non credere palam profitetur); ita ut contra ipsum tanquam de fide notorie suspectum, immo vere haereticum absque ulterori citatione vel mora ad condemnationem et damnationem ejus tanquam haeretici, ac ad omnium et singularum suprascriptarum poenarum et censurarum severitatem procedere possemus.
[Luther is again exhorted to repent, and promised the reception of the prodigal son.]
Nihilominus de eorundem fratrum nostroruin consilio, omnipotentis Dei imitantes clementiam, qui non vult mortem peccatoris, sed magis ut convertatur et vivat, omnium injuriarum hactenus nobis et Apostolicqae sedi illatarum obliti, omni qua possumus pietate uti decrevimus, et quantum in nobis est, agere, ut propositâ mansuetudinis viâ ad cor revertatur, et a praedictis recedat erroribus, ut ipsum tanquam filium illum prodigum ad gremium Ecclesiae revertentem benigne recipiamus. Ipsum igitur Martinum et quoscumque ei adhaerentes, ejusque receptatores et fautores per viscera misericordiae Dei nostri, et per aspersionem sanguinis Domini nostri Jesu Christi, quo et per quem humani generis redemptio, et sanctae matris Ecclesiae aedificatio facta est, ex tote corde hortamur et obsecramus, ut ipsius Ecclesiae pacem, unitatem et veritatem, pro qua ipse Salvator tam instanter oravit ad Patrem, turbare desistant, et a praedictis, tam perniciosis erroribus prorsus abstineant, inventuri apud nos si effectualiter paruerint, et paruisse per legitima documenta nos certificaverint, paternae charitatis affectum, et apertum mansuetudinis et clementiae fontem.
[Luther is suspended from the functions of the ministry, and given sixty days, after the publication of the bull, to recant.]
Inhibentes nihilominus eidem Martino ex nunc, ut interim ab omni praedicatione seu praedicationis officio omnino desistat. Alioquin in ipsum Martinum si forte justitiae et virtutis amor a peccato non retrahat, indulgentiaeque spes ad poenitentiam non reducat, poenarum terror coërceat disciplinae: eundem Martinum ejusque adhaerentes complices, fautores, et receptatores tenore praesentium requirimus, et monemus in virtute sanctae obedientiae, sub praedictis omnibus et singulis poenis eo ipso incurrendis districte praecipiendo mandamus, quatenus infra sexaginta dies, quorum viginti pro primo, viginti pro secundo, et reliquos viginti dies pro tertio et peremptorio termino assignamus ab affixione praesentium in locis infrascriptis immediate sequentes numerandos, ipse Martinus, complices, fautores, adhaerentes, et receptatores praedicti a praefatis erroribus, eorumque praedicatione, ac publications, et assertione, defensione quoque et librorum seu scripturarum editione super eisdem, sive eorum aliquo omnino desistant, librosque ac scripturas omnes et singulas praefatos errores seu eorum aliquos quomodolibet continentes comburant, vel comburi faciant. Ipse etiam Martinus errores et assertiones hujusmodi omnino revocet, ac de revocatione hujusmodi per publica documenta in forma juris valida in manibus duorum Praelatorum consignata ad nos infra alios similes sexaginta dies transmittenda, vel per ipsummet (si ad nos venire voluerit, quod magis placeret) cum praefato plenissimo salvo conductu, quem ex nunc concedimus deferenda, nos certiores efficiat, ut de ejus vera obedientia nullus dubitationis scrupulus valeat remanere.
[In case Luther and his followers refuse to recant within sixty days, they will be excommunicated, and dealt with according to law.]
Alias si (quod absit) Martinus praefatus, complices, fautores, adhaerentes et receptatores praedicti secus egerint, seu proemissa omnia et singula infra terminum praedictum cum effectu non adimpleverint, Apostoli imitantes doctrinam, qui haereticum hominem post primam et secundam correctionem vitandum docuit, ex nunc prout ex tunc, et e converso eundem Martinum, complices, adhaerentes, fautores et receptatores praefatos et eorum quemlibet tanquam aridos palmites in Christo non manentes, sed doctrinam contrariam, Catholicae fidei inimicam, sive scandalosam seu damnatam, in non modicam offensam divinae majestatis, ac universalis Ecclesiae, et fidei Catholicae detrimentum et scandalum dogmatizantes, claves quoque Ecclesiae vilipendentes, notorios et pertinaces haereticos eâdem auctoritate fuisse et esse declarantes, eosdem ut tales harum serie condemnamus, et eos pro talibus haberi ab omnibus utriusque sexus Christi fidelibus supradictis volumus et mandamus. Eosque omnes et singulos omnibus supradictis et aliis contra tales a jure inflictis poenis praesentium tenore subjicimus, et eisdem irretitos fuisse et esse decernimus et declaramus.
[All Catholics are admonished not to read, print, or publish any book of Luther and his followers, but to burn them.]
Inhibemus praeterea sub omnibus et singulis
praemissis poenis eo ipso incurrendis, omnibus et singulis Christi
fidelibus superius nominatis, ne scripta, etiam praefatos errores non
continentia, ab eodem Martino quomodolibet condita vel edita, aut
condenda vel edenda, seu eorum aliqua tanquam ab homine orthodoxae
fidei inimico, atque ideo vehementer suspecta, et ut ejus memoria
omnino deleatur de Christifidelium consortio, legere, asserere,
praedicare, laudare, imprimere, publicare, sive defendere, per se vel
alium seu alios, directe vel indirecte, tacite vel expresse, publice
vel occulte, seu in domibus suis, sive aliis locis publicis vel
privatis tenere quoquomodo praesumant, quinimmo illa comburant, ut
praefertur. The remainder of the bull is briefly summarized
by Raynaldus.
[Christians are forbidden, after the excommunication, to hold any intercourse with Luther and his followers, or to give them shelter, on pain of the interdict; and magistrates are commanded to arrest and send them to Rome.]
Monemus insuper omnes et singulos Christifideles supradictos, sub eadem excommunicationis latae sententiae poena, ut haereticos praedictos declaratos et condemnatos, mandatis nostris non obtemperantes, post lapsum termini supradicti evitent et quantum in eis est, evitari faciant, nec cum eisdem, vel eorum aliquo commercium aut aliquam conversationem seu communionem habeant, nec eis necessaria ministrent.
Ad majorem praeterea dicti Martini suorumque
complicum, fautorum et adhaerentium ac receptatorum praedictorum, sic
post lapsum termini praedicti declaratorum haereticorum et
condemnatorum confusionem universis et singulis utriusque sexus
Christifidelibus Patriarchis, Archiepiscopis, Episcopis,
Patriarchalium, Metropolitanarum, et aliarum cathedralium,
collegiatarum ac inferiorum ecclesiarum Praelatis, Capitulis, aliisque
personis ecclesiastica, saecularibus et quoramvis Ordinum etiam
Mendicantium (praesertim ejus congregationis cujus dictus Martinus est
professus, et in qua degere vel morari dicitur) regularibus exemptis et
non exemptis, necnon universis et singulis principibus, quacumque
ecclesiastica vel mundana fulgentibus dignitate Regibus, Imperatoris Coequelines: Imperatori. Then there
should be a comma after Imperatori. The seven Electors of the
Emperor are meant.
[The places which harbor Luther and his followers are threatened with the Interdict.]
Civitates vero, Dominia, Terras, Castra, Villas, comitatus, fortilicia, Oppida et loca quaecumque ubilibet consistentia earum et eorum respective Metropolitanas, Cathedrales, Collegiatas et alias ecclesias, Monasteria, Prioratus, Domus, Conventus et loca religiosa vel pia cujuscunque ordinis (tit praefertur) ad quae praefatum Martinum vel aliquem ex praedictis declinare contigerit, quamdiu ibi permanserint et triduo post recessum, ecclesiastico subjicimus interdicto.
[Provision for the promulgation and execution of the bull.]
Et ut praemissa omnibus innotescant, mandamus insuper universis Patriarchis, Archiepiscopis, Episcopis, Patriarchalium, Metropolitanarum et aliarum cathedralium ac collegiatarum ecclesiarum Praelatis, Capitulis aliisque personis ecclesiasticis, saecularibus et quorumvis Ordinum supradictorum regularibus, fratribus religiosis, monachis exemptis et non exemptis supradictis, ubilibet, praesertim in Alemania constitutis quatenus ipsi vel eorum quilibet sub similibus censuris et poenis co ipso incurrendis, Martinum omnesque et singulos supradictos qui elapso teremo hujusmodi mandatis seu monitis nostris non paruerint, in eorum ecclesiis, dominicis et aliis festivis diebus, dum inibi major populi multitudo ad divina convenerit, declaratos haereticos et condemnatos publice nuncient faciantque et mandent ab aliis nunciari et ab omnibus evitari. Necnon omnibus Christifidelibus ut eos evitent, pari modo sub praedictis censuris et poenis. Et praesentes literas vel earum transumptum sub forma infrascripta factum in eorum ecclesiis, monasteriis, domibus, conventibus et aliis locis legi, publicare atque affigi faciant. Excommunicamus quoque et anathematizamus omnes et singulos cujuscumque status, gradiis, conditionis, prae-eminentiae, dignitatis aut excellentiae fuerint qui quo minus praesentes literae vel earum transumpta, copiae seu exemplaria in suis terris et dominiis legi, affigi et publicare possint, fecerint vel quoquomodo procuraverint per se vel alium seu alios, publice vel occulte, directe vel indirecte, tacite vel expresse.
Postremo quia difficile foret praesentes literas ad singula quaeque loca deferri in quibus necessarium foret, volumus et apostolica authoritate decernimus, quod earum transumptis manu publici notarii confectis et subscriptis, vel in alma Urbe impressis et sigillo alicujus ecclesiastici Praelati munitis ubique stetur et plena fides adhibeatur, prout originalibus literis staretur, si forent exhibitae vel ostensae.
Et ne praefatus Martinus omnesque alii supradicti,
quos praesentes literae quomodolibet concernunt, ignorantiam earundem
literarum et in eis contentorum omnium et singulorum praetendere
valeant, literas ipsas in Basilicas Principis Apostolorum et
Cancellariae Apostolicae, necnon Cathedralium ecclesiarum
Brandeburgen., Misnen. et Morspergen. [Merseburg] valvis affigi et
publicari debere Cocquelines omits
debere.
Non obstantibus constitutionibus et ordinationibus
apostolicis, seu si supradictis omnibus et singulis vel eorum alicui
aut quibusvis aliis a Sede Apostolica praedicta, vel ab ea potestatem
habentibus sub quavis forma, etiam confessionali et cum quibusvis etiam
fortissimis clausulis, aut ex quavis causa, seu grandi consideratione,
indultum vel concessum existat, quod interdici, suspendi, vel
excommunicari non possint per literas Apostolicas, non facientes plenam
et expressam ac de verbo ad verbum, non autem per clausulas generates
id importantes, de indulto hujusmodi mentionem, ejusdem indulti
tenores, causas Cocquelines: clausulas. A plausible
correction.
Nulli ergo omnino hominum liceat hanc paginam nostrae damnationis, reprobationis, rejectionis, decreti, declarationis, inhibitionis, voluntatis, mandati, hortationis, obsecrationis, requisitionis, monitionis, assignationis, concessionis, condemnationis, subjectionis, excommunicationis, et anathematizationis infringere, vel ei ausu temerario contraire. Si quis autem hoc attentare praesumpserit, indignationem Omnipotentis Dei ac Beatorum Petri et Pauli Apostolorum ejus se noverit incursurum.
Dat. Romae apud S. Petrum anno incarnationis Dominicae Milesimo Quingentesimo Vigesimo. XVII. Kls. Julii. Pontificatus Nostri Anno Octavo.
Visa. R. Milanesius.
Impressum Romae per Iacobum Mazochium
De Mandato S. D. N. Papae. Subscriptions are omitted by Cocquelines and
Raynaldus.
§ 48. Luther burns the Pope’s bull, and forever breaks with Rome. Dec. 10, 1520.
Literature in § 47.
Luther was prepared for the bull of excommunication.
He could see in it nothing but blasphemous presumption and pious
hypocrisy. At first he pretended to treat it as a forgery of Eck. "Ich höre auch sagen, Dr. Eck habe eine
Bulle mit sich von Rom wider mich gebracht, die ihm so
ähnlich sei, dass sie wohl möchte auch Dr. Eck
heissen, so voll Lügen und Irrthum sie sein soll; und er
gebe vor, den Leuten das Maul zu schmieren, sie sollen glauben, es sei
des Papsts Werk, so es sein Lügenspiel ist. Ich lasse es
geschehen, muss des Spiels in Gottes Namen warten; wer weiss, was
göttlicher Rath beschlossen hat." Von den neuen Eckischen
Bullen und Lügen. Widder die Bullen des
Endchrists,
Weimar ed. vol. VI. 613-629. He wrote to Spalatin, Nov. 4 (in De Wette, I.
522): "Impossibile est salvos fieri, qui huic Bullae aut
faverunt, aut non repugnaverunt." He told his students, Dec. 11:
"Nisi toto corde dissentistis a regno papali, non potestis assequi
vestrarum animarum salutem."
In deference to his friends, he renewed the
useless appeal from the Pope to a free general council (Nov. 17, 1520),
which he had made two years before (Nov. 28, 1518); and in his appeal
he denounced the Pope as a hardened heretic, an antichristian
suppresser of the Scriptures, a blasphemer and despiser of the holy
Church and of a rightful council. Walch, XV. 1909 sqq. Erl. ed., XXIV. 28-35; and
Op. Lat., V. 119-131. The appeal was published in Latin and
German.
At the same time he resolved upon a symbolic act
which cut off the possibility of a retreat. The Pope had ordered his
books, good and bad, without any distinction, to be burned; and they
were actually burned in several places, at Cologne even in the presence
of the Emperor. They were to be burned also at Leipzig. Luther wanted
to show that he too could burn books, which was an old custom (
On the tenth day of December, 1520, at nine
o’clock in the morning, in the presence of a large
number of professors and students, he solemnly committed the bull of
excommunication, together with the papal decretals, the Canon law, and
several writings of Eck and Emser, to the flames, with these words
(borrowed from Joshua’s judgment of Achan the thief,
The "Holy One" refers to Christ, as in
The spot where this happened is still shown
outside the Elster Gate at Wittenberg, under a sturdy oak surrounded by
an iron railing. A tablet contains the inscription:
"Dr.
Martin Luther verbrannte an dieser Stätte am 10 Dec. 1520
the päpstliche Bannbulle."
Several hundred students tarried at the fire, which had been kindled by a master of the university, some chanting the Te Deum, others singing funeral dirges on the papal laws; then they made a mock procession through the town, collected piles of scholastic and Romish books, and returning to the place of execution, threw them into the flames.
Luther, with Melanchthon, Carlstadt, and the other
doctors and masters, returned home immediately after the act. He at
first had trembled at the step, and prayed for light; but after the
deed was done, he felt more cheerful than ever. He regarded his
excommunication as an emancipation from all restraints of popery and
monasticism. On the same day he calmly informed Spalatin of the event
as a piece of news. "Anno MDXX, decima Decembris, hora nona,
exusti sunt Wittembergae ad orientalem portam, juxta S. Crucem, omnes
libri Papae: Decretum, Decretales, Sext. Clement. Extravagant., et
Bulla novissima Leonis X.: item summa Angelica [a work on casuistry
by Angelus Carletus de Clavasio, or Chiavasso, d. 1495],
Chrysoprasus [De praedestinatione centuriae sex, 1514]
Eccii, et alia ijusdem autoris, Emseri, et quaedam alia, quo adjecta
per alios sunt: ut videant incendiarii Papistae, non esse magnarum
virium libros exurere, quos confutare non possunt. Haec erunt
nova." De Wette, I. 532. Further details about the burning and the
conduct of the students we learn from the report of an unnamed pupil of
Luther: Excustionis antichristianarum decretalium Acta, In the
Erl. ed. of Op. Lat., V. 250-256. Ranke, i. 307; Köstlin, i. 407;
Kolde, i. 290.
Leo X., after the expiration of the one hundred and twenty days of grace allowed to Luther by the terms of the bull, proceeded to the last step, and on the third day of January, 1521, pronounced the ban against the Reformer, and his followers, and an interdict on the places where they should be harbored. But Luther had deprived the new bull of its effect.
The burning of the Pope’s bull was the boldest and most eventful act of Luther. Viewed in itself, it might indeed have been only an act of fanaticism and folly, and proved a brutum fulmen. But it was preceded and followed by heroic acts of faith in pulling down an old church, and building up a new one. It defied the greatest power on earth, before which emperors, kings, and princes, and all the nations of Europe bowed in reverence and awe. It was the fiery signal of absolute and final separation from Rome, and destroyed the effect of future papal bulls upon one-half of Western Christendom. It emancipated Luther and the entire Protestant world from that authority, which, from a wholesome school of discipline for young nations, had become a fearful and intolerable tyranny over the intellect and conscience of men.
Luther developed his theology before the eyes of the public; while Calvin, at a later period, appeared fully matured, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. "I am one of those," he says, "among whom St. Augustin classed himself, who have gradually advanced by writing and teaching; not of those who at a single bound spring to perfection out of nothing.
He called the Pope the most holy and the most hellish father of Christendom. He began in 1517 as a devout papist and monk, with full faith in the Roman Church and its divinely appointed head, protesting merely against certain abuses; in 1519, at the Leipzig disputation, he denied the divine right, and shortly afterwards also the human right, of the papacy; a year later he became fully convinced that the papacy was that antichristian power predicted in the Scriptures, and must be renounced at the risk of a man’s salvation.
There is no doubt that in all these stages he was equally sincere, earnest, and conscientious.
Luther adhered to the position taken in the act of
Dec. 10, 1520, with unchanging firmness. He never regretted it for a
moment. He had burned the ship behind him; he could not, and he would
not, return. To the end of his life he regarded and treated the Pope of
Rome in his official capacity as the very Antichrist, and expected that
he soon would be destroyed by spiritual force at the second coming of
Christ. At Schmalkalden in 1537 he prayed that God might fill all
Protestants with hatred of the Pope. One of his last and most violent
books is directed "Against the Papacy at Rome, founded by the Devil."
Wittenberg, 1545. Wider das Papstthum zu Rom, tom
Teufel gestiftet (in the Erl. ed., XXVI. 108-228). A rude wood-cut on the
title-page represents the Pope with long donkey-ears going into the
jaws of hell, while demons are punching and jeering at him. Luther
calls the Pope (p. 228) "Papstesel mit langen Eselsohren und verdammtem
Lügenmaul." The book was provoked by two most presumptuous letters of Pope
Paul III. to the Emperor Charles V., rebuking him for giving rest to
the Protestants at the Diet of Speier, 1544, till the meeting of a
general council, and reminding him of the terrible end of those who
dare to violate the priestly prerogatives. King Ferdinand, the
Emperor’s brother, read the book through, and
remarked, "Wenn die bösen Worte heraus wären, so
hätte der Luther nicht übel
geschrieben." But
not a few sincere friends of Luther thought at the time that he did
more harm than good to his own cause by this book.
From the standpoint of his age, Luther regarded the Pope and the Turk as "the two arch-enemies of Christ and his Church," and embodied this view in a hymn which begins, —
It appeared in Klug’s Gesangbuch, Wittenberg, 1543, under the title: "Ein Kinderlied zu singen, wider die zween Ertzfeinde Christi und seiner heiligen Kirchen, den Papst und Türken."
This line, like the famous eightieth question of the Heidelberg Catechism which denounces the popish mass as an "accursed idolatry," gave much trouble in mixed communities, and in some it was forbidden by Roman-Catholic magistrates. Modern German hymn-books wisely substitute "all enemies," or "enemies of Christ," for the Pope and the Turk.
In order to form a just estimate of Luther’s views on the papacy, it must not be forgotten that they were uttered in the furnace-heat of controversy, and with all the violence of his violent temper. They have no more weight than his equally sweeping condemnation of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.
§ 49. The Reformation and the Papacy.
Here is the place to interrupt the progress of events, and to reflect on the right or wrong of the attitude of Luther and the Reformation to the papacy.
The Reformers held the opinion that the papacy was
an antichristian institution, and some of the Protestant confessions of
faith have given symbolical sanction to this theory. They did not mean,
of course, that every individual Pope was an Antichrist (Luther spoke
respectfully of Leo X.), nor that the papacy as such was antichristian:
Melanchthon, at least, conceived of the possibility of a Christian
papacy, or a general superintendence of the Church for the preservation
of order and unity. See his appendix to the Smalcald Articles,
1537: De
autoritate et primatu Papae.
They had in view simply the institution as it was at their time, when it stood in open and deadly opposition to what they regarded as the truth of the gospel of Christ, and the free preaching of the same. Their theory does not necessarily exclude a liberal and just appreciation of the papacy before and after the Reformation.
And in this respect a great change has taken place among Protestant scholars, with the progress of exegesis and the knowledge of church history.
1. The prophetic Scripture texts to which the
Reformers and early Protestant divines used to appeal for their theory
of the papacy, must be understood in accordance with the surroundings
and conditions of the writers and their readers who were to be
benefited. This does not exclude, of course, an application to events
and tendencies of the distant future, since history is a growing and
expanding fulfillment of prophecy; but the application must be germane
to the original design and natural meaning of the text. Few
commentators would now find the Pope of Rome in "the little horn" of
St. John is the only biblical writer who uses the
term Antichrist;"
It is quite legitimate to use the terms
"antichrist" and antichristian" in a wider sense, of all such men and
tendencies as are opposed to Christ and his teaching; but we have no
right to confine them to the Pope and the Roman Church., , Many shall
come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many" (
St. Paul’s prediction of the
great apostasy, and the "man of sin, the son of perdition, who opposes
and exalts himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped;
so that he sits in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God." τὸ
γὰρ
μυστήριον
ἤδη
ἐνεργεῖται
τῆς
ἀνομίας ·
μόνον ὁ
κατέχων
ἄρτι ἕως
ἐκ μέσου
γένηται. The Roman government was at first
(before the Neronian persecution of 64) a protector of Christianity,
and more particularly of Paul, who could effectually appeal to his
Roman citizenship at Philippi, before the centurion at Jerusalem, and
before Festus at Caesarea.
If we would seek for Scripture authority against the sins and errors of popery, we must take our stand on our Lord’s opposition to the traditions of the elders, which virtually set aside the word of God; on Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians and Romans, where he defends Christian freedom against legalistic bondage, and teaches the great doctrines of sin and grace, forgotten by Rome, and revived by the Reformation; and on St. Peter’s protest against hierarchical presumption and pride.
There was in the early Church a general
expectation that an Antichrist in the emphatic sense, an incarnation of
the antichristian principle, a pseudo-Christ of hell, a
"world-deceiver" (as he is called in the newly discovered "Teaching of
the Apostles" Ch. 16:4; κοσμοπλάνος, a very significant term, which unites
the several marks of the Antichrist of John (
2. As regards church history, it was as yet an
unexplored field at the time of the Reformation; but the Reformation
itself roused the spirit of inquiry and independent, impartial
research. The documentary sources of the middle ages have only recently
been made accessible on a large scale by such collections as the
Monumenta Germania. "The keys of Peter," says Dr. Pertz, the Protestant
editor of the Monumenta, "are still the keys of the middle ages." The
greatest Protestant historians, ecclesiastical and
secular,—I need only mention Neander and
Ranke,—agree in a more liberal view of the papacy. Comp. especially Ranke’s
classical work, Die römischen Päpste in den letzten vier
Jahrhunderten,
8th edition, Leipzig, 1885, 3 vols. The first edition appeared 1834-36.
Ranke has found a worthy successor in an English scholar, Dr. M.
Creighton (professor of Church history in Cambridge), the author of an
equally impartial History of the Papacy during the Period of the
Reformation, beginning with the Great Schism, 1378. London and
Boston, 1882 sqq. (so far 4 vols.). But the same period of the papacy
is now being written with ample learning and ability from the modem
Roman point of view, by Dr. Ludwig Pastor (professor of Church history
at Innsbruck) in his Geschichte der Päpste seit dem Ausgang des
Mittelalters, of
which the first volume appeared at Freiburg-i.-B. 1886, and extends
from 1305 to the election of Pius II. The author promises six volumes.
He had the advantage of using the papal archives by the effectual favor
of Pope Leo XIII.
After the downfall of the old Roman Empire, the papacy was, with all its abuses and vices, a necessary and wholesome training-school of the barbarian nations of Western and Northern Europe, and educated them from a state of savage heathenism to that degree of Christian civilization which they reached at the time of the Reformation. It was a check upon the despotism of rude force; it maintained the outward unity of the Church; it brought the nations into communication; it protected the sanctity of marriage against the lust of princes; it moderated slavery; it softened the manners; it inspired great enterprises; it promoted the extension of Christianity; it encouraged the cause of learning and the cultivation of the arts of peace.
And even now the mission of the papacy is not yet
finished. It seems to be as needful for certain nations, and a lower
stage of civilization, as ever. It still stands, not a forsaken ruin,
but an imposing pyramid completed to the very top. The Roman Church
rose like a wounded giant from the struggle with the Reformation,
abolished in the Council of Trent some of the worst abuses, reconquered
a considerable portion of her lost territory in Europe, added to her
dominion one-half of the American Continent, and completed her
doctrinal and governmental system in the decrees of the Vatican
Council. The Pope has lost his temporal power by the momentous events
of 1870; but he seems to be all the stronger in spiritual influence
since 1878, when Leo XIII. was called to occupy the chair of Leo X. An
aged Italian priest shut up in the Vatican controls the consciences of
two hundred millions of human beings,—that is, nearly
one-half of nominal Christendom,—and rules them with
the claim of infallibility in all matters of faith and duty. It is a
significant fact, that the greatest statesman of the nineteenth
century, and founder of a Protestant empire, who at the beginning of
the Kulturkampf declared that he would never go to Canossa (1872),
found it expedient, after a conflict of ten years, to yield to an
essential modification of the anti-papal May-laws of 1873, without,
however, changing his religious conviction, or sacrificing the
sovereignty of the State; he even conferred an extraordinary
distinction upon the Pope by selecting him as arbiter in an
international dispute between Germany and Spain (1885). Alexander VI., by a stroke of his pen, divided
America between Spain and Portugal: Leo XIII., in 1886, gave the
insignificant Caroline Islands in the Pacific to Spain, but the free
commerce to Germany.
3. How can we justify the Reformation, in view of the past history and present vitality of the Papacy?
Here the history of the Jewish Church, which is a type of the Christian, furnishes us with a most instructive illustration and conclusive answer. The Levitical hierarchy, which culminated in the high priest, was of divine appointment, and a necessary institution for the preservation of the theocracy. And yet what God intended to be a blessing became a curse by the guilt of man: Caiaphas, the lineal descendant of Aaron, condemned the Messiah as a false prophet and blasphemer, and the synagogue cast out His apostles with curses.
What happened in the old dispensation was repeated on a larger scale in the history of Christianity. An antichristian element accompanied the papacy from the very beginning, and culminated in the corruptions at the time of the Reformation. The greater its assumed and conceded power, the greater were the danger and temptation of abuse. One of the best of Popes, Gregory the Great, protested against the title of, "universal bishop," as an antichristian presumption. The Greek Church, long before the Reformation, charged the Bishop of Rome with antichristian usurpation; and she adheres to her protest to this day. Not a few Popes, such as Sergius III., John XII., Benedict IX., John XXIII., and Alexander VI., were guilty of the darkest crimes of depraved human nature; and yet they called themselves successors of Peter, and vicars of Christ. Who will defend the papal crusades against the Albigenses and Waldenses, the horrors of the Inquisition, the papal jubilee over the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and all those bloody persecutions of innocent people for no other crime but that of opposing the tyranny of Rome, and dissenting from her traditions? Liberal and humane Catholics would revolt at an attempt to revive the dungeon and the fagot against heresy and schism; but the Church of Rome in her official capacity has never repudiated the principle of persecution by which its practice was justified: on the contrary, Pope Gregory XVI. declared liberty of conscience and worship an insanity (deliramentum), and Pius IX. in his "Syllabus" of 1864 denounced it among the pernicious and pestilential errors of modern times. And what shall we say of the papal schism in the fifteenth century, when two or three rival Popes laid all Christendom under the curse of excommunication? What of the utter secularization of the papacy just before the Reformation, its absorption in political intrigues and wars and schemes of aggrandizement, its avarice, its shameless traffic in indulgences, and all those abuses of power which called forth the one hundred and one gravamina of the German -nation? Who will stand up for the bull of excommunication against Luther, with its threats of burning him and his books, and refusing the consolations of religion to every house or community which should dare to harbor him or any of his followers? If that bull be Christian, then we must close our eyes against the plain teaching of Christ in the Gospels.
Even if the Bishop of Rome should be the legitimate successor of Peter, as he claims, it would not shield him against the verdict of history. For the carnal Simon revived and reasserted himself from time to time in the spiritual Peter. The same disciple whom Christ honored as the "Rock," on whose confession he promised to build his Church, was soon afterwards called "Satan" when he presumed to divert his Master from the path of suffering; the same Peter was rebuked when he drew the sword against Malchus; the same Peter, notwithstanding his boast of fidelity, denied his Lord and Saviour; and the same Peter incurred the severe remonstrance of Paul at Antioch when he practically denied the rights of the Gentile converts, and virtually excluded them from the Church. According to the Roman legend, the prince of the apostles relapsed into his consistent inconsistency, even a day before his martyrdom, by bribing the jailer, and fleeing for his life till the Lord appeared to him with the cross at the spot of the memorial chapel Domine quo vadis. Will the Pope ever imitate Peter in his bitter repentance for denying Christ?
If the Apostolic Church typically foreshadows the whole history of Christianity, we may well see in the temporary collision between Peter and Paul the type of the antagonism between Romanism and Protestantism. The Reformation was a revolt against legal bondage, and an assertion of evangelical freedom. It renewed the protest of Paul against Peter, and it succeeded. It secured freedom in religion, and as a legitimate consequence, also intellectual, political, and civil freedom. It made the Word of God with its instruction and comfort accessible to all. This is its triumphant vindication. Compare for proof Protestant Germany under William I., with Roman-Catholic Germany under Maximilian I.; England under Queen Victoria, with England under Henry VII.; Calvinistic Scotland and Lutheran Scandinavia in the nineteenth century, with Roman Scotland and Scandinavia in the fifteenth. Look at the origin and growth of free Holland and free North America. Contrast England with Spain of the present day; Prussia with Austria; Holland with Portugal; the United States and Canada with the older Mexico and Peru or Brazil. Consider the teeming Protestant literature in every department of learning, science and art; and the countless Protestant churches, schools, colleges, universities, charitable institutions and missionary stations scattered all over the globe. Surely, the Reformation can stand the test: "By their fruits ye shall know them."
NOTES.
Opinions of representative Protestant historians who cannot be charged with partisan bias or Romanizing tendency: —
"Whatever judgment," says Leopold von Ranke, who was a good Lutheran (Die römischen Päpste, I. 29), "we may form of the Popes of former times, they had always great interests in view: the care of an oppressed religion, the conflict with heathenism, the propagation of Christianity among the Northern nations, the founding of an independent hierarchical power. It belongs to the dignity of human existence to will and to execute something great. These tendencies the Popes kept in higher motion."
In the last volume of his great work, published after his death (Weltgeschichte, Siebenter Theil, Leipzig, 1886, pp. 311–313), Ranke gives his estimate of the typical Pope Gregory VII., of which this is a condensed translation: —
"The hierarchical system of Gregory rests on the attempt to make the clerical power the basis of the entire human existence. This explains the two principles which characterize the system,—the command of (clerical] celibacy, and the prohibition of investiture by the hands of a layman. By the first, the lower clergy were to be made a corporation free from all personal relations to human society; by the second, the higher clergy were to be secured against all influence of the secular power. The great hierarch had well considered his standpoint: he thereby met a want of the times, which regarded the clergy, so to say, as higher beings. All his words had dignity, consistency and power. He had a native talent for worldly affairs. Peter Damiani probably had this in view when he called him, once, the holy Satan .... Gregory’s deliverances contain no profound doctrines; nearly all were known before. But they are summed up by him in a system, the sincerity of which no one could call in question. His dying words: ’I die in exile, because I loved justice,’ express his inmost conviction. But we must not forget that it was only the hierarchical justice which he defended to his last breath."—In the thirteenth chapter, entitled "Canossa," Ranke presents his views on the conflict between Gregory VII. and Henry IV., or between the hierarchical and the secular power.
Adolf Harnack, a prominent historian of the present generation, in his commemorative address on Martin Luther (Giessen, 1883, p. 7), calls "the idea of the papacy the greatest and most humane idea (die grösste und humanste Idee) which the middle age produced."
It was In a review of Ranke’s
History of the Popes, that Lord Macaulay, a Protestant of Scotch
ancestry, penned his brilliant eulogy on the Roman Church as the oldest
and most venerable power in Christendom, which is likely to outlast all
other governments and churches. "She was great and respected," he
concludes, "before the Saxon set his foot on Britain, before the Frank
had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at
Antioch, when idols were still worshiped in the Temple of Mecca. And
she may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some traveler from New
Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a
broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St.
Paul’s." First published In the Edinburgh Review,
October, 1840. The passage is often quoted by Roman Catholics, e.g., by
Archbishop Spalding, in his History of the Prot. Ref., p. 217
sqq.; but they find it convenient to ignore the other passage from
his History of England.
But we must not overlook a later testimony, in which the eloquent historian supplemented and qualified this eulogy: —
"From the time," says Macaulay in the first chapter of his History of England, "when the barbarians overran the Western Empire, to the time of the revival of letters, the influence of the Church of Rome had been generally favorable to science, to civilization, and to good government. But, during the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor; while Protestant countries once proverbial for sterility and barbarism, have been turned, by skill and industry, into gardens, and can boast of a long list of heroes and statesmen, philosophers and poets. Whoever, knowing what Italy and Scotland naturally are, and what, four hundred years ago, they actually were, shall now compare the country round Rome with the country round Edinburgh, will be able to form some judgment as to the tendency of papal domination. The descent of Spain, once the first among monarchies, to the lowest depths of degradation; the elevation of Holland, in spite of many natural disadvantages, to a position such as no commonwealth so small has ever reached,—teach the same lesson. Whoever passes, in Germany, from a Roman-Catholic to a Protestant principality, in Switzerland from a Roman-Catholic to a Protestant canton, in Ireland from a Roman-Catholic to a Protestant county, finds that he has passed from a lower to a higher grade of civilization. On the other side of the Atlantic, the same law prevails. The Protestants of the United States have left far behind them the Roman Catholics of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. The Roman Catholics of Lower Canada remain inert, while the whole continent round them is in a ferment with Protestant activity and enterprise. The French have doubtless shown an energy and an intelligence which, even when misdirected, have justly entitled them to be called a great people. But this apparent exception, when examined, will be found to confirm the rule; for in no country that is called Roman-Catholic has the Roman-Catholic Church, during several generations, possessed so little authority as in France.
"It is difficult to say whether England owes more to the Roman-Catholic religion or to the Reformation. For the amalgamation of races and for the abolition of villenage, she is chiefly indebted to the influence which the priesthood in the middle ages exercised over the laity. For political and intellectual freedom, and for all the blessings which political and intellectual freedom have brought in their train, she is chiefly indebted to the great rebellion of the laity against the priesthood."
§ 50. Charles V.
Literature.
Most of the works on Charles V. are histories of his times, in which he forms the central figure. Much new material has been brought to light from the archives of Brussels and Simancas. He is extravagantly lauded by Spanish, and indiscriminately censured by French historians. The Scotch Robertson, the American Prescott, and the German Ranke are impartial.
I. Joh. Sleidan (d. 1556): De Statu Religionis et Reipublicae Carlo V. Caesare Commentarii, Argentor. 1555 fol. (best ed. by Am Ende, Frf.-a.-M., 1785). Ludw. v. Seckendorf: Com. Hist. et Apol. de Lutheranism sive de Reformatione Religionis, Leipzig, 1694. Goes to the year 1546.—The English Calendars of State-Papers,—Spanish, published by the Master of the Rolls.—De Thou: Historia sui Temporis (from the death of Francis I.).—The Histories of Spain by Mariana (Madrid, 1817–22, 20 vols. 8vo); Zurita (Çaragoça, 1669–1710, 6 vols. fol.); Ferreras (French trans., Amsterdam, 1751, 10 vols. 4to); Salazar de Mendoza (Madrid, 1770–71, 3 vols. fol.); Modesto Lafuente (Vols. XI. and XII., 1853), etc.
II. Biographies. Charles dictated to his secretary, William Van Male, while leisurely sailing on the Rhine, from Cologne to Mayence, in June, 1550, and afterwards at Augsburg, under the refreshing shade of the Fugger gardens, a fragmentary autobiography, in spanish or French, which was known to exist, but disappeared, until Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove, member of the Royal Academy of Belgium, discovered in the National Library at Paris, in 1861, a Portuguese translation of it, and published a French translation from the same, with an introduction, under the title: Commentaires de Charles-Quint, Brussels, 1862. An English translation by Leonard Francis Simpson: The Autobiography of the Emperor Charles V., London, 1862 (161 and xlviii. pp.]. It is a summary of the Emperor’s journeys and expeditions ("Summario das Viages e Jornadas"), from 1516 to 1548. It dwells upon the secular events; but incidentally reveals, also, his feelings against the Protestants, whom he charges with heresy, obstinacy, and insolence, and against Pope Paul III., whom he hated for his arrogance, dissimulation, and breach of promise. Comp. on this work, the introduction of Lettenhove (translated by Simpson), and the acute criticism of Ranke, vol. vi. 75 sqq.
Alfonso Ulloa: Vita di Carlo V., Venet., 1560. Sandoval: Histoiria de la Vida y Hechos del Emperadòr Carlos Quinto, Valladolid, 1606 (Pampelona, 1618; Antwerp, 1681, 2 vols.). Sepulveda (Whom the Emperor selected as his biographer): De Rebus Gestis Caroli V. lmperatoris, Madrid, 1780 (and older editions). G. Leti: Vita del Imperatore Carlo V., 1700, 4vols. A. de Musica (in Menckenius, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, vol. I., Leipzig, 1728). William Robertson (d. 1793): The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V., London, 1769, 3 vols.; 6th ed., 1787, 4 vols.; new ed. of his Works, London, 1840, 8 vols. (vols. III., IV., V.); best ed., Phila. (Lippincott) 1857, 3 vols., with a valuable supplement by W. H. Prescott on the Emperor’s life after his abdication, from the archives of Simancas (III., 327–510). Hermann Baumgarten: Geschichte Karls V., Stuttgart, 1885 sqq. (to embrace 4 vols.; chiefly based on the English Calendars and the manuscript diaries of the Venetian historian Marino Sanuto).
III. Documents and Treatises on special parts of his history. G. Camposi: Carlo V. in Modena (in Archivio Storico Italiano, Florence, 1842–53, 25 vols., App.). D. G. van Male: Lettres sur la vie intérieure de l’Empéreur Charles-Quint, Brussels, 1843. K. Lanz: Correspondenz des Kaisers Karl V. aus dem kaiserlichen Archiv und der Bibliothèque de Burgogne in Brussel, Leipzig, 1844–46, 3 vols.; Staatspapiere zur Geschichte des Kaisers Karl V., Stuttgart, 1845; and Actenstücke und Briefe zur Geschichte Karls V., Wien, 1853–57. G. Heine: Briefe an Kaiser Karl V., geschrieben von seinem Beichtvater (Garcia de Loaysa) in den Jahren 1530–32, Berlin, 1848 (from the Simancas archives). Sir W. Maxwell Stirling: The Cloister-Life of Charles V., London, 1852. F. A. A. Mignet: Charles-Quint; son abdication, son séjour et sa mort au monastère de Yuste, Paris, 1854; and Rivalité de François I. et de Charles-Quint, 1875, 2 vols. Amédée Pichot: Charles-Quint, Chronique de sa vie intérieure et de sa vie politique, de son abdication et de sa retraite dans le cloître de Yuste, Paris, 1854. Gachart (keeper of the Belgic archives): Retraite et mort de Charles-Quint au monastère de Yuste (the original documents of Simancas), Brussels. 1854–55, 2 vols.; Correspondance de Charles-Quint et de Adrien VI., Brussels, 1859. Henne: Histoire du règne de Charles V. en Belgique, Brussels, 1858 sqq., 10 vols. Th. Juste: Les Pays-bas sous Charles V., 1861. Giuseppe de Leva: Storia documentata di Carlo V. in correlazione all’ Italia, Venice, 1863. Rösler: Die Kaiserwahl Karls V., Wien, 1868. W. Maurenbrecher: Karl V. und die deutschen Protestanten, 1545–1555, Düsseldorf, 1865; Studien und Skizzen zur Geschichte der Reformationszeit, Leipzig, 1874, pp. 99–133. A. v. Druffel: Kaiser Karl V. und die röm. Curie 1544–1546. 3 Abth. München, 1877 sqq.
IV. Comp. also Ranke: Deutsche Geschichte, I. 240 sqq., 311 sqq.; and on Charles’s later history in vols. II., III., IV., V., VI. Janssen: Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, II. 131 sqq., and vol. III. Weber: Allgemeine Weltgeschichte, vol. X. (1880), 1 sqq. Prescott’s Philip II., bk. I, chaps. 1 and 9 (vol. I. 1–26; 296–359). Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. I., Introduction.
Before passing to the Diet of Worms, we must make the acquaintance of Charles V. He is, next to Martin Luther, the most conspicuous and powerful personality of his age. The history of his reign is the history of Europe for more than a third of a century (from 1520–1556).
In the midst of the early conflicts of the Reformation, the Emperor Maximilian I. died at Wels, Jan. 12, 1519. He had worn the German crown twenty-six years, and is called "the last Knight." With him the middle ages were buried, and the modern era dawned on Europe.
It was a critical period for the Empire: the religion of Mohammed threatened Christianity, Protestantism endangered Catholicism. From the East the Turks pushed their conquests to the walls of Vienna, as seven hundred years before, the Arabs, crossing the Pyrenees, had assailed Christian Europe from the West; in the interior the Reformation spread with irresistible force, and shook the foundations of the Roman Church. Where was the genius who could save both Christianity and the Reformation, the unity of the Empire and the unity of the Church? A most difficult, yea, an impossible task.
The imperial crown descended naturally on Maximilian’s grandson, the young king of Spain, who became the most powerful monarch since the days of Charles the Great. He was the heir of four royal lines which had become united by a series of matrimonial alliances.
Never was a prince born to a richer inheritance,
or entered upon public life with graver responsibilities, than Charles
V. Spanish, Burgundian, and German blood mingled in his veins, and the
good and bad qualities of his ramified ancestry entered into his
constitution. He was born with his eventful century (Feb. 24, 1500), at
Ghent in Flanders, and educated under the tuition of the Lord of
Chièvres, and Hadrian of Utrecht, a theological professor of
strict Dominican orthodoxy and severe piety, who by his influence
became the successor of Leo X. in the papal chair. His father, Philip
I., was the only son of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy (daughter of
Charles the Bold), and cuts a small figure among the sovereigns of
Spain as "Philip the Handsome" (Filipe el Hermoso),—a
frivolous, indolent, and useless prince. His mother was Joanna, called,
"Crazy Jane" (Juana la Loca), second daughter of Ferdinand and
Isabella, and famous for her tragic fate, her insanity, long
imprisonment, and morbid devotion to the corpse of her faithless
husband, for whom, during his life, she had alternately shown
passionate love and furious jealousy. She became, after the death of
her mother (Nov. 26, 1504), the nominal queen of Spain, and dragged out
a dreary existence of seventy-six years (she died April 11, 1555). Her sad story is told by the contemporary
historians Gomez, Peter Martyr, Zurita, and Sandoval (from whom the
scattered account of Prescott is derived in his Ferdinand and
Isabella, III. 94, 170 sqq., 212 sqq., 260 sqq.), and more fully
revealed in the Simancas and Brussels documents. It has been ably
discussed by several modem writers with reference to the unproved
hypothesis of Bergenroth that she was never insane, but suspected and
tortured (?) for heresy, and cruelly treated by Charles. But her
troubles began long before the Reformation, and her melancholy
disposition was derived from her grandmother. She received the extreme
unction from priestly hands, and her last word was: "Jesus, thou
Crucified One, deliver me." See Gustav Bergenroth (a German scholar
then residing in London), Letters, Despatches, and State Papers
relating to the negotiations between England and Spain preserved in the
archives of Simancas and elsewhere. Suppl. to vol. I. and II.,
London, 1868; Gachard, Jeanne la Folle, Bruxelles, 1869;
and Jeanne la Folle et Charles V., in the Bulletin of the Brussels Academy,
1870 and 1872; Rösler, Johanna die Wahnsinnige,
Königin von Castilien, Wien, 1870, Maurenbrecher,
Johanna die
Wahnsinnige, in
his "Studien und Skizzen zur Gesch. der Reformationszeit." Leipzig,
1874, pp. 75-98.
Charles inherited the shrewdness of Ferdinand, the piety of Isabella, and the melancholy temper of his mother which plunged her into insanity, and induced him to exchange the imperial throne for a monastic cell. The same temper reappeared in the gloomy bigotry of his son Philip II., who lived the life of a despot and a monk in his cloister-palace of the Escorial. The persecuting Queen Mary of England, a granddaughter of Isabella, and wife of Philip of Spain, had likewise a melancholy and desponding disposition.
From his ancestry Charles fell heir to an empire within whose boundaries the sun never set. At the death of his father (Sept. 25, 1506), he became, by right of succession, the sovereign of Burgundy and the Netherlands; at the death of Ferdinand (Jan. 23, 1516), he inherited the crown of Spain with her Italian dependencies (Naples, Sicily, Sardinia), and her newly acquired American possessions (to which were afterwards added the conquests of Mexico and Peru); at the death of Maximilian, he succeeded to the hereditary provinces of the house of Habsburg, and soon afterwards to the empire of Germany. In 1530 he was also crowned king of Lombardy, and emperor of the Romans, by the Pope.
The imperial crown of Germany was hotly contested
between him and Francis I. All the arts of diplomacy and enormous sums
of money were spent on electioneering by both parties. The details
reveal a rotten state of the political morals of the times. Pope Leo at
first favored the claims of King Francis, who was the natural rival of
the Austrian and Burgundian power, but a stranger to the language and
manners of Germany. The seven electors assembled at Frankfurt offered
the dignity to the wisest of their number, Frederick of Saxony; but he
modestly and wisely declined the golden burden lined with thorns. He
would have protected the cause of the Reformation, but was too weak and
too old for the government of an empire threatened by danger from
without and within. Martin (Histoire de
France, VII. 496)
says: "L’électeur
Frédéric n’a vait ni la
hardiesse ni le génie d’un tel
rôle."
Charles was crowned with unusual splendor, Oct. 23, at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), where the founder of the German Empire lies buried. In his oath he pledged himself to protect the Catholic faith, the Roman Church, and its head the Pope.
The new emperor was then only twenty years of age, and showed no signs of greatness. "Nondum" ("Not yet") was the motto which he had adopted for his maiden shield in a tournament at Valladolid two years before. He afterwards exchanged it for "Plus Ultra." He was a good rider, and skilled in military exercises; he could break a lance with any Knight, and vanquish a bull in the ring, like an expert espada; but he was in feeble health, with a pale, beardless, and melancholy face, and without interest in public affairs. He had no sympathy with the German nation, and was ignorant of their language. But as soon as he took the reins of power into his own hands, he began to develop a rare genius for political and military government. His beard grew, and he acquired some knowledge of most of the dialects of his subjects. He usually spoke and wrote French and Spanish.
Charles V. as Emperor.
Without being truly great, he was an extraordinary man, and ranks, perhaps, next to Charlemagne and Otho I. among the German emperors.
He combined the selfish conservatism of the house of Habsburg, the religious ardor of the Spaniard, and the warlike spirit of the Dukes of Burgundy. He was the shrewdest prince in Europe, and an indefatigable worker. He usually slept only four hours a day. He was slow in forming his resolutions, but inflexible in carrying them into practice, and unscrupulous in choosing the means. He thought much, and spoke little; he listened to advice, and followed his own judgment. He had the sagacity to select and to keep the ablest men for his cabinet, the army and navy, and the diplomatic service. He was a good soldier, and could endure every hardship and privation except fasting. He was the first of the three great captains of his age, the Duke of Alva being the second, and Constable Montmorency the third.
His insatiable ambition involved him in several
wars with France, in which he was generally successful against his bold
but less prudent rival, Francis I. It was a struggle for supremacy in
Italy, and in the Councils of Europe. He twice marched upon Paris. Martin, from his French standpoint, calls the
controversy between Francis I. and Charles V. "la lutte de la
nationalité française contre la monstrueuse
puissance, issue des combinaisons artificielles de
l’hérédité
féodale, qui tend à
l’asservissement des nationalités
européennes." (Hist. de France, VIII., 2.)
He engaged in about forty expeditions, by land and sea, in times when there were neither railroads nor steamboats. He seemed to be ubiquitous in his vast dominions. His greatest service to Christendom was his defeat of the army of Solyman the Magnificent, whom he forced to retreat to Constantinople (1532), and his rescue of twenty thousand Christian slaves and prisoners from the grasp of the African corsairs (1535), who, under the lead of the renowned Barbarossa, spread terror on the shores of the Mediterranean. These deeds raised him to the height of power in Europe.
But he neglected the internal affairs of Germany, and left them mostly to his brother Ferdinand. He characterized the Germans as "dreamy, drunken, and incapable of intrigue." He felt more at home in the rich Netherlands, which furnished him the greatest part of his revenues. But Spain was the base of his monarchy, and the chief object of his care. Under his reign, America began to play a part in the history of Europe as a mine of gold and silver.
He aimed at an absolute monarchy, with a uniformity in religion, but that was an impossibility; France checked his political, Germany his ecclesiastical ambition.
His Personal Character.
In his private character he was superior to
Francis I., Henry VIII., and most contemporary princes, but by no means
free from vice. He was lacking in those personal attractions which
endear a sovereign to his subjects. Motley (I. 118) calls him "a man without a
sentiment and without a tear." But he did shed tears at the death of
his favorite sister Eleanore (Prescott, I. 324). English translation, p. 157.
He had taste for music and painting. He had also some literary talent, and wrote or dictated an autobiography in the simple, objective style of Caesar, ending with the defeat of the Protestant league (1548); but it is dry and cold, destitute of great ideas and noble sentiments.
He married his cousin, Donna Isabella of Portugal,
at Seville, 1526, and lived in happy union with her till her sudden
death in 1539; but during his frequent absences from Spain, where she
always remained, as well as before his marriage, and after her death,
he indulged in ephemeral unlawful attachments. Motley (I. 123) says, on the authority of the
Venetian ambassador, Badovaro: "He was addicted to vulgar and
miscellaneous incontinence." On the same authority he reports of Philip
II.: "He was grossly licentious. It was his chief amusement to issue
forth at night, disguised, that he might indulge in vulgar and
miscellaneous incontinence in the common haunts of vice." (I.
145.)
Charles has often been painted by the master hand of Titian, whom he greatly admired. He was of middle size, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, with a commanding forehead, an aquiline nose, a pale, grave, and melancholy countenance. His blue and piercing eye, his blonde, almost reddish hair, and fair skin, betokened his German origin, and his projecting lower jaw, with its thick, heavy lip, was characteristic of the princes of Habsburg; but otherwise he looked like a Spaniard, as he was at heart.
Incessant labors and cares, gluttony, and consequent gout, undermined his constitution, and at the age of fifty he was prematurely old, and had to be carried on a litter like a helpless cripple. Notwithstanding his many victories and successes, he was in his later years an unhappy and disappointed man, but sought and found his last comfort in the religion of his fathers.
§ 51. The Ecclesiastical Policy of Charles V.
The ecclesiastical policy of Charles was Roman
Catholic without being ultramontane. He kept his coronation oath. All
his antecedents were in favor of the traditional faith. He was
surrounded by ecclesiastics and monks. He was thoroughly imbued with
the Spanish type of piety, of which his grandmother is the noblest and
purest representative. Isabella the Catholic, the greatest of Spanish
sovereigns, "the queen of earthly queens." So Shakespeare calls her, and praises her
"sweet gentleness," "saintlike meekness,""wife-like government, obeying
in commanding." The inscription on the tomb of Ferdinand and
Isabella in the Capilla Real of the cathedral at Granada is
characteristic: "Mahometice secte prostratores et heretice
pervicacie extinctores Ferdinandus Aragonum et Helisabetha Castelle vir
et uxor unanimes Catholici appellati Marmores clauduntur hoc
tumulo." The sepulcher is wrought in delicate alabaster; on it are
extended the life-size marble figures of the Catholic sovereigns; their
faces are portraits; Ferdinand wears the garter, Isabella the cross of
Santiago; the four doctors of the Church ornament the corners, the
twelve apostles the sides. Under the same monument rest the ashes of
their unfortunate daughter Joanna and her worthless husband. I have
seen no monument which surpasses this in chaste and noble simplicity
(unless it be that of King Frederick William III. and Queen Louisa at
Charlottenburg), and none which is more suggestive of historical
meditation and reflection. Actus fidei;
auto-de-fé in Spanish; auto-da-fé
Charles heard the mass daily, listened to a sermon on Sunday and holy days, confessed and communed four times a year, and was sometimes seen in his tent at midnight on his knees before the crucifix. He never had any other conception of Christianity than the Roman-Catholic, and took no time to investigate theological questions.
He fully approved of the Pope’s
bull against Luther, and ordered it to be executed in the Netherlands.
In his retreat at Yuste, he expressed regret that he had kept his
promise of safe-conduct; in other words, that he had not burned the
heretic at Worms, as Sigismund had burned Hus at Constance. He never
showed the least sympathy with the liberal tendencies of the age, and
regarded Protestantism as a rebellion against Church and State. He
would have crushed it out if he had had the power; but it was too
strong for him, and he needed the Protestant support for his wars
against France, and against the Turks. He began in the Netherlands that
fearful persecution which was carried on by his more bigoted son,
Philip II., but it provoked the uprising of the people, and ended in
the establishment of the Dutch Republic. Motley (Dutch Republic, I. 80) says:
"Thousands and tens of thousands of virtuous, well-disposed men and
women, who had as little sympathy with anabaptistical as with Roman
depravity, were butchered in cold blood, under the sanguinary rule of
Charles, in the Netherlands. In 1533, Queen Dowager Mary of Hungary,
sister of the Emperor, Regent of the provinces, the
’Christian widow’ admired by Erasmus,
wrote to her brother, that ’in her opinion, all
heretics, whether repentant or not, should be prosecuted with such
severity as that error might be at once extinguished, care being only
taken that the provinces were not entirely
depopulated.’ With this humane limitation, the
’Christian widow’ cheerfully set
herself to superintend as foul and wholesale a system of murder as was
ever organized. In 1535, an imperial edict was issued at Brussels,
condemning all heretics to death; repentant males to be executed with
the sword, repentant females to be buried alive, the obstinate, of both
sexes, to be burned. This and similar edicts were the law of the land
for twenty years, and rigidly enforced." "Vine, y vi, y Dios vencio." But it was hardly a battle. Ranke
(vol. IV. 377): "Es war keine Schlacht, sondern ein Ansprengen auf der
einen, ein Auseinanderstieben auf der anderen Seite; in einem
Augenblicke war alles vollendet." He says of the Emperor (p. 376):
"Wie ein
einbalsamirter Leichnam, wie ein Gespenst rückte er gegen
sie [die Protestanten) an."
But while Charles was a strict Roman Catholic from
the beginning to the end of his life, he was, nevertheless, by no means
a blind and slavish papist. Like his predecessors on the German throne,
be maintained the dignity and the sovereignty of the state against the
claims of hierarchical supremacy. He hated the French, or neutral,
politics of the papal court. His troops even captured Rome, and
imprisoned Clement VII., who had formed a league with Francis I.
against him (1527). He quarreled with Pope Paul III., who in turn
severely protested against his tolerant or hesitating policy towards
the Protestants in Germany. He says, in his Autobiography, Ch. VI., in Simpson’s
translation, p. 91 sq.
Moreover, Charles had a certain zeal for a limited
reformation of church discipline on the basis of the Catholic doctrine
and the papal hierarchy. He repeatedly urged a general council, against
the dilatory policy of the Popes, and exhorted Protestants and
Catholics alike to submit to its decisions as final. Speaking of the
Diet of Augsburg, held in 1530, he says that he, asked his Holiness to
convoke and assemble a general council, as most important and necessary
to remedy what was taking place in Germany, and the errors which were
being propagated throughout Christendom." Autobiography, p. 19. On p. 73 sqq. he
complains of Clement VII. and Paul III., on account of their violation
of promise to convoke such a council. He does not conceal his hatred of
Paul III. Comp. Maurenbrecher, Die Kirchenreformation in
Spanien, in his
"Studien und Skizzen." pp. 1-40, and his Geschichte der katholischen
Reformation (Nördlingen, 1880), vol. I., pp. 37-55. Maurenbrecher
shows that there were two reformation-currents in the sixteenth
century, one proceeding from Spain, and led by Charles V., which aimed
at a restoration of the mediaeval Church in its purity and glory; the
other proceeding from Germany, and embodied in Luther, which aimed at
an emancipation of the human mind from the authority of Rome, and at a
reconstruction of the Church on the inner religiosity of the
individual.
This Roman-Catholic reformation was effected by the Council of Trent, but turned out to be a papal counter-reformation, and a weapon against Protestantism in the hands of the Spanish order of the Jesuits.
The Emperor and the Reformer.
Charles and Luther saw each other once, and only
once, at the Diet of Worms. The Emperor was disgusted with the monk who
dared to set his private judgment and conscience against the
time-honored creed of Christendom, and declared that he would never
make him a heretic. But Luther wrote him a respectful letter of thanks
for his safe-conduct. April 28, 1521; in De Wette, I.
589-594.
Twenty years later, after his victory over John
Frederick of Saxony at Mühlberg on the Elbe (April 24,
1547), Charles stood on the grave of Luther in the castle church of
Wittenberg, and was advised by the bloodthirsty Duke of Alva to dig up
and burn the bones of the arch-heretic, and to scatter the ashes to the
winds of heaven; but he declined with the noble words:, I make war on
the living, not on the dead." This was his nearest approach to
religious toleration. But the interesting incident is not sufficiently
authenticated. In his Autobiography (ch. X., 151 sqq.) Charles
speaks of the siege and capitulation of Wittenberg, but says nothing of
a visit to Luther’s grave, nor does he even mention
his name. I looked in vain for an allusion to the fact in Sleidan, and
Lindner (in his extensive Appendix to Seckendorf, from 1546 to 1555).
Ranke ignores it, though he is very full on this chapter in
Charles’s history (vol. IV. 378
sqq.).
For twenty-six years the Emperor and the Reformer stood at the head of Germany, the one as a political, the other as a religious, leader; working in opposite directions,—the one for the preservation of the old, the other for the creation of the new, order of things. The one had the army and treasure of a vast empire at his command; the other had nothing but his faith and pen, and yet made a far deeper and more lasting impression on his and on future ages. Luther died peacefully in his birthplace, trusting in the merits of Christ, and commending his soul to the God who redeemed him. Ten years later Charles ended his life as a monk in Spain, holding a burning candle in the right hand, and pressing with the left the crucifix to his lips, while the Archbishop of Toledo intoned the Psalm De Profundis. The last word of the dying Emperor was "Jesus."
§ 52. The Abdication of Charles, and his Cloister Life.
The abdication of Charles, and his subsequent cloister life, have a considerable interest for ecclesiastical as well as general history, and may by anticipation be briefly noted in this place.
In the year 305, the last of the imperial persecutors of Christianity, who was born a slave and reached his power by military achievements, voluntarily resigned the throne of the Caesars, and retired for the remaining eight years of his life to his native Salona in Dalmatia to raise cabbages. In the year 1555 (Oct. 25), Charles V., who was born an heir of three kingdoms, wearied of the race of politics, diplomacy, and war, defeated by the treason of Moritz, and tormented by gout, abdicated his crown to live and die like an humble monk.
The abdication of Charles took place in the royal
palace at Brussels, in the same hall in which, forty years before, he
had been declared of age, and had assumed the reign of Brabant. He was
dressed in mourning for his unfortunate mother, and wore only one
ornament,—the superb collar of the Golden Fleece. He
looked grave, solemn, pale, broken: he entered leaning on a staff with
one hand, and on the arm of William of Orange with the other; behind
him came Philip II., his son and heir, small, meager, timid, but
magnificently dressed,—a momentous association with
the two youthful princes who were to be afterwards arrayed in deadly
conflict for the emancipation of the Netherlands from the yoke of
Spanish tyranny and bigotry. "Ein Moment volt Schicksal und
Zukunft!" says
Ranke (V. 295)."Da war der mächtige Kaiser, der bisher die
grossen Angelegenheiten der Welt verwaltet hatte; von denen, die ihm
zunächst standen, beinahe der Generation, die ihn umgab,
nahm er Abschied. Neben ihm erschienen die Männer, denen die
Zukunft gehörte, Philipp II. und der Prinz von Oranien, in
denen sich die beiden entgegengesetzten Directionen
repräsentirten, die fortan um Weltherrschaft
kämpfen sollten."
The Emperor rose from the throne, and with his right hand resting on the shoulder of the Prince of Orange,—who was one day to become the most formidable enemy of his house,—and holding a paper in the other hand, he addressed his farewell in French before the members of the royal family, the nobility of the Netherlands, the Knights of the Golden Fleece, the royal counselors, and the great officers of the household. He assured them that he had done his duty to the best of his ability, mindful of his dear native land, and especially of the interests of Christianity against infidels and heretics. He had shrunk from no toil; but a cruel malady now deprived him of strength to endure the cares of government, and this was his only motive for carrying out a long-cherished wish of resigning the scepter. He exhorted them above all things to maintain the purity of the faith. He had committed many errors, but only from ignorance, and begged pardon if he had wronged any one.
He then resigned the crown of the Netherlands to his son Philip with the exhortation, "Fear God: live justly; respect the laws; above all, cherish the interests of religion."
Exhausted, and pale as a corpse, he fell back upon
his seat amid the tears and sobs of the assembly. Sandoval, II. 597 sqq.; Gachart, Analectes
belgiques, 87; Prescott, Philip the Second, I. 10 sqq.;
Ranke, V. 293 sqq. Prescott calls this abdication one of the most
remarkable scenes in history.
On the 16th of January, 1556, he executed the
deeds by which he ceded the sovereignty of Castile and Aragon, with
their dependencies, to Philip. His last act was to resign the crown of
Germany into the hands of his brother Ferdinand; but, as affairs move
slowly in that country, the resignation was not finally acted on till
Feb. 28, 1558, at the Diet at Frankfurt. The negotiations with Ferdinand and the German
Diet are detailed by Ranke, V. 297 sqq.
His Retirement to Yuste.
On the 17th of September Charles sailed from the harbor of Flushing for Spain with a fleet of fifty-six sails, his two sisters (Mary, formerly queen of Hungary, and regent of the Low Countries, and Eleanor, the widow of King Francis of France), and a hundred and fifty select persons of the imperial household.
After a boisterous voyage, and a tedious land-journey, he arrived, Feb. 3, 1557, at the Convent of St. Gerome in Yuste, which he had previously selected for his retreat.
The resolution to exchange the splendors of the
world for monastic seclusion was not uncommon among the rulers and
nobles of Spain; and the rich convents of Montserrat and Poblet (now in
ruins) had special accommodations for royal and princely guests.
Charles had formed it during the lifetime of the Empress Isabella, and
agreed with her that they would spend the rest of their days in
neighboring convents, and be buried under the same altar. In 1542 he
announced his intention to Francisco de Borgia; but the current of
events involved him in a new and vain attempt to restore once more the
Holy Roman Empire in the fullness of its power. Now his work was done,
and he longed for rest. His resolution was strengthened by the desire
to atone for sins of unchastity committed after the death of his
wife. He regretted that, from regard to his son, he
had not married again. Ranke, V. 297.
Yuste is situated in the mountainous province of
Estremadura, about eight leagues from Plasencia and fifty leagues from
Valladolid (then the capital of Spain), in a well-watered valley and a
salubrious climate, and was in every way well fitted for the wishes of
the Emperor. It is often miscalled Saint Yuste, or St.
Justus, even by Robertson in Book XII., Eng. ed. III. 294; Amer. ed.
III. 226, etc.; and more recently by Dr. Stoughton, Spanish
Reformers, Lond., 1883, p. 168. Yuste is not named after a saint,
but after a little stream. The convent was founded in 1404, and its
proper name is El monasterio de San Geronimo de
Yuste. It lies on
the route from Madrid to Lisbon, but is somewhat difficult of access.
It was sacked and almost destroyed by the French soldiers under Soult,
1809. The bedroom of Charles, and an overgrown walnut-tree under whose
shade he used to sit and muse, are still shown. Yuste is now in
possession of the Duke of Montpensier. See descriptions in the works of
Stirling, Mignet, and Prescott, above quoted, and by Ford in
Murray’s Handbook of Spain, I. 294 (sixth
edition).
Here he spent about eighteen months till his death,—a remarkable instance of the old adage, Sie transit gloria mundi.
His Cloister Life.
There is something grand and romantic, as well as sad and solemn, in the voluntary retirement of a monarch who had swayed a scepter of unlimited power over two hemispheres, and taken a leading part in the greatest events of an eventful century. There is also an idyllic charm in the combination of the innocent amusements of country life with the exercises of piety.
The cloister life of Charles even more than his
public life reveals his personal and religious character. It was
represented by former historians as the life of a devout and
philosophic recluse, dead to the world and absorbed in preparation for
the awful day of judgment; By Sandoval, Strada, and by his most elaborate
historian, Dr. Robertson, who says: "There he buried, in solitude and
silence, his grandeur, his ambition, together with those projects
which, during almost half a century, had alarmed and agitated Europe,
filling every kingdom in it, by turns, with the terror of his arms, and
the dread of being subdued by his power." Sepulveda, who visited
Charles in his retreat, seems to be the only early historian who was
aware of his deep interest in public affairs, so fully confirmed by the
documents.
He lived not in the convent with the monks, but in
a special house with eight rooms built for him three years before. It
opened into gardens alive with aromatic plants, flowers, orange,
citron, and fig trees, and protected by high walls against intruders.
From the window of his bedroom he could look into the chapel, and
listen to the music and prayers of the friars, when unable to attend.
He retained over fifty servants, mostly Flemings, including a
major-domo (who was a Spaniard), an almoner, a keeper of the wardrobe,
a keeper of the jewels, chamberlains, secretaries, physician,
confessor, two watchmakers, besides cooks, confectioners, bakers,
brewers, game-keepers, and numerous valets. "Aus den Legaten seines Testamentes lernt man die
Mitglieder derselben kennen,—eine ganze Anzahl
Kammerdiener, besondere Diener für die Fruchtkammer,
Obstkammer, Lichtbeschliesserei, Aufbewahrung der Kleider, der Juwelen,
meist Niederländer, jedoch unter einem spanischen
Haushofmeister, Louis Quixada. Der Leibarzt und eine Apotheke fehlten
nicht." Ranke, V.
305. The codicil of Charles, executed a few days before his death,
specifies the names and vocations of these servants. Sandoval and
Gachart give the list, the latter more correctly, especially in the
orthography of Flemish names. These and other articles of furniture and
outfit are mentioned in the inventory. See Sterling, Pichot, and
Prescott, I. 302 sqq.
He took exercise in his gardens, carried on a litter. He constructed, with the aid of a skilled artisan, a little handmill for grinding wheat, puppet soldiers, clocks and watches, and endeavored in vain to make an two of them run exactly alike. The fresh mountain air and exercise invigorated his health, and he never felt better than in 1557.
He continued to take a lively interest in public affairs, and the events of the times. He greeted with joy the victory of St. Quentin; with partial dissatisfaction, the conclusion of peace with the Pope (whom he would have treated more severely); with regret, the loss of Calais; with alarm, the advance of the Turkish fleet to Spain, and the progress of the Lutheran heresy. He received regular dispatches and messengers, was constantly consulted by his son, and freely gave advice in the new complications with France, and especially also in financial matters. He received visits from his two sisters,—the dowager queens of Hungary and France, who had accompanied him to Spain,—and from the nobles of the surrounding country; he kept up a constant correspondence with his daughter Joanna, regent of Castile, and with his sister, the regent of Portugal.
He maintained the stately Castilian etiquette of dining alone, though usually in the presence of his physician, secretary, and confessor, who entertained him on natural history or other topics of interest. Only once he condescended to partake of a scanty meal with the friars. He could not control, even in these last years, his appetite for spiced capons, pickled sausages, and eel-pies, although his stomach refused to do duty, and caused him much suffering.
But he tried to atone for this besetting sin by
self-flagellation, which he applied to his body so severely during Lent
that the scourge was found stained with his blood. Philip cherished
this precious memorial of his father’s piety, and
bequeathed it as an heirloom to his son. Prescott, l.c., I.
311.
From the beginning of his retreat, and especially in the second year, Charles fulfilled his religious duties with scrupulous conscientiousness, as far as his health would permit. He attended mass in the chapel, said his prayers, and listened to sermons and the reading of selections from the Fathers (Jerome, Augustin, Bernard), the Psalms, and the Epistles of Paul. He favored strict discipline among the friars, and gave orders that any woman who dared to approach within two bow-shots of the gate should receive a hundred stripes. He enjoyed the visits of Francisco Borgia, Duke of Gandia, who had exchanged a brilliant position for membership in the Society of the Jesuits, and confirmed him in his conviction that he had acted wisely in relinquishing the world. He wished to be prayed for only by his baptismal name, being no longer emperor or king. Every Thursday was for him a feast of Corpus Christi.
He repeatedly celebrated the exequies of his parents, his wife, and a departed sister.
Yea, according to credible contemporary testimony,
he celebrated, in the presentiment of approaching death, his own
funeral, around a huge catafalque erected in the dark chapel. Bearing a
lighted taper, he mingled with his household and the monks in chanting
the prayers for the departed, on the lonely passage to the invisible
world, and concluded the doleful ceremony by handing the taper to the
priest, in token of surrendering his spirit to Him who gave it.
According to later accounts, the Emperor was laid alive in his coffin,
and carried in solemn procession to the altar. The story is told with its later embellishments
by Robertson and many others. The papers of Simancas, and the private
letters of the Emperor’s major-domo (Quixada) and
physician, are silent on the subject; and hence Tomas Gonzalez, Mignet
(1854 and 1857), and Maurenbrecher ("Studien und Skizzen." 1874, p.
132, note) reject the whole as a monkish fiction. But the main fact
rests on the testimony of a Hieronymite monk of Yuste, who was present
at the ceremony, and recorded the deep impression it made; and it is
confirmed by Sandoval, who derived his report directly from Yuste. A
fuller account is given by Siguença, prior of the Escorial,
in his general history of the Order of St. Jerome (1605); and by
Strada, who wrote a generation later, and leaves the Emperor in a swoon
upon the floor. Stirling, Pichot, Juste, Gachard (1855), Prescott
(Phil. II., Vol. I., 327 sqq.), and Ranke (Vol. V., 309 sq.),
accept the fact as told in its more simple form by the oldest witness.
It is quite consistent with the character of Charles; for, as Prescott
remarks (p. 332), "there was a taint of insanity in the royal blood of
Castile."
This relish for funeral celebrations reveals a morbid trait in his piety. It reminds one of the insane devotion of his mother to the dead body of her husband, which she carried with her wherever she went.
His Intolerance.
We need not wonder that his bigotry increased toward the end of life. He was not philosopher enough to learn a lesson of toleration (as Dr. Robertson imagines) from his inability to harmonize two timepieces. On the contrary, he regretted his limited forbearance towards Luther and the German Protestants, who had defeated his plans five years before. They were now more hateful to him than ever.
To his amazement, the same heretical opinions
broke out in Valladolid and Sevilla, at the very court and around the
throne of Spain. Augustin Cazalla, Commonly called Dr. Cazalla. See on him Dr.
Stoughton, The Spanish Reformers, p. 204 sq. Gachard, II. 461. Ranke, V. 308. Prescott, I.
325 sq.
Philip II., who inherited the vices but none of the virtues of his father, faithfully carried out this dying request, and by a terrible system of persecution crushed out every trace of evangelical Protestantism in Spain, and turned that beautiful country into a graveyard adorned by somber cathedrals, and disfigured by bull-rings.
His Death.
The Emperor’s health failed rapidly in consequence of a new attack of gout, and the excessive heat of the summer, which cost the life of several of his Flemish companions. He died Sept. 21, 1558, a consistent Catholic as be had lived. A few of his spiritual and secular friends surrounded his death-bed. He confessed with deep contrition his sins; prayed repeatedly for the unity of the Church; received, kneeling in his bed, the holy communion and the extreme unction; and placed his hope on the crucified Redeemer. The Archbishop of Toledo, Bartolomé de Carranza, read the one hundred and thirtieth Psalm, and, holding up a crucifix, said: "Behold Him who answers for all. There is no more sin; all is forgiven;" while another of his preachers commended him to the intercession of saints, namely, St. Matthew, on whose day he was born, and St. Matthias, on whose day he was in a few moments to leave this world.
"Thus," says Mignet, "the two doctrines which divided the world in the age of Charles V. were once more brought before him on the bed of death."
It is an interesting fact, that the same
archbishop who had taken a prominent part in the persecution of English
Protestants under Queen Mary, and who administered the last and truly
evangelical comfort to the dying Emperor, became a victim of
persecution, and that those very words of comfort were used by the
Emperor’s confessor as one of the grounds of the
charge of heresy before the tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition.
Bartolomé de Carranza was seven years imprisoned in Spain,
then sent to Rome, lodged in the Castle of St. Angelo, after long delay
found guilty of sixteen Lutheranizing propositions in his writings,
suspended from the exercise of his episcopal functions, and sentenced
to be shut up for five years in a convent of his order. He died sixteen
days after the judgment, in the Convent Sopra Minerva, May 2, 1576,
"declaring his innocence with tears in his eyes, and yet with strange
inconsistency admitting the justice of his sentence." His long trial is told by Prescott, Philip
the Second, I. 337, 437 sqq.; and by Stoughton, The Spanish
Reformers, pp. 185 sqq.
In less than two months after the decease of the
Emperor, Queen Mary, his cousin, and wife of his son, died, Nov. 17,
1558, and was borne to her rest in Westminster Abbey. With her the
Roman hierarchy collapsed, and the reformed religion, after five years
of bloody persecution, was permanently restored on the throne and in
the Church of England. In view of this coincidence, we may well exclaim
with Ranke, "How far do the thoughts of Divine Providence exceed the
thoughts and purposes of men!" Deutsche
Gesch., vol. V.
311.
His Tomb.
From Yuste the remains of the once mighty Emperor were removed in 1574 to their last resting-place under the altar of the cathedral of the Escorial. That gloomy structure, in a dreary mountain region some thirty miles north of Madrid, was built by his order as a royal burial-place (between 1563 and 1584), and combines a palace, a monastery, a cathedral, and a tomb (called Pantheon). Philip II., "el Escorialense," spent there fourteen years, half king, half monk, boasting that he ruled the Old and New World from the foot of a mountain with two inches of paper. He died, after long and intense suffering, Sept. 13, 1598, in a dark little room facing the altar of the church.
Father and son are represented in gilt-bronze statues, opposite each other, in kneeling posture, looking to the high altar; Charles V., with his wife Isabella, his daughter Maria, and his sisters Eleonora and Maria; Philip II., with three of his wives, and his weak-minded and unfortunate son, Don Carlos.
The Escorial, like Spain itself, is only a shadow
of the past, inhabited by the ghost of its founder, who entombed in it
his own gloomy character. The convent was robbed of its richest treasures
by the French invaders in 1808, and by the Carlists in 1837. Some of
the finest pictures were removed to the museum of Madrid. There still
remains a considerable library; the books are richly bound, but their
gilt backs are turned inside. The Rev. Fritz Fliedner, an active and
hopeful Protestant evangelist in Madrid, with whom I visited the
Escorial in May, 1886, bought there the ruins of a house and garden,
which was built and temporarily occupied by Philip II. (while the
palace-monastery was in process of construction), and fitted it up for
an orphan-home, in which day by day the Scriptures are read, and
evangelical hymns are sung, in the Spanish tongue.
§ 53. The Diet of Worms. 1521.
I. Sources. Acta et res gestae D. M. Luth. in Comitiis Principum Wormatiae. Anno 1521. 4°. Acta Lutheri in Comitiis Wormatiae ed. Pollicarius, Vitb. 1546. These and other contemporary documents are reprinted in the Jena ed. of Luther’s Opera (1557), vol. II.; in Walch’s German ed., vols. XV., 2018–2325, and XXII., 2026 sqq.; and the Erlangen-Frankf. ed. of the Opera Lat., vol. VI. (1872); Vermischte deutsche Schriften, vol. XII. (or Sämmtl. Werke, vol. LXIV., pub. 1855), pp. 366–383. Förstemann: Neues Urkundenbuch, 1842, vol. I. Luther’s Letters to Spalatin, Cuspinianus, Lucas Cranach, Charles V., etc., see in De Wette, I. 586 sqq. Spalatin: Ann. Spalatin is also, according to Köstlin, the author of the contemporary pamphlet: Etliche wunderliche fleissige Handlung in D. M. Luther’s Sachen durch geistliche und weltliche Fürsten des Reich’s; but Brieger (in his "Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch.," Gotha, 1886, p. 482 sqq.) ascribes it to Rudolph von Watzdorf.
On the Roman-Cath. side, Cochläus (who was present at Worms): Pallavicini (who used the letters of Aleander); and especially the letters and dispatches of Aleander, now published as follows: Johann Friedrich: Der Reichstag zu Worms im Jahr 1521. Nach den Briefen des päpstlichen Nuntius Hieronymus Aleander. In the "Abhandlungen der Bayer. Akad.," vol. XI. München, 1870. Pietro Balan (R. Cath.): Monumenta Reform. Lutheranae ex tabulariis S. Sedis secretis. 1521–1525. Ratisb. Fasc. I., 1883. Contains Aleander’s reports from the papal archives, and is one of the first fruits of the liberal policy of Leo XIII. in opening the literary treasures of the Vatican. Theod. Brieger (Prof. of Ch. Hist. in Leipzig): Aleander und Luther, 1521. Die vervollständigten Aleander-Depeschen nebst Untersuchungen über den Wormser Reichstag. 1 Abth. Gotha, 1884 (315 pages). Gives the Aleander dispatches in Italian and Latin from a MS. in the library of Trent, and supplements and partly corrects, in the chronology, the edition of Balan.
II. Special Treatises. Boye: Luther zu Worms. Halle, 1817, 1824. Zimmer: Luther zu Worms. Heidelb. 1521. Tuzschmann: Luther in Worms. Darmstadt, 1860. Soldan: Der Reichstag zu Worms. Worms, 1863. Steitz: Die Melanchthon- und Luther-Herbergen zu Frankfurt-a.-M. Frankf., 1861. Contains the reports of the Frankfurt delegate Fürstenberg, and other documents. Hennes (R. Cath.): M. Luther’s Aufenthalt in Worms. Mainz, 1868. Waltz: Der Wormser Reichstag und seine Beziehungen zur reformator. Bewegung, in the "Forschungen zur deutschen Gesch." Göttingen, 1868, VIII. pp. 21–44. Dan. Schenkel: Luther in Worms. Elberfeld, 1870. Jul. Köstlin: Luther’s Rede in Worms am 18. April, 1521. Halle, 1874 (the best on Luther’s famous declaration). Maurenbrecher: Der Wormser Reichstag von 1521, in his "Studien und Skizzen zur Gesch. der Reform. Zeit," Leipzig, 1874 (pp. 241–275); also in his Gesch. der kathol. Reformation, Nördlingen, 1880, vol. I., pp. 181–201. Karl Jansen (not to be confounded with the Rom.-Cath. Janssen): Aleander am Reichstage zu Worms, 1521. Kiel, 1883 (72 pages). Corrects Friedrich’s text of Aleander’s letters. Th. Kolde: Luther und der Reichstag zu Worms. 2d ed. Halle, 1883. Brieger: Neue Mittheilungen über L. in Worms. Program to the Luther jubilee, Marburg, 1883 (a critique of Balan’s Monumenta). Kalkoff: Germ. transl. of the Aleander Dispatches, Halle, 1886. Elter: Luther u. der Wormser Reichstag. Bonn, 1886.
III. Ranke, I. 311–343. Gieseler, IV. 56–58 (Am. ed.). Merle D’aub., bk. VII. chs. I. -XI. Hagenbach, III. 103–109. G. P. Fisher, pp. 108–111. Köstlin, chs. XVII. and XVIII. (I. 411–466). Kolde, I. 325 sqq. Janssen (R. Cath.), II. 131–166. G. Weber: Das Zeitalter der Reformation (vol. X. of his Weltgeschichte), Leipzig, 1886, pp. 162–178. Baumgarten: Gesch. Karls V. Leipzig, l885, vol. I. 379–460.
On the 28th of January, 1521, Charles V. opened his
first Diet at Worms. This was a free imperial city on the left bank of
the Rhine, in the present grand-duchy of Hesse. Worms is 26 miles S. S. E. of Mainz (Mayence or
Mentz, the ancient Moguntiacum, the capital of Rhenish Hesse since
1815), and has now over 20,000 inhabitants, about one-half of them
Protestants, but in the beginning of the seventeenth century it had
70,000. It was almost destroyed under Louis XIV. (1683). The favorite
German wine, Liebfrauenmilch, is cultivated in its neighborhood. H. Boos, Urkundenbuch der Stadt
Worms, Berlin,
1886. See description of the celebration by Dr.
Friedrich Eich, Gedenkblätter, Worms, 1868; and his book on the controversy
about the locality of the Diet, In welchem Locale stand Luther zu
Worms vor Kaiser und Reich? Leipzig, 1863. He decides for the Bishofshof
(against the Rathhaus).
The religious question threw all the political and financial questions into the background, and absorbed the attention of the public mind.
At the very beginning of the Diet a new papal
brief called upon the Emperor to give, by an imperial edict, legal
force to the bull of January 3, by which Luther was finally
excommunicated, and his books condemned to the flames. The Pope urged
him to prove his zeal for the unity of the Church. God had girded him
with supreme earthly power, that he might use it against heretics who
were much worse than infidels. "Multo deteriores haereticos." The new
papal bull of condemnation, together with a brief to the Emperor,
arrived in Worms the 10th of February. Aleander addressed the Diet
three days after, on Ash Wednesday. Ranke, I. 329. Köstlin,
I., 422 sq. Luther published this bull afterwards with
biting, abusive, and contemptuous comments, under the
title, Die Bulla vom Abendfressen des allerheiligsten, Herrn, des
Papsts. In Walch
XV. 2127 sqq. Merle d’Aubigné gives
characteristic extracts, Bk. VII. ch. 5.
The Pope was ably represented by two Italian
legates, who were afterwards created cardinals, -Marino Caracciolo
(1459–1538) for the political affairs, and Jerome
Aleander (1480–1542) for the ecclesiastical interests.
Aleander was at that time librarian of the Vatican, and enjoyed great
reputation as a Greek scholar. He had lectured at Paris before two
thousand bearers of all classes. He stood in friendly relations to
Erasmus; but when the latter showed sympathy with the Reformation, be
denounced him as the chief founder of the Lutheran heresy. He was an
intense papist, and skilled in all the arts of diplomacy. His religious
wants were not very pressing. During the Diet of Worms he scarcely
found time, in the holy week, "to occupy himself a little with Christ
and his conscience." His sole object was to maintain the power of the
Pope, and to annihilate the new heresy. In his letters he calls Luther
a fool, a dog, a basilisk, a ribald. He urged everywhere the wholesale
burning of his books. Janssen, who praises him very highly, remarks
(II. 144): "Um der Häresie Einhalt zu thun, hielt Aleander die
Verbrennung der lutherischen Bücher für ein
überaus geeignetes Mittel." But I can not see why he says (p. 142) that
Aleander prided himself on being "a German." Aleander was born in
Italy, hated the Germans, and died in Rome.
The Emperor hesitated between his religious impulses—which were decidedly Roman Catholic, though with a leaning towards disciplinary reform through a council—and political considerations which demanded caution and forbearance. He had already taken lessons in the art of dissimulation, which was deemed essential to a ruler in those days. He had to respect the wishes of the Estates, and could not act without their consent. Public sentiment was divided, and there was a possibility of utilizing the dissatisfaction with Rome for his interest. He was displeased with Leo for favoring the election of Francis, and trying to abridge the powers of the Spanish Inquisition; and yet he felt anxious to secure his support in the impending struggle with France, and the Pope met him half-way by recalling his steps against the Inquisition. He owed a debt of gratitude to the Elector Frederick, and had written to him, Nov. 28, 1520, to bring Luther to Worms, that he might have a hearing before learned men; but the Elector declined the offer, fearing the result. On the 17th of December, the Emperor advised him to keep Luther at Wittenberg, as he had been condemned at Rome.
At first be inclined to severe measures, and laid
the draft of an edict before the Diet whereby the bull of
excommunication should be legally enforced throughout all Germany. But
this was resisted by the Estates, and other influences were brought to
bear upon him. Then he tried indirectly, and in a private way, a
compromise through his confessor, John Glapio, a Franciscan friar, who
professed some sympathy with reform, and respect for
Luther’s talent and zeal. He held several interviews
with Dr. Brück (Pontanus), the Chancellor of the Elector
Frederick. He assured him of great friendship, and proposed that he
should induce Luther to disown or to retract the book on the
"Babylonian Captivity," which was detestable; in this case, his other
writings, which contained so much that is good, would bear fruit to the
Church, and Luther might co-operate with the Emperor in the work of a
true (that is, Spanish) reformation of ecclesiastical abuses. We have
no right to doubt his sincerity any more than that of the like-minded
Hadrian VI., the teacher of Charles. But the Elector would not listen
to such a proposal, and refused a private audience to Glapio. His
conference with Hutten and Sickingen on the Ebernburg was equally
unsuccessful. See Brück’s
conversations with Glapio in Förstemann, I., pp. 53, 54.
Erasmus and Hutten regarded him as a crafty hypocrite, who wished to
ruin Luther. Strauss agrees, Ulrich von Hutten, p. 405. But Maurenbrecher, (Studien, etc.,
pp. 258 sqq., and Gesch. der kath. Ref., I. 187 sqq.) thinks that Glapio presented
the program of the imperial policy of reform. Janssen, II., 153 sq.,
seems to be of the same opinion.
The Estates were in partial sympathy with the
Reformation, not from doctrinal and religious, but from political and
patriotic motives; they repeated the old one hundred and one gravamina
against the tyranny and extortions of the Roman See See the list in Walch, XV., 2058
sqq.
During the Diet, Ulrich von Hutten exerted all his
power of invective against the Pope and for Luther. He was harbored at
Ebernburg, a few leagues from Worms, with his friend, the valorous
Francis of Sickingen. He poured contempt and ridicule on the speech of
Aleander, and even attempted to catch him and Caracciolo by force. Luther, in a letter to Spalatin (Nov. 23, 1520,
In De Wette I. 523), in a moment of indignation expressed a wish that
Hutten might have intercepted (utinam
—Intercepisset)
the legates, but not murdered, as Romanists (Janssen, twice, II.
104, 143) misinterpret it. See Köstlin, I. 411, and note on
p. 797. See Aleander’s dispatches in
Brieger, l.c. I. pp. 119 sqq.; Strauss, Ulrich von
Hutten, 4th ed.,
pp. 395 sqq.; and Ullmann, Franz von Sickingen (Leipzig, 1872).
Aleander was scarcely safe on the street after his speech of February 13. He reported to his master, that for nine-tenths of the Germans the name of Luther was a war-cry, and that the last tenth screamed "Death to the court of Rome!" Cochlaeus, who was in Worms as the theological adviser of the Archbishop of Treves, feared a popular uprising against the clergy.
Luther was the hero of the day, and called a new
Moses, a second Paul. His tracts and picture, surrounded by a halo of
glory, were freely circulated in Worms. Aleander reports (April 13) that Luther was
painted with the Holy Spirit over his head (el spirito santo sopra it
capo, come to depingono). Brieger, I. 139.
At last Charles thought it most prudent to
disregard the demand of the Pope. In an official letter of March 6, he
cited Luther to appear before the Diet within twenty-one days under the
sure protection of the Empire. The Elector Frederick, Duke George of
Saxony, and the Landgrave of Hesse, added letters of safe-conduct
through their respective territories. The letters of safe-conduct are printed in
Walch, XV., 2122-2127, and Förstemann, Neues
Urkundenbuch, I.,
61 sq. In the imperial letter signed by Albert, Elector and Archbishop
of Mayence and Chancellor of the Empire, Luther is addressed as
"honorable, well-beloved, pious" (Ehrsamer, Geliebter,
Andächtiger; in the Latin copy, Honorabilis, Dilecte, Devote), much
to the chagrin of the Romanists.
Aleander now endeavored to make the appearance of Luther as harmless as possible, and succeeded in preventing any discussion with him. The heretic was simply to recant, or, in case of refusal, to suffer the penalties of excommunication.
§ 54. Luther’s Journey to Worms.
"Mönchlein, Mönchlein, Du gehest einen schweren Gang."
Luther, from the first intimation of a summons by the
Emperor, regarded it as a call from God, and declared his determination
to go to Worms, though he should be carried there sick, and at the risk
of his life. His motive was not to gratify an unholy ambition, but to
bear witness to the truth. He well knew the tragic fate which overtook
Hus at Constance notwithstanding the safe-conduct, but his faith
inspired him with fearless courage. "You may expect every thing from
me," he wrote to Spalatin, "except fear or recantation. I shall not
flee, still less recant. May the Lord Jesus strengthen me." Letter of Dec. 21, 1520 (De Wette, I., 534,
536): "Ego vero, si vocatus fuero, quantum per me stabit, vel
aegrotus advehar, si sanus venire non possem. Neque enim dubitari fas
est, a Domino me vocari, si Caesar vocat. ... Omnia de me praesumas
praeter fugam et palinodiam: fugere ipse nolo, recantare multo minus.
Ita me comfortet Dominus Jesus."
He shared for a while the hope of Hutten and Sickingen, that the young Emperor would give him at least fair play, and renew the old conflict of Germany with Rome; but he was doomed to disappointment.
While the negotiations in Worms were going on, he used incessantly his voice and his pen, and alternated between devotional and controversial exercises. He often preached twice a day, wrote commentaries on Genesis, the Psalms, and the Magnificat (the last he finished in March), and published the first part of his Postil (Sermons on the Gospels and Epistles), a defense of his propositions condemned by Rome, and fierce polemical books against Hieronymus Emser, Ambrose Catharinus, and other papal opponents.
Emser, a learned Romanist, and secretary of Duke
George of Saxony, had first attacked Luther after the Leipzig
disputation, at which he was present. A bitter controversy followed, in
which both forgot dignity and charity. Luther called Emser "the Goat of
Leipzig" (in reference to the escutcheon of his family), and Emser
called Luther in turn, the Capricorn of Wittenberg."
Luther’s Antwort auf das überchristliche,
übergeistliche, und überkünstliche
Buch Bock Emser’s, appeared in March, 1521, and
defends his doctrine of the general priesthood of believers. On the Emser controversy see Erl. Frkf. ed.,
vol. XXVII.
Catharinus, His proper name was Lancelot Politi. See
Lämmer, Vortridentinische Theologie, p. 21, and Burkhardt,
Luther’s Briefwechsel, p. 38. Luther calls him "insulsus et stolidus Thomista,"
in a letter to Spalatin, March 7, 1521 (De Wette, I.
570).
It is astonishing that in the midst of the war of theological passions, he could prepare such devotional books as his commentaries and sermons, which are full of faith and practical comfort. He lived and moved in the heart of the Scriptures; and this was the secret of his strength and success.
On the second of April, Luther left Wittenberg, accompanied by Amsdorf, his friend and colleague, Peter Swaven, a Danish student, and Johann Pezensteiner, an Augustinian brother. Thus the faculty, the students, and his monastic order were represented. They rode in an open farmer’s wagon, provided by the magistrate of the city. The imperial herald in his coat-of-arms preceded on horseback. Melanchthon wished to accompany his friend, but he was needed at home. "If I do not return," said Luther in taking leave of him, "and my enemies murder me, I conjure thee, dear brother, to persevere in teaching the truth. Do my work during my absence: you can do it better than I. If you remain, I can well be spared. In thee the Lord has a more learned champion."
At Weimar, Justus Jonas joined the company. He was at that time professor and Canon at Erfurt. In June of the same year he moved to Wittenberg as professor of church law and provost, and became one of the most intimate friends and co-workers of Luther. He accompanied him on his last journey to Eisleben, and left us a description of his closing days. He translated several of his and Melanchthon’s works.
The journey to Worms resembled a March of triumph, but clouded with warnings of friends and threats of foes. In Leipzig, Luther was honorably received by the magistrate, notwithstanding his enemies in the University. In Thuringia, the people rushed to see the man who had dared to defy the Pope and all the world.
At Erfurt, where he had studied law and passed
three years in a monastic cell, he was enthusiastically saluted, and
treated as "the hero of the gospel." Before he reached the city, a
large procession of professors and students of his alma mater, headed
by his friends Crotus the rector, and Eoban the Latin poet, met him.
Everybody rushed to see the procession. The streets, the walls, and
roofs were covered with people, who almost worshiped Luther as a
wonder-working saint. The magistrate gave him a banquet, and
overwhelmed him with demonstrations of honor. He lodged in the
Augustinian convent with his friend Lange. On Sunday, April 7, he
preached on his favorite doctrine, salvation by faith in Jesus Christ,
and against the intolerable yoke of popery. Eoban, who heard him,
reports that he melted the hearts as the vernal sun melts the snow, and
that neither Demosthenes nor Cicero nor Paul so stirred their audiences
as Luther’s sermon stirred the people on the shores of
the Gera. A full description of the reception at Erfurt,
with extracts from the speech of Crotus and the poems of Eoban, is
given by Professor Kampschulte (a liberal Catholic historian), in his
valuable monograph, Die Universität Erfurt, vol. II. 95-100."It seems," he says,
"that the nation at this moment wished to make every effort to assure
Luther of his vocation. The glorifications which he received from the
2d to the 16th of April no doubt contributed much to fill him with that
self-confidence which he manifested in the decisive hour. Nowhere was
he received more splendidly than at Erfurt."
During the sermon a crash in the balconies of the
crowded church seared the hearers, who rushed to the door; but Luther
allayed the panic by raising his hand, and assuring them that it was
only a wicked sport of the Devil. "Seid still," he said, "liebes Volk, es ist der Teufel, der richtet so eine
Spiegelfechterei an; seid still, es hat keine
Noth." Some of
his indiscreet admirers called this victory over the imaginary Devil
the first miracle of Luther. The second miracle, they thought, he
performed at Gotha, where the Devil played a similar trick in the
church, and met with the same defeat.
In Gotha and Eisenach he preached likewise to crowded houses. At Eisenach he fell sick, and was bled; but a cordial and good sleep restored him sufficiently to proceed on the next day. He ascribed the sickness to the Devil, the recovery to God. In the inns, he used to take up his lute, and to refresh himself with music.
He arrived at Frankfurt, completely exhausted, on
Sunday, April 14. On Monday he visited the high school of William
Nesse, blessed the children and exhorted them "to be diligent in
reading the Scriptures and investigating the truth." He also became
acquainted with a noble patrician family, von Holzhausen, who took an
active part in the subsequent introduction of the Reformation in that
city. His brief sojourn at Frankfurt, and his contact
with the Holzhausen family, is made the subject of an interesting
historical novel: Haman von Holzhausen. Eine Frankfurter Patriziergeschichte
nach Fainilienpapieren erzählt von M.
K. [Maria
Krummacher]. Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1885. See especially chap. XX.,
pp. 253, sqq.
As he proceeded, the danger increased, and with it
his courage. Before be left Wittenberg, the Emperor had issued an edict
ordering all his books to be seized, and forbidding their sale. The edict is dated March 10. See Burkhardt,
Luther’s Briefwechsel
(1866), p. 38, who refers to
Spalatin’s MS. Seidemann dates the letter from March
2. Ranke, in the sixth ed. (1881), I. 333, says that it was published
March 27, on the doors of the churches at Worms. Luther speaks of it in
his Eisleben report, and says that the edict was a device of the
Archbishop of Mainz to keep him away from Worms, and tempt him to
despise the order of the Emperor. Works, Erl. Frankf. ed., LXIV.
367. Notwithstanding this danger, Janssen thinks
(II. 158) that it required no "special courage" for Luther to go to
Worms.
Luther comforted his timid friends with the words:
Though Hus was burned, the truth was not burned, and Christ still
lives. He wrote to Spalatin from Frankfurt, that he had been unwell
ever since he left Eisenach, and had heard of the
Emperor’s edict, but that he would go to Worms in
spite of all the gates of hell and the evil spirits in the air. April 14 (De Wette, I. 587): "Christus
vivit, et intrabimus Wormatiam invitis omnibus portis inferni et
potentatibus aeris" (
"I shall go to Worms, though there were as many
devils there as tiles on the roofs." Spalatin reports the saying thus:
"Dass er
mir Spalatino aus Oppenheim gen Worms schrieb: ’Er
wollte gen Worms wenn gleich so viel Teufel darinnen wären
als immer Ziegel da
wären’ " (Walch, XV. 2174). A year afterwards, in a
letter to the Elector Frederick, March 5, 1522 (De Wette, II 139),
Luther gives the phrase with this modification: "Er [the Devil] sah mein Herz wohl, da ich zu
Worms einkam, dass, wenn ich hätte gewusst, dass so viel
Teufel auf mich gehalten hätten, als Ziegel auf den
Dächern sind, wäre ich dennoch mitten unter sie
gesprungen mit Freuden." In the verbal report he gave to his friends at Eisleben in
1546 (Erl. Frankf. ed., vol. LXIV. p. 368): "Ich entbot ihm
[Spalatin]wieder:
’Wenn so viel Teufel zu Worms wären als
Ziegel auf den Dächern, noch [doch]wollt ich hinein.’"
A few days before his death at Eisleben, he thus
described his feelings at that critical period: "I was fearless, I was
afraid of nothing; God can make one so desperately bold. I know not
whether I could be so cheerful now." Ibid: "Denn ich war unerschrocken, fürchtete
mich nichts; Gott kann einen wohl so toll machen. Ich weiss nicht, ob
ich jetzt auch so freudig wäre."
Sickingen invited Luther, through Martin Bucer, in person, to his castle Ebernburg, where he would be perfectly safe under the protection of friends. Glapio favored the plan, and wished to have a personal conference with Luther about a possible compromise and co-operation in a moderate scheme of reform. But Luther would not be diverted from his aim, and sent word, that, if the Emperor’s confessor wished, he could see him in Worms.
Luther arrived in Worms on Tuesday morning, April
16, 1521, at ten o’clock, shortly before early dinner,
in an open carriage with his Wittenberg companions, preceded by the
imperial herald, and followed by a number of gentlemen on horseback. He
was dressed in his monastic gown. See Luther’s picture of that
year, by Cranach, in the small biography of Köstlin, p. 237
(Scribner’s ed.). It is very different from those to
which we are accustomed. "Nun fuhr ich," says Luther (LXIV. 368), "auf einem offenen
Wäglein in meiner Kappen zu Worms ein. Da kamen alle Leute
auf die Gassen und wollten den Mönch D. Martinum
sehen."
As he stepped from the carriage, he said, "God will be with me."
The papal legate reports this fact to Rome, and
adds that Luther looked around with the eyes of a demon. Aleander to Vice-Chancellor Medici, from Worms,
April 16: "Esso Luther in descensu currus versis huc et illuc
demoniacis oculis disse: ’Deus erit pro
me.’ " Brieger, I. 143.
Luther was lodged in the house of the Knights of
St. John with two counselors of the Elector. He received visitors till
late at night. "Tutto il mondo," writes Aleander in the same letter, "went to
see Luther after dinner."
The city was in a fever-heat of excitement and expectation.
§ 55. Luther’s Testimony before the Diet.
April 17 and 18, 1521.
See Lit. in § 53.
On the day after his arrival, in the afternoon at
four o’clock, Luther was led by the imperial marshal,
Ulrich von Pappenheim, and the herald, Caspar Sturm, through circuitous
side-streets, avoiding the impassable crowds, to the hall of the Diet
in the bishop’s palace where the Emperor and his
brother Ferdinand resided. He was admitted at about six
o’clock. There he stood, a poor monk of rustic
manners, yet a genuine hero and confessor, with the fire of genius and
enthusiasm flashing from his eyes and the expression of intense
earnestness and thoughtfulness on his face, before a brilliant assembly
such as he had never seen: the young Emperor, six Electors (including
his own sovereign), the Pope’s legates, archbishops,
bishops, dukes, margraves, princes, counts, deputies of the imperial
cities, ambassadors of foreign courts, and a numerous array of
dignitaries of every rank; in one word, a fair representation of the
highest powers in Church and State. Walch, XV. 2225-2231, gives a list of over two
hundred members of the Diet that were present.
Dr. Johann von Eck, Not to be confounded with the more famous Dr.
Eck of Ingolstadt. Aleander, who lodged with him on the same floor,
calls him "homo literatissimo" and "orthodoxo," who had
already done good service in the execution of the papal demands at
Treves. Brieger, I. 146. In a dispatch of April 29, he solicits a
present for him from the Roman See. ("Al official de Treveri un
qualche presente sarebbe util," etc., p. 174). Froude, in his
Luther (pp. 32, 33, 35), confounds the Eck of Treves with the
Eck of Ingolstadt, Aleander with Cajetan, and makes several other
blunders, which spoil his lively description of the scene at
Worms. "Legantur tituli librorum," he cried
aloud.
Luther was apparently overawed by the August assembly, nervously excited, unprepared for a summary condemnation without an examination, and spoke in a low, almost inaudible tone. Many thought that he was about to collapse. He acknowledged in both languages the authorship of the books; but as to the more momentous question of recantation he humbly requested further time for consideration, since it involved the salvation of the soul, and the truth of the word of God, which was higher than any thing else in heaven or on earth.
We must respect him all the more for this reasonable request, which proceeded not from want of courage, but from a profound sense of responsibility.
The Emperor, after a brief consultation, granted him "out of his clemency" a respite of one day.
Aleander reported on the same day to Rome, that
the heretical "fool" entered laughing, and left despondent; that even
among his sympathizers some regarded him now as a fool, others as one
possessed by the Devil; while many looked upon him as a saint full of
the Holy Spirit; but in any case, he had lost much of his reputation. Letter to Vice-Chancellor Medici, Worms, April
17, 1521 (in Brieger, l.c. p. 147): "El pazzo era entrato ridendo et
coram Cesare girava il capo continuamente quà et
là, alto e basso; poi net partir non parea così
allegro. Quì molti di quelli et [=etiam]che lo favoreggiavano, poi che
l’hanno visto, l’hanno existimado chi
pazzo, chi demoniaco, molti altri santo et pieno di spiritu santo;
tutta volta ha perso in ogni modo molta reputatione della opinione
prima."
The shrewd Italian judged too hastily. On the same
evening Luther recollected himself, and wrote to a friend: I shall not
retract one iota, so Christ help me." April 17, to John Cuspinianus, an imperial
counsellor. See De Wette, I. 587 sq.
On Thursday, the 18th of April, Luther appeared a second and last time before the Diet.
It was the greatest day in his life. He never appeared more heroic and sublime. He never represented a principle of more vital and general importance to Christendom.
On his way to the Diet, an old warrior, Georg von
Frundsberg, is reported to have clapped him on the shoulder, with these
words of cheer: "My poor monk, my poor monk, thou art going to make
such a stand as neither I nor any of my companions in arms have ever
done in our hottest battles. If thou art sure of the justice of thy
cause, then forward in God’s name, and be of good
courage: God will not forsake thee." "Mönchlein, Mönchlein, du gehst
jetzt einen Gang, dergleichen ich und mancher Oberster auch in unserer
allerernstesten Schlachtordnung nicht gethan
haben," etc. The
saying is reported by Mathesius (who puts it on the second day of
trial, not on the first, as Köstlin and others), by
Spangenberg and Seckendorf (Leipzig ed. of 1694, vol. I. 156, in Latin
and German).
He was again kept waiting two hours outside the hall, among a dense crowd, but appeared more cheerful and confident than the day before. He had fortified himself by prayer and meditation, and was ready to risk life itself to his honest conviction of divine truth. The torches were lighted when he was admitted.
Dr. Eck, speaking again in Latin and German, reproached him for asking delay, and put the second question in this modified form:, Wilt thou defend all the books which thou dost acknowledge to be thine, or recant some part?"
Luther answered in a well-considered, premeditated
speech, with modesty and firmness, and a voice that could be heard all
over the hall. "Respondit Doctor Martinus et ipse latine et
germanice, quanquam suppliciter, non clamose, ac modeste, non tamen
sine Christiana animositate et constantia."Acta, etc.
(Op. Lat., VI. 9). He began with the customary titles:
"Allerdurchlauchtigster, grossmächtigster Kaiser,
Durchlauchtige Churfürsten, gnädigste und
gnädige Herren!" These fulsome titles are used to this day in Germany, as
if a king or emperor were mightier than the Almighty
I
After apologizing for his ignorance of courtly
manners, having been brought up in monastic simplicity, he divided his
books into three classes: In his report at Eisleben, he calls the three
classes briefly Lehrbücher,
Zankbücher, and Disputationes.
He was requested to repeat his speech in Latin. So Luther says himself (in his Eisleben report
of the Worms events, in the Erl. Frkf. ed., vol. LXIV. 370):
"Dieweil
ich redete, begehrten sie von mir, ich sollt es noch einmal wiederholen
mit lateinischen Worten ... Ich wiederholte alle meine Worte
lateinisch. Das gefiel Herzog Friedrich, dem Churfürsten
überaus wohl." Spalatin confirms this in Epitome Actorum Lutheri,
etc.: "Dixit primo germanice, deinde latine." Other reports put
the Latin speech first; so the Acta Luth. (in the Erl. Frkf. ed.
of Op. Lat., VI. 9: respondit D. Martinus et ipse latine et
germanice). Köstlin follows the latter report (I. 445,
451), and overlooked the testimony of Luther, who must have known
best.
The princes held a short consultation. Eck, in the name of the Emperor, sharply reproved him for evading the question; it was useless, he said, to dispute with him about views which were not new, but had been already taught by Hus, Wiclif, and other heretics, and had been condemned for sufficient reasons by the Council of Constance before the Pope, the Emperor, and the assembled fathers. He demanded a round and direct answer, without horns."
This brought on the crisis.
Luther replied, he would give an answer "with
neither horns nor teeth." In the German text, "ein unstüssige und
unbeissige Antwort" (vol. LXIV. 382); i.e., an answer neither offensive nor
biting—with reference, no doubt, to his concluding
warning.
"Unless I am refuted and convicted by testimonies
of the Scriptures or by clear arguments (since I believe neither the
Pope nor the Councils alone; it being evident that they have often
erred and contradicted themselves), I am conquered by the Holy
Scriptures quoted by me, and my conscience is bound in the word of God:
I can not and will not recant any thing, since it is unsafe and
dangerous to do any thing against the conscience." We give also the German and Latin
texts."Weil denn Eure Kaiserliche Majestät und Eure Gnaden
eine schlichte Antwort begehren, so will ich eine Antwort ohne
Hörner und Zähne geben diesermassen:
’Es sei denn, dass ich durch Zeugnisse der Schrift
oder durch helle Gründe überwunden
werde—denn ich glaube weder dem Papst, noch den
Konzilien allein, dieweil am Tag liegt, dass sie öfters
geirrt und sich selbst widersprochen haben,—so bin ich
überwunden durch die von mir angeführten heiligen
Schriften, und mein Gewissen ist gefangen in Gottes Wort; widerrufen
kann ich nichts und will ich nichts, dieweil wider das Gewissen zu
handeln unsicher und gefährlich ist.’
" See
Köstlin, I. 452. The oldest reports vary a little in the
language. Some have scheinbarliche und merkliche Ursachen
for helle
Gründe, and at the close:"dieweil wider das Gewissen zu handeln beschwerlich
und unheilsam, auch gefährlich ist." Werke
(Erl. Frkf. ed.), vol. LXIV.
382.
The Latin text as given in the Acta Lutheri
Wormatiae habita is as follows: "Hic Lutherus: Quando ergo
serenissima Majestas vestra Dominationesque vestrae simplex responsum
petunt, dabo illud, neque cornutum, neque dentatum, in hunc modum:
’Nisi convictus fuero testimoniis Scripturarum, aut
ratione evidente (nam neque Papae, neque Conciliis solis credo, cum
constet eos errasse saepius, et sibi ipsis contradixisse), victus sum
Scripturis a me adductis captaque est conscientia in verbis Dei;
revocare neque possum neque volo quidquam, cum contra conscientiam
agere neque tutum sit, neque integrum.’ " Opera
Lat. (Frankf. ed.), vol. VI. 13 sq.
So far the reports are clear and harmonious. What followed immediately after this testimony is somewhat uncertain and of less importance.
Dr. Eck exchanged a few more words with Luther, protesting against his assertion that Councils may err and have erred. "You can not prove it," he said. Luther repeated his assertion, and pledged himself to prove it. Thus pressed and threatened, amidst the excitement and confusion of the audience, he uttered in German, at least in substance, that concluding sentence which has impressed itself most on the memory of men: —
"Here I stand. [I can not do otherwise.] God help
me! Amen." "Hier steh’ ich. [Ich kann nicht
anders.] Gott helfe mir! Amen." The bracketed words cannot be traced to a primitive
source. See the critical note at the close of this
section.
The sentence, if not strictly historical, is true to the situation, and expresses Luther’s mental condition at the time,—the strength of his conviction, and prayer for God’s help, which was abundantly answered. It furnishes a parallel to Galileo’s equally famous, but less authenticated, "It does move, for all that" (E pur si muove).
The Emperor would hear no more, and abruptly broke up the session of the Diet at eight o’clock, amid general commotion.
On reaching his lodgings, Luther threw up his arms, and joyfully exclaimed, "I am through, I am through? "To Spalatin, in the presence of others, he said, "If I had a thousand beads, I would rather have them all cut off one by one than make one recantation."
The impression he made on the audience was different according to conviction and nationality. What some admired as the enthusiasm of faith and the strength of conviction, appeared to others as fanaticism and heretical obstinacy.
The Emperor, a stranger to German thought and
speech, The little German he knew was only the
Platt-Deutsch of the Low Countries. He always communicated with
his German subjects in Latin or French, or by the mouth of his brother
Ferdinand. Aleander (l.c. p. 170): "Cesar palam
dixit et sepissime postea repetiit, che mai credera che
l’ habbii composto detti libri." The mixing of
Latin and Italian is characteristic of the Aleander dispatches. He was
inclined to ascribe the authorship of the greater part of
Luther’s books to Melanchthon, of whom he says that he
has "un
belissimo, ma malignissimo ingegno (p. 172). Aleander and Caracciolo to the Vice-Chancellor
Medici, April 19, 1521 (Brieger, I. 153): "Martino uscito fuora della sala
Cesarea alzò la mano in alto more militum Germanorum, quando
exultano di un bel colpo di giostra." In a letter of April 27 (l.c. p.
166), they call Luther "il venerabile ribaldo," who before his departure drank in the
presence of many persons "molte tazze di malvasia, della qual ne
è forte amoroso." The charge of intemperance is repeated in a dispatch of
April 29 (p. 170): "la ebrietà, alla quale detto Luther
è deditissimo." That Luther used to drink beer and wine according to the
universal custom of his age, is an undoubted fact; but that he was
intemperate in eating or drinking, is a slander of his enemies.
Melanchthon, who knew him best, bears testimony to his temperance. See
below, the section on his private life. Contarenus ad Matthaeum Dandalum, quoted by
Ranke, I. 336.
But the German delegates received a different
impression. When Luther left the Bishop’s palace
greatly exhausted, the old Duke Erik of Brunswick sent him a silver
tankard of Eimbeck beer, after having first drunk of it himself to
remove suspicion. Luther said, "As Duke Erik has remembered me to-day,
may the Lord Jesus remember him in his last agony." The Duke thought of
it on his deathbed, and found comfort in the words of the gospel:
"Whosoever shall give unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water
only, in the name of a disciple, he shall in no wise lose his reward."
The Elector Frederick expressed to Spalatin the same evening his
delight with Luther’s conduct: "How excellently did
Father Martin speak both in Latin and German before the Emperor and the
Estates! He was bold enough, if not too much so." Walch, XV. 2246. The interview as related by Luther (Walch, XV.
2247; Erlangen-Frankfurt edition, LXIV. 373) is characteristic of this
prince, and foreshadows his future conduct. "Der Landgraf von Hessen kam zu
Worms erstlich zu mir. Er war aber noch nicht auf meiner Seiten, und
kam in Hof geritten, ging zu mir in mein Gemach, wollte mich sehen. Er
war aber noch sehr jung, sprach: Lieber Herr Doctor, wie
geht’s? Da antwortete ich: Gnädiger Herr,
ich hoff, essoll gut werden. Da sagte er: Ich höre, Herr
Doctor, ihr lehret, wenn ein Mann alt wird und seiner Frauen nicht mehr
Ehepflicht leisten kann, dass dann die Frau mag einen anderen Mann
nehmen, und lachte, denn die Hofräthe
hatten’s ihm eingeblasen. Ich aber lachte auch und
sagte: Ach nein, gnädiger Herr, Euer Fürstlich
Gnad sollt nicht also reden. Aber er ging balde wieder von mir hinweg,
gab mir die Hand und sagte: Habt ihr Recht, Herr Doctor, so helfe euch
Gott."
The strongest sympathizers with Luther were
outside of the Diet, among the common people, the patriotic nobles, the
scholars of the school of Erasmus, and the rising generation of liberal
men. As he returned from the Diet to his lodgings, a voice in the crowd
was heard to exclaim: "Blessed be the womb that bare this son."
Tonstal, the English ambassador, wrote from Worms, that "the Germans
everywhere are so addicted to Luther, that, rather than he should be
oppressed by the Pope’s authority, a hundred thousand
of the people will sacrifice their lives." In Fiddes Life of Wolsey, quoted by
Ranke, I. 337, note. Ranke (I. 337) says "in den kaiserlichen
Gemächern." Other reports say that these words were placarded in public
places at Worms.
The papal party triumphed in the Diet. Nothing else could be expected if the historic continuity of the Latin Church and of the Holy German Roman Empire was to be preserved. Had Luther submitted his case to a general council, to which in the earlier stages of the conflict he had himself repeatedly appealed, the result might have been different, and a moderate reform of the mediaeval Church under the headship of the Pope of Rome might have been accomplished; but no more. By denying the infallibility of a council, he openly declared himself a heretic, and placed himself in opposition to the universal opinion, which regarded oecumenical Councils, beginning with the first of Nicaea in 325, as the ultimate tribunal for the decision of theological controversies. The infallibility of the Pope was as yet an open question, and remained so till 1870, but the infallibility of a general council was at that time regarded as settled. A protest against it could only be justified by a providential mission and actual success.
It was the will of Providence to prepare the way, through the instrumentality of Luther, for independent church-organizations, and the development of new types of Christianity on the basis of the word of God and the freedom of thought.
NOTE ON LUTHER’S SENTENCE: "HERE I STAND," ETC.
These words of Luther have been reported again and again, not only in popular books, but in learned histories, without a doubt of their genuineness. They are engraven on his monument at Worms.
But this very fact called forth a critical investigation of the Saxon Archivarius, Dr. C. A. H. Burkhardt (author of the learned work: Luther’s Briefwechsel), Ueber die Glaubwürdigkeit der Antwort Luthers: "Hie steh’ ich, ich kann nicht anders, Gott helff mir. Amen," in the "Theol. Studien und Kritiken" for 1869, III. pp. 517–531. He rejects all but the last three words (not the whole, as Janssen incorrectly reports, in his History, II. 165, note). His view was accepted by Daniel Schenkel (1870), and W. Maurenbrecher (Gesch. d. kath. Reform., 1880, I. 398). The latter calls the words even "Improper and unworthy," because theatrical, which we cannot admit.
On the other hand, Professor Köstlin, the biographer of Luther, has come to the rescue of the whole sentence in his Easter-program: Luther’s Rede in Worms, Halle, 1874; comp. his notes in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1882, p. 551 sq., and his Martin Luther, I. 453, and the note, p. 800 sq. (second Ed. 1883). His conclusion was accepted by Ranke in the sixth Ed. of his Hist. of Germany (I. 336), and by Mönckeberg (pastor of St. Nicolai in Hamburg), who supports it by new proofs, in an essay, Die Glaubwürdigkeit des Lutherwortes in Worms, in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1876, No. II. pp. 295–306.
The facts are these. In Luther’s own Latin notes which he prepared, probably at Worms, for Spalatin, there is no such sentence except the words, "God help me." The prayer which he offered loudly in his chamber on the evening before his second appearance before the Diet, and which some one has reported, concludes with the words, "Gott helfe mir, Amen!" (Walch, X. 1721; Erl. -Frkf. Ed., LXIV. 289 sq.). Spalatin in his (defective) notes on the acts of the Diet, preserved at Weimar (Gesammtarchiv, Reichtagsacten, 1521), and in his Annals (Ed. by Cyprian, p. 41), vouches likewise only for the words, "Gott helfe mir, Amen!" With this agrees the original edition of the Acta Lutheri Wormatiae habita which were published immediately after the Diet (reprinted in the Frankf. ed. of the Opera Lat., vol. VI. p. 14, see second foot-note).
But other contemporary reports give the whole sentence, though in different order of the words. See the comparative table of Burkhardt, I.c. pp. 525–529. A German report (reprinted in the Erl. -Frkf. ed., vol. LXIV. p. 383) gives as the last words of Luther (in reply to Eck): "Gott kumm mir zu Hilf! Amen. Da bin ich." The words "Da bin ich" (Here I am) are found also in another source. Mathesius reports the full sentence as coming from the lips of Luther in 1540. In a German contemporary print and on a fly-leaf in the University library of Heidelberg (according to Köstlin), the sentence appears in this order: "Ich kann nicht anders; hier steh’ ich; Gott helfe mir." In the first edition of Luther’s Latin works, published 1546, the words appear in the present order: "Hier steh’ ich," etc. In this form they have passed into general currency.
Köstlin concludes that the only question is about the order of words, and whether they were spoken at the close of his main declaration, or a little afterwards at the close of the Diet. I have adopted the latter view, which agrees with the contemporary German report above quoted. Kolde, in his monograph on Luther at Worms (p. 60), agrees substantially with Köstlin, and says: "Wir wissen nicht mehr, in welchem Zusammenhang diese Worte gesprochen worden sind, auch können sie vielleicht etwas anders gelautet haben; bei der herrschenden Unruhe hat der eine Berichterstatter den Ausspruch so, der andere ihn so verstanden; sicherlich drückten sie zu gleicher Zeit seine felsenfeste Überzeugung von der Wahrheit seines in sich gewissen Glaubens aus, wie das Bewusstsein, dass hier nur Gott helfen könne."
§ 56. Reflections on Luther’s Testimony at Worms.
Luther’s testimony before the Diet is an event of world-historical importance and far-reaching effect. It opened an intellectual conflict which is still going on in the civilized world. He stood there as the fearless champion of the supremacy of the word of God over the traditions of men, and of the liberty of conscience over the tyranny of authority.
For this liberty, all Protestant Christians, who enjoy the fruit of his courage, owe him a debt of gratitude. His recantation could not, any more than his martyrdom, have stopped the Reformation; but it would have retarded its progress, and indefinitely prolonged the oppressive rule of popery.
When tradition becomes a wall against freedom,
when authority degenerates into tyranny, the very blessing is turned
into a curse, and history is threatened with stagnation and death. The Devil sometimes tells the truth. So
Mephistopheles, in Goethe’s Faust, when he
excuses the aversion of the student to the study of jurisprudence, and
says with a wicked purpose:— "Es erben sich
Gesetz’ und Rechte Wie
eine ew’ge Krankheit fort; Sie
schleppen von Geschlecht sich zum Geschlechte Und
schleichen sacht von Ort zu Ort. Vernunft wird Unsinn, Wohlthat Plage; Weh
dir, dass du ein Enkel bist! Vom
Rechte, das mit uns geboren ist, Von dem
ist, leider! nie die Frage."
Conscience is the voice of God in man. It is his
most sacred possession. No power can be allowed to stand between the
gift and the giver. Even an erring conscience must be respected, and
cannot be forced. The liberty of conscience was theoretically and
practically asserted by the Christians of the ante-Nicene age, against
Jewish and heathen persecution; but it was suppressed by the union of
Church and State after Constantine the Great, and severe laws were
enacted under his successors against every departure from the
established creed of the orthodox imperial Church. These laws passed
from the Roman to the German Empire, and were in full force all over
Europe at the time when Luther raised his protest. Dissenters had no
rights which Catholics were bound to respect; even a sacred promise
given to a heretic might be broken without sin, and was broken by the
Emperor Sigismund in the case of Hus. Dr. (Bishop) Hefele discusses this case at
length from the Roman Catholic standpoint, in his Conciliengeschichte, vol. VII. (1869), pp. 218 sqq. He defends Sigismund and
the Council of Constance on the ground that a salvus conductus
protects only against illegal violence, but not against the legal
course of justice and deserved punishment, and that its validity for
the return of Hus to Bohemia depended on his recantation. But no such
condition was expressed in the letter of safe-conduct (as given by
Hefele, p. 221), which grants Hus freedom to come, stay, and
return (transire, morari et redire libere). Sigismund had
expressly promised him "ut salvus ad Bohemiam redirem " (p.
226). Such a promise would have been quite unnecessary in case of his
recantation.
This tyranny was brought to an end by the indomitable courage of Luther.
Liberty of conscience may, of course, be abused,
like any other liberty, and may degenerate into heresy and
licentiousness. The individual conscience and private judgment often do
err, and they are more likely to err than a synod or council, which
represents the combined wisdom of many. Luther himself was far from
denying this fact, and stood open to correction and conviction by
testimonies of Scripture and clear arguments. He heartily accepted all
the doctrinal decisions of the first four oecumenical Councils, and had
the deepest respect for the Apostles’ Creed on which
his own Catechism is based. But he protested against the Council of
Constance for condemning the opinions of Hus, which he thought were in
accordance with the Scriptures. The Roman Church itself must admit the
fallibility of Councils if the Vatican decree of papal infallibility is
to stand; for more than one oecumenical council has denounced Pope
Honorius as a heretic, and even Popes have confirmed the condemnation
of their predecessor. Two conflicting infallibilities neutralize each
other. See my Church Hist., vol. IV. 500 sqq.;
and Creeds of Christendom, vol. I. 169 sqq.
Luther did not appeal to his conscience alone, but first and last to the Scripture as he understood it after the most earnest study. His conscience, as he said, was bound in the word of God, who cannot err. There, and there alone, he recognized infallibility. By recanting, he would have committed a grievous sin.
One man with the truth on his side is stronger
than a majority in error, and will conquer in the end. Christ was right
against the whole Jewish hierarchy, against Herod and Pilate, who
conspired in condemning him to the cross. St. Paul was right against
Judaism and heathenism combined, "unus versus mundum;" St. Athanasius,
"the father of orthodoxy," was right against dominant Arianism; Galileo
Galilei was right against the Inquisition and the common opinion of his
age on the motion of the earth; Döllinger was right against
the Vatican Council when, "as a Christian, as a theologian, as an
historian, and as a citizen," he protested against the new dogma of the
infallibility of the Pope. Döllinger’s
declaration of March 28, 1871, for which he was excommunicated, April
17, 1871, notwithstanding his eminent services to the Roman Catholic
Church as her most learned historian, bears some resemblance to
Luther’s declaration at Worms. See Schaff, Creeds
of Christendom, I. 195 sqq.
That Luther was right in refusing to recant, and that he uttered the will of Providence in hearing testimony to the supremacy of the word of God and the freedom of conscience, has been made manifest by the verdict of history.
§ 57. Private Conferences with Luther. The Emperors Conduct.
On the morning after Luther’s
testimony, the Emperor sent a message—a sort of
personal confession of faith—written by his own hand
in French, to the Estates, informing them, that in consistency with his
duty as the successor of the most Christian emperors of Germany and the
Catholic kings of Spain, who had always been true to the Roman Church,
he would now treat Luther, after sending him home with his
safe-conduct, as an obstinate and convicted heretic, and defend with
all his might the faith of his forefathers and of the Councils,
especially that of Constance. Walch, XV. 2235-2237.
Some of the deputies grew pale at this decision; the Romanists rejoiced. But in view of the state of public sentiment the Diet deemed it expedient to attempt private negotiations for a peaceful settlement, in the hope that Luther might be induced to withdraw or at least to moderate his dissent from the general Councils. The Emperor yielded in spite of Aleander’s protest.
The negotiations were conducted chiefly by Richard
von Greiffenklau, Elector and Archbishop of Treves, and at his
residence. He was a benevolent and moderate churchman, to whom the
Elector Frederick and Baron Miltitz had once desired to submit the
controversy. The Elector of Brandenburg, Duke George of Saxony, Dr.
Vehus (chancellor of the Margrave of Baden), Dr. Eck of Treves, Dean
Cochlaeus of Frankfort, John Cochlaeus (his original name was Dobeneck;
b. 1479, at Wendelstein in Franconia, d. at Bresau, 1552) was at first
as a humanist an admirer of Luther, but turned against him shortly
before the Diet of Worms, and became one of his bitterest literary
opponents. He went to Worms unasked, and wished to provoke him to a
public disputation. He was employed by the Archbishop of Treves as
theological counsel, and by Aleander as a spy. Aleander paid him ten
guilders "per sue spese" (see his dispatch of April 29 in
Brieger, I. 175). Cochlaeus wrote about 190 books, mostly polemical
against the Reformers, and mostly forgotten. Luther treated him with
great contempt, and usually calls him "Doctor Rotzlöffel,"
also "Kochlöffel." See Works, Erl. ed., XXXI. 270
sq., 276 sq., 302 sq.; LXII. 74, 78. Otto, Johann Cochlaeus, der
Humanist, Breslau, 1874; Felician Gess, Johannes Cochlaeus, der
Gegner Luthers, Oppeln, 1886, IV. 62 pages.
These men were just as honest as Luther, but they occupied the standpoint of the mediaeval Church, and could not appreciate his departure from the beaten track. The archbishop was very kind and gracious to Luther, as the latter himself admitted. He simply required that in Christian humility he should withdraw his objections to the Council of Constance, leave the matter for the present with the Emperor and the Diet, and promise to accept the final verdict of a future council unfettered by a previous decision of the Pope. Such a council might re-assert its superiority over the Pope, as the reformatory Councils of the fifteenth century had done.
But Luther had reason to fear the result of such
submission, and remained as hard as a rock. He insisted on the
supremacy of the word of God over all Councils, and the right of
judging for himself according to his conscience. "Gnädiger Herr," he said to
the Archbishop of Trier, "ich kann alles leiden, aber die heilige Schrift
kann ich nicht übergeben." And again: "Lieber will ich Kopf und Leben
verlieren, als das klare Wort Gottes verlassen." See the reports on these useless conferences,
in Walch, XV. 2237-2347, 2292-2319; Cochlaeus, Com. de Actis
Lutheri, and his Colloquium cum Luthero Wormatiae habitum;
the report of Hieronymus Vehus, published by Seidemann, in the
"Zeitschrift für histor. Theol.," 1851, p. 80 sqq.; and the
report of Aleander in Brieger, I. 157-160. Ranke says (I. 332), one
might almost be tempted to wish that Luther had withdrawn his
opposition to the councils, and contented himself for the present with
the attack upon the abuses of the papacy, in which he had the nation
with him; but he significantly adds, that the power of his spirit would
have been broken if it had bound itself to any but purely religious
considerations. "Der ewig freie Geist bewegt sich in seinen eigenen
Bahnen."
He asked the Archbishop, on April 25, to obtain for him the Emperor’s permission to go home. In returning to his lodgings, he made a pastoral visit to a German Knight, and told him in leaving: "To-morrow I go away."
Three hours after the last conference, the Emperor sent him a safe-conduct for twenty-one days, but prohibited him from writing or preaching on the way. Luther returned thanks, and declared that his only aim was to bring about a reformation of the Church through the Scriptures, and that he was ready to suffer all for the Emperor and the empire, provided only he was permitted to confess and teach the word of God. This was his last word to the imperial commissioners. With a shake of hands they took leave of each other, never to meet again in this world.
It is to the credit of Charles, that in spite of
contrary counsel, even that of his former teacher and confessor,
Cardinal Hadrian, who wished him to deliver Luther to the Pope for just
punishment, he respected the eternal principle of truth and honor more
than the infamous maxim that no faith should be kept with heretics. He
refused to follow the example of his predecessor, Sigismund, who
violated the promise of safe-conduct given to Hus, and ordered his
execution at the stake after his condemnation by the Council of
Constance. It is asserted by Gieseler and Ranke (I. 341)
that the Council gave official sanction to this maxim by declaring with
regard to Hus: "Nec aliqua sibi [ei] fides aut
promissio de jure naturali, divino vel humano fuerit in praejudicium
catholicae fidei observanda." Von der Hardt, Conc. Const.
IV. 521; Mansi, Concil. XXVII. 791. Hefele (Conciliengeschichte, VII. 227 sq.) charges Gieseler with sinning against the
Council and against truth itself, and maintains that this decree, which
is only found in the Codex Dorrianus at Vienna, was merely proposed by
a member, and not passed by the Council. But the undoubted decree of
the 19th Sess., Sept. 23, 1415, declares that a safe-conduct, though it
should be observed by him who gave it as far as he was able, affords no
protection against the punishment of a heretic if he refuses to recant;
and the fact remains that Hus was not permitted to return, and was
burned in consequence of his condemnation by the Council and during its
session, July 6, 1415. Aeneas Sylvius (afterwards Pope Pius II.) bears
to him and Jerome of Prague the testimony: "Nemo philosophorum tam
forti animo mortem pertulisse traditur quam isti incendium." The
traditional prophecy of Hus: "Now ye burn a goose (anser; Hus in
Bohemian means goose); but out of my ashes shall rise a swan
(cygnus, Luther), which you shall not be able to burn," is not
authentic, and originated in Luther’s time as a
vaticinium post eventum. Ranke says (vol. V. 308): "Es ist die
universalhistorisch grösste Handlung Karls V., dass er
damals das gegebene Wort höher stellte als die kirchliche
Satzung." See above, p. 283.
It is interesting to learn
Aleander’s speculations about
Luther’s intentions immediately after his departure.
He reported to Rome, April 29, 1521, that the heretic would seek refuge
with the Hussites in Bohemia, and do four "beastly things" (cose
bestiali): 1, write lying Acta Wormaciensia, to incite the people to
insurrection; 2, abolish the confessional; 3, deny the real presence in
the sacrament; 4, deny the divinity of Christ. Brieger, I. 169 sqq. Aleander says in support
of the fourth item, that the Lutheran "wretch," Martin Butzer (he calls
him Putzer), had already fallen into the diabolical Arian heresy, as he
had been told by the Emperor’s confessor, Glapio, who
had a conference with Butzer and Sickingen.
Luther did none of these things except the second, and this only in part. To prevent his entering Bohemia, Rome made provision to have him seized on the way.
§ 58. The Ban of the Empire. May 8 (26), 1521.
After Luther’s departure (April 26), his enemies had full possession of the ground. Frederick of Saxony wrote, May 4: "Martin’s cause is in a bad state: he will be persecuted; not only Annas and Caiaphas, but also Pilate and Herod, are against him." Aleander reported to Rome, May 5, that Luther had by his bad habits, his obstinacy, and his "beastly" speeches against Councils, alienated the people, but that still many adhered to him from love of disobedience to the Pope, and desire to seize the church property.
The Emperor commissioned Aleander to draw up a
Latin edict against Luther. Aleander reports, May 5: "Poi me fù
commesso per Cesar et el Consilio (the imperial council),che io stesso facesse el
decreto, con quelle più justificationi si potesse,
acciochè il popolo se contentasse."
The edict was kept back till the Elector Frederick
and the Elector of the Palatinate with a large number of other members
of the Diet had gone home. It was not regularly submitted to, nor
discussed and voted on, by the Diet, nor signed by the Chancellor, but
secured by a sort of surprise. "Das Edict," says Ranke (i. 342), "ward den Ständen nicht
in ihrer Versammlung vorgelegt; keiner neuen Deliberation ward es
unterworfen; unerwartet, in der kaiserlichen Behausung bekamen sie
Kunde davon, nachdem man nichts versäumt, um sie guenstig zu
stimmen; die Billigung desselben, die nicht einmal formell genannt
werden kann, ward ihnen durch eine Art von Ueberraschung
abgewonnen." Dispatch of May 26. Brieger, I. 224. The edict
appeared in print on the following Thursday, May 30, and on Friday the
Emperor left Worms.
The edict is not so long, but as turgid,
bombastic, intolerant, fierce, and Cruel, as the
Pope’s bull of excommunication. Aleander himself calls it more terrible than
any previous edict (cosi horribile quanto mai altro editto),
June 27, 1521. Brieger, I. 241. Ranke says (I. 343):
"Es war
so scharf, so entschieden wie möglich." Die Acht und
Aberacht.
The Acht is the
civil counterpart of the ecclesiastical excommunication and excludes
the victim from all protection of the law. The Aberacht
or Oberacht follows if the Acht remains without effect. It is in the
German definition die völlige Fried- und Rechtslos- oder
Vogelfrei-Erklärung. The imperial Acht is called the Reichsacht. See the edict in full in Walch, XV. 2264-2280.
It was published officially in Latin and German, and translated into
the languages of the Dutch and French dominions of Charles. Aleander
himself, as he says, prepared the French translation.
This was the last occasion on which the mediaeval
union of the secular empire with the papacy was expressed in official
form so as to make the German emperor the executor of the decrees of
the bishop of Rome. The gravamina of the nation were unheeded. Hutten
wrote: "I am ashamed of my fatherland." Letter to Pirkheimer, May 1, 1521: "Me
pudere incipit patriae."Opera II. 59.
Thus Luther was outlawed by Church and State, condemned by the Pope, the Emperor, the universities, cast out of human society, and left exposed to a violent death.
But he had Providence and the future on his side. The verdict of the Diet was not the verdict of the nation.
The departure of the Emperor through the
Netherlands to Spain, where he subdued a dangerous insurrection, his
subsequent wars with Francis in Italy, the victorious advance of the
Turks in Hungary, the protection of Luther by the Elector Frederick,
and the rapid spread of Protestant doctrines, these circumstances,
combined to reduce the imperial edict, as well as the papal bull, to a
dead letter in the greater part of Germany. The empire was not a
centralized monarchy, but a loose confederation of seven great
electorates, a larger number of smaller principalities, and free
cities, each with an ecclesiastical establishment of its own. The love
of individual independence among the rival states and cities was
stronger than the love of national union; and hence it was difficult to
enforce the decisions of the Diet against a dissenting minority or even
a single recalcitrant member. An attempt to execute the edict in
electoral Saxony or the free cities by military force would have
kindled the flame of civil war which no wise and moderate ruler would
be willing to risk without imperative necessity. Charles was an earnest
Roman Catholic, but also a shrewd statesman who had to consult
political interests. Even the Elector Albrecht of Mainz prevented, as
far as he could, the execution of the bull and ban in the dioceses of
Mainz, Magdeburg, and Halberstadt. He did not sign the edict as
chancellor of the empire. Janssen, II. 208 sq.: "Albrecht musste sich beugen
vor Luther, der Primus vor dem excommunicirten Mönch,
welcher ihm mit Enthuellungen drohte."
The settlement of the religious question was ultimately left to the several states, and depended very much upon the religious preferences and personal character of the civil magistrate. Saxony, Hesse, Brandenburg, the greater part of Northern Germany, also the Palatinate, Würtemberg, Nürnberg, Frankfurt, Strassburg, and Ulm, embraced Protestantism in whole or in part; while Southern and Western Germany, especially Bavaria and Austria, remained predominantly Roman Catholic. But it required a long and bloody struggle before Protestantism acquired equal legal rights with Romanism, and the Pope protests to this day against the Treaty of Westphalia which finally secured those rights.
§ 59. State of Public Opinion. Popular Literature.
K. Hagen: Der Geist der Reformation und seine Gegensätze. Erlangen, 1843. Bd. I. 158 sqq. Janssen, II. 181–197, gives extracts from revolutionary pamphlets to disparage the cause of the Reformation.
Among the most potent causes which defeated the ban of the empire, and helped the triumph of Protestantism, was the teeming ephemeral literature which appeared between 1521 and 1524, and did the work of the periodical newspaper press of our days, in seasons of public excitement. In spite of the prohibition of unauthorized printing by the edict of Worms, Germany was inundated by a flood of books, pamphlets, and leaflets in favor of true and false freedom. They created a public opinion which prevented the execution of the law.
Luther had started this popular literary warfare
by his ninety-five Theses. He was by far the most original, fertile,
and effective controversialist and pamphleteer of his age. He commanded
the resources of genius, learning, courage, eloquence, wit, humor,
irony, and ridicule, and had, notwithstanding his many physical
infirmities, an astounding power of work. He could express the deepest
thought in the clearest and strongest language, and had an abundant
supply of juicy and forcible epithets. Kraftwörter, as the Germans call them.
Roman historians, in denouncing his polemics, are
apt to forget the fearful severity of the papal bull, the edict of
Worms, and the condemnatory decisions of the universities. Janssen says (II. 181 and 193):
"Den Ton
für die ganze damalige polemische Literatur gabLuther an,
wie durch seine früheren Schriften, so auch durch die neuen,
welche er von der Wartburg aus in die Welt
schickte." Then
he quotes a number of the coarsest outbursts of
Luther’s wrath, and his disparaging remarks on some
books of the New Testament (the Eusebian Antilegomena), all of which,
however, are disowned by the Lutheran Church, and more than
counterbalanced by his profound reverence for, and submission to, the
undoubted writings (the Homologumena). See § 6, pp. 16
sqq.
His pen was powerfully aided by the pencil of his friend Lucas Cranach, the court-painter of Frederick the Wise.
Melanchthon had no popular talent, but he employed
his scholarly pen in a Latin apology for Luther, against the furious
decree of the Parisian theologasters." "Adversus furiosum Parisiensium
theologastrorum Decretum pro Luthero Apologia," 1521. In the
"Corpus Reformat.," vol. I. 398-416. A copy of the original edition is
in the Royal Library at Berlin. An extract, in Carl
Schmidt’s Philipp Melanchthon, pp. 55
sqq. Determinatio Theologorum Parisiensium super
Doctrina Lutheriana. "Corp. Reform." I. 366-388. "Mein lieber Philipp," he says, "hat ihnen [den groben Pariser Eseln] wohl meisterlich geantwortet, hat
sie aber doch zu sanft angerührt und mit dem leichten Hobel
überlaufen; ich sehe wohl, ich muss mit der Bauernaxt
über die groben Blöcke
kommen." At the
same time there appeared an anonymous satire against the Paris
theologians, in the style of the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum.
See Schmidt, l.c. p. 58.
Ulrich von Hutten was almost equal to Luther in
literary power, eloquence, wit, and sarcasm, as well as in courage, and
aided him with all his might from the Ebernburg during his trial at
Worms; but he weakened his cause by want of principle. He had
previously republished and ridiculed the Pope’s bull
of excommunication. He now attacked the edict of Worms, and wrote
invectives against its authors, the papal legates, and its supporters,
the bishops. In Hieron. Aleandrum, et Marinum Caracciolum
Oratores Leonis X. apud Vormaciam Invectivae
singulae.—In Cardinales, episcopos et Sacerdotes,
Lutherum Vormaciae oppugnantes, Invectiva.—Ad Carolum
Imp. pro Luthero exhortatoria. See Strauss, Ulrich v.
Hutten, pp. 397 sqq.
He added, however, to the second edition, a sort of apologetic letter to Albrecht, the head of the German archbishops, his former friend and patron, assuring him of his continued friendship, and expressing regret that he should have been alienated from the protection of the cause of progress and liberty.
In a different spirit Hans Sachs, the pious
poet-shoemaker of Nürnberg, Characteristic for his poetry is the well-known
rhyme (which is, however, not found in his
works):— "Hans Sachs war
ein Schuh- Macher und Poet
dazu." A new edition of his poems appeared at Stuttgart, 1870
sqq. He figures prominently in Kaulbach’s picture of
the Reformation.
Among the most popular pamphleteers on the Protestant side were a farmer named "Karsthans," who labored in the Rhine country between Strassburg and Basel, and his imitator, "Neukarsthans." Many pamphlets were anonymous or pseudonymous.
It is a significant fact, that the Reformation was defended by so many laymen. All the great German classics who arose in more recent times (Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Uhland, Rückert), as well as philosophers (Leibnitz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, Lotze), are Protestants, at least nominally, and could not have grown on papal soil.
The newness and freshness of this fugitive popular literature called out by the Reformation, and especially by the edict of Worms, made it all the more effective. The people were hungry for intellectual and spiritual food, and the appetite grew with the supply.
The polemical productions of that period are usually brief, pointed, and aimed at the common-sense of the masses. They abound in strong arguments, rude wit, and coarse abuse. They plead the cause of freedom against oppression, of the laity against priestcraft and monkery. A favorite form of composition was the dialogue in which a peasant or a laboring-man defeats an ecclesiastic.
The Devil figures prominently in league with the Pope, sometimes as his servant, sometimes as his master. Very often the Pope is contrasted with Christ as his antipode. The Pope, says one of the controversialists, proclaimed the terrible bull of condemnation of Luther and all heretics on the day commemorative of the institution of the holy communion; and turned the divine mercy into human wrath, brotherly love into persecuting hatred, the very blessing into a curse.
St. Peter also appears often in these productions: he stands at the gate of heaven, examining priests, monks, and popes, whether they are fit to enter, and decides in most cases against them. Here is a specimen: A fat and drunken monk knocks at the gate, and is angry that he is not at once admitted; Peter tells him first to get sober, and laughs at his foolish dress. Then he catechises him; the monk enumerates all his fasts, self-mortifications, and pious exercises; Peter orders that his belly be cut open, and, behold! chickens, wild game, fish, omelets, wine, and other contents come forth and bear witness against the hypocrite, who is forthwith sent to the place of punishment.
The writer of a pamphlet entitled "Doctor Martin Luther’s Passion," draws an irreverent parallel between Luther’s treatment by the Diet, with Christ’s crucifixion: Luther’s entry into Worms is compared to Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, the Diet to the Sanhedrin, Archbishop Albrecht to Caiaphas, the papal legates to the Pharisees, the Elector of Saxony to Peter, Eck and Cochlaeus to the false witnesses, the Archbishop of Treves to Pilate, the German nation to Pilate’s wife; at last Luther’s books and likeness are thrown into the fire, but his likeness will not burn, and the spectators exclaim, "Verily, he is a Christian."
The same warfare was going on in German
Switzerland. Nicolas Manuel, a poet and painter (died 1530), in a
carnival play which was enacted at Berne, 1522, introduces first the
whole hierarchy, confessing one after another their sins, and
expressing regret that they now are to be stopped by the rising
opposition of the people; then the various classes of laymen attack the
priests, expose their vices, and refute their sophistries; and at last
Peter and Paul decide in favor of the laity, and charge the clergy with
flatly contradicting the teaching of Christ and the Apostles. See
Grüneisen’s Nicolaus Manuels Leben und
Werke (1837), pp.
339-392.
These pamphlets and fugitive papers were
illustrated by rude woodcuts and caricatures of obnoxious persons,
which added much to their popular effect. Popes, cardinals, and bishops
are represented in their clerical costume, but with faces of wolves or
foxes, and surrounded by geese praying a Paternoster or Ave Maria. The
"Passion of Christ and Antichrist" has twenty-six woodcuts, from the
elder Lucas Cranach or his school, which exhibit the contrast between
Christ and his pretended vicar in parallel pictures: in one Christ
declines the crown of this world, in the other the Pope refuses to open
the gate to the Emperor (at Canossa); in one Christ wears the crown of
thorns, in the other the Pope the triple crown of gold and jewels; in
one Christ washes the feet of his disciples, in the other the Pope
suffers emperors and kings to kiss his toe; in one Christ preaches the
glad tidings to the poor, in the other the Pope feasts with his
cardinals at a rich banquet; in one Christ expels the profane
traffickers, in the other the Pope sits in the temple of God; in one
Christ rides meekly on an ass into Jerusalem, in the other the Pope and
his cardinals ride on fiery steeds into hell. Passional Christi und Antichristi,
mit Luther’s Nachrede, 1521, in the Frkf. ed., LXIII., 240-248.
Luther accompanied the pictures with texts.
The controversial literature of the Roman-Catholic
Church was far behind the Protestant in ability and fertility. The most
popular and effective writer on the Roman side was the Franciscan monk
and crowned poet, Thomas Murner. He was an Alsatian, and lived in
Strassburg, afterwards at Luzern, and died at Heidelberg (1537). He had
formerly, in his Narrenbeschwörung (1512) and other
writings, unmercifully chastised the vices of all classes, including
clergy and monks, and had sided with Reuchlin in his controversy with
the Dominicans, but in 1520 he turned against Luther, and assailed his
cause in a poetical satire: "Vom grossen lutherischen Narren wie ihn
Doctor Murner beschworen hat, 1522." Newly edited by H. Kurz, Zürich,
1848. Janssen makes much use of this poem (II. 123-128, 190, 415, 416).
Murner thus describes the Protestant attack on the
sacraments:— "Die Mess, die sol
nim gelten Im
Leben noch im Tod. Die
Sacrament sie schelten, Die
seien uns nit Not. Fünf hont sie gar vernichtet, Die
andern lon sie ston, Dermassen zugerichtet, Dass
sie auch bald zergon." Of
Luther’s doctrine of the general priesthood of the
laity he says:— "Wir sein all
Pfaffen worden, Beid
Weiber und die Man, Wiewol
wir hant kein Orden Kein
Weihe gnomen an"
CHAPTER IV.
THE GERMAN REFORMATION FROM THE DIET OF WORMS
TO THE PEASANTS’ WAR, a.d. 1521–1525.
§ 60. A New Phase in the History of the Reformation.
At Worms, Luther stood on the height of his protest against Rome. The negative part of his work was completed: the tyranny of popery over Western Christendom was broken, the conscience was set free, and the way opened for a reconstruction of the Church on the basis of the New Testament. What he wrote afterwards against Rome was merely a repetition and re-affirmation.
On his return to Wittenberg, he had a more difficult task before him: to effect a positive reformation of faith and discipline, worship and ceremonies. A revolution is merely destructive and emancipative: a reformation is constructive and affirmative; it removes abuses and corruptions, but saves the foundation, and builds on it a new structure.
In this home-work Luther was as conservative and churchly as he had been radical and unchurchly in his war against the foreign foe. The connecting link between the two periods was his faith in Christ and the ever-living word of God, with which he began and ended his public labors.
He now raised his protest against the abuse of liberty in his own camp. A sifting process was necessary. Division and confusion broke out among his friends and followers. Many of them exceeded all bounds of wisdom and moderation; while others, frightened by the excesses, returned to the fold of the mother Church. The German nation itself was split on the question of the old or new religion, and remains, ecclesiastically, divided to this day; but the political unification and reconstruction of the German Empire with a Protestant head, instead of the former Roman-Catholic emperor, may be regarded as a remote result of the Reformation, without which it could never have taken place. And it is a remarkable providence, that this great event of 1870 was preceded by the Vatican Council and the decree of papal infallibility, and followed by the overthrow of the temporal power of the Pope and the political unification of Italy with Rome as the capital.
Before Luther entered upon the new phase in his
career, he had a short rest on what he called his "Patmos" (
§ 61. Luther at the Wartburg. 1521–1522.
I. Luther’s Letters, from April 28, 1521, to March 7, 1522, in De Wette, vol. I. 5; II. 1–141. Very full and very characteristic. Walch, XV. 2324–2402.
II. C. Köhler: Luther auf der Wartburg. Eisenach, 1798. A. Witzschell: Luthers Aufenthalt auf der Wartburg. Wien, 1876. J. G. Morris: Luther at Wartburg and Coburg. Philadelphia, 1882.
III. Marheineke, Chap. X. (I. 276 sqq.). Merle D’Aubigné, bk. IX., chs. I. and II. Hagenbach, III. 105 sqq. Fisher, p. 112. Köstlin, I. 468–535.
Luther left Worms after a stay of ten days, April 26, 1521, at ten o’clock in the morning, quietly, in the same company with which he had made his entrance under the greatest popular commotion and expectation. His friend Schurf went along. The imperial herald joined him at Oppenheim so as not to attract notice.
In a letter to his friend Cranach, dated
Frankfurt, April 28, he thus summarizes the proceedings of the Diet:
"Have you written these books? Yes. Will you recant? No. Then get thee
hence! O we blind Germans, how childish we are to allow ourselves to be
so miserably fooled by the Romanists!" De Wette, I. 588.
At Friedberg he dismissed the herald, and gave him
a Latin letter to the Emperor, and a German letter of the same import
to the Estates. He thanked the former for the safe-conduct, and
defended his course at Worms. He could not trust in the decision of one
man or many men when God’s word and eternal interests
were at stake, but was still willing to recant if refuted from the
Scriptures. De Wette, I. 589, 600.
At Hersfeld he was hospitably entertained in the
Benedictine convent by the Abbot Crato, and urged to preach. He did so
in spite of the Emperor’s prohibition, obeying God
rather than men. "I never consented," he says, "to tie up
God’s word. This is a condition beyond my power." See his letter to Spalatin, May 14, in De
Wette, II. 6.
From Eisenach he started with Amsdorf and Petzensteiner for Möhra to see his relations. He spent a night with his uncle Heinz, and preached on the next Sunday morning. He resumed his journey towards Altenstein and Waltershausen, accompanied by some of his relatives. On the 4th of May, a company of armed horsemen suddenly appeared from the woods, stopped his carriage, amidst cursing and swearing, pulled him out, put him on horseback, hurried away with him in full speed, and brought him about midnight to the Wartburg, where he was to be detained as a noble prisoner of state in charge of Captain von Berlepsch, the governor of the castle.
The scheme had been wisely arranged in Worms by the Elector Frederick, whom Aleander calls "the fox of Saxony." He wavered between attachment to the old faith and inclination to the new. He could not be sure of Luther’s safety beyond the term of three weeks when the Emperor’s safe-conduct expired; he did not wish to disobey the Emperor, nor, on the other hand, to sacrifice the reformer, his own subject, and the pride of his university. He therefore deemed it best to withdraw him for a season from the public eye. Melanchthon characterizes him truly when he says of Frederick: "He was not one of those who would stifle changes in their very birth. He was subject to the will of God. He read the writings which were put forth, and would not permit any power to crush what he believed to be true."
The secret was strictly kept. For several months even John, the Elector’s brother, did not know Luther’s abode, and thought that he was in one of Sickingen’s castles. Conflicting rumors went abroad, and found credence among the crowds who gathered in public places to hear the latest news. Some said, He is dead; others, He is imprisoned, and cruelly treated. Albrecht Dürer, the famous painter, who was at that time at Antwerp, and esteemed Luther as "a man enlightened by the Holy Spirit and a confessor of the true Christian faith," entered in his diary on Pentecost, 1521, the prayer that God may raise up another man in his place, and fill him with the Holy Spirit to heal the wounds of the Church.
The Wartburg is a stately castle on a hill above
Eisenach, in the finest part of the Thuringian forest. It combines
reminiscences of mediaeval poetry and piety with those of the
Reformation. It was the residence of the Landgraves of Thuringia from
1073 to 1440. There the most famous Minnesängers, Walther
von der Vogelweide, and Wolfram von Eschenbach, graced the court of
Hermann I. (1190–1217); there St. Elizabeth
(1207–1231), wife of Landgrave Ludwig, developed her
extraordinary virtues of humility and charity, and began those ascetic
self-mortifications which her heartless and barbarous confessor, Conrad
of Marburg, imposed upon her. But the most interesting relics of the
past are the Lutherstube and the adjoining Reformationszimmer. The
plain furniture of the small room which the Reformer occupied, is still
preserved: a table, a chair, a bedstead, a small bookcase, a
drinking-tankard, and the knightly armor of Junker Georg, his assumed
name. The famous ink-spot is seen no more, and the story is not
authentic. On my last visit, July 31, 1886, I saw only
scratches and disfigurements on the wall where the ink-spot was
formerly pointed out. "No old reporter," says Köstlin, I.
472 sq., "knows any thing about the spot of the inkstand on the wall;
the story arose probably from a spot of a different sort." Semler saw
such an ink-spot at Coburg. The legend, however, embodies a true
idea.
Luther’s sojourn in this romantic solitude extended through nearly eleven months, and alternated between recreation and work, health and sickness, high courage and deep despondency. Considering that he there translated the New Testament, it was the most useful year of his life. He gives a full description of it in letters to his Wittenberg friends, especially to Spalatin and Melanchthon, which were transmitted by secret messengers, and dated from "Patmos," or "the wilderness," from "the region of the air," or "the region of the birds."
He was known and treated during this episode as Knight George. He exchanged the monastic gown for the dress of a gentleman, let his hair and beard grow, wore a coat of mail, a sword, and a golden chain, and had to imitate courtly manners. He was served by two pages, who brought the meals to his room twice a day. His food was much better than be had been accustomed to as a monk, and brought on dyspepsia and insomnia. He enjoyed the singing of the birds, "sweetly lauding God day and night with all their strength." He made excursions with an attendant. Sometimes he took a book along, but was reminded that a Knight and a scholar were different beings. He engaged in conversation on the way, with priests and monks, about ecclesiastical affairs, and the uncertain whereabouts of Luther, till he was requested to go on. He took part in the chase, but indulged in theological thoughts among the huntsmen and animals. "We caught a few hares and partridges," he said, "a worthy occupation for idle people." The nets and dogs reminded him of the arts of the Devil entangling and pursuing poor human souls. He sheltered a hunted hare, but the dogs tore it to pieces; this suggested to him the rage of the Devil and the Pope to destroy those whom he wished to preserve. It would be better, he thought, to hunt bears and wolves.
He had many a personal encounter with the Devil,
whose existence was as certain to him as his own. More than once he
threw the inkstand at him—not literally, but
spiritually. His severest blow at the archfiend was the translation of
the New Testament. His own doubts, carnal temptations, evil thoughts,
as well as the dangers threatening him and his work from his enemies,
projected themselves into apparitions of the prince of darkness. He
heard his noises at night, in a chest, in a bag of nuts, and on the
staircase "as if a hundred barrels were rolled from top to bottom."
Once he saw him in the shape of a big black dog lying in his bed; he
threw the creature out of the window; but it did not bark, and
disappeared. In Goethe’s Faust,
Mephistopheles appears in the disguise of a poodle, the canis
infernus, and is conjured by the sign of a cross: "Bist du,
Geselle, Ein
Flüchtling der Hölle? So sieh
diess Zeichen, Dem sie
sich beugen Die
schwarzen Schaaren." "Verachtung kann der stolze hoffährtige
Geist nicht leiden."Tischreden. (LX. 75. Erl.-Frkf. ed.)
Luther was brought up in all the mediaeval
superstitious concerning demons, ghosts, witches, and sorcerers. His
imagination clothed ideas in concrete, massive forms. The Devil was to
him the personal embodiment of all evil and mischief in the world.
Hence he figures very largely in his theology and religious
experience. In the alphabetical index of the
Erlangen-Frankfurt edition of Luther’s German Works,
the title Teufel fills no less than ten closely printed pages
(vol. LXVII. 243-253). His Table-Talk on the Devil occupies about 150
pages in vols. LIX. and LX. It is instructive and interesting to read
it through. Michelet devotes a whole chapter to this subject (pp.
219-234). For a systematic view, see Köstlin,
Luther’s Theologie, vol. II. 313 sq.; 351
sqq. "Der Teufel ist ein trauriger
Geist," he says
in his Table-Talk (LX. 60), "und macht traurige Leute; darum
kann er Fröhlichkeit nicht leiden. Daher
kommt’s auch, dass er von der Musica aufs Weiteste
fleuget; er bleibt nicht, wenn man singt, sonderlich geistliche Lieder.
Also linderte David mit seiner Harfen dem Saul seine Anfechtung, da ihn
der Teufel plagte." Ein Polter-und
Rumpel-Geist. "Solche Wechselbälge [or Wechselkinder, changelings] und Kielkröpfe supponit Satan in locum verorum
filiorum, und plaget die Leute damit. Denn diese Gewalt hat der Satan,
dass er die Kinder auswechselt und einem für sein Kind einen
Teufel in die Wiegen legt." Erl. ed., LX. 41.
But, after all, the Devil has no real power over believers. He hates prayer, and flees from the cross and from the Word of God as from a flaming fire. If you cannot expel him by texts of Holy Scripture, the best way is to jeer and flout him. A pious nun once scared him away by simply saying: "Christiana sum." Christ has slain him, and will cast him out at last into the fire of hell. Hence Luther sings in his battle hymn, —
Luther was at times deeply dejected in spirit. He
wrote to Melanchthon, July 13, under the influence of dyspepsia which
paints every thing in the darkest colors: "You elevate me too high, and
fall into the serious error of giving me too much credit, as if I were
absorbed in God’s cause. This high opinion of yours
confounds and racks me, when I see myself insensible, hardened, sunk in
idleness, alas! seldom in prayer, and not venting one groan over
God’s Church. My unsubdued flesh burns me with
devouring fire. In short, I who ought to be eaten up with the spirit,
am devoured by the flesh, by luxury, indolence, idleness, somnolence.
Is it that God has turned away from me, because you no longer pray for
me? You must take my place; you, richer in God’s
gifts, and more acceptable in his sight. Here, a week has passed away
since I put pen to paper, since I have prayed or studied, either vexed
by fleshly cares, or by other temptations. If things do not improve, I
will go to Erfurt without concealment; there you will see me, or I you,
for I must consult physicians or surgeons. Perhaps the Lord troubles me
so much in order to draw me from this wilderness before the public." De Wette, II. 21 sq.
Notwithstanding his complaints of illness and depression, and assaults from the evil spirit, he took the liveliest interest in the events of the day, and was anxious to descend to the arena of conflict. He kept writing letters, books, and pamphlets, and sent them into the world. His literary activity during those few months is truly astounding, and contrasts strangely with his repeated lament that he had to sit idle at Patmos, and would rather be burned in the service of God than stagnate there.
He had few books in the Wartburg. He studied the
Greek and Hebrew Scriptures very diligently; "Bibliam Graecam et Hebraicam lego." To
Spalatin, May 14 (De Wette, II. 6).
He continued his great Latin commentary on the
Psalms, dwelling most carefully on See Preface to the St. Louis ed. of Walch, XI.
(1882), p. 1 sqq., and Köstlin, I.
486-489.
He also dealt an effectual blow at Cardinal
Albrecht of Mainz, who had exposed in Halle a collection of nearly nine
thousand wondrous relies (including the manna in the wilderness, the
burning bush of Moses, and jars from the wedding at Cana) to the view
of pilgrims, with the promise of a "surpassing" indulgence for
attendance and a charitable contribution to the Collegiate Church.
Luther disregarded the fact that his own pious Elector had arranged a
similar exhibition in Wittenberg only a few years before, and prepared
a fierce protest against the "Idol of Indulgences" (October, 1521).
Spalatin and the Elector protested against the publication, but he
wrote to Spalatin: "I will not put up with it. I will rather lose you
and the prince himself, and every living being. If I have stood up
against the Pope, why should I yield to his creature?" At the same time
he addressed a sharp letter to the archbishop (Dec. 1), and reminded
him that by this time he ought to know that indulgences were mere
knavery and trickery; that Luther was still alive; that bishops, before
punishing priests for marrying, better first expel their own
mistresses. He threatened him with the issue of the book against the
Idol of Halle. The archbishop submitted, and made a humble apology in a
letter of Dec. 21, which shows what a power Luther had acquired over
him. Both letters in Walch, XIX. 656 sqq.;
Luther’s letter in De Wette, II. 112-115. Comp.
Köstlin, I. 485 sq. The usual opinion that Albrecht revived
the traffic in indulgences at Halle seems at least doubtful, and
is denied by Albrecht Wolters in his Easter Program,
Hat Cardinal Albrecht
von Mainz im J. 1521 den Tetzel’schen Ablasshandel
erneuert? Bonn,
1877 (pp. 24). He concludes: "Somit war der
’Abgott,’ welchen Luther
bekämpfte, nicht die Erneuerung des
Tetzel’schen Ablasshandels, sondern die
Wiederaufrichtung der in Sachsen theils erloschenen, theils
erlöschenden alten Ablasslehre, welche der Cardinal durch
Ausstellung seiner mit Ablass begnadigten Reliquien zur Hebung des
neuen Stifts und in der Stiftskirche zu Halle im Jahr 1521 versucht
hat."
§ 62. Luther’s Translation of the Bible.
I. Dr. Martin Luther’s Bibelübersetzung nach der letzten Original-Ausgabe, kritisch bearbeitet von H. E. Bindseil und H. A. Niemeyer. Halle, 1845–55, in 7 vols. 8°. The N. T. in vols. 6 and 7. A critical reprint of the last edition of Luther (1545). Niemeyer died after the publication of the first volume. Comp. the Probebibel (the revised Luther-Version), Halle, 1883. Luther’s Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen und Fürbitte der Heiligen (with a letter to Wenceslaus Link, Sept. 12, 1530), in Walch, XXI. 310 sqq., and the Erl. Frkf. ed., vol. LXV. 102–123. (Not in De Wette’s collection, because of its polemical character.) A defense of his version against the attacks of the Romanists. Mathesius, in his thirteenth sermon on the Life of Luther.
II. On the merits and history of Luther’s version. The best works are by Palm (1772). Panzer (Vollständ. Gesch. der deutschen Bibelübers. Luthers, Nürnb. 1783, 2d ed. 1791), Weidemann (1834), H. Schott (1835), Bindseil (1847), Hopf (1847), Mönckeberg (1855 and 1861), Karl Frommann (1862), Dorner (1868), W. Grimm (1874 and l884), Düsterdieck (1882), Kleinert (1883), TH. Schott (1883), and the introduction to the Probebibel (1883). See Lit. in § 17, p. 103.
III. On the pre-Lutheran German Bible, and Luther’s relation to it. Ed. Reuss: Die deutsche Historienbibel vor der Erfindung des Bücherdrucks. Jena, 1855. Jos. Kehrein (Rom. Cath.): Zur Geschichte der deutschen Bibelübersetzung vor Luther. Stuttgart, 1851. O. F. Fritzsche in Herzog, 2d ed., Bd. III. (1876), pp. 543 sqq. Dr. W. Krafft: Die deutsche Bibel vor Luther, sein Verhältniss zu derselben und seine Verdienste um die deutsche Bibelübersetzung. Bonn, 1883 (25 pages. 4°.) Also the recent discussions (1885–1887) of Keller, Haupt, Jostes, Rachel, Kawerau, Kolde, K. Müller, on the alleged Waldensian origin of the pre-Lutheran German version.
The richest fruit of Luther’s
leisure in the Wartburg, and the most important and useful work of his
whole life, is the translation of the New Testament, by which he
brought the teaching and example of Christ and the Apostles to the mind
and heart of the Germans in life-like reproduction. It was a
republication of the gospel. He made the Bible the
people’s book in church, school, and house. If he had
done nothing else, he would be one of the greatest benefactors of the
German-speaking race. The testimony of the great philosopher Hegel is
worth quoting. He says in his Philosophie der Geschichte, p. 503: "Luther hat die
Autorität der Kirche verworfen und an ihre Stelle die Bibel
und das Zeugniss des menschlichen Geistes gesetzt. Dass nun die Bibel
selbst die Grundlage der christlichen Kirche geworden ist, ist von der
grössten Wichtigkeit; jeder soll sich nun selbst daraus
belehren, jeder sein Gewissen daraus bestimmen können. Diess
ist die ungeheure Veränderung im Principe: die ganze
Tradition und das Gebäude der Kirche wird problematisch und
das Princip der Autorität der Kirche umgestossen. Die
Uebersetzung, welche Luther von der Bibel gemacht hat, ist von
unschätzbarem Werthe für das deutsche Volk
gewesen. Dieses hat dadurch ein Volksbuch erhalten, wie keine Nation
der katholischen Welt ein solches hat; sie haben wohl eine Unzahl von
Gebetbüchlein, aber kein Grundbuch zur Belehrung des Volks.
Trotz dem hat man in neueren Zeiten Streit deshalb erhoben, ob es
zweckmässig sei, dem Volke die Bibel indie Hand zu geben;
die wenigen Nachtheile, die dieses hat, werden doch bei weitem von den
ungeheuren Vortheilen überwogen; die äusserlichen
Geschichten, die dem Herzen und Verstande anstössig sein
können, weiss der religiöse Sinn sehr wohl zu
unterscheiden, und sich an das Substantielle haltend
überwindet er sie." Froude (Luther, p. 42) calls
Luther’s translation of the Bible "the greatest of all
the gifts he was able to offer to Germany."
His version was followed by Protestant versions in other languages, especially the French, Dutch, and English. The Bible ceased to be a foreign book in a foreign tongue, and became naturalized, and hence far more clear and dear to the common people. Hereafter the Reformation depended no longer on the works of the Reformers, but on the book of God, which everybody could read for himself as his daily guide in spiritual life. This inestimable blessing of an open Bible for all, without the permission or intervention of pope and priest, marks an immense advance in church history, and can never be lost.
Earlier Versions.
Luther was not the first, but by far the greatest translator of the German Bible, and is as inseparably connected with it as Jerome is with the Latin Vulgate. He threw the older translation into the shade and out of use, and has not been surpassed or even equaled by a successor. There are more accurate versions for scholars (as those of De Wette and Weizsäcker), but none that can rival Luther’s for popular authority and use.
The civilization of the barbarians in the dark ages began with the introduction of Christianity, and the translation of such portions of the Scriptures as were needed in public worship.
The Gothic Bishop Wulfila or Wölflein
(i.e., Little Wolf) in the fourth century translated nearly the whole
Bible from the Greek into the Gothic dialect. It is the earliest
monument of Teutonic literature, and the basis of comparative Teutonic
philology. Hence repeatedly published from the remaining
fragmentary MSS. in Upsala (Codex Argenteus, so called from its silver
binding), Wolfenbüttel and Milan, by H. C. von Gabelenz and
J. Loebe (1836), Massmann (1857), Bernhardt (1875), Stamm (1878),
Uppström (1854-1868, the most accurate edition), R.
Müller and H. Hoeppe (1881), W. W. Skeat (1882). Comp. also
Jos. Bosworth, The Gothic and Anglo-Saxon Gospels in Parallel
Columns with the Versions of Wycliffe and Tyndale, London, 2d ed.,
1874 (with a fac-simile of the Codex Argenteus).
During the fourteenth century some unknown
scholars prepared a new translation of the whole Bible into the Middle
High German dialect. It slavishly follows the Latin Vulgate. It may be
compared to Wiclif’s English Version (1380), which was
likewise made from the Vulgate, the original languages being then
almost unknown in Europe. A copy of the New Testament of this version
has been recently published, from a manuscript in the Premonstratensian
convent of Tepl in Bohemia. By P. Philipp Klimesch (librarian of the
convent), Der Codex Teplensis, enthaltend "Die Schrift des newen Gezeuges."
Aelteste deutsche Handschrift, welche den im 15 Jahrh. gedruckten
deutschen Bibeln zu Grunde gelegen. Augsburg and München, 1881-1884,
in 3 parts. The Codex contains also homilies of St. Augustin and St.
Chrysostom, and seven articles of faith. The last especially have
induced Keller and Haupt to assign the translation to Waldensian
origin. But these Addenda are not uncatholic, and at most would only
prove Waldensian or Bohemian proprietorship of this particular copy,
but not authorship of the translation. See Notes below, p. 353. See Dr. M. Rachel’s Gymnasial
program: Ueber die Freiberger Bibelhandschrift, nebst Beiträgen
zur Gesch. der vorlutherischen
Bibelübersetzung, Freiberg, 1886 (31 pages). This apocryphal Epistle was also included in
the Albigensian (Romance) version of the 13th century, in a Bohemian
version, and in the early English Bibles, in two independent
translations of the 14th or 15th century, but not in
Wiclif’s Bible. See Forshall and Maddan, Wycliffite
Versions of the Bible (1850), IV. 438 sq.; Anger,
Ueber den
Laodicenerbrief (Leipzig, 1843); and Lightfoot, Com. on Ep. to the
Colossians (London, 1875), p. 363 sq. On the other hand, the same
pseudo-Pauline Epistle appears in many MSS. and early editions of the
Vulgate, and in the German versions of Eck and Dietenberger. It can
therefore not be used as an argument for or against the Waldensian
hypothesis of Keller.
After the invention of the printing-press, and
before the Reformation, this mediaeval German Bible was more frequently
printed than any other except the Latin Vulgate. Ninety-seven editions of the Vulgate were
printed between 1450 and 1500,—28 in Italy (nearly all
in Venice), 16 in Germany, 10 in Basel, 9 in France. See Fritzsche in
Herzogii, vol. VIII.
450.
The spread of this version, imperfect as it was, proves the hunger and thirst of the German people for the pure word of God, and prepared the way for the Reformation. It alarmed the hierarchy. Archbishop Berthold of Mainz, otherwise a learned and enlightened prelate, issued, Jan. 4, 1486, a prohibition of all unauthorized printing of sacred and learned books, especially the German Bible, within his diocese, giving as a reason that the German language was incapable of correctly rendering the profound sense of Greek and Latin works, and that laymen and women could not understand the Bible. Even Geiler of Kaisersberg, who sharply criticised the follies of the world and abuses of the Church, thought it "an evil thing to print the Bible in German."
Besides the whole Bible, there were numerous
German editions of the Gospels and Epistles (Plenaria), and the
Psalter, all made from the Vulgate. In the royal library of Munich there are 21
MSS. of German versions of the Gospels and Epistles. The Gospels for
the year were printed about 25 times before 1518; the Psalter about 13
times before 1513. See besides the works of Panzer, Kehrein, Keller,
Haupt, above quoted, Alzog, Die deutschen Plenarien im 15. und zu Anfang des
16. Jahrh.,
Freiburg-i-B., 1874.
Luther could not be ignorant of this mediaeval
version. He made judicious use of it, as he did also of old German and
Latin hymns. Without such aid he could hardly have finished his New
Testament in the short space of three months. Luther’s use of the older
German version was formerly ignored or denied, but has been proved by
Professor Krafft of Bonn (1883). He adds, however, very justly
(l.c. p. 19): "Es gereicht Luther zum grössten Verdienst,
dass er auf den griechischen Grundtext zurückgegangen, den
deutschen Wortschatz zunächst im N. T. wesentlich
berichtigt, dann aber auch mit seiner Genialität bedeutend
vermehrt hat."
See Notes below, p.
352.
Luther’s Qualifications.
Luther had a rare combination of gifts for a Bible translator: familiarity with the original languages, perfect mastery over the vernacular, faith in the revealed word of God, enthusiasm for the gospel, unction of the Holy Spirit. A good translation must be both true and free, faithful and idiomatic, so as to read like an original work. This is the case with Luther’s version. Besides, he had already acquired such fame and authority that his version at once commanded universal attention.
His knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was only
moderate, but sufficient to enable him to form an independent
judgment. "Ich kann," he says in his Tischreden, "weder griechisch noch ebraeisch, ich will aber
dennoch einem Ebraeer und Griechen ziemlich begegnen. Aber die Sprachen
machen für sich selbst keinen Theologen, sondern sind nur
eine Hülfe. Denn soll einer von einem Dinge reden, so muss
er die Sache [Sprache?] zuvor wissen und verstehen." Erl.-Frkf. ed., vol. LXII.
313.
A good translation, he says, requires "a truly devout, faithful, diligent, Christian, learned, experienced, and practiced heart."
Progress of his Version.
Luther was gradually prepared for this work. He found for the first time a complete copy of the Latin Bible in the University Library at Erfurt, to his great delight, and made it his chief study. He derived from it his theology and spiritual nourishment; he lectured and preached on it as professor at Wittenberg day after day. He acquired the knowledge of the original languages for the purpose of its better understanding. He liked to call himself a "Doctor of the Sacred Scriptures."
He made his first attempt as translator with the seven Penitential Psalms, which he published in March, 1517, six months before the outbreak of the Reformation. Then followed several other sections of the Old and New Testaments,—the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Prayer of King Manasseh, the Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, etc., with popular comments. He was urged by his friends, especially by Melanchthon, as well as by his own sense of duty, to translate the whole Bible.
He began with the New Testament in November or
December, 1521, and completed it in the following March, before he left
the Wartburg. He thoroughly revised it on his return to Wittenberg,
with the effectual help of Melanchthon, who was a much better Greek
scholar. Sturz at Erfurt was consulted about coins and measures;
Spalatin furnished from the Electoral treasury names for the precious
stones of the New Jerusalem ( Under the title: Das Newe Testament Deutzsch.
Wittemberg. With
wood-cuts by Lucas Cranach, one at the beginning of each book and
twenty-one in the Apocalypse. The chapter division of the Latin Bible,
dating from Hugo a St. Caro, was retained with some paragraph
divisions; the versicular division was as yet unknown (Robert Stephanus
first introduced it in his Latin edition, 1548, and in his Greek
Testament of 1551). The order of the Epistles is changed, and the
change remained in all subsequent editions. Some parallel passages and
glosses are added on the margin. It contained many typographical
errors, a very curious one in A copy of this rare edition, without the full-page
Apocalyptic pictures, but with the error just noticed, is in the Union
Seminary Library, New York. It has the famous preface with the fling at
the "rechte stroern Epistel" of St. James, which was afterwards
omitted or modified.
In December a second edition was required, which
contained many corrections and improvements. The woodcuts were also changed. The triple
papal crown of the Babylonian woman in
He at once proceeded to the more difficult task of translating the Old Testament, and published it in parts as they were ready. The Pentateuch appeared in 1523; the Psalter, 1524.
In the progress of the work he founded a Collegium Biblieum, or Bible club, consisting of his colleagues Melanchthon, Bugenhagen (Pommer), Cruciger, Justus Jonas, and Aurogallus. They met once a week in his house, several hours before supper. Deacon Georg Rörer (Rorarius), the first clergyman ordained by Luther, and his proof-reader, was also present; occasionally foreign scholars were admitted; and Jewish rabbis were freely consulted. Each member of the company contributed to the work from his special knowledge and preparation. Melanchthon brought with him the Greek Bible, Cruciger the Hebrew and Chaldee, Bugenhagen the Vulgate, others the old commentators; Luther had always with him the Latin and the German versions besides the Hebrew. Sometimes they scarcely mastered three lines of the Book of Job in four days, and hunted two, three, and four weeks for a single word. No record exists of the discussions of this remarkable company, but Mathesius says that "wonderfully beautiful and instructive speeches were made."
At last the whole Bible, including the Apocrypha as "books not equal to the Holy Scriptures, yet useful and good to read," was completed in 1534, and printed with numerous woodcuts.
In the mean time the New Testament had appeared in
sixteen or seventeen editions, and in over fifty reprints. Fritzsche (l.c., p. 549):
"Vom N. T. sind von
1522-1533 ziemlich sicher 16 original Ausgaben nachgewiesen ... Die
Nachdrucke belaufen sich auf ungefähr 54, wobei Augsburg mit
14, Strassburg mit 13, und Basel mit 12 vertreten
ist."
Luther complained of the many errors in these irresponsible editions.
He never ceased to amend his translation. Besides correcting errors, he improved the uncouth and confused orthography, fixed the inflections, purged the vocabulary of obscure and ignoble words, and made the whole more symmetrical and melodious.
He prepared five original editions, or recensions,
of his whole Bible, the last in 1545, a year before his death. Under the title: Biblia, das ist die gantze Heilige
Schrift, Deutsch. Auffs neu zugericht. D. Mart. Luther. Wittemberg.
Durch Hans Lufft, M.D.XLV. fol. with numerous woodcuts. A copy in the Canstein
Bibelanstalt at Halle. The Union Theol. Seminary in New York has
a copy of the edition of 1535 which bears this title:
Biblia das ist die
/gantze Heilige /Schrifft Deutsch./ Mart. Luth./ Wittemberg./ Begnadet
mit Kür-/ furstlicher zu Sachsen /freiheit. /Gedruckt durch
Hans Lufft./ M. D. XXXV. The margin is ornamented. Then follows the imprimatur of
the Elector John Frederick of Saxony, a preface of Luther to the O. T.,
and a rude picture of God, the globe and paradise with Adam and Eve
among trees and animals. Republished with the greatest care by Bindseil
& Niemeyer. See Lit., p. 340.
The edition of 1546 was prepared by his friend
Rörer, and contains a large number of alterations, which he
traced to Luther himself. Some of them are real improvements, e.g.,
"Die Liebe höret nimmer auf," for, "Die Liebe wird nicht
müde" (
Editions and Revisions.
The printed Bible text of Luther had the same fate
as the written text of the old Itala and Jerome’s
Vulgate. It passed through innumerable improvements and
mis-improvements. The orthography and inflections were modernized,
obsolete words removed, the versicular division introduced (first in a
Heidelberg reprint, 1568), the spurious clause of the three witnesses
inserted in
Gradually no less than eleven or twelve recensions came into use, some based on the edition of 1545, others on that of 1546. The most careful recension was that of the Canstein Bible Institute, founded by a pious nobleman, Carl Hildebrand von Canstein (1667–1719) in connection with Francke’s Orphan House at Halle. It acquired the largest circulation and became the textus receptus of the German Bible.
With the immense progress of biblical learning in the present century, the desire for a timely revision of Luther’s version was more and more felt. Revised versions with many improvements were prepared by Joh.- Friedrich von Meyer, a Frankfurt patrician (1772–1849), and Dr. Rudolf Stier (18001862), but did not obtain public authority.
At last a conservative official revision of the
Luther Bible was inaugurated by the combined German church governments
in 1863, with a view and fair prospect of superseding all former
editions in public use. See Note at the end of the next
section.
The Success.
The German Bible of Luther was saluted with the greatest enthusiasm, and became the most powerful help to the Reformation. Duke George of Saxony, Duke William of Bavaria, and Archduke Ferdinand of Austria strictly prohibited the sale in their dominions, but could not stay the current. Hans Lufft at Wittenberg printed and sold in forty years (between 1534 and 1574) about a hundred thousand copies,—an enormous number for that age,—and these were read by millions. The number of copies from reprints is beyond estimate.
Cochlaeus, the champion of Romanism, paid the
translation the greatest compliment when he complained that
"Luther’s New Testament was so much multiplied and
spread by printers that even tailors and shoemakers, yea, even women
and ignorant persons who had accepted this new Lutheran gospel, and
could read a little German, studied it with the greatest avidity as the
fountain of all truth. Some committed it to memory, and carried it
about in their bosom. In a few months such people deemed themselves so
learned that they were not ashamed to dispute about faith and the
gospel not only with Catholic laymen, but even with priests and monks
and doctors of divinity." De Actis et Scriptis M. Lutheri ad Ann.
1522. Gieseler (IV. 65 sq.) quotes the whole passage in
Latin.
The Romanists were forced in self-defense to issue
rival translations. Such were made by Emser (1527), Dietenberger
(1534), and Eck (1537), and accompanied with annotations. They are more
correct in a number of passages, but slavishly conformed to the
Vulgate, stiff and heavy, and they frequently copy the very language of
Luther, so that he could say with truth, "The Papists steal my German
of which they knew little before, and they do not thank me for it, but
rather use it against me." These versions have long since gone out of
use even in the Roman Church, while Luther’s still
lives. The last edition of Dr. Eck’s
Bible appeared in 1558, at Ingolstadt, Bavaria.
NOTE.
the pre-lutheran german bible.
According to the latest investigations, fourteen printed editions of the whole Bible in the Middle High German dialect, and three in the Low German, have been identified. Panzer already knew fourteen; see his Gesch. der nürnbergischen Ausgaben der Bibel, Nürnberg, 1778, p. 74.
The first four, in large folio, appeared without date and place of publication, but were probably printed: 1, at Strassburg, by Heinrich Eggestein, about or before 1466 (the falsely so-called Mainzer Bibel of 1462); 2, at Strassburg, by Johann Mentelin, 1466 (?); 3, at Augsburg, by Jodocus Pflanzmann, or Tyner, 1470 (?); 4, at Nürnberg, by Sensenschmidt and Frissner, in 2 vols., 408 and 104 leaves, 1470–73 (?). The others are located, and from the seventh on also dated, viz.: 5, Augsburg, by Günther Zainer, 2 vols., probably between 1473–1475. 6, Augsburg, by the same, dated 1477 (Stevens says, 1475?). 7, The third Augsburg edition, by Günther Zainer, or Anton Sorg, 1477, 2 vols., 321 and 332 leaves, fol., printed in double columns; the first German Bible with a date. 8, The fourth Augsburg edition, by A. Sorg, 1480, folio. 9, Nürnberg, by Anton Koburger (also spelled Koberger), 1483. 10, Strassburg, by Johann Gruninger, 1485. 11 and 12, The fifth and sixth Augsburg editions, in small fol., by Hans Schönsperger, 1487 and 1490. 13, The seventh Augsburg edition, by Hans Otmar, 1507, small folio. 14, The eighth Augsburg edition, by Silvan Otmar, 1518, small folio.
The Low Dutch Bibles were printed: 1, at Cologne, in large folio, double columns, probably 1480. The unknown editor speaks of previous editions and his own improvements. Stevens (Nos. 653 and 654) mentions two copies of the O. T. in Dutch, printed at Delf, 1477, 2 vols. fol. 2, At Lübeck, 1491 (not 1494), 2 vols. fol. with large woodcuts. 3, At Halberstadt, 1522.
Comp. Kehrein (I.c.), Krafft (l.c., pp. 4, 5), and Henry Stevens, The Bibles in the Caxton Exhibition, London, 1878. Stevens gives the full titles with descriptions, pp. 45 sqq., nos. 620 sqq.
Several of these Bibles, including the Koburger and those of Cologne and Halberstadt, are in the possession of the Union Theol. Seminary, New York. I examined them. They are ornamented by woodcuts, beginning with a picture of God creating the world, and forming Eve from the rib of Adam in Paradise. Several of them have Jerome’s preface (De omnibus divinae historiae libris, Ep. ad Paulinum), the oldest with the remark: "Da hebet an die epistel des heiligen priesters sant Jeronimi zu Paulinum von allen gottlichen büchern der hystory. Das erst capitel."
Dr. Krafft illustrates the dependence of Luther on
the earlier version by several examples (pp. 13–18).
The following is from the Sermon on the Mount,
the ninth bible, 1483.
Habt ir gehört, das gesaget ist den alten. Du solt nit tödten, wellicher aber tödtet. der wird schuldig des gerichts. Aber ich sag euch, daz ein yeglicher der do zürnet seinem bruder. der wirt schuldig des gerichts. Der aber spricht zu seinem bruder. racha. der wirt schuldig des rats. Und der do spricht. tor. der wirt schuldig des hellischen fewrs. Darum ob du opfferst dein gab zu dem attar. und do wirst gedenckend. daz dein bruder ettwas hat wider dich, lasz do dein gab vor dem altar und gee zum ersten und versüne dich mit deim bruder und denn kum und opffer dein gab. Bis gehellig deim widerwertigen schyer. die weyl du mit im bist him weg. das dich villeycht der widersacher nit antwurt den Richter. und der Richter dich antwurt dem diener und werdest gelegt in den kercker. Fürwar ich sag dir. du geest nit aus von dannen. und das du vergeltest den letzten quadranten.
luther’s new testament, 1522.
Ihr habt gehortt, das zu den alten gesagt ist, du sollt nit todten, wer aber todtet, der soll des gerichts schuldig seyn. Ich aber sage euch, wer mit seynem bruder zurnit, der ist des gerichts schuldig, wer aber zu seynem bruder sagt, Racha, der ist des rads schuldig, wer aber sagt, du narr, der ist des hellischen fewers schuldig.
Darumbwen̄ du deyn gabe auff den altar opfferst, un wirst alda eyngedenken, das deyn bruder ettwas widder dich hab, so las alda fur dem altar deyn gabe, unnd gehe zuvor hyn, unnd versune dich mitt deynem bruder, unnd als denn kom unnd opffer deyn gabe.
Sey willfertig deynem widersacher, bald, dieweyl du noch mit yhm auff dem wege bist, auff das dich der widdersacher nit der mal eyns ubirantwortte dem richter, un̄ d. richter ubirantworte dich dem diener, un̄ werdist yn̄ den kerccker geworffen, warlich ich sage dyr, du wirst nit von dannen erauze komen, bis du auch den letzten heller bezealest.
To this I add two specimens in which the superiority of Luther’s version is more apparent.
the koburger bible of nürnberg, 1483
In dem anfang hat got beschaffen hymel und erden. aber dye erde was eytel und leere. und die vinsternus warn auff dem antlitz des abgrunds. vnd der geist gots swebet oder ward getragen auff den wassern. Un̄ got der sprach. Es werde dz liecht. Un das liecht ist worden.
luther’s bible, ed. 1535.
Im anfang schuff Gott himel und erden. Und die erde war wüst und leer, und es war finster auff der tieffe, und der Geist Gottes schwebet auff dem wasser.
Un Gott sprach. Es werde liecht. Und es ward liecht.
The Strassburg Bible Of 1485.
Ob ich rede inn der zungen der engel vnd der menschen; aber habe ich der lieb nit, ich bin gemacht alls ein glockenspeyss lautend oder alls ein schell klingend. Vnd ob ich hab die weissagung und erkenn all heimlichkeit vnd alle kunst, und ob ich hab alten glauben, also das ich übertrag die berg, habe ich aber der lieb nit, ich bin nichts.
Luther’s New Testament, 1522.
Wenn ich mit menschen und mit engelzungen redet
und hette die Ed. of 1535: der. Ed. of 1535: nicht. Later eds.: eine …
schelle.
The precise origin of the mediaeval German Bible is still unknown. Dr. Ludwig Keller of Münster first suggested in his Die Reformation und die älteren Reformparteien, Leipzig, 1885, pp. 257–260, the hypothesis that it was made by Waldenses (who had also a Romanic version); and he tried to prove it in his Die Waldenser und die deutschen Bibelübersetzungen, Leipzig, 1886 (189 pages). Dr. Hermann Haupt, of Würzburg, took the same ground in his Die deutsche Bibelübersetzung der mittelalterlichen Waldenser in dem Codex Teplensis und der ersten gedruckten Bibel nachgewiesen, Würzburg, 1885 (64 pages); and again, in self-defense against Jostes, in Der waldensische Ursprung des Codex Teplensis und der vor-lutherischen deutschen Bibeldrucke, Würzburg, 1886. On the other hand, Dr. Franz Jostes, a Roman Catholic scholar, denied the Waldensian and defended the Catholic origin of that translation, in two pamphlets: Die Waldenser und die vorlutherische Bibelübersetzung, Münster, 1885 (44 pages), and Die Tepler Bibelübersetzung. Eine zweite Kritik, Münster, 1886 (43 pages). The same author promises a complete history of German Catholic Bible versions. The question has been discussed in periodicals and reviews, e.g., by Kawerau in Luthardt’s "Theol. Literaturblatt," Leipzig, 1885 and 1886 (Nos. 32–34), by Schaff in the New York "Independent" for Oct. 8, 1885, and in the "Presbyterian Review" for April, 1887, pp. 355 sqq.; by Kolde, in the "Göttinger Gelehrte Anzeigen," 1887, No. I.; by Müller in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1887, No. III.; and Bornemann, in the "Jahrb. f. Prot. Theol.," 1888, 67–101.
The arguments for the Waldensian origin are derived from certain additions to the Codex Teplensis, and alleged departures from the text of the Vulgate. But the additions are not anti-Catholic, and are not found in the cognate Freiberger MS.; and the textual variations can not be traced to sectarian bias. The text of the Vulgate was in greater confusion in the middle ages than the text of the Itala at the time of Jerome, nor was there any authorized text of it before the Clementine recension of 1592. The only plausible argument which Dr. Keller brings out in his second publication (pp. 80 sqq.) is the fact that Emser, in his Annotations to the New Test. (1523), charges Luther with having translated the N. T. from a "Wickleffisch oder hussisch exemplar." But this refers to copies of the Latin Vulgate; and in the examples quoted by Keller, Luther does not agree with the Codex Teplensis.
The hostility of several Popes and Councils to the circulation of vernacular translations of the Bible implies the existence of such translations, and could not prevent their publication, as the numerous German editions prove. Dutch, French, and Italian versions also appeared among the earliest prints. See Stevens, Nos. 687 and 688 (p. 59 sq.). The Italian edition exhibited in 1877 at London is entitled: La Biblia en lingua Volgare (per Nicolo di Mallermi). Venetia: per Joan. Rosso Vercellese, 1487, fol. A Spanish Bible by Bonif. Ferrer was printed at Valencia, 1478 (see Reuss, Gesch. der heil. Schr. N. T., II. 207, 5th Ed.).
The Bible is the common property and most sacred treasure of all Christian churches. The art of printing was invented in Catholic times, and its history goes hand in hand with the history of the Bible. Henry Stevens says (The Bibles in the Caxton Exhibition, p. 25): "The secular history of the Holy Scriptures is the sacred history of Printing. The Bible was the first book printed, and the Bible is the last book printed. Between 1450 and 1877, an interval of four centuries and a quarter, the Bible shows the progress and comparative development of the art of printing in a manner that no other single book can; and Biblical bibliography proves that during the first forty years, at least, the Bible exceeded in amount of printing all other books put together; nor were its quality, style, and variety a whit behind its quantity."
§ 63. A Critical Estimate of Luther’s Version.
Luther’s version of the Bible is a
wonderful monument of genius, learning, and piety, and may be regarded
in a secondary sense as inspired. It was, from beginning to end, a
labor of love and enthusiasm. While publishers and printers made
fortunes, Luther never received or asked a copper for this greatest
work of his life. He could say with perfect truth:
"Ich
habe meine Ehre nicht gemeint, auch keinen Heller dafür
genomen, sondern habe es zu Ehren gethan den lieben Christen und zu
Ehren einem, der droben sitzt."
We must judge it from the times. A German
translation from the original languages was a work of colossal
magnitude if we consider the absence of good grammars, dictionaries,
and concordances, the crude state of Greek and Hebrew scholarship, and
of the German language, in the sixteenth century. Luther wrote to
Amsdorf, Jan. 13, 1522, that he had undertaken a task beyond his power,
that he now understood why no one had attempted it before in his own
name, and that he would not venture on the Old Testament without the
aid of his friends. "Interim Biblia transferam, quanquam onus
susceperim supra vires. Video nunc, quid sit interpretari, et cur
hactenus a nullo sit attentatum, qui proficeretur nomen suum. [This
implies his knowledge of older German translations which are
anonymous.] Vetus Testamentum non potero attingere, nisi
vobis praesentibus et cooperantibus." "Ach Gott! wie ein gross und verdriesslich Werk ist es,
die hebräischen Schreiber zu zwingen deutsch zu reden; wie
sträuben sie sich und wollen ihre hebräische Art
gar nicht verlassen und dem groben Deutschen nachfolgen, gleich als
wenn eine Nachtigall ... sollte ihre liebliche Melodei verlassen und
dem Kukuk nachsingen." Walch, XVI. 508. Comp. his letter to Spalatin about the
difficulties in Job, Feb. 23, 1524, in De Wette, II.
486.
As regards the text, it was in an unsettled condition. The science of textual criticism was not yet born, and the materials for it were not yet collected from the manuscripts, ancient versions, and patristic quotations. Luther had to use the first printed editions. He had no access to manuscripts, the most important of which were not even discovered or made available before the middle of the nineteenth century. Biblical geography and archaeology were in their infancy, and many names and phrases could not be understood at the time.
In view of these difficulties we need not be surprised at the large number of mistakes, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies in Luther’s version. They are most numerous in Job and the Prophets, who present, even to the advanced Hebrew scholars of our day, many unsolved problems of text and rendering. The English Version of 1611 had the great advantage of the labors of three generations of translators and revisers, and is therefore more accurate, and yet equally idiomatic.
The Original Text.
The basis for Luther’s version of
the Old Testament was the Massoretic text as published by Gerson Ben
Mosheh at Brescia in 1494. Luther’s copy of the Hebrew
Bible is preserved in the Royal Library at Berlin. The editio
princeps of the whole Hebrew Bible appeared 1488 (Soncino: Abraham
ben Chayin de’ Tintori). A copy in possession of Dr.
Ginsburg in England. See Stevens, l.c. p. 60. Portions had been
printed before. A copy of the Lyons ed. of 1519, and one of the
Basel ed. of 1509, now in possession of the Brandenburg Provincial
Museum at Berlin. Grimm, Gesch. d. luther.
Bibelübers., p. 8, note. Lyra acquired by his Postillae perpetuae in
V. et N. Test. (first published in Rome, 1472, in 5 vols. fol.,
again at Venice, 1540) the title Doctor planus et utilis. His
influence on Luther is expressed in the well-known
lines:— "Si Lyra non
lyrasset, Lutherus non
saltasset."
The basis for the New Testament was the second
edition of Erasmus, published at Basel in Switzerland in 1519. Greek and Latin, 2 vols. folio. The first part
contains Preface, Dedication to Pope Leo X., and the Ratio seu
Compendium verae Theologiae per Erasmum Roterodamum (120 pages);
the second part, the Greek Text, with a Latin version in parallel
columns, with brief introductions to the several books (565 pages). At
the end is a Latin letter of Frobenius, the publisher, dated "Nonis
Fehr. Anno M.D.XIX." A copy in the Union Theol. Seminary, New York. -
Some say that Luther made use of Gerbel’s reprint of
Erasmus, 1521. But Dr. Reuss of Strassburg, who has the largest
collection and best knowledge of Greek Testaments, denies
this. Gesch. der h. Schriften des N. T., 5th ed., II. 211, note. See Schaff, Companion to the Greek
Testament, etc., New York, 3d ed., 1888, pp. 229 sqq., and the
facsimile of the Erasmian ed. on p. 532 sq. Tyndale’s
English version was likewise made from Erasmus. O. von Gebhardt, in his Novum Test. Graece
et Germanice, Preface, p. xvi., says of the second ed. of Erasmus:
"Die
Zahl der Druckfehler ist so gross, dass ein vollständiges
Verzeichniss derselben Seiten füllen
würde." Comp. Scrivener, Introd. to the Criticism of the N. T.,
3d ed. (1883), p. 432 sq.
Luther did not slavishly follow the Greek of
Erasmus, and in many places conformed to the Latin Vulgate, which is
based on an older text. He also omitted, even in his last edition, the
famous interpolation of the heavenly witnesses in It first appeared in the Frankfort edition of
Luther’s Bible, 1574. The revised Luther-Bible of 1883
strangely retains the passage, but in small type and in brackets, with
the note that it was wanting in Luther’s editions.
The Probebibel departs only in a few places from the Erasmian text as followed
by Luther: viz.,
The German Rendering.
The German language was divided into as many dialects as tribes and states, and none served as a bond of literary union. Saxons and Bavarians, Hanoverians and Swabians, could scarcely understand each other. Each author wrote in the dialect of his district, Zwingli in his Schwyzerdütsch. "I have so far read no book or letter," says Luther in the preface to his version of the Pentateuch (1523), in which the German language is properly handled. Nobody seems to care sufficiently for it; and every preacher thinks he has a right to change it at pleasure, and to invent new terms." Scholars preferred to write in Latin, and when they attempted to use the mother tongue, as Reuchlin and Melanchthon did occasionally, they fell far below in ease and beauty of expression.
Luther brought harmony out of this confusion, and
made the modern High German the common book language. He chose as the
basis the Saxon dialect, which was used at the Saxon court and in
diplomatic intercourse between the emperor and the estates, but was
bureaucratic, stiff, heavy, involved, dragging, and unwieldy. He says in his Tischreden (Erl. ed.,
vol. lxii. 313): "Ich habe keine gewisse, sonderliche eigene Sprache im
Deutschen [i.e.,
no special dialect], sondern brauche der gemeinen deutschen Sprache, dass mich
Oberländer und Niederländer verstehen
mögen. Ich rede nach der sächsischen Canzelei,
welcher nachfolgen alle Fürsten und Könige in
Deutschland. Alle Beichstädte,
Fürstenhöfe schreiben nach der
sächsischen und unseres Fürsten Canzelei, darumb
ists auch die gemeinste deutsche Sprache. Kaiser Maximilian und
Kurfürst Friedrich, Herzog zu Sachsen, etc., haben im
römischen Reich die deutschen Sprachen
[dialects] also
in eine gewisse Sprache gezogen." Formerly the Latin was the diplomatic
language in Germany. Louis the Bavarian introduced the German in 1330.
The founder of the diplomatic German of Saxony was Elector Ernst, the
father of Elector Friedrich. See Wilibald Grimm, Gesch. der luth.
Bibelübersetzung (Jena, 1884), p. 24 sqq.
He adapted the words to the capacity of the
Germans, often at the expense of accuracy. He cared more for the
substance than the form. He turned the Hebrew shekel into a
Silberling, The same word silverling occurs once in
the English version, See Grimm, Luther’s
Uebersetzung der Apocryphen, in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1883, pp. 376-400. He
judges that Luther’s version of Ecclesiasticus (Jesus
Sirach) is by no means a faithful translation, but a model of a free
and happy reproduction from a combination of the Greek and Latin
texts.
Erasmus Alber, a contemporary of Luther, called him the German Cicero, who not only reformed religion, but also the German language.
Luther’s version is an idiomatic
reproduction of the Bible in the very spirit of the Bible. It brings
out the whole wealth, force, and beauty of the German language. It is
the first German classic, as King James’s version is
the first English classic. It anticipated the golden age of German
literature as represented by Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Goethe,
Schiller,—all of them Protestants, and more or less
indebted to the Luther-Bible for their style. The best authority in
Teutonic philology pronounces his language to be the foundation of the
new High German dialect on account of its purity and influence, and the
Protestant dialect on account of its freedom which conquered even Roman
Catholic authors. "Luther’s Sprache,"
says Jakob Grimm, In the Preface to his German Grammar,
"muss
ihrer edeln, fast wunderbaren Reinheit, auch ihres gewaltigen
Einflusses halber für Kern und Grundlage der
neuhochdeutschen Sprachniedersetzung gehalten werden, wovon bis auf den
heutigen Tag nur sehr unbedeutend, meistens zum Schaden der Kraft und
des Ausdrucks, abgewichen wordenist. Man darf das Neuhochdeutsche in
der That als den protestantischen Dialekt bezeichnen, dessen
freiheitathmende Natur längst schon, ihnen unbewusst,
Dichter und Schriftsteller des katholischen Glaubens
überwältigte. Unsere Sprache ist nach dem
unaufhaltsamen Laufe der Dinge in Lautverhältnissen und
Formen gesunken; was aber ihren Geist und Leib genährt,
verjüngt, was endlich Blüten neuer Poesie
getrieben hat, verdanken wir keinem mehr als
Luthern." Comp.
Wetzel, Die Sprache Luthers in seiner Bibel, Stuttgart, 1850. Heinrich
Rückert, Geschichte der neu-hochdeutschen
Schriftsprache,
II. 15-175. Opitz, Ueber die Sprache Luthers, Halle, 1869. Dietz, Wörterbuch zu
Luther’s deutschen Schriften, Leipzig, 1870 sqq.
Lehmann, Luthers Sprache in seiner Uebersetzung des N.
T., Halle,
1873.
The Protestant Spirit of Luther’s Version.
Dr. Emser, one of the most learned opponents of
the Reformation, singled out in Luther’s New Testament
several hundred linguistic blunders and heretical falsifications. Annotationes des hochgel. und
christl. doctors Hieronymi Emsers über Luthers neuw
Testament, 1523.
I have before me an edition of Freiburg-i.-B., 1535 (140 pages). Emser
charges Luther with a thousand grammatical and fourteen hundred
heretical errors. He suspects (p. 14) that he had before him
"ein
sonderlich Wickleffisch oder Hussisch Exemplar." He does not say whether he means a
copy of the Latin Vulgate or the older German version. He finds (p. 17)
four errors in Luther’s version of the
Lord’s Prayer: 1, that he turned Vater unser
into Unser Vater, against the German custom for a thousand years
(but in his Shorter Catechism he retained the old form, and the
Lutherans adhere to it to this day); 2, that he omitted
der du
bist; 3, that he
changed the panis supersubstantialis (überselbständig Brot!) into panis quotidianus
(täglich Brot); 4, that he added the doxology, which is not in the
Vulgate. In our days, one of the chief objections against the English
Revision is the omission of the doxology. Das gantz New Testament: So durch
den Hochgelerten L. Hieronymum Emser seligen verteutscht, unter des
Durchlauchten Hochgebornen Fürsten und Herren Georgen
Hertzogen zu Sachsen, etc., ausgegangen ist. Leipzig, 1528. The first edition
appeared before Emser’s death, which occurred Nov. 8,
1527. I find in the Union Seminary four octavo copies of his N. T.,
dated Coln, 1528 (355 pp.), Leipzig, 1529 (416 pp.), Freiburg-i.-B.
1535 (406 pp.), Cöln, 1568 (879 pp.), and a copy of a fol.
ed., Cologne, 1529 (227 pp.), all with illustrations and marginal notes
against Luther. On the concluding page, it is stated that 607 errors of
Luther’s are noted and corrected. The Cologne ed. of
1529 indicates, on the titlepage, that Luther arbitrarily changed the
text according to the Hussite copy ("wie Martinus Luther dem rechten
Text, dem huschischen Exemplar nach, seins gefallens ab und zugethan
und verendert hab"). Most editions contain a Preface of Duke George of Saxony, in
which he charges Luther with rebellion against all ecclesiastical and
secular authority, and identifies him with the beast of the Apocalypse,
The charge that Luther adapted the translation to
his theological opinions has become traditional in the Roman Church,
and is repeated again and again by her controversialists and
historians. Dr. Döllinger, in his
Reformation, vol. III. 139 sqq., 156 sqq., goes into an
elaborate proof. In his Luther, eine Skizze (Freiburg-i. -B., 1851), p. 26, he calls
Luther’s version "ein Meisterstück in
sprachlicher Hinsicht, aber seinem Lehrbegriffe gemäss
eingerichtet, und daher in vielen Stellen absichtlich unrichtig und
sinnentstellend."
So also Cardinal Hergenröther (Lehrbuch der allg.
Kirchengesch.,
vol. III. 40, third ed. of 1886): "Die ganze Uebersetzung war ganz
nach Luthers System zugerichtet, auf Verbreitung seiner
Rechtfertigungslehre berechnet, oft durch willkührliche
Entstellungen und Einschaltungen seinen Lehren
angepasst."
The same objection has been raised against the
Authorized English Version. By older and more recent Romanists, as Ward,
Errata of the Protestant Bible, Dublin, 1810. Trench considers the main
objections in his book on the Authorized Version and Revision, pp. 165
sqq. (in the Harper ed. of 1873). The chief passages objected to by
Romanists are
In both cases, the charge has some foundation, but no more than the counter-charge which may be brought against Roman Catholic Versions.
The most important example of dogmatic influence
in Luther’s version is the famous interpolation of the
word alone in But he omitted allein in
He therefore insisted on this insertion in spite
of all outcry against it. His defense is very characteristic. "If your
papist," he says, In his Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen, in the Erl.-Frkf. ed., vol. LXV., p.
107 sqq. It was published in September, 1530, with special reference to
Emser, whom he does not name, but calls "the scribbler from Dresden"
("der
dresdener Sudler"). The Revisers of the Probebibel retained the interpolated
allein in
The Protestant and anti-Romish character of
Luther’s New Testament is undeniable in his prefaces,
his discrimination between chief books and less important books, his
change of the traditional order, and his unfavorable judgments on
James, Hebrews, and Revelation. The Prefaces are collected in the 7th volume of
Bindseil’s edition of the Luther Bible, and in the 63d
volume of the Erlangen ed. of Luther’s works. The most
important is his preface to the Epistle to the Romans, and his most
objectionable that to the Epistle of James. He adds in the marginal note on
On the other hand, the Roman Catholic translators
used the same liberty of marginal annotations and pictorial
illustrations in favor of the doctrines and usages of their own church.
Emser’s New Testament is full of anti-Lutheran
glosses. In
The same may be said of the other two German
Catholic Bibles of the age of the Reformation. They follow
Luther’s language very closely within the limits of
the Vulgate, and yet abuse him in the notes. Dr. Dietenberger adds his
comments in smaller type after the chapters, and agrees with
Emser’s interpretation of Biblia beider Allt unnd Newen
Testamenten, fleissig, treulich vn Christlich nach alter inn
Christlicher Kirchen gehabter Translation, mit Ausslegung etlicher
dunckeler ort und besserung vieler verrückter wort und
sprüch ... Durch D. Johan Dietenberger, new verdeutscht.
Gott zu ewiger ehre unnd wolfarth seiner heil. Christlichen
Kirchen … Meynz, 1534, fol. From a copy in the Union
Seminary (Van Ess library). Well printed and
illustrated. I have before me three copies of as many folio
editions of Eck’s Bible, 1537, 1550, and 1558, bearing
the title: Bibel Alt und New Testament, nach dem Text in der heiligen
Kirchen gebraucht, durch Doctor Johan Ecken, mit fleiss, auf
hochteutsch verdolmetscht, etc. They were printed at Ingolstadt, and agree in the number
of pages (1035), and vary only in the date of publication. They contain
in an appendix the Prayer of Manasseh, the Third Book of Maccabees, and
the spurious Epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans.
To be just, we must recognize the sectarian
imperfections of Bible versions, arising partly from defective
knowledge, partly from ingrained prejudices. A translation is an
interpretation. Absolute reproduction is impossible in any work. There is an Italian proverb that translators
are traitors (Traduttori traditori). Jerome speaks of versiones which are
eversiones. As Trench says, there are in every translation
"unavoidable losses inherent in the nature of the task, in the
relations of one language to the other, in the lack of accurate
correlations between them, in the different schemes of their
construction." Hence the stiffness of literalism and the
abundance of Latinisms in the Rhemish Version of the N. T. (first
published in 1582, second ed. 1600, third ed. at Douay, 1621), such as
"supersubstantial bread" for daily or needful bread (Jerome introduced
supersubstantialis for the difficult ἐπιούσιος
in the Lord’s
Prayer,
There is, however, a gradual progress in translation, which goes hand in hand with the progress of the understanding of the Bible. Jerome’s Vulgate is an advance upon the Itala, both in accuracy and Latinity; the Protestant Versions of the sixteenth century are an advance upon the Vulgate, in spirit and in idiomatic reproduction; the revisions of the nineteenth century are an advance upon the versions of the sixteenth, in philological and historical accuracy and consistency. A future generation will make a still nearer approach to the original text in its purity and integrity. If the Holy Spirit of God shall raise the Church to a higher plane of faith and love, and melt the antagonisms of human creeds into the one creed of Christ, then, and not before then, may we expect perfect versions of the oracles of God.
NOTES.
the official revision of the luther-bible, and the anglo-
american revision of the authorized english bible.
An official revision of Luther’s version was inaugurated, after long previous agitation and discussion, by the "Eisenach German Evangelical Church Conference," in 1863, and published under the title: Die Bibel oder die ganze Heilige Schrift des Alten und Neuen Testaments nach der deutschen Uebersetzung D. Martin Luthers. Halle (Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses), 1883. It is called the Probebibel. The revised New Testament had been published several years before, and is printed by Dr. O. von Gebhardt together with the Greek text, in his Novum Testamentum Graece et Germanice, Leipzig, 1881.
The revision was prepared with extraordinary care, but in an ultra-conservative spirit, by a number of distinguished biblical scholars appointed by the ecclesiastical authorities of the German governments, eleven for the New Testament (Nitzsch, Twesten, Beyschlag, Riehm, Ahlfeld, Brückner, Meyer, Niemann, Fronmüller, Schröder, Köstlin), and over twenty for the Old Testament, including some who had also served in the New Testament company (Tholuck, Schlottmann, Riehm, Dillmann, Kleinert, Delitzsch, Bertheau, Düsterdieck, Kamphausen, Baur of Leipzig, Ahlfeld, Thenius, Kübel, Kapff, Schröder, Diestel, Grimm, Kühn, Hoffmann, Clausen, Grill). Dorner, Mönckeberg, and Karl Frommann took a very active part as counsellors and promoters, the last (an eminent Germanist and Luther-scholar, but with strong archaic tastes) in the linguistic portion.
The work was very severely criticised by opposite schools for changing too much or too little, and was recommitted by the Eisenach Conference of 1886 for final action. The history of this revision is told in the preface and Introduction to the Probebibel, and in Grimm’s Geschichte der luth. Bibelübersetzung, Jena, 1884, pp. 48–76.
The Anglo-American revision of the Authorized English Version of 1611 was set in motion by the Convocation of Canterbury, and carried out in fifteen years, between 1870 and 1885, by two committees,—one in England and one in the United States (each divided into two companies, -one for the Old Testament, one for the New, and each consisting of scholars of various Protestant denominations). Dr. Dorner, on his visit to America in 1873, desired to bring about a regular co-operation of the two revision movements, but it was found impracticable, and confined to private correspondence.
The two revisions are similar in spirit and aim; and as far as they run parallel, they agree in most of the improvements. Both aim to replace the old version in public and private use; but both depend for ultimate success on the verdict of the churches for which they were prepared. They passed through the same purgatory of hostile criticism both from conservative and progressive quarters. They mark a great progress of biblical scholarship, and the immense labor bestowed upon them can never be lost. The difference of the two arises from the difference of the two originals on which they are based, and its relation to the community.
The authorized German and English versions are equally idiomatic, classical, and popular; but the German is personal, and inseparable from the overawing influence of Luther, which forbids radical changes. The English is impersonal, and embodies the labors of three generations of biblical scholars from Tyndale to the forty-seven revisers of King James,—a circumstance which is favorable to new improvements in the same line. In Germany, where theology is cultivated as a science for a class, the interest in revision is confined to scholars; and German scholars, however independent and bold in theory, are very conservative and timid in practical questions. In England and America, where theology moves in close contact with the life of the churches, revision challenges the attention of the laity which claims the fruits of theological progress.
Hence the Anglo-American revision is much more thorough and complete. It embodies the results of the latest critical and exegetical learning. It involves a reconstruction of the original text, which the German Revision leaves almost untouched, as if all the pains-taking labors of critics since the days of Bengel and Griesbach down to Lachmann and Tischendorf (not to speak of the equally important labors of English scholars from Mill and Bentley to Westcott and Hort) had been in vain.
As to translation, the English Revision removes not only misleading errors, but corrects the far more numerous inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the minor details of grammar and vocabulary; while the German Revision is confined to the correction of acknowledged mistranslations. The German Revision of the New Testament numbers only about two hundred changes, the Anglo-American thirty-six thousand. The revised German New Testament is widely circulated; but of the provisional Probebibel, which embraces both Testaments, only five thousand copies were printed and sold by the Canstein Bibelanstalt at Halle (as I learned there from Dr. Kramer, July, 1886). Of the revised English New Testament, a million copies were ordered from the Oxford University Press before publication, and three million copies were sold in less than a year (1881). The text was telegraphed from New York to Chicago in advance of the arrival of the book. Over thirty reprints appeared in the United States. The Revised Old Testament excited less interest, but tens of thousands of copies were sold on the day of publication (1885), and several American editions were issued. The Bible, after all, is the most popular book In the world, and constantly increasing in power and influence, especially with the English-speaking race. (For particulars on the English Revision, see Schaff’s Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Version, New York, 3d ed., 1888, pp. 404 sqq., and the extensive Revision literature, pp. 371 sqq.)
§ 64. Melanchthon’s Theology.
See Literature in § 38, pp. 182 sq. The 21st vol. of the "Corpus Reformatorum" (1106 fol. pages) is devoted to the various editions of Melanchthon’s Loci Theologici, and gives bibliographical lists (fol. 59 sqq.; 561 sqq.), and also an earlier outline from an unpublished MS. Comp. Carl Schmidt, Phil. Mel., pp. 64–75; and on Melanchthon’s doctrinal changes, Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. 1. 261 sqq.
While Luther translated the New Testament on the Wartburg, Melanchthon prepared the first system of Protestant theology at Wittenberg. Both drew from the same fountain, and labored for the same end, but in different ways. Luther built up the Reformation among the people in the German tongue; Melanchthon gave it methodical shape for scholars by his Latin writings. The former worked in the quarries, and cut the rough blocks of granite; the latter constructed the blocks into a habitable building. Luther expressed a modest self-estimate, and a high estimate of his friend, when he said that his superiority was more "in the rhetorical way," while Melanchthon was "a better logician and reasoner."
Melanchthon finished his "Theological
Common-Places or Ground-Thoughts (Loci Communes or Loci Theologici), in
April, 1521, and sent the proof-sheets to Luther on the Wartburg. They
appeared for the first time before the Close of that year. Under the title: Loci communes rerum
theologicarum seu hypotyposes theologicae, Wittenberg, 1521.
Bindseil puts the publication in December. I have a copy of the Leipzig
ed. of M.D.LIX., which numbers 858 pages without indices, and bears the
title: Loci Praecipui Theologici. Nunc denuo cura et diligentia
summa recogniti, multisque in locis copiose illustrati, cum appendice
disputationis de conjugio, etc.
This book marks an epoch in the history of theology. It grew out of exegetical lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, the Magna Charta of the evangelical system. It is an exposition of the leading doctrines of sin and grace, repentance and salvation. It is clear, fresh, thoroughly biblical, and practical. Its main object is to show that man cannot be saved by works of the law or by his own merits, but only by the free grace of God in Christ as revealed in the gospel. It presents the living soul of divinity, in striking contrast to the dry bones of degenerate scholasticism with its endless theses, antitheses, definitions, divisions, and subdivisions.
The first edition was written in the interest of practical Christianity rather than scientific theology. It is meagre in the range of topics, and defective in execution. It is confined to anthropology and soteriology, and barely mentions the metaphysical doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation, as transcendent mysteries to be adored rather than curiously discussed. It has a polemical hearing against the Romanists, in view of the recent condemnation of Luther by the Sorbonne. It also contains some crude and extreme opinions which the author afterwards abandoned. Altogether in its first shape it was an unripe production, though most remarkable if we consider the youth of the author, who was then only twenty-four years of age.
Melanchthon shared at first
Luther’s antipathy to scholastic theology; but he
learned to distinguish between pure and legitimate scholasticism and a
barren formalism, as also between the Aristotelian philosophy itself
and the skeleton of it which was worshiped as an idol in the
universities at that time. He knew especially the value of
Aristotle’s ethics, wrote a commentary on the same
(1529), and made important original contributions to the science of
Christian ethics in his Philosophiae Moralis Epitome (1535). See his ethical writings in vol. XVI. of his
Opera, in the "Corp. Reform.," and a discussion of their merits
in Wuttke’s Handbuch der christl.
Sittenlehre, 3d
ed. (1874), I. 148 sqq.
Under his improving hand, the Loci assumed in subsequent editions the proportions of a full, mature, and well-proportioned system, stated in calm, clear, dignified language, freed from polemics against the Sorbonne and contemptuous flings at the schoolmen and Fathers. He embraced in twenty-four chapters all the usual topics from God and the creation to the resurrection of the body, with a concluding chapter on Christian liberty. He approached the scholastic method, and even ventured, in opposition to the Anti-Trinitarians, on a new speculative proof of the Holy Trinity from psychological analogies. He never forsakes the scriptural basis, but occasionally quotes also the Fathers to show their supposed or real agreement with evangelical doctrines.
Melanchthon’s theology, like that of Luther, grew from step to step in the heat of controversy. Calvin’s Institutes came finished from his brain, like Minerva out of the head of Jupiter.
The Loci prepared the way for the Augsburg Confession (1530), in which Melanchthon gave to the leading doctrines official shape and symbolical authority for the Lutheran Church. But he did not stop there, and passed through several changes, which we must anticipate in order to form a proper estimate of that work.
The editions of his theological manual are divided into three classes: 1, those from 1521 to 1535; 2, those from 1535 to 1544; 3, those from 1544 to 1559. The edition of 1535 (dedicated to King Henry VIII. of England, and translated into German by Justus Jonas) was a thorough revision. This and the editions which followed embody, besides additions in matter and improvements in style, important modifications of his views on predestination and free will, on the real presence, and on justification by faith. He gave up necessitarianism for synergism, the corporeal presence in the eucharist for a spiritual real presence, and solifidianism for the necessity of good works. In the first and third article he made an approach to the Roman-Catholic system, in the second to Calvinism.
The changes were the result of his continued study
of the Bible and the Fathers, and his personal conferences with Roman
and Reformed divines at Augsburg and in the colloquies of Frankfort,
Hagenau, Worms, and Ratisbon. He calls them elucidations of
obscurities, moderations of extreme views, and sober second thoughts. See his letters to his friend Camerarius, 2
Sept. 1535 ("Corp. Ref." II. 936), and Dec. 24, 1535 (ib. II.
1027): "Ego nunc in meis Locis multa mitigavi." ... "In Locis
meis videor habere δευτέρας
φροντίδας." His letters are interspersed with
Greek words and classical reminiscences.
1. He denied at first, with Luther and Augustin,
all freedom of the human will in spiritual things. Loc. Theol., 1521 A.7: "Quandoquidem
omnia quae eveniunt, necessario juxta divinam praedestinationem
eveniunt, nulla est voluntatis nostrae libertas." He refers to In his Com. in Ep. ad Roman., 1524, cap.
8: "Itaque sit haec certa sententia, a Deo fieri omnia tam bona quam
mala ... Constat Deum omnia facere non permissive sed
potenter,—ita ut sit ejus proprium opus Judae
proditio, sicut Pauli vocatio." Luther published this commentary
without Melanchthon’s knowledge, and humorously
dedicated it to him.
But on closer examination, and partly under the influence of Erasmus, he abandoned this stoic fatalism as a dangerous error, inconsistent with Christianity and morality. He taught instead a co-operation of the divine and human will in the work of conversion; thus anticipating Arminianism, and approaching the older semi-Pelagianism, but giving the initiative to divine grace. "God," he said in 1535, "is not the cause of sin, and does not will sin; but the will of the Devil and the will of man are the causes of sin." Human nature is radically, but not absolutely and hopelessly, corrupt; it can not without the aid of the Holy Spirit produce spiritual affections such as the fear and love of God, and true obedience; but it can accept or reject divine grace. God precedes, calls, moves, supports us; but we must follow, and not resist. Three causes concur in the conversion,—the word of God, the Holy Spirit, and the will of man. Melanchthon quotes from the Greek Fathers who lay great stress on human freedom, and he accepts Chrysostom’s sentence: "God draws the willing."
He intimated this synergistic view in the eighteenth article of the altered Augsburg Confession, and in the German edition of the Apology of the Confession. But he continued to deny the meritoriousness of good works; and in the colloquy of Worms, 1557, he declined to condemn the doctrine of the slavery of the human will, because Luther had adhered to it to the end. He was willing to tolerate it as a theological opinion, although he himself had rejected it.
2. As to the Lord’s Supper, he first accepted Luther’s view under the impression that it was supported by the ancient Church. But in this he was shaken by Oecolampadius, who proved (1530) that the Fathers held different opinions, and that Augustin did not teach an oral manducation. After 1534 he virtually gave up for himself, though he would not condemn and exclude, the conception of a corporeal presence and oral manducation of the body and blood of Christ; and laid the main stress on the spiritual, yet real presence and communion with Christ.
He changed the tenth article of the Augsburg Confession in 1540, and made it acceptable to Reformed divines by omitting the anti-Zwinglian clause. But he never accepted the Zwinglian theory of a mere commemoration. His later eucharistic theory closely approached that of Calvin; while on the subject of predestination and free will he differed from him. Calvin, who had written a preface to the French translation of the Loci Theologici, expressed, in private letters, his surprise that so great a theologian could reject the Scripture doctrine of eternal predestination; yet they maintained an intimate friendship to the end, and proved that theological differences need not prevent religious harmony and fraternal fellowship.
3. Melanchthon never surrendered the doctrine of justification by faith; but he laid in his later years, in opposition to antinomian excesses, greater stress on the necessity of good works of faith, not indeed as a condition of salvation and in a sense of acquiring merit, but as an indispensable proof of the duty of obedience to the divine will.
These doctrinal changes gave rise to bitter controversies after Luther’s death, and were ultimately rejected in the Formula of Concord (1577), but revived again at a later period. Luther himself never adopted and never openly opposed them.
The Loci of Melanchthon met from the start with extraordinary favor. Edition after edition appeared in Wittenberg during the author’s lifetime, the last from his own hand in the year 1559, besides a number of contemporaneous reprints at Basel, Hagenau, Strassburg, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Halle, and many editions after his death.
Luther had an extravagant opinion of them, and
even declared them worthy of a place in the Canon. Invictus libellus non solum immortalitate,
sed quoque canone ecclesiastico dignus."In the beginning of De
Servo Arbitrio (1525), against Erasmus. He says in his Tischreden (Erl. ed.,
LIX. 278 sq.): "Wer itzt ein Theologus will werden, der hat grosse
Vortheil. Denn erstlich hat er die Bibel, die ist nu so klar, dam er
sie kann lesen ohne alle Hinderung. Darnach lese er darzu die locos
communes Philippi; die lese er fleissig und wohl, also dass er sie gar
im Kopfe habe. Wenn er die zwei Stücke hat, so ist er ein
Theologus, dem weder der Teufel noch kein Ketzer etwas abbrechen kann,
und ihm stehet die ganze Theologia offen, dass er Alles, was er will,
darnach lesen kann ad aedificationem. Und wenn er will, so mag er auch
dazu lesen Philippi Melanchthonis Commentarium in Epistolam Pauli ad
Romanos. Lieset er alsdenn darzu meinen commentarium in Epistolam ad
Galatas und in Deuteronomium, so gebe ich ihm denn eloquentiam et
copiam verborum. Ihr findet kein Buch unter allen seinen
Büchern, da die summa religionis oder die ganze Theologia so
fein bei einander ist, als in den locis communibus. Leset alle Patres
und Sententiarios, so ist es doch Alles nichts dagegen. Non est melior
liber post scripturam sanctam, quam ipsius loci communes. Philippus ist
enger gespannet denn ich; ille pugnat et docet; ich bin mehr ein
Rhetoricus oder ein Wäscher [Deutscher?]"
The Loci became the text-book of Lutheran theology in the universities, and took the place of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Strigel and Chemnitz wrote commentaries on them. Leonhard Hutter likewise followed them, till he published a more orthodox compend (1610) which threw them into the shade and even out of use during the seventeenth century.
The theological manual of Melanchthon proved a
great help to the Reformation. The Romanists felt its power. Emser
called it a new Koran and a pest. In opposition to them, he and Eck
wrote Loci Catholici. Eck’s Loci Communes
adversus Lutheranos, Landshut, 1525, passed through many
editions.
Melanchthon’s Loci are the ablest theological work of the Lutheran Church in the sixteenth century. Calvin’s Institutes (1536) equal them in freshness and fervor, and surpass them in completeness, logical order, philosophical grasp, and classical finish.
It is remarkable that the first and greatest
dogmatic systems of the Reformation proceeded from these two
lay-theologians who were never ordained by human hands, but received
the unction from on high. Melanchthon was simply professor, first of
Greek, then of theology. Calvin was destined by his father for the
clerical profession, and he received the tonsure; but there is no
record of his ordination for the priesthood.
§ 65. Protestant Radicalism. Disturbances at Erfurt.
I. Letters of Luther from May, 1521, to March, 1522, to Melanchthon, Link, Lange, Spalatin, etc., in De Wette, vol. II.
II. F. W. Kampschulte: Die Universität Erfurt in ihrem Verh. zu dem Humanismus und der Reformation. Trier, 1858. Second part, chs. III. and IV. pp. 106 sqq.
III. Biographies of Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt, by Füsslin (1776), Jäger (Stuttgart, 1856), Erbkam (in Herzogii, VII. 523 sqq.).
IV. Gieseler, IV. 61–65 (Am. ed.). Marheineke, chs. X. and XI. (I. 303 sqq.). Merle D’AuB., bk. IX. chs. 6–8. Köstlin, bk. IV. chs. 3 and 4 (I. 494 sqq.). Ranke, II. 7–26. Janssen, II. 204–227.
While Luther and Melanchthon laid a solid foundation for an evangelical church and evangelical theology, their work was endangered by the destructive zeal of friends who turned the reformation into a revolution. The best thing may be undone by being overdone. Freedom is a two-edged sword, and liable to the worst abuse as well as to the best use. Tares will grow up in every wheat-field, and they sometimes choke the wheat. But the work of destruction was overruled for the consolidation of the Reformation. Old rotten buildings had to be broken down before a new one could be constructed.
The Reformation during its first five years was a battle of words, not of deeds. It scattered the seeds of new institutions all over Germany, but the old forms and usages still remained. The new wine had not yet burst the old skin bottles. The Protestant soul dwelt in the Catholic body. The apostles after the day of Pentecost continued to visit the temple and the synagogue, and to observe circumcision, the sabbath, and other customs of the fathers, hoping for the conversion of all Israel, until they were cast out by the Jewish hierarchy. So the Protestants remained in external communion with the mother Church, attending Latin mass, bowing before the transubstantiated elements on the altar, praying the Ave Maria, worshiping saints, pictures, and crucifixes, making pilgrimages to holy shrines, observing the festivals of the Roman calendar, and conforming to the seven sacraments which accompanied them at every step of life from the cradle to the grave. The bishops were still in charge of their dioceses, and unmarried priests and deacons performed all the ecclesiastical functions. The convents were still occupied by monks and nuns, who went through their daily devotions and ascetic exercises. The outside looked just as before, while the inside had undergone a radical change.
This was the case even in Saxony and at Wittenberg, the nursery of the new state of things. Luther himself did not at first contemplate any outward change. He labored and hoped for a reformation of faith and doctrine within the Catholic Church, under the lead of the bishops, without a division, but he was now cast out by the highest authorities, and came gradually to see that he must build a new structure on the new foundation which he h ad laid by his writings and by the translation of the New Testament.
The negative part of these changes, especially the abolition of the mass and of monasticism, was made by advanced radicals among his disciples, who had more zeal than discretion, and mistook liberty for license.
While Luther was confined on the Wartburg, his followers were like children out of school, like soldiers without a captain. Some of them thought that he had stopped half way, and that they must complete what he had begun. They took the work of destruction and reconstruction into their own inexperienced and unskillful hands. Order gave way to confusion, and the Reformation was threatened with disastrous failure.
The first disturbances broke out at Erfurt in
June, 1521, shortly after Luther’s triumphant passage
through the town on his way to Worms. Two young priests were
excommunicated for taking part in the enthusiastic demonstrations. This
created the greatest indignation. Twelve hundred students, workmen, and
ruffians attacked and demolished in a few days sixty houses of the
priests, who escaped violence only by flight. Kampschulte, l.c., II. 117 sqq., gives a
full account of this Pfaffenstum and its
consequences.
The magistrate looked quietly on, as if in league with the insurrection. Similar scenes of violence were repeated during the summer. The monks under the lead of the Augustinians, forgetting their vows, left the convents, laid aside the monastic dress, and took up their abode among the people to work for a living, or to become a burden to others, or to preach the new faith.
Luther saw in these proceedings the work of Satan,
who was bringing shame and reproach on the gospel. See his letters to Melanchthon and Spalatin, in
De Wette, II. 7sq., 31. To the latter he wrote: "Erfordiae Satanas
suis studiis nobis insidiatus est, ut nostros mala fama inureret, sed
nihil proficiet: non sunt nostri, qui haec
faciunt." Letter to Lange, March 28, 1522, in De Wette,
II. 175.
During these troubles Crotus, the enthusiastic admirer of Luther, resigned the rectorship of the university, left Erfurt, and afterwards returned to the mother Church. The Peasants’ War of 1525 was another blow. Eobanus, the Latin poet who had greeted Luther on his entry, accepted a call to Nürnberg. The greatest celebrities left the city, or were disheartened, and died in poverty.
From this time dates the decay of the university, once the flourishing seat of humanism and patriotic aspirations. It never recovered its former prosperity.
§ 66. The Revolution at Wittenberg. Carlstadt and the New Prophets.
See Lit. in § 65.
In Wittenberg the same spirit of violence broke out under the lead of Luther’s older colleague, Andreas Carlstadt, known to us from his ill success at the Leipzig disputation. He was a man of considerable originality, learning, eloquence, zeal, and courage, but eccentric, radical, injudicious, ill-balanced, restless, and ambitious for leadership.
He taught at first the theology of mediaeval scholasticism, but became under Luther’s influence a strict Augustinian, and utterly denied the liberty of the human will.
He wrote the first critical work on the Canon of
the Scriptures, and anticipated the biblical criticism of modern times.
He weighed the historic evidence, discriminated between three orders of
books as of first, second, and third dignity, putting the Hagiographa
of the Old Testament and the seven Antilegomena of the New in the third
order, and expressed doubts on the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch.
He based his objections to the Antilegomena, not on dogmatic grounds,
as Luther, but on the want of historical testimony; his opposition to
the traditional Canon was itself traditional; he put ante-Nicene
against post-Nicene tradition. This book on the Canon, however, was
crude and premature, and passed out of sight. Libellus de Canonicis Scripturis,
Wittenb. 1520; also in German: Welche Bücher heilig und biblisch
seind. Comp.
Weiss, Einleitung in’s N. T. (1886), p. 109,
and Reuss, Histoire du Canon (1863), 357 sqq. (Hunter’s
translation, p. 336 sq.)
He invented some curious and untenable interpretations of Scripture, e.g., of the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper. He referred the word "this," not to the bread, but to the body of Christ, so as to mean: "I am now ready to offer this (body) as a sacrifice in death." He did not, however, publish this view till 1524, and afterwards made common cause with Zwingli.
Carlstadt preached and wrote, during Luther’s absence, against celibacy, monastic vows, and the mass. At Christmas, 1521, he omitted in the service the most objectionable parts of the Canon of the mass, and the elevation of the host, and distributed both wine and bread to a large congregation. He announced at the same time that he would lay aside the priestly dress and other ceremonies. Two days afterwards he was engaged to the daughter of a poor nobleman in the presence of distinguished professors of the university, and on Jan. 20, 1522, he was married. He gave improper notoriety to this act by inviting the whole university and the magistrate, and by publishing a book in justification of it.
He was not, however, the first priest who openly
burst the chains of celibacy. Bartholomäus Bernhardi of
Feldkirchen, a Wittenberg licentiate and newly elected Probst at
Kemberg, and two other priests of less reputable character, had
preceded him in 1521. Justus Jonas followed the example, and took a
wife Feb. 10, 1522, to get rid of temptations to impurity (
Carlstadt went further, and maintained that no
priest without wife and children should receive an appointment (so he
explained "must" in
He also denounced pictures and images as dumb
idols, which were plainly forbidden in the second commandment, and
should be burnt rather than tolerated in the house of God. He induced
the town council to remove them from the parish church; but the
populace anticipated the orderly removal, tore them down, hewed them to
pieces, and burnt them. He assailed the fasts, and enjoined the people
to eat meat and eggs on fast-days. He repudiated all titles and
dignities, since Christ alone was our Master (
In the beginning of November, 1521, thirty of the forty monks left the Augustinian convent of Wittenberg in a rather disorderly manner. One wished to engage in cabinet making, and to marry. The Augustinian monks held a congress at Wittenberg in January, 1522, and unanimously resolved, in accordance with Luther’s advice, to give liberty of leaving or remaining in the convent, but required in either case a life of active usefulness by mental or physical labor.
The most noted of these ex-monks was Gabriel Zwilling or Didymus, who preached in the parish church during Luther’s absence, and was esteemed by some as a second Luther. He fiercely attacked the mass, the adoration of the sacrament, and the whole system of monasticism as dangerous to salvation.
About Christmas, 1521, the revolutionary movement
was reinforced by two fanatics from Zwickau, Nicolaus Storch, a weaver,
and Marcus Thomä Stübner. Marcus (Marx) Thomä and
Stübner are not two distinct persons, but identical. See
Köstlin’s note, vol. I. 804
sq.
These Zwickau Prophets, as they were called, agreed with Carlstadt in combining an inward mysticism with practical radicalism. They boasted of visions, dreams, and direct communications with God and the Angel Gabriel, disparaged the written word and regular ministry, rejected infant baptism, and predicted the overthrow of the existing order of things, and the near approach of a democratic millennium.
We may compare Carlstadt and the Zwickau Prophets with the Fifth Monarchy Men in the period of the English Commonwealth, who were likewise millennarian enthusiasts, and attempted, in opposition to Cromwell, to set up the "Kingdom of Jesus" or the fifth monarchy of Daniel.
Wittenberg was in a very critical condition. The magistrate was discordant and helpless. Amsdorf kept aloof. Melanchthon was embarrassed, and too modest and timid for leadership. He had no confidence in visions and dreams, but could not satisfactorily answer the objections to infant baptism, which the prophets declared useless because a foreign faith of parents or sponsors could not save the child. Luther got over this difficulty by assuming that the Holy Spirit wrought faith in the child.
The Elector was requested to interfere; but he dared not, as a layman, decide theological and ecclesiastical questions. He preferred to let things take their natural course, and trusted in the overruling providence of God. He believed in Gamaliel’s counsel, which is good enough in the preparatory and experimental stages of a new movement. His strength lay in a wise, cautious, peaceful diplomacy. But at this time valor was the better part of discretion.
The only man who could check the wild spirit of revolution, and save the ship of the Reformation, was Luther.
§ 67. Luther returns to Wittenberg.
Walch, XV. 2374–2403. De Wette, II. 137 sqq.
Luther was informed of all these disturbances. He saw the necessity of some changes, but regretted the violence with which they had been made before public opinion was prepared, and he feared a re-action which radicalism is always likely to produce. The Latin mass as a sacrifice, with the adoration of the host, the monastic institution, the worship of saints, images and relics, processions and pilgrimages, and a large number of superstitious ceremonies, were incompatible with Protestant doctrines. Worship had sooner or later to be conducted in the vernacular tongue; the sacrifice of the mass must give way to a commemorative communion; the cup must be restored to the laity, and the right of marriage to the clergy. He acquiesced in these changes. But about clerical vestments, crucifixes, and external ceremonies, he was indifferent; nor did he object to the use of pictures, provided they were not made objects of worship. In such matters he asserted the right of Christian freedom, against coercion for or against them. As to the pretended revelations of the new prophets, he despised them, and maintained that an inspired prophet must either be ordinarily called by church authority, or prove his divine commission by miracles.
He first went to Wittenberg in disguise, and spent three days there in December, 1621. He stayed under the roof of Amsdorf, and dared not show himself in the convent or on the street.
When the disturbances increased, he felt it his
duty to reappear openly on the arena of conflict. He saw from the
Wartburg his own house burning, and hastened to extinguish the flames.
The Elector feared for his safety, as the Edict of Worms was still in
force, and the Diet of Nürnberg was approaching. He ordered
him to remain in his concealment. Luther was all his life an advocate
of strict submission to the civil magistrates in their own proper
sphere; but on this occasion be set aside the considerations of
prudence, and obeyed the higher law of God and his conscience. His
reply to the Elector (whom be never met personally) bears noble
testimony to his sublime faith in God’s all-ruling
providence. It is dated Ash Wednesday (March 5, 1522), from Borne,
south of Leipzig. He wrote in substance as follows: In De Wette, II. 137-141. De Wette calls the
letter "ein bewunderungswürdiges Denkmal des hohen
Glaubensmuthes, von welchem Luther erfüllt
war."
"Grace and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, and my most humble service.
"Most illustrious, high-born Elector, most gracious Lord! I received the letter and warning of your Electoral Grace on Friday evening [Feb. 26], before my departure [March 1]. That your Electoral Grace is moved by the best intention, needs no assurance from me. I also mean well, but this is of no account .... If I were not certain that we have the pure gospel on our side, I would despair .... Your Grace knows, if not, I make known to you, that I have the gospel, not from men, but from heaven through our Lord Jesus Christ .... I write this to apprise you that I am on my way to Wittenberg under a far higher protection than that of the Elector; and I have no intention of asking your Grace’s support. Nay, I believe that I can offer your Highness better protection than your Highness can offer me. Did I think that I had to trust in the Elector, I should not come at all. The sword is powerless here. God alone must act without man’s interference. He who has most faith will be the most powerful protector. As I feel your Grace’s faith to be still weak, I can by no means recognize in you the man who is to protect and save me. Your Electoral Grace asks me, what you are to do under these circumstances? I answer, with all submission, Do nothing at all, but trust in God alone .... If your Grace had faith, you would behold the glory of God; but as you do not yet believe, you have not seen it. Let us love and glorify God forever. Amen."
Being asked by the Elector to give his reasons for
a return, he assigned, in a letter of March 7, from Wittenberg, De Wette, II. 141-144.
Luther rode without fear through the territory of his violent enemy, Duke George of Saxony, who was then urging the Elector to severe measures against him and the Wittenbergers. He informed the Elector that he would pass through Leipzig, as he once went to Worms, though it should rain Duke Georges for nine days in succession, each fiercer than the original in Dresden.
He safely arrived in Wittenberg on Thursday evening, the 6th of March, full of faith and hope, and ready for a fight against his false friends.
On this journey he had on the 3d or 4th of March
an interesting interview with two Swiss students, Kessler and Spengler,
in the tavern of the Black Bear at Jena. We have an account of it from
one of them, John Kessler of St. Gallen, who afterwards became a
reformer of that city. Published by Bernet, Joh. Kessler genannt
Athenarius, St.
Gallen, 1826, and more fully by E. Götzinger in
Kessler’s Sabbata, St. Gallen, 1866 and 1868, 2
parts. See a good account in Hagenbach’s Ref.
Gesch., pp. 141 sqq. In the Schwarze Bär hotel at Jena,
where I stopped a few days in July, 1886, the "Lutherstube" is still
shown with the likeness of Luther an old Bible, and
Kessler’s report.
The two Swiss, who had studied at Basel, were attracted by the fame of Luther and Melanchthon, and traveled on foot to Wittenberg to hear them. They arrived at Jena after a terrible thunderstorm, fatigued and soaked through, and humbly sat down on a bench near the door of the guest-chamber, when they saw a Knight seated at a table, sword in hand, and the Hebrew Psalter before him. Luther recognized the Swiss by their dialect, kindly invited them to sit down at his side, and offered them a drink. He inquired whether Erasmus was still living in Basel, what he was doing, and what the people in Switzerland thought of Martin Luther. The students replied that some lauded him to the skies as a great reformer; others, especially the priests, denounced him as an intolerable heretic. During the conversation two traders came in; one took from his pocket Luther’s sermons on the Gospels and Epistles, and remarked that the writer must be either an angel from heaven or a devil from hell. At dinner Luther gave them a rare feast of reason and flow of soul. The astonished students suspected that the mysterious Knight was Ulrich von Hutten, when Luther, turning to the host, smilingly remarked, "Behold, I have become a nobleman over the night: these Swiss think that I am Hutten; you take me for Luther. The next thing will be that I am Marcolfus." He gave his young friends good advice to study the biblical languages with Melanchthon, paid their bill, offered them first a glass of beer, but substituted for it a glass of wine, since the Swiss were not used to beer, and with a shake of the hand he begged them to remember him to Doctor Jerome Schurf, their countryman, at Wittenberg. When they wished to know the name of the sender of the salutation, he replied, "Simply tell him that he who is coming sends greeting, and he will understand it."
When the students a few days afterwards arrived at Wittenberg, and called on Dr. Schurf to deliver the message from "him who is coming," they were agreeably surprised to find Luther there with Melanchthon, Jonas, and Amsdorf. Luther greeted them heartily, and introduced them to Melanchthon, of whom he had spoken at Jena.
The same student has left us a description of
Luther’s appearance at that time. He was no more the
meager, emaciated monk as at the Leipzig disputation three years
previously, See the description of Mosellanus, p.
180. "Mit tiefen, schwarzen Augen und Braunen blinzend und
zwitzerlnd wie ein Stern, dass die nit wohl mögen angesehen
werden." Köstlin, I. 536, with references, p.
805.
§ 68. Luther restores Order in Wittenberg.—The End of Carlstadt.
I. Eight Sermons of Luther preached from Sunday, March 7 (Invocavit) to the next Sunday (Reminiscere), after his return to Wittenberg. The oldest editions, slightly varying in length, appeared 1523. Altenb. ed., II. 99 sqq.; Walch, XV. 2423 sqq.: XX. 1–101; Erl. ed., XXVIII. 202–285 (both recensions). Luther’s Letters to Spalatin, the Elector, and others from March, 1522, in De Wette, II. 144 sqq.
II. Of modern historians, Marheineke, Merle D’Aubigné, Ranke, Hagenbach, and Köstlin (I. 537–549) may be compared.
On the Sunday after his arrival, Luther ascended his old pulpit, and re-appeared before his congregation of citizens and students. Wittenberg was a small place; but what he said and did there, and what Calvin did afterwards in Geneva, had the significance of a world-historical fact, more influential at that time than an encyclical from Rome.
Protestantism had reached a very critical juncture. Luther or Carlstadt, reformation or revolution, the written Word or illusive inspirations, order or confusion: that was the question. Luther was in the highest and best mood, full of faith in his cause, and also full of charity for his opponents, strong in matter, sweet in manner, and completely successful. He never showed such moderation and forbearance before or after.
He preached eight sermons for eight days in
succession, and carried the audience with him. They are models of
effective popular eloquence, and among the best he ever preached. He
handled the subject from the stand-point of a pastor, with fine tact
and practical wisdom. He kept aloof from coarse personalities which
disfigure so many of his polemical writings. Not one unkind word, not
one unpleasant allusion, escaped his lips. In plain, clear, strong,
scriptural language, he refuted the errors without naming the
errorists. The positive statement of the truth in love is the best
refutation of error. The ἀληθεύειν
ἐν
ἀγάπῃ,
The ruling ideas of these eight discourses are: Christian freedom and Christian charity; freedom from the tyranny of radicalism which would force the conscience against forms, as the tyranny of popery forces the conscience in the opposite direction; charity towards the weak, who must be trained like children, and tenderly dealt with, lest they stumble and fall. Faith is worthless without charity. No man has a right to compel his brother in matters that are left free; and among these are marriage, living in convents, private confession, fasting and eating, images in churches. Abuses which contradict the word of God, as private masses, should be abolished, but in an orderly manner and by proper authority. The Word of God and moral suasion must be allowed to do the work. Paul preached against the idols in Athens, without touching one of them; and yet they fell in consequence of his preaching.
"Summa summarum," said Luther, "I will preach,
speak, write, but I will force no one; for faith must be voluntary.
Take me as an example. I stood up against the Pope, indulgences, and
all papists, but without violence or uproar. I only urged, preached,
and declared God’s Word, nothing else. And yet while I
was asleep, or drinking Wittenberg beer with my Philip Melanchthon and
Amsdorf, the Word inflicted greater injury on popery than prince or
emperor ever did. I did nothing, the Word did every thing. Had I
appealed to force, all Germany might have been deluged with blood; yea,
I might have kindled a conflict at Worms, so that the Emperor would not
have been safe. But what would have been the result? Ruin and
desolation of body and soul. I therefore kept quiet, and gave the Word
free course through the world. Do you know what the Devil thinks when
he sees men use violence to propagate the gospel? He sits with folded
arms behind the fire of hell, and says with malignant looks and
frightful grin: ’Ah, how wise these madmen are to play
my game! Let them go on; I shall reap the benefit. I delight in
it.’ But when he sees the Word running and contending
alone on the battle-field, then he shudders and shakes for fear. The
Word is almighty, and takes captive the hearts." Erl. ed., XXVIII. 219 and 260 (second sermon).
The allusion to the drinking of "Wittenbergisch Bier mit meinem
Philippo und Amsdorf" (p. 260) is omitted in the shorter edition, which has instead:
"wenn
ich bin guter Dinge gewesen" (p. 219).
Eloquence rarely achieved a more complete and honorable triumph. It was not the eloquence of passion and violence, but the eloquence of wisdom and love. It is easier to rouse the wild beast in man, than to tame it into submission. Melanchthon and the professors, the magistrate and peaceful citizens, were delighted. Dr. Schurf wrote to the Elector, after the sixth discourse: "Oh, what joy has Dr. Martin’s return spread among us! His words, through divine mercy, are bringing back every day misguided people into the way of the truth. It is as clear as the sun, that the Spirit of God is in him, and that he returned to Wittenberg by His special providence."
Most of the old forms were restored again, at least for a season, till the people were ripe for the changes. Luther himself returned to the convent, observed the fasts, and resumed the cowl, but laid it aside two years afterwards when the Elector sent him a new suit. The passage in the mass, however, which referred to the unbloody repetition of the sacrifice and the miraculous transformation of the elements, was not restored, and the communion in both kinds prevailed, and soon became the universal custom. The Elector himself, shortly before his death (May 5, 1525), communed with the cup.
Didymus openly acknowledged his error, and
declared that Luther preached like an angel. Luther speaks favorably of him, and recommended
him to a pastoral charge at Altenburg. See his letters in De Wette, II.
170, 183, 184. He published at Nürnberg, 1524, a
self-defense "Wider das geistlose sanftlebende Fleisch zu
Wittenberg," and
called Luther an "Arch-heathen," "Arch-scamp," "Wittenberg Pope,"
"Babylonian Woman," "Dragon," "Basilisk," etc.
Carlstadt submitted silently, but sullenly. He was
a disappointed and unhappy man, and harbored feelings of revenge
against Luther. Ranke characterizes him as "one of those men, not rare
among Germans, who with an inborn tendency to profundity unite the
courage of rejecting all that is established, and defending all that
others reject, without ever rising to a clear view and solid
conviction." He resumed his lectures in the university for a time; but
in 1523 he retired to a farm in the neighborhood, to live as "neighbor
Andrew" with lowly peasants, without, however, resigning the emoluments
of his professorship. He devoted himself more fully than ever to his
mystical speculations and imaginary inspirations. He entered into
secret correspondence with Münzer, though he never fully
approved his political movements. He published at Jena, where he
established a printing-press, a number of devotional books under the
name of "a new layman," instead of Doctor of Theology. He induced the
congregation of Orlamünde to elect him their pastor without
authority from the academic Senate of Wittenberg which had the right of
appointment, and introduced there his innovations in worship, storming
the altars and images. In 1524 be openly came out with his novel theory
of the Lord’s Supper in opposition to Luther, and thus
kindled the unfortunate eucharistic controversy which so seriously
interfered with the peace and harmony of the Reformers. He also
sympathized with the Anabaptists. Nevertheless, in 1526 he invited Luther and his
wife, Melanchthon and Jonas, as sponsors at the baptism of a new-born
son in the village of Segren near Wittenberg. He lived after his return
from exile in very humble circumstances, barely making a living from
the sale of cakes and beer. His writings against Carlstadt, in Walch, X.,
XV., and XX., and in Erl. ed., LXIV. 384-408. His book
Wider die himmlischen
Propheten (1525)
is chiefly directed against Carlstadt. In the Table Talk (Erl. ed.,
LXI. 911 he calls Carlstadt and Münzer incarnate
devils.
§ 69. The Diets of Nürnberg, a.d. 1522–1524. Adrian VI.
I. Walch, XV. 2504 sqq. Ranke, vol. II. pp. 27–46, 70–100, 244–262. J. Janssen, Vol. II. 256 sqq., 315 sqq. Köstlin, I. 622 sqq.
II. On Adrian VI. Gachard: Correspondance de Charles Quint et d’Adrian VI. Brux., 1859. Moring: Vita Adriani VI., 1536. Burmann: Hadrianus VI., sive Analecta Historica de Hadr. VI. Trajecti 1727 (includes Moring). Ranke: Die röm. Päpste in den letzten vier Jarhh., I., 59–64 (8th ed. 1885). C. Höfler (Rom. Cath.): Wahl und Thronbesteigung des letzten deutschen Papstes, Adrian VI. Wien, 1872; and Der deutsche Kaiser und der letzte deutsche Papst, Carl V. und Adrian VI. Wien, 1876. Fr. Nippold: Die Reformbestrebungen Papst Hadrian VI., und die Ursachen ihres Scheiterns. Leipzig, 1875. H. Bauer: Hadrian VI. Heidelb., 1876. Maurenbrecher: Gesch. der kathol. Reformation, I. 202–225. Nördlingen, 1880. See also the Lit. on Charles V., § 50 (p. 262 sqq.).
We must now turn our attention to the political situation, and the attitude of the German Diet to the church question.
The growing sympathies of the German nation with the Reformation and the political troubles made the execution of the papal bull and the Edict of Worms against Luther more and more impossible. The Emperor was absent in Spain, and fully occupied with the suppression of an insurrection, the conquest of Mexico by Cortez, and the war with France. Germany was threatened by the approach of the Turks, who had conquered Belgrad and the greater part of Hungary. The dangers of the nation were overruled for the progress of Protestantism.
An important change took place in the papacy. Leo X. died Dec. 1, 1521; and Adrian VI. (1459–1523) was unexpectedly elected in his absence, perhaps by the indirect influence of the Emperor, his former pupil. The cardinals hardly knew what they did, and hoped he might decline.
Adrian formed, by his moral earnestness and
monastic piety, a striking contrast to the frivolity and worldliness of
his predecessors. He was a Dutchman, born at Utrecht, a learned
professor of theology in Louvain, then administrator and inquisitor of
Spain, and a man of unblemished character. Ranke (Päpste, I. 60):
"Adrian
war von durchaus unbescholtenem Ruf: rechtschaffen, fromm,
thätig; sehr ernsthaft, man sah ihn nie anders als leise mit
den Lippen lächeln; aber voll wohlwollender, reiner
Absichten: ein wahrer Geistlicher. Welch ein Gegensatz, als er nun dort
einzog, wo Leo so prächtig und verschwenderisch Hof
gehalten! Es existirt ein Brief von ihm, in welchem er sagt: er
möchte lieber in seiner Propstei zu Löwen Gott
dienen als Papst sein." Pallavicino calls him "ecclesiastico ottimo, pontifide
mediocre."
Under these circumstances the Diet met at Nürnberg, March 23, 1522, and again Nov. 17, under the presidency of Ferdinand, the brother of the Emperor. To avert the danger of the Turks, processions and public prayers were ordered, and a tax imposed; but no army was raised.
Adrian demanded the execution of the Edict of Worms, and compared Luther to Mohammed; but he broke the force of his request by confessing with surprising frankness the corruptions of the Roman court, which loudly called for a radical moral reform of the head and members. Never before had the Curia made such a confession.
"We know," wrote the Pope in the instruction to
his legate, Francesco Chieregati, "that for some time many
abominations, abuses in ecclesiastical affairs, and violations of
rights have taken place in the holy see; and that all things have been
perverted into bad. From the head the corruption has passed to the
limbs, from the Pope to the prelates: we have all departed; there is
none that doeth good, no, not one." He regarded Protestantism as a just
punishment for the sins of the prelates. He promised to do all in his
power to remedy the evil, and to begin with the Curia whence it
arose. "Ut primum curia haec, unde forte omne hoc
malum processit, reformetur." See the instruction in Raynaldus,
ad ann. 1522, Tom. XI. 363. Luther published it with sarcastic
comments. Pallavicino charges Adrian with exaggeration and want of
prudence, which he thought was "often more important for the public
good than personal holiness." See Hergenröther, III.
43.
The Emperor was likewise in favor of a reform of discipline, though displeased with Adrian for not supporting him in his war with France and his church-spoliation schemes.
The attempt to reform the church morally without touching the dogma had been made by the great Councils of the fifteenth century, and failed. Adrian found no sympathy in Rome, and reigned too short a time (Jan. 9, 1522 to Sept. 14, 1523) to accomplish his desire. It was rumored that he died of poison; but the proof is wanting. Rome rejoiced. His successor, Clement VII. (1523–1534), adopted at once the policy of his cousin, Leo X.
Complaint was made in the Diet against the Elector Frederick, that he tolerated Luther at Wittenberg, and allowed the double communion, the marriage of priests, and the forsaking of convents, but his controlling influence prevented any unfavorable action. The report of the suppression of the radical movements in Wittenberg made a good impression. Lutheran books were freely printed and sold in Nürnberg. Osiander preached openly against the Roman Antichrist.
The Diet, in the answer to the Pope (framed Feb. 8 and published as an edict March 6, 1523), refused to execute the Edict of Worms, and demanded the calling of a free general council in Germany within a year. In the mean time, Luther should keep silence; and the preachers should content themselves with preaching the holy gospel according to the approved writings of the Christian church. At the same time the hundred gravamina of the German nation were repeated.
This edict was a compromise, and did not decide the church question; but it averted the immediate danger to the Reformation, and so far marks a favorable change, as compared with the Edict of Worms. It was the beginning of the political emancipation of Germany from the control of the papacy. Luther was rather pleased with it, except the prohibition of preaching and writing, which he did not obey.
The influence of the edict, however, was weakened by several events which occurred soon afterwards.
At a new Diet at Nürnberg in January, 1524, where the shrewd Pope Clement VII. was represented by Cardinal Campeggio, the resolution was passed to execute the Edict of Worms, though with the elastic clause, "as far as possible."
At the earnest solicitation of the papal nuncio,
the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, and the Dukes William and Louis of
Bavaria, together with twelve bishops of South Germany, concluded at
Ratisbon, July 6, 1524, a league for the protection of the Roman faith
against the Reformation, with the exception of the abolition of some
glaring abuses which did not touch doctrines. See details in Ranke, II., 108 sqq. and in
Janssen, II., 336 sqq.
Thus the German nation was divided into two hostile camps. From this unhappy division arose the political weakness of the empire, and the terrible calamities of the Smalkaldian and the Thirty Years’ Wars. In 1525 the Peasants’ War broke out, and gave new strength to the reaction, but only for a short time.
§ 70. Luther and Henry VIII
Henricus VIII.: Adsertio VII. Sacram. adv. Luth. Lond. 1521. A German translation by Frick, 1522, in Walch, XIX., 158 sqq. Lutherus: Contra Henricum Regem. 1522. Also freely reproduced in German by Luther. His letter to Henry, Sept. 1, 1525. Auf des Königs in England Lästerschrift M. Luther’s Antwort. 1527. Afterwards also in Latin. See the documents in Walch, XIX. 153–521; Erl. ed., XXVIII. 343 sqq.; XXX. 1–14. Comp. also Luther’s letters of Feb. 4 and March 11, 1527, in De Wette III. 161 and 163.
With all his opposition to Ultra-Protestantism in church and state, Luther did not mean to yield an inch to the Romanists. This appears from two very personal controversies which took place during these disturbances,—the one with Henry VIII. concerning the sacraments; the other with Erasmus about predestination and free-will. In both he forgot the admirable lessons of moderation which he had enjoined from the pulpit in Wittenberg. He used again the club of Hercules.
Henry VIII. of England urged Charles V. to
exterminate the Lutheran heresy by force, and wrote in 1521 (probably
with the assistance of his chaplain, Edward Lee), a scholastic defence
of the seven sacraments, against Luther’s "Babylonish
Captivity." He dedicated the book to Pope Leo X. He treated the
Reformer with the utmost contempt, as a blasphemer and servant of
Satan. He used the old weapons of church authority against freedom. He
adhered to the dogma of transubstantiation, even after his breach with
Rome. Pope Clement VII. judged that this book was written with the aid
of the Holy Spirit, and promised indulgence to all who read it. At the
same time he gratified the ambition of the vain king by confirming the
title "Defender of the Faith," which Leo had already conferred upon
him. Pallavicino and Hergenröther (III.
41) show that Leo conferred the title in a bull of Oct. 11, 1521, and
that Clement confirmed it in a bull of March 5, 1523.
The Protestant successors of Henry have retained the title to this day, though with a very different view of its meaning. The British sovereigns are defenders of the Episcopal Church in England, and of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, and in both characters enemies of the Church of Rome.
Luther read the King a lecture (in Latin and
German) such as was rarely read to any crowned head. He called him
"King Henry, of God’s disgrace (or wrath), King of
England," and heaped upon him the most abusive epithets. Especially in the German edition of his reply,
where Henry is styled not only a gekrönter
Esel (crowned
donkey) and elender Narr (miserable fool), but even a verruchter Schurke,
unverschämter Lügner,
Gotteslästerer, etc ."I say it before all the world, that the King of
England is a liar and no gentleman (ein
Unbiedermann)."
He makes fun of his title "Defender of Faith." The papists who deny
Christ may need such a defender; but "the true church disdains a human
patron, and sings, ’Dominus mihi
adjutor’ ( Wider Hanswurst, 1541.
When there was a prospect of gaining Henry VIII. for the cause of the Reformation, Luther made the matter worse by a strange inconsistency. In a most humble letter of Sept. 1, 1525, be retracted (not his doctrine, but) all the personal abuse, asked his pardon, and offered to honor his name publicly. Henry in his reply refused the offer with royal pride and scorn, and said that he now despised him as heartily for his cowardice as he had formerly hated him for his heresy. He also charged him with violating a nun consecrated to God, and leading other monks into a breach of their vows and into eternal perdition. Emser published a German translation of Luther’s letter and the King’s answer (which was transmitted through Duke George of Saxony), and accompanied it with new vituperations and slanders (1527). All the Romanists regarded this controversy, and the similar correspondence with Duke George, as a great blow to the Reformation.
Luther now resumed his former sarcastic tone; but
it was a painful effort, and did not improve the case. He suspected
that the answer was written by Erasmus, who had "more skill and sense
in his finger than the King with all his wiseacres." He emphatically
denied that he had offered to retract any of his doctrines. "I say, No,
no, no, as long as I breathe, no matter how it offend king, emperor,
prince, or devil .... In short, my doctrine is the main thing of which
I boast, not only against princes and kings, but also against all
devils. The other thing, my life and person, I know well enough to be
sinful, and nothing to boast of; I am a poor sinner, and let all my
enemies be saints or angels. I am both proud and humble as St. Paul
(
In December of the same year in which he wrote his
first book against King Henry, Luther began his important treatise "On
the Secular Power, and how far obedience is due to it." He defends here
the divine right and authority of the secular magistrate, and the duty
of passive obedience, on the ground of
One wrong does not justify another. Yet those Roman-Catholic historians who make capital of this humiliating conduct of the Reformer, against his cause, should remember that Cardinal Pole, whom they magnify as one of the greatest and purest men of that age, in his book on the Unity of the Church, abused King Henry as violently and more keenly, although he was his king and benefactor, and had not given him any personal provocation; while Luther wrote in self-defense only, and was with all his passionate temper a man of kind and generous feelings.
Melanchthon regretted the fierce attack on King
Henry; and when the king began to favor the Reformation, he dedicated
to him the revised edition of his theological Loci (1535). He was twice
called to England, but declined. He wrote in March: "Ego jam alteris literis
in Angliam vocor" (Op. II 708).
§ 71. Erasmus.
I. Erasmus: Opera omnia, ed. by Beatus Rhenanus, Basil. 1540–41; 8 vols. fol.; best ed. by Clericus (Le Clerk), Lugd. Bat. 1703–06; 10 tom. in 11 vols. fol. There are several English translations of his Enchiridion, Encomium, Adagia, Colloquia, and smaller tracts. His most important theological works are his editions of the Greek Test. (1516, ’19,’ 22,’ 27, ’35, exclusive of more than thirty reprints), his Annotations and Paraphrases, his Enchiridion Militis Christiani, his editions of Laur. Valla, Jerome, Augustin, Ambrose, Origen, and other Fathers. His Moriae Encomium, or Panegyric of Folly (composed 1509), was often edited. His letters are very important for the literary history of his age. His most popular book is his Colloquies, which contain the wittiest exposures of the follies and abuses of monkery, fasting, pilgrimages, etc. English transl. by N. Bailey, Lond. 1724; new ed. with notes by Rev. E. Johnson, 1878, 2 vols. After 1514 all his works were published by his friend John Froben in Basel.
Comp. Adalb. Horawitz: Erasmus v. Rotterdam und Martinus Lipsius, Wien, 1882; Erasmiana, several numbers, Wien, 1882–85 (reprinted from the Sitzungsberichte of the Imperial Academy of Vienna; contains extracts from the correspondence of Er., discovered in a Codex at Louvain, and in the Codex Rehdigeranus, 254 of the city library at Breslau, founded by Rehdiger). Horawitz and Hartfelder: Briefwechsel des Beatus Rhenanus, Leipzig, 1886.
II. Biographies of Erasmus by himself and by Beatus Rhenanus, in vol. I. of the ed. of Clericus; by Pierre Bayle, in his "Dictionnaire" (1696); Knight, Cambr. 1726; Jortin, Lond. 1748, 2 vols.; 1808, 3 vols. (chiefly a summary of the letters of Erasmus with critical comments); Burigny, Paris, 1757, 2 vols.; Henke, Halle, 1782, 2 vols.; Hess, Zürich, 1789, 2 vols.; Butler, London, 1825; Ad. Müller, Hamburg, 1828 (Leben des E. v. Rotterdam ... Eine gekrönte Preisschrift; comp. the excellent review of Ullmann in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1829, No. I.); Glasius (prize essay in Dutch), The Hague, 1850; Stichart (Er. v. Rotterd., seine Stellung zur Kirche und zu den Kirchl. Bewegungen seiner Zeit), Leipz. 1870; Durand de Laur (Erasme, précurseur et initiateur de l’esprit moderne), Par. 1873, 2 vols.; R. B. Drummond (Erasmus, his Life and Character), Lond. 1873, 2 vols.; G. Feugère (Er., étude sur sa vie et ses ouvrages), Par. 1874; Pennington, Lond. 1875; Milman (in Savonarola, Erasmus, and other Essays), Lond. 1870; Nisard, Rénaissance et réforme, Paris, 1877.—Also Woker: De Erasmi Rotterodami studiis irenicis. Paderborn, 1872. W. Vischer: Erasmiana. Programm zur Rectoratsfeier der Univers. Basel. Basel, 1876. "Erasmus" in Ersch and Gruber, vol. XXXVI. (by Erhard); in the "Allg. Deutsche Biogr." VI. 160–180 (by Kämmel); in Herzog,1 IV. 114–121 (by Hagenbach), and in Herzog,2 IV. 278–290 (by R. Stähelin); in the "Encycl. Brit.," 9th ed., VIII. 512–518. Schlottmann: Erasmus redivivus, Hal. 1883. Comp. Lit. in § 72.
The quarrel between King Henry and Luther was the occasion of a far more serious controversy and open breach between Erasmus and the Reformation. This involved a separation of humanism from Protestantism.
The Position of Erasmus.
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam His double name is a Latin and Greek
translation of his father’s Christian name Gerard
(Roger), or Gerhard = Gernhaber or Liebhaber,i.e., Beloved, in mediaeval Latin
Desiderius, in Greek Erasmus, or rather Erasmius
from Ἐράσμιος
Lovely. He found out the mistake when he became
familiar with Greek, and accordlingly gave his godson, the son of his
publisher Froben, the name John Erasmius (Erasmiolus). In
dedicating to him an improved edition of his Colloquies (1524),
he calls this book "ἐράσμιον, the delight of the Muses who foster
sacred things." " He was equally unfortunate in the additional epithet
Roterodamus, instead of Roterodamensis. But he was
innocent of both mistakes. Drummond (II. 337) calls Erasmus "the greatest
luminary of his age, the greatest scholar of any age." But his learning
embraced only the literature in the Greek and Latin
languages.
Erasmus shines in the front rank of the humanists and forerunners of the Reformation, on the dividing line between the middle ages and modern times. His great mission was to revive the spirit of classical and Christian antiquity, and to make it a reforming power within the church. He cleared the way for a work of construction which required stronger hands than his. He had no creative and no organizing power. The first period of his life till 1524 was progressive and reformatory; the second, till his death, 1536, was conservative and reactionary.
He did more than any of his contemporaries to prepare the church for the Reformation by the impulse he gave to classical, biblical, and patristic studies, and by his satirical exposures of ecclesiastical abuses and monastic ignorance and bigotry. But he stopped half way, and after a period of, hesitation he openly declared war against Luther, thereby injuring both his own reputation and the progress of the movement among scholars. He was a reformer against reform, and in league with Rome. Thus he lost the respect and confidence of both parties. It would have been better for his fame if he had died in 1516, just after issuing the Greek Testament, a year before the Reformation. To do justice to him, we must look backward. Men of transition, like Staupitz, Reuchlin, and Erasmus, are no less necessary than bold leaders of a new departure. They belong to the class of which John the Baptist is the highest type. Protestants should never forget the immense debt of gratitude which they owe to the first editor of the Greek Testament who enabled Luther and Tyndale to make their translations of the word of life from the original, and to lead men to the very fountain of all that is most valuable and permanent in the Reformation. His edition was hastily prepared, before the art of textual criticism was born; but it anticipated the publication of the ponderous Complutensian Polyglot, and became the basis of the popularly received text. His exegetical opinions still receive and deserve the attention of commentators. To him we owe also the first scholarly editions of the Fathers, especially of Jerome, with whom he was most in sympathy. From these editions the Reformers drew their weapons of patristic controversy with the Romanists, who always appealed to the fathers of the Nicene age rather than to the grandfathers of the apostolic age.
Erasmus was allied to Reuchlin and Ulrich von Hutten, but greater and far more influential than both. All hated monasticism and obscurantism. Reuchlin revived Hebrew, Erasmus Greek learning, so necessary for the cultivation of biblical studies. Reuchlin gave his nephew Melanchthon to Wittenberg, but died a good Catholic. Hutten became a radical ultra-reformer, fell out with Erasmus, who disowned him when he was most in need of a friend, and perished in disgrace. Erasmus survived both, to protest against Protestantism.
And yet he cannot be charged with apostasy or even with inconsistency. He never was a Protestant, and never meant to be one. Division and separation did not enter into his program. From beginning to end he labored for a reformation within the church and within the papacy, not without it. But the new wine burst the old bottles. The reform which he set in motion went beyond him, and left him behind. In some of his opinions, however, he was ahead of his age, and anticipated a more modern stage of Protestantism. He was as much a forerunner of Rationalism as of the Reformation.
Sketch of His Life.
Erasmus was the illegitimate son of a Dutch
priest, Gerard, and Margaret, the daughter of a
physician,—their last but not their only child. His father was ordained a priest after the
birth of Erasmus; for he says that he lived with Margaret "spe
conjugii," and became a priest in Rome on learning from his
parents, who were opposed to the marriage, the false report that his
beloved Margaret was dead. He says in his autobiographical
sketch: "Natus Roterodami vigilia Simonis et Judæ circa
annum 67, supra millesimum quadringentesimum." His friend and
biographer, Beatus Rhenanus, did not know the year of his birth. His
epitaph in Basel gives 1466; the inscription on his statue at Rotterdam
gives 1467; the historians vary from 1464 to 1469. Bayle, Burigny,
Müller, and Drummoud (I. 3 sq.) discuss the
chronology.
After the death of his mother, he was robbed of his inheritance by his guardians, and put against his will into a convent at Herzogenbusch, which he exchanged afterwards for one at Steyn (Emaus), near Gouda, a few miles from Rotterdam.
He spent five unhappy years in monastic seclusion (1486–1491), and conceived an utter disgust for monkery. Ulrich von Hutten passed through the same experience, with the same negative result; while for Luther monastic life was his free choice, and became the cradle of a new religious life. Erasmus found relief in the study of the classics, which he pursued without a guide, by a secret impulse of nature. We have from this period a number of his compositions in poetry and prose, odes to Christ and the holy Virgin, invectives against despisers of eloquence, and an essay on the contempt of the world, in which he describes the corruptions of the world and the vices of the monks.
He was delivered from his prison life in 1491 by the bishop of Cambray, his parsimonious patron, and ordained to the priesthood in 1492. He continued in the clerical profession, and remained unmarried, but never had a parish.
He now gave himself up entirely to study in the
University of Paris and at Orleans. His favorite authors were Cicero,
Terence, Plutarch, and Lucian among the classics, Jerome among the
fathers, and Laurentius Valla the commentator. He led hereafter an
independent literary life without a regular charge, supporting himself
by teaching, and then supported by rich friends. He calls himself, in his autobiographical
sketch, "dignitatum ac divitiarum perpetuus
contemptor."
He paid two important visits to England, first on
the invitation of his grateful and generous pupil, Lord Montjoy,
between 1498 and 1500, and again in 1510. There he became intimate with
the like-minded Sir Thomas More, Dean Colet, Archbishop Warham,
Cardinal Wolsey, Bishop Fisher, and was introduced to King Henry VII.
and to Prince Henry, afterwards Henry VIII. Colet taught him that
theology must return from scholasticism to the Scriptures, and from dry
dogmas to practical wisdom. J. H. Lupton: A Life of John Colet, D. D.,
Dean of St. Paul’s and Founder of St.
Paul’s School. London, 1887.
Between his visits to England he spent three years in Italy (1506–1509), and bathed in the fountain of the renaissance. He took the degree of doctor of divinity at Turin, and remained some time in Venice, Padua, Bologna, and Rome. He edited the classics of Greece and Rome, with specimens of translations, and superintended the press of Manutius Aldus at Venice. He entered into the genius of antiquity, and felt at home there. He calls Venice the most magnificent city of the world. But the lovely scenery of Italy, and the majestic grandeur of the Alps, seem to have made no more impression upon his mind than upon that of Luther; at least, he does not speak of it.
After he returned from his last visit to England, he spent his time alternately at Brussels, Antwerp, and Louvain (1515–1521). He often visited Basel, and made this ancient city of republican Switzerland, on the boundaries between France and Germany, his permanent home in 1521. There he lived several years as editor and adviser of his friend and publisher, John Froben, who raised his press to the first rank in Europe. Basel was neutral till 1529, when the Reformation was introduced. It suited his position and taste. He liked the climate and the society. The bishop of Basel and the magistrate treated him with the greatest consideration. The university was then in its glory. He was not one of the public teachers, but enjoyed the intercourse of Wyttenbach, Capito, Glarean, Pellican, Amerbach. "I am here," he wrote to a friend, "as in the most agreeable museum of many and very eminent scholars. Everybody knows Latin and Greek, most of them also Hebrew. The one excels in history, the other in theology; one is well versed in mathematics, another in antiquities, a third in jurisprudence. You know how rarely we meet with such a combination. I at least never found it before. Besides these literary advantages, what candor, hospitality, and harmony prevail here everywhere! You would swear that all had but one heart and one soul."
The fame of Erasmus brought on an extensive correspondence. His letters and books had the widest circulation. The "Praise of Folly" passed through seven editions in a few months, and through at least twenty-seven editions during his lifetime. Of his "Colloquies," a bookseller in Paris printed twenty-four thousand copies. His journeys were triumphal processions. Deputations received him in the larger cities with addresses of welcome. He was treated like a prince. Scholars, bishops, cardinals, kings, and popes paid him homage, sent him presents, or gave him pensions. He was offered by the Cardinal of Sion, besides a handsome board, the liberal sum of five hundred ducats annually, if he would live with him in Rome. He was in high favor with Pope Julius II. and Leo X., who patronized liberal learning. The former released him from his monastic vows; the latter invited him to Rome, and would have given him any thing if he had consented to remain. Adrian VI. asked his counsel how to deal with the Lutheran heresy (1523). Clement VII., in reply to a letter, sent him a present of two hundred florins. Paul III. offered him a cardinal’s hat to reward him for his attack on Luther (1536), but he declined it on account of old age.
The humanists were loudest in his praise, and almost worshiped him. Eoban Hesse, the prince of Latin poets of the time, called him a "divine being," and made a pilgrimage on foot from Erfurt to Holland to see him face to face. Justus Jonas did the same. Zwingli visited him in Basel, and before going to sleep used to read some pages of his writings. To receive a letter from him was a good fortune, and to have a personal interview with him was an event. A man even less vain than Erasmus could not have escaped the bad effect of such hero-worship. But it was partly neutralized by the detractions of his enemies, who were numerous and unsparing. Among these were Stunica and Caranza of Spain, Edward Lee of England, the Prince of Carpi, Cardinal Aleander, the leaders of scholastic divinity of Louvain and Paris, and the whole crowd of ignorant monks.
His later years were disturbed by the death of his
dearest and kindest friend, John Froben (1527), to whose memory he paid
a most noble tribute in one of his letters; and still more by the
progress of the Reformation in his own neighborhood. The optimism of
his youth and manhood gave way to a gloomy, discontented pessimism. The
Lutheran tragedy, he said, gave him more pain than the stone which
tortured him. "It is part of my unhappy fate, that my old age has
fallen on these evil times when quarrels and riots prevail everywhere."
"This new gospel," he writes in another letter, "is producing a new set
of men so impudent, hypocritical, and abusive, such liars and
sycophants, who agree neither with one another nor with anybody else,
so universally offensive and seditious, such madmen and ranters, and in
short so utterly distasteful to me that if I knew of any city in which
I should be free from them, I would remove there at once." His last
letters are full of such useless lamentations. He had the mortification
to see Protestantism triumph in a tumultuous way in Basel, through the
labors of Oecolampadius, his former friend and associate. It is
pleasant, however, and creditable to him, that his last interview with
the reformer was friendly and cordial. The authorities of the city left
him undisturbed. But he reluctantly moved to the Roman Catholic city of
Freiburg in Baden (1529), wishing that Basel might enjoy every
blessing, and never receive a sadder guest than he. He dictated these lines to his friend Amerbach
on departing: "Jam Basilea vale! qua non urbs
altera multis Annis exhibuit
gratius hospitium. Hinc precor omnia
laeta tibi, simul illud, ErasmoHospes uti
ne unquam tristior adveniat."
On his way he stopped in Basel in the house of
Jerome Froben, August, 1535, and attended to the publication of Origen.
It was his last work. He fell sick, and died in his seventieth year,
July 12, 1536, of his old enemies, the stone and the gout, to which was
added dysentery. He retained his consciousness and genial humor to the
last. When his three friends, Amerbach, Froben, and Episcopius, visited
him on his death-bed, he reminded them of Job’s three
comforters, and playfully asked them about the torn garments, and the
ashes that should be sprinkled on their heads. He died without a priest
or any ceremonial of the Church (in wretched monastic Latin: "sine
crux, sine lux, sine Deus"), but invoking the mercy of Christ. His last
words, repeated again and again, were, "O Jesus, have mercy; Lord,
deliver me; Lord, make an end; Lord, have mercy upon me!" "O Jesu, misericordia; Domine, libera me;
Domine, fac finem; Domine, miserere mei;" and in German or
Dutch, Lieber God (Gott)!—Beatus Rhenanus, in Vita
Er.
In his will, dated Feb. 12, 1536, he left his
valuables to Froben, Rhenanus, and other friends, and the rest to the
aged and poor and for the education of young men of promise. Drummond, II. 338-340, gives the document in
full.
Erasmus was of small stature, but well formed. He
had a delicate constitution, an irritable temperament, fair skin,
blonde hair, wrinkled forehead, blue eyes, and pleasant voice. His face
had an expression of thoughtfulness and quiet studiousness. See the interesting description of his face by
Lavater in his Physiognomik, quoted by Ad. Müller, p.
108, and Hagenbach, K. Gesch., III. 50. There are several
portraits of him,—by Matsys (1517), Dürer
(1523), and, the best, by Holbein who painted him repeatedly at
Basel.
He talked and wrote in Latin, the universal language of scholars in mediaeval Europe. He handled it as a living language, with ease, elegance, and effect, though not with classical correctness. His style was Ciceronian, but modified by the ecclesiastical vocabulary of Jerome. In his dialogue "Ciceronianus," or on the best mode of speaking (1528), he ridicules those pedantic semi-pagans, chiefly Italians, who worshiped and aped Cicero, and avoided Christian themes, or borrowed names and titles from heathen mythology. He had, however, the greatest respect for Cicero, and hoped that "he is now living peacefully in heaven." He learned neither German nor English nor Italian, and had only an imperfect knowledge of French, and even of his native Dutch.
He had a nervous sensibility. The least draught
made him feverish. He could not bear the iron stoves of Germany, and
required an open fireplace. He could drink no wine but Burgundy. He
abhorred intemperance. He could not eat fish on fast days; the mere
smell of it made him sick: his heart, he said, was Catholic, but his
stomach Lutheran. He never used spectacles either by day or by
candle-light, and many wondered that study had not blinded his eyes. He
walked firm and erect without a cane. His favorite exercise was
horseback-riding. In thanking Archbishop Warham of Canterbury for
the present of a horse, he thus humorously describes the animal: "I
have received the horse, which is no beauty, but a good creature
notwithstanding; for he is free from all the mortal sins, except
gluttony and laziness; and he is adorned with all the virtues of a good
confessor, being pious, prudent, humble, modest, sober, chaste, and
quiet, and neither bites nor kicks." To Polydore Virgil, who sent him
money to procure a horse, he replied, "I wish you could give me
any thing to cure the rider." ("Dedisti quo
paretur equus, utinam dare possis
quo reparetur eques."
—Op. III. 934.)
His Theological Opinions.
Erasmus was, like most of the German and English humanists, a sincere and enlightened believer in Christianity, and differed in this respect from the frivolous and infidel humanists of France and Italy. When charged by Prince Albertus Pius of Carpi, who was in high favor at the papal court, with turning sacred things into ridicule, he answered, "You will much more readily find scoffers at sacred things in Italy among men of your own rank, ay, and in your much-lauded Rome, than with us. I could not endure to sit down at table with such men." He devoted his brilliant genius and classical lore to the service of religion. He revered the Bible as a divine revelation, and zealously promoted its study. He anticipated Luther in the supreme estimate of the word of God as the true source of theology and piety. Oecolampadius confessed that he learned from Erasmus "nihil in sacris scripturis praeter Christum quaerendum."
He had a sharp eye to the abuses of the Church, and endeavored to reform them in a peaceful way. He wished to lead theology back from the unfruitful speculations and frivolous subtleties of scholasticism to Scriptural simplicity, and to promote an inward, spiritual piety. He keenly ridiculed the foolish and frivolous discussions of the schoolmen about formalities and quiddities, and such questions as whether God could have assumed the form of a woman, or an ass, or a cucumber, or a flint-stone; whether the Virgin Mary was learned in the languages; and whether we would eat and drink after the resurrection. He exposed the vices and follies, the ignorance and superstition, of the monks and clergy. He did not spare even the papacy. "I have no desire," he wrote in 1523, that the primacy of the Roman See should be abolished, but I could wish that its discipline were such as to favor every effort to promote the religion of the gospel; for several ages past it has by its example openly taught things that are plainly averse to the doctrines of Christ."
At the same time he lacked a deeper insight into the doctrines of sin and grace, and failed to find a positive remedy for the evils he complained of. In using the dangerous power of ridicule and satire which he shared with Lucian, he sometimes came near the line of profanity. Moreover, he had a decidedly skeptical vein, and in the present century he would probably be a moderate Rationalist.
With his critical faculty he saw the difficulties
and differences in the human surroundings and circumstances of the
Divine Scriptures. He omitted in his Greek Testament the forgery of the
three witnesses, … "ne cui sit ansa
calumniandi. Tametsi suspicor codicem illum ad nostros esse
correctum."—Opera, VI. 1080. The Codex
Montfortianus, now in Dublin, was probably written between 1519-1522,
and the disputed passage interpolated with the purpose of injuring the
reputation of Erasmus. See J. R. Harris, The Origin of the Leicester
Codex of the N. Test., London and Cambridge, 1887, p. 46
sqq. De genuina verborum Domini: Hoc est corpus
meum, etc., juxta vetustissimos auctores expositione liber. Basil.,
1525. .. See the Preface to his edition of St. Hilary
on the Trinity, published at Basel, 1523.
He had a high opinion of the morality and piety of
the nobler heathen, such as Socrates, Cicero, and Plutarch. "The
Scriptures," he says in his Colloquies, "deserve, indeed, the highest
authority; but I find also in the writings of the ancient heathen and
in the poets so much that is pure, holy and divine, that I must believe
that their hearts were divinely moved. The spirit of Christ is perhaps
more widely diffused than we imagine, and many will appear among the
saints who are not in our catalogue." "Fortasse latius se fundit spiritus Christi
quam nos interpretamur, et multi sunt in consortio sanctorum qui non
sunt apud nos in catalogo."—Coll., in the
conversation entitled Convivium Religiosum.
The same liberal sentiments we find among the early Greek fathers (Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen), and in Zwingli.
Bigoted Catholics hated and feared him, as much as
the liberal admired and lauded him. "He laid the egg," they said,
"which Luther hatched." He himself alludes to this saying: "Ego
peperi ovum, Lutherus exclusit" (Op. III. 840), but adds,
"Egoposui ovum gallinaceum, Lutherus exclusit pullum longe
dissimillimum."
In his last word to his popish enemies who
identified him with Luther to ruin both together, he writes: "For the
future I despise them, and I wish I had always done so; for it is no
pleasure to drown the croaking of frogs. Let them say, with their stout
defiance of divine and human laws, ’We ought to obey
God rather than men.’ That was well said by the
Apostles, and even on their lips it is not without a certain propriety;
only it is not the same God in the two cases. The God of the Apostles
was the Maker of heaven and earth: their God is their belly. Fare ye
well." Des. Erasmi Epistola ad quosdam
impudentissimos Graculos (jackdaws). Op. IX. Pars II. (or
vol. X.), p. 1745; Drummond, II. 265 sq.
His Works.
The literary labors of Erasmus may be divided into three classes: —
I. Works edited. Their number proves his marvellous industry and enterprise.
He published the ancient Latin classics, Cicero, Terence, Seneca, Livy, Pliny; and the Greek classics with Latin translations, Euripides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plutarch, Lucian.
He edited the principal church fathers (some for the first time from MSS.); namely, Jerome (1516–1518; ed. ii., 1526; ed. iii., a year after his death), Cyprian (1520), Athanasius (in a Latin version, 1522), Hilarius (1523), Irenaeus (Latin, 1526, ed. princeps, very defective), Ambrose (1527), Augustin (1529), Epiphanius (1529), Chrysostom on Matthew (1530), Basil (in Greek, 1532; he called him the "Christian Demosthenes"), Origen (in Latin, 1536). He wrote the prefaces and dedications.
He published the Annotations of Laurentius Valla on the New Testament (1505 and 1526), a copy of which he had found by chance on the shelves of an old library.
The most important of his edited works is the
Greek New Testament, with a Latin translation. On this see the critical introductions to the
New Testament; Scrivener’s Introd. to the Criticism
of the N. T., 3d ed., pp. 429-434; Schaff’s
Companion to the Greek Test., 3d ed., pp. 229-232; and Drummond,
I. 308 sqq.
II. Original works on general literature.
His "Adages" (Adagia), begun at Oxford, dedicated
to Lord Mountjoy, first published in Paris in 1500, and much enlarged
in subsequent editions, The last edition before me, Adagiorum
Chiliades ... ex officina Frobenia, 1536, contains 1087 pages
folio, with an alphabetical index of the Proverbs. See vol. II. of the
Leiden ed. For extracts see Drummond, I. ch. X.
"The Praise of Folly" (Encomium Moriae) Μωρίασ
Ἐγκώμιον, id est Stultitiae Laus, first
printed 1510 or 1511. Op. IV. 405-507. There is a neat edition of the
Encomium and the Colloquia by Tauchnitz, Leipzig, 1829.
Drummond (I. 184 sqq.) gives a good summary of the
contents.
In his equally popular "Colloquies" (Colloquia
Familiaria), begun in 1519, and enlarged in numerous editions, Erasmus
aims to make better scholars and better men, as he says in his
dedication to John Erasmius Froben (the son of his friend and
publisher). The work which appeared in 1518 under this
title, with a preface of Rhenanus, was disclaimed by Erasmus, except
some portions which he had dictated more than twenty years previously
to a pupil in Paris by way of amusement. He compared it to an ass in a
lion’s skin. The Colloquia are printed in
Opera, I. 624-908. I have an edition cum notis selectis
variorum accurante Corn. Schrevelio. Lugd., Bat.
Bailey’s translation, London, 1724, republished 1878,
reproduces in racy colloquial English the idiomatic and proverbial
Latinisms of the original. In the dialogue Virgo
μισόγαμος, the maiden Catharine, who had resolved
to become a nun, is advised by her lover Eubulus that she may keep her
chastity more safely at home; for the monks were by no means all "
eunuchs,"but often do all they can to deserve their name "
fathers."("Patres vocantur, ac frequenter efficiunt, ut hoc nomen
vere competat in ipsos.") She is also told that " all are not
virgins who wear the veil, unless there be many in our days who share
the pecular privilege of the Virgin Mary, of being a virgin after
childbirth."The maiden admits the force of her lover’s
arguments, but refuses to be convinced. In the colloquy that follows,
entitled Virgo poenitens, she acknowledges the wisdom of the
advice when it was too late. She had scarcely been twelve days in the
nunnery before she entreated her mother, and then her father, to take
her home if they wished to save her life.
The numerous letters of Erasmus and to Erasmus
throw much light upon contemporaneous literary and ecclesiastical
history, and make us best acquainted with his personality. He
corresponded with kings and princes, popes and cardinals, as well as
with scholars in all parts of Europe. He tells us that he wrote
sometimes forty letters in a day. The Epistolae in
Froben’s ed. of 1540, Tom. III. fol. (1213 pp.), with
his preface, dated Freiburg, 1529; in Le Clerk’s ed.,
Tom. III. Pars I. and II. There is also a fine edition of the collected
epistles of Erasmus, Melanchthon, Thomas More, and Lud. Vives, London,
1642, 2 vols. fol. 2146 and 116 pages, with a good portrait of Erasmus
(a copy in the Union Seminary). Recent additions have been made by
Horawitz (Erasmiana, 1883 sqq.). Jortin and Drummond give many
extracts from the epistles.
III. Theological works. The edition of the Greek
Testament, with a new Latin version and brief annotations, and the
independent paraphrases, are the most important contributions of
Erasmus to exegesis, and have appeared in very many editions. The
paraphrastic form of commenting, which briefly explains the
difficulties, and links text and notes in continuous composition, so as
to make the writer his own interpreter, Erasmus well defines it in the dedicatory
preface ad Card. Grimanum, before the Pauline Epistles:
"hiantia committere, abrupta mollire, confusa digerere, evoluta
evolvere, nodosa explicare, obscuris lucem addere, hebraismum romana
civitate donare ... et ita temperare παράφρασινne fiat παραφρόνησις, h. e. sic aliter dicere ut non
dicas alia."
His "Method of True Theology" (Ratio verae
Theologiae) Opera, vol. V. 57 sqq.
The Enchiridion Militis Christiani, Usually translated "The Manual of a Christian
Soldier;" but ἐγχειρίδιονmeans also a dagger, and he himself
explains it, "Enchiridion, hoc est, pugiunculum."Op. V.
1-65. The first English translation (1533) is believed to be by William
Tyndale, the translator of the New Testament. Another, with notes,
which I have before me, is by Philip Wyatt Crowther, Esq., London,
1816, under the title "The Christian’s Manual,"
etc. On the disputed date see Drummond, I.
122.
In the tract on the Confessional (1524), he enumerates the advantages and the perils of that institution which may be perverted into a means of propagating vice by suggesting it to young and inexperienced penitents. He leaves, on the whole, the impression that the confessional does more harm than good.
In the book on the Tongue (1525), he eloquently describes, and illustrates with many anecdotes, its use and abuse. After its publication he wrote to his friends, "Erasmus will henceforth be mute, having parted with his tongue."
But a year after appeared his book on the Institution of Christian Matrimony (1526), dedicated to Queen Catherine of England. It contains the views of an unmarried man on the choice of a mate, the duties of parents, and the education of children. He justly blames Tertullian and Jerome (he might have included all the fathers) for their extravagant laudation of celibacy, and suggests doubts on the sacramental character of marriage.
One of his last works was a Catechism on the Apostles’ Creed, the Decalogue, and the Lord’s Prayer, which he dedicated to the father of the unfortunate Anne Boleyn. For the same nobleman he wrote a short devotional work on preparation for death.
§ 72. Erasmus and the Reformation.
I. Erasmus: De Libero Arbitrio diatribe (1524), in Opera ed. Lugd. IX. Pars I. 1215 sqq., in Walch, XVIII. Hyperaspistae diatribes libri duo contra Servum Arbitr. M. Lutheri, in 2 parts (1526 and 1527), in Opera IX. Pars II. 1249 sqq., and in Walch, XVIII.
Luther: De Servo Arbitrio ad Erasmum Roterodamun, Wittembergae, 1525. On the last p. of the first ed. before me is the date "Mense Decembri, Anno MDXXV." German in Walch, XVIII. Erl. ed. Opera Lat. VII. 113 sqq. Letters of Luther to Erasmus and about Erasmus in Walch, XVIII., and in De Wette, I. pp. 39, 52, 87, 247; II. 49; III. 427; IV, 497.
II. Chlebus: Erasmus und Luther, in "Zeitschr. f. Hist. Theol.," 1845. Döllinger in his Die Reformation, 1846, vol. i. pp. 1–20. Kerker: Er. u. sein Theol. Standpunkt, in the "Theol. Quartalschrift," 1859. D. F. Strauss: Ulrich von Hutten, 4th ed. Bonn, 1878, pp. 448–484, 511–514, and passim. Plitt: Erasmus in s. Stellung zur Reformation, Leipz., in the "Zeitschrift f. Hist. Theol.," 1866, No. III. Rud. Stähelin: Eras. Stellung z. Reformation, Basel, 1873 (35 pp.; comp. his art. In Herzog2, quoted in § 71). Froude: Times of Erasmus and Luther. Three Lect., delivered at Newcastle, 1867 (in the first series of his "Short Studies on Great Subjects," New York ed., 1873, pp. 37–127), brilliant but inaccurate, and silent on the free-will controversy. Drummond: Erasmus, etc., 1873, vol. II. chs. xiii.-xv. E. Walter: Erasmus und Melanchthon, Bernburg, 1879. A. Gilly: Erasme de Rotterd., sa situation en face de l’église et de la libre pensée, Arras, 1879. Comp. also Kattenbusch: Luther’s Lehre vom unfreien Willen, Göttingen, 1875, and Köstlin: Luther’s Theologie, vol. II. 32–55.
Erasmus was eighteen years older than Luther, and stood at the height of his fame when the reformer began his work. He differed from him as Jerome differed from Augustin, or Eusebius from Athanasius. Erasmus was essentially a scholar, Luther a reformer; the one was absorbed in literature, the other in religion. Erasmus aimed at illumination, Luther at reconstruction; the former reached the intellect of the educated, the latter touched the heart of the people. Erasmus labored for freedom of thought, Luther for freedom of conscience. Both had been monks, Erasmus against his will, Luther by free choice and from pious motives; and both hated and opposed monkery, but the former for its ignorance and bigotry, the latter for its self-righteousness and obstruction of the true way to justification and peace. Erasmus followed maxims of worldly wisdom; Luther, sacred principles and convictions. The one was willing, as he confessed, to sacrifice "a part of the truth for the peace of the church," and his personal comfort; the other was ready to die for the gospel at any moment. Erasmus was a trimmer and timeserver, Luther every inch a moral hero.
Luther wrote upon his tablet (1536), "Res et verba Philippus; verba sine re Erasmus; res sine verbis Lutherus; nec res nec verba Carolostadius." But Luther himself was the master of words and matter, and his words were deeds. Melanchthon was an improved Erasmus on the side of evangelical truth.
It is easy to see how far two men so differently constituted could go together, and where and when they had to part. So long as the Reformation moved within the church, Erasmus sympathized with it. But when Luther, who had at first as little notion of leaving the Catholic Church, burnt the Pope’s bull and the decretals, and with them the bridge behind him, Erasmus shrank back, and feared that the remedy was worse than the evil. His very breadth of culture and irresolution became his weakness; while Luther’s narrowness and determination were his strength. In times of war, neutrality is impossible, and we must join one of the two contending armies. Erasmus was for unity and peace, and dreaded a split of the church as the greatest calamity; and yet he never ceased to rebuke the abuses. It was his misfortune, rather than his fault, that he could not side with the Reformation. We must believe his assertion that his conscience kept him from the cause of the Lutherans. At the same time he was concerned for his personal comfort and literary supremacy, and anxious to retain the friendship of his hierarchical and royal patrons. He wished to be a spectator, but not an actor in "the Lutheran tragedy."
Erasmus hailed the young Melanchthon with
enthusiastic praise of his precocious genius and learning, and
continued to respect him even after his breach with Luther. He stood in
friendly correspondence with Zwingli, who revered him as the prince of
humanists. He employed Oecolampadius as his assistant, and spoke
highly, though evasively, of his book on the eucharist. He was not
displeased with Luther’s attacks on indulgences and
monasticism, and wrote to Zwingli that he had taught nearly every thing
that Luther teaches, but without his coarseness and paradoxes. "Videor mihi fere omnia docuisse quae docet
Lutherus, nisi quod non tam atrociter, quodque abstinui a quibusdam
aenigmatibus et paradoxis." In Zwingli’s
Opera, ed. Schuler and Schulthess, vol. VII.
310. After the bull of excommunication, it required
special permission to read the books of the heretic. In a letter to
Bombasius, Sept. 23, 1521, Erasmus says that he begged Jerome Aleander
for permission, but was denied unless he were to obtain it in express
words from the Pope. Drummond, II. 85 sq. Ems., Epist. 427. See the first letter
of Luther (March 28, 1519), the reply of Erasmus (May 30), and a second
letter of Luther (April, 1524), and the reply of Erasmus (May 5), in
Latin in Er. Epist., in German in Walch, vol. XVIII., 1944 sqq.,
and in the Appendix to Müller’s
Erasmus, pp. 385-395. The two letters of Luther to Erasmus are
also given in Latin by De Wette, I. 247-249, and II.
498-501.
So far, then, he objected not so much to the matter as to the manner of Luther, whose plebeian violence and roughness offended his cultured taste. But there was a deeper difference. He could not appreciate his cardinal doctrine of justification by faith alone, and took offence at the denial of free-will and human merit. He held the Catholic views on these subjects. He wished a reform of the discipline, but not of the faith, of the church, and cared little for dogmatic controversies.
His gradual alienation may be seen in the following extracts from his letters.
To Albrecht, Cardinal-Archbishop of Mainz, he wrote from Louvain, Nov. 1, 1519: –
"Permit me to say that I have never had any thing to do either with the affair of Reuchlin or with the cause of Luther. I have never taken any interest in the Cabbala or the Talmud. Those virulent contentions between Reuchlin and the party of Hochstraten have been extremely distasteful to me. Luther is a perfect stranger to me, and I have never had time to read his books beyond merely glancing over a few pages. If he has written well, no praise is due to me; if not, it would be unjust to hold me responsible .... Luther had written to me in a very Christian tone, as I thought; and I replied, advising him incidentally not to write any thing against the Roman Pontiff, nor to encourage a proud or intolerant spirit, but to preach the gospel out of a pure heart .... I am neither Luther’s accuser, nor advocate, nor judge; his heart I would not presume to judge—for that is always a matter of extreme difficulty—still less would I condemn. And yet if I were to defend him, as a good man, which even his enemies admit him to be; as one put upon his trial, a duty which the laws permit even to sworn judges; as one persecuted—which would be only in accordance with the dictates of humanity—and trampled on by the bounden enemies of learning, who merely use him as a handle for the accomplishment of their designs, where would be the blame, so long as I abstained from mixing myself up with his cause ? In short, I think it is my duty as a Christian to support Luther in this sense, that, if he is innocent, I should not wish him to be crushed by a set of malignant villains; if he is in error, I would rather see him put right than destroyed: for thus I should be acting in accordance with the example of Christ, who, as the prophet witnesseth, quencheth not the smoking flax, nor breaketh the bruised reed."
To Pope Leo X., from Louvain, Sept. 13, 1520 (three months after the excommunication of Luther, June 15): –
"I have no acquaintance with Luther, nor have I ever read his books, except perhaps ten or twelve pages, and that only by snatches. From what I then saw, I judged him to be well qualified for expounding the Scriptures in the manner of the Fathers,—a work greatly needed in an age like this, which is so excessively given to mere subtleties, to the neglect of really important questions. Accordingly, I have favored his good, but not his bad, qualities, or rather I have favored Christ’s glory in him. I was among the first to foresee the danger there was of this matter ending in violence, and no one ever hated violence more than I do. Indeed, I even went so far as to threaten John Froben the printer, to prevent him publishing his books. I wrote frequently and industriously to my friends, begging that they would admonish this man to observe Christian meekness in his writings, and do nothing to disturb the peace of the church. And when he himself wrote to me two years ago, I lovingly admonished him what I wished him to avoid; and I would he had followed my advice. This letter, I am informed, has been shown to your Holiness, I suppose in order to prejudice me, whereas it ought rather to conciliate your Holiness’s favor towards me."
On Dec. 5, 1520, five days before the burning of the Pope’s bull, Erasmus, being asked for his opinion about Luther by the Elector Frederick of Saxony, whom he happened to meet at Cologne, hesitated a while, and looked blank; but being pressed by the Elector, who stood square before him and stared him in the face, he gave the well-known answer, –
"Luther has committed two
sins,—he has touched the Pope on the crown, and the
monks on the belly." See p. 232.
The Elector smiled, and remembered the expression shortly before his death. Returned to his lodgings, Erasmus wrote down some axioms rather favorable to Luther and disapproving of the "Pope’s unmerciful bull," and sent them to Spalatin, but concealed the manuscript from fear that Aleander might see it; but it had been already published.
From a letter to a friend in Basel (Louis Berus), dated Louvain, May 14, 1521:–
"By the bitterness of the Lutherans, and the stupidity of some who show more zeal than wisdom in their endeavors to heal the present disorders, things have been brought to such a pass, that I, for one, can see no issue but in the turning upside down of the whole world. What evil spirit can have sown this poisonous seed in human affairs? When I was at Cologne, I made every effort that Luther might have the glory of obedience and the Pope of clemency, and some of the sovereigns approved of this advice. But, lo and behold! the burning of the Decretals, the ’Babylonish Captivity,’ those propositions of Luther, so much stronger than they need be, have made the evil, it seems, incurable .... The only thing that remains to us, my dear Berus, is to pray that Christ, supreme in goodness and in power, may turn all to good; for he alone can do so."
In the same month, during the sessions of the Diet of Worms, he wrote to Nicholas Everard, from Mechlin, 1521: –
"If Luther had written more moderately, even
though he had written freely, he would both have been more honored
himself, and done more good to the world; but fate has decreed
otherwise. I only wonder that the man is still alive .... They say that
an edict is in readiness far more severe than the
Pope’s bull; The edict was passed May 26, 1521, but dated
back May 8. (See p. 318.)
After the Diet of Worms, several events occurred
which seemed to confirm his worst fears about the effects of the
Reformation, and imbittered him against its leaders; namely, the
disturbances of Carlstadt at Wittenberg (1521),
Luther’s invective against Henry VIII. (1522), and the
fierce attack of his former friend and admirer Ulrich von Hutten
(1523). Erasmus had disowned the poor fugitive Hutten,
who turned on him like a wild beast in his Expostulatio cum
Erasmo, published at Strasburg, July, 1523. Erasmus wrote to
Pirkheimer, "Emoriar si crediturus eram, in universis Germanis esse
tantum inhumanitatis, impudentiae, vanitatis, virulentiae quantum habet
unus libellus Hutteni." He answered by Spongia Erasmi adversus
Adspergines Ulrici Hutteni, Basel, 1523. (Opera, vol. IX.
Pars II. 1631-73). Luther judged: "I am not pleased with
Hutten’s attack, but still less with
Erasmus’s reply." The Expostulatio and the
Spongia were also translated into German. See on this bitter
personal controversy, Strauss, Ulrich von Hutten, pp. 448-484; and
Drummond, II. 120 sqq.
Nevertheless, he advised Pope Adrian VI. to avoid all harsh measures, to deal gently with errors, to pardon past misdoings, to reform abuses, and to call a general council of moderate men. The counsel was disregarded.
Glareanus (Loriti) of Basel described Erasmus very
well, when he wrote to Zwingli, Jan. 20, 1523, "Erasmus is an old man,
and desires rest. Each party would like to claim him, but he does not
want to belong to any party. Neither party is able to draw him. He
knows whom to avoid, but not whom to attach himself to." Glareanus
added, however, that Erasmus confessed Christ in his writings, and that
he never heard any unchristian word from his lips. Opera Zw., VII. 263.
§ 73. The Free-will Controversy. 1524–1527.
See Literature in § 73.
After halting some time between approval and disapproval, Erasmus found it impossible to keep aloof from the irrepressible conflict. Provoked by Hutten, and urged by King Henry and English friends, he declared open war against Luther, and broke with the Reformation. He did so with great reluctance; for he felt that he could not satisfy either party, and that he was out of his element in a strictly theological dispute. He chose for his attack Luther’s doctrine of total depravity.
Here lay the chief dogmatic difference between the two. Erasmus was an admirer of Socrates, Cicero, and Jerome; while Luther was a humble pupil of St. Paul and Augustin. Erasmus lacked that profound religious experience through which Luther had passed in the convent, and sympathized with the anthropology of the Greek fathers and the semi-Pelagian school.
In September, 1524, Erasmus appeared on the field
with his work on the "Freedom of the Will." It is a defence of freedom
as an indispensable condition of moral responsibility, without which
there can be no meaning in precept, repentance, and reward. He
maintains essentially the old semi-Pelagian theory, but in the mildest
form, and more negatively than positively; for he wished to avoid the
charge of heresy. He gives the maximum of glory to God, and a minimum
to man. "I approve," he says, "of those who ascribe something to
free-will, but rely most upon grace." We must exert our will to the
utmost, but the will is ineffective without the grace of God. He urged
against Luther Christ’s call upon Jerusalem to repent
(
Luther appreciated the merits of Erasmus, and
frankly acknowledged his literary superiority. He wrote him a very respectful letter, March
28, 1519, thanking him for his great services to the cause of letters,
and congratulating him for being heartily abused by the enemies of
truth and light. Even in his book against Erasmus (De Servo
Arbitrio), he says at the beginning: "Viribus eloquentiae et
ingenio me longissime superas." And towards the close: "Fateor,
tu magnus es et multis iisque nobilissimis dotibus a Deo ornatus ...
ingenio, eruditione, facundia usque ad miraculum. Ego vero nihil habeo
et sum, nisi quod Christianum esse me glorier."Op. Lat. VII.
367 (Erl. Frcf. ed.). See his letters to Lange and Spalatin in De
Wette, I. 39 sq., 52; 87 sq. To Lange he wrote; "Ich fürchte,
Erasmus breitet Christum und die Gnade Gottes nicht genug aus, von der
er gar wenig weiss. Das Menschliche gilt mehr bei ihm als das
Göttliche." De Wette, II. p. 352 sqq. In De Wette, II. 498 sq. Erasmus answered, May
5, 1524.
Luther on the Slavery of the Human Will.
He waited a whole year before he published his
reply on the "Slavery of the Will" (December, 1525). It is one of his
most vigorous and profound books, full of grand ideas and shocking
exaggerations, that border on Manichaeism and fatalism. Köstlin (I. 773) says that it is not
surpassed by any work of Luther, "for energy and acuteness." But
Döllinger and Janssen (II. 379) judge that Luther borrowed
it from the Koran rather than from the New Testament. "Ipsa ratione teste nullum potest esse
liberum arbitrium in homine vel angelo aut ulla creatura."Op.
Lat. VII. 366.
In the same book Luther makes a distinction
between the Word of God and God himself, or between the revealed will
of God, which offers salvation to all, and the concealed or hidden
will, which means to save only some, and to leave the rest to deserved
perdition. In this way he escapes the force of such passages as "Multa facit Deus quae verbo suo non
ostendit nobis, multa quoque vult, quae verbo suo non ostendit sese
velle. Sic non vult mortem peccatoris, verbo scilicet, vult autem illam
voluntate illa imperscrutabili." Vol. VII. p. 222. Erl. ed. Op.
Lat. The scholastic divines made a similar distinction between the
voluntas signi and the voluntas
beneplaciti.
If we except the peculiar way of statement and illustration, Luther’s view is substantially that of St. Augustin, whom Erasmus, with all due reverence for the great man, represents as teaching, "God works in us good and evil, and crowns his good works in us, and punishes his bad works in us." The positive part is unobjectionable: God is the author and rewarder of all that is good; but the negative part is the great stumbling-block. How can God in justice command us to walk when we are lame, and punish us for not walking? The theory presupposes, of course, the apostasy and condemnation of the whole human race, on the ground of its unconscious or impersonal pre-existence and participation in the sin and guilt of Adam.
All the Reformers were originally Augustinians,
that is, believers in the total depravity of man’s
nature, and the absolute sovereignty of God’s grace.
They had, like St. Paul and St. Augustin, passed through a terrible
conflict with sin, and learned to feel in their hearts, what ordinary
Christians profess with their lips, that they were justly condemned,
and saved only by the merits of Christ. They were men of intense
experience and conviction of their own sinfulness and of
God’s mercifulness; and if they saw others perish in
unbelief, it was not because they were worse, but because of the
inscrutable will of God, who gives to some, and withholds from others,
the gift of saving faith. Those champions of freedom taught the slavery
of the will in all things pertaining to spiritual righteousness. They
drew their moral strength from grace alone. They feared God, and
nothing else. Their very fear of God made them fearless of men. The
same may be said of the French Huguenots and the English Puritans.
Luther stated this theory in stronger terms than Augustin or even
Calvin; and he never retracted it,—as is often
asserted,—but even twelve years later he pronounced
his book against Erasmus one of his very best. In 1537 he wrote to Capito, "Nullum agnosco
meum justum librum nisi forte De Servo Arbitrio et Catechismum." De
Wette, V. 70. In the Articles of Smalkald he again denied the freedom
of the will as a scholastic error; and in his last work, the Commentary
on Genesis vi:6, and xxvi, he reaffirmed the distinction of the secret
and revealed will of God, which we are unable to harmonize, but for
this reason he deems it safest to adhere to the revealed will and to
avoid speculations on the impenetrable mysteries of the hidden will.
"Melius et tutius est consistere ad praesepe Christi hominis;
plurimum enim periculi in eo est, si in illos labyrinthos divinitatis
te involvas." On Form. Conc., Art. II. and XI. See
Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, I. 313 sq. Ibid., I. 102 sqq. Among the condemned
propositions of Quesnel are these: "The grace of Christ is necessary
for every good work; without it nothing can be done.""The will of man,
before conversion by prevenient grace, is capable of all evil and
incapable of good."
Final Alienation.
The Erasmus-Luther controversy led to some further
personalities in which both parties forgot what they owed to their
cause and their own dignity. Erasmus wrote a bitter retort, entitled
"Hyperaspistes," and drove Luther’s predestinarian
views to fatalistic and immoral consequences. He also addressed a
letter of complaint to Elector John. The outrages of the
Peasants’ War confirmed him in his apprehensions. He
was alienated from Melanchthon and Justus Jonas. He gave up
correspondence with Zwingli, and rather rejoiced in his death. When he heard of it in 1531, he wrote to a
friend, "It is a good thing that two of their leaders have
perished,—Zwingli on the battle-field, and
Oecolampadius shortly after of fever and
abscess."—Op. III. 1422. He gives a deplorable picture of the
demoralizing effects of the Reformation in a letter to Geldenhauer in
1526, Opera X. 1578-1580, quoted in full in Latin and German by
Döllinger, Die Reformation, I. 13-15. The Strasburg preachers, Capito,
Bucer, and Hedio, tried to refute the charges in 1530. Erasmus again
came out with the charge, among others, that luxury was never greater,
nor adulteries more frequent, than among the self-styled evangelicals,
and appeals in confirmation to admissions of Luther, Melanchthon, and
Oecolampadius. Some of his last letters, discovered and published by
Horawitz (Erasmiana, 1885, No. IV. p. 44 sqq.), contain similar
complaints.
He was summoned to the Diet of Augsburg, 1530, as a counsellor of the Emperor, but declined because he was sick and conscious of his inability to please either party. He wrote, however, to Cardinal Campeggio, to the bishop of Augsburg, and other friends, to protest against settling questions of doctrine by the sword. His remedy for the evils of the Church was mutual forbearance and the correction of abuses. But his voice was not heeded; the time for compromises and half measures had passed, and the controversy took its course. He devoted his later years chiefly to the editing of new editions of his Greek Testament, and the writings of the church fathers.
Luther abandoned Erasmus, and abused him as the
vainest creature in the world, as an enraged viper, a refined
Epicurean, a modern Lucian, a scoffer, a disguised atheist, and enemy
of all religion. In his letter to Link, March 7, 1529 (in De
Wette, III. 426 sq.), he calls Erasmus "ἄθεον, Lucianumque, Epicurum," and in a
letter to his son John, 1533 (De Wette, IV. 497), he says: "Erasmus,
hostis omnium religiorum et inimicus singularis Christi, Epicuri
Lucianique perfectum exemplar et idea." Comp. his judgments in the
Tischreden, LXI. 93-113 (Erl. ed.).
§ 74. Wilibald Pirkheimer.
Bilibaldi Pirkheimeri Opera politica, historica, philologica, et epistolica, ed. by M. Goldast, Francf., 1610, fol. With a portrait by A. Dürer. His Encomium Podagrae was translated into English by W. Est, The Praise of the Gout, or the Gout’s Apology, a paradox both pleasant and profitable. Lond., 1617.
Lampe: Zum Andenken W. P.’s. Nürnberg, 1828. Karl Hagen: Deutschlands literarische und relig. Verhältnisse im Ref. Zeitalter. Mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Wilibald Pirkheimer. Erlangen, vol. I., 1841, pp. 188 sqq., 261 sqq., 2d ed. 1868. Döllinger: Reformation, vol. I., 161–174. D. F. Strauss: Ulrich von Hutten, 4th ed., Bonn, 1878, pp. 118 sq.; 227–235; 514–518. Lochner: Lebensläufe berühmter und verdienter Nürnberger, Nürnb., 1861. Rud. Hagen: W. P. in seinem Verhältniss zum Humanismus und zur Reformation, Nürnberg, 1882. Lic. P. Drews: Wilibald Pirkheimer’s Stellung zur Reformation, Leipz., 1887 (138 pp.).
About this time, and after the
Peasants’ War, the most eminent humanists withdrew
from the Reformation, and followed Erasmus into the sheepfold of the
mother church, disgusted with the new religion, but without being fully
reconciled to the old, and dying at last of a broken heart. In this
respect, the apprehension of Erasmus was well founded; the progress of
the Reformation arrested and injured the progress of liberal learning,
although not permanently. Theology triumphed over classical culture,
and fierce dogmatic feuds took the place of satirical exposures of
ignorant monks. But the literary loss was compensated by a religious
gain. In the judgment of Luther, truth proved mightier than eloquence,
faith stronger than learning, and the foolishness of God wiser than the
wisdom of men. See his letter to Caspar Börner,
professor of literature in Leipzig, May 28, 1522, in De Wette, II.
199-201. The letter was intended also for Erasmus, and printed under
the title, "Judicium D. M. Lutheri de Erasmo Roterodamo. Epistola ad
amicum 1522." He says that he would not provoke Erasmus, but was
not afraid of his attack.
Among the pupils, friends and admirers of Erasmus,
who were first attracted and then repelled by the Reformation, are
Wilibald Pirkheimer, Crotus Rubeanus, Mutianus Rufus, Ulrich Zasius,
Vitus Amerpach, Georg Wizel, Jacob Strauss, Johann Wildenauer
(Egranus), Johann Haner, Heinrich Loriti Glareanus, and Theobald
Billicanus. Döllinger gives, from the R.
Catholic standpoint, a full account of these scholars in the first
volume of his work on the Reformation (Regensburg, 1846). On Wizel we
have an interesting university program of Neander: Commentatio de
Georgio Vicelio. Berlin, 1840. Strauss notices several of them from
the rationalistic standpoint, in his Ulrich von
Hutten.
Wilibald Pirkheimer (1470–1530),
the most distinguished and influential of them, was descended from an
ancient, rich, and noble family of Nürnberg, and received a
liberal military and diplomatic education. He spent seven years in
Italy (1490–1497), and became a leader in the
Renaissance. He occupied also a high social position as senator of
Nürnberg and imperial counsellor. He was honored by
important diplomatic missions, and fulfilled them with great ability.
He was not an original genius, but the most learned and most eloquent
layman in Germany. He mastered philology, jurisprudence, geography,
astronomy, music, painting, botany, and all the discoveries and
sciences of the time. He collected a rare library of books and
manuscripts and a cabinet of coins, and gave free access to visitors.
He translated writings of Xenophon, Plato, Plutarch, Euclid, Ptolemy,
Lucian, Gregory Nazianzen, and Nilus, into Latin. On his literary labors, see Karl Hagen,
l.c., I. 280 sqq. He tells in his narrative the following
anecdote of a brave and quick-witted Swiss maiden. When asked by the
imperial soldiers, "What are the Swiss guards doing on their post?" she
replied, "Waiting for you to attack them." — "How
strong is their number?" — "Strong enough to throw you
all back." — " But how strong?" —
"You might have counted them in the recent fight, but fright and flight
made you blind." —" What do they live of?"
— "Of eating and drinking." The soldiers laughed, but
one drew his sword to kill her. "Verily," she said, "you are a brave
man to threaten an unarmed girl. Go and attack yonder guard, who can
answer you with deeds instead of words." Comp.
Münch, W. P.’s Schweizerkrieg und
Ehrenhandel.
Basel, 1826. Drews, l.c., p. 10. Unfortunately his moral character was not free
from blemish. He became a widower in 1504, and lived in illicit
intercourse with his servant, who bore him a son when he was already
past fifty. Christoph Scheurl wrote: "I wish Melanchthon knew
Pirkheimer better: he would then be more sparing in his praise. With
the most he is in bad repute." See K. Hagen, l.c., I. 347, and
Drews, l.c., 14 sq.
Pirkheimer hailed the beginnings of the
Reformation with patriotic and literary enthusiasm, invited Luther to
his house when he returned utterly exhausted from Augsburg in 1518,
distributed his books, and, with his friends Albrecht Dürer
and Lazarus Spengler, prepared the way for the victory of the new ideas
in his native city. He wrote an apology of Reuchlin in his controversy
with the Dominicans, contributed probably to the "Letters of Obscure
Men," and ridiculed Dr. Eck in a satirical, pseudonymous dialogue,
after the Leipzig disputation. Eccius dedolatus
(Der abgehobelte
Eck). Auctore Ioanne Francisco Cottalambergio, Poëta
Laureato. 1520.
See p. 182.
This conduct is characteristic of the humanists. They would not break with the authorities of the church, and had not the courage of martyrs. They employed against existing abuses the light weapons of ridicule and satire rather than serious argument and moral indignation. They had little sympathy with the theology and piety of the Reformers, and therefore drew back when the Reformers, for conscience’ sake, broke with the old church, and were cast out of her bosom as the Apostles were cast out of the synagogue.
In a letter to Erasmus, dated Sept. 1, 1524,
Pirkheimer speaks still favorably of Luther, though regretting his
excesses, and deprecates a breach between the two as the greatest
calamity that could befall the cause of sound learning. But soon after
the free-will controversy, and under the influence of Erasmus, he wrote
a very violent book against his former friend Oecolampadius, in defence
of consubstantiation (he did not go as far as transubstantiation). Bilibaldi Birckheimheri de
vera Christi carne et vero ejus sanguine, ad Ioan. Oecolampadium
responsio.
Norembergae, 1526. Bilibaldi Pirckheymeri de vera Christi carne,
etc., reponsio secunda. 1527. I give the titles, with the inconsistencies of spelling
from original copies in the Union Theol. Seminary. Pirkheimer calls
Oecolampadius (his Greek name for Hausschein, House-lamp)
"Coecolampadius" (Blindschein, Blind-lamp), and deals with him
very roughly. Drews (pp. 89-110) gives a full account of this
unprofitable controversy.
The distractions among Protestants, the Anabaptist disturbances, the Peasants’ War, the conduct of the contentious Osiander, sickness, and family afflictions increased his alienation from the Reformation, and clouded his last years. The stone and the gout, of which he suffered much, confined him at home. Dürer, his daily companion (who, however, differed from him on the eucharistic question, and strongly leaned to the Swiss view), died in 1528. Two of his sisters, and two of his daughters, took the veil in the nunnery of St. Clara at Nürnberg. His sister Charitas, who is famous for her Greek and Latin correspondence with Erasmus and other luminaries, was abbess. The nunnery suffered much from the disturbances of the Reformation and the Peasants’ War. When it was to be secularized and abolished, he addressed to the Protestant magistrate an eloquent and touching plea in behalf of the nuns, and conclusively refuted the charges made against them. The convent was treated with some toleration, and survived till 1590.
His last letters, like those of Erasmus, breathe
discontent with the times, lament over the decline of letters and good
morals, and make the evangelical clergy responsible for the same evils
which he formerly charged upon the Roman clergy and monks. "I hoped,"
he wrote to Zasius (1527), a distinguished professor of jurisprudence
at Freiburg, who likewise stood halting between Rome and
Wittenberg,—"I hoped for spiritual liberty; but,
instead of it, we have carnal license, and things have gotten much
worse than before." Zasius was of the same opinion, Comp. Döllinger, Die
Reform. i.
174-182. Hans Sachs (in his Gespräch eines evang.
Christen mit einem katholischen, Nürnberg, 1524) warns the
Nürnbergers against their excesses of intemperance,
unchastity, uncharitableness, by which they brought the Lutheran
doctrine into contempt. Döllinger, l.c., I. 174 sqq.,
quotes testimonies to the same effect from Konrad Wickner and Lazarus
Spengler, both prominent Protestants in Nürnberg, and from
contemporaries in other parts of Germany. Döllinger, I. p. 533 sq., gives this
letter in Latin and German, and infers from it that Pirkheimer died a
member of the Catholic Church.
His apparent inconsistency is due to a change of
the times rather than to a change of his conviction. Like Erasmus, he
remained a humanist, who hoped for a reformation from a revival of
letters rather than theology and religion, and therefore hailed the
beginning, but lamented the progress, of the Lutheran movement. This is substantially also the judgment of
Drews, his most recent biographer, who says (l.c., p. 123):
"Pirkheimer ist jeder Zeit Humanist geblieben ... In der Theorie
war er ein Anhänger der neuen, gewaltigen Bewegung; aber als
dieselbe anfing praktisch zu werden, erschrak er vor den
Gährungen, die unvermeidlich waren. Der Humanist sah die
schönen Wissenschaften bedroht; der Patrizier erschrak vor
der Übermacht des Volkes; der Staatsmann erzitterte, als er
den Bruch mit den alten Verhältnissen als eine Notwendigkeit
fühlte. Nur ein religiös fest
gegründeter Glaube war im Stande, über diesen
Kämpfen den Sieg und den Frieden zu sehen. Daran aber fehlte
es gerade Pirkheimer; alles theologische Interesse vermag dieses
persönliche religiöse Leben nicht zu ersetzen.
Wohl besass er ein lebendiges Rechtsgefühl, einen ethischen
Idealismus, aber es fehlte ihm die Kraft, im eignen Leben denselben zu
verwirk-lichen. Ihm war das Leben ein heiteres Spiel, solange die Tage
sonnenhell waren; als sie sich umdüsterten, wollten sich die
Wolken weder hinwegscherzen, noch hinwegschmähen lassen. Ein
religiös, sittlicher Charakter war Pirkheimer nicht,
’Vivitur ingenio, caetera mortis
erunt,’ diese Worte hat er unter sein von
Dürer gezeichnetes Bild (1524) gesetzt. Sie enthalten das
Glaubensbekenntnis Pirkheimers, das Geheimnis seines
Lebens."
Broken by disease, affliction, and disappointment, he died in the year of the Augsburg Confession, Dec. 22, 1530, praying for the prosperity of the fatherland and the peace of the church. He left unfinished an edition of Ptolemy’s Geography, which Erasmus published with a preface. Shortly before his death, Erasmus had given him an unfavorable account of the introduction of the Reformation in Basel and of his intention to leave the city.
Pirkheimer made no permanent impression, and his writings are antiquated; but, as one of the most prominent humanists and connecting links between the mediaeval and the modern ages, he deserves a place in the history of the Reformation.
§ 75. The Peasants’ War. 1523–1525.
I. Luther: Ermahnung zum Frieden auf die zwölf Artikel der Bauernschaft in Schwaben (1525); Wider die mörderischen und raüberischen Rotten der Bauern (1525); Ein Sendbrief von dem harten Büchlein wider die Bauern (1525). Walch, Vols. XVI. and XXI. Erl. ed., XXIV. 257–318. Melanchthon: Historic Thomae Münzers (1525), in Walch, XVI. 204 sqq. Cochlæus (Rom. Cath.), in his writings against Luther.
II. Histories of the Peasants’ War, by Sartorius (Geschichte des deutschen Bauernkriegs, Berlin, 1795); Wachsmuth (Leipzig. 1834); Oechsle (Heilbronn, 1830 anti 1844); Bensen (Erlangen, 1840); Zimmermann (Stuttgart, 1841, second edition 1856, 3 Vols.); Jörg (Freiburg, 1851); Schreiber (Freiburg, 1863–66, 3 vols.); Stern (Leipzig, 1868); Baumann (Tübingen, 1876–78); L. Fries, ed. by Schäffler and Henner (Würzburg, 1876, 1877); Hartfelder (Stuttgart, 1884).
III. Monographs on Thomas Münzer by Strobel (Leben, Schriften und Lehren Thomae Müntzers, Nürnberg and Altdorf, 1795); Gebser (1831); Streif (1835); Seidemann (Dresden, 1842); Leo (1856); Erbkam (in Herzog2, Vol. X. 365 sqq.).
IV. Ranke: II. 124–150. Janssen: II. 393–582. Häusser: ch. VII. Weber: Weltgesch., vol. X. 229–273 (second edition, 1886).
The ecclesiastical radicalism at Wittenberg was the prelude of a more dangerous political and social radicalism, which involved a large portion of Germany in confusion and blood. Both movements had their roots in crying abuses; both received a strong impetus from the Reformation, and pretended to carry out its principles to their legitimate consequences; but both were ultra- and pseudo-Protestant, fanatical, and revolutionary.
Carlstadt and Münzer are the connecting
links between the two movements, chiefly the latter. Carlstadt never
went so far as Münzer, and afterwards retraced his steps.
Their expulsion from Saxony extended their influence over Middle and
Southern Germany. Ranke (II. 126): "Dass Münzer und
Karlstadt, und zwar nicht ohne Zuthun Luthers, endlich aus Sachsen
entfernt wurden, trug zur Ausbreitung und Verstärkung dieser
Bewegung ungemein bei. Sie wandten sich beide nach
Oberdeutschland."
Ranke attributes too much influence to Carlstadt’s
false doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, which he
published after his expulsion.
Condition of the Peasants.
The German peasants were the beasts of burden for society, and in no better condition than slaves. Work, work, work, without reward, was their daily lot, even Sunday hardly excepted. They were ground down by taxation, legal and illegal. The rapid increase of wealth, luxury, and pleasure, after the discovery of America, made their condition only worse. The knights and nobles screwed them more cruelly than before, that they might increase their revenues and means of indulgence.
The peasants formed, in self-protection, secret
leagues among themselves: as the "Käsebröder"
(Cheese-Brothers), in the Netherlands; and the "Bundschuh," So called from the tied shoe which the peasants
wore as a symbol of subjection, in contrast to the buckled shoe of the
upper classes.
Long before the Reformation revolutionary
outbreaks took place in various parts of Germany,—a.d.
1476, 1492, 1493, 1502, 1513, and especially in 1514, against the
lawless tyranny of Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg. But these
rebellions were put down by brute force, and ended in disastrous
failure. On the connection of the earlier
peasants’ insurrections with the movements preparatory
to the Reformation, compare Ullmann’s essay on Hans
Böheim of Niklashausen, in his Reformatoren vor der
Reformation, vol.
I. 419-446.
In England a communistic insurrection of the peasants and villeins occurred in 1381, under the lead of Wat Tyler and John Balle, in connection with a misunderstanding of Wiclif’s doctrines.
The Reformation, with its attacks upon the papal tyranny, its proclamation of the supremacy of the Bible, of Christian freedom, and the general priesthood of the laity, gave fresh impulse and new direction to the rebellious disposition. Traveling preachers and fugitive tracts stirred up discontent. The peasants mistook spiritual liberty for carnal license. They appealed to the Bible and to Dr. Luther in support of their grievances. They looked exclusively at the democratic element in the New Testament, and turned it against the oppressive rule of the Romish hierarchy and the feudal aristocracy. They identified their cause with the restoration of pure Christianity.
Thomas Münzer.
Thomas Münzer, one of the Zwickau Prophets, and an eloquent demagogue, was the apostle and travelling evangelist of the social revolution, and a forerunner of modern socialism, communism, and anarchism. He presents a remarkable compound of the discordant elements of radicalism and mysticism. He was born at Stolberg in the Harz Mountain (1590); studied theology at Leipzig; embraced some of the doctrines of the Reformation, and preached them in the chief church at Zwickau; but carried them to excess, and was deposed.
After the failure of the revolution in Wittenberg, in which he took part, he labored as pastor at Altstädt (1523), for the realization of his wild ideas, in direct opposition to Luther, whom he hated worse than the Pope. Luther wrote against the "Satan of Altstädt." Münzer was removed, but continued his agitation in Mühlhausen, a free city in Thuringia, in Nürnberg, Basel, and again in Mühlhausen (1525).
He was at enmity with the whole existing order of society, and imagined himself the divinely inspired prophet of a new dispensation, a sort of communistic millennium, in which there should be no priests, no princes, no nobles, and no private property, but complete democratic equality. He inflamed the people in fiery harangues from the pulpit, and in printed tracts to open rebellion against their spiritual and secular rulers. He signed himself "Münzer with the hammer," and "with the sword of Gideon." He advised the killing of all the ungodly. They had no right to live. Christ brought the sword, not peace upon earth. "Look not," he said, "on the sorrow of the ungodly; let not your sword grow cold from blood; strike hard upon the anvil of Nimrod [the princes]; cast his tower to the ground, because the day is yours."
The Program of the Peasants.
At the beginning of the uprising, the Swabian
peasants issued a program of their demands, a sort of political and
religious creed, consisting of twelve articles. They are given In German by Walch, Strobel,
Oechsle, Gieseler, Weber. The authorship is uncertain. It is ascribed
to Christoph Schappeler, a native Swiss, and preacher at Memmingen; but
also to Heuglin of Lindau, Habmeier, and Münzer. See the
note of Ranke, II. 135.
Professing to claim nothing inconsistent with Christianity as a religion of justice, peace, and charity, the peasants claim: 1. The right to elect their own pastors (conceded by Zwingli, but not by Luther). 2. Freedom from the small tithe (the great tithe of grain they were willing to pay). 3. The abolition of bond-service, since all men were redeemed by the blood of Christ (but they promised to obey the elected rulers ordained by God, in every thing reasonable and Christian). 4. Freedom to hunt and fish. 5. A share in the forests for domestic fuel. 6. Restriction of compulsory service. 7. Payment for extra labor above what the contract requires. 8. Reduction of rents. 9. Cessation of arbitrary punishments. 10. Restoration of the pastures and fields which have been taken from the communes. 11. Abolition of the right of heriot, by which widows and orphans are deprived of their inheritance. 12. All these demands shall be tested by Scripture; and if not found to agree with it, they are to be withdrawn.
These demands are moderate and reasonable, especially freedom from feudal oppression, and the primitive right to elect a pastor. Most of them have since been satisfied. Had they been granted in 1524, Germany might have been spared the calamity of bloodshed, and entered upon a career of prosperity. But the rulers and the peasants were alike blind to their best interests, and consulted their passion instead of reason. The peasants did not stick to their own program, split up in parties, and resorted to brutal violence against their masters. Another program appeared, which aimed at a democratic reconstruction of church and state in Germany. Had Charles V. not been taken up with foreign schemes, he might have utilized the commotion for the unification and consolidation of Germany in the interest of an imperial despotism and Romanism. But this would have been a still greater calamity than the division of Germany.
Progress of the Insurrection.
The insurrection broke out in summer, 1524, in Swabia, on the Upper Danube, and the Upper Rhine along the Swiss frontier, but not on the Swiss side, where the peasantry were free. In 1525 it extended gradually all over South-Western and Central Germany. The rebels destroyed the palaces of the bishops, the castles of the nobility, burned convents and libraries, and committed other outrages. Erasmus wrote to Polydore Virgil, from Basel, in the autumn of 1525: "Every day there are bloody conflicts between the nobles and the peasants, so near us that we can hear the firing, and almost the groans of the wounded." In another letter he says: "Every day priests are imprisoned, tortured, hanged, decapitated, or burnt."
At first the revolution was successful. Princes, nobles, and cities were forced to submit to the peasants. If the middle classes, which were the chief supporters of Protestant doctrines, had taken sides with the peasants, they would have become irresistible.
But the leader of the Reformation threw the whole weight of his name against the revolution.
Luther advises a wholesale Suppression of the Rebellion.
The fate of the peasantry depended upon Luther. Himself the son of a peasant, he had, at first, considerable sympathy with their cause, and advocated the removal of their grievances; but he was always opposed to the use of force, except by the civil magistrate, to whom the sword was given by God for the punishment of evil-doers. He thought that revolution was wrong in itself, and contrary to Divine order; that it was the worst enemy of reformation, and increased the evil complained of. He trusted in the almighty power of preaching, teaching, and moral suasion. In the battle of words he allowed himself every license; but there he stopped. With the heroic courage of a warrior in the spiritual army of God, he combined the humble obedience of a monk to the civil authority.
He replied to the Twelve Articles of the Swabian
peasants with an exhortation to peace (May, 1525). He admitted that
most of them were just. He rebuked the princes and nobles, especially
the bishops, for their oppression of the poor people and their
hostility to the gospel, and urged them to grant some of the petitions,
lest a fire should be kindled all over Germany which no one could
extinguish. But he also warned the peasants against revolution, and
reminded them of the duty of obedience to the ruling powers (
When the dark cloud of war rose up all over
Germany, and obscured the pure light of the Reformation, Luther dipped
his pen in blood, and burst out in a most violent manifesto "against
the rapacious and murderous peasants." He charged them with doing the
Devil’s work under pretence of the gospel. Kurzum, eitel Teufelswerk treiben
sie, und insonderheit ists der Erzteufel, der zu Mühlhausen
regiert [Münzer],und nichts denn Raub, Mord, Blutvergiessen anricht, wie denn
Christus von ihm sagt, "Darum, lieben Herren,
löset hie, rettet hie, erbarmet euch der armen
Leute [i.e., not
the peasants, but the poor people deluded by them]; steche, schlage,
würge hie wer da kann. Bleibst du darüber todt:
wohl dir, seliglicheren Tod kannst du nimmermehr überkommen.
Denn du stirbst im Gehorsam göttlichs Worts und Befehls,
So fierce were Luther’s words,
that he had to defend himself in a public letter to the chancellor of
Mansfeld (June or July, 1525). He did not, however, retract his
position. "My little book," he said, "shall stand, though the whole
world should stumble at it." He repeated the most offensive passages,
even in stronger language, and declared that it was useless to reason
with rebels, except by the fist and the sword. Ibid., 298, 303, 307. See preceding
note.
Cruel as this conduct appears to every friend of the poor peasants, it would he unjust to regard it as an accommodation, and to derive it from selfish considerations. It was his sincere conviction of duty to the magistrate in temporal matters, and to the cause of the Reformation which was threatened with destruction.
Defeat of the Rebellion.
The advice of the Reformer was only too well executed by the exasperated princes, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, who now made common cause against the common foe. The peasants, badly armed, poorly led, and divided among themselves, were utterly defeated by the troops of the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, Duke Henry of Brunswick, the Elector Jolin, and the Dukes George and John of Saxony. In the decisive battle at Frankenhausen, May 25, 1525, five thousand slain lay on the field and in the streets; three hundred were beheaded before the court-house. Münzer fled, but was taken prisoner, tortured, and executed. The peasants in South Germany, in the Alsace and Lorraine, met with the same defeat by the imperial troops and the forces of the electors of the Palatinate and Treves, and by treachery. In the castle of Zabern, in the Alsace (May 17), eighteen thousand peasants fell. In the Tyrol and Salzburg, the rebellion lasted longest, and was put down in part by arbitration.
The number of victims of war far exceeded a
hundred thousand. Bishop Georg of Speier estimated the number of
the killed at a hundred and fifty thousand. This does not include those
who were made prisoners, beheaded, and hanged, or dreadfully mutilated.
A hangman in the district of Würzburg boasted that he had
executed by the sword three hundred and fifty in one month. Margrave
George of Brandenburg had to remind his brother Casimir, that, unless
he spared some peasants, they would have nothing to live on. Janssen,
II. 563. Letter of Aug. 16, 1525, to Brismann (in De
Wette, III. 22): "Rusticorum res quievit ubique, caesis ad centum
millia, tot orphanis factis, reliquis vero in vita sic spoliatis, ut
Germaniae facies miserior nunquam fuerit. Ita saeviunt victores, ut
impleant suas iniquitates."
The Peasants’ War was a complete
failure, and the victory of the princes an inglorious revenge. The
reaction made their condition worse than ever. Very few masters had
sufficient humanity and self-denial to loosen the reins. Most of them
followed the maxim of Rehoboam: "My father chastised you with whips,
but I will chastise you with scorpions" (
The cause of the Reformation suffered irreparable
injury, and was made responsible by the Romanists, and even by Erasmus,
for all the horrors of the rebellion. The split of the nation was
widened; the defeated peasantry in Roman Catholic districts were forced
back into the old church; quiet citizens lost their interest in
politics and social reform; every attempt in that direction was frowned
down with suspicion. Luther had once for all committed himself against
every kind of revolution, and in favor of passive obedience to the
civil rulers who gladly accepted it, and appealed again and again to
The defeat of the Peasants’ War marks the end of the destructive tendencies of the Reformation, and the beginning of the construction of a new church on the ruins of the old.
CHAPTER V.
THE INNER DEVELOPMENT OF THE REFORMATION FROM THE PEASANTS’ WAR TO THE DIET OF AUGSBURG, a.d. 1525–1530.
§ 76. The Three Electors.
G. Spalatin: Friedrich d. Weise, Lebensgeschichte, ed. by Neudecker and Preller, Jena, 1851. Tutzschmann: Fr. d. W., Grimma, 1848. Ranke, vol. II. Kolde: Friedrich der Weise und die Anfänge der Reformation, Erlangen, 1881. Köstlin in the Studien u. Kritiken, 1882, p. 700, (vers. Kolde). Comp. §§ 26 and 61.
Shortly before the close of the Peasants’ War, Frederick III., surnamed the Wise, Elector of Saxony (1486–1525), died peacefully as he had lived, in his sixty-third year, May 5, 1525. His last hours at the castle of Lochau form a striking contrast with the stormy and bloody scenes around him. He hoped that the common people would not prevail, but admitted that they had reason to complain of harsh treatment. "Dear children," he said to his servants, "if I have wronged any one of you, I beg you to forgive me for God’s sake; we princes do many naughty things to the poor people." Shortly before his death, he partook of the holy communion in both kinds. This is the only distinct Protestant act in his life. His body was removed to Wittenberg, and buried in the castle church at which Luther had posted his Ninety-Five Theses. Melanchthon delivered a Latin oration; Luther wrote letters of condolence to his brother and nephew, who succeeded him, and praised his wisdom, his kindness to his subjects, his love of justice and hatred of falsehood. Aleander, the Pope’s legate at Worms, called him the old fox of Saxony, but in history he bears the name of the Wise. He had charge of the German Empire after the death of Maximilian; he modestly declined the imperial crown; he decided the election of King Charles of Spain, and was the only Elector who did not sell his vote.
Frederick was a devout Catholic, a believer in relics and indulgences, but at the same time a lover of fair dealing, an admirer of Luther, and much concerned for his university. He saved the German Reformation by saving the Reformer, without openly breaking with the Catholic Church. He never saw Luther, except at a distance in the Diet of Worms, and communicated with him chiefly through his chaplain and secretary, Spalatin. His cautious reserve was the best policy for the time.
Frederick was succeeded by his brother, John the
Steadfast or Constant (1525–1532). He was less prudent
and influential in politics, but a more determined adherent of the
Reformation. He was too fat to mount his horse without the aid of a
machine. He went to sleep at times under Luther’s
sermons, but stood by him at every cost. His motto was: "The word of
God abideth for ever," which was placed on his ensigns and liveries. "V. D. M. I. AE." = Verbum Dei manet in
aetemum.
His son and successor, John Frederick the Magnanimous (1532–1554), survived Luther. He founded the University of Jena. He suffered the disastrous defeat at Mühlberg (April 24, 1547), and would rather lose his Electorate and half of his estates than deny the evangelical faith in which he was brought up. How different was the conduct of Elector Augustus the Strong of Saxony, who sold the Lutheran faith of his ancestors for the crown of Poland (1697), and disgraced both by his scandulous life.
Luther has left some characteristic remarks about
his three sovereigns. Of Frederick, whom he only knew from a distance,
he said, "He was a wise, intelligent, able, and good man, who hated all
display and hypocrisy. He was never married. But he left two illegitimate
sons. Extracts from the Tischreden, Erl. ed.,
vol. LXI., 379, 380, 385, 387, 389, 393, 394.
These three Electors of Saxony are the model princes of the Lutheran Reformation, which owes much to their protection. Philip of Hesse was more intelligent, brilliant, liberal, and daring than any of them, but his bigamy paralyzed his influence. He leaned more to the Reformed side, and stood on good terms with Zwingli. The most pious of the princes of Germany in the sixteenth century was Frederick III., surnamed the Pious, Elector of the Palatinate (1559–1576), who introduced the Heidelberg Catechism.
The Protestant sovereigns became supreme bishops in their respective dominions. They did not preach, nor administer the sacraments, but assumed the episcopal jurisdiction in the government of the Church, and exercised also the right of reforming the Church (jus reformationis) in their dominions, whereby they established a particular confession as the state religion, and excluded others, or reduced them to the condition of mere toleration. This right they claimed by virtue of a resolution of the Diet of Speier, in 1526, which was confirmed by the Peace of Augsburg, 1555, and ultimately by the Peace of Westphalia, 1648. The Reformers regarded this secular summepiscopate as a temporary arrangement which was forced upon them by the hostility of the bishops who adhered to the Pope. They justified it by the example of Josiah and other pious kings of Israel, who destroyed idolatry and restored the pure worship of Jehovah. They accepted the protection and support of the princes at the sacrifice of the freedom and independence of the church, which became an humble servant of the state. Melanchthon regretted this condition; and in view of the rapacity of the princes, and the confusion of things, he wished the old bishops back again, and was willing even to submit to the authority of a pope if the pope would allow the freedom of the gospel. In Scandinavia and England the episcopal hierarchy was retained, or a new one substituted for the old, and gave the church more power and influence in the government.
§ 77. Luther’s Marriage. 1525.
I. Luther’s Letters of May and
June, 1525, touching on his marriage, in De Wette’s
collection, at the end of second and beginning of third vols. His views
on matrimonial duties, in several sermons, e.g., Predigt vom Ehestand,
1525 (Erl. ed., xvi. 165 sqq.), and in his Com. on
II. The biographies of Katharina von Bora by Walch (1752), Beste (1843), Hofmann(1845), Meurer(1854). Uhlhorn: K. v. B., in Herzog2, vol. II. 564–567. Köstlin: Leben Luthers, I. 766–772; II. 488 sqq., 605 sqq.; his small biography, Am. ed. (Scribner’s), pp. 325–335, and 535 sqq. Beyschlag: Luther’s Hausstand in seiner reform. Bedeutung. Barmen, 1888.
III. Burk: Spiegel edler Pfarrfrauen. Stuttgart, 3d ed. 1885. W. Baur (Gen. Superintendent of the Prussian Rhine Province): Das deutsche evangelische Pfarrhaus, seine Gründung, seine Entfaltung und sein Bestand. Bremen, 1877, 3d ed. 1884.
Amidst the disturbances and terrors of the Peasants’ War, in full view of his personal danger, and in expectation of the approaching end of the world, Luther surprised his friends and encouraged his foes by his sudden marriage with a poor fugitive nun. He wrote to his friend Link: "Suddenly, and while I was occupied with far other thoughts, the Lord has, plunged me into marriage."
The manner was highly characteristic, neither saint-like nor sinner-like, but eminently Luther-like. By taking to himself a wife, he wished to please his father, to tease the Pope, and to vex the Devil. Beneath was a deeper and nobler motive, to rescue the oldest ordinance of God on earth from the tyranny of Rome, and to vindicate by his own example the right of ministers to the benefit of this ordinance. Under this view, his marriage is a public event of far-reaching consequence. It created the home life of the evangelical clergy.
He had long before been convinced that vows of
perpetual celibacy are unscriptural and unnatural. He held that God has
created man for marriage, and that those who oppose it must either be
ashamed of their manhood, or pretend to be wiser than God. He did not
object to the marriage of Carlstadt, Jonas, Bugenhagen, and other
priests and monks. But he himself seemed resolved to remain single, and
continued to live in the convent. He was now over forty years of age;
eight years had elapsed since he opened the controversy with Rome in
the Ninety-Five Theses; and, although a man of powerful passions, he
had strictly kept his monastic and clerical vow. His enemies charged
him with drinking beer, playing the lute, leading a worldly life, but
never dared to dispute his chastity till after his marriage. As late as
Nov. 30, 1524, he wrote to Spalatin I shall never take a wife, as I
feel at present. Not that I am insensible to my flesh or sex (for I am
neither wood nor stone); but my mind is averse to wedlock, because I
daily expect the death of a heretic." De Wette, II. 570. Ibid., II. 643.
In April, 1523, nine nuns escaped from the convent
of Nimptsch near Grimma, fled to Wittenberg, and appealed to Luther for
protection and aid. Among them was Catharina von Bora, Also spelled Bore or Boren. She was born Jan. 29, 1499, and was in the
convent from 1509. Erasmus, in a letter of 1525, ascribed to
Catharina from hearsay extraordinary beauty: "Lutherus duxit uxorem,
puellam mire venustam, ex clara familia Bornae, sed ut narrant
indotatam, quae ante annos complures vestalis esse desierat."
Michelet (Life of Luther, ch. V.), probably misled by this
letter, calls her "a young girl of remarkable
beauty."
Catharina had been attached and almost engaged to
a former student of Wittenberg from Nürnberg; but he changed
his mind, to her great grief, and married a rich wife (1523). After
this Luther arranged a match between her and Dr. Glatz of
Orlamünde (who was afterwards deposed); but she refused him,
and intimated to Amsdorf, that she would not object to marry him or the
Reformer. Amsdorf remained single. Luther at first was afraid of her
pride, but changed his mind. On May 4, 1525, he wrote to Dr.
Rühel (councilor of Count Albrecht of Mansfeld, and of
Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz), that he would, take his Katie to wife
before he died, in spite of the Devil." De Wette, II. 655. On June 2, 1525, he advised
Cardinal Archbishop and Elector Albrecht of Mainz, in an open letter,
to marry, and to secularize the archbishopric. Ibid., p.
673.
On the evening of June 13, on Tuesday after
Trinity Sunday, he invited Bugenhagen, Jonas, Lucas Cranach and wife,
and a professor of jurisprudence, Apel (an ex-Dean of the Cathedral of
Bamberg, who had himself married a nun), to, his house, and in their
presence was joined in matrimony to Catharina von Bora in the name of
the Holy Trinity. Bugenhagen performed the ceremony in the customary
manner. On the following morning he entertained his friends at
breakfast. Justus Jonas reported the marriage to Spalatin through a
special messenger. He was affected by it to tears, and saw in it the
wonderful hand of God. "Lutherus noster duxit Catharinam de Bora.
Heri adfui rei et vidi sponsum in thalamo jacentem. [An indecent
German custom of the time; see Köstlin, II. 767.] Non
potui me continere, adstans huic spectaculo, quin illachrymarem, nescio
quo affectu animum percellente … mirabilis Deus a in
consiliis et operibus suis."
On June 27 Luther celebrated his wedding in a more
public, yet modest style, by a nuptial feast, and invited his father
and mother and his distant friends to "seal and ratify" the union, and
to "pronounce the benediction." See his letters of invitation in De Wette, III.
1, 2, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. Ibid., III. 103, 104. Tischreden,
IV. 308. Köstlin, I. 772.
The event was a rich theme for slander and gossip.
His enemies circulated a slander about a previous breach of the vow of
chastity, and predicted that, according to a popular tradition, the
ex-monk and ex-nun would give birth to Antichrist. Erasmus contradicts
the slander, and remarked that if that tradition was true, there must
have been many thousands of antichrists before this. In his letter to Franciscus Sylvius (1526):
"De conjugio Lutheri certum est, de partu maturo sponsae vanus erat
rumor, nunc tamen gravida esse dicitur. Si vera est vulgi fabula
Antichristum nasciturum ex monacho et monacha quemadmodum isti
jactitant, quot Antichristorum millia jam olim habet mundus ? At ego
sperabam fore, ut Lutherum uxor redderet magis cicurem. Verum ille
praeter omnem expectationem emisit librum in me summa quidem cura
elaboratum, sed adeo virulentum, ut hactenus in neminem scripserit
hostilius." The letter was published in the original Greek
by W. Meyer, in the reports of the München Academy of
Sciences, Nov. 4, 1876, pp. 601-604. The text is changed in the
Corp. Reform., I. 753. Mel. calls Luther a very reckless man
(ἀνὴρ ὡς
μάλιστα
εὐχερής), but hopes that he will become more
solemn (σεμνότερος).
Luther himself felt at first strange and restless
in his new relation, but soon recovered. He wrote to Spalatin, June 16,
"l have made myself so vile and contemptible forsooth that all the
angels, I hope, will laugh, and all the devils weep." De Wette, III. 3. Ibid., III. 125.
§ 78. Luther’s Home Life.
Luther and Katie were well suited to each other. They lived happily together for twenty-one years, and shared the usual burdens and joys. Their domestic life is very characteristic, full of good nature, innocent humor, cordial affection, rugged simplicity, and thoroughly German. It falls below the refinement of a modern Christian home, and some of his utterances on the relation between the two sexes are coarse; but we must remember the rudeness of the age, and his peasant origin. No stain rests upon his home life, in which he was as gentle as a lamb and as a child among children.
"Next to God’s Word," he said from his personal experience, "there is no more precious treasure than holy matrimony. God’s highest gift on earth is a pious, cheerful, God-fearing, home-keeping wife, with whom you may live peacefully, to whom you may intrust your goods and body and life."
He loved his wife dearly, and playfully called her
in his letters "my heartily beloved, gracious housewife, bound hand and
foot in loving service, Catharine, Lady Luther, Lady Doctor, Lady of
Zulsdorf. From his little farm. Saumärkterin. They lived near
the pigmarket.
"Pray read, dear Katie, the Gospel of John and the
little Catechism .... You worry yourself about your God, just as if He
were not Almighty, and able to create ten Doctor Martin Luthers for the
old one drowned perhaps in the Saale, or fallen dead by the fireplace,
or on Wolf’s fowling floor. Leave me in peace with
your cares; I have a better protector than you and all the angels.
He—my Protector—lies in the manger
and hangs upon a Virgin’s breast, but He sits also at
the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. Rest, therefore, in peace.
Amen." Feb. 7, 1546, In De Wette, V.
787.
In his will (1542), seventeen years after his marriage, he calls her a "pious, faithful, and devoted wife, full of loving, tender care towards him." At times, however, he felt oppressed by domestic troubles, and said once he would not marry again, not even a queen. Those were passing moods. "Oh, how smoothly things move on, when man and wife sit lovingly at table! Though they have their little bickerings now and then, they must not mind that. Put up with it." "We must have patience with woman, though she be it times sharp and bitter. She presides over the household machinery, and the servants deserve occasionally a good scolding." He put the highest honor of woman on her motherhood. "All men," he said, "are conceived, born, and nursed by women. Thence come the little darlings, the highly prized heirs. This honor ought in fairness to cover up all feminine weakness."
Luther had six children,—three
daughters, two of whom died young, and three sons, Hans (John), Martin,
and Paul. None inherited his genius. Hans gave him much trouble. Paul
rose to some eminence as physician of the Elector, and died at Dresden,
1593. The sons accompanied their father on his last journey to
Eisleben. Nobbe, Stammbaum der Familie des Dr. M.
Luther, Grimma,
1846.
He began the day, after his private devotions, which were frequent and ardent, with reciting in his family the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and a Psalm. He went to bed at nine, but rose early, and kept wide awake during the day. Of his private devotions we have an authentic account from his companion, Veit Dietrich, who wrote to Melanchthon during the Diet of Augsburg, 1530, when Luther was at Coburg, feeling the whole weight of that great crisis: —
"No day passes that he does not give three hours to prayer, and those the fittest for study. Once I happened to hear him praying. Good God! how great a spirit, how great a faith, was in his very words! With such reverence did he ask, as if he felt that he was speaking with God; with such hope and faith, as with a Father and a Friend. ’I know,’ he said, ’that Thou art our Father and our God. I am certain, therefore, that Thou art about to destroy the persecutors of Thy children. If Thou doest not, then our danger is Thine too. This business is wholly Thine, we come to it under compulsion: Thou, therefore, defend.’ ... In almost these words I, standing afar off, heard him praying with a clear voice. And my mind burned within me with a singular emotion when he spoke in so friendly a manner, so weightily, so reverently, to God."
Luther celebrated the festivals, especially Christmas, with childlike joy. One of the most familiar scenes of Christian family life in Germany is Luther with his children around the Christmas-tree, singing his own Christmas hymn:
The Nativity hymn,—
"Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her ,"
was written for his children in 1535. He abridged it in 1543:—
"Vom Himmel kam der Engel Schaar ."
Nothing can be more charming or creditable to his
heart than the truly childlike letter he wrote to his oldest boy Hans,
then four years of age, from Coburg, during the sessions of the
Augsburg Diet in the momentous year 1530. De Wette, IV. 41 sq. Comp. Luther’s
Brief an sein Söhnlein
Hänsigen. With woodcuts and original drawings by Ludwig Richter, Leipz.
1883. Fronde calls it "the prettiest letter ever addressed by a father
to a child."Luther, p. 53.
"Grace and peace in Christ, my dear little boy. I
am pleased to see that thou learnest thy lessons well, and prayest
diligently. Go on thus, my dear boy, and when I come home, I will bring
you a fine fairing. I know of a pretty, delightful garden, where are
merry children that have gold frocks, and gather nice apples and pears,
cherries and plums under the trees, and sing and jump and are happy;
they also ride on fine little horses with gold bridles and silver
saddles. I asked the man who owns the garden, who the children were. He
said, ’These are the children who love to pray and to
learn, and are good.’ Then I said,
’Dear man, I also have a son who is called Hans
Luther. May he not come to this garden and eat such pretty apples and
pears, and ride on such fine little horses, and play with these
children?’ The man said, ’If he likes
to pray and to learn, and is pious, he may come to the garden, and
Lippus Philip, son of Melanchthon. Jodocus, son of Jonas.
"Then he showed me a smooth lawn in the garden
laid out for dancing, and there hung the golden pipes and drums and
crossbows. But it was still early, and the children had not dined;
therefore I could not wait for the dance. So I said,
’Dear sir, I will go straight home and write all this
to my little boy; but he has an aunt, Lene, Great-aunt, Magdalen.
"Therefore, dear little boy Johnny, learn and pray with a good heart, and tell Lippus and Jost to do the same, and then you will all come to the garden together. And now I commend you to Almighty God. Give my love to aunt Lene, and give her a kiss for me. Anno 1530.
Thy loving father,
He was deeply grieved by the early death of his
favorite daughter Lena (Magdalen), a pious, gentle, and affectionate
girl of fourteen, with large, imaginative eyes, and full of promise. Erl. ed., vol. LXV. 237, in Latin and German.
Lena died Sept. 20, 1542. See her picture by Cranach in
Köstlin’s small biography, p.
545.
Luther was simple, regular, and temperate in his habits. The reports to the contrary are slanders of enemies. The famous and much-abused adage, —
"Wer nicht liebt Weib, Wein und Gesang,
Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang."
is not found in his works, nor in any contemporary
writing, but seems to have originated in the last century, on the basis
of some mediaeval saying. The lines appeared first in the present form in
the Wandsbecker Bote for 1775, No. 75, p. 300, and then in 1777
in the Musenalmanach of J. H. Voss (the poet, and translator of
Homer), who was supposed to be the author, and to have foisted them
upon Luther. Herder gave them a place among his Volkslieder,
1778, I. 12. Seidemann, in Schnorr’s "Archiv," vol.
VIII. (1879), p. 440, has shown that the sentiment is substantially
pre-Lutheran, and quotes from Luther’s Table
Talk, Ser. IV., a sentence somewhat analogous, but involving a
reproach to the Germans for drunkenness: "Wie wollt ihr jetzt anders einen
Deutschen vorthun denn Ebrietate,
praesertim talem qui non diligit Musicamet Mulieres?" See
Köstlin, II. 678 sq. Another similar sentence has since been
found by L. Schulze in the "Reformatorium viae clericorum " of
1494: "Absque Venere et mero rite laetabitur
nemo." He liked the beer of Eimbeck and Naumburg. In
one of his last letters (Feb. 7. 1546) to his wife from Eisleben, where
he was treated like a prince by the counts of Mansfeld, he gives her
this piece of information: "We live here very well, and the
town-council gives me for each meal half a pint of
’Rheinfall’ (Rhine wine), which is
very good. Sometimes I drink it with my friends. The wine of the
country here is also good, and Naumburger beer is very good, though I
fancy its pitch fills my chest with phlegm. The Devil has spoilt all
the beer in the world with pitch, and the wine with brimstone. But here
the wine is pure, such as the country gives." De Wette, V.
788. He preached some strong sermons against
intemperance, and commends the Italians and Turks for sobriety. See
Colloquia, ed. Bindseil, I. 195 sqq.
He had a powerful constitution, but suffered much
of the stone, of headache, and attacks of giddiness, and fainting;
especially in the fatal year 1527, which brought him to the brink of
the grave. He did not despise physicians, indifferent as they were in
those days, and called them "God’s menders (Flicker)
of our bodies; "but he preferred simple remedies, and said, "My best
medical prescription is written in
Luther exercised a generous hospitality, and had
always guests at his table. He was indiscriminately benevolent to
beggars, until rogues sharpened his wits, and made him more careful. He wrote to Justice Menius, Aug. 24, 1535 (De
Wette, IV. 624), that he was often deceived, "per fictas Nonnas et
generosas meretrices."
Luther improved upon it in Latin: —
But Melanchthon carried the palm with
To the records of Veit Dietrich, Lauterbach, and
Mathesius, which were often edited, though in bad taste, we owe the
most remarkable "Table-Talk "ever published. See St. Louis ed. of Walch, vol. XXII., much
improved by Hoppe, 1887. Köstlin, small biography, N. Y. ed.
p. 554, Ger. ed. p. 592. But In his large work, vol. II. 519, he makes
this just qualification: "Derbe, plumpe, unserm Ohre anstössige
Worte kommen in Luther’s Reden wie in seinen
Schriften, ja einigemale sogar in seinen Predigten vor. Seine Art war
in der That keine feine; sie steht aber auch so noch bedeutend
über dem Ton, der damals durchschnittlich in weltlichen und
geistlichen Kreisen, bei Bürgern, hohen Herren und
Kirchenfürsten herrschte, und jene ungünstigen
Eindrücke müssen der edeln Kraft, dem Salz und
Mark gegenüber, die seine Gespräche und Schriften
durchdringen, auch für uns weit
zurücktreten."
He enjoyed the beauties of nature, loved trees and flowers, was fond of gardening, watched with wonder the household of the bees, listened with delight to the singing birds, renewed his youth with the return of spring, and adored everywhere the wisdom and goodness of nature’s God. Looking at a rose, he said, "Could a man make a single rose, we should give him an empire; but these beautiful gifts of God come freely to us, and we think nothing of them. We admire what is worthless, if it be only rare. The most precious of things is nothing if it be common." "The smallest flowers show God’s wisdom and might. Painters cannot rival their color, nor perfumers their sweetness; green and yellow, crimson, blue, and purple, all growing out of the earth. And yet we trample on lilies as if we were so many cows." He delighted in a refreshing rain. "God rains," he said, "many hundred thousand guilders, wheat, rye, barley, oats, wine, cabbage, grass, milk." Talking of children, he said, "They speak and act from the heart. They believe in God without disputing, and in another life beyond the present. They have small intellect, but they have faith, and are wiser than old fools like us. Abraham must have had a hard time when he was told to kill Isaac. No doubt he kept it from Sarah. If God had given me such all order, I should have disputed the point with Him. But God has given his only begotten Son unto death for us."
He shared in the traditional superstitions of his
age. He believed in witchcraft, and had many a personal encounter with
the Devil in sleepless nights. See above, p. 334 sq. See a curious tract of Andrew D. White, A
History of the Doctrine of Comets, in the "Papers of the American
Historical Association," N. Y., 1887, vol. II. 16.
Luther gave himself little concern about his household, and left it in the hands of his wife, who was prudent and economical. He calls himself a negligent, forgetful, and ignorant housekeeper, but gives great credit to his "Herr Kathie." He was contented with little, and called economy the best capital. All the Reformers were poor, and singularly free from avarice; they moved in a lofty sphere, and despised the vanities of the world.
Luther’s income was very small,
even for the standard of his times, and presents a striking contrast to
the royal splendor and luxury of bishops and cardinals. His highest
annual salary as professor was three hundred guilders; it was first a
hundred guilders; on his marriage the Elector John doubled it; the
Elector John Frederick added a hundred; a guilder being equal in value
to about sixteen marks or shillings (four dollars) of the present day.
He received no honorarium from the students, nor any salary as preacher
in the town church; but regular payments in wood and grain, and
occasional presents of a fine suit, a cask of wine, or venison, or a
silver cup from the Elector, with his greetings. Admiring friends gave
him rings, chains, and other valuables, which he estimated in 1542 at a
thousand guilders. In his last years (from 1541) he, as well as
Bugenhagen, Melanchthon, and Jonas, received an annual honorary pension
of fifty guilders from the king of Denmark, who thereby wished to show
his gratitude for the Lutheran Reformation, and had previously (1539)
sent him a special present of a hundred guilders through Bugenhagen.
From his father, who left twelve hundred and fifty guilders, he
inherited two hundred and fifty guilders. The publishers offered him
(as he reported in 1539) a yearly grant of four hundred guilders for
the free use of his manuscripts, but he refused "to make money out of
the gifts of God." If he had been rewarded according to modern ideas,
the royalty of his German Bible Version alone would have amounted to a
handsome fortune before his death. He bought in 1540 from his
brother-in-law a little farm, Zulsdorf, between Leipzig and Borna, for
six hundred and ten guilders, as a home for his family. His wife
cultivated a little garden with fruit-trees, even mulberry and fig
trees, raised hops and brewed beer for domestic use, as was then the
custom. She also had a small fish-pond. She enjoyed hard work. Luther
assisted her in gardening and fishing. In 1541 he purchased a small
house near the convent, for his wife. On Luther’s
Vermögensumstände, see Seidemann, Luther’s
Grundbesitz,
1860. Köstlin, II. 498 sqq., and his references, p.
678.
His widow survived him seven years, and suffered from poverty and affliction. The Elector, the Counts of Mansfeld, and the King of Denmark added small sums to her income; but the unfortunate issue of the Smalkaldian war (1547) disturbed her peace, and drove her from Wittenberg. She returned after the war. Melanchthon and Bugenhagen did for her what they could. When the pestilence broke out at Wittenberg in 1552, and the university was moved to Torgau, she followed with her children; but on the journey she was thrown from the wagon into a ditch, and contracted a cold which soon passed into consumption. She died Dec. 20, 1552, at Torgau; her last prayer was for her children and the Lutheran Church.
A few words about Luther’s
personal appearance. In early life, as we have seen, he looked like an
ascetic monk, pale, haggard, emaciated. See the description of Mosellanus, p. 180, and
Cranach’s engraving from the year 1520, in
Köstlin, p. 120 (Scribner’s
ed.).
The same humility made him protest against the use of his name by his followers, who nevertheless persisted in it. "I pray you," he said, "leave my name alone, and do not call yourselves Lutherans, but Christians. Who is Luther? My doctrine is not mine. I have not been crucified for any one. St. Paul would not that any one should call themselves of Paul, nor of Peter, but of Christ. How, then, does it befit me, a miserable bag of dust and ashes, to give my name to the children of Christ? Cease, my dear friends, to cling to those party names and distinctions,—away with them all! and let us call ourselves only Christians, after Him from whom our doctrine comes. It is quite proper, that the Papists should bear the name of their party; because they are not content with the name and doctrine of Jesus Christ, they will be Papists besides. Well, let them own the Pope, as he is their master. For me, I neither am, nor wish to be, the master of any one. I and mine will contend for the sole and whole doctrine of Christ, who is our sole master."
§ 79. Reflections on Clerical Family Life.
The Reformers present to us the first noted examples of clerical family life in the Christian Church. This is a new and important chapter in the history of civilization.
They restored a natural right founded in the
ordinance of God. The priests and high priests of the Jewish theocracy
down to the father of John the Baptist, as well as the patriarchs,
Moses, and some of the prophets, lived in wedlock. The prince of the
apostles, whom Roman Catholics regard as the first pope, was a married
man, and carried his wife with him on his missionary journeys. In spite of this fact attested by St. Paul,
But from the second century the opinion came to prevail, and still prevails in the papal communion, which is ruled by an unmarried priest, that marriage is inconsistent with the sacerdotal office, and should be forbidden after ordination. This view was based on the distinction between a lower and higher morality with corresponding merit and reward, the one for the laity or the common people; the other for priests and monks, who form a spiritual nobility. All the church fathers, Greek and Latin, even those who were themselves married (as Tertullian, Gregory of Nyssa, Synesius), are unanimous in praising celibacy above marriage; and the greatest of them are loudest in this praise, especially St. Jerome. And yet the mothers of Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and Augustin, are the brightest examples of Christian women in the ancient Church. Nonna, Anthusa, and Monica were more useful in giving birth to these luminaries of the Church than any nuns.
This ascetic feature marks a decided difference between the Fathers and the Reformers, as it does between the Catholic and Evangelical churches. Anglicanism, with all its respect for the Fathers, differs as widely from them in this respect as any other Protestant communion.
The Oriental churches, including that of Russia,
stopped half way in this ascetic restriction of a divine right. They
approve and even enjoin marriage upon the lower clergy (before
ordination), but forbid it to bishops, and regard the directions of
Paul,
In view of this state of public opinion and the
long tradition of Latin Christendom, we need not wonder that the
marriage of the Reformers created the greatest sensation, and gave rise
to the slander that sensual passion was one of the strongest motives of
their rebellion against popery. Erasmus struck the keynote to this
perversion of history, although he knew well enough that Luther and
Oecolampadius were Protestants several years before they thought of
marrying. Clerical marriage was a result, not a cause, of the
Reformation, as clerical celibacy was neither the first nor the chief
objection to the papal system. Archbishop Spalding, in his History of the
Reformation (I. 176), following the example of unscrupulous Romish
controversialists, thus echoes the joke of Erasmus: "Matrimony was, in
almost all cases, the dénouement of the drama which
signalized the zeal for reformation." He refers for proof to
Moore’s Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of
a Religion, ch. XLVI., "where the great Irish poet enters into the
subject at length, giving his authorities as he proceeds, and playing
off his caustic wit on the hymeneal propensities of the Reformers." In
looking at that chapter (for the first time), I find that it abounds in
misstatements and abuse of the Reformers, whom the Irish poet calls not
only "fanatics" and "bigots," but "the coarsest hypocrites" and "slaves
of the most vulgar superstition " (p. 246, Philad. ed. 1833). The same
poet gives us the startling piece of information (p. 248) that the
Protestants were subdivided on the eucharistic question alone into
countless factions such as "Panarii, Accidentarii, Corporarii,
Arrabonarii, Tropistae, Metamorphistae, Iscariotistae,
Schwenkenfeldians, etc., etc., etc.," and that "an author of
Bellarmine’s time counted no less than two hundred
different opinions on the words, ’This Is my
body’ " ! Moore was evidently better at home in the
history of Lord Byron than in the history of the
church.
On a superficial view one might wish that the
Reformers had remained true to their solemn promise, like the Jansenist
bishops in the seventeenth century, and the clerical leaders of the Old
Catholic secession in the nineteenth. The Old Catholic Bishop Reinkens and Bishop
Herzog, Drs. Döllinger, Friederich, Reusch, and Langen,
remained single after their excommunication in 1870. But
Père Loyson-Hyacinthe, who occupies a similar position of
Tridentine or rather Gallican Romanism versus Vatican Romanism,
followed the example of the Reformers, and married an American widow,
whom he had converted to the Roman Church by his eloquent sermons in
Notre Dame, before she converted him to herself. They were joined
together by Dean Stanley in Westminster Abbey. It is reported that Pope
Pius IX., on being informed of the fact, and asked to excommunicate the
ex-monk, wittily replied, "It is not necessary, since he has taken the
punishment into his own arms." A Pope’s view of the
blessed estate of matrimony!
Far be it from us to depreciate the value of
voluntary celibacy which is inspired by the love of God. The mysterious
word of our Lord, We may mention the saintly Archbishop Leighton,
Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the missionary Zeisberger, Dr. William Augustus
Mühlenberg (the founder of St. Luke’s
Hospital In New York and of St. Johnland, and the singer of "I would
not live alway"), the model pastor Ludwig Harms of Hermannsburg, the
historian Neander and his sister, and the nurses or deaconesses of
Kaiserswerth and similar institutions.
The Reformation has changed the moral ideal, and elevated domestic and social life. The mediaeval ideal of piety is the flight from the evil world: the modern ideal is the transformation of the world. The model saint of the Roman Church is the monk separated from the enjoyments and duties of society, and anticipating the angelic life in heaven where men neither marry nor are given in marriage: the model saint of the Evangelical Church is the free Christian and useful citizen, who shows his piety in the performance of social and domestic duties, and aims at the sanctification of the ordinances of nature. The former tries to conquer the world by running away from its temptations—though after all he cannot escape the flesh, the world, and the Devil in his own heart: the latter tries to conquer the world by converting it. The one abstains from the wedding feast: the other attends it, and changes the water into wine. The one flees from woman as a tempter: the other takes her to his heart, and reflects in the marriage relation the holy union of Christ with his Church. The one aims to secure, chastity by abstinence: the other proves it within the family. The one renounces all earthly possessions: the other uses them for the good of his fellow-men. The one looks for happiness in heaven: the other is happy already on earth by making others happy. The daily duties and trials of domestic and social life are a better school of moral discipline than monkish celibacy and poverty. Female virtues and graces are necessary to supplement and round out the character of man. Exceptions there are, but they prove the rule.
It may be expected that in the fervor and hurry of the first attempts in the transition from slavery to freedom, some indiscretions were committed; but they are as nothing compared with the secret chronique scandaleuse of enforced celibacy. It was reserved for later times to cultivate a more refined style of family life; but the Reformers burst the chains of papal tyranny, and furnished the practical proof that it is possible to harmonize the highest and holiest calling with the duties of husband and father. Though falling short of modern Protestant ideas of the dignity and rights of woman, they made her the rightful companion of the Christian pastor; and among those companions may be found many of the purest, most refined, and most useful women on earth. The social standing of woman is a true test of Christian civilization.
Melanchthon was the first among the Reformers who
entered the state of matrimony; but being a layman, he violated no
priestly or monastic vow. He married, at the urgent request of his
friends, Katharina Krapp, the daughter of the burgomaster of
Wittenberg, in November, 1520, and lived with his plain, pious,
faithful, and benevolent wife, till her death in 1557. He was seen at
times rocking the cradle while reading a book. C. Schmidt, Philipp Melanchthon, pp. 47
sqq., 617, 710 sqq.
Calvin was likewise free from the obligation of
vows, but the severest and most abstemious among the Reformers. He
married Idelette de Buren, the widow of an Anabaptist minister of
Holland, whom he had converted to the Paedobaptist faith; he lived with
her for nearly nine years, had three children who died in infancy, and
remained a widower after her death. The only kind of female beauty
which impressed him was, as he said, gentleness, purity, modesty,
patience, and devotion to the wants of her husband; and these qualities
he esteemed in his wife. Stähelin, Johannes Calvin,
vol. I. 272 sqq.
Zwingli unfortunately broke his vow at Einsiedeln,
while still a priest, and in receipt of a pension from the Pope. He
afterwards married a worthy patrician widow with three children, Anna
Reinhard von Knonau, who bore him two sons and two daughters, and lived
to lament his tragic death on the field of battle, finding, like him,
her only comfort in the Lord Jesus and the word of God. R. Christoffel, Huldreich Zwingli, pp.
336-339, 413. The slanderous exaggerations of Janssen have been refuted
by Ebrard, Usteri, and Schweizer.
Ludwig Cellarius (Keller), Oecolampadius (the
Reformer of Basel), Wolfgang Capito (the Reformer of Strassburg), and
his more distinguished friend Martin Bucer (a widower who was always
ready for union) were successively married to Wilibrandis Rosenblatt,
the daughter of a Knight and colonel aid-de-camp of the Emperor
Maximilian I. She accompanied Bucer to Cambridge in England, and after
his death returned to Basel, the survivor of four husbands! She died
Nov. 1, 1564. Hagenbach (Oekolampad, p. 108, note)
gives this date, and refers to the Reformations-Almanach,
1821. Herzog, Leben Joh.
Oekolampadius,
vol. II. 70 sqq.; Hagenbach, Joh. Oekolampad und Oswald
Myconius, p. 107.
Hagenbach says that the names of his children were the pillars of his
home: godliness, truth, and peace. In a letter to Adrianus Arivulus: "Nuper
Oecolampadius duxit uxorem, puellam non inelegantem. Vult opinor
affligere carnem. Quidam appellant Lutheranam tragaediam, mihi videtur
esse comaedia. Semper enim in nuptias exeunt tumultus." He
afterwards apologized to Oecolampadius, and disclaimed any intention to
satirize him. See his letter to Oecolampadius in
Drummond’s Erasmus, II. 319. Archbishop Spalding
(l.c. I. 176) thus repeats the joke: "The gospel light seems to
have first beamed upon Oecolampadius from the eye of a beautiful young
lady, whom, in violation of his solemn vows plighted to Heaven, he
espoused, probably, as Erasmus wittily remarked, to mortify himself."
He says nothing of the apology of Erasmus to his friend and
associate.
Archbishop Cranmer appears in an unfavorable
light. His first wife, "Black Joan," died in childbed before his
ordination. Early in 1532, before he was raised to the primacy of
Canterbury by Henry VIII. (August, 1532), he married a niece of the
Lutheran preacher Osiander of Nürnberg, and concealed the
fact, the disclosure of which would have prevented his elevation. The
papal bulls of confirmation were dated February and March, 1533, and
his consecration took place March 30, 1533. The next year he privately
summoned his wife to England; but sent her away in 1539, when he found
it necessary to execute the bloody articles of Henry VIII., which
included the prohibition of clerical marriage. He lent a willing hand
to the divorces and re-marriages of his royal master. And yet with all
his weakness of character, and time-serving policy, Cranmer must have
been an eminently devout man if he translated and reproduced (as he
certainly edited) the Anglican liturgy, which has stood the test of
many generations to this day. Strype’s Memorials of
Cranmer (Bk. I., chs. 1, 4, 19; Bk. III., chs. 8 and 38);
Hook’s Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury
(vols. VI. and VII.); Hardwick’s History of the
Reformation, ed. W. Stubbs (1873), p. 179; and art. Cranmer in
Leslie Stephen’s "Dictionary of National Biogr.," vol.
XIII.
John Knox, the Luther of Scotland, had the
courage, as a widower of fifty-eight (March, 1563–64),
to marry a Scotch lass of sixteen, Margaret Stuart, of royal name and
blood, to the great indignation of Queen Mary, who "stormed
wonderfully" at his audacity. The papists got up the story that he
gained her affection by sorcery, and aimed to secure for his heirs,
with the aid of the Devil, the throne of Scotland. His wife bore him
three daughters, and two years after his death (1572) contracted a
second marriage with Andrew Ker, a widower. Dr. M’Crie’s
Life of John Knox, Philad. ed., pp. 269 and 477 (Append. Note
HHH); and Dav. Laing’s Preface to the 6th vol. of his
ed. of Works of John Knox, pp. LXV. sqq.
The most unfortunate matrimonial incident in the Reformation is the consent of Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer to the disgraceful bigamy of Landgrave Philip of Hesse. It is a blot on their character, and admits of no justification. When the secret came out (1540), Melanchthon was so over-whelmed with the reproaches of conscience and a sense of shame that he fell dangerously ill at Weimar, till Luther, who was made of sterner stuff, and found comfort in his doctrine of justification by faith alone, prayed him out of the jaws of death.
In forming a just estimate of this subject, we must not only look backward to the long ages of clerical celibacy with all its dangers and evils, but also forward to the innumerable clerical homes which were made possible by the Reformation. They can bear the test of the closest examination.
Clerical celibacy and monastic vows deprived the
church of the services of many men who might have become shining stars.
On the other hand, it has been calculated by Justus Möser in
1750, that within two centuries after the Reformation from ten to
fifteen millions of human beings in all lands owe their existence to
the abolition of clerical celibacy. Ranke states this fact. Among distinguished sons of clergymen may be
named Linné, the botanist; Berzelius, the chemist;
Pufendorf, the lawyer; Schelling, the philosopher; Buxtorff, the
Orientalist; Euler, the mathematician; Agassiz, the scientist; Edward
and Ottfried Müller, the classical philologists; John von
Müller, Spittler, Heeren, Mommsen, Bancroft, among
historians; Henry Clay, Senator Evarts, and two Presidents of the
United States, Arthur and Cleveland, among statesmen; Charles Wesley,
Gellert, Wieland, Lessing, the brothers Schlegel, Jean Paul, Emanuel
Geibel, Emerson (also the female writers Meta Heusser, Elizabeth
Prentiss, Mrs. Stowe), among poets; John Wesley, Monod, Krummacher,
Spurgeon, H. W. Beecher, R. S. Storrs, among preachers; Jonathan
Edwards, Schleiermacher, Hengstenberg, Nitzsch, Julius
Müller, Dorner, Dean Stanley, among divines; Swedenborg, the
seer; with a large number of prominent and useful clergymen, lawyers,
and physicians, in all Protestant countries.
There is a poetic as well as religious charm in
the home of a Protestant country pastor who moves among his flock as a
father, friend, and comforter, and enforces his teaching of domestic
virtues and affections by his example, speaking louder than words. The
beauty of this relation has often been the theme of secular poets.
Everybody knows Oliver Goldsmith’s "Vicar of
Wakefield," which describes with charming simplicity and harmless humor
the trials and patience, the domestic, social, and professional virtues
of a country pastor, and begins with the characteristic sentence: "I
was ever of opinion, that the honest man who married, and brought up a
large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only
talked of population; from this motive I had scarcely taken orders a
year, before I chose my wife, as she did her wedding-gown, not for a
fine glossy face, but for such qualities as would wear well." Herder
read this English classic four times, and commended it to his bride as
one of the best books in any language. Goethe, who himself tasted the
charm of a pastoral home in the days of his purest and strongest love
to Friederike of Sesenheim, praises the "Vicar of Wakefield," as "one
of the best novels, with the additional advantage of being thoroughly
moral, yea in a genuine sense Christian," and makes the general
assertion: "A Protestant country pastor is perhaps the most beautiful
topic for a modern idyl; he appears like Melchizedek, as priest and
king in one person. He is usually associated by occupation and outward
condition with the most innocent conceivable estate on earth, that of
the farmer; he is father, master of his house, and thoroughly
identified with his congregation. On this pure, beautiful earthly
foundation, rests his higher vocation: to introduce men into life, to
care for their spiritual education, to bless, to instruct, to
strengthen, to comfort them in all the epochs of life, and, if the
comfort for the present is not sufficient, to cheer them with the
assured hope of a more happy future." From the tenth book of his Wahrheit und
Dichtung. Herder
directed his attention to the "Vicar," while they studied at
Strassburg, and read it to him aloud in German translation. In the same
book Goethe describes in fascinating style his visits to the parsonage
of Sesenheim.
In his "Deserted Village," Goldsmith gives another picture of the village preacher as
From a higher spiritual plane William Wordsworth, the brother of an Anglican clergyman and uncle of two bishops, describes the character of a Protestant pastor in his "Ecclesiastical Sonnets."
A Romish priest or a Russian pope depends for his influence chiefly upon his official character, though he may be despised for his vices. A Protestant minister stands or falls with his personal merits; and the fact of his high and honorable position and influence in every Protestant country, as a Christian, a gentleman, a husband and father, is the best vindication of the wisdom of the Reformers in abolishing clerical celibacy.
§ 80. Reformation of Public Worship.
I. Luther: Deutsches Taufbüchlein, 1523; Ordnung des Gottes-dienstes in der Gemeinde, 1523; Vom Gräuel der Stillmesse, 1524; Deutsche Messe und Ordnung des Gottesdienstes, 1526; Das Taufbüchlein verdeutscht, aufs neue zugerichtet, 1526. In Walch, X.; in Erl. ed., XXII. 151 sqq. Comp. the Augsburg confession, Pars II. art. 3 (De missa); Apol. of the Augsb. Conf. art. XXIV. (De missa); the Lutheran liturgies or Kirchenagenden (also Kirchenordnungen) of the 16th century, collected in Daniel: Codex Liturgicus Ecclesiae Lutheranae, Lips. 1848 (Tom. II. of his Cod. Lit.), and Höfling: Liturgisches Urkundenbuch (ed. by G. Thomasius and Theodos. Harnack), Leipz. 1854.
II. Th. Kliefoth: Die ursprüngliche Gottesdienstordnung in den deutschen Kirchen luth. Reformation, ihre Destruction und Reformation, Rostock, 1847. Grüneisen: Die evang. Gottesdienstordnung in den oberdeutschen Landen, Stuttgart, 1856. Gottschick: Luthers Anschauungen vom christl. Gottesdienst und seine thatsächliche Reform desselben, Freiburg i. B., 1887.
The reformation of doctrine led to a reconstruction
of worship on the basis of Scripture and the guidance of such passages
as, God is spirit," i e., all spirit, nothing but spirit,
(without the article, as in the margin of the Revised Version),
according to the Greek: πνεῦμα(emphatically put first)
ὁΘεός, in opposition to all materialistic
conceptions and local limitations. Compare the parallel expressions: "
God is love" ( λογικὴ
λατρεία,
The Reformers first cleansed the sanctuary of
gross abuses and superstitions, and cast out the money-changers with a
scourge of cords. They abhorred idolatry, which in a refined form had
found its way into the church. They abolished the sale of indulgences,
the worship of saints, images, and relics, processions and pilgrimages,
the private masses, and masses for the dead in purgatory. Missae de sanctis, missae votivae missae pro
defunctis. Melanchthon, in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession,
art. XXIV., says: "The fact that we hold only public or common mass is
no offense against the Catholic Church. For in the Greek churches even
to-day private masses are not held; but there is only a public mass,
and that on the Lord’s Day and festivals." Masses for
the dead, which date from Pope Gregory I., imply, of course, the
doctrine of purgatory, and were among the crying abuses of the
church.
But the impoverishment was compensated by a gain; the work of destruction was followed by a more important and difficult work of reconstruction. This was the revival of primitive worship as far as it can be ascertained from the New Testament, the more abundant reading of the Scriptures and preaching of the cardinal truths of the gospel, the restoration of the Lord’s Supper in its original simplicity, the communion in both kinds, and the translation of the Latin service into the vernacular language whereby it was made intelligible and profitable to the people. There was, however, much crude experimenting and changing until a new order of worship could be fairly established.
Uniformity in worship is neither necessary nor desirable, according to Protestant principles. The New Testament does not prescribe any particular form, except the Lord’s Prayer, the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper, and the baptismal formula.
The Protestant orders of worship differ widely in the extent of departure from the Roman service, which is one and the same everywhere. The Lutheran Church is conservative and liturgical. She retained from the traditional usage what was not inconsistent with evangelical doctrine; while the Reformed churches of the Zwinglian and Calvinistic type aimed at the greatest simplicity and spirituality of worship after what they supposed to be the apostolic pattern. Some went so far as to reject all hymns and forms of prayer which are not contained in the Bible, but gave all the more attention to the Psalter, to the sermon, and to extemporaneous prayer. The Anglican Church, however, makes an exception among the Reformed communions: she is even more conservative than the Lutheran, and produced a liturgy which embodies in the choicest English the most valuable prayers and forms of the Latin service, and has maintained its hold upon the reverence and affection of the Episcopal churches to this day. They subordinate preaching to worship, and free prayer to forms of prayer.
Luther began to reform public worship in 1523, but
with caution, and in opposition to the radicalism of Carlstadt, who
during the former’s absence on the Wartburg had
tumultuously abolished the mass, and destroyed the altars and pictures.
He retained the term "mass," which came to signify the whole public
service, especially the eucharistic sacrifice. He tried to save the
truly Christian elements in the old order, and to reproduce them in the
vernacular language for the benefit of the people. His churchly
instincts were strengthened by his love of poetry and music. He did not
object even to the use of the Latin tongue in the Sunday service, and
expressed an impracticable wish for a sort of pentecostal Sunday mass
in German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. "Wenn ichs vermöchte," he says in his tract on the German
Mass, January, 1526, "und die griechische und ebräische Sprache
wäre uns so gemein als die lateinischen und hätte
so vielfeiner Musica und Gesangs als die lateinische hat, so sollte man
einen Sonntag um den andern in alten vier Sprachen, deutsch,
lateinisch, griechisch und ebräisch, Messe halten, singen,
und lesen." Such
a polyglot service was never even attempted except at the Propaganda in
Rome. Melanchthon (Apol. Conf. Aug., art. XXIV.) defends the use
of a Latin along with German hymns in public worship.
So he confined himself to provide for the public
Sunday service. He retained the usual order, the Gospels and Epistles,
the collects, the Te Deum, the Gloria in excelsis, the Benedictus, the
Creed, the responses, the kneeling posture in communion, even the
elevation of the host and chalice (which he afterwards abandoned, but
which is still customary in the Lutheran churches of Scandinavia),
though without the adoration. He omitted the canon of the mass which
refers to the priestly sacrifice, and which, since the sixth century,
contains the kernel of the Roman mass, as an unbloody repetition of the
crucifixion and miraculous trans-formation of the elements. The canon missae ("Te igitur,"
etc.), embraces five or six prayers bearing upon the consecration and
the offering of Christ’s body. It begins with an
intercession for the Pope and all orthodox Catholics. Janssen says
(III. 64): "In der Messe liess Luther den Canon, den Kern und das Wesen der
katholischen Messe, fort," and unfairly adds: "Das Volk jedoch sollte dieses
nicht wissen." As
if Luther were the man to deceive the people!
He gave the most prominent place to the sermon, which was another departure from previous custom. He arranged three services on Sunday, each with a sermon: early in the morning, chiefly for servants; the mass at nine or ten; and in the afternoon a discourse from a text in the Old Testament. On Monday and Tuesday in the morning the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer were to be taught; on Wednesday, the Gospel of Matthew; on Saturday, the Gospel of John; on Thursday, the Epistle lessons should be explained. The boys of the school were to recite daily some Psalms in Latin, and then read alternately one or more chapters of the New Testament in Latin and German.
Luther introduced the new order with the approval
of the Elector in October, 1525, and published it early in 1526. Deutsche Messe und Ordnung des
Gottesdiensts,
with musical notes for the parts to be sung.
Melanchthon says in the Augsburg Confession of
1530: Part II. art. III. Comp. his "Apology of the
Conf.," art. XXIV., De missa.
Luther regarded ceremonies, the use of clerical
robes, candles on the altar, the attitude of the minister in prayer, as
matters of indifference which may be retained or abolished. In the
revision of the baptismal service, 1526, he abolished the use of salt,
spittle, and oil, but retained the exorcism in an abridged form. He
also retained the public confession and absolution, and recommended
private confession of sin to the minister. The Augsburg Confession, Part II. art. IV.,
says: "Confession is not abolished in our churches. For it is not usual
to communicate the body of our Lord, except to those who have been
previously examined and absolved. ... Men are taught that they should
highly regard absolution, inasmuch as it is God’s
voice, and pronounced by God’s
commsand."
The Lutheran churches in Northern Germany and in Scandinavia adopted the order of Wittenberg with sundry modifications; but the Lutheran churches in Southern Germany (Würtemberg, Baden, Palatinate, Alsace) followed the simpler type of the Swiss service.
The Lutheran order of worship underwent some radical changes in the eighteenth century under the influence of rationalism; the spirit of worship cooled down; the weekly communion was abolished; the sermon degenerated into a barren moral discourse; new liturgies and hymnbooks with all sorts of misimprovements were introduced. But in recent times, we may say since the third centennial celebration of the Reformation (1817), there has been a gradual revival of the liturgical spirit in different parts of Germany, with a restoration of many devotional treasures of past ages. There is, however, no uniform Lutheran liturgy, like the Common Prayer Book of the Church of England. Each Lutheran state church has its own liturgy and hymnbook.
§ 81. Prominent Features of Evangelical Worship.
Taking a wider view of the subject, we may emphasize the following characteristic features of evangelical worship, as compared with that of the Latin and Greek churches:
1. The prominence given to the sermon, or the exposition and application of the word of God. It became the chief part of divine service, and as regards importance took the place of the mass. Preaching was the special function of the bishops, but sadly neglected by them, and is even now in Roman-Catholic countries usually confined to the season of Lent. The Roman worship is complete without a sermon. The mass, moreover, is performed in a dead language, and the people are passive spectators rather than hearers. The altar is the throne of the Catholic priest; the pulpit is the throne of the Protestant preacher and pastor. The Reformers in theory and practice laid the greatest stress on preaching and hearing the gospel as an act of worship.
Luther set the example, and was a most
indefatigable and popular preacher. His sermons fill 16 vols. in the Erl. ed. of
his Works. They were taken down in short-hand, and first
published by his companion Aurifaber. In the Erl. ed., XVI. 209
sqq.
He was a Boanerges, the like of whom Germany never heard before or since. He had all the elements of a popular orator. Melanchthon said, "One is an interpreter, one a logician, another an orator, but Luther is all in all." Bossuet gives him credit for "a lively and impetuous eloquence by which he delighted and captivated his hearers." Luther observed no strict method. He usually followed the text, and combined exposition with application. He made Christ and the gospel his theme. He lived and moved in the Bible, and understood how to make it a book of life for his time. He always spoke from intense conviction and with an air of authority. He had an extraordinary faculty of expressing the profoundest thoughts in the clearest and strongest language for the common people. He hit the nail on the head. He was bold and brave, and spared neither the Devil nor the Pope nor the Sacramentarians. His polemical excursions, how-ever, are not always in good taste, nor in the right spirit.
He disregarded the scholars among his hearers, and aimed at the common people, the women and children and servants. "Cursed be the preachers," he said, "who in church aim at high or hard things." He was never dull or tedious. He usually stopped when the hearers were at the height of attention, and left them anxious to come again. He censured Bugenhagen for his long sermons, of which people so often and justly complain. He summed up his homiletical wisdom in three rules: —
"Tritt frisch auf; Mach’s Maul auf; Hör’ bald auf." Literally: Get up freshly; Open your mouth widely; Be done quickly. Comp. E. Jonas, Die Kanzelberedtsamkeit Luthers, Berlin, 1852; Beste, Die bedeutendsten Kanzelredner der älteren luth. Kirche, 1856 (pp. 30-36); G. Garnier, Sur la predication de Luther, Montauban, 1876; Thomas S. Hastings, Luther as a Preacher, In the "Luther Symposiac" by the Professors of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1883.
The mass and the sermon are the chief means of edification,—the one in the Greek and Roman, the other in the Protestant churches. The mass memorializes symbolically, day by day, the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world; the sermon holds up the living Christ of the gospel as an inspiration to holy living and dying. Both may degenerate into perfunctory, mechanical services; but Christianity has outlived all dead masses and dry sermons, and makes its power felt even through the weakest instrumentalities.
As preaching is an intellectual and spiritual effort, it calls for a much higher education than the reading of the mass from a book. A comparison of the Protestant with the Roman or Greek clergy at once shows the difference.
2. In close connection with preaching is the stress laid on catechetical instruction. Of this we shall speak in a special section.
3. The Lord’s Supper was restored to its primitive character as a commemoration of the atoning death of Christ, and a communion of believers with Him. In the Protestant system the holy communion is a sacrament, and requires the presence of the congregation; in the Roman system it is chiefly a sacrifice, and may be performed by the priest alone. The withdrawal of the cup is characteristic of the over-estimate of the clergy and under-estimate of the laity; and its restoration was not only in accordance with primitive usage, but required by the doctrine of the general priesthood of believers.
Luther retained the weekly communion as the conclusion of the regular service on the Lord’s Day. In the Reformed churches it was made less frequent, but more solemn.
4. The divine service was popularized by substituting the vernacular for the Latin language in prayer and song,—a change of incalculable consequence.
5. The number of church festivals was greatly reduced, and confined to those which commemorate the great facts of our salvation; namely, the incarnation (Christmas), the redemption (Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter), and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Ascension and Pentecost), with the concluding festival of the Holy Trinity. They constitute the nucleus of the Christian year, and a sort of chronological creed for the people. The Lutheran Church retained also (at least in some sections) the feasts of the Virgin Mary, of the Apostles and Evangelists, and of All Saints; but they have gradually gone out of use.
Luther held that church festivals, and even the
weekly sabbath, were abolished in principle, and observed only on
account of the requirements of public worship and the weakness of the
laity. "Propter necessitatem Verbi Dei" and
"propter infirmos." On Luther’s views of Sunday,
see his explanation of the third (fourth) commandment in his
catechisms, and Köstlin, Luthers Theologie, II. 82
sqq.
In this view all the Reformers substantially
agree, including Calvin and Knox, except that the latter made
practically less account of the annual festivals, and more of the
weekly festival. The Anglo-American theory of the
Lord’s Day, which is based on the perpetual essential
obligation of the Fourth Commandment, as a part of the moral law to be
observed with Christian freedom in the light of
Christ’s resurrection, is of Puritan origin at the
close of the sixteenth century, and was first symbolically sanctioned
by the Westminster standards in 1647, but has worked itself into the
flesh and blood of all English-speaking Christendom to the great
benefit of public worship and private devotion. On the history of Sunday observance, see
Hessey, Sunday; its Origin, History, etc. (Oxford, 1860);
Gilfillan, The Sabbath (Edinb. 1861); and the author’s
essay on the Christian Sabbath in "Christ and Christianity" (New
York and London, 1885, pp. 213-291).
§ 82. Beginnings of Evangelical Hymnody.
I. The "Wittenberg Enchiridion," 1524. The "Erfurt Enchiridion," 1524. Walter’s "Gesangbuch," with preface by Luther, 1524. Klug’s "Gesangbuch," by Luther, 1529, etc. Babst’s "Gesangbuch," 1545, 5th ed. 1553. Spangenberg’s "Cantiones ecclesiasticae," 1545. See exact titles in Wackernagel’s Bibliographie, etc.
II. C. v. Winterfeld: Luther’s geistl. Lieder nebst Stimmweisen. Leipz. 1840. Ph. Wackernagel: Luther’s geistl. Lieder u. Singweisen. Stuttgart, 1848. Other editions of Luther’s Hymns by Stip, 1854; Schneider, 1856; Dreher, 1857. B. Pick: Luther as a Hymnist. Philad. 1875. Emil. Frommel: Luther’s Lieder und Sprüche. Der singende Luther im Kranze seiner dichtenden und bildenden Zeitgenossen. Berlin, 1883. (Jubilee ed. with illustrations from Dürer and Cranach.) L. W. Bacon and N. H. Allen: The Hymns of Luther set to their original melodies, with an English Version. New York, 1883. E. Achelis: Die Entste-hungszeit v. Luther’s geistl. Liedern. Marburg, 1884. Danneil: Luther’s geistl. Lieder nach seinen drei Gesangbüchern von 1524, 1529, 1545. Frankf. -a-M., 1885.
III. Aug. H. Hoffmann von Fallersleben: Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenlieds his auf Luther’s Zeit. Breslau, 1832; third ed., Hannover, 1861. F. A. Cunz: Gesch. des deutschen Kirchenlieds. Leipz. 1855, 2 parts. Julius Mützell: Geistliche Lieder der evangelischen Kirche aus dem 16ten Jahrh. nach den ältesten Drucken. Berlin, 1855, in 3 vols. (The same publ. afterwards Geistl. Lieder der ev. K. aus dem 17ten und Anfang des 18ten Jahrh. Braunschweig, 1858.) K. Müllenhoff and W. Scherer: Denkmäler deutscher Poesie und Prosa aus dem 8ten his 12ten Jahrh. Berlin, 1864.
*Eduard Emil Koch (d. 1871): Geschichte des Kirchenlieds der christlichen, insbesondere der deutschen evangelischen Kirche. Third ed. completed and enlarged by Richard Lauxmann. Stuttgart, 1866–1876, in 8 vols. (The first ed. appeared in 1847; the second in 1852 and 1853, in 4 vols.) A very useful book for German hymnody.
*Philipp Wackernagel (d. 1877): Das deutsche Kirchenlied von Luther his N. Hermann und A. Blaurer. Stuttgart, 1842, in 2 vols. By the same: Bibliographie zur Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes im 16ten Jahrhundert. Frankf. -a-M., 1855. *By the same: Das deutsche Kirchenlied von der ältesten Zeit his zu Anfang des XVII Jahrhunderts. Leipzig, 1864–77, in 5 vols. (his chief work, completed by his two sons). A monumental work of immense industry and pains-taking accuracy, in a department where "pedantry is a virtue." Vol. I. contains Latin hymns, and from pp. 365–884 additions to the bibliography. The second and following vols. are devoted to German hymnody, including the mediaeval (vol. II.).
*A. F. W. Fischer: Kirchenlieder-Lexicon. Hymnologisch-literarische Nachweisungen über 4,500 der wichtigsten und verbreitetsten Kirchenlieder aller Zeiten. Gotha, 1878, ’79, in 2 vols. K. Severin Meister and Wilhelm Bäumker (R. C.): Das katholische deutsche Kirchenlied in seinen Singweisen von den frühesten Zeiten his gegen Ende des 17ten Jahrh. Freiburg-i. -B. 1862, 2d vol. by Bäumker, 1883. Devoted chiefly to the musical part.
On the hymnody of the Reformed churches of Switzerland and France in the sixteenth century, Les Psaumes mis en rime franaçaise par Clément Marot et Theodore de Bèze. Mis en musique à quatre parties par Claude Goudimel. Genève, 1565. It contains 150 Psalms, Symeon’s Song, a poem on the Decalogue and 150 melodies, many of which were based on secular tunes, and found entrance into the Lutheran Church. A beautiful modern edition by O. Douen: Clément Marot et le Psautier Huguenot. Paris, 1878 and 1879, 2 vols. Weber: Geschichte des Kirchengesangs in der deutschen reformirten Schweiz seit der Reformation. Zürich, 1876.
On the hymnody of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, see Wackernagel’s large work, III. 229–350 (Nos. 255–417), and Koch, l.c. II. 114–132.
Comp. the hymnological collections and discussions of Rambach, Bunsen, Knapp, Daniel, J. P. Lange, Stier, Stip, Geffken, Vilmar, etc. Also Schaff’s sketch of "German Hymnology," and other relevant articles in the forthcoming "Dictionary of Hymnology," edited by J. Julian, to be published by J. Murray in London and Scribner in New York, 1889. This will be the best work in the English language on the origin and history of Christian hymns of all ages and nations.
The most valuable contribution which German Protestantism made to Christian worship is its rich treasury of hymns. Luther struck the key-note; the Lutheran Church followed with a luminous train of hymnists; the Reformed churches, first with metrical versions of the Psalms and appropriate tunes, afterwards with new Christian hymns.
The hymn in the strict sense of the term, as a
popular religious lyric, or a lyric poem in praise of God or Christ to
be sung by the congregation in public worship, was born in Germany and
brought to maturity with the Reformation and with the idea of the
general priesthood of believers. The Latin Church had prepared the way,
and produced some of the grandest hymns which can never die, as the
"Dies Irae," the "Stabat mater," and the "Jesu dulcis memoria." But
these and other Latin hymns and sequences of St. Hilary, St. Ambrose,
Fortunatus, Notker, St. Bernard, St. Thomas Aquinas, Thomas a Celano,
Jacobus de Benedictis, Adam of St. Victor, etc., were sung by priests
and choristers, and were no more intelligible to the common people than
the Latin Psalter and the Latin mass. On Greek and Latin hymnology and the
literature, see Schaff, Church History, III. 575 sqq., and IV.
402 sqq. and 416 sqq. Comp. Ozanam, Les poetes Franciscains en Italie
au 13mesiècle. Paris, 1852.
German Hymnody before the Reformation.
In order to form a just estimate of German Protestant hymnody, we must briefly survey the mediaeval German hymnody.
The first attempts of Teutonic church poetry are
biblical epics, and the leader of the Teutonic Christ-singers is the
Anglo-Saxon monk Caedmon of Whitby (formerly a swineherd), about 680,
who reproduced in alliterative verse, as by inspiration, the biblical
history of creation and redemption, and brought it home to the
imagination and heart of Old England. Bouterweck, Caedmon’s des
Angelsachsen biblische Dichtungen, Elberfeld, 1849-54. Bosanquet, The Fall of
Man, or Paradise Lost of Caedmon, translated in verse from the
Anglo-Saxon, London, 1860. E. Sievers, Der Heliand und die
angelsächsische Genesis. Halle, 1875. Flacius first edited
Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch (Evangeliorum liber), Bas. 1571. Recent editions by Graff, under
the title Krist, Königsberg, 1831; and Kelle,
Otfrid’s Evang.-buch, Regensb. 1856 and 1859, 2
vols. Specimens in Wackernagel’s D. Kirchenlied
(the large work), vol. ii. 3-21. A translation into modern German by G.
Rapp, Gotha, 1858.
These three didactic epics were the first
vernacular Bibles for the laity among the Western barbarians. Comp. Hammerich, Aelteste christliche Epik der
Angelsachsen, Deutschen und
Nordländer. Translated from the Danish by Michelsen,
1874.
The lyric church poetry and music began with the "Kyrie Eleison" and "Christe Eleison," which passed from the Greek church into the Latin as a response of the people, especially on the high festivals, and was enlarged into brief poems called (from the refrain) Kirleisen, or Leisen, also Leichen. These enlarged cries for mercy are the first specimens of German hymns sung by the people. The oldest dates from the ninth century, called the "Leich vom heiligen Petrus," in three stanzas, the first of which reads thus in English: —
Wackernagel, II. 22, published the whole hymn from a manuscript in Munich.
One of the best and most popular of these Leisen, but of much later date, is the Easter hymn,
Wackernagel, II. 43 sq., gives several forms. They were afterwards much enlarged. In a Munich manuscript of the fifteenth century, a Latin verse is coupled with the German:—
"Christus surrexit,
mala nostra texit,
et quos hic dilexit
hos ad coelum vexit
Kyrie leyson."
Penitential hymns in the vernacular were sung by
the Flagellants (the Geisslergesellschaften), who in the middle of the
fourteenth century, during a long famine and fearful pestilence (the
"Black Death," 1348), passed in solemn processions with torches,
crosses, and banners, through Germany and other countries, calling upon
the people to repent and to prepare for the judgment to come. See specimens in Koch, I. 194 sq., and in
Wackernagel, II. 333 sqq.
Some of the best Latin hymns, as the "Te Deum," the "Gloria in excelsis," the "Pange lingua," the "Veni Creator Spiritus," the "Ave Maria," the "Stabat Mater," the "Lauda, Sion, Salvatorem," St. Bernard’s "Jesu dulcis memoria," and "Salve caput cruentatum," were repeatedly translated long before the Reformation. Sometimes the words of the original were curiously mixed with the vernacular, as in the Christmas hymn, —
Several forms in Wackernagel, II.
A Benedictine monk, John of Salzburg, prepared a
number of translations from the Latin at the request of his archbishop,
Pilgrim, in 1366, and was rewarded by him with a parish. Wackernagel (II. 409 sqq.) gives forty-three of
his hymns from several manuscripts in the libraries at Munich and
Vienna.
The "Minnesänger" of the thirteenth century—among whom Gottfried of Strassburg and Walther von der Vogelweide are the most eminent—glorified love, mingling the earthly and heavenly, the sexual and spiritual, after the model of Solomon’s Song. The Virgin Mary was to them the type of pure, ideal womanhood. Walther cannot find epithets enough for her praise.
The mystic school of Tauler in the fourteenth century produced a few hymns full of glowing love to God. Tauler is the author of the Christmas poem, —
and of hymns of love to God, one of which begins, —
Wackernagel, II. 302 sqq.; Koch, I. 191.
The "Meistersänger" of the fifteenth century were, like the "Minnesänger," fruitful in hymns to the Virgin Mary. One of them begins, —
From the middle ages have come down also some of
the best tunes, secular and religious. Meister and Bäumker, in
the Katholische deutsche Kirchenlied in seinen
Singweisen, give
a collection of these catholic tunes, partly from unpublished
manuscript sources. They acknowledge, however, the great merit of the
Protestant hymnologists who have done the pioneer work in mediaeval
church poetry and music, especially Winterfeld and
Wackernagel.
The German hymnody of the middle ages, like the
Latin, overflows with hagiolatry and Mariolatry. Mary is even clothed
with divine attributes, and virtually put in the place of Christ, or of
the Holy Spirit, as the fountain of all grace. The most pathetic of
Latin hymns, the "Stabat mater dolorosa," which describes with
overpowering effect the piercing agony of Mary at the cross, and the
burning desire of being identified with her in sympathy, is disfigured
by Mariolatry, and therefore unfit for evangelical worship without some
omissions or changes. The great and good Bonaventura, who wrote the
Passion hymn, "Recordare sanctae crucis," applied the whole Psalter to
the Virgin in his "Psalterium B. Mariae," or Marian Psalter, where the
name of Mary is substituted for that of the Lord. It was also
translated into German, and repeatedly printed. Wackernagel, in his Biblogr., p. 454
sqq., gives extracts from an edition printed at Nürnberg,
1521.
"Through all the centuries from Otfrid to Luther"
(says Wackernagel), II p. xiii.; compare Nos. 222, 226, 728, 870,
876.
Wackernagel, II. 799 sqq., gives this hymn in several forms. It was sung on the feast of the Nativity of Mary, and at other times.
Hans Sachs afterwards characteristically changed it into
The mediaeval hymnody celebrates Mary as the queen
of heaven, as the "eternal womanly," which draws man insensibly
heavenward. I allude, of course, to the mystic conclusion
of the second part of Goethe’s
Faust:— "Das Ewig-Weibliche
zieht uns hinan."
German Hymnody of the Reformation.
The evangelical church substituted the worship of Christ, as our only Mediator and Advocate, for the worship of his virgin-mother. It reproduced and improved the old Latin and vernacular hymns and tunes, and produced a larger number of original ones. It introduced congregational singing in the place of the chanting of priests and choirs. The hymn became, next to the German Bible and the German sermon, the most powerful missionary of the evangelical doctrines of sin and redemption, and accompanied the Reformation in its triumphal march. Printed as tracts, the hymns were scattered wide and far, and sung in the house, the school, the church, and on the street. Many of them survive to this day, and kindle the flame of devotion.
To Luther belongs the extraordinary merit of
having given to the German people in their own tongue, and in a form
eclipsing and displacing all former versions, the Bible, the catechism,
and the hymn-book, so that God might speak directly to them in His
word, and that they might directly speak to Him in their songs. He was
a musician also, and composed tunes to some of his hymns. According to Koch (I. 470), Luther is certainly
the author of the tunes to "Ein feste Burg," and to "Jesaja dem Propheten das
geschah," and
probably of six more; the tunes to the other Luther-hymns are of
older or of uncertain origin. Wackernagel, III. 1-31, gives fifty-four
Luther-poems, including the variations, and some which cannot be called
hymns, as the praise of "Frau Musica," and "Wider Herzog Heinrich von
Braunschweig."
Carlyle’s translation,—
"A safe stronghold our God is still,"
is upon the whole the best because of its rugged vigor and martial ring. Heine called this hymn the Marseillaise of the Reformation; but it differs as widely from the Marseillaise as the German Reformation differs from the godless French Revolution.
This mighty poem is based upon the forty-sixth
Psalm (Deus noster refugium et virtus) which furnished the key-note. It
was born of deep tribulation and conquering faith, in the disastrous
year 1527 (not 1521, or 1529, or 1530), and appeared first in print in
1528. The hymn appears in Joseph
Klug’s Gesangbuch of 1529 (and in a hymn-book of Augsburg, 1529), and to that
year it is assigned by Wackernagel (III. 20), Koch, and also by
Köstlin in the first ed. of his large biography of M. Luther
(1875, vol. II. 127), as a protest against the Diet of Speier held in
that year. But since the discovery of an older print apparently from
February, 1528, Köstlin has changed his view in favor of
1527, the year of the pestilence and Luther’s severest
spiritual and physical trials. He says (I.c. II. 182, second and
third ed.): "Aus jener schwersten Zeit, welche Luther bis Ende des Jahres 1527
durchzu-machen hatte, ist wohl das gewaltigste seiner Lieder, das
’Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,’
hervorgegangen."
Schneider (1856) first fixed upon Nov. 1, 1527, as the birthday of this
hymn from internal reasons, and Knaake (1881) added new ones. The
deepest griefs and highest faith often meet. Justinus Kemer
sings:— "Poesie
ist tiefes Schmerzen, Und es
kommt das schönste Lied Nur aus
einem Menschenherzen, Das ein
tiefes Leid durchglüht."
Luther availed himself with his conservative tact
of all existing helps for the benefit of public worship and private
devotion. Most of his hymns and tunes rest on older foundations partly
Latin, partly German. Some of them were inspired by Hebrew Psalms. To
these belong, besides, Ein feste Burg" (
On the second chapter of Luke, which is emphatically the gospel of children, are based his truly childlike Christmas songs, —
and
Others are free reproductions of Latin hymns, either directly from the original, or on the basis of an older German version: as, —
"Herr Gott, dich loben wir" (1543).
(Te Deum laudamus.)
"Komm, Gott, Schöpfer, heiliger Geist" (1524).
(Veni, Creator Spiritus.)
"Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland" (1524).
(Veni, Redemptor gentium.)
"Gelobet seist du, Jesus Christ" (1524).
(Grates nunc omnes reddamus.)
"Mitten wir im Leben sind" (1524).
(Media vita in morte sumus.)
"Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist" (1524).
(Now we pray to the Holy Ghost.)
"Christ lag in Todesbanden" (1524).
(In the bonds of death He lay.) The third stanza of this resurrection hymn is
very striking:— "Es war
ein wunderlicher Krieg, Da Tod
und Leben rungen: Das
Leben das behielt den Sieg, Es hat
den Tod verschlungen. Die
Schrift hat verkündet das, Wie da
ein Tod den andern frass, Ein
Spott aus dem Tod ist worden. Hallelujah! (That was a wondrous war, I trow, When Life and Death
together fought; But Life hath triumphed o’er his
foe. Death is mocked and set at naught. .’Tis even as the Scripture saith, Christ through death hath conquered Death.)
"Surrexit Christus hodie.")
Among his strictly original hymns are, —
"Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g’mein" (1523).
(Rejoice, rejoice, dear flock of Christ.)
Bunsen calls this, the first (?) voice of German church-song, which flashed with the power of lightning through all German lands, in praise of the eternal decree of redemption of the human race and of the gospel of freedom."
This is directed against the Pope and the Turk, as
the chief enemies of Christ and his church in Luther’s
days. The second line, which was very offensive to
the Papists, is changed in most modern hymnbooks
into,— "Und
steure alter Feinde Mord."
The stirring song of the two evangelical proto-martyrs at Brussels in 1523, —
is chronologically his first, and not a hymn in the proper sense of the term, but had an irresistible effect, especially the tenth stanza, —
See the whole in Wackernagel, III. 3, 4. Thomas Fuller says of the ashes of Wiclif, that the brook Swift, into which they were cast (1428), "conveyed them into the Avon, the Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wiclif are the emblems of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over."
Luther’s hymns are characterized, like those of St. Ambrose, by simplicity and strength, and a popular churchly tone. But, unlike those of St. Ambrose and the Middle Ages, they breathe the bold, confident, joyful spirit of justifying faith, which was the beating heart of his theology and piety.
Luther’s hymns passed at once
into common use in church and school, and sung the Reformation into the
hearts of the people. Hans Sachs of Nürnberg saluted him as
the nightingale of Wittenberg. "Die wittenbergisch Nachtigall, Die man
jetzt höret überall."
Before Luther’s death (1546),
there appeared no less than forty-seven Lutheran hymn- and tune-books.
The first German evangelical hymn-book, the so-called "Wittenberg
Enchiridion." was printed in the year 1524, and contained eight hymns,
four of them by Luther, three by Speratus, one by an unknown author.
The "Erfurt Enchiridion" of the same year numbered twenty-five hymns,
of which eighteen were from Luther. The hymn-book of Walther, also of
1524, contained thirty-two German and five Latin hymns, with a preface
of Luther. Klug’s Gesangbuch by Luther, Wittenberg,
1529, had fifty (twenty-eight of Luther); Babst’s of
1545 (printed at Leipzig), eighty-nine; and the fifth edition of 1553,
a hundred and thirty-one hymns. See Koch, I. 246 sqq., and
Wackernagel’s Bibliographie, p. 66
sqq.
This rapid increase of hymns and hymn-books continued after Luther’s death. We can only mention the names of the principal hymnists who were inspired by his example.
Justus Jonas (1493–1555), Luther’s friend and colleague, wrote, —
Paul Ebert (1511–1569), the faithful assistant of Melanchthon, and professor of Hebrew in Wittenberg, is the author of
and
Burkhard Waldis of Hesse (1486–1551) versified the Psalter.
Erasmus Alber (d. in Mecklenburg, 1553) wrote twenty hymns which Herder and Gervinus thought almost equal to Luther’s.
Lazarus Spengler of Nürnberg (1449–1534) wrote about 1522 a hymn on sin and redemption, which soon became very popular, although it is didactic rather than poetic: –
Hans Sachs (1494–1576), the shoemaker-poet of Nürnberg, was the most fruitful "Meistersänger" of that period, and wrote some spiritual hymns as well; but only one of them is still in use: —
Veit Dietrich, pastor of St. Sebaldus in Nürnberg (d. 1549), wrote: —
Markgraf Albrecht of Brandenburg (d. 1557), is the author of: —
Paul Speratus, his court-chaplain at Königsberg (d. 1551), contributed three hymns to the first German hymn-book (1524), of which —
is the best, though more didactic than lyric, and gives rhymed expression to the doctrine of justification by faith.
Schneesing’s
appeared first in 1545, and is used to this day.
Mathesius, the pupil and biographer of Luther, and pastor at Joachimsthal in Bohemia (1504–65), wrote a few hymns. Nicolaus Hermann, his cantor and friend (d. 1561), is the author of a hundred and seventy-six hymns, especially for children, and composed popular tunes. Nicolaus Decius, first a monk, then an evangelical pastor at Stettin (d. 1541), reproduced the Gloria in Excelsis in his well-known
and the eucharistic Agnus Dei in his
He also composed the tunes.
The German hymnody of the Reformation period was enriched by hymns of the Bohemian Brethren. Two of them, Michael Weisse (d. 1542) and Johann Horn, prepared free translations. Weisse was a native German, but joined the Brethren, and was sent by them as a delegate to Luther in 1522, who at first favored them before they showed their preference for the Reformed doctrine of the sacraments. One of the best known of these Bohemian hymns is the Easter song (1531): —
We cannot follow in detail the progress of German
hymnody. It flows from the sixteenth century down to our days in an
unbroken stream, and reflects German piety in the sabbath dress of
poetry. It is by far the richest of all hymnodies. It is characteristic of the voluminous
Ultramontane work of Janssen, that it has not a word to say about the
hymnological enrichment of public worship and Christian piety by Luther
and his followers.
The number of German’ hymns
cannot fall short of one hundred thousand. Dean Georg Ludwig von
Hardenberg of Halberstadt, in the year 1786, prepared a hymnological
catalogue of the first lines of 72,733 hymns (in five volumes preserved
in the library of Halberstadt). This number was not complete at that
time, and has considerably increased since. About ten thousand have
become more or less popular, and passed into different hymn-books.
Fischer In his Kirchenlieder-Lexicon, 1878.
We may safely say that nearly one thousand of these hymns are classical and immortal. This is a larger number than can be found in any other language.
To this treasury of German song, several hundred men and women, of all ranks and conditions,—theologians and pastors, princes and princesses, generals and statesmen, physicians and jurists, merchants and travelers, laborers and private persons,—have made contributions, laying them on the common altar of devotion. The majority of German hymnists are Lutherans, the rest German Reformed (as Neander and Tersteegen), or Moravians (Zinzendorf and Gregor), or belong to the United Evangelical Church. Many of these hymns, and just those possessed of the greatest vigor and unction, full of the most exulting faith and the richest comfort, had their origin amid the conflicts and storms of the Reformation, or the fearful devastations and nameless miseries of the Thirty Years’ War; others belong to the revival period of the pietism of Spener, and the Moravian Brotherhood of Zinzendorf, and reflect the earnest struggle after holiness, the fire of the first love, and the sweet enjoyment of the soul’s intercourse with her heavenly Bridegroom; not a few of them sprang up even in the cold and prosy age of "illumination" and rationalism, like flowers from dry ground, or Alpine roses on fields of snow; others, again, proclaim, in fresh and joyous tones, the dawn of reviving faith in the land where the Reformation had its birth. Thus these hymns constitute a book of devotion and poetic confession of faith for German Protestantism, a sacred band which encircles its various periods, an abiding memorial of its struggles and victories, its sorrows and joys, a mirror of its deepest experiences, and an eloquent witness for the all-conquering and invincible life-power of the evangelical Christian faith.
The treasures of German hymnody have enriched the churches of other tongues, and passed into Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, French, Dutch, and modern English and American hymn-books.
John Wesley was the first of English divines who appreciated its value; and while his brother Charles produced an immense number of original hymns, John freely reproduced several hymns of Paul Gerhardt, Tersteegen, and Zinzendorf. The English Moravian hymn-book as revised by Montgomery contains about a thousand abridged (but mostly indifferent) translations from the German. In more recent times several accomplished writers, male and female, have vied with each other in translations and transfusions of German hymns.
Among the chief English translators are Miss
Frances Elizabeth Cox; Sacred Hymns from the German, London,
1841, new ed. with German text, 1865. Psalms and Hymns, partly original, partly
selected, for the use of the Church of England, Cambridge, 1851.
Many of the pieces are from the German. He contributed most of the
translations to Ernest Bunsen’s Hymns for Public
Worship and Private Devotion, London, 1848. Luther’s Spiritual
Songs, London, 1854; and Lyra Domestica, translations from
Spitta’s Psaltery and Harp, London, 1860;
second series, 1864. Lyra Germanica, first and second series,
Lond. and N. Y., 1855 and 1858, in several editions. Also the beautiful
Chorale Book for England, London, 1863, which contains many
hymns from the Lyra Germanica, partly remodelled, with
seventy-two others translated by the same lady, together with the old
tunes edited by Bennet and Goldschmidt. Several translations of Miss C.
W., especially from Paul Gerhardt, have passed into hymn-books. Comp.
Theo. Kübler, Historical Notices to the Lyra
Germanica (dedicated to Miss C. W.), London,
1865. Hymns from the Land of Luther, translated
from the German by H. L. L., Edinburgh and New York, in 4, parts,
1854; fifth ed., Edinb. 1884 (15th thousand), enlarged by the Alpine
Lyrics of Mrs. Meta Heusser. The translations of Miss Borthwick
reproduce the spirit rather than the letter of the original. Several of
them have become more widely known through hymnbooks and private
collections: as Franck’s eucharistic hymn,
"Schmücke dich, Oliebe Seele.""Soul, arise, dispel thy sadness;"
Gerhardt’s "Ich bin ein Gast auf Erden.""A pilgrim and a stranger, I journey
here below;" Tersteegen’s "Gott rufet
noch.""God
calling yet;" Schmolck’s "Mein Jesu, wie Du willst, So lass
mich allzeit wollen" "My Jesus, as Thou wilt;" Zinzendorf’s
"Jesu,
geh voran.""Jesus, still lead on;" Spitta’s
"Was
macht ihr, dass ihr weinet.""What mean ye by this wailing" and his "Angel of
Patience" (Es zieht ein stiller Engel."" A gentle angel walketh throughout this
world of woe"); Lange’s "Was kein Auge hat
gesehen."" What
no human eye hath seen; "Mrs. Heusser’s
"Noch
ein wenig Schweiss und Thränen," " A few more conflicts, toils and
tears;" "O Jesu Christ, mein Leben."" O Christ, my Life, my Saviour;" besides
other religious lyrics which are not intended for hymns. Miss Borthwick
has since published Lyra Christiana, a Treasury of Sacred Poetry,
edited by H. L. L., Edinb. 1888, which contains a few German poems,
but is mostly selected from English sources. Presbyterian minister in New York City, died
1859. He Is the best translator of Gerhardt’s
"O Haupt
voll Blut und Wunden" ("O sacred Head, now wounded"), and several other famous hymns,
German and Latin. His translations were first published in
Schaff’s "Kirchenfreund"or 1849-’51 (with the
originals), then in the "Mercersburg Review" for 1869, pp. 304 sqq.,
414 sqq., and have since passed into many American
hymn-books. Horae Germanicae, Auburn and New York,
1845, 2d ed. 1856. Mills was professor of biblical criticism in the
Presbyterian Theol. Seminary at Auburn, N. Y., and died
1867. Paul Gerhardt’s Spiritual
Songs, London, 1867. e.g., for Schaff’s
Christ in Song, New York, 1868, and London, 1870. In my German
Hymn-book (Philad. 1859, revised and enlarged ed., 1874), I have noted
the English translations as far as I knew them.
English and American hymnody began much later than the German, but comes next to it in fertility, is enriching itself constantly by transfusions of Greek, Latin, and German, as well as by original hymns, and may ultimately surpass all hymnodies.
§ 83. Common Schools.
Luther: An die Rathsherren aller Städte deutschen Landes, dass sie christliche Schulen aufrichten und halten sollen. Wittenberg, 1524. The book appeared in the same year in Latin (De constituendis scholis), with a preface of Melanchthon, the probable translator, at Hagenau. In Walch, x. 533; in the Erlangen. ed., xxii. 168–199.
Church and school go together. The Jewish synagogue was a school. Every Christian church is a school of piety and virtue for old and young. The mediaeval church was the civilizer and instructor of the barbarians, founded the convent and cathedral schools, and the great universities of Paris (1209), Bologna, Padua, Oxford, Cambridge, St. Andrews, Glasgow, Salamanca, Alcala, Toledo, Prague (1348), Vienna (1365), Heidelberg (1386), Cologne (1388), Erfurt (1393), Leipzig (1409), Basel (1460), Ingolstadt (1472), Tübingen (1477), Wittenberg (1502), etc. But education in the middle ages was aristocratic, and confined to the clergy and a very few laymen of the higher classes. The common people were ignorant and superstitious, and could neither read nor write. Even noblemen signed their name with a cross. Books were rare and dear. The invention of the printing-press prepared the way for popular education. The Reformation first utilized the press on a large scale, and gave a powerful impulse to common schools. The genius of Protestantism favors the general diffusion of knowledge. It elevates the laity, emancipates private judgment, and stimulates the sense of personal responsibility. Every man should be trained to a position of Christian freedom and self-government.
Luther discussed this subject first in his Address to the German Nobility (1520). In 1524 he wrote a special book in which he urged the civil magistrates of all the cities of Germany to improve their schools, or to establish new ones for boys and girls; this all the more since the zeal for monastic institutions had declined, and the convents were fast getting empty. He wisely recommended that a portion of the property of churches and convents be devoted to this purpose, instead of being wasted on secular objects, or on avaricious princes and noblemen. He makes great account of the study of languages, and skillfully refutes the objections. A few extracts will give the best idea of this very useful little book on a most important subject.
"Grace and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ … Although I am now excommunicated for three years, and should keep silent if I feared men more than God, ... I will speak as long as I live, until the righteousness of Christ shall break forth in its glory … I beg you all, my dear lords and friends, for God’s sake to take care of the poor youth, and thereby to help us all. So much money is spent year after year for arms, roads, dams, and innumerable similar objects, why should not as much be spent for the education of the poor youth? ... The word of God is now heard in Germany more than ever before. But if we do not show our gratitude for it, we run the risk of sinking back into a worse darkness.
"Dear Germans, buy while the market is at the door. Gather while the sun shines and the weather is good. Use God’s grace and word while it is at hand. For you must know that God’s grace and word is a travelling shower, which does not return where once it has been. It was once with the Jews, but gone is gone (hin ist hin); now they have nothing. Paul brought it into Greece, but gone is gone; now they have the Turk. Rome and Italy have also had it, but gone is gone; they have now the Pope. And ye Germans must not think that you will have it forever; for ingratitude and contempt will not let it abide. Therefore, seize and hold fast, whoever can.
"It is a sin and shame that we should need to be admonished to educate our children, when nature itself, and even the example of the heathen, urge us to do so. … You say, the parents should look to that, it is none of the business of counselors and magistrates. But how, if the parents neglect it? Most of the parents are incapable; having themselves learnt nothing, they cannot teach their children. Others have not the time. And what shall become of the orphans? The glory of a town consists not in treasure, strong walls, and fine houses, but in fine, educated, well-trained citizens. The city of old Rome trained her sons in Latin and Greek and all the fine arts ....
"We admit, you say, there should and must be schools, but what is the use of teaching Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and other liberal arts? Could we not teach, in German, the Bible and God’s word, which are sufficient for salvation? Answer: Yes, I well know, alas! that we Germans must ever be and abide brutes and wild beasts, as the surrounding nations call us, and as we well deserve to be called. But I wonder why you never say, Of what use are silks, wines, spices, and other foreign articles, seeing we have wine, corn, wool, flax, wood, and stones, in German lands, not only an abundance for sustenance, but also a choice and selection for elegance and ornament? The arts and languages, which do us no harm, nay, which are a greater ornament, benefit, honor, and advantage, both for understanding Holy Writ, and for managing civil affairs, we are disposed to despise; and foreign wares, which are neither necessary nor useful to us, and which, moreover, peel us to the very bone, these we are not willing to forego. Are we not deserving to be called German fools and beasts? ...
"Much as we love the gospel, let us hold fast to the languages. God gave us the Scriptures in two languages, the Old Testament in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek. Therefore we should honor them above all other languages. … And let us remember that we shall not be able to keep the gospel without the languages. The languages are the sheath in which this sword of the Spirit is hid. They are the casket in which this treasure is kept. They are the vessels in which this drink is contained; they are the storehouse in which this food is laid by; and, as the gospel itself shows, they are the baskets in which these loaves and fishes and fragments are preserved. Yea, if we should so err as to let the languages go (which God forbid!), we shall not only lose the gospel, but it will come to pass at length that we shall not be able to speak or write correctly either Latin or German. ...
"Herewith I commend you all to the grace of God. May He soften and kindle your hearts so that they shall earnestly take the part of these poor, pitiable, forsaken youth, and, through Divine aid, counsel and help them to a happy and Christian ordering of the German land as to body and soul with all fullness and overflow, to the praise and honor of God the Father, through Jesus Christ, our Saviour. Amen."
The advice of Luther was not unheeded. Protestant
nations are far ahead of the Roman Catholic in popular education. In
Germany and Switzerland there is scarcely a Protestant boy or girl that
cannot read and write; while in some papal countries, even to this day,
the majority of the people are illiterate. In Spain, once the richest and proudest
monarchy of Europe, sixty per cent of the adult population could not
read in 1877, according to the official census. Compare this with the
educational statistics of Prussia, which in the sixteenth century was a
poor, semi-barbarous principality. The contrast between North America
and South America in point of popular education is still more
striking.
§ 84. Reconstruction of Church Government and Discipline.
Aemil Ludw. Richter: Die evangel; Kirchenordnungen des 16 Jahrh., Weimar, 1846, 2 vols. By the same: Gesch. der evang. Kirchenver-fassung in Deutschland. Leipz., 1851. By the same: Lehrbuch des kath. und evang. Kirchenrechts, Leipzig, 5th ed., 1858. J. W. F. Höfling: Grundsätze der evang.-lutherischen Kirchenverfassung. Erlangen, third ed., 1853. Stahl: Die Kirchenverfassung nach Recht und Lehre der Protestanten. Erlangen, 1862. Mejer: Grundl. des luth. Kirchenregiments, Rostock, 1864. E. Friedberg: Lehrbuch des kath. u. evang. Kirchenrechts, Leipz., 1884.
The papal monarchy and visible unity of Western
Christendom were destroyed with the burning of the
Pope’s bull and the canon law. The bishops refused to
lead the new movement; disorder and confusion followed. A
reconstruction of government and discipline became necessary. The idea
of an invisible church of all believers was not available for this
purpose. The invisible is not governable. The question was, how to deal
with the visible church as it existed in Saxony and other Protestant
countries, and to bring order out of chaos. The lawyers had to be
consulted, and they could not dispense with the legal wisdom and
experience of centuries. Luther himself returned to the study of the
canon law, though to little purpose. Letter to Spalatin, March 30, 1529 (De Wette,
III. 433): "Jura papistica legere incipimus et
inspicere." Comp. A. Kohler, Luther und die
Juristen, Gotha,
1873; Köstlin, M. Luth., II. 476 sqq., 580 sq. In his
Table Talk (Erl. ed., LXII., 214 sqq.), Luther has much to say
against the lawyers, and thinks that few of them will be saved.
"Ein
frommer Jurist,"
he says, "ist ein seltsames Thier."
Four ways were open for the construction of an evangelical church polity: —
1. To retain the episcopal hierarchy, without the papacy, or to create a new one in its place. This was done in the Lutheran churches of Scandinavia, and in the Church of England, but in the closest connection with the state, and in subordination to it. In Scandinavia the succession was broken; in England the succession continued under the lead of Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, was interrupted under Queen Mary, and restored under Queen Elizabeth.
Had the German bishops favored the Reformation,
they would, no doubt, have retained their power in Germany, and
naturally taken the lead in the organization of the new church.
Melanchthon was in favor of episcopacy, and even a sort of papacy by
human (not Divine) right, on condition of evangelical freedom; but the
hostility of the hierarchy made its authority impossible in Germany. Apol. Conf. Aug., Art. XIV.
(Müller’s ed. of the Lutheran symbols, p.
205): "Nos summa voluntate cupere conservare politiam ecclesiasticam
et gradus in ecclesia, factos etiam humana auctoritate." He
subscribed the Smalcald Articles (1537), with a clause in favor of a
limited papal supervision.
2. To substitute a lay episcopate for the clerical episcopate; in other words, to lodge the supreme ecclesiastical power in the hands of the civil magistrate, who appoints ministers, superintendents, and church counselors as executive officers.
This was done in the Lutheran churches of Germany.
The superintendents performed episcopal duties, but without
constituting a distinct and separate grade of the ministry, and without
the theory of the episcopal or apostolical succession. The Lutheran
Church holds the Presbyterian doctrine of the parity of ministers. See the Appendix to the Smalcald Articles,
which have symbolical authority, on the Power and Primacy of the Pope
(Müller’s ed., p. 341): "Quum jure
divino non sint diversi gradus episcopi et pastoris manifestum est
ordinationem a pastore in sua ecclesia factam jure divino ratam esse.
Itaque cum episcopi ordinarii fiunt hostes ecclesia aut nolunt
impartire ordinationem, ecclesiae retinent ius
suum."
3. To organize a presbyterian polity on the basis of the parity of ministers, congregational lay-elders, and deacons, and a representative synodical government, with strict discipline, and a distinction between nominal and communicant membership. This was attempted in Hesse at the Synod of Homberg (1526) by Lambert (a pupil of Zwingli and Luther), developed by Calvin in Geneva, and carried out in the Reformed churches of France, Holland, Scotland, and the Presbyterian churches of North America. Luther rather discouraged this plan in a letter to Philip of Hesse; but in 1540 he expressed a wish, with Jonas, Bugenhagen, and Melanchthon, to introduce Christian discipline with the aid of elders (seniores) in each congregation. Several Lutheran Church constitutions exclude adulterers, drunkards, and blasphemers from the communion.
4. Congregational independency; i.e., the organization of self-governing congregations of true believers in free association with each other. This was once suggested by Luther, but soon abandoned without a trial. It appeared in isolated attempts under Queen Elizabeth, and was successfully developed in the seventeenth century by the Independents in England, and the Congregationalists in New England.
The last two ways are more thoroughly Protestant and consistent with the principle of the general priesthood of believers; but they presuppose a higher grade of self-governing capacity in the laity than the episcopal polity.
All these forms of government admit of a union with the state (as in Europe), or a separation from the state (as in America). Union of church and state was the traditional system since the days of Constantine and Charlemagne, and was adhered to by all the Reformers. They had no idea of a separation; they even brought the two powers into closer relationship by increasing the authority of the state over the church. Separation of the two was barely mentioned by Luther, as a private opinion, we may say almost as a prophetic dream, but was soon abandoned as an impossibility.
Luther, in harmony with his unique personal
experience, made the doctrine of justification the cardinal truth of
Christianity, and believed that the preaching of that doctrine would of
itself produce all the necessary changes in worship and discipline. But
the abuse of evangelical freedom taught him the necessity of
discipline, and he raised his protest against antinomianism. His
complaints of the degeneracy of the times increased with his age and
his bodily infirmities. The world seemed to him to be getting worse and
worse, and fast rushing to judgment. He was so disgusted with the
immorality prevailing among the citizens and students at Wittenberg,
that he threatened to leave the town altogether in 1544, but yielded to
the earnest entreaties of the university and magistrate to remain. See his letters to Jonas, Lauterbach, Link,
Probst, and others, in De Wette, vol. V. To Lauterbach he wrote, Nov.
10, 1541 (V. 407), "Ego paene de Germania desperavi, postquam
recepit inter parietes veros illos Turkas seu veros illos diabolos,
avaritiam, usuram, tyrannidem, discordiam et totam illam Lernam
perfidiae, malitiae, et nequitiae, in nobilitate, in aulis, in curiis,
in oppidis, in villis, super haec autem contemtum verbi et
ingratitudinem inauditam." To Jonas he wrote, March 7, 1543 (V.
548), that the German nobility and princes were worse than the Turks,
and bent upon enslaving Germany, and exhausting the people. To the same
he gives, June 18, 1543 (V. 570), an account of the immorality of
Wittenberg, and the indifference of the magistrate, and concludes,
"Es ist
ein verdriesslich Ding um die Welt." He thought that the end of the wicked world
was near (Letter to Probst, Dec. 5, 1544, vol. V.
703).
The German Reformation did not stimulate the duty
of self-support, nor develop the faculty of self-government. It threw
the church into the arms of the state, from whose bondage she has never
been able as yet to emancipate herself. The princes, nobles, and city
magistrates were willing and anxious to take the benefit, but reluctant
to perform the duties, of their new priestly dignity; while the common
people remained as passive as before, without a voice in the election
of their pastor, or any share in the administration of their
congregational affairs. The Lutheran prince took the place of the
bishop or pope; the Lutheran pastor (Pfarrherr), the place of the
Romish priest, but instead of obeying the bishop he had to obey his
secular patron. Friedberg, Kirchenrecht, p. 57, correctly says, "Die Reformation hat schliesslich wohl
Pfarrsprengel geschaffen, aber keine Gemeinden." This is true even now of the Lutheran
churches in Northern Germany; but in Westphalia, on the Rhine, and in
America, the congregational life is more or less developed, partly
through contact with Reformed churches.
§85. Enlarged Conception of the Church. Augustin, Wiclif, Hus, Luther.
Köstlin: Luthers Lehre von der Kirche. Stuttgart, 1853. Comp. his Luthers Theologie in ihrer geschichtl. Entwicklung, II. 534 sqq.; and his Martin Luther, bk. VI. ch. iii. (II. 23 sqq.). Joh. Gottschick: Hus’, Luther’s und Zwingli’s Lehre von der Kirche, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte." Bd. VIII., Gotha, 1886, pp. 345 sqq. and 543 sqq. (Very elaborate, but he ought to have gone back to Wiclif and Augustin. Hus merely repeated Wiclif.)
Comp. also on the general subject Münchmeyer: Das Dogma von der sichtbaren und unsichtbaren Kirche, 1854. Ritschl: Ueber die Begriffe sichtbare und unsichtbare Kirche, in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1859. Jul. Müller: Die unsichtbare Kirche, in his "Dogmatische Abhandlungen." Bremen, 1870, pp. 278–403 (an able defense of the idea of the invisible church against Rothe, Münchmeyer, and others who oppose the term invisible as inapplicable to the church. See especially Rothe’s Anfänge der christl. Kirche, 1837, vol. I. 99 sqq.). Alfred Krauss: Das protestantische Dogma von der unsichtbaren Kirche, Gotha, 1876. Seeberg: Der Begriff der christlichen Kirche, Part I., 1885. James S. Candlish: The Kingdom of God. Edinburgh, 1884.
Separation from Rome led to a more spiritual and more liberal conception of the church, and to a distinction between the one universal church of the elect children of God of all ages and countries, under the sole headship of Christ, and the several visible church organizations of all nominal Christians. We must trace the gradual growth of this distinction.
In the New Testament the term ejkklhsiva (a
popular assembly, congregation) is used in two senses (when applied to
religion): 1, in the general sense of the whole body of Christian
believers (by our Lord,
The Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds
include the holy catholic church and the communion of saints among the
articles of faith, Yet not in the strict and deeper sense in which
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are articles of (saving) faith; hence
the preposition εἰς, in, is omitted before ecclesiam, and the
following articles, at least in the Latin forms (the Greek Nicene Creed
has εἰς). The term "catholic" (καθολικός, from κατὰand ὅλος, whole, entire, complete) does not occur in
the New Testament (for the inscrip-tions of the Epistles of James,
Peter, John, and Jude, ἐπιστολαὶ
καθολικαί, or simply καθολικαί, are no part of the apostolic text, but
added by transcribers), and is first used as an epithet of the Church
by Ignatius of Antioch, the enthusiast for episcopacy and martyrdom
(Ad Smyrn., c. 8), and in the Martyrium of Polycarp (in
Eusebius, II. E., IV. 14). It was applied also to faith, tradition,
people, and became equivalent with Christian, in distinction from Jews,
idolaters, heretics, and schismatics.
The mediaeval schoolmen distinguished three stages in the catholic church as to its locality,—the militant church on earth (ecclesia militans), the church of the departed or the sleeping church in purgatory (ecclesia dormiens), and the triumphant church in heaven (ecclesia triumphans). This classification was retained by Wiclif, Hus, and other forerunners of Protestantism; but the Reformers rejected the intervening purgatorial church, together with prayers for the departed, and included all the pious dead in the church triumphant.
In the militant church on earth, Augustin made an
important distinction between "the true body of Christ" (corpus Christi
verum), and "the mixed body of Christ" (corpus Christi mixtum or
simulatum). He substitutes this for the less suitable designation of a
"twofold body of Christ" (corpus Domini bipartitum), as taught by
Tichonius, the Donatist grammarian (who referred to De Doctr. Christ., III. 32 (in
Schaff’s "Nicene and Post-Nicene Library;" Works of
St. Augustin, vol. II. 509). De Bapt. contra Donat., IV. 5. For a
fuller exposition of his doctrine of the church, see his Donatist
writings, and Reuter’s Augustin. Studien
(1887).
It should be added, however, that Augustin
confined the true church on earth to the limits of the visible,
orthodox, catholic body of his day, and excluded all
heretics,—Manichaeans, Pelagians, Arians,
etc.,—and schismatics,—Donatists,
etc.,—as long as they remain outside of fellowship
with that body. In explaining the article "the holy church," in his
version of the Creed (which omits the epithet "catholic," and the
additional clause "the communion of saints"), he says that this surely
means, the Catholic Church;" and adds, "Both heretics and schismatics
style their congregations churches. But heretics in holding false
opinions regarding God do injury to the faith itself; while
schismatics, on the other hand, in wicked separations break off from
brotherly charity, although they may believe just what we believe.
Wherefore, neither do the heretics belong to the Church Catholic, which
loves God; nor do the schismatics form a part of the same, inasmuch as
it loves the neighbor, and consequently readily forgives the
neigbbor’s sin." De Fide et Symbolo, c. 10 (in
Schaff’s ed., III. 331).
In the ninth century the visible Catholic Church was divided into two rival Catholic churches,—the patriarchal church in the East, and the papal church in the West. The former denied the papal claim of universal jurisdiction and headship, as an anti-Christian usurpation; the latter identified the Church Catholic with the dominion of the papacy, and condemned the Greek Church as schismatical. Hereafter, in Western Christendom, the Holy Catholic Church came to mean the Holy Roman Church.
The tyranny and corruptions of the papacy called
forth the vigorous protest of Wiclif, who revived the Augustinian
distinction between the true church and the mixed church, but gave it
an anti-Roman and anti-papal turn (which Augustin did not). He defined
the true church to be the congregation of the predestinated, or elect,
who will ultimately be saved. Tractatus de Ecclesia, c. I.,
"congregatio omnium praedestinatorum ... Illa est sponsa Christl ...
Jerusalem mater nostra, templum Domini, regnum coelorum et civitas
regni magni." Then he quotes the distinction made by Augustin, to
whom he refers throughout the book more frequent-ly than to all other
fathers combined. This important tract was recently published for the
first time from three MSS. in Vienna and Prague by the "Wyclif
Society," and edited by Dr. Johann Loserth (professor of history in the
University of Czernowitz), London (Trübner & Co.), 1886,
600 pp. But the same view of the church is taught in other books of
Wiclif, and correctly stated by Dr. Lechler in his Joh. von
Wiclif, Leipz., 1873, vol. I. 541 sqq.
Wiclif’s view of the true church
was literally adopted by the Bohemian Reformer Hus, who depended for
his theology on the English Reformer much more than was formerly
known. The close affinity has recently been shown by
Joh. Loserth, Hus und Wiclif; zur Genesis der hussitischen
Lehre (Prag and
Leipz., l884), and is especially apparent from a comparison of
Wiclif’s and Hus’s treatises De
Ecclesia. Wiclif’s book exerted little influence
in England, but became known in Bohemia in 1407 or before, and the
reproduction of it by Hus created a great sensation. The arrangement,
the ideas, and arguments of the two books are the same, and often the
very language. Comp. Loserth’s Introduction to
Wiclif’s De Ecclesia. Luther first used the term "invisible." Zwingli
first added the term "visible" in his Expositio christianae.
fidei (1531): "Credimus et unam sanctam esse catholicam, h.e.
universalem ecclesiam. Eam autem esse aut visibilem aut
invisibilem." Zwingli was the only one among the Reformers who
included the elect heathen in the invisible church. The clearest
symbolical statement of the Protestant doctrine of the invisible and
visible church is given in the Westminster Confession, ch. xxv.
(Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, III.
657).
Important questions were raised with this
distinction for future settlement. Some eminent modern Protestant
divines object to the term "invisible church," as involving a
contradiction, inasmuch as the church is essentially a visible
institution; but they admit the underlying truth of an invisible,
spiritual communion of believers scattered throughout the world. Rothe (Anfänge der christl.
Kirche, I. p.
101) says that the idea of a moral and spiritual union and communion of
all believers in Christ, or of the communion of saints, is in the
highest sense real (ist nach unsrer innigsten Ueberzeugung eine im
höchsten Sinne reale), but cannot be called a church. He resolves
and dissolves the church ultimately into the kingdom of God, which he
identifies with the ideal state.
Luther received a copy of Hus’s
treatise De Ecclesia from Prague in 1519. Under the date of Oct. 3, 1519, he informed
Staupitz that he had received from Prague letters of two priests,
"una cum libello Joannis Hus." De Wette, I. 341. An edition of
the Tractatus de Ecclesia was published at Mainz and Hagenau in
1520.
Luther developed this idea in his own way, and
modified it in application to the visible church. He started from the
article of the Creed, "I believe in the holy catholic church," but
identified this article with the "communion of saints," as a definition
of the catholic church. This identification may be questioned. The holy
catholic church corresponds rather to the church visible, the communion
of saints to the church invisible. The communion of saints means that
inward and spiritual fellowship of true believers on earth and in
heaven which is based on their union with Christ. It is their
fellowship with God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit (Comp. "The saints in heaven and on earth But one communion make; All join In Christ, their living Head, And of his grace partake." The article of the
communio sanctorum (as well as the epithet catholica) is
a later insertion, and not found in the creeds before the fifth
century. See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, I. 22 and II. 52.
The oldest commentators understood it of the communion with the saints
in heaven. According to the Catechism of the Council of Trent, it means
"a community of spiritual blessings," especially the sacraments enjoyed
in the Catholic Church. A more comprehensive and satisfactory
exposition is given by Pearson on the Creed, Art. IX., and in
the Westminster Confession, Ch. XXVI. The German proverb, ."Das ist um katholisch zu
werden" (This is
to turn Catholic), describes a condition of things that drives one to
desperation or madness.
Luther held that the holy church in its relation
to God is an article of faith, not of sight, and therefore invisible. In his second Commentary on the Galatians (Erl.
ed., III. 38): "Recte igitur fatemur in symbolo,
nos credere ecclesiam sanctam. Est enim invisibilis, habitans in Spiritu, in loco
inaccessibili, ideo non potest videri ejus sanctitas."
His theory acquired symbolical authority through
the Augsburg Confession, which defines the church to be "the
congregation of saints in which the gospel is rightly taught, and the
sacraments are rightly administered." Art. VII., "Est autem ecclesia congregatio
sanctorum [Germ. ed., Versammlung aller
Gläubigen], in qua evangelium recte [rein] docetur, et recte
[laut des Evangelii] administrantur sacramenta." Comp.
the Apol. Conf., Art. VII. and VIII. The same definition is
substantially given in the Anglican Art. XIX. It would exclude the
Quakers, who reject the external sacraments, yet are undoubted
believers in Christ. The Calvinistic Confessions (e.g., Conf.
Belgica, Art. XXIX.) and characteristically to those two marks a
third one, the exercise of discipline In punishing
sin.
How far, we must ask here, did Luther recognize the dominion of the papacy as a part of the true catholic church? He did not look upon the Pope in the historical and legal light as the legitimate head of the Roman Church; but he fought him to the end of his life as the antagonist of the gospel, as the veritable Antichrist, and the papacy as an apostasy. He could not have otherwise justified his separation, and the burning of the papal bull and law-books. He assumed a position to the Pope and his church similar to that of the apostles to Caiaphas and the synagogue. Nevertheless, whether consistently or not, he never doubted the validity of the ordinances of the Roman Church, having himself been baptized, confirmed, and ordained in it, and he never dreamed of being re-baptized or re-ordained. Those millions of Protestants who seceded in the sixteenth century were of the same opinion, with the sole exception of the Anabaptists who objected to infant-baptism, partly on the ground that it was an invention of the popish Antichrist, and therefore invalid.
Nor did Luther or any of the Reformers and
sensible Protestants doubt that there always were and are still many
true Christians in the Roman communion, notwithstanding all her errors
and corruptions, as there were true lsraelites even in the darkest
periods of the Jewish theocracy. In his controversy with the
Anabaptists (1528), Luther makes the striking admission: "We confess
that under the papacy there is much Christianity, yea, the whole
Christianity, and has from thence come to us. We confess that the
papacy possesses the genuine Scriptures, genuine baptism, the genuine
sacrament of the altar, the genuine keys for the remission of sins, the
true ministry, the true catechism, the Ten Commandments, the articles
of the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer. … I
say that under the Pope is the true Christendom, yea, the very
élite of Christendom, and many pious and great saints." "Ich sage, dass unter dem Papst die rechte Christenheit
ist, ja der rechte Ausbund der Christenheit, und viel frommer, grosser
Heiligen."
(Von der
Wiedertaufe, Erl.
ed. XXVI. 257 sq.) The Roman Catholic Möhler does not fail
to quote this passage in his Symbolik, p. 422 sq. He says of
Luther’s conception of the church (p. 424), that it is
not false, but only one-sided (nicht falsch, obgleich
einseitig). He
virtually admits the Protestant distinction between the visible and the
invisible church, but holds that the Catholics put the visible church
first as the basis of the invisible, while the Protestants reverse the
order.
For proof he refers, strangely enough, to the very
passage of Paul, Ibid. p. 258. Critical commentators have
long since abandoned this interpretation. Whatever be the wider
applicability of this passage, Paul certainly meant a "mystery of
lawlessness" (not tyranny) already at work in his time
(ἤδη
ἐνεργεῖται, In his Judicium de Jure reformandi, 1525
("Corp. Ref." I. 767): "It is written that the Antichrist will have a
great and powerful reign in the last times, as Paul says, Antichrist
will be seated and rule in the temple of God, that is, in the church."
And again in the "Apology of the Augsburg Confession" (1530), arts.
VII. and VIII. (Müller’s ed., p. 152):
"Paulus praedicat futurum, ut Antichristus sedeat in templo Dei, hoc
est, in ecclesia dominetur et gerat officia." Com. in Ep. ad Gal. (Erl. ed., 1. 40
sq.): "Paulus vocat ecclesia Galatiae per synecdochen ... Sie et nos
hodie vocamus ecclesiam romanam sanctam et omnes episcopatus sanctos,
etiamsi sint subversi et episcopi et ministri eorum impii. Deus enim
regnat in medio inimicorum suorum; item, Antichristus sedet in templo
Dei, et Satan adest in medio filiorum Dei … Manet in
romana urbe quamquam Sodoma et Gomorra pejore baptismus, sacramentum,
vox et textus evangelii, sacra scriptura, ministeria, nomen Christi,
nomen Dei."
He combined with the boldest independence a strong
reverence for the historical faith. He derives from the unbroken
tradition of the church an argument against the Zwinglians for the real
presence in the eucharist; and says, in a letter to Albrecht, Margrave
of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia (April, 1532, after
Zwingli’s death): "The testimony of the entire holy
Christian church (even without any other proof) should be sufficient
for us to abide by this article, and to listen to no sectaries against
it. For it is dangerous and terrible (gefährlich und
erschrecklich) to hear or believe any thing against the unanimous
testimony, faith, and doctrine of the entire holy Christian church as
held from the beginning for now over fifteen hundred years in all the
world. … To deny such testimony is virtually to
condemn not only the holy Christian church as a damned heretic, but
even Christ himself, with all his apostles and prophets, who have
founded this article, ’I believe a holy Christian
church,’ as solemnly affirmed by Christ when he
promised, ’Behold, I am with you all the days, even to
the end of the world’ ( De Wette, Briefe, IV.
354.
A Roman controversialist could not lay more stress on tradition than Luther does in this passage. But tradition, at least from the sixth to the sixteenth century, strongly favors the belief in transubstantiation, and the sacrifice of the mass, both of which he rejected. And if the same test should be applied to his doctrine of solifidian justification, it would be difficult to support it by patristic or scholastic tradition, which makes no distinction between justification and sanctification, and lays as much stress on good works as on faith. He felt it himself, that on this vital point, not even Augustin was on his side. His doctrine can be vindicated only as a new interpretation of St. Paul in advance of the previous understanding.
Calvin, if we may here anticipate his views as
expounded in the first chapters of the fourth book of his "Institutes
of the Christian Religion," likewise clearly distinguishes between the
visible and invisible church, Lib. IV., c. i., §§ 4 and
7. He speaks most eloquently of the ecclesia visibilis, as our
mother in whose womb we are conceived to enter into spiritual
life. Lib. IV., c. ii., § 12:
"Antichristum in templo Dei sessurum praedixerunt Daniel et
Paulus (
The Westminster Confession implies the same
theory, and supports it by the same questionable exegesis of Ch. XXV. 6: "The Pope of Rome ... is that
Antichrist, that man of sin and perdition, that exalteth himself in the
Church against Christ and all that is called God." And yet there are
American divines who derive from this passage the very opposite
conclusion; namely, that the Roman Church is no church at all, and that
all her ordinances are invalid. An attempt to sanction this conclusion
was made at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church at
Cincinnati in 1885, but failed. The Westminster Confession never calls
the Roman Church Antichrist, but only the Pope, who is no more the
Roman Church than the Moderator of the General Assembly is the General
Assembly, or the President of the United States is the American people,
or the Czar of Russia is Russia. The government is only one factor in
the life of a nation or a church.
The claims of the Roman Church rest on a broader
and more solid base than the papacy, which is merely the form of her
government. The papal hierarchy was often as corrupt as the Jewish
hierarchy, and some popes were as wicked as Caiaphas; Dante locates them in the Inferno; and
Möhler says, "Hell has swallowed them up."
NOTES.
luther’s views on the church fathers.
Walch, XXII. 2050–2065. Erlangen ed. LXII. 97 sqq. (Tischreden). Bindseil: Mart. Lutheri Colloquia (1863), 3 vols.
In this connection it may be interesting to collect from his writings and Table Talk some of Luther’s characteristic judgments of the church fathers whose works began to be more generally known and studied through the editions of Erasmus.
Luther had no idea of a golden age of virgin purity of the church. He knew that even among the apostles there was a Judas, and that errors and corruptions crept into the Galatian, Corinthian, and other congregations, as is manifest from the censures, warnings, and exhortations of the Epistles of the New Testament. Much less could he expect perfection in any post-apostolic age. His view of the absolute supremacy of the Word of God over all the words of men, even the best and holiest, led him to a critical and discriminating estimate of the fathers and schoolmen. Besides, he felt the difference between the patristic and the Protestant theology. The Continental Reformers generally thought much less of the fathers than the Anglican divines.
"The fathers," says Luther, "have written many things that are pious and useful (multa pia et salutaria), but they must be read with discrimination, and judged by the Scriptures." "The dear fathers lived better than they wrote; we write better than we live." (Melius vixerunt quam scripserunt: nos Deo juvante melius scribimus quam vivimus. Bindseil, l.c. III. 140; Erl. ed., LXII. 103.) He placed their writings far below the Scriptures; and the more he progressed in the study of both, the more he was impressed with the difference (Erl. ed., LXII. 107). To reform the church by the fathers is impossible; it can only be done by the Word of God (XXV. 231). They were poor interpreters, in part on account of their ignorance of Hebrew and Greek (XXII. 185). All the fathers have erred in the faith. Nevertheless, they are to be held in veneration for their testimony to the Christian faith (propter testimonium fidei omnes sunt venerandi. Erl. ed. LXII. 98).
Of all the fathers he learned most from Augustin. For him he had the profoundest respect, and him he quotes more frequently than all others combined. He regards him as one of the four pillars of the church (the claims of Ambrose, Jerome, and Gregory, he disputed), as the best commentator, and the patron of theologians. "Latina nostra ecclesia nullum habuit praestantiorem doctorem quam Augustinum" (Bindseil, I. 456). "He pleased and pleases me better than all other doctors; he was a great teacher, and worthy of all praise" (III. 147). The Pelagians stirred him up to his best books, in which he treats of free-will, faith, and original sin. He first distinguished it from actual transgression. He is the only one among the fathers who had a worthy view of matrimony. The papists pervert his famous word: "I would not believe the gospel if the Catholic Church did not move me thereto," which was said against the Manichaeans in this sense: Ye are heretics, I do not believe you; I go with the church, the bride of Christ, which cannot err (Erl. ed., XXX. 394 sq.). Augustin did more than all the bishops and popes who cannot hold a candle to him (XXXI. 358 sq.), and more than all the Councils (XXV. 341). If he lived now, he would side with us, but Jerome would condemn us (Bindseil, III. 149). Yet with all his sympathy, Luther could not find his "sola fide." Augustin, he says, has sometimes erred, and is not to be trusted. "Although good and holy, he was yet lacking in the true faith, as well as the other fathers." "When the door was opened to me for the understanding of Paul, I was done, with Augustin" (da war es aus mit ihm. Erl. ed., LXII. 119).
Next to Augustin he seems to have esteemed Hilary on account of his work on the Trinity. "Hilarius," he says, "inter omnes patres luctator fuit strenuissimus adversus haereticos, cui neque Augustinus conferri potest" (Bindseil, III. 138). Ambrose he calls "a pious, God-fearing, and brave man," and refers to his bold stand against the Emperor Theodosius. But his six books on Genesis are very thin, and his hymns have not much matter, though his (?) "Rex Christe, factor omnium," is "optimus hymnus." He praises Prudentius for his poetry. Tertullian, whom he once calls the oldest of the fathers (though he lived after 200), was "durus et superstitiosus." Of Cyprian he speaks favorably. As to Jerome, he had to admit that he was the greatest Bible translator, and will not be surpassed in this line (Erl. ed. LXII. 462). But he positively hated him on account of his monkery, and says: "He ought not to be counted among the doctors of the church; for he was a heretic, although I believe that he was saved by faith in Christ. I know no one of the fathers, to whom I am so hostile as to him. He writes only about fasting, virginity, and such things" (LXII. 119sq.). He was tormented by carnal temptations, and loved Eustochium so as to create scandal. He speaks impiously of marriage. His commentaries on Matthew, Galatians, and Titus are very thin. Luther had no more respect for Pope Gregory I. He is the author of the fables of purgatory and masses for souls; he knew little of Christ and his gospel, and was entirely too superstitious. The Devil deceived him, and made him believe in appearances of spirits from purgatory. "His sermons are not worth a copper" (Erl. ed., LI. 482; LII. 187; LX. 189, 405; XXVIII. 98 sqq.; Bindseil, III. 140, 228). But he praises beyond its merits his hymn Rex Christe, which he wrongly ascribes to Ambrose (Bindseil, III. 149; comp. Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnol., vol. I. 180 sq.).
With the Greek fathers, Luther was less familiar. He barely mentions Ignatius, Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, and Epiphanius. He praises Athanasius as the greatest teacher of the Oriental Church, although he was nothing extra (obwohl er nichts sonderliches war). He could not agree with Melanchthon’s favorable judgment of Basil the Great. He thought Gregory of Nazianzen, the eloquent defender of the divinity of Christ during the Arian ascendency, to be of no account ("Nazianzenus est nihil." Bindseil, III. 152). He speaks well of Theodoret’s Commentary to Paul’s Epistles, but unreasonably depreciates Chrysostom, the golden preacher and commentator, and describes him as a great rhetorician, full of words and empty of matter; he even absurdly compares him to Carlstadt! "He is garrulous, and therefore pleases Erasmus, who neglects faith, and treats only of morals. I consulted him on the beautiful passage on the highpriest in Hebrews; but he twaddled about the dignity of priests, and let me stick in the mud (Bindseil, III. 136; Erl. ed. LXII. 102).
Of mediaeval divines Luther esteemed Nicolaus Lyra as a most useful commentator. He praises St. Bernard, who in his sermons "excels all other doctors, even Augustin." He speaks highly of Peter the Lombard, "the Master of Sentences," and calls him a "homo diligentissimus et excellentissimi ingenii," although he brought in many useless questions (Bindseil, III. 151; Erl. ed. LXII. 114). He calls Occam, whom he studied diligently, "summus dialecticus" (Bindseil, III. 138, 270). But upon the whole he hated the schoolmen and their master, "the damned heathen Aristotle," although he admits him to have been "optimus dialecticus," and learned from him and his commentators the art of logical reasoning. Even Thomas Aquinas, "the Angelic Doctor," whom the Lutheran scholastics of the seventeenth century highly and justly esteemed, he denounced as a chatterer (loquacissimus), who makes the Bible bend to Aristotle (Bindseil, III. 270, 286), and whose books are a fountain of all heresies, and destructive of the gospel ("der Brunn und Grundsuppe aller Ketzerei, Irrthums und Verleugnung des Evangeliums." Erl. ed. XXIV. 240). This is, of course, the language of prejudice and passion.—His views on Augustin are the most correct, because he knew him best, and liked him most.
Melanchthon and Oecolampadius from fuller knowledge and milder temper judged more favorably and consistently of the fathers generally, and their invaluable services to Christian literature.
§ 86. Changes in the Views on the Ministry. Departure from the Episcopal Succession. Luther ordains a Deacon, and consecrates a Bishop.
The Reformers unanimously rejected the sacerdotal
character of the Christian ministry (except in a spiritual sense), and
hence also the idea of a literal altar and sacrifice. No priest, no
sacrifice. "Priest" is an abridgment of "presbyter," Milton, in his discontent with the
Presbyterians and zeal for independency, said, "Presbyter is priest
writ large." The exceptional designation of the Christian
prophets as "highpriests" (ἀρχιερεῖς, in the Didaché, ch.
XIII. 3, is probably figurative. See Schaff, The Oldest Church
Manual, p. 206 sq. See Schaff, l.c. p. 74 sq., and
211. See the passage in the Appendix to
Luther’s Articles of Smalcald, quoted above on p. 517,
note 2.
In the place of a graded hierarchy, the Reformers
taught the parity of ministers; and in the place of a special
priesthood, offering the very body and blood of Christ, a general
priesthood of believers, offering the sacrifices of prayer and praise
for the one sacrifice offered for all time to come. Luther derived the
lay-priesthood from baptism as an anointing by the Holy Spirit and an
incorporation into Christ. "A layman with the Scriptures," he said, "is
more to be believed than pope and council without the Scriptures." Comp. § 44, p. 207, and Melanchthon
in his Apology of the Augsb. Conf., arts. XIII. and
XXIV.
Nevertheless, he maintained, in opposition to the
democratic radicalism of Carlstadt and the fanatical spiritualism of
the Zwickau prophets, the necessity of a ministry, as a matter of order
and expediency; and so far he asserted its divine origin. Every public
teacher must be called of God through the Church, or prove his
extraordinary call by miracles. And so the Augsburg Confession declares
that "no man shall publicly teach in the church, or administer the
sacraments, without a regular call." Art. XIV.
But what constitutes a regular call? Luther at
first took the ground of congregational independency in his writings to
the Bohemian Brethren (1523), and advocated the right of a Christian
congregation to call, to elect, and to depose its own minister. In the address De instituendis
ministris, to the magistrate and people of Prag, and in his tract
"Dass
eine christliche Versammlung oder Gemeinde Recht und Macht habe, alle
Lehrer zu urtheilen und Lehrer zu berufen, ein- und
abzusetzen."
(Erl. ed., XXII. 140 sqq.; and Walch, X. 1795 sqq.) "Es sind verkehrt, verblendete Larven, und rechte
Kinderbischöfe." The last word of his German tract to the Bohemians. Erl.
ed., XXII. 151.
But congregations of pure Christians, capable of self-government, could not be found in Germany at that time, and are impossible in state churches where churchmanship and citizenship coincide. Luther abandoned this democratic idea after the Peasants’ War, and called on the arm of the govern-ment for protection against the excesses of the popular will.
In the first years of the Reformation the
congregations were supplied by Romish ex-priests and monks. But who was
to ordain the new preachers educated at Wittenberg? The bishops of
Saxony (Naumburg-Zeiz, Meissen, and Merseburg) remained loyal to their
master in Rome; and there was no other ordaining power according to
law. Luther might have derived the succession from two bishops of
Prussia,—Georg von Polenz, bishop of Samland, and
Erhard von Queis, bishop of Pomesania,—who accepted
the Reformation, and afterwards surrendered their episcopal rights to
Duke Albrecht as the summus episcopus (1525). The conversion and attempted reformation of
Archbishop Herrmann of Cologne occurred much later, in
1543. In the preface to his commentary on
Deuteronomy, which he dedicated to the bishop of Samland, 1525 (Erl.
ed. of Opera Latina, XIII. 6): "Non enim te laudamus, sed
insigne illud miraculum gratiae Dei extollimus, quam in te valere,
regnare et triumphare videmus et audimus cum gaudio ut ... te unicum et
solum inter omnes episcopi orbis elegerit Dominus et liberaverit ex ore
Satanae quod dilatavit sicut infernum et devorat omnes. Nihil enim
videmus in ceteris episcopis (quanquam esse inter eos sperem aliquot
Nicodemos) nisi quod subversis caesare et regibus ac principibus
fremunt et insaniunt contra resurgens vel potius oriens evangelion, ut
denuo impleant illud Psalmi secundi," etc. Comp. his letter to
Spalatin, Feb. 1, 1524, and to Briesmann, July 4, 1524, in De Wette,
II. 474 and 525 sqq.
With these views, and the conviction of his own divine authority to reform the church, he felt no reluctance to take the episcopal prerogative into his hands. He acted to the end of his life as an irregular or extraordinary bishop and pope in partibus Protestantium, being consulted by princes, magistrates, theologians, and people of all sorts.
He set the first example of a Presbyterian
ordination by laying hands on his amanuensis, Georg Rörer
(Rorarius), and making him deacon at Wittenberg, May 14, 1525.
Rörer is favorably known by his assistance in the Bible
Version and the first edition of Luther’s works. He
died as librarian of the University of Jena, 1557. Melanchthon
justified the act on the ground that the bishops neglected their
duty. Corp. Ref., I. 765. Comp. Seckendorf,
Hist. Lutheranismi, vol. II. 29.
But Luther ventured even to consecrate a bishop,
or a superintendent; as John Wesley did two hundred and fifty years
afterwards in the interest of his followers in the United States. When
the bishopric of Naumburg became vacant, the chapter, backed by the
Roman-Catholic minority of the nobility and people, regularly elected
Julius von Pflug, one of the ablest, purest, and mildest opponents of
the Reformation. This choice displeased the Protestants. The Elector
John Frederick, by an illegal use of power, confiscated the property of
the diocese, and appointed a counter-bishop in the person of Nicolaus
von Amsdorf, Luther’s most devoted friend, who was
unmarried and a nobleman, and at that time superintendent at Magdeburg.
The consecration took place on June 20, 1542, in the dome of Naumburg,
in the presence of the Elector, the Protestant clergy, and a
congregation of about five thousand people. Luther preached the sermon,
and performed the consecration with the assistance of three
superintendents (Medler, Spalatin, and Stein) and an abbot, by the
laying-on of hands, and prayer. See an account of the consecration in
Seckendorf, III. 391 sqq.; Köstlin, II. 561 sqq.; Janssen,
III. 483-492. Janssen describes the sickening details of the violence,
intrigues, and robberies connected with the Protestantizing and
secularizing of the three Saxon bishoprics. Exempel, einen rechten
christlichen Bischof zu weihen, 1542. Erl. ed., XXVI. 77-108; Walch, XVII. 122. He
begins with the characteristic sentence: "Wir armen Ketzer haben abermal
eine grosse Sünde begangen wider die höllische
unchristliche Kirche des allerhöllischten Vaters, des
Papstes, dass wir einen Bischof im Stift Naumburg ordinirt und
eingeweihet haben, ohne allen Chresem [Chrisma, Salböl], auch
ohne Butter, Schmalz, Speck, Teer, Schmeer, Weihrauch, Kohlen und was
derselben grossen Heiligkeit mehr ist: dazu wider ihren Willen; doch
nicht ohne ihr Wissen." Comp. also his letter to Jacob Probst, March 26, 1546 (De
Wette, V. 451), where he calls this consecration "audax facinus et
plenissimum odio, invidia at indignatione." " ... gezwungen durch Gottes Gebot, sich von ihm zu
sondern, und ihn für keinen Bischof, sondern für
einen Wolf, ja für einen Teufel zu
halten." Erl.
ed., p. 80.
This is the spirit and language of this apologetic Tract. It was followed by a still fiercer attack upon popery as an invention of the Devil" (1545).
Amsdorf was forced upon the chapter and the people by the Elector, but lost his bishopric in the Smalcaldian War (1547), took a leading and ultra-Lutheran part in the bitter theological controversies which followed, and died at Eisenach, 1565, in his eighty-second year. His ephemeral episcopate was, of course, a mere superintendency.
Several of Luther’s friends and pupils were appointed superintendents; as Lauterbach at Pirna (d. 1569); Heidenreich, or Heiderich, at Torgau (d. 1572), who with Mathesius, Dietrich, Weller, and others, preserved his "table spice" (condimenta mensae), as they called his familiar conversations.
The appointment of these superintendents was in
the hands of the prince as summus episcopus over his territory. The
congregations had not even the power of electing their own pastors. "Die Gemeinde," says Friedberg, l.c., p. 61, "tritt bei dieser
Organisation ganz zurück. Sie ist der
’Pöbel,’ der unter der
Zucht des Wortes und der Polizei des Kirchenregimentes steht
… Eine Mitwirkung an der Handhabung der Kirchenzucht
findet sich nur in den Kirchenordnungen, wo reformirte
Einflüsse bemerkbar sind."
In the cities the magistrate assumed the episcopal power, and appointed the superintendents.
The further development of the episcopal, territorial, and collegial system in the Lutheran Church lies beyond our limits.
§ 87. Relation of Church and State.
In January, 1523, Luther published a remarkable book
on the civil magistrate, dedicated to Prince John, in which he proved
from Von weltlicher Obrigkeit, wie weit
man ihr Gehorsam schuldig sei. Erl. ed. XXII. 59-105.
"God has ordained two governments among the
children of Adam, the reign of God under Christ, and the reign of the
world under the civil magistrate, each with its own laws and rights.
The laws of the reign of the world extend no further than body and
goods and the external affairs on earth. But over the soul God can and
will allow no one to rule but himself alone. The Westminster Confession, ch. XX. 2, says:
"God alone is Lord of the conscience." L.c.p. 82: "Das weltlich Regiment hat Gesetze,
die sich nicht weiter strecken, denn über Leib und Gut, und
was äusserlich ist auf Erden. Denn über die Seele
kann und will Gott niemand lassen regieren, denn sich selbst alleine.
Darumb wo weltlich Gewalt sich vermisset, der Seelen Gesetze zu geben,
da greift sie Gott in sein Regiment, und verführet und
verderbet nur die Seelen. Das wollen wir so klar machen, dass mans
greifen solle, auf dass unsere Junkern, die Fürsten und
Bischöfe sehen, was sie für Narren sind, wenn sie
die Leut mit ihren Gesetzen und Geboten zwingen wollen, sonst oder so
zu glauben." "Zum Glauben kann und soll man niemand
zwingen." As to
St. Augustin, he changed his views on this subject, as Luther did
afterwards. The anti-Manichaean Augustin was tolerant (he himself had
been a Manichaean for nine years), but the anti-Donatist Augustin was
intolerant. The former said, "Credere non potest homo nisi
volens;" the latter misinterpreted the words: "Compelle intrare
ut impleatur domus mea" (
Here is the principle of religious liberty which was proclaimed in principle by Christ, acted upon by the apostles, re-asserted by the ante-Nicene fathers against the tyranny of persecuting Rome, but so often violated by Christian Rome in her desire for a worldly empire, and also by Protestant churches and princes in their dealings with Romanists and Anabaptists. Luther does not spare the secular rulers, though this book is dedicated to the brother of the Elector.
"From the beginning of the world wise princes
have been rare birds, and pious princes still rarer. Most of them are
the greatest fools or the worst boobies on earth. "Die grössten Narren oder die
ärgsten Buben auf Erden" (p. 89).
He refers to
To the objection that the secular magistrate should afford an external protection, and hinder heretics from seducing the people, he replies: —
This is the business of bishops, and not of
princes. For heresy can never be kept off by force; another grip is
needed for that; this is another quarrel than that of the sword.
God’s word must contend here. If this fails, the
worldly power is of no avail, though it fill the world with blood.
Heresy is a spiritual thing that cannot be hewn down by iron, nor
burned by fire, nor drowned by water. "Ketzerei ist ein geistlich Ding, das kann man mit
keinem Eisen hauen, mit keinem Feuer verbrennen, mit keinem Wasser
ertränken."
In his exposition of the First Epistle of St.
Peter, from the same year (1523), he thus comments on the exhortation
"to fear God and honor the king:" In the Erl. ed., vol. LI. p. 419
sq.
"If the civil magistrate interferes with spiritual matters of conscience in which God alone must rule, we ought not to obey at all, but rather lose our head. Civil government is confined to external and temporal affairs. … If an emperor or prince asks me about my faith, I would give answer, not because of his command, but because of my duty to confess my faith before everybody. But if he should go further, and command me to believe this or that, I would say, ’Dear sir, mind your secular business; you have no right to interfere with God’s reign, and therefore I shall not obey you at all.’ "
Similar views on the separation of church and
state were held by Anabaptists, Mennonites, the English martyr-bishop
Hooper, and Robert Browne the Independent; but they had no practical
effect till a much later period. See § 12, p. 76,
note.
Luther himself changed his opinion on this
subject, and was in some measure driven to a change by the disturbances
and heresies which sprang up around him, and threatened disorder and
anarchy. The victory over the peasants greatly increased the power of
the princes. The Lutheran Reformers banded the work of re-organization
largely over to them, and thus unwittingly introduced a caesaropapacy;
that is, such a union of church and state as makes the head of the
state also the supreme ruler in the church. It is just the opposite of
the hierarchical principle of the Roman Church, which tries to rule the
state. Melanchthon justified this transfer chiefly by the neglect of
the pope and bishops to do their duty. He says, if Christ and the
apostles had waited till Annas and Caiaphas permitted the gospel, they
would have waited in vain. Judicium de jure reformandi (1525), in
the "Corp. Reform." I. 763 sqq.
The co-operation of the princes and magistrates in the cities secured the establishment of the Protestant Church, but brought it under the bondage of lawyers and politicians who, with some honorable exceptions, knew less and ruled worse than the bishops. The Reformers often and bitterly complained in their later writings of the rapacity of princes and nobles who confiscated the property of churches and convents, and applied it to their own use instead of schools and benevolent purposes. Romish historians make the most of this fact to the disparagement of the Reformation. But the spoliations of Protestant princes are very trifling, as compared with the wholesale confiscation of church property by Roman-Catholic powers, as France, Spain, and Italy in the last and present centuries.
The union of church and state accounts for the
persecution of papists, heretics, and Jews; and all the Reformers
justified persecution to the extent of deposition and exile, some even
to the extent of death, as in the case of Servetus. See § 12, p. 59
sqq.
The modern progress of the principle of toleration and religious liberty goes hand in hand with the loosening of the bond of union between church and state.
§ 88. Church Visitation in Saxony.
Melanchthon: Articuli de quibus egerunt per visitatores in regione Saxoniae. Wittenb., 1527. Reprinted in the Corpus Reform., vol. XXVI. (1858), 9–28. The same in German with preface by Luther: Unterricht der Visitatoren an die Pfarrherrn im Kurfürstenthum zu Sachsen. Wittenb., 1628. In Walch, X. 1902, and in Corp. Reform., XXVI. 29–40. Also Luther’s Letters to Elector John, from the years 1525 to 1527, in De Wette, vol. III. 38 sqq.
Burkhardt: Gesch. der sächsischen Kirchen- und Schulvisitationen von 1524–45. Leipzig, 1879. Köstlin: M. L., II. 23–49.
In order to abolish ecclesiastical abuses, to
introduce reforms in doctrine, worship, and discipline, and to
establish Christian schools throughout the electorate of Saxony, Luther
proposed a general visitation of all the churches. This was properly
the work of bishops. But, as there were none in Saxony who favored the
Reformation, he repeatedly urged the Elector John, soon after he
succeeded his brother Frederick, to institute an episcopal visitation
of the churches in his territory, and to divide it into three or four
districts, each to be visited by two noblemen or magistrates. See his letters of Oct. 31, 1525, Nov. 30,
1525, Nov. 22, 1526, Feb. 5, 1527, Oct. 12, 1527. "Wollen die Alten ja nicht, mögen sie immer
zum Teufel hinfahren. Aber wo die Jugend versäumet und
unerzogen bleibt, da ist die Schuld der
Obrigkeit" (De
Wette, III. 136). In the same letter he says that the people live
"wie die
Säue: da ist keine Furcht Gottes, noch Zucht mehr, weit des
Papstes Bann ist abgegangen, und thut jedermann was er nur
will."
It was a dangerous step, and the entering wedge of a new caesaropapacy,—the rule of statecraft over priestcraft. But it seemed to be the only available help under the circumstances, and certainly served a very useful purpose. Luther had full confidence in the God-fearing Elector, that he would not abuse the authority thus temporarily conferred on him.
The Elector, after considerable delay, resolved upon the visitation in July, 1527, on the quasi-legal basis of the Diet of Speier, which a year before had temporarily suspended, but by no means abolished, the Edict of Worms. He directed Melanchthon to prepare a "formula of doctrine and rites" for the instruction of the visitors. Melanchthon elaborated in Latin, and more fully in German, a summary of the evangelical doctrines of faith and duty, which may be regarded as the first basis of the Augsburg Confession. He treats, in seventeen articles, of faith, the cross (affliction), prayer, the fruits of the Spirit, the magistrate, the fear of God, righteousness, judgment, the sacraments (Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Confession), the sign of the eucharist, penitence, marriage, prohibited cases, human traditions, Christian liberty, free-will, and the law. The order is not very logical, and differs somewhat in the German edition. The work was finished in December, 1527.
Luther wrote a popular preface and notes to the
German edition, and explained the object. He shows the importance of
church visitation, from the example of the apostles and the primary aim
of the episcopal office; for a bishop, as the term indicates, is an
overseer of the churches, and an archbishop is an overseer of the
bishops. But the bishops have become worldly lords, and neglect their
spiritual duties. Now, as the pure gospel has returned, or first begun,
we need a true episcopacy; and, as nobody has a proper authority or
divine command, we asked the Elector, as our divinely appointed ruler
( "Denn obwol S. K. F. Gnaden zu
lehren und geistlich regieren nicht befohlen ist, so sind sie doch
schuldig, als weltliche Obrigkeit, darob zu halten, dass nicht
Zwietracht, Rotten und Aufruhr sich unter den Unterthanen erheben, wie
auch der Kaiser Constantinus die Bischöfe gen Nicaea
fordert," etc.
Corp. Ref., XXVI. fol. 46.
Melanchthon wisely abstained from polemics, and
advised the preachers to attack sin and vice, but to let the pope and
the bishops alone. Luther was not pleased with this moderation, and
added the margin: "But they shall violently condemn popery with its
devotees, since it is condemned by God; for popery is the reign of
Antichrist, and, by instigation of the Devil, it terribly persecutes
the Christian church and God’s Word." See the note in full, l.c., fol.
85.
The Elector appointed Luther, Melanchthon, Jonas,
Spalatin, and Myconius, besides some prominent laymen, among the
visitors. They carried on their work in 1528 and 1529. They found the
churches in a most deplorable condition, which was inherited from the
times of the papacy, and aggravated by the abuse of the liberty of the
Reformation. Pastors and people had broken loose from all restraint,
churches and schools were in ruins, the ministers without income,
ignorant, indifferent, and demoralized. Some kept taverns, were
themselves drunkards, and led a scandalous life. The people, of course,
were no better. "The peasants," wrote Luther to Spalatin, "learn
nothing, know nothing, and abuse all their liberty. They have ceased to
pray, to confess, to commune, as if they were bare of all religion. As
they despised popery, so they now despise us. It is horrible to behold
the administration of the popish bishops." Letter of February, 1529, in De Wette, 1II.
424. Comp. also the prefaces to his Catechisms. It is characteristic of
the Ultramontane history of Janssen, that, while he dwells largely on
the lamentations of Luther over the wretched condition of the churches
in Saxony, and derives them from his doctrine of justification by faith
alone (vol. III. 67-69), he completely ignores
Luther’s Catechisms which were to cure these
evils.
The strong arm of the law was necessary. Order was measurably restored. The property of churches and convents was devoted to the endowment of parishes and schools, and stipends for theological students (1531). The appointment of ministers passed into the hands of the Elector. The visitations were repeated from time to time under the care of regular superintendents and consistories which formed the highest ecclesiastical Councils, under the sovereign as the supreme bishop.
In this way, the territorial state-church government was established and order restored in Saxony, Hesse, Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Mecklenburg, East Friesland, Silesia, and other Protestant sovereignties of Germany.
§ 89. Luther’s Catechisms. 1529.
I. Critical editions of Luther’s Catechisms in his Works, Erl. ed., vol. XXI. (contains the two catechisms and some other catechetical writings); by Mönckeberg (Hamburg, 1851, second ed. 1868); Schneider (Berlin, 1853, a reprint of the standard ed. of 1531 with a critical introduction); Theodos. Harnack (Stuttgart, 1856; a reprint of two editions of 1529 and 1539, and a table of the chief textual variations till 1842); Zezschwitz (Leipz. 1881); Calinich (Leipz. 1882). See titles in Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, I. 245. The Catechisms are also printed in the editions of the Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Church, and the Little (or Small) Catechism, with English translation, in Schaff’s Creeds, etc., vol. III. 74–92. The text in the Book of Concord is unreliable, and should be compared with the works mentioned.
II. Discussions on the history and merits of Luther’s Catech., by Köcher, Augusti, Veesenmeyer, Zezschwitz , and others, quoted by Schaff, l.c. 245. Add Köstlin: M. L., bk. VI. ch. IV. (II. 50–65).
The Catechisms of Luther are the richest fruit of the
Saxon church visitations. Intended as a remedy for the evils of
ignorance and irreligion, they have become symbolical standards of
doctrine and duty, and permanent institutions in the Lutheran Church.
The Little Catechism, which is his best, bears the stamp of his
religious genius, and is, next to his translation of the Bible, his
most useful and enduring work by which he continues a living teacher in
catechetical classes and Sunday schools as far as the Lutheran
confession extends. He here adapts the mysteries of the kingdom of
heaven to the capacity of children, and becomes himself a child with
children, a learner with the teacher, as he said, "I am a doctor and a
preacher, yet I am like a child who is taught the Catechism, and I read
and recite word by word in the morning the Ten Commandments, the
Articles of the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer, and
cheerfully remain a child and pupil of the Catechism." A great little
book, with as many thoughts as words, and every word sticking to the
heart as well as the memory. It is strong food for men, and milk for
babes. It appeals directly to the heart, and can be turned into prayer.
In the language of the great historian Leopold von Ranke, "it is as
childlike as it is profound, as comprehensible as it is unfathomable,
simple and sublime. Happy he whose soul was fed by it, who clings to
it! He possesses an imperishable comfort in every moment; under a thin
shell, a kernel of truth sufficient for the wisest of the wise." To this and other testimonies, may be added
that of Köstlin, II. 63: "Der Kleine Katechismus steht in
erster Reihe unter den Schriften des Reformators."
Catechetical instruction was (after the model of the Jewish synagogue) a regular institution of the Christian church from the beginning, as a preparation for membership. In the case of adult converts, it preceded baptism; in the case of baptized infants, it followed baptism, and culminated in the confirmation and the first communion. The oldest theological school, where Clement and the great Origen taught, grew out of the practical necessity of catechetical teaching. The chief things taught were the Creed (the Nicene in the Greek, the Apostles’ in the Latin Church) or what to believe, the Lord’s Prayer (Pater Noster) or how to pray, and the Ten Commandments or how to live. To these were added sometimes special chapters on the sacraments, the Athanasian Creed, the Te Deum, the Gloria in excelsis, the Ave Maria, Scripture verses, and lists of sins and virtues. Cyril’s Catechetical Lectures were a standard work in the Greek Church. Augustin wrote, at the request of a deacon, a famous book on catechising (De catechizandis rudibus), and a brief exposition of the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer (Enchiridion), which were intended for teachers, and show what was deemed necessary in the fifth century for the instruction of Christians. In the middle ages the monks Kero (720) and Notker (912), both of St. Gall, Otfrid of Weissenburg (870), and others prepared catechetical manuals or primers of the simplest kind. Otfrid’s Catechism contains (1) the Lord’s Prayer with an explanation; (2) the deadly sins; (3) the Apostles’ Creed; (4) the Athanasian Creed; (5) the Gloria. The anti-papal sects of the Albigenses, Waldenses, and Bohemian Brethren, paid special attention to catechetical instruction.
The first Protestant catechisms were prepared by
Lonicer (1523), Melanchthon (1524), Brentius (1527), Althamer, Lachmann
(1528), and later by Urbanus Rhegius (Rieger). Hartmann, Aelteste Katechetische
Denkmale,
Stuttgart, 1844. Jonas is probably the author of the
Laienbiblia, 1525 (republished by Schneider in 1853), and this
was probably the basis of "Cranmer’s Catechism." 1548.
See Schaff, Creeds, I. 655, note 2. Erl. ed., vol. XXII. 1-32. Comp. also
his Taufbüchlein verdeutscht, 1523, and reproduced 1526 (?), ibid.
XXII. 157 sqq. and 290 sqq.
He wrote two Catechisms, both in the German language. The "Great Catechism" is a continuous exposition, and not divided into questions and answers; moreover, it grew so much under his hands, that it became unsuitable for the instruction of the young, which he had in view from the beginning. Hence he prepared soon afterwards (in July, 1529) a short or little Catechism under the name Enchiridion. It is the ripe fruit of the larger work, and superseded it for practical use. The same relation exists between the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Westminster Assembly.
With his conservative instinct, Luther retained
the three essential parts of a catechism,—the
Decalogue, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. He called
the first the doctrine of all doctrines; the second, the history of all
histories; the third, the highest of all prayers. To these three chief
divisions he added, after the Catholic tradition and the example of the
Bohemian Catechism, an instruction on the sacraments of Baptism and the
Lord’s Supper, in two separate parts, making five in
all. He retained in the address of the Lord’s Prayer
the old German Vater unser (Pater Noster), and the translation "Deliver
us from evil" (a malo); but in his Bible he changed the former into
Unser Vater ( If German farmers in Pennsylvania are asked,
"What is the difference between the Lutherans and the Reformed?" the
reply is, "The one pray Vater unser, the other Unser
Vater."
The later editions of the Little Catechism (since
1564) contain a sixth part on "Confession and Absolution," or, "The
Power of the Keys," which is inserted either as Part V., between
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, or added as Part VI.,
or as an appendix. The precise authorship of the enlarged form or forms
(for they vary) of this part, with the questions, "What is the power of
the keys?" etc., is uncertain; but the substance of
it—viz. the questions on private or auricular
confession of sin to the minister, and absolution by the minister, as
given in the "Book of Concord"—date from Luther
himself, and appear first substantially in the third edition of 1531,
as introductory to the fifth part on the Lord’s
Supper. He made much account of private confession and absolution;
while the Calvinists abolished the same as a mischievous popish
invention, and retained only the public act. "True absolution," says
Luther, "or the power of the keys, instituted in the gospel by Christ,
affords comfort and support against sin and an evil conscience.
Confession or absolution shall by no means be abolished in the church,
but be retained, especially on account of weak and timid consciences,
and also on account of untutored youth, in order that they may be
examined and instructed in the Christian doctrine. But the enumeration
of sins should be free to every one, to enumerate, or not to enumerate
such as he wishes." Articuli Smalcald. P. III., cap.
8.
The Church of England holds a similar view on this subject. The Book of Common Prayer contains, besides two forms of public confession and absolution, a form of private confession and absolution. But the last is omitted in the liturgy of the Episcopal Church of the United States.
Besides these doctrinal sections, the Little Catechism, as edited by Luther in 1531 (partly, also, in the first edition of 1529) has three appendices of a devotional or liturgical character: viz., (1) A series of short family prayers; (2) a table of duties (Haustafel) for the members of a Christian house hold, consisting of Scripture passages; (3) a marriage manual (Traubüchlin), and (4) a baptismal manual (Taufbüchlin).
The first two appendices were retained in the "Book of Concord;" but the third and fourth, which are liturgical and ceremonial, were omitted because of the great diversity in different churches as to exorcism in baptism and the rite of marriage.
The Little Catechism was translated from the German original into the Latin (by Sauermann) and many other languages, even into the Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. It is asserted by Lutheran writers that no book, except the Bible, has had a wider circulation. Thirty-seven years after its appearance, Mathesius spoke of a circulation of over a hundred thousand copies. It was soon introduced into public schools, churches, and families. It became by common consent a symbolical book, and a sort of "layman’s Bible" for the German people.
Judged from the standpoint of the Reformed churches, the catechism of Luther, with all its excellences, has some serious defects. It gives the text of the Ten Commandments in an abridged form, and follows the wrong division of the Latin Church, which omits the Second Commandment altogether, and cuts the Tenth Commandment into two to make up the number. It allows only three questions and answers to the exposition of the creed,—on creation, redemption, and sanctification. It gives undue importance to the sacraments by making them co-ordinate parts with the three great divisions; and elevates private confession and absolution almost to the dignity of a third sacrament. It contains no instruction on the Bible, as the inspired record of Divine revelation and the rule of faith and practice. These defects are usually supplied in catechetical instruction by a number of preliminary or additional questions and answers.
§ 90. The Typical Catechisms of Protestantism.
In this connection we may anticipate a brief comparison between the most influential manuals of popular religious instruction which owe their origin to the Reformation, and have become institutions, retaining their authority and usefulness to this day.
These are Luther’s Little Catechism (1529), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the Anglican Catechism (1549, enlarged 1604, revised 1661), and the Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647). The first is the standard catechism of the Lutheran Church; the second, of the German and Dutch Reformed, and a few other Reformed churches (in Bohemia and Hungary); the third, of the Episcopal Church of England and her daughters in the British Colonies and the United States; the fourth, of the Presbyterian churches in Scotland, England, and America. They follow these various churches to all their missionary fields in heathen lands, and have been translated into many languages.
They are essentially agreed in the fundamental doctrines of catholic and evangelical religion. They teach the articles of the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer; that is, all that is necessary for a man to believe and to do in order to be saved. They thus exhibit the harmony of the chief branches of orthodox Protestant Christendom.
But they also differ, and reflect the peculiar
genius and charisma of these churches. The Lutheran Catechism is the
simplest, the most genial and childlike; the Heidelberg Catechism, the
fullest and the richest for a more mature age; the Anglican Catechism,
the shortest and most churchly, though rather meagre; the Westminster
Catechism, the clearest, precisest, and most logical. The first three
are addressed to the learner as a church-member, who answers the
questions from his present or prospective experience. The Westminster
Catechism is impersonal, and gives the answers in the form of a
theological definition embodying the question. The first two breathe
the affectionate heartiness and inwardness which are characteristic of
German piety; the other two reflect the sober and practical type of
English and Scotch piety. The Lutheran and Anglican Catechisms begin
with the Ten Commandments, and regard the law in its preparatory
mission as a schoolmaster leading to Christ. The other catechisms begin
with an exposition of the articles of faith, and proceed from faith to
the law as a rule of Christian life, which the Heidelberg Catechism
represents as an act of gratitude for the salvation obtained (following
in its order the Epistle to the Romans, from sin to redemption, and
from redemption to a holy life of gratitude). Luther adheres to the
Roman division of the Decalogue, and abridges it; the others give the
better division of the Jews and the Greek Church, with the full text.
The Lutheran and Anglican Catechisms assign to the sacraments an
independent place alongside of the Commandments, the Creed, and the
Lord’s Prayer; while the Heidelberg and Westminster
Catechisms incoporate them in the exposition of the articles of faith.
The former teach baptismal regeneration, and Luther also the corporeal
real presence, and private confession and absolution; the latter teach
the Calvinistic theory of the sacraments, and ignore private confession
and absolution. The Anglican Thirty-nine Articles, however, likewise
teach the Reformed view of the Lord’s Supper. The
Westminster Catechism departs from the catholic tradition by throwing
the Apostles’ Creed into an appendix, and substituting
for the historical order of revelation a new logical scheme; While all
the other catechisms make the Creed the basis of their, doctrinal
expositions. For a fuller comparison, see Schaff, Creeds
of Christendom, I. 543 sqq.
The difference is manifest in the opening questions and answers, which we give here in parallel columns: —
luther’s catechism
The First Commandment.
Thou shalt have no other gods.
What does this mean?
We should hear and love God, and trust in Him, above all things
The Second [Third] Commandment.
Thou shalt not take the name of thy God in vain.
What does this mean?
We should so fear and love God as not to curse, swear, conjure, lie, or deceive, by his name; but call upon it in every time of need, pray, praise, and give thanks.
The Third [Fourth] Commandment.
Thou shalt keep the holy Sabbath day.
What does this mean?
We should hear and love God as not to despise preaching and His Word, and willingly hear and learn it.
heidelberg catechism.
What is thy only comfort in life and in death?
That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto Him.
How many things are necessary for thee to know, that thou in this comfort mayest live abd die happily?
Three things: First, the greatness of my sin and misery. Secondly, how I am redeemed from all my sins and misery. Thirdly, how I am to be thankful to God for such redemption.
anglican catechism
What is your name?
N. or M.
Who gave you this name?
My Godfathers and Godmothers The American Episcopal Prayer book reads
instead: My Sponsors.
What did your godfathers and godmothers [sponsors] then for you?
They did promise and vow three things in my name. First, that I should renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh. Secondly, that I should believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith. And thirdly, that I should keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in them all the days of my life.
westminster catechism.
What is the chief end of man?
Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.
What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him?
The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him.
What do the Scriptures principally teach?
The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man.
What is God?
God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
CHAPTER VI.
PROPAGATION AND PERSECUTION OF PROTESTANTISM IN
GERMANY TILL 1530.
§ 91. Causes and Means of Progress.
The Reformation spread over Germany with the
spontaneous and irresistible impulse of a great historical movement
that struck its roots deep in the wants and necessities of the church.
The only propaganda of Luther was the word and the pen, but these he
used to the utmost of his time and strength. "There was no need of an
arrangement," says Ranke, "or of a concerted agreement, or of any
special mission. As at the first favor of the vernal sun the seed
sprouts from the ploughed field, so the new convictions, which were
prepared by all what men had experienced and heard, made their
appearance on the slightest occasion, wherever the German language was
spoken." Deutsche
Geschichte, etc.,
vol. II. 46 (6th ed.).
The chief causes of progress were the general
discontent with papal tyranny and corruption; the desire for light,
liberty, and peace of conscience; the thirst for the pure word of God.
The chief agencies were the German Bible, which spoke with Divine
authority to the reason and conscience, and overawed the human
authority of the pope; the German hymns, which sang the comforting
doctrines of grace into the hearts of the people; and the writings of
Luther, who discussed every question of the day with commanding ability
and abundant knowledge, assuring the faith of friends, and crushing the
opposition of foes. The force and fertility of his genius as a polemic
are amazing, and without a parallel among fathers, schoolmen, and
modern divines. He ruled like an absolute monarch in the realm of
German theology and religion; and, with the gospel for his shield and
weapon, he was always sure of victory. I "Selbstherrschender, gewaltiger ist wohl nie ein
Schriftsteller aufgetreten, in keiner Nation der Welt. Auch
dürfte kein anderer zu nennen sein, der die vollkommenste
Verständlichkeit und Popularität, gesunden,
treuherzigen Menschenverstand mit so vielechtem Geist, Schwung und
Genius vereinigt hätte. Er gab der Literatur den Charakter
den sie seitdem behalten, der Forschung, des Tiefsinns, der
Polemik." Ranke,
II. 56.
"Fesselnder, ergreifender und packender hat kein Deutscher geschrieben.
Dabei beherrschte er seine Muttersprache mit solcher Gewalt, dass er
sie zur Schriftsprache zu erheben vermochte." Fr. Kapp, Geschichte des deutschen
Buchhandels, vol.
I. p. 407.
What Luther did for the people, Melanchthon accomplished, in his gentle and moderate way, for scholars. In their united labors they were more than a match for all the learning, skill, and material resources of the champions of Rome.
No such progress of new ideas and principles had taken place since the first introduction of Christianity. No power of pope or emperor, no council or diet, could arrest it. The very obstacles were turned into helps. Had the Emperor and his brother favored the cause of progress, all Germany might have become nominally Lutheran. But it was better that Protestantism should succeed, in spite of their opposition, by its intellectual and moral force. A Protestant Constantine or Charlemagne would have extended the territory, but endangered the purity, of the Reformation.
Secular and selfish motives and passions were
mingled with the pure enthusiasm for the gospel. Violence, intrigues,
and gross injustice were sometimes employed in the suppression of the
old, and the introduction of the new, faith. Janssen dwells, we may say, exclusively on the
lower motives, and by omitting the higher spiritual motives and aims
utterly misrepresents the Reformers and the
Reformation.
§ 92. The Printing-Press and the Reformation.
The art of printing, which was one of the providential preparations for the Reformation, became the mightiest lever of Protestantism and modern culture.
The books before the Reformation were, for the most part, ponderous and costly folios and quartos in Latin, for limited circulation. The rarity of complete Bibles is shown by the fact that copies in the libraries were secured by a chain against theft. Now small and portable books and leaflets were printed in the vernacular for the millions.
The statistics of the book trade in the sixteenth
century reveal an extraordinary increase since Luther. In the year
1513, there appeared only ninety prints in Germany; in 1514, one
hundred and six; in 1515, one hundred and forty-five; in 1516, one
hundred and five; in 1517, eighty-one. They are mostly little
devotional tracts, flying newspapers, official notices, medical
prescriptions, stories, and satirical exposures of clerical and
monastic corruptions. In 1518 the number rose to one hundred and
forty-six; in 1519, to two hundred and fifty-two; in 1520, to five
hundred and seventy-one; in 1521, to five hundred and twenty-three; in
1522, to six hundred and seventy-seven; in 1523, to nine hundred and
forty-four. Thus the total number of prints in the five years preceding
the Reformation amounted only to five hundred and twenty-seven; in the
six years after the Reformation, it rose to three thousand one hundred
and thirteen. For these figures and several facts in this
paragraph I am indebted to the instructive work of Friedrich
Kapp, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels (published by the
"Börsenverein der deutschen Buchhändler,"
Leipzig, 1886), vol. I. 407 sq. The statistics of Ranke (II. 56) are
taken from Panzer’s Annalen der älteren
deutschen Literatur (1788 and 1802) and are superseded by the more recent and fuller
investigations of Weller, Kuczynski, and Kapp.
These works are distributed over fifty different cities of Germany. Of all the works printed between 1518 and 1523 no less than six hundred appeared in Wittenberg; the others mostly in Nürnberg, Leipzig, Cologne, Strassburg, Hagenau, Augsburg, Basel, Halberstadt, and Magdeburg. Luther created the book-trade in Northern Germany, and made the little town of Wittenberg one of the principal book-marts, and a successful rival of neighboring Leipzig as long as this remained Catholic. In the year 1523 more than four-fifths of all the books published were on the side of the Reformation, while only about twenty books were decidedly Roman Catholic. Erasmus, hitherto the undisputed monarch in the realm of letters, complained that the people would read and buy no other books than Luther’s. He prevailed upon Froben not to publish any more of them. "Here in Basel," he wrote to King Henry VIII., "nobody dares to print a word against Luther, but you may write as much as you please against the pope." Romish authors, as we learn from Cochlaeus and Wizel, could scarcely find a publisher, except at their own expense; and the Leipzig publishers complained that their books were unsalable.
The strongest impulse was given to the book trade
by Luther’s German New Testament. Of the first
edition, Sept. 22, 1522, five thousand copies were printed and sold
before December of the same year, at the high price of one guilder and
a half per copy (about twenty-five marks of the present value). Hans
Luft printed a hundred thousand copies on his press in Wittenberg. Adam
Petri in Basel published seven editions between 1522 and 1525; Thomas
Wolf of the same city, five editions between 1523 and 1525. Duke George
commanded that all copies should be delivered up at cost, but few were
returned. The precious little volume, which contains the wisdom of the
whole world, made its way with lightning speed into the palaces of
princes, the castles of knights, the convents of monks, the studies of
priests, the houses of citizens, the huts of peasants. Mechanics,
peasants, and women carried the New Testament in their pockets, and
dared to dispute with priests and doctors of theology about the
gospel. This was the complaint of Cochlaeus, see p.
350. Luther called him Kochlöffel and Rotzlöffel (cochlear =
spoon).
As there was no copyright at that time, the works
of the Reformers were multiplied by reprints in Nürnberg,
Augsburg, Strassburg, Basel. Republication was considered a legitimate
and honorable business. Luther complained, not of the business itself,
but of the reckless and scandalous character of many reprints of his
books, which were so full of blunders that he could hardly recognize
them. He called such printers thieves and highway
robbers, and their work Bubenstück, den gemeinen Mann zu
betrügen"(September, 1525). Kapp (I. 318) mentions that the electors of
Saxony from 1571-1670 received no less than a hundred and ninety-two
"most humble" (alleruntherthänigste) dedications from various authors, and
that the magistrate of Zürich received thirty-eight from
1670-1685.
But, while the progressive Reformation gave wings
to the printing-press, the conservative re-action matured gradually a
system of restriction, which, under the name of censorship and under
the direction of book-censors, assumed the control of the publishing
business with authority to prevent or suppress the publication and sale
of books, pamphlets, and newspapers hostile to the prevailing
religious, moral, or political sentiments. On the history of the book censorship
(Büchercensur) and press persecutions, compare the
ninth and tenth chapters of Kapp, I. 522 sqq.
The burning of obnoxious books by public authority of church or state is indeed as old as the book-trade. A work of Protagoras, in which he doubted the existence of the Greek gods, was burned at the stake in Athens about twenty years after the death of Pericles. The Emperor Augustus subjected slanderous publications (libelli famosi) to legal prosecution and destruction by fire. Christian emperors employed their authority against heathen, heretical, and infidel books. Constantine the Great, backed by the Council of Nicaea, issued an edict against the writings of Porphyry and Arius; Accadius, against the books of the Eunomians (398); Theodosius, against the books of the Nestorians (435). Justinian commanded the destruction of sundry obnoxious works, and forbade their re-issue on pain of losing the right arm (536). The oecumenical synod of 680 at Constantinople burned the books which it had condemned, including the letters of the Monothelitic Pope Honorius.
Papal Rome inherited this practice, and improved upon it. Leo I. caused a large number of Manichaean books to be burnt (446). The popes claimed the right and duty to superintend the religious and moral literature of Christendom. They transferred the right in the thirteenth century to the universities, but they found little to do until the art of printing facilitated the publication of books. The Council of Constance condemned the books of Wiclif and Hus, and ordered the bishops to burn all the copies they could seize (1415).
The invention of the printing-press (c. 1450)
called forth sharper measures in the very city where the inventor, John
Gutenberg, lived and died (1400–1467). It gave rise
also to the preventive policy of book-censorship which still exists in
some despotic countries of Europe. Berthold, Archbishop of Mainz, took
the lead in the restriction of the press. He prohibited, Jan. 10, 1486,
the sale of all unauthorized German translations of Greek and Latin
works, on the plea of the inefficiency of the German language, but with
a hostile aim at the German Bible. In the same year Pope Innocent VIII.
issued a bull against the printers of bad books. The infamous Pope
Alexander VI. prohibited in 1498, on pain of excommunication, the
printing and reading of heretical books; and in a bull of June 1, 1501,
which was aimed chiefly against Germany, he subjected all kinds of
literary publications to episcopal supervision and censorship, and
required the four archbishops of Cöln, Mainz, Trier, and
Magdeburg, or their officials, carefully to examine all manuscripts
before giving permission to print them. He also ordered that books
already printed should be examined, and burnt if they contained any
thing contrary to the Catholic religion. This bull forms the basis of
all subsequent prohibitions and restrictions of the press by papal,
imperial, or other authority. The bull is not given in the Bullarium,
but by Raynaldus ad a. 1501, No. 36, Zaccaria, and Reusch (I.
54), in part also by Kapp (l.c. p. 530).
Leo X., who personally cared more for heathen art
than Christian literature, went further, and prohibited, in a bull of
March 3, 1515, the publication of any book in Rome without the
imprimatur of the magister sacri palatii (the book-censor), and in
other states and dioceses without the imprimatur of the bishop or the
inquisitor of heretical depravity. The bull "Inter solicitudines" was
promulgated in the fifth Lateran Council. Labbe, XIV. 257, and Reusch,
I. 55 sq. The bull "Exurge, Domine," is printed in
full, p. 235 sqq.
Thus, with the freedom of conscience, was born the
freedom of the press. But it had to pass through a severe ordeal, even
in Protestant countries, and was constantly checked by Roman
authorities as far as their power extended. The German Empire, by the
Edict of Worms, made itself an ally of the pope against free thought
and free press, and continued so until it died of old age in 1806. Kapp, l.c., p. 536 sqq., shows that the
Edict of Worms, drawn up by the papal legate Aleander, is the beginning
of the German book-censorship, and not, as usually supposed, the recess
of the Nürnberg Diet of 1524. "Wie Rom," he says
(539), "die Wiege der Büchercensur für die ganze
Welt, so ist Worms ihre Geburtsstätte für
Deutschland." The
restriction of the press, however, was begun in Germany, as we have
seen, already in 1486, by Elector Berthold of Mainz. "Derselbe Luther," says Kapp, p. 552, "welcher das Papstthum
für noch lange nicht genug zerscholten, zerschrieben,
zersungen, zerdichtet Und zermalet hielt, rief schon 1525 die Censur
für seinen nunmehrigen Standpunkt zur
Hilfe." He refers
to his attempt to secure a prohibition of Carlstadt’s
writings in Saxony. Fr. Heinrich Reusch (old catholic Prof. at
Bonn): Der Index der verbotenen Bücher,
Bonn, 1883-85, 2 vols. Of older
works we mention, Fr. Zaccaria, Storia polemica delle proibizioni
de’ libri, Rom., 1777; and Jos. Mendham, The Literary Policy of
the Church of Rome exhibited in an account of her damnatory Catalogues
or indexes, both prohibitory and expurgatory, London, 1826, 3d ed.
1844.
§ 93. Protestantism in Saxony.
H. G. Hasse: Meissnisch-Albertinisch-Sächsische Kirchengesch. Leipz. 1847, 2 parts. Fr. Seifert: Die Reformation in Leipzig, Leipz. 1881. G. Lechler: Die Vorgeschichte der Reform. Leipzigs, 1885. See also the literary references in Köstlin, II. 426 and 672.
Electoral Saxony was the first conquest of the Reformation. Wittenberg was the centre of the whole movement, with Luther as the general in chief, Melanchthon, Jonas, Bugenhagen, as his aids. The gradual growth of Lutheranism in this land of its birth is identical with the early history of the Reformation, and has been traced already.
In close connection with the Electorate is the
Duchy of Saxony, and may here be considered, although it followed the
movement much later. The Duchy included the important cities of Dresden
(the residence of the present kingdom of Saxony) and Leipzig with its
famous university. Duke George kept the Reformation back by force
during his long reign from 1500 to 1539. He hated the papal extortions,
and advocated a reform of discipline by a council, but had no sympathy
whatever with Luther. He took a dislike to him at the disputation in
Leipzig, forbade his Bible, issued a rival version of the New Testament
by Emser, sent all the Lutherans out of the land, and kept a close
watch on the booksellers. One of them, Johann Herrgott, was executed in
Leipzig, 1527 (not 1524) for selling Lutheran books, or rather for
complicity with the Peasants’ War, and for agrarian
socialistic doctrines. See A. Kirchhoff, Johann Herrgott,
Buchführer von Nürnberg, und sein tragisches
Ende, 1527, and
Kapp, l.c., I. 438 sq. and 594. After George’s death Luther
said: "I would rather that he lived and be converted now he has gone
into the eternal fire [!], if the gospel is true." Köstlin,
II. 424.
George made provision for the perpetuation of Romanism in his dominion but his sons died one after another. His brother and heir, Heinrich the Pious, was a Lutheran (as was his wife). Though old and weak, he introduced the Reformation by means of a church visitation after the Wittenberg model and with Wittenberg aid. The Elector of Saxony, Luther, Melanchthon, Jonas, and Cruciger were present at the inaugural festivities in Leipzig, May, 1539. Luther had the satisfaction of preaching at Pentecost before an immense audience in the city, where twenty years before he had disputed with Eck, and provoked the wrath of Duke George. Yet he was by no means quite pleased with the new state of things, and complained bitterly of the concealed malice of the semi-popish clergy, and the overbearing and avaricious conduct of the nobles and courtiers.
Nevertheless, the change was general and permanent. Leipzig became the chief Lutheran university, and the center of the Protestant book-trade, and remains so to this day. Joachim Camerarius (Kammermeister), an intimate friend and correspondent of Melanchthon, labored there as professor from 1541–1546 for the prosperity of the university, and for the promotion of classical learning and evangelical piety.
We briefly allude to the subsequent changes. Moritz, the son and heir of Heinrich, was a shrewd politician, a master in the art of dissimulation, and a double traitor, who from selfish motives in turn first ruined and then saved the cause of the Reformation. He professed the Lutheran faith, but betrayed his allies by aiding the Emperor in the Smalcaldian war for the price of the Electoral dignity of his cousin (1547); a few years later be betrayed the Emperor (1552), and thereby prepared the way for the treaty of Passau and the peace of Augsburg, which secured temporary rest to the Lutherans (1555).
His next successors, Augustus I. (his brother, 1553–1586). Christian I. (1586–1591), and Christian II. (1591–1611), were intolerant Lutherans, and suppressed Crypto-Calvinism and every other creed. Frederick Augustus I. (1694–1733) sold the faith of his ancestors for the crown of Poland. Since that time the rulers of Saxony have been Roman Catholics, while the people remained Lutheran, but gradually grew more liberal than their ancestors. Freedom of worship was granted to the Roman Church in 1807, to the German Reformed in 1818, and more recently (since 1866) to other communions.
§ 94. The Reformation in Nürnberg.
Priem: Geschichte von Nürnberg, 1874. F Roth: Die Einführung der Reformation in Nürnberg, 1517–28, Würzburg, 1885 (pp. 271).
The imperial cities (Reichsstädte) of the old German Empire, such as Nürnberg, Augsburg, Frankfurt, Strassburg, enjoyed a larger measure of liberty than other cities. They had the sovereignty over their territory, with a constitutional government, and seat and vote in the Diet (Reichstag). They were the centres of intelligence, wealth, and influence. For this reason the Reformation made from the beginning rapid progress in them, though not without commotion and opposition.
Nürnberg (Nuremberg), the most
picturesque mediaeval city of Germany, was at that time the metropolis
of German commerce, politics, letters, and art, and of an unusual
constellation of distinguished men, most of whom sympathized with
Erasmus and Luther. Pirkheimer, the Maecenas of Nürnberg
(1475–1530), prepared the way, although he afterwards
withdrew, like his friend Erasmus and other humanists. See § 74, p. 434
sqq.
Lazarus Spengler (1479–1534), secretary of the magistrate, an admirer of Staupitz, wrote an apology of Luther, 1519, and a popular hymn on justification by faith ("Durch Adam’s Fall ist ganz verderbt"), helped to found an evangelical college, and left a confession of faith in his testament which Luther published with a preface, 1535. Joachim Camerarius, on the recommendation of Melanchthon, was called to the new college in 1526, as professor of history and Greek literature, and remained there till 1535, when he was called to the University of Tübingen, and afterwards (1541) to Leipzig.
Andreas Osiander (1498–1552), an able and learned, but opinionated and quarrelsome theologian, preached in St. Lorenz against the Roman Antichrist after 1522, fought as violently against Zwinglianism, married in 1525, attended the colloquy at Marburg, 1529, and the convent at Smalcald, 1537. He published a mechanical Gospel Harmony (1537), at the request of Archbishop Cranmer, who had married his niece (1532). He left Nürnberg in 1549, and became professor of theology at the newly founded university of Königsberg. There he stirred up a bitter theological controversy with the Wittenberg divines by his mystical doctrine of an effective and progressive justification by the indwelling of Christ (1551).
At Nürnberg several Diets were held during the Reformation period, and a temporary peace was concluded between Protestants and Roman Catholics in 1532.
§ 95. The Reformation in Strassburg. Martin Bucer.
Joh. W. Baum: Capito und Butzer, Elberfeld, 1860 (partly from MSS. See a complete chronological list of Bucer’s works, pp. 577–611). W. Krafft: art. "Butzer" in Herzog’s Encykl.2, vol. III. 35–46 (abridged in Schaff-Herzog). Tim. W. Röhrich: Gesch. der Reformation in Elsass und besonders in Strassburg, Strassb. 1830–32, 3 vols. A. Erichson: L’Église française de Strasbourg au seizième siècle d’après des monuments inédits. Stasb. 1885. Max Lenz: Briefwechsel Landgraf Philipps mit Bucer, Leipzig, 1880 and 1887, 2 vols. Ad. Baum: Magistrat und Reformation in Strassburg. Strassb. 1887 (212 pages).
Strassburg, the capital of the Alsace, celebrated for its Gothic cathedral, university, and libraries, had been long before the Reformation the scene of the mystic revival preacher Tauler and the Friends of God. It was a thoroughly German city before Louis XIV. incorporated it with France (1681), and was re-conquered by Germany in 1870.
The Reformation began there in 1523. Zell, Bucer,
Capito (Köpfel), Hedio (Heil), and for a few years Calvin
also (1538 to 1541), labored there with great success. The magistrate
abolished the mass, 1528, and favored the Protestant cause under the
lead of Jacob Sturm, an enlightened patriot, who represented the city
in all important transactions at home, in the Diet, and in conferences
with the Romanists, till his death (1553). He urged the establishment
of a Christian college, where classical learning and evangelical piety
should be cultivated. His namesake, Johann Sturm, an eminent pedagogue,
was called from Paris to preside over this college (1537), which grew
into an academy, and ultimately into a university. Both were moderate
men, and agreed with Capito and Bucer. On Jacob Sturm see the monograph of H.
Baumgarten, Strassburg. 1876. Of John Sturm (who died 1589, in his
eighty-second year), there are several biographies, by C. Schmidt (in
French, 1855), Rieth (1864), Kückelhahn (1872), and Zaar
(1872).
The chief reformer of Strassburg was Martin Bucer
(1491–1552). Butzer in German, Bucerus in
Latin.
Here he labored as minister for twenty-five years, and had a hand in many important movements connected with the Reformation. He attended the colloquy at Marburg (1529); wrote, with Capito, the Confessio Tetrapolitana (1530); brought about an artificial and short-lived armistice between Luther and Zwingli by the Wittenberg Concordia (1536); connived, unfortunately, at the bigamy of Philip of Hesse; and took a leading part, with Melanchthon, in the unsuccessful reformation of Archbishop Herrmann of Cologne (1542). Serious political troubles, and his resistance to the semi-popish Interim, made his stay in Strassburg dangerous, and at last impossible. Melanchthon in Wittenberg, Myconius in Basel, and Calvin in Geneva, offered him an asylum; but be accepted, with his younger colleague Fagius, a call of Cranmer to England (1549). He aided him in his reforms; was highly esteemed by the archbisbop and King Edward VI., and ended his labors as professor of theology in Cambridge. His bones were exhumed in the reign of Bloody Mary (1556), but his memory was honorably restored by Queen Elizabeth (1560).
Bucer figures largely in the history of his age as
the third (next to Luther and Melanchthon) among the Reformers of
Germany, as a learned theologian and diplomatist, and especially as a
unionist and peacemaker between the Lutherans and Zwinglians. He forms
also a connecting link between Germany and England, and exerted some
influence in framing the Anglican standards of doctrine and worship.
His motto was: "We believe in Christ, not in the church." "Wir sind Christgläubig, nicht
kirchgläubig."
He impressed his character upon the church of Strassburg, which occupied a middle ground between Wittenberg and Zürich, and gave shelter to Calvin and the Reformed refugees of France. Strict Lutheranism triumphed for a period, but his irenical catholicity revived in the practical pietism of Spener, who was likewise an Alsacian. In recent times the Strassburg professors, under the lead of Dr. Reuss, mediated between the Protestant theology of Germany and that of France, in both languages, and furnished the best edition of the works of John Calvin.
§ 96. The Reformation in North Germany.
In Magdeburg the doctrines of Luther were preached in
1522 by Melchior Mirisch, an Augustinian prior, who had studied at
Wittenberg. The magistrate shook off the authority of Archbishop
Albrecht, invited Luther to preach in 1524, and secured the services of
his friend Nicolaus von Amsdorf, who became superintendent, and
introduced the, necessary changes. During the Interim troubles the city
was a stronghold of the Lutheran party headed by Flacius, and laid
under the imperial ban (1548). In the Thirty Years’
War it was burnt by Tilly (1631), but rose anew from destruction. Seckendorf, I. 246. Wolter, Gesch. der Stadt
Magdeburg (1845);
Hoffmann, Chronik der Stadt Magdeb. (1850, 3 vols.); Rathmann, Gesch.
Magdeb.;
Preger, Matth. Flacius Illyricus und seine Zeit (Erlangen, 1859-1861).
In Magdeburg appeared the first Protestant church history, 1559–1574, in thirteen folio volumes, edited by Flacius, under the title "The Magdeburg Centuries,"—a work of colossal industry, but utilizing history for sectarian purposes against popery. It called forth the Annales of Baronius in the opposite interest.
Breslau and Silesia were reformed chiefly by John
Hess, who studied at Wittenberg, 1519, a friend of Luther and
Melanchthon. He held a successful disputation in Breslau in defense of
the Protestant doctrines, 1524. Of this disputation Luther reported to
Spalatin, May 11, 1524 (De Wette, II. 511): "Vratislaviæ
disputatio Joannis Hess processit feliciter, frustra resistentibus tot
legatis regum et technis episcopi."
Kaspar Schwenkfeld von Ossig
(1490–1561), a nobleman in the service of the Duke
Frederick II. of Liegnitz, was one of the earliest promoters of the
Reformation in Silesia, but fell out with Luther in the eucharistic
controversy (1524). He had peculiar views on the sacraments, similar to
those of the Quakers. He also taught that the flesh of Christ was
deified. He founded a new sect, which was persecuted in Germany, but is
perpetuated among the Schwenkfeldian congregations in Eastern
Pennsylvania. Professor Hartranft, D. D., of Hartford, Conn.,
a descendant of the Pennsylvania Schwenkfelders, has investigated the
Schwenkfeld literature at Breslau, and issued a prospectus for its
publication (1887).
Among the later leaders of the Protestant cause in
Breslau must be mentioned Crato von Crafftheim (d. 1585), who studied
at Wittenberg six years as an inmate of Luther’s
household, and became an eminent physician of the Emperor Maximilian
II. His younger friend, Zacharias Ursinus (d. 1583), is one of the two
authors of the Heidelberg Catechism. Crato belonged to the
Melanchthonian school, in distinction from the rigid Lutheranism which
triumphed in the Formula of Concord. Köstlin, biography of Hess in the
"Zeitschrift des schlesischen Geschichtsvereins," vol. VI.
Gilett, Crato von Crafftheim und seine Freunde, Frankfurt-a.-M. 1860, 2 parts. A very
learned work. To Ursinus we shall return in the history of the
Reformation in the Palatinate. In the cities of the Hanseatic League
the Reformation was introduced at an early period.
Bremen accepted Protestantism in November, 1522,
by calling Heinrich Moller, better known as Heinrich von
Zütphen (1468–1524), to the parish of
Ansgari, and afterwards two other Protestant preachers. Moller had
studied at Wittenberg, 1515, and taken a degree in 1521 under
Melanchthon. He was prior of an Augustinian convent at Dort, and
preached there and in Antwerp the doctrines of the Reformation, but had
to flee for his life. He followed an invitation to preach in Ditmar,
but met with opposition, and was burnt to death by a fanatical and
drunken mob excited by the monks. Luther published an account of his
death, and dedicated it to the Christians in Bremen, with an exposition
of the tenth Psalm. He rejoiced in the return of the spirit of
martyrdom, which, he says, "is horrible to behold before the world, but
precious in the sight of God." Vom Bruder Heinrich in Ditmar
verbrannt,
Wittenberg, 1525, in the Erl. ed. XXVI. 313-337; in Walch, XXI. 94 sqq.
Comp. Paul Crocius, Das grosse Martyrbuch, Bremen, 1682. Klaus Harms,
Heinrich von
Zütphen, in Piper’s "Evang. Kalender,"
1852.
In 1527 all the churches of Bremen were in charge of Protestant pastors, and afterwards divided between the Lutheran and Reformed Confessions. The convents were turned into schools and hospitals.
Hamburg, which shares with Bremen the supremacy in
the North German and maritime commerce, followed in 1523. Five years
later Dr. Bugenhagen, called Pomeranus (1485–1558),
was called from Wittenberg to superintend the changes. This Reformer,
Luther’s faithful friend and pastor, had a special
gift of government, and was the principal organizer of the Lutheran
churches in Northern Germany and Denmark. For this purpose he labored
in the cities of Braunschweig (1528), Hamburg (1529), Lübeck
(1530–1532), in his native Pomerania (1534), and in
Denmark, where he spent nearly five years (1537–1542).
His church constitutions were models. Printed in Richter, Die evang.
Kirchenordnungen,
vol. I. C. Bertheau, Bugenhagen’s Kirchenordnung
für die Stadt Hamburg vom J. 1529, 1885. L. Hänselmann,
B.’s Kirchenordnung f. d. Stadt
Braunschweig,
1885. Frantz, Die evangelische Kirchenverfassung in den deutschen
Städten des 16. Jahrh., Halle, 1876. Vogt, Johannes Bugenhagen
Pomeranus,
Elberfeld, 1867. The year 1885, the fourth centennial of
Bugenhagen’s birth, called out several popular
sketches of his life by Knauth, Petrich, Zitzlaff, and Hering (1888).
See also O. Vogt, Bugenhagen’s
Briefwechsel,
Stettin, 1888.
Lübeck, a rich commercial city, and capital of the Hanseatic League, expelled the first Lutheran preachers, but recalled them, and removed the priests in 1529. Bugenhagen completed the work.
In Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Duke Ernst the Confessor favored the new doctrines in 1527, and committed the prosecution of the work to Urbanus Rhegius, whom he met at the Diet of Augsburg, 1530.
Rhegius So he spells his name (Rieger in German), not
Regius (König).
He now entered upon his more important and permanent labors as general superintendent of Lüneberg, and took the leading part in the Reformation of Celle, Hannover, Minden, Soest, Lemgo, and other places; but he gives a doleful description of the moral condition. He attended the colloquy at Hagenau, and died soon after his return, May 27, 1541.
He wrote two catechisms and several devotional
books. In his earlier career he was vain, changeable, and factious. He
lacked originality, but had the talent of utilizing and popularizing
the new ideas of others. Luther gives him the testimony: "He hated not
only the popish abominations, but also all sectaries; he sincerely
loved the pure word, and handled it with all diligence and
faithfulness, as his writings abundantly show." Rhegius, Opera latine edita, Norimb.
1561; Deutsche Bücher und Schriften, Nürnb. 1562, and again
Frankf. 1577. Döllinger, Die Reform. II. 58 sqq. Uhlhorn,
Urbanus
Rhegius,
Elberfeld, 1862, and his sketch in Herzog2, XIII. 147-155.
The Dukes of Mecklenburg, Heinrich and Albrecht, applied to Luther in 1524 for "evangelists," and Luther sent them two Augustinian monks. Heinrich favored the Reformation, but very cautiously. The university of Rostock, founded 1419, became at a later period a school of strict Lutheran orthodoxy.
§ 97. Protestantism in Augsburg and South Germany.
Augsburg, first known twelve years before Christ as a
Roman colony (Augusta Vindelicorum), and during the middle ages an
imperial city (since 1276), the seat of a bishop, the chief emporium
for the trade of Northern Europe with the Mediterranean and the East,
and the home of princely merchants and bankers (the Fuggers and
Welsers), figures prominently in the early history of the Reformation,
and gave the name to the standard confession of the Lutheran Church in
1530, and to the treaty of peace in 1555. Friedrich Roth, Augsburgs
Reformationsgeschichte, 1517-1527. München, 1881.
But the Zwinglians, under the lead of Michael Keller, gradually gained the upper hand among influential men. Zwingli took advantage of the situation in his famous letter to Alber, Nov. 16, 1524, in which he first fully developed his theory. Even Rhegius, who had written before against Carstadt (sic) and Zwingli, became a Zwinglian, though only for a short period.
The Anabaptist leaders, Hubmaier, Denck, Hetzer,
Hut, likewise appeared in Augsburg, and gathered a congregation of
eleven hundred members. They held a general synod in 1527. They
baptized by immersion. Rhegius stirred up the magistrate against them:
the leaders were imprisoned, and some executed. See the description of the congregation of the
"Apostolic Brethren," as the Anabaptists called themselves, in Ludwig
Keller, Ein Apostel der Wiedertäufer (i.e., Hans Denck), Leipzig, 1882, ch.
VI. 94-119.
The confusion and strife among the Protestants strengthened the Roman party. The people did not know what to believe, and the magistrate hesitated. The moral condition of the city, as described by Rhegius, Musculus, and other preachers, was deplorable, and worse than under the papal rule. During the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, the Emperor prohibited all Protestant preaching in public: the magistrate made no objection, and dismissed the preachers. But the Augsburg Confession left a permanent impression on the place.
The South-German cities of Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau were, like Augsburg, influenced by Zwingli as well as Luther, and united with Strassburg in the Tetrapolitan Confession, which Bucer and Capito prepared in great haste during the Diet of Augsburg as a document of union between the two wings of Protestantism. It failed to meet the approval of the Diet, and was, like Zwingli’s Confession, not even allowed to be read; but Bucer adhered to it to the end.
The most important and permanent conquest which
the Reformation made in South Germany was that of the duchy (now
kingdom) of Württemberg under Duke Ulrich, through the
labors of Brenz, Blaurer, and Schnepf, after 1534. The University of
Tübingen (founded 1477) became one of the most fruitful
nurseries of Protestant theology, in all its phases, from the strictest
orthodoxy to the most radical criticism. Römer, Kirchliche Geschichte
Württembergs, Stuttg. 1848. Keim, Schwäbische
Reformationsgeschichte. Tübingen, 1855. Schneider, Württemb.
Reformationsgesch. Stuttgart, 1887.
§ 98. The Reformation in Hesse, and the Synod of Homberg. Philip of Hesse, and Lambert of Avignon.
I. Lambertus Avenionensis: Paradoxa quae Fr. L. A. apud sanctam Hessorum Synodum Hombergi congregatam pro Ecclesiarum Reformatione e Dei Verbo disputanda et definienda proposuit, Erphordiae, 1527. (Reprinted in Sculteti Annales, p. 68; in Hardt, Hist. Lit. Ref. V. 98; an extract in Henke’s N. Kirchengesch., I. 101 sqq.) N. L. Richter: Die Kirchenordnungen des 16ten Jahrh., Weimar, 1846, vol. I. 56–69 (the Homberg Constitution). C. A. Credner: Philipp des Grossmüthigen hessische Kirchenreformations-Ordnung. Aus schriftlichen Quellen herausgegeben, übersetzt, und mit Rücksicht auf die Gegenwart bevorwortet, Giessen, 1852 (123 pp.)
II. F. W. Hassencamp: Hessische Kirchengesch. seit dem Zeitalter der Reformation, Marburg, 1852 and 1855. W. Kolbe: Die Einführung der Reformation in Marburg, Marburg, 1871. H. L. J. Heppe: Kirchengesch. beider Hessen, Marburg, 1876. (He wrote several other works on the church history of Hesse and of the Reformation generally, in the interest of Melanchthonianism and of the Reformed Church.) E, L. Henke: Neuere Kirchengesch. (ed. by Gass, Halle, 1874), I. 98–109. Mejer: Homberger Synode, in Herzog2, VI. 268 sqq. Köstlin: M. L., II. 48 sqq.
III. Works on Philip of Hesse by Rommel (Philipp der Grossmüthige, Landgraf von Hessen, Giessen, 1830, 3 vols.), and Wille (Philipp der Grossmüthige und die Restitution Herzog Ulrichs von Würtemberg, Tübingen, 1882). Max Lenz: Zwingli und Landgraf Philip, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte," 1879; and Briefwechsel Landgraf Philipps mit Bucer, Leipz. 1880, vol. 2d, 1887 (important for the political and ecclesiastical history of Germany between 1541 and 1547). The history of Philip is interwoven in Ranke’s Geschichte (vols. I. to VI.), and in Janssen’s Geschichte (vol. III.). Against Janssen is directed G. Bossert: Württemberg und Ianssen, Halle, 1884, 2 parts.
IV. Biographies of Lambert of Avignon by Baum (Strassb. 1840), Hassencamp (Elberfeld, 1860), Ruffet (Paris, 1873), and a sketch by Wagenmann in Herzog2, VIII. 371 sqq. (1881). The writings of Lambert of Avignon, mostly Theses and Commentaries, are very scarce, and have never been collected. His letters (some of them begging letters to the Elector of Saxony and Spalatin) are published by Herminjard in Correspondance des Réformateurs, vol. I. 112, 114, 118, 123, 131, 138, 142, 144, 146, 328, 344, 347, 371; vol. II. 239. Luther refers to him in several letters to Spalatin (see below).
Hesse or Hessia, in Middle Germany, was Christianized by St. Boniface in the eighth century, and subject to the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Mainz. It numbered in the sixteenth century fifty convents, and more than a thousand monks and nuns.
Hesse became, next to Saxony, the chief theater of the Reformation in its early history; and its chief patron among the princes, next to Elector John, was Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, surnamed the "Magnanimous" (1504–1567). He figures prominently in the political history of Germany from 1525, when he aided in the suppression of the Peasants’ War, till 1547, when he was defeated by the Emperor in the Smalcaldian War, and kept a prisoner for five years (1547–1552). The last years of his life were quiet and conciliatory, but his moral force was broken by his misconduct and the failure of his political combinations.
His connection with the Reformation presents two
different aspects, which make it difficult to decide whether it was
more beneficial or more injurious. He made the acquaintance of Luther
at the Diet of Worms (1521), and asked and received instruction from
Melanchthon, whom be met at Heidelberg (1524). He declared in 1525,
that he would rather lose body and life, land and people, than depart
from the word of God, and urged the ministers to preach it in its
purity. Ranke, II. 121. See pp. 308 and 481;
Seckendorf’s Excursus on the bigamy, III. 277-281;
Ranke, IV. 186 sqq.; Köstlin, Bk. VIII., ch. 1. (II. 533
sqq.); and Janssen III. 57, 439 sqq. This nasty subject lies beyond our
period, but may be disposed of here in a few remarks. Philip was a man
of powerful sensuality, and married very young a daughter of Duke
George of Saxony. As she was unattractive, and gave him little
satisfaction, he indulged freely and long before his bigamy in his
carnal passions to the injury of his health; and for this reason his
conscience would not allow him to partake of the holy communion more
than once in fifteen years (from 1525 to 1540), as he confessed himself
in a letter to Luther, April 5, 1540 (Lenz, Briefwechsel
Philipp’s mit Bucer, I. 361, and Ranke, IV. 186, note). If
Fräulein Margaretha von der Sale, who captivated his
passions, had consented to become his mistress, he would not have
fallen upon the extraordinary device of bigamy. The worst feature in
this shameful affair is the weak connivance of the Reformers, which
furnished the Romanists a keen weapon of attack. See Janssen. But
Protestantism is no more responsible for the sins of Philip of Hesse,
than Romanism is for the sins of Louis XIV.
The Landgrave was the first prince who took
advantage of the recess of the Diet of Speier, Aug. 27, 1526, and
construed it into a legal permission for the introduction of the
Reformation into his own territory. For this purpose he convened a
synod in the little Hessian town of Homberg. In Kurhessen (which in 1866 was annexed to
Prussia). Homberg must not be confounded with the better-known
watering-place Homburg near Frankfort on the Main.
The leading spirit of this synod was Francis
Lambert of Avignon (1487–1530), the first French monk
converted to Protestantism and one of the secondary reformers. He had
been formerly a distinguished and efficient traveling preacher of the
Franciscan order in the South of France. But he could find no peace in
severe ascetic exercises; and, when he became acquainted with some
tracts of Luther in a French translation, he took advantage of a
commission of his convent to deliver letters to a superior of his order
in Germany, and left his native land never to return. He traveled on a
mule through Geneva, Bern, Zürich, Basel, Eisenach, to
Wittenberg, as a seeker after light on the great question of the day.
He was half converted by Zwingli in a public disputation (July, 1522),
and more fully by Luther in Wittenberg, where he arrived in January,
1523. Luther, who was often deceived by unworthy ex-priests and
ex-monks, distrusted him at first, but became convinced of his
integrity, and aided him. He mentions him under the assumed name of
Johannes Serranus in letters to Spalatin, Dec. 20 and 26, 1522, and
Jan. 12 and 23, 1523 (in De Wette, II. 263, 272, 299, 302). In the last
letter, after he had made his personal acquaintance, he writes,
"AdestJohannes ille Serranus, vero nomine Franciscus Lambertus
… De integritate viri nulla est dubitatio: testes sunt
apud nos, qui illum et in Francia et in Basilea audierunt.
… Mihi per omnia placet vir, et satis spectatus mihi
est ... ut dignus sit quem in exilio paululum feramus et
juvemus." Then he
asks Spalatin to secure for him from the Elector a contribution of
twenty or thirty guilders for his support. In a letter of Feb. 25, 1523
(De Wette, II. 308), he repeats this request as a beggar for a poor
exile of Christ. A last request he made Aug. 14, 1523 (II.
387). Farrago omnium fere rerum theologicarum.
It was translated into English, 1536. This book and his De Fidelium
vocatione in Regnum Christi contain the views which he defended in
Homberg.
Lambert prepared for the Synod of Homberg, at the
request of the Landgrave, a hundred and fifty-eight Theses (Paradoxa),
as a basis for the reformation of doctrine, worship, and discipline. He
advocated them with fiery and passionate eloquence in a long Latin
speech. Hase says (p. 387): "Die Mönche und
Prälaten verstummten vor der glühenden
Beredtsamkeit des landflüchtigen
Minoriten." But
he was opposed by Ferber, the guardian of the Marburg Franciscans, who
denounced him as a "runaway monk," and denied the legal competency of
the synod. Lambert in turn called him a champion of Antichrist and a
blasphemer, and exclaimed, "Expellatur ex provincia!" which
Ferber misunderstood, "Occidatur bestia!" He confessed
afterwards that he lost his temper. Hassencamp, Fr. Lambert, p.
39 sq., and Hencke, l.c. I. 103 sq.
His leading ideas are these. Every thing which has
been deformed must be reformed by the Word of God. This is the only
rule of faith and practice. All true Christians are priests, and form
the church. They have the power of self-government, and the right and
duty to exercise discipline, according to
It is a matter of dispute, whether Lambert
originated these views, or derived them from the Franciscan, or
Waldensian, or Zwinglian, or Lutheran suggestions. The last is most
probable. It is certain that Luther in his earlier writings (1523)
expressed similar views on church government and the ministry. They are
legitimately developed from his doctrine of the general priesthood of
believers. See above, pp. 518 and 538. Ritschl and Meier
assert that Lambert borrowed his church ideal from his own order of the
Minorites.
On the basis of these principles a church
constitution was prepared in three days by a synodical commission, no
doubt chiefly by Lambert himself. It is a combination of
Congregationalism and Presbyterianism. Its leading features are
congregational self-government, synodical supervision, and strict
discipline. The directions for worship are based on
Luther’s "Deutsche Messe," 1526. The Latin original of the constitution is lost,
but two copies are extant from which the printed editions of Schminke,
Richter, and Credner are derived. Janssen (III. 54) calls it, not quite
accurately, "ein vollständig ausgebildetes, rein demokratisches
Presbyterialsystem."
The constitution, with the exception of a few
minor features, remained a dead letter. The Landgrave was rather
pleased with it, but Luther, whom he consulted, advised postponement;
he did not object to its principles, but thought that the times and the
people were not ripe for it, and that laws in advance of public opinion
rarely succeed. Letter to the Landgrave, Monday after Epiphany,
1527 (in the Erl. ed., vol. LVI. 170 sq.). He was reluctant to give an
answer, from fear that nonapproval might be construed as proceeding
from Wittenberg jealousy of any rivalry. He does not mention Lambert,
but cautions against rash proceedings. "Fürschreiben und
Nachthun ist weit von einander" (theory and practice are wide apart). Köstlin
(II. 50) says: "Gegen die Principien des Entwurfs an sich wandte Luther
nichts ein. Der Grund, weshalb er ihn ablehnte, war das
Bedürfniss allmählicher Entwicklung im Gegensatz
zur plötzlichen gesetzlichen Durchführung
umfassender Ideen, für welche die Gegenwart nicht
vorbereitet sei." See his letter to Myconius in Hassencamp,
Lamb. v. A., p. 50 sq., and Döllinger,
Die
Reform. II. 18
sq. The latter quotes the Latin (from Strieder, Hessische
Gelehrtengesch.
VII. 386): "Dolens et gemens vivo, quod paucissimos videam recte uti
evangelii libertate, et quod caritas ferme nulla sit, sed plena sint
omnia obtrectationibus mendaciis, maledicentia, invidia." In a
letter to Bucer, Lambert says, "Horreo mores populi hujus ita ut
putem me frustra in eis laborare." Herminjard (II. 242) adds in a
note an extract from the letter of a student of Zürich,
Rudolph Walther, who wrote to Bullinger from Marburg, June 17, 1540
(the year of the bigamy of the Landgrave): "Mores [huius
regionis] omnium corruptissimi. Nullum in hac Germaniae parte
inter Papistas et Evangelicae doctrinae professores discrimen cernas,
si morum et vitae censuram instituas."
The Landgrave put himself at the head of the church, and reformed it after the Saxon model. He abolished the mass and the canon law, confiscated the property of the convents, endowed hospitals and schools, arranged church visitations, and appointed six superintendents (1531).
The combination of Lutheran and Reformed elements
in the Hessian reformation explains the confessional complication and
confusion in the subsequent history, and the present status of the
Protestant Church in Hesse, which is claimed by both denominations. Dr. Vilmar of Marburg (originally Reformed)
tried to prove that the Hessians were Lutherans, but did not know it.
His colleague, Dr. Heppe, with equal learning tried to prove the
opposite. A German proverb speaks of the "blind Hessians," and this
applies at least to those unfortunate twenty thousand soldiers who
allowed themselves to be sold by their contemptible tyrant (Frederick
II., a convert to the Church of Rome, d. 1785), like so many heads of
cattle, for twenty-one million thalers, to the king of England to be
used as powder against the American colonies. Hence the ugly meaning of
the term "Hessians" in America, which does great injustice to their
innocent countrymen and descendants.
The best service which the Landgrave did to the cause of learning and religion, was the founding of the University of Marburg, which was opened July 1, 1527, with a hundred and four students. It became the second nursery of the Protestant ministry, next to Wittenberg, and remains to this day an important institution. Francis Lambert, Adam Kraft, Erhard Schnepf, and Hermann Busch were its first theological professors.
Lambert now had, after a roaming life of great
poverty, a settled situation with a decent support. He lectured on his
favorite books, the Canticles, the Prophets, and the Apocalypse; but he
had few hearers, was not popular with his German colleagues, and felt
unhappy. He attended the eucharistic Colloquy at Marburg in October,
1529, as a spectator, became a convert to the view of Zwingli, and
defended it in his last work. De Symbolo Foederis, etc., published at
Strassburg after his death, 1530. He says in the preface: "Volo ut
mundus sciat me sententiam circa Coenam Domini demutasse."
Herminjard, II. 240. Letter to Bucer, March 14, 1530, ib. II.
242. Dr. Döllinger, II. 18, uses his
complaints of the prevailing immorality as a testimony against the
Reformation, but judges favorably of his writings.
Lambert seems to have had a remote influence on
Scotland, where principles of church government somewhat similar to his
own were carried into practice after the model of the Reformed Church
of Geneva. For among his pupils was Patrick Hamilton, the proto-martyr
of the Scotch Reformation, who was burned at St. Andrews, Feb. 29,
1528. His name is entered on the University Album of
the year 1527, together with two other Scotchmen, John Hamilton and
Gilbert Winram. See Jul. Cæsar, Catalogus Studiorum
scholae Marpurgensis, Marb. 1875, p. 2. Comp. Lorimer, Patrick
Hamilton, Edinb. 1857, and the careful sketch of Professor Mitchell
of St. Andrews, in the Schaff-Herzog "Encycl." II. 935
sqq. The fact of Tyndale’s sojourn
in Marburg has been disputed without good reason by Mombert in the
preface to his facsimile edition of Tyndale’s
Pentateuch, New York, 1884 (p. XXIX.). He conjectures that
"Marborow" is a fictitious name for Wittenberg.
Tyndale’s name does not appear in the University
Register, but he may not have entered it. Hans Luft was the well-known
printer of Luther’s Bible in Wittenberg in Saxony, but
he may have had an agent in Marburg "in the land of
Hesse."
§ 99. The Reformation in Prussia. Duke Albrecht and Bishop Georg Von Polenz.
I. Luther’s Letters to Albrecht from May 26, 1525, to May 2, 1545 (17, see list in Erl. ed. LVI. 248), to Briesmann and Georg von Polenz, in the collections of De Wette and Enders. J. Voigt: Briefwechsel der berühmtesten Gelehrten des Zeitalters der Reformation mit Herzog Albrecht von Preussen, Königsb. 1841.
II. Hartknoch: Preussische Kirchenhistorie, Königsberg, 1686. Arnoldt: Preussische Kirchengeschichte, Königsberg, 1769. Bock: Leben Albrechts des Aelteren, Königsb. 1750. Rhesa: De primis sacrorum reformatoribus in Prussia, Königsberg, 1823–1830 (seven University Programs containing biographies of Briesmann, Speratus, Poliander, Georg v. Polenz, Amandus). Gebser: Der Dom zu Königsberg, 1835. Erdmann: Preussen, Ordensstaat, in Herzog1, XII. 117–165 (1860; omitted in the second ed.). Pastor (R. Cath.): Neue Quellenberichte über den Reformator Albrecht von Brandenburg, Mainz, 1876 (in the "Katholik," LVI. February and March). C. A. Hase: Herzog Albrecht von Preussen und sein Hofprediger. Eine königsberger Tragödie aus dem Zeitalter der Reformation, Leipzig, 1879. Rindfleisch: Herzog Albrecht von Hohenzollern, der letzte Hochmeister, und die Reformation in Preussen, Danzig, 1880. P. Tschackert (professor in Königsberg): Georg von Polentz, Bischof von Samland, Leipzig, 1888 (in "Kirchengeschichtl. Studien" by Brieger, Tschackert, etc., pp. 145–194).
III. The general histories of Prussia by Stenzel, Droysen, Voigt (large work, 1827–39, in 9 vols.; condensed ed. 1850, in 3 vols.), Cosel, Hahn, Pierson (4th ed. 1881, 2 vols.), Ranke (Zwölf Bücher preussischer Gesch. 1874), Förster, etc. For the history of the Teutonic order, see Watterich: Die Gründung des deutschen Ordensstaates in Preussen, Leipzig, 1857; and Joh. Voigt: Geschichte des deutschen Ritterordens, Berlin, 1859, 2 vols.
IV. Ranke: Vol. II. 326 sqq. Janssen: III. 70–77.
Of greater prospective importance than the conversion
of Hesse and even of Saxony to Protestantism, was the evangelization of
Prussia, which from a semi-barbarous Duchy on the shores of the Baltic
rose to the magnitude of a highly civilized kingdom, stretching from
the borders of Russia beyond the banks of the Rhine, and which is now,
in connection with the new German Empire, the leading Protestant power
on the Continent of Europe. "Bei weitem die merkwürdigste und
durchgreifendste Veränderung fand in Preussen
statt." Ranke,
II. 326. Janssen can see in the Reformation of Prussia only a change
for the worse. The best refutation of his view is the subsequent
history and present condition of Prussia. The history of the past must
be read in the light of the present. "By their fruits ye shall know
them."
Old Prussia Prussia proper is a division of the kingdom of
Prussia, and comprises East or Ducal Prussia and West or Royal Prussia,
with a total area of 24,114 square miles, and a population of about
three millions and a half. East Prussia was united with Brandenburg by
the Elector John Sigismund, 1618 West Prussia was severed from Poland
by Frederick the Great in the first division of that kingdom,
1772.
After nearly two centuries of rule the Knights
degenerated, and their power declined by internal dissensions and the
hostility of Poland. In 1466 they were forced by Casimir IV. in the
Peace of Thorn to cede West Prussia with the richest cities to Poland,
and to accept East Prussia as a fief of that kingdom. This was
virtually the destruction of the political power of the order. The
incompatibility of the military and monastic life became more and more
apparent. Pope Adrian VI. urged Albrecht to restore the order to its
former monastic purity and dignity. But this was impossible. The order
had outlived itself. "Der deutsche Orden," says Ranke (II. 334), "und seine Herrschaft in
Preussen war ohne Zweifel das eigenthümlichste Product des
hierarchischritterlichen Geistes der letzen Jahrhunderte in der
deutschen Nation; er hatte eine grossartige Weltenwirkung
ausgeübt und ein unermessliches Verdienst um die Ausbreitung
des deutschen Namens erworben; aber seine Zeit war
vorüber."
Luther saw this, and inaugurated a different kind
of reform. He seized a favorable opportunity, and exhorted the Knights,
in a public address, March 28, 1523, to forsake the false monastic
chastity so often broken, and to live in true matrimonial chastity
according to the ordinance of God in paradise ( An die Herren deutsches Ordens,
dass sie falsche Keuschheit meiden und zur rechten ehelichen Keuschheit
greifen, Ermahnung. Wittenberg, den 28 März, 1523. In the Erl. ed. XXIX.
l6-33. Walch, XIX. 2157 sqq.
In the summer of the same year be sent, at the
wish of Albrecht, the pioneer of Protestant preachers, to Prussia, in
the person of his friend Dr. Johannes Briesmann (14881549), a
theologian of learning, piety, and executive ability, who arrived in
Königsberg, Sept. 27, 1523, and labored there as preacher in
the Dome, and successor of Bishop Georg von Polenz, till his death,
with the exception of four years which he spent as evangelist in Riga
(1527–1531). He published several sermons. Extracts in
Seckendorf, I. 272. See the article "Briesmann" by Dr. Erdmann in
Herzog2, II. 629-631,
with literature.
With the help of these theologians and evangelists, Duke Albrecht and Bishop Georg von Polenz brought about a radical change in Prussia, and prepared the way for its great future destiny. The religious reformation preceded the political change.
Albrecht, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, last
grandmaster of the Teutonic Knights, and first Duke of Prussia, was
born at Ansbach, May 16, 1490; destined for the clerical profession;
received into the order of the Knights, and elected its grand-master in
1511. He made his entry into Königsberg, Nov. 22, 1512. His
effort to make Prussia independent and to refuse obedience to the king
of Poland, involved him in a disastrous war till 1521, when an
armistice for four years was concluded. He attended, as one of the
princes of the empire, the Diet of Nürnberg, 1522 and 1523,
and sought protection against Poland, but in vain. He diligently heard,
during that time, the sermons of Andreas Osiander, and was converted to
the doctrines of the Reformation. He called him his "spiritual father
in Christ, through whom God first rescued him from the darkness of
popery, and led him to the true divine knowledge." On a journey to
Berlin he had a private conference with Luther and Melanchthon, and
asked their advice (September, 1523). "Trust in God," said Luther with
the consent of Melanchthon, "rather than the empire; shake off the
senseless rules of your order, and make an end to that hermaphrodite
monster which is neither religious nor secular; abolish the unchaste
chastity of monkery; take to thyself a wife, and found a legitimate
secular sovereignty." At the same time be recommended to him Paul
Speratus as his assistant, who afterwards became bishop of Pomesania.
The prince smiled, but said nothing. Letter to John Briesmann, July 4, 1524, in De
Wette, II. 526 sq.
In the mean time the evangelical doctrines had already spread in Prussia, and facilitated the proposed political change by undermining the monastic constitution of the order.
Two bishops of Prussia, differing from their
brethren in Germany, favored the movement, George von Polenz of
Samland, and Erhard von Queiss of Pomesania. The former took the lead.
Luther was agreeably surprised, and expressed his joy that one, at
least, of the bishops dared to profess the free gospel of Christ. "At last," he wrote to Spalatin, Feb. 1, 1524,
"even a bishop has given the glory to the name of Christ, and proclaims
the gospel in Prussia, namely the bishop of Samland, encouraged and
instructed by John Briesmann, whom I sent, so that Prussia also begins
to give farewell to the kingdom of Satan." De Wette, II.
474. Erl. ed., Op. Lat. XIII. The dedicatory
letter dated April, 1525, is printed also in De Wette, II. 647-651. In
this letter occurs the notable passage (p. 649): "Vide mirabilia, ad
Prussiam pleno cursu plenisque telis currit Evangelion." Comp. the
passage quoted p. 539, note 2. Professor Tschackert, his best biographer, says
(l.c., p. 187): "The correspondence of Bishop Georg von Polentz,
as far as known, contains not a syllable nor even an allusion to a
letter of his to Luther. Even the name of Luther occurs after the
reformatory mandate of 1524 only once, in a postscript to a letter to
Paul Speratus, Aug. 22, 1535." In this letter he requested his
colleague, Bishop Speratus of Pomesania, to give some noble students
from Lithuania letters of introduction to Luther and Melanchthon
("literis tuis Martino et Philippo commendes.") See the letter,
l.c., p. 191.
Erhard von Queiss renounced popery in a public sermon, 1524, and resigned his worldly possessions and authority to the Duke (1527), in order to attend better to the spiritual duties of an evangelical bishop.
Georg von Polenz was the chancellor and chief counselor of Albrecht (we may say his Bismarck on a small scale) in this work of transformation. He was about five years older than Luther, and survived him four years. He descended from an old noble family of Meissen in Saxony, studied law in Italy, and was for a while private secretary at the court of Pope Julius II. Then he served as a soldier under Maximilian I. He became acquainted with Margrave Albrecht at Padua, 1509, and joined the Teutonic Knights. In 1519 he was raised to the episcopal chair, and consecrated by the neighboring bishops of Ermland and Pomesania in the Dome of Königsberg. The receipt of the Roman curia for a tax of fourteen hundred and eighty-eight ducats is still extant in the archives of that city. The first years of his office were disturbed by war with Poland, for which he had to furnish men and means. During the absence of the Duke in Germany he took his place.
In September, 1523, be became acquainted with Dr. Briesmann, and learned from him the biblical languages, the elements of theology, which he had never studied before, and the doctrines of Luther. In January, 1524, be already issued an order that baptism be celebrated in the vernacular tongue, and recommended the clergy to read diligently the Bible, and the writings of Luther, especially his book on Christian Liberty. This was the beginning of the Reformation in Prussia. We have from him three sermons, and three only, which he preached in favor of the change, at Christmas, 1523, and at Easter and Pentecost, 1524. He echoes in them the views of Briesmann. He declares, "I shall with the Divine will hold fast to the word of God and to the gospel, though I should lose body and life, goods and honor, and all I possess." He despised the authority of Pope Clement VII., who directed his legate, Campeggio, Dec. 1, 1524, to summon the bishop as a rebel and perjurer, to induce him to recant, or to depose him.
In May, 1525, he resigned the secular part of his episcopal authority into the hands of the Duke, because it was not seemly and Christian for a bishop to have so much worldly glory and power. A few days afterwards be married, June 8, 1525, five days before Luther’s marriage. In the next year the Duke followed his example, and invited Luther to the wedding (June, 1526). This double marriage was a virtual dissolution of the order as a monastic institution. In 1546 Georg von Polenz resigned his episcopal supervision into the hands of Briesmann. He died in peace, April 28, 1550, seventy-two years old, and was buried in the cathedral of Königsberg, the first Protestant bishop and chancellor of the first Prussian Hohenzollern, standing with him on the bridge of two ages with his hand on the Bible and his eye firmly fixed upon the future.
Albrecht, acting on the advice of Luther, changed
the property of the Knights into a hereditary duchy. The king of Poland
consented. On April 10, 1525, Albrecht was solemnly invested at Crakow
with the rule of Prussia as a fief of Poland. Soon afterwards he
received the homage of the Diet at Königsberg. The
evangelical preachers saluted him under the ringing of the bells. The
Emperor put him under the ban, but it had no effect. Most of the
Knights received large fiefs, and married; the rest emigrated to
Germany. Albrecht formally introduced the Reformation, July 6, 1525,
and issued a Lutheran constitution and liturgy. The fasts were
abolished, the number of holy days reduced, the ceremonies changed, the
convents turned into hospitals, and worship conducted in the
vernacular. All Romish and sectarian preaching was prohibited. He
assumed all the ecclesiastical appointments, and became the supreme
bishop of Prussia, the two Roman-Catholic bishops Georg and Queiss
having surrendered to him their dignity. Their successors were mere
superintendents. He felt, however, that the episcopal office was
foreign to a worldly sovereign, and accepted it as a matter of
necessity to secure order. "Coacti sumus," he said, "alienum
officium, i.e., episcopate in nos sumere, ut omnia ordine, et decenter
fierent." Preface to the Articuli ceremoniarum, published by
a general synod at Königsberg, May 12,
1530. Arnoldt, Historie der
königsberger Universität, 1746. See above, p. 570. Osiander’s
son-in-law, Funke, Albrecht’s chaplain and confessor,
continued the controversies, but was at last beheaded with two others,
1566, as "Ruhestörer, Landesverräther und
Beförderer der osiandrischen Ketzerei."
Albrecht did not enjoy his reign. It was sadly
disturbed in this transition state by troubles from within and without.
He repeatedly said that he would rather watch sheep than be a ruler. He
was involved in heavy debts. The seven children of his first wife, a
daughter of the king of Denmark, died young, except a daughter, Anna
Sophia, who married a duke of Mecklenburg (1555). His pious and
faithful wife died, 1547. In 1550 he married a princess of
Braunschweig; her first daughter was born blind; only one son, Albrecht
Friedrich, survived him, and spent his life in melancholy. But Albrecht
remained true to his evangelical faith, and died (March 20, 1568), with
the words of
SUBSEQUENT HISTORY.
A few glimpses of the later history are here in place to explain the present confessional status of the Protestant church in the kingdom of Prussia.
The Duchy of Prussia in 1618 fell as an inheritance to John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg (1608–1619), son-in-law of the second Prussian Duke (Albert Frederick), and a descendant of Frederick of Hohenzollern, who had become margrave of Brandenburg by purchase in 1415. In this way the connection of Prussia arid Brandenburg was completed.
But Prussia remained in feudal subjection to
Poland till 1656, when Frederick William, "the great Elector,"
conquered the independence by the victory of Warsaw. He is the first,
as Frederick II., his great-grandson, is the second, founder of the
greatness of Prussia. After the terrible devastations of the Thirty
Years’ War he gathered the broken fragments of his
provinces into a coherent whole during his long and successful reign
(1640–1688). He was the most enlightened and most
liberal among the German princes of his age. He protected the
independence of Germany against French aggression. He was married to
Louisa Henrietta, princess of Orange, of the Calvinistic faith, and
authoress of the popular resurrection hymn, "Jesus, meine
Zuversicht." Several English translations; one by Miss
Winkworth, "Jesus my Redeemer lives." The hymn has a long and
interesting history. See A. F. W. Fischer, Kirchenlieder-Lexicon, I. 390-396.
With John Sigismund began an important
confessional change, which laid the foundation for the union policy of
his successors. He introduced the Reformed or Calvinistic element,
which had been crushed out in Saxony, into the Court and Dome Church of
Berlin, and gave the Heidelberg Catechism a place besides the Augsburg
Confession. His grandson, "the great Elector," strengthened the
Reformed element by his marriage to a princess from Holland, who
adorned her faith, and by inviting a colony of French Huguenots who
left their country for the sake of conscience. It was therefore quite
natural that the Reformed rulers of a Lutheran country should cherish
the idea of a union of the two confessions, which was realized in the
present century. For fuller information, see Schaff, Creeds
of Christendom, I. 554 sqq. To the literature there given should be
added Ranke, Zwölf Bücher Preuss.
Geschichte,
Leipz. 1874, I. 185-192; Kawerau in Herzog2, XIV. 227-232; and Wangemann, Joh. Sigismund und Paul
Gerhard, Berlin,
1884. The literature on the Prussian Union refers to the history after
1817, and is very large. We mention Nitzsch, Urkundenbuch der evangelischen
Union, Berlin,
1853; Jul. Müller, Die evangel. Union, ihr Wesen und
göttliches Recht, Berlin, 1854; Brandes, Geschichte der kirchlichen Politik
des Hauses Brandenburg, 1872,’ 73, 2 vols.;
Mücke, Preussen’s landeskirchliche
Unionsentwicklung, 1879; Wangemann, Die preussische Union in ihrem Verhältniss
zur Una Sancta,
Berlin, 1884.
We have seen that Old Prussia was Lutheranized under the direct influence of the Wittenberg divines with whom Albrecht was in Constant correspondence. In Brandenburg also, the Lutheran type of Protestantism, after many reverses and controversies, was established under John George (1571–1598); the Formula of Concord was forcibly introduced, and all Calvinistic teaching was strictly forbidden. The Brandenburg "Corpus Doctrinae" of 1572 emphasizes Luther’s word that Zwingli was no Christian, and the Brandenburg chancellor Dietelmeyer is known by his unchristian prayer: "Impleat nos Deus odio Calvinistarum!"
But the Elector John Sigismund, who by travels and personal intercourse with Calvinistic princes and divines conceived a high regard for their superior Christian piety and courtesy, embraced the Reformed faith in 1606, and openly professed it in February, 1614, by declaring his assent to the four oecumenical symbols (including the Chalcedonense) and the altered Augsburg Confession of 1540, without imposing his creed upon his subjects, only prohibiting the preachers to condemn the Calvinists from the pulpit. In May, 1514, he issued a personal confession of faith, called the "Confession of Sigismund," or the "Brandenburg Confession" (Confessio Marchica). It teaches a moderate, we may say, Melanchthonian and unionistic Calvinism, and differs from the Lutheran Formula of Concord in the following points: It rejects Eutychianism and the ubiquity of Christ’s body, consubstantiation in the Lord’s Supper, the use of the wafer instead of the broken bread, and exorcism in baptism; on the other hand, it teaches the Calvinistic view of the spiritual real presence for believers, and unconditional election, but without an unconditional decree of reprobation; it distinctly declares that God sincerely wishes the salvation of all men, and is not the author of sin and damnation.
The change of Sigismund was the result of conscientious conviction, and not dictated by political motives. The people and his own wife re-mained Lutheran. He made no use of his territorial summepiscopate and the jus reformandi. He disclaimed all intention to coerce the conscience, since faith is a free gift of God, and cannot be forced. No man should pre-sume to exercise dominion over man’s religion. He thus set, in advance of his age, a noble example of toleration, which became the traditional policy of the Prussian rulers. The pietistic movement of Spener and Francke, which was supported by the theological faculty at Halle, weakened the confessional dissensus, and strengthened the consensus. The Moravian brotherhood exhibited long before the Prussian Union, in a small community, the real union of evangelical believers of both confessions.
Frederick the Great was an unbeliever, and had as little sympathy with Pietism and Moravianism as with Lutheranism and Calvinism; but he was a decided upholder of religious toleration, which found expression in his famous declaration that in his kingdom everybody must be at liberty to get saved "after his own fashion." The toleration of indifferentism, which prevailed in the last century, broke down the reign of bigotry, and prepared the way for the higher and nobler principle of religious liberty.
The revival of religious life at the beginning of the nineteenth century was a revival of general Christianity without a confessional or denomina-tional type, and united for a time pious Lutherans, Reformed, and even Roman Catholics. It was accompanied by a new phase of evangelical theology, which since Schleiermacher and Neander laid greater stress on the consensus than the dissensus of the Protestant confessions in oppo-sition to rationalism and infidelity. The ground was thus prepared for a new attempt to establish a mode of peaceful living between the two confessions of the Reformation.
King Frederick William III.
(1797–1840), a conscientious and God-fearing monarch,
who had been disciplined by sad reverses and providen-tial deliverances
of Prussia, introduced what is called the "Evangelical Union" of the
Lutheran and Reformed confessions at the tercentennial celebration of
the Reformation (Sept. 27, 1817). The term "evangelical," which was
claimed by both, assumed thus a new technical sense. The object of the
Union (as officially explained in 1834 and 1852) was to unite the two
churches under, one government and worship, without abolishing the
doctrinal distinctions. The Cabinetsordre of Feb. 18, 1834, declares:
"Die
Union bezweckt und bedeutet kein Aufgeben des bisherigen
Glaubensbekenntnisses; auch ist die Autorität, welche die
Bekenntnisschriften der beiden evangelischen Confessionen bisher
gehabt, durch sie nicht aufgehoben worden."
The two sons and successors of the founder of the Prussian Union, King Frederick William IV. (1840–1858), and Emperor William I. (1858–1888), have faithfully adhered to it in theory and practice.
Frederick William IV. was well versed in theology,
and a pronounced evangelical believer. He wished to make the church
more independent, and as a means to that end he established the
Oberkirchenrath (1850, modified 1852), which in connection with the
Cultusministerium should administer the affairs of the church in the
name of the king; while a general synod was to exercise the legislative
function. Under his reign the principle of religious liberty made great
progress, and was embodied in the Prussian Constitution of 1850, which
guarantees in Article XII. the freedom of conscience and of private and
public worship to all religious associations. See Schaff, Church and State in the United
States, New York, 1888, p. 97 sq.
William I., aided by Bismarck and Moltke, raised Prussia, by superior statesmanship and diplomacy, and by brilliant victories in the wars with Austria (1866) and France (1870), to her present commanding position. He became by common consent of the German sovereigns and people the first hereditary emperor of United Germany under the lead of Prussia. He adorned this position in eighteen years of peace by his wisdom, integrity, justice, untiring industry, and simple piety, and gained the universal esteem and affection of the German nation, yea, we may say, of the civilized world, which mourned for him when on the 9th of March, 1888, in the ninety-first year of an eventful life, he entered into his rest. History has never seen a more illustrious trio than the Emperor William, "the Iron Chancellor," and "the Battle-thinker," who "feared God, and nothing else."
The new German Empire with a Protestant head is the last outcome of the Reformation of Prussia, and would not have been possible without it.
§ 100. Protestant Martyrs.
No great cause in church or state, in religion or
science, has ever succeeded without sacrifice. Blood is the price of
liberty. "The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christianity."
Persecution develops the heroic qualities of human nature, and the
passive virtues of patience and endurance under suffering.
Protestantism has its martyrs as well as Catholicism. In Germany it
achieved a permanent legal existence only after the Thirty
Years’ War. The Reformed churches in France, Holland,
England, and Scotland, passed through the fiery ordeal of persecution.
It has been estimated that the victims of the Spanish Inquisition
outnumber those of heathen Rome, and that more Protestants were
executed by the Spaniards in a single reign, and in a single province
of Holland, than Christians in the Roman empire during the first three
centuries. See Schaff, Church Hist. II.
78.
The persecution of Protestants began at the Diet of Worms in 1521. Charles V. issued from that city the first of a series of cruel enactments, or "placards," for the extermination of the Lutheran heresy in his hereditary dominion of the Netherlands. In 1523 two Augustinian monks, Henry Voes and John Esch, were publicly burnt, as adherents of Luther, at the, stake in Brussels. After the fires were kindled, they repeated the Apostles’ Creed, sang the "Te Deum laudamus," and prayed in the flames, "Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon us." The heroic death of these Protestant proto-martyrs inspired Luther’s first poem, which begins, —
See above, p. 505, and Ranke, II. 119.
The prior of their convents Lampert Thorn, was
suffocated in prison. The martyrdom of Henry of Zütphen has
already been noticed. § 96, p. 574, sq. See their biography in Piper’s
Evang. Kalender, VII. 408, and article "Klarenbach" by C.
Krafft, in Herzog2, VIII.
20-33.
George Winkler, a preacher in Halle, was cited by
the Archbishop of Cologne to Aschaffenburg for distributing the
communion in both kinds, and released, but murdered by unknown hands on
his return, May, 1527. Luther wrote a letter of comfort to the
Christians at Halle on the death of their minister. Walch, X. 2260. See
also his letter, April 28, 1528, in De Wette, III.
305.
Duke George of Saxony persecuted the Lutherans,
not by death, but by imprisonment and exile. John Herrgott, a traveling
book-peddler, was beheaded (1527) for revolutionary political opinions,
rather than for selling Lutheran books. See § 93, p. 567,
note.
In Southern Germany the Edict of Worms was more
rigidly executed. Many executions by fire and sword, accompanied by
barbarous mutilations, took place in Austria and Bavaria. In Vienna a
citizen, Caspar Tauber, was beheaded and burnt, because he denied
purgatory and transubstantiation, Sept. 17, 1524. Ranke, II. 117 sq. Ibid. p. 117. Letter dated May 20, 1527, in De Wette, III.
179 sq. But Käser seems to have been an Anabaptist, which
Luther did not know. See Cornelius, Gesch. des Münsterschen
Aufruhrs, II.
56.
But the Anabaptists had their martyrs as well, and
they died with the same heroic faith. Hätzer was burnt in
Constance, Hübmaier in Vienna. In Passau thirty perished in
prison. In Salzburg some were mutilated, others beheaded, others
drowned, still others burnt alive. Ranke, III. 369.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SACRAMENTARIAN CONTROVERSIES.
§ 101. Sacerdotalism and Sacramentalism.
The Catholic system of Christianity, both Greek and Roman, is sacramental and sacerdotal. The saving grace of Christ is conveyed to men through the channel of seven sacraments, or "mysteries," administered by ordained priests, who receive members into the church by baptism, accompany them through the various stages of life, and dismiss them by extreme unction into the other world. A literal priesthood requires a literal sacrifice, and this is the repetition of Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross offered by the priest in the mass from day to day. The power of the mass extends not only to the living, but even to departed spirits in purgatory, abridging their sufferings, and hastening their release and transfer to heaven.
The Reformers rejected the sacerdotal system altogether, and substituted for it the general priesthood of believers, who have direct access to Christ as our only Mediator and Advocate, and are to offer the spiritual sacrifices of prayer, praise, and intercession. They rejected the sacrifice of the mass, and the theory of transubstantiation, and restored the cup to the laity. They also agreed in raising the Word of God, as the chief means of grace, above the sacraments, and in reducing the number of the sacraments. They retained Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as instituted by Christ for universal and perpetual observance.
But here begins the difference. It consists in the
extent of departure from the sacramental system of the Roman Church.
The Lutheran Confession is, we may say, semi-sacramental, or much more
sacramental than the Reformed (if we except the Anglican communion). Claus Harms, a typical Lutheran of the
nineteenth century, published in 1817 Ninety-five Theses against
Rationalism in the Lutheran Church, one of which reads thus (I quote
from memory): "The Catholic Church is a glorious church; for it is
built upon the Sacrament. The Reformed Church is a glorious church; for
it is built upon the Word. But more glorious than either is the
Lutheran Church; for it is built upon both the Word and the
Sacrament."
Zwingli and Calvin reduced the sacraments to signs
and seals of grace which is inwardly communicated by the Holy Spirit.
They asserted the sovereign causality of God, and the independence of
the Spirit who "bloweth where it willeth" (
The Anabaptists went still farther, and rejected infant-baptism because it lacks the element of faith on the part of the baptized. They were the forerunners of the Quakers, who dispensed with the external sacraments altogether, retaining, however, the spiritual fact of regeneration and communion with Christ, which the sacraments symbolize to the senses. The Quakers protested against forms when they were made substitutes for the spirit, and furnished the historic proof that the spirit in cases of necessity may live without forms, while forms without the spirit are dead.
It was the will of Providence that different theories on the means of grace should be developed. These theories are not isolated; they proceed from different philosophical and theological standpoints, and affect other doctrines. Luther was not quite wrong when he said to Zwingli at Marburg "You have a different spirit." Luther took his stand on the doctrine of justification by faith; Zwingli and Calvin, on the doctrine of divine causality and sovereignty, or eternal election. Luther proceeded anthropologically and soteriologically from man to God, Zwingli and Calvin proceeded theologically from God to man.
The difference culminates in the doctrine of the eucharistic presence, which called forth the fiercest controversies, and still divides Western Christendom into hostile camps. The eucharistic theories reveal an underlying difference of views on the relation of God to man, of the supernatural to the natural, of invisible grace to the visible means. The Roman doctrine of transubstantiation is the outgrowth of a magical supernaturalism which absorbs and annihilates the natural and human, leaving only the empty form. The Lutheran doctrine implies an interpenetration of the divine and human. The commemorative theory of Zwingli saves the integrity and peculiar character of the divine and human, but keeps them separate and distinct. The eucharistic theory affects Christology, the relation of church and state, and in some measure the character of piety. Lutheranism inclines to the Eutychian, Zwinglianism to the Nestorian, Christology. The former fosters a mystical, the latter a practical, type of piety.
Calvin, who appeared on the stage of public action five years after Zwingli’s, and ten years before Luther’s, death, advocated with great ability a eucharistic theory which mediates between the Lutheran realism and the Zwinglian spiritualism, and which passed into the Reformed confessions Luther had to deal with Zwingli, and never came into contact with Calvin. If he had, the controversy might have taken a different shape; but he would have maintained his own view of the real presence, and refused the figurative interpretation of the words of institution.
With the doctrine of the eucharist are connected
some minor ritualistic differences, as the use of the wafer, and the
kneeling posture of the communicants, which the Lutherans retained from
the Catholic Church; while the Reformed restored the primitive practice
of the breaking of bread, and the standing or sitting posture. Some
Lutheran churches retained also the elevation of the host; Luther
himself declared it a matter of indifference, and abolished it at
Wittenberg in 1542. "Vom Anbeten des Sacraments des heil.
Leichnams Christi" (1523), addressed to the Bohemians (Erl. ed.
XXVIII. 389, 404, 410); Kurzes Bekenntniss vom heil.
Sacrament (1544),
Erl. ed. XXXII. 420 sqq. In a letter to Buchholzer in Berlin, Dec. 4,
1539 (De Wette, V. 236), Luther reports that the elevation was given up
at Wittenberg. But this must refer to the castle church, for in the
parish church it continued till June 25, 1542 when Bugenhagen abolished
it. See Köstlin, II. 588 and 683.
§ 102. The Anabaptist Controversy. Luther and Huebmaier.
Luther: Von der Wiedertaufe, an zwei Pfarrherrn. Wittenberg, 1528. In Walch, XXVII. 2643 sqq.; Erl. ed. XXVI. 254–294. Justus Menius: Der Wiedertäufer Lehre und Geheimniss, with a Preface by Luther, 1530. In the Erl. ed. LXIII. 290 sqq. Melanchthon: Contra Anabaptistas Judicium, "Corp. Reform." I. 953 sqq.
On the Baptist side the writings of Huebmaier, or, as he wrote his name, Huebmör, which are very rare, and ought to be collected and republished. Calvary, in "Mittheilungen aus dem Antiquariate," vol. I. Berlin, 1870, gives a complete list of them. The most important are Von dem christlichen Tauf der Gläubigen (1525); Eine Stimme eines ganzen christlichen Lebens (1525); Von Ketzern und ihren Verbrennern; Schlussreden (Axiomata); Ein Form des Nachtmals Christi; Von der Freiwilligkeit des Menschen (to show that God gives to all men an opportunity to become his children by free choice); Zwölf Artikel des christlichen Glaubens, etc.
On Huebmaier, see Schreiber in the "Taschenbuch fuer Gesch. und Alterthum Sueddeutschlands," Freiburg, 1839 and 40. Cunitz in Herzog’s "Encykl.," 2d ed. VI. 344. Ranke, II. 118, 126; III. 366, 369. Janssen, II. 387, 486.
All the Reformers retained the custom of infant-baptism, and opposed rebaptism (Wiedertaufe) as a heresy. So far they agreed with the Catholics against the Anabaptists, or Catabaptists as they were called, although they rejected the name, because in their view the baptism of infants was no baptism at all.
The Anabaptists or Baptists (as distinct from Pedobaptists) sprang up in Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, and organized independent congregations. Their leaders were Huebmaier, Denck, Hätzer, and Grebel. They thought that the Reformers stopped half-way, and did not go to the root of the evil. They broke with the historical tradition, and constructed a new church of believers on the voluntary principle. Their fundamental doctrine was, that baptism is a voluntary act, and requires personal repentance, and faith in Christ. They rejected infant-baptism as an anti-scriptural invention. They could find no trace of it in the New Testament, the only authority in matters of faith. They were cruelly persecuted in Protestant as well as Roman Catholic countries. We must carefully distinguish the better class of Baptists and the Mennonites from the restless revolutionary radicals and fanatics, like Carlstadt, Muenzer, and the leaders of the Muenster tragedy.
The mode of baptism was not an article of controversy at that time; for the Reformers either preferred immersion (Luther), or held the mode to be a matter of indifference (Calvin).
Luther agreed substantially with the Roman
Catholic doctrine of baptism. His Taufbuechlein of 1523 is a
translation of the Latin baptismal service, including the formula of
exorcism, the sign of the cross, and the dipping. The second edition
(1526) is abridged, and omits the use of chrisma, salt, and spittle. See above § 45, p. 218, and the two
editions of the Taufbüchlein in the Erl. ed. XXII.
157, 291. In both editions dipping is prescribed ("Da nehme er das Kind und
tauche es in die Taufe"), and no mention is made of any other mode. The Reformed
churches objected to the retention of exorcism as a species of
superstition. The first English liturgy of Edward VI. (who was baptized
by immersion) prescribes trine-immersion (dipping); the second liturgy
of 1552 does the same, but gives (for the first time in England)
permission to substitute pouring when the child is
weak.
Balthasar Huebmaier, or Huebmör, was born near Augsburg, 1480; studied under Dr. Eck at Freiburg-i. -B. and Ingolstadt, and acquired the degree of doctor of divinity. He became a famous preacher in the cathedral at Regensburg, and occasioned the expulsion of the Jews in 1519, whose synagogue was converted into a chapel of St. Mary. In 1522 he embraced Protestant opinions, and became pastor at Waldshut on the Rhine, on the borders of Switzerland. He visited Erasmus at Basel, and Zwingli at Zuerich, and aided the latter in the introduction of the Reformation. The Austrian government threatened violent measures, and demanded the surrender of his person. He left Waldshut, and took refuge in a convent of Schaffhausen, but afterwards returned. He openly expressed his dissent from Zwingli and Oecolampadius on the subject of infant-baptism. Zwingli was right, he said, in maintaining that baptism was a mere sign, but the significance of this sign was the pledge of faith and obedience unto death, and such a pledge a child could not make; therefore the baptism of a child had no meaning, and was invalid. Faith must be present, and cannot be taken for granted as a future certainly. Instead of baptism he introduced a solemn presentation or consecration of children before the congregation. He made common cause with the Anabaptists of Zuerich, and with Thomas Muenzer, who came into the neighborhood of Waldshut, and kindled the flame of the Peasants’ War. He is supposed by some to be the author of the Twelve Articles of the Peasants. He was rebaptized about Easter, 1525, and re-baptized many others. He abolished the mass, and removed the altar, baptismal font, pictures and crosses from the church.
The triumph of the re-action against the rebellious peasants forced him to flee to Zuerich (December, 1525). He had a public disputation with Zwingli, who had himself formerly leaned to the view that it would be better to put off baptism to riper years of responsibility, though he never condemned infant-baptism. He retracted under pressure and protest, and was dismissed with some aid. He went to Nikolsburg in Moravia, published a number of books in German, having brought a printing-press with him from Switzerland, and gathered the Baptist "Brethren" into congregations. But when Moravia, after the death of Louis of Hungary, fell into the possession of King Ferdinand of Austria, Huebmaier was arrested with his wife, sent to Vienna, charged with complicity in the Peasants’ War, and burned to death, March 10, 1528. He died with serene courage and pious resignation. His wife, who had strengthened him in his faith, was drowned three days later in the Danube. Zwingli, after his quarrel with Huebmaier, speaks unfavorably of his character; Vadian of St. Gall, and Bullinger, give him credit for great eloquence and learning, but charge him with a restless spirit of innovation. He was an advocate of the voluntary principle. and a martyr of religious freedom. Heretics, he maintained, are those only who wickedly oppose the Holy Sciptures, and should be won by instruction and persuasion. To use force is to deny Christ, who came to save, not to destroy.
A few months before Huebmaier’s
death, Luther wrote, rather hastily, a tract against the Anabaptists
(January or February, 1528), in the shape of a letter to two unnamed
ministers in Catholic territory. He calls it in a letter to Spalatin, Feb. 5,
1528 (De Wette, III. 279), "epistolam tumultuarie scriptam." He
alludes to it in several other letters of the same year (III. 250, 253,
263). The passage is quoted in § 11, p.
60. Letter to Link, May 12, 1528 (De Wette, III.
311): "Constantiam Anabaptistarum morientium arbitror similem esse
illi, qua Augustinus celebrat Donatistas et Josephus Judaeos in vastata
Jerusalem, et multa talia furorem esse Satanae non est dubium,
praesertim ubi sic moriuntur cum blasphemia sacramenti. Sancti
martyres, ut noster Leonardus Kaiser [a Lutheran of Bavaria who was
beheaded Aug. 18, 1527] cum timore et humilitate magnaque animi erga
hostes lenitatemoriuntur: illi vero quasi hostium taedio et
indignatione pertinaciam suam augere, et sic mori
videntur."
1. Infant-baptism is wrong because it comes from
the pope, who is Antichrist. But then we ought to reject the
Scriptures, and Christianity itself, which we have in common with Rome.
Christ found many abuses among the Pharisees and Sadducees and the
Jewish people, but did not reject the Old Testament, and told his
disciples to observe their doctrines ( See above, p. 529 sq.
2. Infants know nothing of their baptism, and have to learn it afterwards from their parents or sponsors. But we know nothing of our natural birth and of many other things, except on the testimony of others.
3. Infants cannot believe. Luther denied this, and
appealed to the word of Christ, who declared them fit for the kingdom
of heaven (
4. The absence of a command to baptize children.
But they are included in the command to baptize all nations (
5. Among the positive arguments, Luther mentions
the analogy of circumcision, Christ’s treatment of
children, the cases of family baptisms,
Melanchthon quoted also the testimonies of Origen, Cyprian, Chrysostom, and Augustin, for the apostolic origin of infant-baptism.
§ 103. The Eucharistic Controversy.
I. Sources (1) Lutheran. Luther: Wider die himmlischen Propheten, Jan. 1525 (against Carlstadt and the Enthusiasts). Dass die Worte, "Das ist mein Leib," noch fest stehen (wider die Schwarmgeister), 1527. Grosses Bekenntniss vom Abendmahl, March, 1528 (against Zwingli and Oecolampadius). Kurzes Bekenntniss rom heil. Sacrament, 1544. All these tracts in the Erl. ed. vols. XXVI. 254; XXIX. 134, 348; XXX. 14, 151; XXXII. 396. Walch, Vol. XX. 1–2955, gives the eucharistic writings, for and against Luther, together with a history.
Bugenhagen: Contra novum errorem de sacramento corporis et sanguinis Christi. 1525. Also in German. In Walch, XX. 641 sqq. Brentz and Schnepf: Syngramma Suevicum super verbis coenae Dominicae "Hoc est corpus meum," etc., signed by fourteen Swabian preachers, Oct. 21, 1525. Against Oecolampadius, see Walch, XX. 34, 667 sqq.
(2) On the Zwinglian side. Zwingli: Letter to Rev. Mathaeus Alber, Nov. 16, 1524; Commentarius de vera et falsa religione, 1525; Amica exegesis, id est, Expositio eucharistiae negotii ad M. Lutherum, 1526; Dass diese Worte Jesu Christi: "Das ist myn Lychnam," ewiglich den alten eynigen Sinn haben werden, 1527; and several other eucharistic tracts. Oecolampadius: De genuina verborum Domini: "Hoc est corpus meum," juxta vetustissimos auctores expositione, Basel, 1525; Antisyngramma ad ecclesiastas Suevos (with two sermons on the sacrament), 1526. Oecolampadius and Zwingli: Ueber Luther’s Buch Bekenntniss genannt, zwo Antworten, 1528. See Zwingli: Opera, ed. Schuler and Schulthess, vol. II. Part II. 1–223; III. 145; 459 sqq.; 589 sqq.; 604 sqq. Also Walch, vol. XX. Extracts in Usteri and Vögelin, M. H. Zwingli’s Sämmtl. Schriften im Auszuge, vol. II. Part I., pp. 3–187.
II. The historical works on the eucharistic controversies of the Reformation period, by Lavater (Historia Sacramentaria, Tig. 1563): Selnecker and Chemnitz (Hist. des sacram. Streits, Leipz., 1583 and 1593); Hospinian (Hist. Sacramentaria, Tig. 1603, 2 vols.); Löscher (Hist. Motuum, in 3 Parts, Leipz., second ed., 1723); Ebrard (Das Dogma vom heil. Abendmahl und seine Geschichte, 2 vols., 1846); Kahnis (1851); Dieckhoff (1854); H. Schmid (1873).
III. The respective sections in the General Church Histories, and the Histories of the Reformation, especially Seckendorf, Gieseler, Baur, Hagenbach, Merle, Fisher. Planck, in his Geschichte des Protest. Lehrbegriffs (Leipz. second revised ed., 1792, vol. II., Books V. and VI.), gives a very full and accurate account of the eucharistic controversy, although he calls it "die unseligste alter Streitigkeiten" (II. 205).
IV. Special discussions. Dorner: Geschichte der protestant. Theologie (Muenchen, 1867), pp. 296–329. Jul. Mueller: Vergleichung der Lehren Luther’s und Calvin’s ueber das heil. Abendmahl, in his "Dogmatische Abhandlungen" (Bremen, 1870, pp. 404–467). Köstlin: Luther’s Theologie, II. 100 sqq., 511 sqq.; Mart. Luther, I. 715–725; II. 65–110 (Luther und Zwingli); 127 sqq.; 363–369. August Baur: Zwingli’s Theologie (Halle, 1885; second vol. has not yet appeared).
American discussions of the eucharistic controversies. J. W. Nevin (Reformed, d. 1886): The Mystical Presence, Philadelphia, 1846; Doctrine of the Reformed Church on the Lord’s Supper, in "The Mercersburg Review," 1850, pp. 421–549. Ch. Hodge (Presbyt, d. 1878): in "The Princeton Review" for April, 1848; Systematic Theology, New York, 1873, vol. III., 626–677. C. P. Krauth (Luth., d. 1883): The Conservative Reformation (Philadelphia, 1872), p. 585 sqq. H. J. Van Dyke (Calvinist): The Lord’s Supper, 2 arts. in "The Presbyterian Review," New York, 1887, pp. 193 and 472 sqq. J. W. Richard (Luth.), in the "Bibliotheca Sacra" (Oberlin, O.), Oct. 1887, p. 667 sqq., and Jan. 1888, p. 110 sqq.
See, also, the Lit. quoted in Schaff, Church Hist., I. 471 sq. and IV. 543 sq.
While the Reformers were agreed on the question of infant-baptism against the Anabaptists, they disagreed on the mode and extent of the real presence in the Lord’s Supper.
The eucharistic controversies of the sixteenth century present a sad and disheartening spectacle of human passion and violence, and inflicted great injury to the progress of the Reformation by preventing united action, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy; but they were overruled for the clearer development and statement of truth, like the equally violent Trinitarian, Christological, and other controversies in the ancient church. It is a humiliating fact, that the feast of union and communion of believers with Christ and with each other, wherein they engage in the highest act of worship, and make the nearest approach to heaven, should have become the innocent occasion of bitter contests among brethren professing the same faith and the same devotion to Christ and his gospel. The person of Christ and the supper of Christ have stirred up the deepest passions of love and hatred. Fortunately, the practical benefit of the sacrament depends upon God’s promise, and simple and childlike faith in Christ, and not upon any scholastic theory, any more than the benefit of the Sacred Scriptures depends upon a critical knowledge of Greek and Hebrew.
The eucharist was twice the subject of controversy
in the Middle Ages,—first in the ninth, and then in
the eleventh, century. The question in both cases turned on a grossly
realistic and a spiritual conception of the sacramental presence and
fruition of Christ’s body and blood; and the result
was the triumph of the Roman dogma of transubstantiation, as advocated
by Paschasius Radbertus against Ratramnus, and by Lanfranc against
Berengar, and as finally sanctioned by the fourth Lateran Council in
1215, and the Council of Trent in 1551. Schaff, Church History, vol. IV.
543-572; Creeds of Christendom, II 130-139.
The Greek and Latin churches are substantially agreed on the doctrine of the communion and the mass, but divide on the ritual question of the use of leavened or unleavened bread. The withdrawal of the cup from the laity caused the bloody Hussite wars.
The eucharistic controversies of the Protestants assumed a different form. Transubstantiation was discarded by both parties. The question was not, whether the elements as to their substance are miraculously transformed into the body and blood of Christ, but whether Christ was corporally or only spiritually (though no less really) present with the natural elements; and whether he was partaken of by all communicants through the mouth, or only by the worthy communicants through faith.
The controversy has two acts, each with several scenes: first, between Luther and Zwingli; secondly, between the Lutherans and Philippists and Calvinists. At last Luther’s theory triumphed in the Lutheran, Calvin’s theory in the Reformed churches. The Protestant denominations which have arisen since the Reformation on English and American soil,—Independents, Baptists, Methodists, etc.,—have adopted the Reformed view. Luther’s theory is strictly confined to the church which bears his name. But, as the Melanchthonian and moderate Lutherans approach very nearly the Calvinistic view, so there are Calvinists, and especially Anglicans, who approach the Lutheran view more nearly than the Zwinglian. The fierce antagonism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has given way on both sides to a more dispassionate and charitable temper. This is a real progress.
We shall first trace the external history of this controversy, and then present the different theories with the arguments.
§ 104. Luther’s Theory before the Controversy.
Luther rejected, in his work on the "Babylonish
Captivity of the Church" (1520), the doctrine of the mass,
transubstantiation, and the withdrawal of the cup, as strongholds of
the Papal tyranny. From this position he never receded. In the same
work he clearly intimated his own view, which he had learned from
Pierre d’Ailly, Cardinal of Cambray (Cameracensis), Petrus de Alliaco (1350-1420) was one of the
leaders of the disciplinary reform movement during the papal schism,
and in the councils of Pisa and Constance, the teacher of Gerson and
Nicolaus de Clemanges. He gives his views on consubstantiation and
transubstantiation, which resemble those of Occam in his
Quaestiones super
libros Sententiarum (Argent. 1490), Lib. IV. Qu. VI. See Steitz, in his learned art.
on transubstantiation, in Herzog2 XV.
831; and Tschackert, Peter von Ailli, Gotha,
1877.
Formerly, when I was imbibing the scholastic
theology, the Cardinal of Cambray gave me occasion for reflection, by
arguing most acutely, in the Fourth Book of the Sentences, that it
would be much more probable, and that fewer superfluous miracles would
have to be introduced, if real bread and real wine, and not only their
accidents, were understood to be upon the altar, unless the Church had
determined the contrary. Afterwards, when I saw what the church was,
which had thus determined,—namely, the Thomistic, that
is, the Aristotelian Church,—I became bolder; and,
whereas I had been before in great straits of doubt, I now at length
established my conscience in the former opinion: namely, that there
were real bread and real wine, in which were the real flesh and real
blood of Christ in no other manner and in no less degree than the other
party assert them to be under the accidents. "Esse verum panem verumque vinum, in quibus
Christi vera caro verusque sanguis non aliter nec minus sit, quam illi
sub accidentibus suis ponunt."
At that time of departure from Romanism he would
have been very glad, as he confessed five years later, to become
convinced that there was nothing in the Lord’s Supper
but bread and wine. Yea, his old Adam was still inclined to such a
view; but he dared not doubt the literal meaning of the words of
institution. "Das bekenne ich," he wrote, Dec. 15, 1524, to the Christians
in Strassburg (De Wette, II. 577), "wo D. Carlstadt oder jemand anders
vor fünf Jahren mich hätte mögen
berichten, dass im Sacrament nichts denn Brot und Wein wäre,
der hätte mir einen grossen Dienst gethan. Ich habe wohl so
harte Anfechtungen da erlitten und mich gerungen und gewunden, dass ich
gern heraus gewesen wäre, weil ich wohl sah, dass ich damit
dem Papstthum hätte den grössten Puff
können geben. Ich hab auch zween gehabt, die geschickter
davon zu mir geschrieben haben denn D. Carlstadt, und nicht also die
Worte gemartert nach eigenem Dünken. Aber ich bin gefangen,
kann nicht heraus: der Text ist zu gewaltig da, und will sich mit
Worten nicht lassen ans dem Sinn reissen." The two persons alluded to are probably, as
Ullmann conjectures, Wessel or Rhodius and Honius, who sent a letter to
Luther with Wessel’s books. In Walch, XIX. 1593 sqq.; Erl. ed., XXVIII. 389
sqq. He says in the beginning: "We Germans believe that Christ is
verily with his flesh and blood in the sacrament, as he was born of
Mary, and hung on the holy cross." He rejects the figurative
interpretation because it might deprive other passages of their
force.
In his conviction of the real presence, he was greatly strengthened by the personal attacks and perverse exegesis of Carlstadt. Henceforth he advocated the point of agreement with the Catholics more strenuously than he had formerly opposed the points in which he differed from them. He changed the tone of moderation which he had shown in his address to the Bohemians, and treated his Protestant opponents with as great severity as the Papists. His peculiar view of the eucharist became the most, almost the only, serious doctrinal difference between the two wings of the Reformation, and has kept them apart ever since.
§ 105. Luther and Carlstadt.
The first outward impulse to the eucharistic
controversy came from Holland in the summer of 1522, when Henry Rhodius
brought from Utrecht a collection of the writings of John Wessel to
Wittenberg, which he had received from a distinguished Dutch jurist,
Cornelius Honius (Hoen). Wessel, one of the chief forerunners of the
Reformation (d. 1489), proposed, in a tract "De Coena," a figurative
interpretation of the words of institution, which seems to have
influenced the opinions of Erasmus, Carlstadt, and Zwingli on this
subject. Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der
Reformation (1842), vol. II. 560-583. Melanchthon derived the controversy
from Erasmus. "Tota illa tragoedia περὶ
δείπνου
κυριακοῦ
ab ipso [Erasmo] nata videri
potest." Letter to Camerarius, July 26, 1529 ("Corpus Ref.,"
I. 1083). He was informed by Zwingli in Marburg: "se ex Erasmi
scriptis primum hausisse opinionem suam de coena Domini." Letter to
Acquila, Oct. 12, 1529 (IV. 970). Erasmus spoke very highly of the book
of Oecolampadius on the Lord’s Supper, and would have
accepted his view if it were not for the consensus of the church:
"Mihi non displiceret Oecolampadii sententia, nisi obstaret
consensus ecclesiae." Letter to Pirkheimer, June 6,
1526.
But Luther was so much pleased with the agreement
on other points that he overlooked the difference, and lauded Wessel as
a theologian truly taught of God, and endowed with a high mind and
wonderful gifts; yea, so fully in harmony with him, that the Papists
might charge Luther with having derived all his doctrines from Wessel,
had he known his writings before. Preface to "Farrago rerum, theolog., Wesselo
autore," published at Wittenberg, 1521 or 1522. Op., VII.
493 sqq. See Ullmann, l.c. p. 564 sq. This edition, however,
excludes the tract De coena,—a proof that
Luther did not altogether like it.
The controversy was opened in earnest by
Carlstadt, Luther’s older colleague and former friend,
who gave him infinite trouble, and forced him into self-defense and
into the development of the conservative and churchly elements in his
theology. See §§ 66 and 68, pp. 378
sqq. and 387. Carlstadt is the real author of the eucharistic
controversy, not Luther, as Hospinian and Hottinger assumed. But Luther
and Zwingli were the chief actors in it. Carlstadt’s
view passed out of sight, when the Swiss view was brought
out.
In 1524 Carlstadt came out with a new and absurd
interpretation of the words of institution ( This is the reason why Luther called Carlstadt
and his sympathizers enthusiasts and fanatics. Schwarmgeister or Schwärmer. His eucharistic tracts in crude and unreadable
German are printed in Walch, XX. 138-158, 378-409, 2852-2929. Comp.,
also, vol. XV. 2414-2502. Carlstadt’s earlier
eucharistic writings of 1521 strongly defend the corporal presence, and
even the adoration of bread and wine, because they were the body and
blood of Christ. Planck, l.c., II. 210 sqq., gives a full
exposition of his earlier and later views. See, also, M.
Göbel on Carlstadt’s Abendmahlslehre
in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1842.
Luther exhorted the Strassburgers, in a vigorous
letter (Dec. 14, 1524), to hold fast to the evangelical doctrines, and
warned them against the dangerous vagaries of Carlstadt. At the same
time he issued an elaborate refutation of Carlstadt, in a book "Against
the Heavenly Prophets" (December, 1524, and January, 1525, in two
parts). It is written with great ability and great violence. "A new
storm is arising," he begins. "Dr. Andreas Carlstadt is fallen away
from us, and has become our worst enemy." He thought the poor man had
committed the unpardonable sin. Letter to Briesmann, Jan. 11, 1525, De Wette,
II. 612. KöstIin (M. L., I.
726): Luther’s Widerwille gegen die menschliche
Vernunft im Gebiete des Religiösen und Göttlichen
wurde, seit er hier [in Carlstadt’s writings] sie auftreten sah, noch
stärker und heftiger als früher.
Früher stellte er hin und wieder noch unbefangen die
Berufung auf Schriftbeweise und auf helle, evidente,
vernünftige Gründe nebeneinander, indem er durch
die einen oder anderen widerlegt zu werden begehrte: so ja auch noch
beim Wormser Reichstag; solchen Ausdrücken werden wir fortan
nicht leicht mehr begegnen."On Luther’s views of the relation of
reason to faith, see above, § 9, p. 29
sqq.
§ 106. Luther and Zwingli.
But now two more formidable opponents appeared on the field, who, by independent study, had arrived at a far more sensible interpretation of the words of institution than that of Carlstadt, and supported it with strong exegetical and rational arguments. Zwingli, the Luther of Switzerland, and Oecolampadius, its Melanchthon, gave the controversy a new and more serious turn.
Zwingli received the first suggestion of a
figurative interpretation (est = significat) from Erasmus and Wessel
through Honius; as Luther derived his first idea of a corporal presence
in the unchanged elements from Pierre d’Ailly. The assertion of some biographers of Zwingli,
that he already at Glarus became acquainted with the writings of
Ratramnus and Wiclif, is without proof. He first intimates his view in
a letter to his teacher Wyttenbach, June 15, 1523, but as a secret.
(Opera, VII., 1. 297.) He published the letter of Honius, which
explains the est to be equivalent to significat, at
Zürich in March, 1525, but had received it in 1521 from two
learned visitors, Rhodius and Sagarus. See Gieseler, III. 1, 192 sq.,
note 27 (Germ. ed.); and especially Ullmann, l.c., II. 569
sq. Opera, III. 589. Walch gives a German
translation, XVII. 1881. Planck (II. 261 sqq.) quotes all the important
points of this letter.
A few months later (March, 1525) he openly
expressed his view with the same arguments in the "Commentary on the
True and False Religion." Opera, III. 145. The section on the
Lord’s Supper appeared also in a German translation.
Planck, II. 265 sqq.
In the same year Oecolampadius, one of the most
learned and pious men of his age, appeared with a very able work in
defense of the same theory, except that he put the figure in the
predicate, and explained the words of institution (like Tertullian):
"hoc est figura corporis mei." He lays, how-ever, no stress on this
difference, as the sense is the same. He wrote with as much modesty and
moderation as learning and acuteness. He first made use of testimonies
of the church fathers, especially Augustin, who favors a spiritual
fruition of Christ by faith. Erasmus judged the arguments of
Oecolampadius to be strong enough to seduce the very elect. Ep. ad Budam Episc. Lingonensem, Oct. 2,
1525 (Op., III. 1, 892): "Exortum est novum dogma, in
Eucharistia nihil esse praeter panem et vinum. Id ut sit difficillimum
refellere, fecit Io. Oecolampadius qui tot testimoniis, tot argumentis
eam opinionem communiit, ut seduci posse videantur etiam electi."
Planck (II. 274): "Dass Oecolampad in dieser Schrift die ausgebreitetste
Gelehrsamkeit und den blendendsten oder treffendsten Scharfsinn zeigte,
dies haben selbst seine parteyischsten Gegner niemals
geläugnet; aber sie hätten wohl auch gestehen
dürfen, dass er die anständigste Bescheidenheit,
die würdigste Mässigung und gewiss auch die
redlichste Wahrheitsliebe darin gezeigt habe." Dr. Baur also, in his
Kirchengesch. IV. 90, speaks very highly of the book of Oecolampadius, and
gives a summary of it. Baur and Gieseler, among modern church
historians, clearly betray their Swiss sympathy in this controversy, as
well as Planck, although all of them are Germans of Lutheran
descent.
The Lutherans were not slow to reply to the Swiss.
Bugenhagen, a good pastor, but poor theologian,
published a letter to Hess of Breslau against Zwingli. In German translation, Walch, XX.
641. Luther had used the same weak argument before,
in his Address to the Bohemians (1523), where he says (Erl. ed.,
XXVIII. 393 sq.): "Wo man Solchen Frevel an einem Ort zuliesse, dass man ohn
Grund der Schrift möcht sagen, das Wörtlin
’Ist’ heisst so viel als das
Wörtlin ’Bedeut,’ so
könnt mans auch an keinem andern Ort wehren, und
würde die ganze Schrift zunichte; sintemal keine Ursach
wäre, warum solcher Frevel an einem Ort gülte,
und nicht an alten Oertern. So möcht man denn sagen, dass
Maria ist Jungfrau und Mutter Gottes, sei so viel gesagt, Maria bedeut
eine Jungfrau und Gottes Mutter. Item, Christus ist Gott und Mensch,
das ist, Christus bedeut Gott und Mensch. Item, In his Responsio ad Bugenhagii
Epistolam, 1525. Opera, III. 604-614. In German, Walch, XX.
648.
Several Swabian preachers, under the lead of
Brentius of Hall, replied to Oecolampadius, who (himself a Swabian by
birth) had dedicated his book to them with the request to examine and
review it. Their Syngramma Suevicum is much more important than
Bugenhagen’s epistle. They put forth the peculiar view
that the word of Christ puts into bread and wine the very body and
blood of Christ; as the word of Moses imparted a hearing power to the
brazen serpent; as the word of Christ, "Peace be unto you," imparts
peace; and the word, "Thy sins be forgiven," imparts pardon. But, by
denying that the body of Christ is broken by the hands, and chewed with
the teeth, they unwittingly approached the Swiss idea of a purely
spiritual manducation. Oecolampadius clearly demonstrated this
inconsistency in his Anti-syngramma (1526). Walch, XX. 667; Planck, II. 281-311.
Köstlin and Dorner say that the Syngramma is more
Calvinistic than Lutheran.
The controversy reached its height in 1527 and
1528, when Zwingli and Luther came into direct conflict. Zwingli
combated Luther’s view vigorously, but respectfully,
fortiter in re, suaviter in modo, in a Latin book, under the peaceful
title, "Friendly Exegesis," and sent a copy to Luther with a letter,
April 1, 1527. Even Löscher admits that Zwingli
treated Luther with great respect in this book. Comp. Planck, II. 470
sq.; Köstlin, II. 94 sqq. He informed Stiefel, Jan. 1, 1527 (De Wette,
!II. 148), that he was writing a book against the "sacramentarii
turbatores." On March 2l, 1527 (III. 165), he informed the preacher
Ursinus that he had finished it, and warned him to avoid the
"Zwingliana et Oecolampadia sententia" as the very pest, since
it was "blasphema in Christi verbum et fidem." The work was
translated into German by M. Judex. The closing passages blaming Bucer
for accompanying a Latin version of
Luther’s Kirchenpostille and Bugenhagen’s commentary on
the Psalms with Zwinglian notes are omitted in the Wittenberg edition
of Luther’s Works, 1548. Amsdorf complained of this
omission, which was traced by some to Melanchthon, by others to
Rörer, the corrector of Luft’s printing
establishment. See Walch, XX. 53, and Erl. ed., XXX.
15. Ein
Tausendkünstler, a myriad-minded trickster.
He dwells at length on the meaning of the words of
institution: "This is my body." They must be taken literally, unless
the contrary can be proved. Every departure from the literal sense is a
device of Satan, by which, in his pride and malice, he would rob man of
respect for God’s Word, and of the benefit of the
sacrament. He makes much account of the disagreement of his opponents,
and returns to it again and again, as if it were conclusive against
them. Carlstadt tortures the word "this" in the sacred text; Zwingli,
the word "is;" "Oecolampadius, the word "body;" He coins new names for the three parties,
Tutisten, Tropisten, Deutisten. Erl. ed. XXX.
336.
A great part of the book is devoted to the proof
of the ubiquity of Christ’s body. He explains "the
right hand of God" to mean his "almighty power." Here he falls himself
into a figurative interpretation. He ridicules the childish notion
which he ascribes to his opponents, although they never dreamed of it,
that Christ is literally seated, and immovably fastened, on a golden
throne in heaven, with a golden crown on his head. "Wie man den Kindern pflegt fürzubilden
einen Gaukelhimmel, darin ein gülden Stuhl stehe und
Christus neben dem Vater sitze in einer Chorkappen und
gülden Krone, gleichwie es die Mäler malen. Denn
wo sie nicht solche kindische, fleischliche Gedanken hätten
von der rechten Hand Gottes, würden sie freilich sich nicht
so lassen anfechten den Leib Christi im Abendmahl, oder sich
bläün mit dem Spruch Augustini (welchem sie doch
sonst nichts gläuben noch keinem andern), Christus muss an
einem Ort leiblichsein, aber seine Wahrheit [Gottheit?] is
allenthalben."
Erl. ed. XXX. 56.
Nitzsch and Köstlin are right when they
say that both Zwingli and Luther "assume qualities of the glorified
body of Christ, of which we can know nothing; the one by asserting a
spacial inclusion of that body in heaven, the other by asserting
dogmatically its divine omnipresence on earth." Köstlin, M. Luther, II. 96
and 642; and Luthers Theologie, II. 172 sqq.
Zwingli answered Luther without delay, in an
elaborate treatise, likewise in German (but in the Swiss dialect), and
under a similar title ("That the words, ’This is my
body,’ have still the old and only sense," etc.). Werke, vol. II. Part II. 16-93.
Afterwards translated into Latin by Gualter, Opera Lat.II.
374-416.
He disowns the imputed literal understanding of God’s almighty hand, and says, "We have known long since that God’s power is everywhere, that he is the Being of beings, and that his omnipresence upholds all things. We know that where Christ is, there is God, and where God is, there is Christ. But we distinguish between the two natures, and between the person of Christ and the body of Christ." He charges Luther with confounding the two. The attributes of the infinite nature of God are not communicable to the finite nature of man, except by an exchange which is called in rhetoric alloeosis. The ubiquity of Christ’s body is a contradiction. Christ is everywhere, but his body cannot be everywhere without ceasing to be a body, in any proper sense of the term.
This book of Zwingli is much sharper than his
former writings on the subject. He abstains indeed from abusive
language, and says that God’s Word must decide the
controversy, and not opprobrious terms, as fanatic, devil, murderer,
heretic, hypocrite, which Luther deals out so freely. "Es wirt hie Gottes Wort Oberhand gwünnen,
nit ’Schwärmer, Tüfel, Schalk,
Ketzer, Mörder, Ufrührer,
Glychsner [Gleissner] oder Hüchler, trotz, potz, plotz, blitz,
donder [Donner], Po, pu, pa, plump,’ und derglychen Schelt-,
Schmütz-, und Schänzelwort."Werke, II. Part II.
29. Fleischfresser,
Blutsäufer, Anthropophagos, Capernaiten, brödern
Gott, gebratener Gott. Luther indignantly protests against these opprobrious epithets
in his Short Confession, "als wären wir solche tolle, unsinnige,
rasende Leute, die Christum im Sacrament localiter hielten, und
stückweise zerfrässen, wie der Wolf ein Schaaf,
und Blut söffen, wie eine Kuh das
Wasser." But in
the same breath he pays the opponents back with interest, and calls
them "Brotfresser, Weinsäufer, Seelenfresser,
Seelenmörder, eingeteufelt, durchteufelt,
überteufelt." Erl. ed. XXXII. 402-404. Water that has been used in
washing.
Oecolampadius wrote likewise a book in
self-defense. Secunda, justa et aequa responsio ad Mart.
Lutherum. The book is mentioned by Hospinian, but must be very
rare, since neither Löscher nor Walch nor Planck has seen
it. It was afterwards called the "Great"
Confession, to distinguish it from the "Small" Confession which he
published sixteen years later (1544). Erl. ed. XXX. 151-373; Walch, XX.
11 18 sqq. In a letter dated March 28, 1528 (De Wette, III. 296), he
informs Link that he sent copies of his Confession through John Hofmann
to Nürnberg, and speaks with his usual contempt of the
Sacramentarians. "Zwingel," he says, "est tam rudis, ut asino queat
comparari."
The "Confession" is divided into three parts. The first is a refutation of the arguments of Zwingli and Oecolampadius; the second, an explanation of the passages which treat of the Lord’s Supper; the third, a statement of all the articles of his faith, against old and new heresies.
He devotes much space to a defense of the ubiquity
of Christ’s body, which he derives from the unity of
the two natures. He calls to aid the scholastic distinction between
three modes of presence,—local, definitive, and
repletive. "Es sind dreierlei Weise an einem Ort zu sein,
localiter oder circumscriptive, definitive,
repletive." He
explains this at length (XXX. 207 sqq., Erl. ed.). Local or
circumscriptive presence is the presence of wine in the barrel, where
the body fills the space; definite presence is incomprehensible, as the
presence of an angel or devil in a house or a man, or the passing of
Christ through the tomb or through the closed door; repletive presence
is the supernatural omnipresence of God which fills all space, and is
confined by no space. When Christ walked on earth, he was locally
present; after the resurrection, he appeared to the disciples
definitively and incomprehensibly; after his ascension to the right
hand of God, he is everywhere by virtue of the inseparable union of his
humanity with his divinity. Zwingli made the biting remark that Luther ends
this book with the Devil, with whom he had begun his former
book.
The "Confession" called out two lengthy answers of
Zwingli and Oecolampadius, at the request of the Strassburg divines;
but they add nothing new. Zwingli’s answer in German is
printed in Werke, II. Part II. 94-223; in Latin, Opera,
II. 416-521. The answer of Oecolampadius, in Walch, XX. 1725
sqq.
This bitter controversy fell in the most trying time of Luther, when he suffered greatly from physical infirmity and mental depression, and when a pestilence raged at Wittenberg (1527), which caused the temporary removal of the University to Jena. He remained on the post of danger, escaped the jaws of death, and measurably recovered his strength, but not his former cheerfulness, good humor, and buoyancy of spirit.
§ 107. The Marburg Conference, a.d. 1529. (With Facsimile of Signatures.)
I. Contemporary Reports. (1) Lutheran. Luther’s references to the Conference at Marburg, in Erl. ed. XXXII. 398, 403, 408; XXXVI. 320 sqq. (his report from the pulpit); LIV. 286; 83, 107 sq., 153; LV. 88. Letters of Luther to his wife, Philip of Hesse, Gerbel, Agricola, Amsdorf, Link, and Probst, from October, 1529, and later, in De Wette, III. 508 sqq; IV. 26 sq. Reports of Melanchthon, Jonas, Brenz, and Osiander, in "Corpus Reform.," I. 1098, 1102 (Mel. in German); 1095 (Jonas), XXVI. 115; Seckendorf, II. 136; Walch, XVII. 2352–2379; Scultetus, Annal. evang., p. 215 sqq.; Riederer, Nachrichten, etc., II. 109 sqq.
(2) Reformed (Swiss and Strassburg) reports of Collin, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, are collected in Zwingli’s Opera, ed. Schuler and Schulthess, vol. IV. 173–204, and Hospinian’s Hist. Sacram., II. 74 sqq., 123 sqq. Bullinger: Reformationsgesch., II. 223 sqq. The reports of Bucer and Hedio are used by Baum in his Capito und Butzer (Elberf. 1860), p. 453 sqq., and Erichson (see below). The MS. of Capito’s Itinerary was burned in 1870 with the library of the Protestant Seminary at Strassburg, but had previously been copied by Professor Baum.
II. The Marburg Articles in Walch, XVII. 2357 sqq.; Erl. ed. LXV. 88 sqq.; "Corp. Reform.," XXVI. 121–128; H. Heppe: Die 15 Marburger Artikel vom 3 Oct., 1529, nach dent wieder aufgefundenen Autographon der Reformatoren als Facsimile veröffentlicht, Kassel, 1847, 2d ed. 1854 (from the archives at Kassel); another ed. from a MS. in Zuerich by J. M. Usteri in the "Studien und Kritiken," 1883, No. II., p. 400–413 (with facsimile). A list of older editions in the "Corpus Reform.," XXVI. 113–118.
III. L. J. K. Schmitt: Das Religionsgespräch zu Marburg im J. 1529, Marb. 1840. J. Kradolfer: Das Marb. Religiogsgesprach im J. 1529, Berlin, 1871. Schirrmacher: Briefe und Akten zur Geschichte des Religions-gesprächs zu Marburg 1529 und des Reichstags zu Augsburg 1530 nach der Handschrift des Aurifaber, Gotha, 1876. M. Lenz: Zwingli und Landgraf Philipp, three articles in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift fuer K. Gesch.," 1879 (pp. 28, 220, and 429). Oswald Schmidt: in Herzog2, IX. (1881), 270–275. A. Erichson: Das Marburger Religionsgespräch i. J. 1529, nach ungedruckten strassburger Urkunden, Strassb. 1880. (Based upon Hedio’s unpublished Itinerarium ab Argentina Marpurgum super negotio Eucharistiae.) Frank H. Foster: The Historical Significance of the Marburg Colloquy, and its Bearing upon the New Departure (of Andover], in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," Oberlin, Ohio, April, 1887, p. 363–369.
IV. See also the respective sections in Hospinian, Löscher (Historia Motuum, I. 143 sqq.), Planck (II. 515 sqq.), Marheineke, Hagenbach, Rommel (Phil. der Grossmuethige, I. 247 sqq., II. 219 sqq.), Hassencamp (Hessische K. G., II.), Merle D’Aubigné (bk. VIII. ch. VII.), Ebrard (Das Dogma vom heil. Abendmahl, II. 268 sqq.), and in the biographies of Luther, e.g., Köstlin: M. Luth. II. 127 sqq. (small biography, E. V. p. 391 sqq.), and of Zwingli, e.g., by Christoffel and Mörikofer. Comp. also Ranke, III. 116 sqq.; Janssen, III. 149–154
The eucharistic controversy broke the political force of Protestantism, and gave new strength to the Roman party, which achieved a decided victory in the Diet of Speier, April, 1529.
In this critical situation, the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse formed at Speier "a secret agreement" with the cities of Nuernberg, Ulm, Strassburg and St. Gall, for mutual protection (April 22, 1529). Strassburg and St. Gall sided with Zuerich on the eucharistic question.
The situation became more threatening during the summer. The Emperor made peace with the Pope, June 29, and with France, July 19, pledging himself with his allies to extirpate the new deadly heresy; and was on the way to Augsburg, where the fate of Protestantism was to be decided. But while the nations of Europe aimed to emancipate themselves from the authority of the church and the clergy, the religious element was more powerful,—the hierarchical in the Roman, the evangelical in the Protestant party,—and overruled the political. This is the character of the sixteenth century: it was still a churchly and theological age.
Luther and Melanchthon opposed every alliance with
the Zwinglians; they would not sacrifice a particle of their creed to
any political advantage, being confident that the truth must prevail in
the end, without secular aid. Their attitude in this matter was narrow
and impolitic, but morally grand. In a letter to Elector John, March 6,
1530, Luther denied the right of resistance to the Emperor, even if he
were wrong and used force against the gospel. "According to the
Scriptures," he says, "a Christian dare not resist the magistrate,
right or wrong, but must suffer violence and injustice, especially from
the magistrate." De Wette, III. 560.
Luther, as soon as he heard of the agreement at Speier, persuaded the Elector to annul it. "How can we unite with people who strive against God and the sacrament? This is the road to damnation, for body and soul." Melanchthon advised his friends in Nuernberg to withdraw from the alliance, "for the godless opinion of Zwingli should never be defended." The agreement came to nothing.
Philip of Hesse stood alone. He was enthusiastic for an alliance, because he half sympathized with the Zwinglian theory, and deemed the controversy to be a battle of words. He hoped that a personal conference of the theological leaders would bring about an understanding.
After consulting Melanchthon personally in Speier,
and Zwingli by letter, the Landgrave issued formal invitations to the
Reformers, to meet at Marburg, and offered them a safe-conduct through
his territory. The letters of invitation in Monumenta
Hassiaca, tom. III., and Neudecker, Urkunden, p. 95.
Zwingli received the invitation with joy, and
hoped for the best. The magistrate of Zuerich was opposed to his
leaving; but he resolved to brave the danger of a long journey through
hostile territory, and left his home in the night of Sept. 3, without
waiting for the Landgrave’s safe-conduct, and without
even informing his wife of his destination, beyond Basel. Accompanied
by a single friend, the Greek professor Collin, he reached Basel safely
on horseback, and on the 6th of September he embarked with
Oecolampadius and several merchants on the Rhine for Strassburg, where
they arrived after thirteen hours. The Reformers lodged in the house of
Matthew Zell, the preacher in the cathedral, and were hospitably
entertained by his wife Catharine, who cooked their meals, waited at
the table, and conversed with them on theology so intelligently that
they ranked her above many doctors. She often alluded in later years,
with joy and pride, to her humble services to these illustrious men.
They remained in Strassburg eleven days, in important consultation with
the ministers and magistrates. Zwingli preached in the minister on
Sunday, the 12th of September, in the morning, on our knowledge of
truth, and our duty to obey it; Oecolampadius preached in the
afternoon, on the new creature in Christ, and on faith operative in
love ( The 27th is given by Hedio in his Itinerary, as
the day of their arrival, and is accepted by Baum, Erichson, and
Köstlin. The usual date is the 29th.
Zwingli and Philip of Hesse had political and
theological sympathies. Zwingli, who was a statesman as well as a
reformer, conceived about that time far-reaching political combinations
in the interest of religion. He aimed at no less than a Protestant
alliance between Zuerich, Hesse, Strassburg, France, Venice, and
Denmark, against the Roman empire and the house of Habsburg. He
believed in muscular, aggressive Christianity, and in rapid movements
to anticipate an attack of the enemy, or to be at least fully prepared
for it. The fiery and enthusiastic young Landgrave freely entered into
these plans, which opened a tempting field to his ambition, and
discussed them with Zwingli, probably already at Marburg, and
afterwards in confidential letters, till the catastrophe at Cappel made
an end to the correspondence, and the projected alliance. There are still extant ten letters from the
Landgrave to Zwingli, and three from Zwingli to the Landgrave, to which
should be added four letters from Duke Ulrich of Württemberg
to Zwingli. They are published in Kuchenbecker’s
Monumenta Hassiaca, in
Neudecker’s Urkunden aus der
Reformationszeit,
and in Zwingli’s Opera, vol. VIII., and are
explained and discussed by Max Lenz in three articles quoted in the
Literature. The correspondence began during the second Diet of Speier,
April 22, 1529 (the date of the first epistle of Philip), and ended
Sept. 30, 1531 (the date of Philip’s last letter),
eleven days before Zwingli’s death. The letters of the
Landgrave, before the Marburg Conference, treat of religion; those
after that Conference, chiefly of politics, and are strictly
confidential. The prince addresses the theologian as "Dear Master
Ulrich," "Dear Zwingli," etc.
The Wittenbergers, as already remarked, would have
nothing to do with political alliances unless it were an alliance
against foreign foes. They were monarchists and imperialists, and
loyally attached to Charles V., "the noble blood," as Luther called
him. They feared that an alliance with the Swiss would alienate him
still more from the Reformation, and destroy the prospect of
reconciliation. In the same year Luther wrote two vigorous works (one
dedicated to Philip of Hesse) against the Turks, in which, as a
Christian, a citizen, and a patriot, he exhorted the German princes to
aid the Emperor in protecting the German fatherland against those
invaders whom he regarded as the Gog and Magog of prophecy, and as the
instruments of God’s wrath for the punishment of
corrupt Christendom. Vom Kriege wider die
Türken, April, 1529, and Heerpredigt wider den
Türken, published it the end of 1529, and in a second edition, January,
1530. In the Erl. ed., XXXI. 31 sqq. and 80 sqq.
The Wittenbergers, therefore, received the invitation to a colloquy with distrust, and resisted it. Luther declared that such a conference was useless, since he would not yield an inch to his opponents. Melanchthon even suggested to the Elector that he should forbid their attendance. They thought that "honorable Papists" should be invited as judges on a question touching the real presence! But the Elector was unwilling to displease the Landgrave, and commanded the Reformers to attend. When they arrived at the Hessian frontier, Luther declared that nothing could induce him to cross it without a safe-conduct from the Landgrave (which arrived in due time). They reached Marburg on the last of September, three days after the Swiss.
How different the three historic appearances of
Luther in public! In the Leipzig disputation with Eck, we see him
struggling in the twilight for emancipation from the bondage of popery.
At Worms he stood before the Emperor, with invincible courage, as the
heroic witness of the liberty of conscience. Marburg he entered
reluctantly, at the noonday heat of his labors, in bad humor, firmly
set in his churchly faith, imperious and obstinate, to face the Swiss
Reformers, who were as honest and earnest as he, but more liberal and
conciliatory. In Leipzig he protested as a Catholic against the
infallibility of pope and council; in Worms he protested against the
papal tyranny over the Bible and private judgment; in Marburg he
protested as a conservative churchman against his fellow-Protestants,
and in favor of the catholic faith in the mystery of the sacrament. R. Rothe calls Luther an old Catholic, not a
modern Protestant, though the greatest Reformer and a prophet.
(Kirchengesch. II. 334.)
The visitors stopped at an inn, but were at once invited to lodge in the castle, and treated by the Landgrave with princely hospitality.
The Reformed called upon the Lutherans, but met
with a cool reception. Luther spoke a kind word to Oecolampadius; but
when he first met his friend Bucer, who now sided with Zwingli, he
shook his hand, and said, smiling, and pointing his finger at him, "You
are a good-for-nothing knave." "Du bist ein Schalk und ein
Nebler."
Melanchthon saluted Hedio in Latin, "I am glad to see you. You are
Hedio." Baum, p. 459. Erichson, p. 16.
In that romantic old castle of Marburg which
overlooks the quaint city, and the beautiful and fertile valley of the
Lahn, the famous Conference was held on the first three days of
October. It was the first council among Protestants, and the first
attempt to unite them. It attracted general attention, and promised to
become world-historical. "Die Versammlung," says Ranke, III. 122, "hatte etwas Erhabenes,
Weltbedeutendes."
§ 108. The Marburg Conference continued. Discussion and Result.
The work of the Conference began on Friday, the 1st of October, with divine service in the chapel of the castle. Zwingli preached on the providence of God, which he afterwards elaborated into an important treatise, "De Providentia." It was intended for scholars rather than the people; and Luther found fault with the introduction of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin words into the pulpit. Luther, Bucer, and Osiander preached the morning sermons on the following days; Luther, on his favorite doctrine of justification by faith.
The Landgrave first arranged a private interview
between the lions and the lambs; that is, between Luther and
Oecolampadius, Zwingli and Melanchthon. The two pairs met after divine
service, in separate chambers, and conferred for several hours. The
Wittenberg Reformers catechised the Swiss about their views on the
Trinity, original sin, and baptism, and were in a measure relieved of
their suspicion that they entertained unsound views on these topics.
Melanchthon had, a few months before the Conference, written a very
respectful letter to Oecolampadius (April 8, 1529), in which he regrets
that the "horribilis dissensio de coena Domini" interfered with the
enjoyment of their literary and Christian friendship, and states his
own view of the eucharist very moderately and clearly to the effect
that it was a communion with the present Christ rather than a
commemoration of the absent Christ. "Corpus Reform.," I. 1048 sqq. He says: "Vos
absentia Christi corpus tanquam in tragoedia repraesentari contenditis.
Ego de Christo video exstare promissiones: ’Ego
vobiscum usque ad consummationem seculi, et similes, ubi nihil est opus
divellere ab humanitate divinitatem; proinde de sentio, hoc sacramentum
verae praesentiae testimonium esse quod cum ita sit, sentio in illa
coena praesentis corporis κοινωνίανesse." He does not enter into an interpretation of
the words of institution. Erichson, p. 20, from Strassburg
reports. "Ich habe mich müde
gewaschen," said
Luther. Bucer, in a letter to Blaurer in Constance,
Oct. 18, 1529, charged Melanchthon especially with the obstinate
refusal of brotherhood, and made him, even more than Luther,
responsible for the failure of the Conference, adding, as a reason,
that he was unwilling to lose the favor of the Emperor Charles and his
brother Ferdinand. Baum, l.c., p. 463; Erichson, p.
45.
Luther must have handled Oecolampadius more severely; for the latter, in coming from the conference room, whispered to Zwingli, "I am again in the hands of Dr. Eck" (as at the colloquy in Baden in 1526).
The general discussion took place on Saturday, the
2d of October, in a large hall (which cannot now be identified with
certainty). "In interiore hypocaustoad cubiculum
Principis," says Jonas (Seckendorf, II. 140). It was not the
Rittersaal, but the reception-room in the new east wing of the
castle, adjoining the bedroom of the Landgrave. The castle has
undergone many changes.
Besides these representative theologians there
were a number of invited guests, princes (including the exiled Duke
Ulrich of Wuerttemberg), noblemen, and scholars (among them Lambert of
Avignon). Zwingli speaks of twenty-four, Brentius of fifty to sixty,
hearers. Poor Carlstadt, who was then wandering about in Friesland, and
forced to sell his Hebrew Bible for bread, had asked for an invitation,
but was refused. Many others applied for admission, but were
disappointed. Justus Jonas reports ("Corp. Ref.," I. 1097,
and Seckendorf, II. 140): "A Francofordia confluxerunt plerique,
alii Rhenanis partibus, e Colonia, Argentina, Basilea, Helvetiis, etc.,
sed non sunt admissi in colloquium."
John Feige, the chancellor of the Landgrave, exhorted the theologians in an introductory address to seek only the glory of Christ and the restoration of peace and union to the church.
The debate was chiefly exegetical, but brought out no new argument. It was simply a recapitulation of the preceding controversy, with less heat and more gentlemanly courtesy. Luther took his stand on the words of institution in their literal sense: "This is my body;" the Swiss, on the word of Christ: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life."
Luther first rose, and declared emphatically that he would not change his opinion on the real presence in the least, but stand fast on it to the end of life. He called upon the Swiss to prove the absence of Christ, but protested at the outset against arguments derived from reason and geometry. To give pictorial emphasis to his declaration, he wrote with a piece of chalk on the table in large characters the words of institution, with which he was determined to stand or fall: "Hoc est corpus Meum."
Oecolampadius in reply said he would abstain from
philosophical arguments, and appeal to the Scriptures. He quoted
several passages which have an obviously figurative meaning, but
especially
Luther denied the second proposition, and asserted that Christ did not reject oral, but only material manducation, like that of the flesh of oxen or of swine. I mean a sublime spiritual fruition, yet with the mouth. To the objection that bodily eating was useless if we have the spiritual eating, he replied, If God should order me to eat crab-apples or dung, I would do it, being assured that it would he salutary. We must here close the eyes.
Here Zwingli interposed: God does not ask us to
eat crab-apples, or to do any thing unreasonable. We cannot admit two
kinds of corporal manducation; Christ uses the same word "to eat,"
which is either spiritual or corporal. You admit that the spiritual
eating alone gives comfort to the soul. If this is the chief thing, let
us not quarrel about the other. He then read from the Greek Testament
which he had copied with his own hand, and used for twelve years, the
passage
Luther asked him to read the text in German or Latin, not in Greek. When Christ says, "The flesh profiteth nothing," he speaks not of his flesh, but of ours.
Zwingli: The soul is fed with the spirit, not with flesh.
Luther: We eat the body with the mouth, not with the soul. If God should place rotten apples before me, I would eat them.
Zwingli: Christ’s body then would he a corporal, and not a spiritual, nourishment.
Luther: You are captious.
Zwingli: Not so; but you contradict yourself.
Zwingli quoted a number of figurative passages;
but Luther always pointed his finger to the words of institution, as he
had written them on the table. He denied that the discourse,
At this point a laughable, yet characteristic
incident occurred. "Beg your pardon," said Zwingli, "that passage [ He added, "Wo nicht, so will ich euch auch
über die Schnauze fahren, dass es euch gereuen wird, dazu
Ursach gegeben zu haben."
Zwingli: In Switzerland also there is strict justice, and we break no man’s neck without trial. I use simply a figurative expression for a lost cause.
The Landgrave said to Luther, "You should not take offense at such common expressions." But the agitation was so great that the meeting adjourned to the banqueting hall.
The discussion was resumed in the afternoon, and turned on the christological question. I believe, said Luther, that Christ is in heaven, but also in the sacrament, as substantially as he was in the Virgin’s womb. I care not whether it be against nature and reason, provided it be not against faith.
Oecolampadius: You deny the metaphor in the words of institution, but you must admit a synecdoche. For Christ does not say, This is bread and my body (as you hold), but simply, This is my body.
Luther: A metaphor admits the existence of a sign only; but a synecdoche admits the thing itself, as when I say, the sword is in the scabbard, or the beer in the bottle.
Zwingli reasoned: Christ ascended to heaven, therefore he cannot be on earth with his body. A body is circumscribed, and cannot be in several places at once.
Luther: I care little about mathematics.
The contest grew hotter, without advancing, and was broken up by a call to the repast.
The next day, Sunday, Oct. 3, it was renewed.
Zwingli maintained that a body could not be in different places at once. Luther quoted the Sophists (the Schoolmen) to the effect that there are different kinds of presence. The universe is a body, and yet not in a particular place.
Zwingli: Ah, you speak of the Sophists, doctor! Are you really obliged to return to the onions and fleshpots of Egypt? He then cited from Augustin, who says, "Christ is everywhere present as God; but as to his body, he is in heaven."
Luther: You have Augustin and Fulgentius on your side, but we have all the other fathers. Augustin was young when he wrote the passage you quote, and he is obscure. We must believe the old teachers only so far as they agree with the Word of God.
Oecolampadius: We, too, build on the Word of God,
not on the fathers; but we appeal to them to show that we teach no
novelties. Luther hastily prepared a memorandum for the
Landgrave, with quotations from Hilary, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Cyprian,
and Irenaeus, to counteract the quotations from Augustin. See Letters,
ed. De Wette, III. 508-511.
Luther, pointing again his finger to the words on the table: This is our text: you have not yet driven us from it. We care for no other proof.
Oecolampadius: If this is the case, we had better close the discussion.
The chancellor exhorted them to come to an understanding.
Luther: There is only one way to that. Let our adversaries believe as we do.
The Swiss: We cannot.
Luther: Well, then, I abandon you to God’s judgment, and pray that he will enlighten you.
Oecolampadius: We will do the same. You need it as much as we.
At this point both parties mellowed down. Luther
begged pardon for his harsh words, as he was a man of flesh and blood.
Zwingli begged Luther, with tearful eyes, to forgive him his harsh
words, and assured him that there were no men in the world whose
friendship he more desired than that of the Wittenbergers. As Luther reports the words,
"Es sind
keine Leut auf Erden, mit denen ich lieber wollt’ eins
seyn als mit den Wittenbergern." In Zwingli’s dialect,
"Es
werend kine Lüt uff Erden, mit denen ich lieber
wöllt’ ins sin, denn mit den
Wittenbergern."
Jacob Sturm and Bucer spoke in behalf of
Strassburg, and vindicated their orthodoxy, which had been impeached.
Luther’s reply was cold, and displeased the audience.
He declared to the Strassburgers, as well as the Swiss, "Your spirit is
different from ours." "Ihr habt einen anderen Geist als
wir."
The Conference was ended. A contagious disease, called the English sweat (sudor Anglicus), which attacked its victims with fever, sweat, thirst, intense pain, and exhaustion, had suddenly broken out in Marburg as in other parts of Germany, and caused frightful ravages that filled everybody with alarm. The visitors were anxious to return home. So were the fathers of the Council of Trent, when the Elector Moritz chased the Emperor through the Tyrol; and in like manner the fathers of the Vatican Council hurried across the Alps when France declared war against Germany, and left the Vatican decrees in the hands of Italian infallibilists.
But the Landgrave once more brought the guests together at his table on Sunday night, and urged upon every one the supreme importance of coming to some understanding.
On Monday morning he arranged another private
conference between the Saxon and the Swiss Reformers. They met for the
last time on earth. With tears in his eyes, Zwingli approached Luther,
and held out the hand of brotherhood, but Luther declined it, saying
again, "Yours is a different spirit from ours." Zwingli thought that
differences in non-essentials, with unity in essentials, did not forbid
Christian brotherhood. "Let us," he said, "confess our union in all
things in which we agree; and, as for the rest, let us remember that we
are brethren. There will never be peace in the churches if we cannot
bear differences on secondary points." Luther deemed the corporal
presence a fundamental article, and construed
Zwingli’s liberality into indifference to truth. "I am
astonished," he said, "that you wish to consider me as your brother. It
shows clearly that you do not attach much importance to your doctrine."
Melanchthon looked upon the request of the Swiss as a strange
inconsistency. He wrote to Agricola, Oct. 12, 1529 ("Corp.
Ref.," I. 1108): "Magnopere contenderunt, ut a nobis fratres
appellarentur. Vide eorum stultitia! Cum damnent nos, cupiunt tamen a
nobis fratres haberi! Nos noluimus eis hac in re
assentiri."
The Swiss were ready to burst over such an insult, but controlled their temper.
On the same day Luther wrote the following characteristic letter to his wife: —
"Grace and peace in Christ. Dear Lord Keth, I do you to know that our friendly colloquy in Marburg is at an end, and that we are agreed in almost every point, except that the opposite party wants to have only bread in the Lord’s Supper, and acknowledge the spiritual presence of Christ in the same. To-day the Landgrave wants us to come to an agreement, and, if not, to acknowledge each other as brethren and members of Christ. He labors very zealousy for this end. But we want no brothership and membership, only peace and good-will. I suppose to-morrow or day after to-morrow we shall break up, and proceed to Schleitz in the Voigtland whither his Electoral Grace has ordered us.
"Tell Herr Pommer [Bugenhagen] that the best argument of Zwingli was that corpus non potest esse sine loco: ergo Christi corpus non est in pane. Of Oecolampadius: This sacramentum est signum corporis Christi. I think God has blinded their eyes.
"I am very busy, and the messenger is in a hurry. Give to all a good night, and pray for us. We are all fresh and hale, and live like princes. Kiss for me little Lena and little Hans (Lensgen und Hänsgen).
"Your obedient servant,
"M. L."
"P. S.—John Brenz, Andrew Osiander, Doctor Stephen [Agricola] of Augsburg are also here.
"People are crazy with the fright of the sweating
plague. Yesterday about fifty took sick, and two died." De Wette, III. 512 sq.
At last Luther yielded to the request of the Landgrave and the Swiss, retired to his closet, and drew up a common confession in the German language. It consists of fifteen articles expressing the evangelical doctrines on the Trinity, the person of Christ, his death and resurrection, original sin, justification by faith, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the sacraments.
The two parties agreed on fourteen articles, and even in the more important part of the fifteenth article which treats of the Lord’s Supper as follows: —
We all believe, with regard to the Supper of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, that it ought to be celebrated in both kinds, according to the institution of Christ; that the mass is not a work by which a Christian obtains pardon for another man, whether dead or alive; that the sacrament of the altar is the sacrament of the very body and very blood of Jesus Christ; and that the spiritual manducation of this body and blood is specially necessary to every true Christian. In like manner, as to the use of the sacrament, we are agreed that, like the word, it was ordained of Almighty God, in order that weak consciences might be excited by the Holy Ghost to faith and charity.
"And although at present we are not agreed on the
question whether the real body and blood of Christ are corporally
present in the bread and wine, yet both parties shall cherish Christian
charity for one another, so far as the conscience of each will permit;
and both parties will earnestly implore Almighty God to strengthen us
by his Spirit in the true understanding. Amen." I add the German original in the antiquated
spelling, from the archives in Zürich (as published by
Usteri in 1883):— "Vom
Sacrament des leibs und bluts Christi." "Zum
fünnffzehennden Gleuben unnd hallten wir alle | vonn dem
Nachtmale unnsers lieben herrn Jhesu Christi | das man bede gestallt
nach Innsetzung Christi prauchen soll | das ouch die Messe nicht ein
werck ist | do mit einer dem andren tod oder lebendig gnad erlangt. |
Das auch das Sacrament desz Altars | sey ein Sacrament desz waren leibs
unnd pluts | Jhesu Christi und die geistliche Niessung desselbigen
leibs unnd pluts | einem Iden Christen fürnemlich vonn
nöthen | deszgleichen der prauch desz Sacraments | wie das
wort | von Gott dem allmechtigen gegeben | unnd geordennt sey | damit
die schwachen Gewissen | zu gleuben | zubewegen | durch den heyligenn
Geist. Unnd wiewol aber wir unns | ob der war leyb unnd plut Christi |
leiplich im prot unnd weinsey | diser Zeit nit vergleicht haben | so
soll doch ein theyl gegen den anndern Christliche lieb | so fern Idesz
gewissen ymmer leiden kan | erzeigen | unnd bede theyl | Gott den
Allmechtigen vleyssig bitten | das er unns durch seinen Geist den
rechten verstanndt bestetigen well. Amen."
The Landgrave urged the insertion that each party should show Christian charity to the other. The Lutherans assented to this only on condition that the clause be added: "as far as the conscience of each will permit."
The articles were read, considered, and signed on
the same day by Luther, Melanchthon, Osiander, Agricola, Brentius, on
the part of the Lutherans; and by Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Bucer, and
Hedio, on the part of the Reformed. They were printed on the next day,
and widely circulated. Three copies were signed at Marburg (according
to Osiander’s report, who took one to
Nürnberg). They were long supposed to be lost, but two have
been recovered and published by Heppe and Usteri from the archives at
Cassel and Zürich (see Lit.). They agree almost verbatim,
except in the order of signatures, the former giving the first place to
the Lutheran, the latter to the Reformed names. The small differences
are discussed by Usteri. l.c.
On the fifth day of October, in the afternoon, the guests took leave of each other with a shake of hands. It was not the hand of brotherhood, but only of friendship, and not very cordial on the part of the Lutherans. The Landgrave left Marburg on the same day, early in the morning, with a painful feeling of disappointment.
Luther returned to Wittenberg by way of Schleitz, where he met the Elector John by appointment, and revised the Marburg Articles so as to adapt them to his creed, and so far to weaken the consensus.
Both parties claimed the victory. Zwingli complained in a letter to Vadian of the overbearing and contumacious spirit of Luther, and thought that the truth (i.e., his view of it) had prevailed, and that Luther was vanquished before all the world after proclaiming himself invincible. He rejoiced in the agreement which must destroy the hope of the papists that Luther would return to them.
Luther, on the other hand, thought that the Swiss had come over to him half way, that they had humbled themselves, and begged his friendship. "There is no brotherly unity among us," he said in the pulpit of Wittenberg after his return from Mar-burg, "but a good friendly concord; they seek from us what they need, and we will help them."
Nearly all the contemporary reports describe the
Conference as having been much more friendly and respectful than was
expected from the preceding controversy. The speakers addressed each
other as "Liebster Herr," "Euer Liebden," and abstained from terms of
opprobrium. The Devil was happily ignored in the interviews; no heresy
was charged, no anathema hurled. Luther found that the Swiss were not
such bad people as he had imagined, and said even in a letter to
Bullinger (1538), that Zwingli impressed him at Marburg as "a very good
man" (optimus vir). Brentius, as an eye-witness, reports that Luther
and Zwingli appeared as if they were brothers. Jonas described the
Reformed leaders during the Conference as follows: In a Latin letter to Reiffenstein, dated
Marburg, Oct. 4, 1529; in the "Corp. Reform.," I. 109, and Seckendorf,
vol. II. 140. "In Zwinglio agreste quiddam est et
arrogantulum." "Mira bonitas naturae et
clementia." "Calliditas vulpina."
The laymen who attended the Conference seem to have been convinced by the Swiss arguments. The Landgrave declared that he would now believe the simple words of Christ, rather than the subtle interpretations of men. He desired Zwingli to remove to Marburg, and take charge of the ecclesiastical organization of Hesse. Shortly before his death he confessed that Zwingli had convinced him at Marburg. But more important is the conversion of Lambert of Avignon, who had heretofore been a Lutheran, but could not resist the force of the arguments on the other side. "I had firmly resolved," he wrote to a friend soon after the Conference, "not to listen to the words of men, or to allow myself to be influenced by the favor of men, but to be like a blank paper on which the finger of God should write his truth. He wrote those doctrines on my heart which Zwingli developed out of the word of God." Even the later change of Melanchthon, who declined the brotherhood with the Swiss as strongly as Luther, may perhaps be traced to impressions which he received at Marburg.
If the leaders of the two evangelical confessions could meet to-day on earth, they would gladly shake hands of brotherhood, as they have done long since in heaven.
The Conference did not effect the desired union,
and the unfortunate strife broke out again. Nevertheless, it was by no
means a total failure. It prepared the way for the Augsburg Confession,
the chief symbol of the Lutheran Church. More than this, it served as
an encouragement to peace movements of future generations. Comp. the remarks of Ranke, III. 124 sqq. He
sees the significance of the Conference in the fact that the two
parties, in spite of the theological difference, professed the same
evangelical faith.
It was during the fiercest dogmatic controversies and the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, that a prophetic voice whispered to future generations the watchword of Christian peacemakers, which was unheeded in a century of intolerance, and forgotten in a century of indifference, but resounds with increased force in a century of revival and re-union:
"In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity."
NOTE
On the Origin of the Sentence: "In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis (or, dubiis) libertas, in utrisque (or, omnibus) caritas."
This famous motto of Christian Irenics, which I have slightly modified in the text, is often falsely attributed to St. Augustin (whose creed would not allow it, though his heart might have approved of it), but is of much later origin. It appears for the first time in Germany, a.d. 1627 and 1628, among peaceful divines of the Lutheran and German Reformed churches, and found a hearty welcome among moderate divines in England.
The authorship has recently been traced to Rupertus Meldenius, an otherwise unknown divine, and author of a remarkable tract in which the sentence first occurs. He gave classical expression to the irenic sentiments of such divines as Calixtus of Helmstädt, David Pareus of Heidelberg, Crocius of Marburg, John Valentin Andrew of Wuerttemberg, John Arnd of Zelle, Georg Frank of Francfort-on-the Oder, the brothers Bergius in Brandenburg, and of the indefatigable traveling evangelist of Christian union, John Dury, and Richard Baxter. The tract of Meldenius bears the title, Paraenesis votiva pro Pace Ecclesiae ad Theologos Augustanae Confessionis, Auctore Ruperto Meldenio Theologo, 62 pp. in 4to, without date and place of publication. It probably appeared in 1627 at Francfort-on-the Oder, which was at that time the seat of theological moderation. Mr. C. R Gillett (librarian of the Union Theological Seminary) informs me that the original copy, which he saw in Berlin, came from the University of Francfort-on-the Oder after its transfer to Breslau.
Dr. Luecke republished the tract, in 1850, from a reprint in Pfeiffer’s Variorum Auctorum Miscellanea Theologiae (Leipzig, 1736, pp. l36–258), as an appendix to his monograph on the subject (pp. 87–145). He afterwards compared it with a copy of the original edition in the Electoral library at Cassel. Another original copy was discovered by Dr. Klose in the city library of Hamburg (1858), and a third one by Dr. Briggs and Mr. Gillett in the royal library of Berlin (1887).
The author of this tract is an orthodox Lutheran,
who was far from the idea of ecclesiastical union, but anxious for the
peace of the church and zealous for practical scriptural piety in place
of the dry and barren scholasticism of his time. He belongs, as Luecke
says ("Stud. und Kritiken," 1851, p. 906), to the circle of "those
noble, genial, and hearty evangelical divines, like John Arnd, Valentin
Andrew, and others, who deeply felt the awful misery of the fatherland,
and especially the inner distractions of the church in their age, but
who knew also and pointed out the way of salvation and peace." He was
evidently a highly cultivated scholar, at home in Hebrew, Greek, and
Latin, and in controversial theology. He excels in taste and style the
forbidding literature of his age. He condemns the pharisaical
hypocrisy, the folodoxiva, filargiva, and filoneikiva of the
theologians, and exhorts them first of all to humility and love. By too
much controversy about the truth, we are in danger of losing the truth
itself. Nimium altercando amittitur Veritas. "Many," he says, "contend
for the corporal presence of Christ who have not Christ in their
hearts." He sees no other way to concord than by rallying around the
living Christ as the source of spiritual life. He dwells on the nature
of God as love, and the prime duty of Christians to love one another,
and comments on the seraphic chapter of Paul on charity (
The golden sentence occurs in the later half of the tract (p. 128 in Luecke’s edition), incidentally and in hypothetical form, as follows: —
"Verbo dicam: Si nos servaremus in necessariis unitatem, in non-necessariis libertatem, in utrisque charitatem, optimo certe loco essent res nostrae."
The same sentiment, but in a shorter sententious and hortative form, occurs in a book of Gregor Frank, entitled Consideratio theologica de gradibus necessitatis dogmatumt Christianorum quibus fidei, spei et charitatis officia reguntur, Francf. ad Oderam, 1628. Frank (1585–1651) was first a Lutheran, then a Reformed theologian, and professor at Francfort. He distinguishes three kinds of dogmas: (1) dogmas necessary for salvation: the clearly revealed truths of the Bible; (2) dogmas which are derived by clear and necessary inference from the Scriptures and held by common consent of orthodox Christendom; (3) the specific and controverted dogmas of the several confessions. He concludes the discussion with this exhortation: —
"Summa est: Servemus in necessariis unitatem, in non-necessariis libertatem, in utrisque charitatem."
He adds, "Vincat veritas, vivat charitas, maneat libertas per Jesum Christum qui est veritas ipsa, charitas ipsa, libertas ipsa."
Bertheau deems it uncertain whether Meldenius or Frank was the author. But the question is decided by the express testimony of Conrad, Berg, who was a colleague of Frank in the same university between 1627 and 1628, and ascribes the sentence to Meldenius.
Fifty years later Richard Baxter, the Puritan pacificator in England, refers to the sentence, Nov. 15, 1679, in the preface to The True and Only Way of Concord of All the Christian Churches, London, 1680, in a slightly different form: "I once more repeat to you the pacificator’s old despised words, ’Si in necessariis sit [esset] unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in utrisque charitas, optimo certo loco essent res nostrae.’ "
Luecke was the first to quote this passage, but overlooked a direct reference of Baxter to Meldenius in the same tract on p. 25. This Dr. Briggs discovered, and quotes as follows: —
"Were there no more said of all this subject, but that of Rupertus Meldenius, cited by Conradus Bergius, it might end all schism if well understood and used, viz." Then follows the sentence. Baxter also refers to Meldenius on the preceding page. This strengthens the conclusion that Meldenius was the "pacificator." For we are referred here to the testimony of a contemporary of Meldenius. Samuel Werenfels, a distinguished irenical divine of Basel, likewise mentions Meldenius and Conrad Bergius together as irenical divines, and testes veritatis, and quotes several passages from the Paraenesis votiva.
Conrad Bergius (Berg), from whom Baxter derived his knowledge of the sentence, was professor in the university of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, and then a preacher at Bremen. He and his brother John Berg (1587–1658), court chaplain of Brandenburg, were irenical divines of the German Reformed Church, and moderate Calvinists. John Berg attended the Leipzig Colloquy of March, 1631, where Lutheran and Reformed divines agreed on the basis of the revised Augsburg Confession of 1540 in every article of doctrine, except the corporal presence and oral manducation. The colloquy was in advance of the spirit of the age, and had no permanent effect. See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, I. 558 sqq., and Niemeyer, Collectio Confessionum in Ecclesiis Reformatis publicatarum, p. LXXV. and 653–668.
Dr. Briggs has investigated the writings of Conrad Bergius and his associates in the royal library of Berlin. In his "Praxis Catholica divini canonis contra quasvis haereses et schismata," etc., which appeared at Bremen in 1639, Bergius concludes with the classical word of "Rupertus Meldenius Theologus," and a brief comment on it. This is quoted by Baxter in the form just given. In the autumn of 1627 Bergius preached two discourses at Frankfurt on the subject of Christian union, which accord with the sentence, and appeared in 1628 with the consent of the theological faculty. They were afterwards incorporated in his Praxis Catholica. He was thoroughly at home in the polemics and irenics of his age, and can be relied on as to the authorship of the sentence.
But who was Meldenius? This is still an unsolved question. Possibly he took his name from Melden, a little village on the borders of Bohemia and Silesia. His voice was drowned, and his name forgotten, for two centuries, but is now again heard with increased force. I subscribe to the concluding words of my esteemed colleague, Dr. Briggs: "Like a mountain stream that disappears at times under the rocks of its bed, and re-appears deeper down in the valley, so these long-buried principles of peace have reappeared after two centuries of oblivion, and these irenical theologians will be honored by those who live in a better age of the world, when Protestant irenics have well-nigh displaced the old Protestant polemics and scholastics."
The origin of the sentence was first discussed by a Dutch divine, Dr. Van der Hoeven of Amsterdam, in 1847; then by Dr. Luecke of Göttingen, Ueber das Alter, den Verfasser, die ursprungliche Form und den wahren Sinn des kirchlichen Friedenspruchs ’In necessariis unitas,’ etc., Göttingen, 1850 (XXII. and 146 pages); with supplementary remarks in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1851, p. 905–938. Luecke first proved the authorship of Meldenius. The next steps were taken by Dr. Klose, in the first edition of Herzog’s "Theol. Encycl," sub Meltlenius, vol. IX. (1858), p. 304 sq., and by Dr. Carl Bertheau, in the second edition of Herzog, IX. (1881), p. 528–530. Dr. Brigas has furnished additional information in two articles in the "Presbyterian Review," vol. VIII., New York, 1857, pp. 496–499, and 743–746.
§ 109. Luther’s Last Attack on the Sacramentarians. His Relation to Calvin.
We anticipate the concluding act of the sad controversy of Luther with his Protestant opponents. It is all the more painful, since Zwingli and Oecolampadius were then sleeping in the grave; but it belongs to a full knowledge of the great Reformer.
The Marburg Conference did not really reconcile the parties, or advance the question in dispute; but the conflict subsided for a season, and was thrown into the background by other events. The persistent efforts of Bucer and Hedio to bring about a reconciliation between Wittenberg and Zuerich soothed Luther, and excited in him the hope that the Swiss would give up their heresy, as he regarded it. But in this hope he was disappointed. The Swiss could not accept the "Wittenberg Concordia" of 1536, because it was essentially Lutheran in the assertion of the corporal presence and oral manducation.
A year and a half before his death, Luther broke
out afresh, to the grief of Melanchthon and other friends, in a most
violent attack on the Sacramentarians, the "Short Confession on the
Holy Sacrament" (1544). Erl. ed. XXXII. 396-425; Walch, XX. 2195 sqq.
Comp. Luther’s letter to Hungarian ministers, April
21, 1544 (in De Wette, V. 644), where he announces his intention soon
to add one more to his many confessions on the real presence. "Cogor
post tot confessiones meas adhuc unam facere, quam faciam propediem et
novissimam." The Erlangen editor says that the book was not
published till 1545; but the titlepage of Hans Luft’s
edition bears date "Am Ende: M. D. XLIIII." Melanchthon informed
Bullinger of the appearance of the book in August, 1544; and Calvin
heard of it in November, 1544. Schwenkfeld sent Luther some books with appeals
to his authority (1543). Luther returned an answer by the messenger, in
which he called Schwenkfeld "a nonsensical fool," and asked him to
spare him his books, which were "spit out by the Devil." In the Short
Confession, he calls him always Stenkefeld (Stinkfield),
and ein
"verdampt Lügenmand." See above, p. 606, note. Dévay is the founder of the Reformed
(Calvinistic) church in Hungary. See Revecz in
Herzog2, III. 572
sqq. "Summa," he wrote to Chancellor
Brück, who sent him the program, and
Amsdorf’s censure, "das Buch ist den
Schwärmern nicht allein leidlich, sondern auch
tröstlich, vielmehr für ihre Lehre als
für unsere; ... und ist alles zu lang und gross
Gewäsche, dass ich das Klappermaul, den Butzer, hier wohl
spüre." De Wette, V. 709; "Corp. Reform." V. 113,
461. Comp. above, p. 251. Melanchthon called the
"Short Confession" "the most atrocious book of Luther "
(atrocissimum Lutheri scriptum, in quo bellum
περὶ
δείπνου
κυριακοῦinstaurat). Letter to Bullinger, Aug. 30, 1544, in
"Corp. Ref." v. 475. He agreed with the judgment of Calvin, who wrote
to him, June 28, 1545 "I confess that we all owe the greatest thanks to
Luther, and I should cheerfully concede to him the highest authority,
if he only knew how to control himself. Good God! what jubilee we
prepare for the Papists, and what sad example do we set to
posterity!"
The "Short Confession" contains no argument, but
the strongest possible reaffirmation of his faith in the real
pres-ence, and a declaration of his total and final separation from the
Sacramentarians and their doctrine, with some concluding remarks on the
elevation of the sacrament. Standing on the brink of the grave, and in
view of the judgment-seat, he solemnly condemns all enemies of the
sacraments wherever they are. "Denn ich," he says after a few contemptuous words about
Schwenk-feld, "als der ich nu auf der Gruben gehe, will diess Zeugniss und
diesen Ruhm mit mir für meins lieben Herrn und Heilands Jesu
Christi Richtstuhl bringen, dass ich die Schwärmer und
Sacramentsfeinde, Carlstadt, Zwingel, Oecolampad, Stenkefeld und ihre
Jünger zu Zürch [Zürich], und wo sie sind, mit ganzem
Ernst verdampt und gemieden habe, nach seinem Befehl He ascribes to them indiscriminately
"ein
eingeteufelt, durchteufelt, überteufelt,
lästerlich Herz und
Lügenmaul" (l.c., p. 404). He wrote in 1527: "Dem Oecolampad hat Gott viel Gaben
geschenkt für [vor]vielen andern, und mir ja herzlich für den Mann
leid ist." Erl.
ed. XXX. 34. In an answer to Bullinger,
Zwingli’s successor, dated May 14, 1538 (De Wette, V.
112): "Libere enim dicam: Zwinglium, postquam Marpurgi mihi visus et
auditus est, virum optimum esse judicavi, sicut et Oecolampadium, ita
ut eorum casis me paene exanimaverit ... non quod invideam honori
Zwinglii, de cuius morte tantum dolorem concepi,"
etc. He had expressed the same doubt twelve years
before, but in a milder tone, in a letter to Duke Albrecht of Prussia,
April, 1532 (De Wette, IV. 352 sq.): "Sind sie" [Zwingli and his followers who fell on
the battle-field at Cappel] "selig worden, wie dasselb Gott nicht
unmöglich ist, einen Menschen in seinem letzten Ende, in
einem Augenblick, zu bekehren, das gönnen und
wünschen wir ihnen von Grund unsers Herzens: aber
Märtyrer zu machen, da gehört mehr zu, denn
schlecht selig werden." In the Short Confession (p. 411) he seems to count Zwingli and
Oecolampadius among "the Devil’s
martyrs." "Solche gottlose Heiden, Socrates, Aristides, ja der
gräuliche Numa, der zu Rom alle Abgötterei erst
gestiftet."
This attitude Luther retained to the end. It is
difficult to say whom he hated most, the papists or the
Sacramentarians. On the subject of the real presence he was much
farther removed from the latter. He remarks once that he would rather
drink blood alone with the papists than wine alone with the Zwinglians.
A few days before his death, he wrote to his friend, Pastor Probst in
Bremen: "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the
Sacramentarians, nor standeth in the way of the Zwinglians, nor sitteth
in the seat of the Zurichers." De Wette, V. 778. The German in Walch, XVII.
2633. It should be remembered that in this letter, dated Jan. 17, 1546,
he describes himself as "senex, decrepitus, piger, fessus, frigidus,
monoculus," and "infelicissimus omnium
hominum" In a book of March, 1531, against an anonymous
layman of Dresden, who charged him with stirring up the Germans to open
rebellion against the emperor, he defends this pious cursing as the
necessary negative supplement to the positive petitions of the
Lord’s Prayer."Ich kann nicht
beten," he says,
"ich
muss dabei fluchen. Soll ich sagen: ’geheiligt werde
dein Name,’ muss ich. dabei sagen:
’Verflucht, verdammt, geschändet
müsse werden der Papisten Namen, und aller, die deinen Namen
lästern.’ Soll ich sagen:
’Dein Reich komme,’ so muss ich dabei
sagen:’ Verflucht, verdammt, verstört
müsse werden das Papstthum sammt allen Reichen auf Erden,
die deinem Reiche zuwider sind. Soll ich sagen: ’Dein
Wille geschehe,’ so muss ich dabei sagen:
’Verflucht, verdammt, geschändet und zu
nichte müssen werden alle Gedanken und Anschläge
der Papisten und aller die wider deinen Willen und Rath
streben.’ Wahrlich, so bete ich alle Tage
mündlich, und mit dem Herzen ohne Unterlass, und mit mir
alle, die an Christum gläuben, und fühle auch
wohl, dass es erhört wird. Denn man mussGottes Wunder sehen,
wie er diesen schrecklichen Reichstag [the Diet of Augsburg,
1530],und das unmässliche Dräuen und
Wüthen der Papisten zu nichte macht, und auch ferner sie
gründlich zu nichte machen wird. Dennoch behalte ich ein
gut, freundlich, friedlich und christlich Herz gegen jedermann; das
wissen auch meine grössten Feinde." (Wider den Meuchler zu
Dresden, Walsh,
XVI. 2085; Erl. ed. XXV. 108.) Seven years later (1538) he made a
similar statement in a tract on the Pope’s program of
a Reformation: "Man soll nicht fluchen (das ist wahr); aber beten muss man,
dass Gottes Name geheiliget und geehrt werde, des Papsts Name
geschädet und verflucht werde, sammt seinem Gott, dem
Teufel, dass Gottes Reich komme, des Antichrists Reich zu Grunde gehe.
Solchen paternosterlichen Fluch mag man wohl beten, und soll ihn jeder
Christ beten, weil die letzten Erzbösewichte am Ende der
Welt, Papst, Cardinal, und Bischof so schändlich,
böslich, muthwillig unsern lieben Herrn und Gott
lästern und dazu spotten." Erl. ed. XXV. 151. When once asked whether
we may curse in praying, Luther replied: "Yes; for when I pray,
’Hallowed be thy name,’ I curse
Erasmus and all heretics who blaspheme God."Tischreden, vol.
LIX. 22. In Marburg, at the dinner-table, he added after that petition,
audibly, with a sharp voice, and closing his hands more tightly,
"Und
dass unser Name für tausend Teufel verdammt
werde." Baum,
Capito u. Butzer, p. 461.
It is befitting that with this last word against
the Sacramentarians should coincide in time and spirit his last and
most violent attack upon the divine gift of reason, which he had
himself so often and so effectually used as his best weapon, next to
the Word of God. On Jan. 17, 1546, he ascended the pulpit of Wittenberg
for the last time, and denounced reason as the damned whore of the
Devil." The fanatics and Sacramentarians boast of it when they ask:
"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" Hear ye the Son of God who
says: "This is my body," and crush the serpent beneath your feet. See above, § 9, p. 31 sq.
Köstlin, Luthers Theologie, II. 226,
290.
Six days later Luther left the city of his public labors for the city of his birth, and died in peace at Eisleben, Feb. 18. 1546, holding fast to his faith, and commending his soul to his God and Redeemer.
In view of these last utterances we must,
reluctantly, refuse credit to the story that Luther before his death
remarked to Melanchthon: "Dear Philip, I confess that the matter of the
Lord’s Supper has been overdone;" "Der Sache vom Abendmahl ist viel zu viel
gethan." Hardenberg, a Reformed minister at Bremen ((I.
1574), reported such a conversation as coming from the lips of his
friend Melanchthon; but Melanchthon nowhere alludes to it.
Stähelin (John Calvin, I. 228 sq.) accepts,
Köstlin (M. L., II. 627) rejects the report, as
resting on some misunderstanding. So also C. Bertheau in the article
"Hardenberg" in Herzog2, V. 596 sq.
Comp. Diestelmann, Die letzte Unterredung Luthers mit Melanchthon
über den Abendmahlsstreit, Göttingen, l874;
Köstlin’s review of Diestelmann, in the
"Studien und Kritiken," 1876, p. 385 sqq.; and Walte in the "Jahrb.
für prot. Theol.," 1883. It is a pity that the story cannot
be sufficiently authenticated, for it certainly expresses what ought to
have been Luther’s last confession on the
subject.
But it is gratifying to know that Luther never
said one unkind word of Calvin, who was twenty-five years younger. He
never saw him, but read some of his books, and heard of him through
Melanchthon. In a letter to Bucer, dated Oct. 14, 1539, he sent his
respectful salutations to John Sturm and John Calvin, who lived at that
time in Strassburg, and added that he had read their books with
singular delight. This includes his masterly answer to the letter of
Bishop Sadolet (1539). De Wette, V. 211: "Bene vale et salutabis
Dr. Joannem Sturmium et Johannem Calvinum reverenter, quorum libellos
cum singulari voluptate legi. Sadoleto optarem, ut crederet Deum esse
creatorem hominum etiam extra Italiam." From the last sentence it
appears that he read Calvin’s answer to Bishop
Sadolet. He is reported to have remarked to Cruciger: "This answer has
hand and foot, and I rejoice that God raises such men who will give
popery the last blow, and finish the war against Antichrist which I
began." Calvin alludes to these salutations in his Secunda Defensio
adv. Westphalum (Opera, ed. Reuss, IX.
92). "Calvinus magnam gratiam
iniit." This letter of Melanchthon is lost, but Calvin
alludes to it in a letter to Farel, 1539. Opera, X. 432. The
words of Luther are: "Spero ipsum [Calvinum] olim de nobis melius
sensurum, sed aequum est a bono ingenio nos aliquid
ferre." Ch. IV. p. 236 sqq. (De Coena Domini),
Opera, I. 118 sqq. Opera Calc., ed. Reuss vol. V. 385-416.
On fol. 400 Calvin rejects the "localis corporis Christ
praesentia" in the eucharist, but asserts "veram carnis et
sanguinis communicationem quae fidelibus in coena
exhibetur." Opera, V. 429-460. Pezel, Ausführliche Lehre vom
Sacramentstreit,
Bremen, 1600, p. 137 sqq. See Gieseler, vol. IV. 414 sq. (New York ed.
of the E. transl.); Stähelin, Joh. Calvin, I. 227
(with Pezel’s report in full); Müller,
Dogmat. Abhandlungen, p. 406; Köstlin, M. L.,
II. 615 and 687. It is remarkable in this connection that Luther spoke
in high terms of the Swabian Syngramma, which was directed
against the Swiss theory, but leaves no room for an oral manducation,
and comes nearest to the Calvinistic view. Comp. Köstlin,
Luthers Theologie, II. 147.
Calvin returned Luther’s greetings through Melanchthon, and sent him two pamphlets with a letter, dated Jan. 21, 1545, addressing him as "my much respected father," and requesting him to solve the scruples of some converted French refugees. he expresses the wish that "he might enjoy for a few hours the happiness of his society," though this was impossible on earth.
Melanchthon, fearing a renewal of the eucharistic
controversy, had not the courage to deliver this
letter—the only one of Calvin to
Luther—"because," he says, "Doctor Martin is
suspicious, and dislikes to answer such questions as were proposed to
him." Opera, ed. Reuss, XII. 6 sq., 61 sq.
Letters, ed. Constable, I. 416 sq.
Calvin regretted "the vehemence of
Luther’s natural temperament, which was so apt to boil
over in every direction," and to "flash his lightning sometimes also
upon the servants of the Lord;" but he always put him above Zwingli,
and exhorted the Zurichers to moderation. When he heard of the last
attack of Luther, he wrote a noble letter to Bullinger, Nov. 25, 1544,
in which he says: Letters, I. 409 sq., Opera, XI.
774.
"I hear that Luther has at length broken forth in
fierce invective, not so much against you as against the whole of us.
On the present occasion, I dare scarce venture to ask you to keep
silence, because it is neither just that innocent persons should thus
be harassed, nor that they should be denied the opportunity of clearing
themselves; neither, on the other hand, is it easy to determine whether
it would be prudent for them to do so. But of this I do earnestly
desire to put you in mind, in the first place, that you would consider
how eminent a man Luther is, and his excellent endow-ments, with what
strength of mind and resolute constancy, with how great skill, with
what efficiency and power of doctrinal statement, he hath hither-to
devoted his whole energy to overthrow the reign of Antichrist, and at
the same time to diffuse far and near the doctrine of salvation. Often
have I been wont to declare, that even although he were to call me a
devil, I should still not the less esteem and acknowledge him as an
illustrious servant of God. "Saepe dicere solitus sum: etiam si me
diabolum vocaret, me tamen hoc illi honoris habiturum, ut insignem Dei
servum agnoscam: qui tamen ut pollet eximiis virtutibus, ita magnis
vitiis laboret."
This is the wisest Christian answer from Geneva to the thunderbolts of Wittenberg.
§ 110. Reflections on the Ethics of the Eucharistic Controversy.
Dogmatics and ethics, faith and conduct, should agree like the teaching and example of Christ from which they are to be drawn. But, in practice, they often conflict. History shows us many examples of ungodly champions of orthodoxy and godly champions of heterodoxy, of unholy churchmen and holy dissenters. The angel of Ephesus is commended for zeal against false apostles, and censured for leaving the first love; while the angel of Thyatira is praised for his good works, and reproved for tolerating error. Some are worse than their belief, and others are better than their misbelief or unbelief.
Luther and Zwingli are by no means opposed to each other as orthodox and heretic; they were essentially agreed in all fundamental articles of the evangelical faith, as the Marburg Conference proved. The difference between them is only a little more Catholic orthodoxy and intolerance in Luther, and a little more Christian charity and liberality in Zwingli. This difference is characteristic of the Reformers and of the denominations which they represent.
Luther had a sense of superiority, and claimed the
credit of having begun the work of the Reformation. He supposed that
the Swiss were indebted to him for what little knowledge they had of
the gospel; while, in fact, they were as independent of him as the
Swiss Republic was of the German Empire, and knew the gospel as well as
he. In his book, "Dass die Worte
Christi," etc.
(1527, Erl. ed. XXX. 11), he calls the Sacramentarians "his tender
children, his dear brethren, his golden friends" ("meine zarte Kinder, meine
Brüderlein, meine gülden
Freundlein "),
who would have known nothing of Christ and the gospel if Luther had not
previously written ("wo der Luther nicht zuvor hätte
geschrieben"). He
compared Carlstadt to Absalom and to Judas the traitor. He treated the
Swiss not much better, in a letter to his blind admirer Amsdorf, April
14, 1545 (De Wette, V. 728), where he says that they kept silence,
while he alone was sustaining the fury of popery (cum solus sudarem
in sustinenda furia Papae), and that after the peril was over, they
claimed the victory, and reaped the fruit of his labors (tum
erampebant triumphatores gloriosi. Sic, sic alius laborat, alius
fruitur). Dr. Döllinger (Luther, 1851, p. 29 sq.)
derives the bitterness of Luther’s polemics against
the Swiss largely from "jealousy and wounded pride," and calls his
refutation of their arguments "very weak," and even "dis-honest"
("seine
Polemik war, wie immer und gegen jedermann, in hohem Grade
unehrlich," p.
31). The charge of dishonesty we cannot admit.
But it would be great injustice to attribute his
conduct to obstinacy and pride, or any selfish motive. It proceeded
from his inmost conviction. He regarded the real presence as a
fundamental article of faith, inseparably connected with the
incarnation, the union of the two natures of Christ, and the mystical
union of believers with his divine-human personality. He feared that
the denial of this article would consistently lead to the rejection of
all mysteries, and of Christianity itself. He deemed it, moreover, most
dangerous and horrible to depart from what had been the consensus of
the Christian Church for so many centuries. His piety was deeply rooted
in the historic Catholic faith, and it cost him a great struggle to
break loose from popery. In the progress of the eucharistic
controversy, all his Catholic instincts and abhorrence of heresy were
aroused and intensified. In his zeal he could not do justice to his
opponents, or appreciate their position. His sentiments are shared by
millions of pious and devout Lutherans to this day, whose conscience
forbids them to commune with Christians of Reformed churches. The philosopher Steffens, who was far from
uncharitable bigotry, always went from Berlin to Breslau to commune
with the orthodox Old Lutherans. Bishop Martensen, one of the
profoundest Lutheran divines of the nineteenth century, thought that
only in cases of necessity could a Lutheran commune with a Calvinist,
who denies what Luther affirms, or evades the mystery of the real
presence. Briefwechsel zwischen Martensen und Dorner, Berlin, 1888, vol. I. 262 sq. He
changed his view afterwards. I could name eminent living Lutheran
divines who would hardly allow even this exception. In America the
Lutheran theory had largely given way to the Zwinglian until it was
revived by the German Missouri Synod, and found a learned advocate in
Dr. Krauth, who went so far as to propose to the General Lutheran
Council the so-called "Galesburg rule" (1875): "Lutheran pulpits for
Lutheran ministers only, Lutheran altars for Lutheran communicants
only."
In addition to Luther’s dogmatic
standpoint we must take into account his ignorance of the true
character of the Swiss, and their real doctrine. He had hardly heard of
the Swiss Reformation when the controversy began. He did not even spell
Zwingli’s name correctly (he always calls him
"Zwingel"), and could not easily understand his Swiss dialect. Zwingli’s Latin is better than
his Züridütsch, in which his answers to
Luther’s German attacks were
written.
Zwingli was clear-headed, self-possessed, jejune, and sober (even in his radical departures from Rome), and farther removed from fanaticism than Luther himself. He was a pupil of the classical and humanistic school of Erasmus; he had never been so deeply rooted in the mediaeval faith, and it cost him much less trouble than Luther to break off from the old church; he was a man of reflection rather than of intuition, and had no mystic vein, but we may say a rationalistic bent. Nevertheless, he was as loyal to Christ, and believed in the Word of God and the supernatural as firmly, as Luther; and the Reformed churches to this day are as pure, faithful, devoted, and active in Christian works as any, and less affected by rationalism than the Lutheran, in part for the very reason that they allow reason its legitimate influence in dogmatic questions. If Zwingli believed in the salvation of the pious heathen and unbaptized infants, it was not because he doubted the absolute necessity of the saving grace of Christ, which he very strongly asserted, but simply because he extended this grace beyond the boundaries of the visible church, and the ordinary means of grace; and on this point, as on others, he anticipated modern ideas. He was inferior to Luther in genius, and depth of mind and heart, but his superior in tolerance, liberality, and courtesy; and in these qualities also he was in advance of his age, and has the sympathies of the best modern culture.
Making every allowance for Luther’s profound religious conviction, and for the misunderstanding of his opponent, nothing can justify the spirit and style of Luther’s polemics, especially his last book against the sacramentarians. He drew his inspiration for it from the imprecatory Psalms, not from the Sermon on the Mount. He spoke the truth in hatred and wrath, not in love.
This betrays an organic defect in his reformation;
namely, the over-estimate of dogmatics over ethics, and a want of
discipline and self-government. In the same year in which he wrote his
fiercest book against the Sacramentarians, he seriously contemplated
leaving Wittenberg as a veritable Sodom: so bad was the state of
morals, according to his own testimony, in the very centre of his
influence. In July, 1545 (De Wette, V. 732 sq.), he wrote
to his wife from Leipzig that he did not wish to return, and that she
should sell house and home, and move "from this Sodoma" to Zulsdorf. He
would rather beg his bread than torture his last days by the sight of
the disorderly condition of Wittenberg.
Luther’s polemics had a bad effect on the Lutheran Church. He set in motion that theological fury which raged for several generations after his death, and persecuted some of the best men in it, from Melanchthon down to Spener.
His blind followers, in their controversies among
themselves and with the Reformed, imitated his faults, without his
genius and originality; and in their zeal for what they regarded the
pure doctrine, they forgot the common duties of courtesy and kindness
which we owe even to an enemy. These champions of Lutheran orthodoxy were not
simply Lutherisch, but verluthert, durchluthert, and
überluthert. They fulfilled the prediction of the Reformer: "Adorabunt
stercora mea." Their mottoes
were,— "Gottes
Wort und Luther’s Lehr Vergehet nun und nimmermehr;" and "Gottes
Wort und Luther’s Schrift Sind
des Papst’s und Calvini Gift." They believed that
Luther’s example gave them license to exhaust the
vocabulary of abuse, and to violate every rule of courtesy and good
taste. They called the Reformed Christians "dogs," and
Calvin’s God "a roaring bull
(Brüllochse), a blood-thirsty Moloch, and a hellish
Behemoth." They charged them with teaching and worshiping the very
Devil (den leibhaftigen Teufel), instead of the living God. One of them proved that "the
damned Calvinistic heretics hold six hundred and sixty-six tenets [the
apocalyptic number!] in common with the Turks." Another wrote a book to
show that Zwinglians and Calvinists are no Christians at all, but
baptized Jews and Mohammedans. O sancta simplicitas! On the
intolerance of those champions of Lutheran orthodoxy, see the
historical works of Arnold, Planck, Tholuck (Der Geist der lutherischen
Theologen Wittenbergs im 17ten Jahrh., 1852, p. 279 sqq.), and the fifth volume of
Janssen.
We may quote here a well-considered judgment of Dr. Dorner, one of the ablest and profoundest evangelical divines of Germany, who says in a confidential letter to his lifelong friend, Bishop Martensen of Denmark, —
"I am more and more convinced that the deepest
defect of Lutheran churchism heretofore has been a lack of the full
appreciation of the ethical element of Christianity. This becomes
manifest so often in the manner of the Lutheran champions. There is
lacking the tenderness of conscience and thorough moral culture which
deals conscientiously with the opponent. Justification by faith is made
to cover, in advance, all sins, even the future ones; and this is only
another form of indulgence. The Lutheran doctrine leads, if we look at
the principle, to an establishment of ethics on the deepest foundation.
But many treat justification, not only as the begin-ning, but also as
the goal. Hence we see not seldom the justified and the old man side by
side, and the old man is not a bit changed. Lutherans who show in their
literary and social conduct the stamp of the old Adam would deal more
strictly with themselves, and fear to fall from grace by such conduct,
if they had a keener conscience, and could see the neces-sary
requirements of the principle of justification; for then they would
shrink from such conduct as a sin against conscience. But the doctrine
of justification is often misused for lulling the conscience to sleep,
instead of quickening it." Die Rechtfertigungslehre wird
vielfach zur Einschläferung statt zur Schärfung
des Gewissens missbraucht."See Dorner’s letter of May 14, 1871, in
the Briefwechsel just quoted, vol. II. 114. Dorner and Martensen, both
masters in Christian dogmatics and ethics, kept up a most instructive
and interesting correspondence of friendship for more than forty years,
on all theological and ecclesiastical questions of the day, even during
the grave disturbances between Germany and Denmark on the
Schleswig-Holstein controversy, which broke out at last in open war
(1864). That correspondence is as remarkable in theology as the
Schiller and Goethe correspondence is in poetry and
art.
Zwingli’s conduct towards Luther, judged from the ethical point of view, is much more gentlemanly and Christian, though by no means perfect. He, too, misunderstood and misrepresented Luther when he charged him with teaching a local presence and a carnal eating of Christ’s body. He, too, knew how to be severe, and to use the rapier and the knife against the club and sledge-hammer of the Wittenberg Reformer. But he never forgot, even in the heat of controversy, the great services of Luther, and more than once paid him the tribute of sincere admiration.
"For a thousand years," says Zwingli, "no mightier
investigator of the Holy Scriptures has appeared than Luther. No one
has equaled him in manly and immovable courage with which he attacked
popery. But whose work is it? God’s, or
Luther’s? Ask Luther himself, and he will say
God’s. He traces his doctrine to God and his eternal
Word. As far as I have read his writings (although I have often
purposely abstained from doing so), I find them well founded in the
Scriptures: his only weak point is, that he yields too much to the
Romanists in the matter of the sacraments, and the confession to the
priest, and in tolerating the images in the churches. If he is sharp
and racy in speech, it comes from a pious, honest heart, and a flaming
love for the truth .... Others have come to know the true religion, but
no one has ventured to attack the Goliath with his formidable armor;
but Luther alone, as a true David, anointed by God, hurled the stones
taken from the heavenly brook so skillfully that the giant fell
prostrate on the ground. Therefore let us never cease to sing with joy:
’Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten
thousands’ ( The neat manuscript is still preserved in the
library of the Wasserkirche at Zürich, where I examined it
in August, 1886. I have given the substance of several passages
scattered through his polemical writings, and collected in the useful
edition of Zwingli’s Sämmtliche
Schriften by
Usteri and Vögelin, vol. II., Part II., p. 571
sqq.
I may add here the impartial testimony of Dr. Köstlin, the best biographer of Luther, and himself a Lutheran: —
"Zwingli knew how to keep himself under control.
Even where he is indignant, and intentionally sharp and pointed, he
avoids the tone of passionate excitement, and uses the calm and urbane
language of a gentleman of humanistic culture, and thereby proves his
superiority over his opponent, without justifying the suspicion of
Luther that he was uncertain in his own mind, and that the attitude he
assumed was only a feint. His polemics forms thus the complete opposite
to Luther’s book, ’That the words of
Christ,’ etc. Yet it presents also another aspect.
Zwingli characterizes, with select words of disregard, the writers and
contents of the Syngramma, to which Luther had given his assent, and
clearly hints at Luther’s wrath, spite, jealousy,
audacity, and other faults poorly concealed under the cover of bravery,
constancy, etc.; yea, here and there he calls his arguments
’childish’ and
’fantastic,’ etc. Hence his new
writings were by no means so
’friendly’ as the title indicates.
What is more important, we miss in them a sense for the deeper, truly
religious motives of Luther, as much as we miss in Luther an
appreciation of like motives in Zwingli .... He sees in Luther
obstinate blindness, while Luther discovered in him a devilish
spirit." Martin Luther, II. 96 sq.
§ 111. The Eucharistic Theories compared. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin.
We now present, for the sake of clearness, though at the risk of some repetition, the three Protestant theories on the real presence, with the chief arguments.
Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin agree, negatively, in opposition to the dogma of transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, and the withdrawal of the cup from the laity; positively, in these essential points: the divine institution and perpetuity of the Lord’s Supper, the spiritual presence of Christ, the commemorative character of the ordinance as the celebration of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, its importance as the highest act of worship and communion with Christ, and its special blessing to all who worthily partake of it.
They differ on three points,—the
mode of Christ’s presence (whether corporal, or
spiritual); the organ of receiving his body and blood (whether by the
mouth, or by faith); and the extent of this reception (whether by all,
or only by believers). The last point has no practical religious value,
though it follows from the first, and stands or falls with it. The
difference is logical rather than religious. The
Lord’s Supper was never intended for unbelievers. Paul
in speaking of "unworthily" receiving the sacrament (
I. The Lutheran Theory teaches a real and
substantial presence of the very body and blood of Christ, which was
born of the Virgin Mary, and suffered on the cross, in, with, and under
(in, sub, cum) the elements of bread and wine, and the oral manducation
of both substances by all commun-icants, unworthy and unbelieving, as
well as worthy and believing, though with opposite effects. The
simultaneous co-existence or conjunction of the two substances is not a
local inclusion of one substance in the other (impanation), nor a
mixture or fusing-together of the two substances into one; nor is it
permanent, but ceases with the sacramental action. It is described as a
sacramental, supernatural, incomprehensible union. The Lutheran divines of the seventeenth century
describe the real presence as sacramentalis, vera et realis,
substantiatis, mystica, supernaturalis, et incomprehensibilis, and
distinguish it from the praesentia gloriosa, hypostatica,
spiritualis, figurativa, and from ἀπουσία
(absence), ἐνουσία
(inexistence), συνουσία
(co-existence in the sense of
coalescence), and μετουσία
(transubstantiation). The Formula Concordiae (Epitome, Art.
VII., Negativa 21) indignantly rejects the notion of dental mastication
as a malicious slander of the Sacramentarians. But Luther, in his
instruction to Melanchthon, Dec. 17, 1534, gave it as his opinion, from
which he would not yield, that "the body of Christ is distributed,
eaten, and bitten with the teeth.""Und ist Summa das unsere Meinung,
dass wahrhaftig in und mit dem Brod der Leib Christi gessen wird, also
dass alles, was das Brod wirket und leidet, der Leib Christi wirke und
leide, dass er ausgetheilt, gessen, und mit den Zähnen
zubissen [zerbissen]werde." De
Wette, IV. 572. Comp. his letter to Jonas, Dec. 16, 1534, vol. IV. 569
sq. Dorner thinks that Luther speaks thus only per synecdochen;
but this is excluded by the words, "What the bread does and suffers,
that the body of Christ does and suffers." Melanchthon very properly
declined to act on this instruction (see his letter to Camerarius, Jan.
10, 1535, in the "Corp. Reform." II. 822), and began about that time to
change his view on the real presence. He was confirmed in his change by
the renewal of the eucharistic controversy, and his contact with
Calvin. The Lutheran theory is generally designated by
the convenient term consubstantiation, but Lutheran divines
expressly reject it as a misrepresentation. The Zwinglians, with their
conception of corporality, could not conceive of a corporal presence
without a local presence; while Luther, with his distinction of three
kinds of presence and his view of the ubiquity of
Christ’s body, could do so. The scholastic term
consubstantiatio is not so well defined as
transubstantiatio, and may be used in different senses: (1) a
mixture of two substances (which nobody ever taught); (2) an inclusion
of one substance in another (impanatio); (3) a sacramental
co-existence of two substances in their integrity in the same place. In
the first two senses the term is not applicable to the Lutheran theory.
The "in pane" might favor impanation, but, the sub and
cum qualify it. Dr. Steitz, in a learned article on
Transubstantiation, in Herzog,1 XVI.
347, and in the second edition, XV. 829, attributes to the Lutheran
Church the third view of consubstantiation, but to Luther himself the
second; namely, "die sacramentiche Durchdringung der Brotsubstanz von der
Substanz des Leibes." To this Luther’s illustration of the fire in
the iron might lead. But fire and iron remain distinct. At all events,
he denied emphatically a local or physical inclusion. Lutheran divines
in America are very sensitive when charged with
consubstantiation.
The confessional deliverances of the Lutheran Church on the Lord’s Supper are as follows: —
the augsburg confession of 1530.
"ART. X. Of the Supper of the Lord they teach that
the [true] body and blood of Christ The Latin text reads simply: corpus et
sanguis Christi; the German text: wahrer Leib und Blut
Christi. Vere adsint et distribuantur. The German
text adds: unter der Gestalt des Brots und Weins. The variations between the Latin and
German texts of the original edition indicate a certain hesitation in
Melanchthon’s mind, if not the beginning of a change,
which was completed in the altered confession. German: da. German addition: und genomnen
wird. Vescentibus. The German text has no
equivalent for this verb. Et improbant secus docentes. In
German: Derhalben wird auch die Gegenlehre
verworfen,
wherefore also the opposite doctrine is rejected. The
sacramentarian (Zwinglian) doctrine is meant, but not the Calvinistic,
which appeared six years afterward, 1536. The term improbant for
the papal damnant, and anathema sit, shows the progress
in toleration. The Zwinglian view is not condemned as a heresy, but
simply disapproved as an error. The Formula of Concord made a step
backwards in this respect, and uses repudiamus and
damnamus.
the altered augsburg confession of 1540.
Concerning the Supper of the Lord they teach that
with bread and wine are truly exhibited Cum pane et vino vere exhibeantur,
instead ofvere adsint et distribuantur. The verb exhibit does
not necessarily imply the actual reception by unbelievers, which the
verb distribute does. So Dorner also judges of the difference
(l.c., p. 324). The disapproval of those who teach otherwise is
significantly omitted, no doubt in deference to
Calvin’s view, which had been published in the mean
time, and to which Melanchthon himself leaned.
articles of smalkald (by luther), 1537.
"Of this Sacrament of the Altar, we hold that the bread and wine in the Supper are the true body and blood of Christ, and are given to, and re-ceived by, not only the pious, but also to and by the impious Christians."
In the same articles Luther denounces transubstantiation as a "subtle sophistry (subtilitas sophistica)," and the Romish mass as "the greatest and most terrible abomination (maxima et horrenda abominatio)." Pars III., Art. VI., in Mueller’s ed., pp. 301, 320.
formula of concord (1577). epitome, art. vii. affirmative.
"I. We believe, teach, and confess that in the Lord’s Supper the body and blood of Christ are truly and substantially present, and that they are truly distributed and taken together with the bread and wine.
"II. We believe, teach, and confess that the words of the Testament of Christ are not to be understood otherwise than as the words themselves literally sound, so that the bread does not signify the absent body of Christ, and the wine the absent blood of Christ, but that on account of the sacra-mental union the bread and wine are truly the body and blood of Christ.
"III. Moreover, as concerns the consecration, we believe, teach, and confess that no human work, nor any utterance of the minister of the Church, is the cause of the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Supper, but that this is to be attributed to the omnipotent power of our Lord Jesus Christ alone.
"IV. Nevertheless, we believe, teach, and confess,
by unanimous con-sent, that in the use of the Lord’s
Supper the words of the institution of Christ are by no means to be
omitted, but are to be publicly recited, as it is written (
"V. Now the foundations on which we rest in this controversy with the Sacramentarians are the following, which, moreover, Dr. Luther has laid down in his Larger Confession concerning the Supper of the Lord: —
"The first foundation is an article of our Christian faith, to wit: Jesus Christ is true, essential, natural, perfect God and man in unity of person, inseparable and undivided.
"Secondly: That the right hand of God is
everywhere; and that Christ, in respect of his humanity, is truly and
in very deed seated thereat, and therefore as present governs, and has
in his hand and under his feet, as the Scripture saith (
"Thirdly: That the Word of God is not false or deceiving.
"Fourthly: That God knows and has in his power various modes of being in any place, and is not confined to that single one which philosophers are wont to call local or circumscribed.
"VI. We believe, teach, and confess that the body
and blood of Christ are taken with the bread and wine, not only
spiritually through faith, but also by the mouth, nevertheless not
Capernaitically, but after a spiritual and heavenly manner, by reason
of the sacramental union. For to this the words of Christ clearly bear
witness, in which he enjoins us to take, to eat to drink; and that this
was done by the Apostles the Scripture makes mention, saying (
"To the same, with great consent, do the chief of the most ancient doctors of the church—Chrysostom, Cyprian, Leo the First, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustin—bear witness.
"VII. We believe, teach, and confess that not only
true believers in Christ, and such as worthily approach the Supper of
the Lord, but also the unworthy and unbelieving receive the true body
and blood of Christ; in such wise, nevertheless, that they derive
thence neither consolation nor life, but rather so as that receiving
turns to their judgment and condemnation, unless they be converted, and
repent (
"For although they repel from them Christ as a Saviour, nevertheless they are compelled, though extremely unwilling, to admit him as a stem Judge. And he no less present exercises his judgment over these impenitent guests than as present he works consolation and life in the hearts of true believers and worthy guests.
"VIII. We believe, teach, and confess that there
is one kind only of unworthy guests: they are those only who do not
believe. Of these it is written (
"IX. We believe, teach, and confess that no true
believer, so long as he retains a living faith, receives the holy
Supper of the Lord unto condemnation, however much weakness of faith he
may labor under. For the Lord’s Supper has been
chiefly instituted for the sake of the weak in faith, who nevertheless
are penitent, that from it they may derive true consolation and a
strengthening of their weak faith (
We believe, teach, and confess that the whole worthiness of the guests at this heavenly Supper consists alone in the most holy obedience and most perfect merit of Christ. And this we apply to ourselves by true faith, and are rendered certain of the application of this merit, and are confirmed in our minds by the sacrament. But in no way does that worthiness depend upon our virtues, or upon our inward or outward preparations."
The three great arguments for the Lutheran theory are the words of institution taken in their literal sense, the ubiquity of Christ’s body, and the prevailing faith of the church before the Reformation.
1. As to the literal interpretation, it cannot be
carried out, and is surrendered, as inconsistent with the context and
the surroundings, by nearly all modern exegetes. I may mention among commentators (on
2. The ubiquity of Christ’s body
involves an important element of truth, but is a dogmatic hypothesis
without sufficient Scripture warrant, and cannot well be reconciled
with the fact of the ascension, or with the nature of a body, unless it
be resolved into a mere potential or dynamic presence which makes it
possible for Christ to make his divine-human power and influence felt
wherever he pleases. The Lutheran divines were divided between the
idea of an absolute ubiquity (which would prove too much for the
Lutheran doctrine, and run into a sort of Panchristism or
Christo-Pantheism), and a relative ubiquity or
multivolipraesentia (which depends upon the will). The Formula
of Concord inconsistently favors both views. See
Dorner’s History of Christology, II. 710 sqq. (Germ.
ed.), and Schaff, Creeds, I. 322, 325 sq., and
348.
The illustrations which Luther uses—as the sun shining everywhere, the voice resounding in a thousand ears and hearts, the eye seeing different objects at once—all lead to a dynamic presence, which Calvin fully admits.
3. The historic argument might prove too much (for transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the mass), unless we are satisfied with the substance of truth which underlies the imperfect human theories and formulas. The real presence of Christ with his people is indeed a most precious truth, which can never be surrendered. It is the very life of the church and the comfort and strength of believers from day to day. He promised the perpetual presence not only of his spirit or influence, but of his theanthropic person:, I am with you alway." It is impossible to make an abstract separation of the divine and human in the God-man. He is the Head of the church, his body, and "filleth all in all." Nor can the church give up the other important truth that Christ is the bread of life, and nourishes, in a spiritual and heavenly manner, the soul of the believer which is vitally united to him as the branch is to the vine. This truth is symbolized in the miraculous feeding of the multitude, and set forth in the mysterious discourse of the sixth chapter of John.
As far as Luther contended for these truths, he was right against the Sacramentarians, though he erred in the form of conception and statement. His view is mystical but profound; Zwingli’s view is clear but superficial. The former commends itself to devout feeling, the latter to the sober understanding and intellect.
II. The Zwinglian Theory.—The
Lord’s Supper is a solemn commemoration of the atoning
death of Christ, according to his own command: "Do this in remembrance
of me," and the words of Paul: "As often as ye eat this bread, and
drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he
come." Zwingli calls the sacrament ein
Wiedergedächtniss und Erneuern dessen, was einst geschehen
und in Ewigkeit kräftig ist. His views on the Lord’s
Supper are conveniently put together by Usteri and Vögelin,
in Zwingli’s Sämmtliche Schriften im
Auszuge, vol. II.
70-167. Dorner (Gesch. der protest. Theol., p.
300): "Das Charakteristische in allen Schriften
Zwingli’s vor 1524 ist sein Gegensatz gegen das heil.
Abendmahl als Opfer und Messe." So also Ebrard. He expressed at Marburg, and in his two
confessions to Charles I. and to Francis I., his full belief in the
divinity of Christ in the sense of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds.
Dorner says (l.c., p. 302): "Dass Zwingli Christum
gegenwärtig denkt, ist unleugbar; er sei bei diesem Mahle
Wirth und Gastmahl (hospes et epulum)."
His last word on the subject of the eucharist (in the Confession to King Francis I.) is this: —
"We believe that Christ is truly present in the
Lord’s Supper; yea, that there is no communion without
such presence .... We believe that the true body of Christ is eaten in
the communion, not in a gross and carnal manner, but in a sacramental
and spiritual manner by the religious, believing and pious heart." Christum credimus vere esse in coena, immo
non esse Domini coenam nisi Christus adsit ... Adserimus igitur non sic
carnaliter et crasse manducari corpus Christi in coena, ut isti
perhibent, sed verum Christi corpus credimus in coena sacramentaliter
et spiritualiter edi, a religiosa, fideli et sancta mente, quomodo et
divus Chrysostomus sentit. Et haec est brevis summa nostrae, immo non
nostrae, sed ipsius veritatis, sententia de hac controversia.
Niemeyer, Collectio Confess., pp. 71, 72.
This passage comes so near the Calvinistic view
that it can hardly be distinguished from it. Calvin did injustice to
Zwingli, when once in a confidential letter he called his earlier
eucharistic doctrine, profane." Letter to Viret, September, 1542: "De
scriptis Zwinglii sic sentire, ut sentis, tibi permitto. Neque enim
omnia legi. Et fortassis sub finem vitae, retractavit ac correxit in
melius quae temere initio exciderant. Sed in scriptis prioribus memini,
quam profana sit de Sacramentis sententia."Opera, XI.
438.
Zwingli’s theory did not pass into any of the leading Reformed confessions; but it was adopted by the Arminians, Socinians, Unitarians, and Rationalists, and obtained for a time a wide currency in all Protestant churches, even the Lutheran. But the Rationalists deny what Zwingli strongly believed, the divinity of Christ, and thus deprive the Lord’s Supper of its deeper significance and power.
III. The Calvinistic
Theory.—Calvin was the greatest divine and best writer
among the Reformers, and his "Institutes of the Christian Religion"
have almost the same importance for Reformed theology as the "Summa" of
Thomas Aquinas for that of the Roman Church. He organized the ideas of
the Reformation into a clear, compact system, with the freshness and
depth of genius, the convincing power of logic, and a complete mastery
of the Latin and French languages. Henri Martin (Histoire de
France, Tom.
VIII. 188 sq.) says of Calvin’s Institutes that
they gave a religious code to the Reform in France and in a great part
of Europe,"and that it is "une vraie
’Somme’ théologique,
où se trouve impliqué l’ordre
civil même, et qui n’est pas, comme celle
de Thomas d’Aquin, le résumé
d’un système établi, mais le
programne et le code d’un système
à établir ... Luther attire: Calvin impose et
retient ... Volonté et logique, voilà
Calvin" (p. 185).
He calls him "le premier écrivain par la durée et
l’influence de sa langue, de son
style."
His theory of the Lord’s Supper
occupies a via media between Luther and Zwingli; he combines the
realism of the one with the spiritualism of the other, and saves the
substance for which Luther contended, but avoids the objectionable
form. He rests on the exegesis of Zwingli. He accepts the symbolical
meaning of the words of institution; he rejects the corporal presence,
the oral manducation, the participation of the body and blood by
unbelievers, and the ubiquity of Christ’s body. But at
the same time he strongly asserts a spiritual real presence, and a
spiritual real participation of Christ’s body and
blood by faith. While Zwingli dwelt chiefly on the negative, he
emphasizes the positive, element. While the mouth receives the visible
signs of bread and wine, the soul receives by faith, and by faith
alone, the things signified and sealed thereby; that is, the body and
blood of Christ with the benefit of his atoning death and the virtue of
his immortal life. He combines the crucified Christ with the glorified
Christ, and brings the believer into contact with the whole Christ. He
lays great stress on the agency of the Holy Spirit in the ordinance,
which was overlooked by Luther and Zwingli, but which appears in the
ancient liturgies in the invocation of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy
Spirit who unites in a supernatural manner what is separated in space,
and conveys to the believing communicant the life-giving virtue of the
flesh of Christ now glorified in heaven. Some of the strongest passages on this point
occur in his polemic tracts against Westphal. In the Second Defense he
says: "Christum corpore absentem doceo nihilominus non tantum divina
sua virtute, quae ubique diffusa est, nobis adesse, sed etiam facere ut
nobis vivifica sit sua caso" (Opera, IX. 76)."Spiritus
sui virtute Christus locorum distantiam superat ad vitam nobis e sua
carne inspirandam" (p. 77). And in his last admonition: "Haec
nostrae doctrinae summa est, carnem Christi panem esse vivificum, quia
dum fide in eam coalescimus, vere animas nostras alit et pascit. Hoc
nonnisi spiritualiter fieri docemus, quia hujus sacrae unitatis
vinculum arcana est et incomprehensibilis Spiritus Sancti virtus"
(p. 162). For a good exposition of the Calvinistic theory which
substantially agrees with ours, we may refer to Ebrard
(Abendmahl, II. 550-570), Stähelin (Calvin, I.
222 sqq.), and Nevin (Mystical Presence).
Calvin discussed the eucharistic question repeatedly and fully in his Institutes and in separate tracts. I select a few extracts from his Institutes (Book IV., ch. XVII. 10 sqq.), which contain his first and last thoughts on the subject.
(10) "The sum is, that the flesh and blood of Christ feed our souls just as bread and wine maintain and support our corporal life. For there would be no aptitude in the sign, did not our souls find their nourishment in Christ. This could not be, did not Christ truly form one with us, and refresh us by the eating of his flesh, and the drinking of his blood. But though it seems an incredible thing that the flesh of Christ, while at such a distance from us in respect of place, should be food to us, let us remember how far the secret virtue of the Holy Spirit surpasses all our conceptions, and how foolish it is to wish to measure its immensity by our feeble capacity. Therefore, what our mind does not comprehend, let faith conceive; viz., that the Spirit truly unites things separated by space. That sacred communion of flesh and blood by which Christ transfuses his life into us, just as if it penetrated our bones and marrow, he testifies and seals in the Supper, and that not by presenting a vain or empty sign, but by there exerting an efficacy of the Spirit by which he fulfils what he promises. And truly the thing there signified he exhibits and offers to all who sit down at that spiritual feast, although it is beneficially received by believers only who receive this great benefit with true faith and heartfelt gratitude." ...
"(18) ... Though Christ withdrew his flesh from us, and with his body ascended to heaven, he sits at the right hand of the Father; that is, he reigns in power and majesty, and the glory of the Father. This kingdom is not limited by any intervals of space, nor circumscribed by any dimensions. Christ can exert his energy wherever he pleases, in earth and heaven, can manifest his presence by the exercise of his power, can always be present with his people, breathing into them his own life, can live in them, sustain, confirm, and invigorate them, and preserve them safe, just as if he were with them in the body, in fine, can feed them with his own body, communion with which he transfuses into them. After this manner, the body and blood of Christ are exhibited to us in the sacrament.
"(19) The presence of Christ in the Supper we must hold to be such as neither affixes him to the element of bread, nor encloses him in bread, nor circumscribes him in any way (this would obviously detract from his celestial glory); and it must, moreover, be such as neither divests him of his just dimensions, nor dissevers him by differences of place, nor assigns to him a body of boundless dimensions, diffused through heaven and earth. All these things are clearly repugnant to his true human nature. Let us never allow ourselves to lose sight of the two restrictions. First, let there be nothing derogatory to the heavenly glory of Christ. This happens whenever he is brought under the corruptible elements of this world, or is affixed to any earthly creatures. Secondly, let no property be assigned to his body inconsistent with his human nature. This is done when it is either said to be infinite, or made to occupy a variety of places at the same time.
"But when these absurdities are discarded, I willingly admit any thing which helps to express the true and substantial communication of the body and blood of the Lord, as exhibited to believers under the sacred symbols of the Supper, understanding that they are received, not by the imagination or intellect merely, but are enjoyed in reality as the food of eternal life."
Calvin’s theory was not disapproved by Luther, who knew it, was substantially approved by Melanchthon in 1540, and adopted by all the leading Reformed Confessions of faith. We select a few specimens from one of the earliest and from the latest Calvinistic standards: —
heidelberg catechism (1563).
Question 76. What is it to eat the crucified body, and drink the shed blood, of Christ?
Answer. It is not only to embrace with a believing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ, and thereby to obtain the forgiveness of sins and life eternal; but moreover also, to be so united more and more to his sacred body by the Holy Ghost, who dwells both in Christ and in us, that although He is in heaven, and we on the earth, we are, nevertheless flesh of His flesh and bone of His bones, and live and are governed forever by one Spirit, as members of the same body are by one soul.
Q. 78. Do, then, the bread and wine become the real body and blood of Christ?
A. No: but as the water, in baptism, is not changed into the blood of Christ, nor becomes the washing away of sins itself, being only the divine token and assurance thereof; so also, in the Lord’s Supper, the sacred bread does not become the body of Christ itself, though agreeably to the nature and usage of sacraments it is called the body of Christ.
Q. 79. Why, then, doth Christ call the bread His body, and the cup His blood, or the New Testament in His blood; and St. Paul, the communion of the body and blood of Christ?
A. Christ speaks thus not without great cause; namely, not only to teach us thereby, that, like as bread and wine sustain this temporal life, so also His crucified body and shed blood are the true meat and drink of our souls unto life eternal; but much more, by this visible sign and pledge to assure us that we are as really partakers of His true body and blood, through the working of the Holy Ghost, as we receive by the mouth of the body these holy tokens in remembrance of Him; and that all His sufferings and obedience are as certainly our own, as if we had ourselves suffered and done all in our own persons.
westminster confession of faith (1647).
Chapter XXIX., section VII.
Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this sacrament, do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified, and all benefits of his death: the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are, to the outward senses.
westminster larger catechism (1647).
Question 170. How do they that worthily communicate in the Lord’s Supper feed upon the body and blood of Christ therein?
Answer. As the body and blood of Christ are not corporally or carnally present in, with, or under the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper; and yet are spiritually present to the faith of the receiver, no less truly and really than the elements themselves are to their outward senses; so they that worthily communicate in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, do therein feed upon the body and blood of Christ, not after a corporal or carnal, but in a spiritual manner; yet truly and really, while by faith they receive and apply unto themselves Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE POLITICAL SITUATION BETWEEN 1526 AND 1529.
§ 112. The First Diet of Speier, and the Beginning of the Territorial System. 1526.
I. The documents in Walch, XVI. 243 sqq. Neue Sammlung der Reichsabschiede, II. 273–75. Buchholtz: Ferdinand I., Bd. III.
II. Ranke, II. 249 sqq. Janssen, III. 39 sqq. J. Ney (Prot. minister in Speier): Analekten zur Gesch. des Reichstags zu Speier im J. 1526, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch.," Gotha, 1885, p. 300 sqq., and 1887, p. 300 sqq. (New Documents from the archives of Karlsruh and Würzburg). Walter Friedensburg: Der Reichstag zu Speier, 1526, im Zusammenhang der polit. und Kirchl. Entwicklung Deutschlands im Reformationszeitalter, Berlin, 1887 (xiv. and 602 pages). Previous discussions by Veesemeier and Kluckhohn (in "Hist. Zeitschrift," 1886). Friedensburg used much new material preserved in the archives of Hamburg and other cities. Charles G. Albert: The Diet of Speyer, the Rise and Necessity of Protestantism, in the "Luth. Quart. Review" (Gettysburg, Penn.), for January, 1888.
We must now consider the political situation which has in part been presupposed in previous sections.
As Protestantism advanced, the execution of the
Edict of Worms became less and less practicable. This was made manifest
at the imperial Diet of Speier, held in the summer of 1526 under
Archduke Ferdinand, in the name of the Emperor. Speier, or Speyer, is an old German city on the
left bank of the Rhine, the seat of a bishop, with a cathedral and the
graves of eight German kings, the capital of the Bavarian Palatinate.
It became the birthplace of the name "Protestants" in 1529. See below,
§ 115, p. 692.
The Diet came with the consent of Ferdinand to the
unanimous conclusion, Aug. 27, that a general or national council
should be convened for the settlement of the church question, and that
in the mean time, in matters concerning the Edict of Worms, "every
State shall so live, rule, and believe as it may hope and trust to
answer before God and his imperial Majesty." Demnach haben wir uns jetzt
einmüthiglich verglichen und vereiniget, mittlerzeit des
Concilii, oder aber Nationalversammlung, nichtsdestoweniger mit unsern
Unterthanen, ein jeglicher in Sachen so das Edict durch kaiserl.
Majestät auf dem Reichstag zu Worms gehalten, ausgangen,
belangen möchten, für sich also zu leben, zu
regieren und zu halten, wie ein jeder solches gegen Gott und
kaiserliche Majestät hoffet und vertraut zu
verantworten."See
the Reichsabschied (recess) in Walch, XVI. 266, and in Gieseler,
III. I. 223 (Germ. ed.; IV. 126 Am. ed.). The acts are now published in
full by Friedensburg.
This important action was not meant to annul the
Edict of Worms, and to be a permanent law of religious liberty, which
gave to each member of the Diet the right to act as he pleased. This was the view heretofore taken by most
Protestant historians, e.g., by Kurtz (II. 31, ed. 9th), who calls the
recess "die reichsgesetzliche Legitimation der
Territorialverfassung," and by Fisher (Hist. of the Christ. Ch., p. 304): "This
act gave the Lutheran movement a legal existence." The correct view is
stated by Janssen (III. 51): "Der Speierer Abschied bildet keineswegs eine
positive Rechtsgrundlage, wohl aber den Ausgangspunkt für
die Ausbildung neuer Landeskirchen." Kluckhohn, Friedensburg, and his reviewer,
Kawerau (in the "Theol. Literaturzeitung," Dec. 3, 1887), arrive at the
same conclusion.
But in its practical effect the resolution of 1526
went far beyond its intention. It was a great help to the cause of
Protestantism, especially as the council which the Diet contemplated,
and which the Emperor himself repeatedly urged upon the Pope, was
postponed for twenty years. In the mean time the Protestant princes,
notably Philip of Hesse at the Synod of Homberg (Oct. 20, 1526), and
the Elector of Saxony, interpreted the decree according to their
wishes, and made the best use of the temporary privilege of independent
action, regardless of its limitations or the views of the Emperor.
Luther himself understood the Diet of Speier as having given him a
temporary acquittal of heresy. He alludes to it in a polemical tract against
Duke George of Saxony from the year 1529 as follows:
"Auch so
bin ich auf dem Reichstage zu Speir durch ein öffentlichs
kaiserlichs Reichsdecret wiederumb befreiet, oder zum wenigsten
befristet [freed
at least for a season], dass man mich nicht kann einen Ketzer schelten; weil
daselbst beschlossen ist von Allen
einträchtiglich, dass ein jeglicher solle und müge glauben, wie ers
wisse gegen Gott und kaiserliche Majestät zu verantworten;
und ich billig daraus als die Ungehorsamen dem Reich und
Aufrührischen beklagen möcht alle die, so mich
einen Ketzer schelten. Hat das Gebotzu Worms gegolten, da ich verdampt
ward ohn Bewilligung der besten und höhesten
Stände des Reichs: warumb sollt mir denn das Gebot zu Speir
nicht auch gelten, welchs einträchtlich durch alle
Stände des Reichs beschlossen und angenommen
ist." Erl. ed.,
vol. VIII. p. 14.
At all events, from this time dates the exercise of territorial sovereignty, and the establishment of separate State churches in Germany. And as that country is divided into a number of sovereign States, there are there as many Protestant church organizations as Protestant States, according to the maxim that the ruler of the territory is the ruler of religion within its bounds (cujus regio, ejus religio).
Every Protestant sovereign hereafter claimed and exercised the so-called jus reformandi religionem, and decided the church question according to his own faith and that of the majority of his subjects. Saxony, Hesse, Prussia, Anhalt, Lüneburg, East-Friesland, Schleswig-Holstein, Silesia, and the cities of Nürnberg, Augsburg, Frankfurt, Ulm, Strassburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck, adopted the Reformation. The princes of the territories and the magistrates of the cities consulted the theologians and preachers; but the congregations had no voice, not even in the choice of their pastor, and submitted in passive obedience. The powerful house of Austria, with the Emperor, and the Dukes of Bavaria, adhered to the old faith, and hotly contested the principle of independent state action on the church question, as being contrary to all the traditions of the Empire and of the Roman Church, which is constitutionally exclusive and intolerant.
The Protestant princes and theologians were likewise intolerant, though in a less degree, and prohibited the mass and the Roman religion wherever they had the power. Each party was bent upon victory, and granted toleration only from necessity or prudence when the dissenting minority was strong enough to assert its rights. Toleration was the fruit of a bitter contest, and was at last forced upon both parties as a modus vivendi. Protestantism had to conquer the right to exist, by terrible sacrifices. The right was conceded by the Augsburg treaty of peace, 1555, and finally established by the Westphalian treaty, 1648, which first uses the term toleration in connection with religion, and remains valid to this day, in spite of the protest of the Pope. The same policy of toleration was adopted in England after the downfall of the Stuart dynasty in 1688, and included all orthodox Protestants, but excluded the Roman Catholics, who were not emancipated till 1829. In Germany, toleration was first confined to three confessions,—the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, and the German Reformed,—but was gradually extended to other religious communions which are independent of state support and state control.
NOTES.
toleration and freedom.
Toleration is far from religious liberty, but a step towards it. Toleration is a concession of the government on the ground of necessity or expediency, and may be withdrawn or extended. Even despotic Russia and Turkey are tolerant, the one towards Mohammedans, the other towards Christians, because they cannot help it. To kill or to exile all dissenters would be suicidal folly. But they allow no departure from the religion of the State, and no propagandism against its interests.
Religious liberty is an inviolable and inalienable right which belongs to all men, within the limits of public morals and safety. God alone is the Lord of conscience, and no power on earth has a right to interfere with it. The full enjoyment and public exercise of religious liberty require a peaceful separation of church and state, which makes each independent, self-governing, and self-supporting in its own sphere, and secures to the church the legal protection of the state, and to the state the moral support of the church. This is the American theory of religious freedom, as guaranteed by the Federal Constitution of 1787: it prevents the state from persecuting the church, and the churches from persecuting each other, and confines them to their proper moral and spiritual vocation. The American principle of the legal equality of religious confessions was proposed by the Frankfort Parliament in 1849, triumphed in the new German empire, 1870, and is making steady progress all over the civilized world. (See the author’s Church and State in the United States, N. Y., 1888.)
§ 113. The Emperor and the Pope. The Sacking of Rome, 1527.
Contemporary accounts of the sacking of Rome are collected by Carlo Milanesi: Il Sacco di Roma del MDXXVII., Florence, 1867. Alfred von Reumont: Geschichte der Stadt Rom (Berlin, 1870), vol. III. 194 sqq.; Comp. the liter. he gives on p. 846 sq. Ranke: bk. V. (vol. III. I sqq.). Janssen: vol. III. 124 sqq.
Charles V. neither signed nor opposed the edict of Speier. He had shortly before fallen out with Clement VII., because this Pope released King Francis I. from the hard conditions of peace imposed upon him after his defeat at Pavia, June 26, 1526, and placed himself at the head of a Franco-Italian league against the preponderance of Austria the Holy League" of Cognac, May 22, 1526). The league of the Emperor and the Pope had brought about the Edict of Worms; the breach between the two virtually annulled it at the Diet of Speier. Had the Emperor now embraced the Protestant doctrines, he might have become the head of a German imperial state church. But all his instincts were against Protestantism.
His quarrel with the Pope was the occasion of a fearful calamity to the Eternal City. The Spanish and German troops of the Emperor, under the lead of Constable Charles de Bourbon, and the old warrior Frundsberg (both enemies of the Pope), marched to Rome with an army of twenty thousand men, and captured the city, May 6, 1527. Bourbon, the ablest general of Charles, but a traitor to his native France, was struck by a musket-ball in climbing a ladder, and fell dead in the moment of victory. The pope fled to the castle St. Angelo. The soldiers, especially the Spaniards, deprived of their captain, surpassed the barbarians of old in beastly and refined cruelty, rage and lust. For eight days they plundered the papal treasury, the churches, libraries, and palaces, to the extent of ten millions of gold; they did not spare even the tomb of St. Peter and the corpse of Julius II., and committed nameless outrages upon defenseless priests, monks, and nuns. German soldiers marched through the streets in episcopal and cardinal’s robes, dressed a donkey like a priest, and by a grim joke proclaimed Luther as pope of Rome.
Never before had Rome suffered such indignities
and loss. The sacking was a crime against civilization, humanity, and
religion; but, at the same time, a fearful judgment of God upon the
worldliness of the papacy, and a loud call to repentance. Reumont (l.c. III. 201) says:
"Wüster und andauernder ist keine Stadt
geplündert, sind keine Einwohner misshandelt worden als Rom
und die Römer. Spanier wie Teutsche haben bei diesem grausen
Werke gewetteifert, jene mit erfinderischer Unmenschlichkeit, diese mit
wilder Barbarei. Kirchen, Klöster, Palläste,
Wohnhäuser, Hütten wurden mit gleicher Beutelust
ausgeleert und verwüstet, Männer, Frauen, Kinder
mit gleicher Grausamkeit misshandelt."
When the news reached Germany, many rejoiced, at
the fall of Babylon." But Melanchthon, rising above bigotry, said in
one of his finest addresses to the students of Wittenberg: "Why should
we not lament the fall of Rome, which is the common mother-city of all
nations? I indeed feel this calamity no less than if it were my own
native place. The robber hordes were not restrained by considerations
of the dignity of the city, nor the remembrance of her services for the
laws, sciences, and arts of the world. This is what we grieve over.
Whatever be the sins of the Pope, Rome should not be made to suffer."
He acquitted the Emperor of all blame, and held the army alone
responsible. "Corp. Ref.," XI. 130; C. Schmidt, Phil.
Melanchthon, p. 135 sq.
§ 114. A War Panic, 1528.
On the "Packische Händel," see Walch (XVI. 444), Gieseler (III. 1, 229), Ranke (III. 26), Janssen (III. 109), Rommel’s, and Wille’s monographs on Philip of Hesse; and St. Ehses: Geschichte der Packschen Händel, Freiburg i. B. 1881.
The action of the Diet of 1526, and the quarrel between the Emperor and the Pope, were highly favorable to the progress of the Reformation. But the good effect was in great part neutralized by a stupendous fraud which brought Germany to the brink of a civil war.
Philip of Hesse, an ardent, passionate, impulsive, ambitious prince, and patron of Protestantism, was deceived by an unprincipled and avaricious politician, Otto von Pack, provisional chancellor of the Duchy of Saxony, into the belief that Ferdinand of Austria, the Electors of Mainz and Brandenburg, the Dukes of Saxony and Bavaria, and other Roman Catholic rulers had concluded a league at Breslau, May 15, 1527, for the extermination of Protestantism. He procured at Dresden a sealed copy of the forged document, for which he paid Pack four thousand guilders. He persuaded the Elector John of Saxony of its genuineness, and concluded with him, in all haste, a counter-league, March 9, 1528. They secured aid from other princes, and made expensive military preparations, to anticipate by a masterstroke an attack of the enemy.
Fortunately, the Reformers of Wittenberg were
consulted, and prevented an open outbreak by their advice. Luther
deemed the papists had enough for any thing, but was from principle
opposed to aggressive war; See his letters on this subject in De Wette,
III. 314 sqq. After a fugitive life, Pack was beheaded as a
forger in the Netherlands, 1536, at the solicitation of Duke
George.
The rash conduct of Philip put the Protestant princes in the position of aggressors and disturbers of the public peace, and the whole affair brought shame and disgrace upon their cause.
§ 115. The Second Diet of Speier, and the Protest of 1529.
Walch, XVI. 315 sqq. J. J. Müller: Historie von der evang. Stände Protestation und Appellation wider den Reichsabschied zu Speier, 1529, Jena, 1705. Tittmann: Die Protestation der evang. Stände mit Hist. Erläuterungen, Leipzig, 1829. A. Jung: Gesch. des Reichstags zu Speier, 1529, Leipzig, 1830. J. Ney (protest. pastor at Speier): Geschichte des Reichstags zu Speier im Jahr 1529. Mit einem Anhange ungedruckter Akten und Briefe, Hamburg, 1880. Ranke, III. 102–116. Janssen, III 130–146.
Under these discouragements the second Diet of Speier
was convened in March, 1529, for action against the Turks, and against
the further progress of Protestantism. The Catholic dignitaries
appeared in full force, and were flushed with hopes of victory. The
Protestants felt that "Christ was again in the hands of Caiaphas and
Pilate." Words of Jacob Sturm, the ambassador of
Strassburg, from the middle of March.
The Diet neutralized the recess of the preceding Diet of 1526; it virtually condemned (without, however, annulling) the innovations made; and it forbade, on pain of the imperial ban, any further reformation until the meeting of the council, which was now positively promised for the next year by the Emperor and the Pope. The Zwinglians and Anabaptists were excluded even from toleration. The latter were to be punished by death.
The Lutheran members of the Diet, under the
well-founded impression that the prohibition of any future reformation
meant death to the whole movement, entered in the legal form of an
appeal for themselves, their subjects and for all who now or shall
hereafter believe in the Word of God, the famous protest of April 25,
1529, against all those measures of the Diet which were contrary to the
Word of God, to their conscience, and to the decision of the Diet of
1526, and appealed from the decision of the majority to the Emperor, to
a general or German council, and impartial Christian judges. The great Instrumentum appellationis is
given by Müller, Walch, Jung, and in substance by Gieseler,
l.c. April 25 (a Sunday) is the date of the legal completion of
the protest (Ranke, III. 113). The dates of the preparatory steps are
April 19 and 22. Janssen denies the right of such protest, and
dates from it the schism of the German nation. "Von dem Tage zu Speier
an," he says,
III. 144, "beginnt die eigentliche Spaltung der deutschen
Nation."
Fortunately, the schism has been healed in 1870 by Providence, without
the aid of the Pope and against his wish and will.
The protest of Speier was a renewal and expansion of Luther’s protest at Worms. The protest of a single monk had become the protest of princes and representatives of leading cities of the empire, who now for the first time appeared as an organized party. It was a protest of conscience bound in the Word of God against tyrannical authority.
The appeal was not entertained. The Emperor, who soon afterwards concluded peace with the Pope (June 29, 1529), and with the King of France (Aug. 5), refused even to grant the delegation of the Protestant States a respectful hearing at Piacenza (September), and kept them prisoners for a while.
From this protest and appeal the Lutherans were
called Protestants; with good reason, if we look at their attitude to
Rome, which remains the same to this day. It is the duty of the church
at all times to protest against sin, error, corruption, tyranny, and
every kind of iniquity. But the designation, which has since become a
general term for evangelical Christians, is negative, and admits of an
indiscriminate application to all who dissent from popery, no matter on
what grounds and to what extent. It must be supplemented by the more
important positive designation Evangelical. The gospel of Christ, as
laid down in the New Testament, and proclaimed again in its primitive
purity and power by the Reformation, is the basis of historical
Protestantism, and gives it vitality and permanency. The protest of
Speier was based objectively upon the Word of God, subjectively upon
the right of private judgment and conscience, and historically upon the
liberal decision of the Diet of 1526. It is remarkable that one of the most
conservative branches of Protestant Christendom, "the Protestant
Episcopal Church in the United States of America," adopted the term as
a part of its official title when, after the Revolutionary War,
it assumed an independent organization. This could not be done in the
state of churchly sentiment which has since come to prevail in that
church. Vigorous efforts have been made within the last few years to
get rid of the term Protestant, and to substitute for it
Catholic, or American, or some other more or less
presumptuous epithet, but without success so far. The secession from
this body which was organized in 1873 took the name of "The Reformed
Episcopal Church."
Unfortunately, the moral force of the protest of
Speier was soon weakened by dissensions among the signers. Luther and
Melanchthon, who at that time were quite agreed on the eucharistic
question, seriously objected to all political and military alliances,
and especially to an alliance with the Zwinglians, whom they abhorred
as heretics. In a letter to Elector John, May 22, 1529 (De
Wette, III. 455), Luther went so far as to call the Zwinglians
"audacious enemies of God and his Word, who fight against God and the
sacrament."
§ 116. The Reconciliation of the Emperor and the Pope.
The Crowning of the Emperor. 1529.
The Emperor expressed to the Pope his deep regret at the sacking of the holy city. His breach with him was purely political and temporary. The French troops again entered Lombardy. Henry VIII. of England sympathized with Francis and the Pope. The Spanish counselors of Charles repre-sented to him that the imprisonment of the vicar of Christ was inconsistent with the traditional loyalty of Spain to the holy see.
On Nov. 26, 1527, the Emperor concluded an agreement with the Pope by which he was released from confinement, and reinstated in his temporal power (except over a few fortified places), on promise of paying the soldiers, and convening a council for the reformation of the church. For a while Clement distrusted the Emperor, and continued his Franco-Italian policy; but at last they definitely made peace, June 29, 1529. The Pope acknowledged the sovereignty of the Emperor in Italy, which he had heretofore opposed; the Emperor guaranteed to him the temporal possessions, with a reservation of imperial rights.
They held a personal conference at Bologna in
November of that year. They were well matched in political and
diplomatic shrewdness, and settled their secular disputes as well as
they could. Charles was crowned Roman emperor, Feb. 24, 1530, at
Bologna, the only emperor crowned outside of St.
Peter’s at Rome, and the last German emperor crowned
by the Pope. The dignitaries who graced the occasion were chiefly
Spanish and Italian noblemen. Only one of the seven German electors was
present, Philip of the Palatinate. The wooden awning which was
constructed between the palace and the church of San Petronio broke
down, but the Emperor escaped an accident. Clothed in a richly jewelled
robe, he was anointed with oil, and received from the bishop of Rome
the crown of Charlemagne as the temporal head of Western Christendom,
and swore to protect the Pope and the Roman-Catholic Church with their
possessions, dignities, and rights. How has the situation changed since! In the
same once papal city where the Emperor was crowned by the Pope with all
the splendor of the Catholic ceremonial, the eighth centennial of the
University—the oldest in the world ("Bononia
docet")—was celebrated June 11-13, 1888, in the
presence of the King and Queen, with unbounded enthusiasm for free and
united Italy, which has shaken off the yoke of petty tyrants, and is
determined to resist all attempts at a restoration of the temporal
power of the papacy. The Italians are willing to take their religion
from the Pope, but not their politics. Practically, church and state
are almost as separate in Italy, since 1870, as in the United
States.
This event was the sunset of the union of the German empire with the papal theocracy.
The German electors complained that they were not invited to the coronation, nor consulted about the treaties with the Italian States, and entered a formal protest.
Early in May, 1530, the Emperor crossed the Alps on his way to the Diet of Augsburg, which was to decide the fate of Lutheranism in Germany.
CHAPTER IX.
THE DIET AND CONFESSION OF AUGSBURG. A.D. 1530.
§ 117. The Diet of Augsburg.
I. Sources. Collection in Walch, XVI. 747–2142. Luther’s Letters of the year 1530, in De Wette, vol. IV. Melanchthon’s Letters in the "Corpus Reformatorum," ed. Bretschneider and Bindseil, vol. II., and documents relating to the Augsb. Conf. in vol. XXVI. Spalatin, Annal., ed. by Cyprian, 131–289. The Roman Cath. representation: Pro Religione Christiana Res Gestae in Comitiis Augustae Vindelicorum habitis, 1530, reprinted in Cyprian’s Historie der Augsb. Conf. Brück wrote a refutation published by Förstemann, "Archiv für Ref. Gesch.," 1831. Collection of documents by Förstemann: Urkundenbuch zu der Gesch. des Reichstages zu Augsburg in J. 1530. Halle, 1833, ’35, 2 vols. By the same: Neues Urkundenbuch, Hamburg, 1842. Schirrmacher: Briefs und Acten zur Gesch. des Religionsgesprächs zu Marburg, 1529, und des Reichstages zu Augsburg, 1530, nach der Handschrift des Aurifaber, Gotha, 1876.
II. Histories of the Augsburg Diet and Confession. See list in "Corp. Ref." XXVI. 101–112. D. Chytræus (Kochhafe): Historie der Augsb. Conf., Rostock, 1576, Frcf. 1577, 1578, 1600. G. Coelestin: Hist. Comitiorum a. 1530 Augustae celebratorum, Frcf. 1577, 4 vols. fol. E. Sal. Cyprian: Hist. der Augsb. Conf., Gotha, 1730. Cur. A. Salig: Historie der Augsb. Conf. und derselben Apologie, Halle, 1730–35, in 3 parts. Weber: Vollständige Gesch. der Augsb. Conf., Frcf. 1783–84, 2 vols. Planck: Gesch. des protest. Lehrbegriff’s (Leipz. 1792), vol. III. I. 1–178. Fickenscher: Gesch. des Reichstages zu Augsb. 1530, Nürnb. 1830. Pfaff: Gesch. des Reichstags zu Augsburg, 1530, Stuttg. 1830. Add special works on the Augsb. Conf. mentioned in § 119.
III. The relevant sections in the general Church Histories of Schroeckh, Mosheim, Gieseler, etc.; in the Histories of the Reformation by Marheineke, Hagenbach, Merle D’aub., Fisher; in the general Histories of Germany by Ranke (Prot.), vol. III. 162–215, and Janssen (Rom. Cath.), vol. III. 165–211. Also the numerous Lives of Luther (e.g., Köstlin, Book VI., chs. XI. and XII., vol. II. 198 sqq.), and Melanchthon (e.g., C. Schmidt, 190–250).
IV. Special points. H. Virk: Melanchthon’s Politische Stellung auf dem Reichstag zu Augsburg, in Brieger’s "Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte," 1887, pp. 67 and 293 sqq.
The situation of Protestantism in 1530 was critical. The Diet of Speier had forbidden the further progress of the Reformation: the Edict of Worms was in full legal force; the Emperor had made peace with the Pope, and received from him the imperial crown at Bologna; the Protestants were divided among themselves, and the Conference at Marburg had failed to unite them against the common foe. At the same time the whole empire was menaced by a foreign power. The Turks under Suleiman "the Magnificent," who called himself, Lord of all rulers, Dispenser of crowns to the monarchs of the earth, the Shadow of God over the world," had reached the summit of their military power, and approached the gates of Vienna in September, 1529. They swore by the beard of Mohammed not to rest till the prayers of the prophet of Mecca should be heard from the tower of St. Stephen. They were indeed forced to retire with a loss of eighty thousand men, but threatened a second attempt, and in the mean time laid waste a great part of Hungary.
Under these circumstances the Diet of Augsburg convened, April 8, 1530. Its object was to settle the religious question, and to prepare for war against the Turks. The invitation dated Jan. 21, 1530, from Bologna, carefully avoids, all irritating allusions, sets forth in strong language the danger of foreign invasion, and expresses the hope that all would co-operate for the restoration of the unity of the holy empire of the German nation in the one true Christian religion and church.
But there was little prospect for such co-operation. The Roman majority meant war against the Protestants and the Turks as enemies of church and state; the Protestant minority meant defense against the Papists and the Turks as the enemies of the gospel. In the eyes of the former, Luther was worse than Mohammed; in the eyes of the Lutherans, the Pope was at least as bad as Mohammed. Their motto was, —
The Emperor stood by the Pope and the Edict of
Worms, but was more moderate than his fanatical surroundings, and
treated the Lutherans during the Diet with courteous consideration,
while he refused to give the Zwinglians even a hearing. The Lutherans
on their part praised him beyond his merits, and were deceived into
false hopes; while they would have nothing to do with the Swiss and
Strassburgers, although they agreed with them in fourteen out of
fifteen articles of faith. Luther wrote to Hausmann, July 6, 1530:
"Mirum est quam omnes ardeant amore et favore Caesaris." In De
Wette-Seidemann, VI. 116. Melanchthon praised the virtues of the
Emperor extravagantly, even after the Diet. "Corp. Ref." II. 430 sq.,
361; Virck, l.c., 338sq.
The Saxon Elector, as soon as he received the summons to the Diet, ordered the Wittenberg theologians, at the advice of Chancellor Brück, to draw up a confession of faith for possible use at Augsburg, and to meet him at Torgau. He started on the 3d of April with his son, several noblemen, Luther, Melanchthon, Jonas, Spalatin, and Agricola, stopped a few days at Coburg on the Saxon frontier, where Luther was left behind, and entered Augsburg on the 2d of May.
The Emperor was delayed on the journey through the
Tyrol, and did not arrive till the 15th of June. On the following day
he took a devout part in the celebration of the Corpus Christi
festival. He walked in solemn procession under the most scorching heat,
with uncovered head, heavy purple cloak, and a burning wax-candle. The
Protestant princes absented themselves from what they regarded an
idolatrous ceremony. They also declined to obey the
Emperor’s prohibition of evangelical preaching during
the Diet. Margrave George of Brandenburg declared that he would rather
lose his head than deny God. The Emperor replied: "Dear prince, not
head off, not head off." "Lieber Fürst, nicht Kopf abhauen, nicht
Kopf ab." Andreas
Osiander understood him to say, "mehr Kopf
abhauen," and so
reported to Luther, June 21, 1530; adding, "neque enim recte
Germanice autLatine novit." Krafft, Briefe und
Documente, 67;
Janssen, III. 166. Charles usually spoke in French; but he declared
that he would sacrifice any other language, even Spanish or French,
yea, one of his states, for a better knowledge of
German.
The Diet was opened on Monday, June 20, with high mass by the Cardinal Archbishop of Mainz, and a long sermon by Archbishop Pimpinelli of Rossano, the papal nuncio at the court of Ferdinand. He described, in elegant Latin, the tyranny of the Turks, reproved the Germans for their sleepiness and divisions, and commended the heathen Romans and Mohammedans for their religious unity, obedience, and devotion to the past. A few days afterwards (June 24) the papal nuncio at the Diet, Laurentius Campegius (Campeggi) warned the Estates not to separate from the holy Catholic church, but to follow the example of other Christian kings and powers.
The Emperor desired first to secure help against the Turks, but the Protestants insisted on the priority of the church question. He accordingly commanded them to have their confession ready within four days, and to hand it to him in writing. He did not wish it to be read before the Diet, but the Protestants insisted upon this. He then granted the reading in Latin, but the Elector of Saxony pressed the rights of the German vernacular. "We are on German soil," said he, "and therefore I hope your Majesty will allow the German language." The Emperor yielded this point, but refused the request to have the Confession read in the city hall where the Diet met.
On the twenty-fifth day of
June—the most memorable day in the history of
Lutheranism, next to the 31st of October -the Augsburg Confession was
read, with a loud and firm voice, by Dr. Baier, vice-chancellor of
Electoral Saxony, in the German language, before the Diet in the
private chapel of the episcopal palace. The reading occupied nearly two
hours. The Emperor, who knew little German and less theology, soon fell
asleep. Brentius: "cum confessio legeretur,
obdormivit." The Emperor was equally sleepy on the 3d of August
during the reading of the papal confutation.
Dr. Brück, the Saxon chancellor who composed the preface and epilogue, handed to the Emperor a German and a Latin copy of the Confession. The Emperor kept the former, and gave the latter to the Elector of Mainz for safe-keeping. The Latin copy (in Melanchthon’s own handwriting) was deposited in the archives of Brussels, and disappeared under the reign of Duke Alba. The German original, as read before the Diet, was sent, with the acts of the Diet, to the Council of Trent, and never returned. But unauthorized editions soon appeared in different places (six German, one Latin) during the Diet; and Melanchthon himself issued the Confession in both languages at Wittenberg, 1531.
Both documents were signed by seven princes; namely, the Elector John of Saxony, Landgrave Philip of Hesse, Margrave George of Brandenburg, Duke Ernest of Lüneburg, Duke John Frederick of Saxony, Duke Francis of Lüneburg, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt; and by two representatives of free cities, Nürnberg and Reutlingen.
The signing required considerable courage, for it involved the risk of the crown. When warned by Melanchthon of the possible consequences, the Saxon Elector nobly replied: "I will do what is right, unconcerned about my Electoral dignity. I will confess my Lord, whose cross I esteem more highly than all the power on earth."
This act and testimony gave great significance to
the Diet of Augsburg, and immortal glory to the confessors. Luther gave
eloquent expression to his joy, when he wrote to Melanchthon, Sept. 15,
1530: In De Wette, IV. 165.
The only blot on the fame of the Lutheran confessors of Augsburg is their intolerant conduct towards the Reformed, which weakened their own cause. The four German cities which sympathized with the Zwinglian view on the Lord’s Supper wished to sign the Confession, with the exception of the tenth article, which rejects their view; but they were excluded, and forced to hand in a separate confession of faith.
§ 118. The Negotiations, the Recess, the Peace of Nürnberg.
The remaining transactions during this Diet were discouraging and unfruitful, and the result was a complete, but short-lived, victory of the Roman Catholic party.
Melanchthon during all this time was in a state of
nervous trepidation and despondency. He spent his time "in lacrymis ac
luctu," was exhausted and emaciated. See his letters, and those of
Jonas and Osiander, in "Corp. Ref.," II. 125 sq., 157,
l63. He wrote two letters to Campeggi, July 6, and
two to his secretary, July 7 and Aug. 5. See "Corp. Reform.," II.
168-174, and 240. In the first letter, after a quotation from Plato and
some words of flattery, he makes this astounding concession (fol. 170):
"Dogma nullum habemus diversum ab ecclesia Romana. ... Parati sumus
obedire ecclesiae Romana, modo ut illa pro sua clementia, qua semper
erga omnes gentes usa est, pauca quaedamvel dissimulet, vel relaxet
quae jam mutare nequidem si velimus queamus. ... Ad haec Romani
pontificis auctoritatem et universam politiam ecclesiasticam reverenter
colimus, modo nos non abjiciat Rom. pontifex. ... Nullam ob rem aliam
plus odii sustinemus in Germania, quam quia ecclesiae Romanae dogmata
summa constantia defendimus. Hanc fidem Christo et Romanae ecclesiae ad
extremum spiritum, Deo volente, praestabimus. Levis quaedam
dissimilitudo rituum est quae videtur obstare concordiae."Of
similar import are the propositions he sent to Campeggi, Aug. 4 (fol.
246).
All these approaches failed. Rome would listen to nothing but absolute submission.
Melanchthon soon found out that the papal divines,
especially Eck, were full of pharisaical pride and malice. He was
severely censured by the Nürnbergers and by Philip of Hesse
for his weakness, and even charged by some with treason to the
evangelical cause. His conduct must be judged in the light of the fact
that the Roman Church allowed a certain freedom on the controverted
points of anthropology and soteriology, and did not formally condemn
the evangelical doctrines till several years afterwards, in the Council
of Trent. The Augsburg Confession itself takes this view of the matter,
by declaring at the close of the doctrinal articles: "This is the sum
of doctrine among us, in which can be seen nothing which is discrepant
with Scripture, nor with the Catholic or even with the Roman Church, so
far as that Church is known from the writings of the Fathers."
Melanchthon may be charged with moral weakness and mistake of judgment,
but not with unfaithfulness. Luther remained true to his invaluable
friend, who was indispensable to the evangelical cause, and did it the
greatest service at Augsburg. He comforted him in his letters from
Coburg. See letter of Sept. 11, 1530, in De Wette, IV.
163.
The Lutheran Confession was referred for answer, i.e., for refutation, to a commission of twenty Roman theologians, who were present at the Diet, including Eck, Faber, Cochlaeus, Wimpina, and Dittenberger. Their answer was ready July 13, but declined by the Emperor on account of its length and bitter tone. After undergoing five revisions, it was approved and publicly read on the 3d of August before the Diet, in the same chapel in which the Protestant Confession had been read. The Emperor pronounced the answer "Christian and well-considered." He was willing to hand a copy to the Protestants, on condition to keep it private; but Melanchthon prepared a refutation, at the request of the Lutheran princes.
The Emperor, in his desire for a peaceful result, arranged a conference between the theological leaders of the two parties. Eck, Wimpina, and Cochlaeus represented the Roman Catholics; Melanchthon, Brenz, and Schnepf, the Lutherans. The discussion began Aug. 16, but proved a failure. A smaller committee conferred from the 24th to the 29th of August, but with no better result. Melanchthon hoped against hope, and made concession after concession, to conciliate the bishops and the Emperor. But the Roman divines insisted on a recognition of an infallible church, a perpetual sacrifice, and a true priesthood. They would not even give up clerical celibacy, and the withdrawal of the cup from the laity; and demanded a restoration of the episcopal jurisdiction, of church property, and of the convents.
Luther, writing from Coburg, urged the hesitating
theologians and princes to stand by their colors. He, too, was willing
to restore innocent ceremonies, and even to consent to the restoration
of episcopacy, but only on condition of the free preaching of the
gospel. He deemed a reconciliation in doctrine impossible, unless the
Pope gave up popery. Summa, mihi in totum displicet tractatus de
doctrinae concordia, ut quae plane sit impossibilis, nisi papa velit
papatum suum aboleri."Letter to Melanchthon, Aug. 26, in De Wette,
IV. 147.
On the 22d of September the Emperor announced the Recess of the Diet; that, after having heard and refuted the Confession of the Protestants, and vainly conferred with them, another term for consideration till April 15, 1531, be granted to them, as a special favor, and that in the mean time they should make no new innovations, nor disturb the
Catholics in their faith and worship, and assist the Emperor in the suppression of the Anabaptists and those who despised the holy sacrament. The Emperor promised to bring about a general council within a year for the removal of ecclesiastical grievances.
The signers of the Augsburg Confession, the cities of Frankfurt, Ulm, Schwäbisch Hall, Strassburg, Memmingen, Constance, Lindau, refused the recess. The Lutherans protested that their Confession had never been refuted, and offered Melanchthon’s Apology of the same, which was rejected. They accepted the proposed term for consideration.
The day after the announcement of the Recess, the Elector of Saxony returned home with his theologians. The Emperor took leave of him with these words: "Uncle, uncle, I did not look for this from you." The Elector with tears in his eyes went away in silence. He stopped on the journey at Nürnberg and Coburg, and reached Torgau the 9th of October. The Landgrave of Hesse had left Augsburg in disgust several weeks earlier (Aug. 6), without permission, and created fears of an open revolt.
Luther was very indignant at the Recess, which was
in fact a re-affirmation of the Edict of Worms. To stop the progress of
the gospel, he declared, is to crucify the Lord afresh; the Augsburg
Confession must remain as the pure word of God to the judgment day; the
mass cannot be tolerated, as it is the greatest abomination; nor can it
be left optional to commune in one or both kinds. Let peace be
condemned to the lowest hell, if it hinder and injure the gospel and
faith. They say, if popery falls, Germany will go to ruin. It is
terrible, but I cannot help it. It is the fault of the papists. See his Exposition of "Glossen auf das vermeintliche kaiserliche
Edict," in Walch,
XVI. 2017 sqq.; Erl. ed. XXV. 51-88. Warnung an seine lieben
Deutschen, Erl.
ed. XXV. 1-51. The Romanists regarded this as an incendiary call to
open rebellion. He defended himself against this charge,
in Wider
den Meuchler in Dresden, 1531 (Erl. ed. 89-109).
The Recess of the Diet was finally published Nov.
19; but its execution threatened to bring on civil war, and to give
victory to the Turks. The Emperor shrank from such consequences and was
seriously embarrassed. Only two of the secular princes, Elector Joachim
of Brandenburg and Duke George of Saxony, were ready to assist him in
severe measures. The Duke of Bavaria was dissatisfied with the
Emperor’s efforts to have, his brother Ferdinand
elected Roman king. The archbishops of Mayence and Cologne, and the
bishop of Augsburg, half sympathized with the Protestants. Albrecht accepted from Melanchthon the
dedication of his commentary on the Romans and sent him a cup with
thirty gold guilders (1532). He also sent to Luther’s
wife a present of twenty guilders, which Luther declined.
Köstlin, II. 427; Janssen, III. 203. Hermann of Cologne
afterwards professed Protestantism, and made an abortive attempt to
reform his diocese with the aid of Bucer and
Melanchthon.
The Lutheran princes therefore formed in December, 1530, at Smalcald, a defensive alliance under the name of the Smalcaldian League. The immediate object was to protect themselves against the lawsuits of the imperial chamber of justice for the recovery of church property and the restoration of the episcopal jurisdiction. Opinions were divided on the question whether the allies in case of necessity should take up arms against the Emperor; the theologians were opposed to it, but the lawyers triumphed over the theological scruples, and the Elector of Saxony pledged the members for defensive measures against any and every aggressor, even the Emperor. At a new convent at Smalcald in March, 1531, the League was concluded in due form for six years. It embraced Electoral Saxony, Hesse, Lüneburg, Anhalt, Mansfeld, and eleven cities. Out of this League ultimately arose the Smalcaldian war, which ended so disastrously for the Protestant princes, especially the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse (1547).
But for the present, war was prevented by the
peace at Nürnberg, 1532. A renewed invasion of Sultan
Suleiman with an army of three hundred thousand, in April, 1532, made
conciliation a political and patriotic duty. The Emperor convened a
Diet at Regensburg, April 17, which was transferred to
Nürnberg; and there, on July 23, 1532, a temporary truce was
concluded, and vigorous measures taken against the Turks, who were
defeated by land and sea, and forced to retreat. The victorious Emperor
went to Italy, and urged the Pope to convene the council; but the Pope
was not yet ready, and found excuses for indefinite postponement. Luther chastised the Pope with all his power of
irony and sarcasm for his conduct in regard to a council, in his
book Von
den Conciliis und Kirchen, 1539 (Erl. ed. XXV. 219-388).
John the Constant died in the same year, of a stroke of apoplexy (Aug. 16, 1532), and was followed by his son John Frederick the Magnanimous, who in the Smalcaldian war lost his electoral dignity, but saved his evangelical faith.
§ 119. The Augsburg Confession.
I. Editions of the Augsb. Conf.: The best critical edition in the 26th vol. of the "Corpus Reformatorum," ed. Bretschneider und Bindseil (1858), 776 pages. It gives the Invariata and the Variata, in Latin and German, with critical apparatus, list of MSS. and early editions, and the preceding documents: viz., the Articles of Visitation, the Marburg, the Schwabach, and the Torgau Articles.
The Confession in Latin or German, or both, Is embodied in all the collections of Lutheran symbols by Rechenberg, Walch, Weber, Hase, Meyer, Francke, Müller.
Separate modem editions by Twesten, Tittmann, Weber, Wiggers, Förstemann, Harter, etc.
English translation, with Latin text, in Schaff, Creeds, III. 3–73; in English alone, in Henkel, Book of Concord, 1854, and Jacobs, Book of Concord, Philad., 1882. The first English translation was made by Richard Taverner, London, 1536, the last, on the basis of this, by Charles P. Krauth. (See B. M. Schmucker: English Translations of the Augsb. Conf., Philad., 1887, 34 pp.)
On the literature compare Köllner: Symbolik der Lutherischen Kirche, Hamburg, 1837, pp. 150–152, with a full history of the Conf., pp. 153–396.
II. Histories and monographs: the works of Chytraeus, Coelestin, Cyprian, Salig, Pfaff, Fickenscher, Forstemann, etc., quoted in § 117. Recent works: Köllner, 1837 (see above). Rudelbach: Die Augsb. Conf. nach den Quellen, Dresden, 1841. G. Plitt: Einleitung in die Augustana, Erlangen, 1867–68 2 Parts; Die Apologie der Augustana, Erl., 1873. W. J. Mann: A Plea for the Augsburg Confession, Philadelphia, 1856. Stuckenberg: The History of the Augsb. Confession, Philad., 1869. Zöckler: Die Augsb. Conf., Frkf. -a.-M., 1870. Vilmar: Die Augsb. Confession erklärt, Gütersloh, 1870. A brief account in Schaff: Creeds (4th ed. 1884), I. 225–242. On the Roman Catholic side see Janssen, III. 165–211, and L. Pastor: Die kirchlichen Reunionsbest-rebungen während der Regierung Karls V., Freiburg, 1879, 22 sqq.
III. On special points: Luther’s relation to the Augsb. Conf. is discussed by Rückert, Jena, 1854; Calinich, Leipz., 1861; Knaake, Berlin, 1863. The relation of the A. C. to the Marburg, Schwabach, and Torgau Articles is treated by Ed. Engelhardt in the "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol.," 1865, pp. 515–529; and by Th. Brieger in "Kirchengesch. Studien," Leipzig, 1888, pp. 265–320.
The Augsburg Confession is the first and the most
famous of evangelical confessions. It gave clear, full, systematic
expression to the chief articles of faith for which Luther and his
friends had been contending for thirteen years, since he raised his
protest against the traffic in indulgences. By its intrinsic merits and
historic connections, it has become the chief doctrinal standard of the
Lutheran Church, which also bears the name of the "Church of the
Augsburg Confession." It retains this position to this day,
notwithstanding the theological and ecclesiastical dissensions in that
communion. It furnished the keynote to similar public testimonies of
faith, and strengthened the cause of the Reformation everywhere. It had
a marked influence upon the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of
England. See the proof in Schaff, Creeds of
Christendom, I. 624 sqq.
It is purely apologetic, and much more irenic than polemic. It aims to be, if possible, a Formula of Concord, instead of Discord. It is animated by a desire for reconciliation with Rome. Hence it is remarkably mild in tone, adheres closely to the historic faith, and avoids all that could justly offend the Catholics. It passes by, in silence, the supremacy of the Scriptures as the only rule of faith and practice, and some of the most objectionable features in the Roman system,—as indulgences, purgatory, and the papal primacy (which Melanchthon was willing to tolerate on an impossible condition). In short, it is the most churchly, the most catholic, the most conservative creed of Protestantism. It failed to conciliate Rome, but became the strongest bond of union among Lutherans.
The Confession is the ripe fruit of a gradual
growth. It is based chiefly upon three previous confessional
documents—the fifteen Articles of Marburg, Oct. 4,
1529, the seventeen Articles of Schwabach (a modification and expansion
of the former by Luther, with the insertion of his view of the real
presence), adopted by the Lutheran princes in a convent at Schwabach,
near Nürnberg, Oct. 16, 1529, and several Articles of Torgau
against certain abuses of the Roman Church, drawn up by Luther,
Melanchthon, Jonas, and Bugenhagen, by order of the Elector, at his
residence in Torgau, March 20, 1530. The Articuli Torgavienses were formerly
confounded with the Articuli Suobacences till
Förstemann discovered the former in the archives at Weimar
(1833).
Melanchthon used this material in a free way, and made a new and far better work, which bears the stamp of his scholarship and moderation, his power of condensation, and felicity of expression. He began the preparation at Coburg, with the aid of Luther, in April, and finished it at Augsburg, June 24. He labored on it day and night, so that Luther had to warn him against over-exertion. "I command you," he wrote to him May 12, "and all your company that they compel you, under pain of excommunication, to take care of your poor body, and not to kill yourself from imaginary obedience to God. We serve God also by taking holiday and rest."
If we look at the contents, Luther is the primary,
Melanchthon the secondary, author; but the form, the method, style, and
temper are altogether Melanchthon’s. Nobody else could
produce such a work. Luther would have made it more aggressive and
polemic, but less effective for the occasion. He himself was conscious
of the superior qualification of his friend for the task, and expressed
his entire satisfaction with the execution. "It pleases me very well,"
he wrote of the Confession, "and I could not change or improve it; nor
would it be becoming to do so, since I cannot tread so softly and
gently." "Denn ich so sanft und leise nicht treten
kann." Letter to
Elector John, May 15, 1530. In De Wette, IV. 17. He calls the
Augustana die Leisetreterin, the softly stepping Confession. Letter to Jonas, July 2l,
1530.
The Augsburg Confession proper (exclusive of preface and epilogue) consists of two parts,—one positive and dogmatic, the other negative and mildly polemic or rather apologetic. The first refers chiefly to doctrines, the second to ceremonies and institutions. The order of subjects is not strictly systematic, though considerably improved upon the arrangement of the Schwabach and Torgau Articles. In the manuscript copies and oldest editions, the articles are only numbered; the titles were subsequently added.
I. The first part presents in twenty-one articles—beginning with the Triune God, and ending with the worship of saints—a clear, calm, and condensed statement of the doctrines held by the evangelical Lutherans: (1) in common with the Roman Church; (2) in common with the Augustinian school in that church; (3) in opposition to Rome; and (4) in distinction from Zwinglians and Anabaptists.
(1) In theology and Christology, i.e., the doctrines of God’s unity and trinity (Art. I.), and of Christ’s divine-human personality (III.), the Confession strongly re-affirms the ancient catholic faith as laid down in the oecumenical creeds, and condemns (damnamus) the old and new forms of Unitarianism and Arianism as heresies.
(2) In anthropology, i.e., in the articles on the fall and original sin (II.), the slavery of the natural will and necessity of divine grace (XVIII.), the cause and nature of sin (XIX.), the Confession is substantially Augustinian, in opposition to the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies. The Donatists are also condemned (damnant, VIII.) for denying the objective virtue of the ministry and the sacraments, which Augustin defended against them.
(3) The general evangelical views more or less distinct from those of Rome appear in the articles on justification by faith (IV.), the Gospel ministry (V.), new obedience (VI.), the Church (VII., VIII.), repentance (XII.), ordination (XIV.), ecclesiastical rites (XV.), civil government (XVI.), good works (XIX.), the worship of saints, and the exclusive mediatorship of Christ (XX.).
These articles are so guardedly and skillfully
worded as to disarm the papal opponents. Even the doctrine of
justification by faith (Art. IV.), which Luther declared to be the
article of the standing or falling church, is briefly and mildly
stated, without the sola so strongly insisted on by Luther, and so
objectionable to the Catholics, who charged him with willful perversion
of the Scriptures, for inserting it in the Epistle to the Romans
(3:28). In a letter to Brenz, May, 1531 (Corp. Ref.,
II. 502), Melanchthon remarks that he did not speak more plainly on
this point, "propter adversariorum calumnias." In the Apology of
the Confession (Art. IV.), he is more explicit, and declares this
doctrine incidentally to be "the chief point of Christian doctrine
(praecipuus locus doctrinae Christianae) in this controversy."
Müller, Symb. Bücher, p. 87.
Döllinger charges Melanchthon, in his varying statements of
this doctrine, with sophistry, Die Reformation, III. 279 sqq. The revisers of the Luther
Bible retained the insertion allein in
(4) The distinctively Lutheran
views—mostly retained from prevailing catholic
tradition, and differing in part from those of other Protestant
churches—are contained in the articles on the
sacraments (IX., X., XIII.), on confession and absolution (XI.), and
the millennium (XVII.). The tenth article plainly asserts the doctrine
of a real bodily presence and distribution of Christ in the eucharist
to all communicants, and disapproves (improbant) of those who teach
differently (the Zwinglians). That the Zwinglians are meant by the secus
docentes (in the German ed., Gegenlehr), must be inferred from the preceding
Conference at Marburg, and the whole conduct of the Lutherans during
the Diet. The omission of Zwingli’s name was due,
probably, to respect for his friend the Landgrave of Hesse, one of the
signers of the Confession. "They condemn the Anabaptists, who disallow the
baptism of children, and affirm that children are saved without
baptism." The edition of 1540 adds after "sine baptismo" the
words "et extra ecclesiam Christi." The Romish Confutation fully
approves of the condemnation of the Anabaptists, and calls them
"hominum genus seditiosissimum, procul a finibus Romani imperii
eliminandum." Corp. Reform., XXVII. 105.
These anti-Zwinglian and anti-Baptist articles,
however, have long since lost their force in the Lutheran Church.
Melanchthon himself changed the wording of the tenth Article in the
edition of 1540, and omitted the clause of disapproval. The damnation
of unbaptized infants dying in infancy, which is indirectly indorsed by
condemning the opposite, is a fossil relic of a barbarous orthodoxy,
and was justly denied by the Baptists, as also by Zwingli and
Bullinger, who on this point were ahead of their age. The first
official deliverance against this dogma was raised by the Reformed
Church of Scotland, in the Second Scotch Confession (1581), which
condemns among the errors of "the Roman Antichrist" "his Cruel judgment
against infants departing without the sacrament, and his absolute
necessity of baptism." Schaff, Creeds, i. 687, iii.
482.
The doctrine of the second advent and millennium (rejected in Art. XVII.), if we except the dreams of the radical wing of the Anabaptists, has found advocates among sound and orthodox Lutherans, especially of the school of Bengel, and must be regarded as an open question.
The last Article of the doctrinal part expresses the assurance that the Lutherans hold no doctrine which is contrary to the Scriptures, or to the Catholic or even the Roman Church, as far as known from the fathers, and differ from her only on certain traditions and ceremonies. Luther knew better, and so did the Romanists. Only Melanchthon, in his desire for union and peace, could have thus deceived himself; but he was undeceived before he left Augsburg, and in the Apology of the Confession be assumed a very different tone.
II. The second part of the Confession rejects, in seven articles, those abuses of Rome which were deemed most objectionable, and had been actually corrected in the Lutheran churches; namely, the withdrawal of the communion cup from the laity (I.), the celibacy of the clergy (II.), the sacrifice of the mass (III.), obligatory auricular confession (IV.), ceremonial feasts and fasts (V.), monastic vows (VI.), and the secular power of the bishops as far as it interferes with the purity and spirituality of the church (VII.). This last Article is virtually a protest against the principle of Erastianism or Caesaro-papacy, and would favor in its legitimate consequences a separation of church and state. "The ecclesiastical and civil powers," says the Confession, "are not to be confounded. The ecclesiastical power has its own commandment to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments. Let it not by force enter into the office of another, let it not transfer worldly kingdoms," etc. And as to the civil power, it is occupied only with worldly matters, not with the gospel, and "defends not the minds, but the bodies and bodily things, against manifest injuries." This protest has been utterly disregarded by the Protestant rulers in Germany. The same Article favors the restoration of the episcopal jurisdiction with purely spiritual and ecclesiastical authority. This also was wholly disregarded by the signers, who were unwilling to give up their summepiscopate which they had claimed and exercised since 1526 with the consent of the Reformers.
The Confession concludes with these words: "Peter
forbids bishops to be lords, and to be imperious over the churches ( It was Melanchthon’s wish
(which Köllner chose as motto for his Symb. d. luth.
Kirche): "Utinam utinam possim non quidem dominationem
confirmare, sed administrationem restituere episcoporum. Video enim,
qualem habituri simus ecclesiam, dissoluta πολιτεία
ecclesiastica." Occasionally lonely voices are heard for the restoration of
episcopacy in the Lutheran Church, but without effect. See F.
Haupt, Der Episcopat der deutschen Reformation, oder Artikel 28 der
Augsburg Conf.,
Frankf., 1866; Luther und der Episcopat, 1866.
The style of the Latin edition is such as may be expected from the rare classic culture and good taste of Melanchthon; while the order and arrangement might be considerably improved.
The diplomatic preface to the Emperor, from the pen of a lawyer, Chancellor Brück, is clumsy, tortuous, dragging, extremely obsequious, and has no other merit than to introduce the reader into the historical situation. The brief conclusion (Epilogus) is from the same source, and is followed by the signatures of seven princes and two magistrates. Several manuscript copies omit both preface and epilogue, as not properly belonging to the Confession.
Space forbids us to discuss the questions of the
text, and the important variations of the Unaltered Confession of 1530,
and the Altered Confession of 1540, which embodies the last
improvements of its author, but has only a semi-official character and
weight within the Lutheran Church. See on these questions Schaff, Creeds,
I. 237 sqq., and especially Köllner, Symbolik der luth.
Kirche, p. 236
sqq. and 267 sqq.
§ 120. The Roman Confutation and the Protestant Apology.
I. Corpus Reformatorum (Melanchthonis Opera), ed. by Bretschneider and Bindseil, vol. XXVII. (1859), 646 columns, and vol. XXVIII. 1–326. These volumes contain the Confutatio Confessionis Augustanae, and the two editions of Melanchthon’s Apologia Conf. Aug., in Latin and German, with Prolegomena and critical apparatus. The best and most complete edition. There are few separate editions of the Apology, but it Is incorporated in all editions of the Lutheran Symbols; see Lit. in § 119. The Latin text of the Confutatio was first published by A. Fabricius Leodius in Harmonia Confess. Augustanae, 1573; the German, by C. G. Müller, 1808, from a copy of the original in the archives of Mainz, which Weber had previously inspected (Krit. gesch. der Augsb. Conf., II. 439 sqq.).
II. K. Kieser (R. Cath.). Die Augsburger Confession und ihre Widerlegung, Regensburg, 1845. Hugo Lämmer: Die vor-tridentinisch-katholische Theologie des Reformations-Zeitalters, Berlin, 1858, pp. 33–46. By the same: De Confessonis Augustanae Confutatione Pontificia, in Neidner’s "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol.," 1858. (Lämmer, a Lutheran, soon afterwards joined the Roman Church, and was ordained a priest, 1859, and appointed missionarius apostolicus, 1861.) G. Plitt (Luth.):Die Apologie der Augustana geschichtlich erklärt, Erlangen, 1873. Schaff: Creeds, etc., I. 243. The history and literature of the Apology are usually combined with that of the Confession, as in J. G. Walch, Feuerlin-Riederer, and Köllner.
The Roman "Catholic Confutation," so called, of the
Augsburg Confession, was prepared in Augsburg by order of the Emperor
Charles, by the most eminent Roman divines of Germany, and bitterest
opponents of Luther, especially Drs. Eck, Faber, Cochlaeus, in Latin
and German. The full title is Catholica et
quasi-extemporanea Responsio Pontificia seu Confutatio Augustanae
Confessionis. The first draught was verbose and bitter
("verbosior et acrior"); the second, third, fourth, and fifth
were briefer and milder.
The document follows the order of the Augsburg
Confession. It approves eighteen doctrinal articles of the first part,
either in full or with some restrictions and qualifications. Even the
fourth article, on justification, escapes censure, and Pelagianism is
strongly condemned. The first draught, however, had a lengthy
attack upon Luther’s sola
fide. "Decimus articulus in verbis nihil offendit
si modo credant [principes, the Lutheran signers] sub
qualibet specie integrum Christum adesse." Because it is defined as a congregatio
sanctorum, without including mali et
peccatores. Because it rejects the invocation of
saints."Hic articulus confessionis toties damnatus penitus
rejiciendus est et cum tota universali ecclesia
reprobandus."
The second part of the Confession, on abuses, is
wholly rejected; but at the close, the existence of various abuses,
especially among the clergy, is acknowledged, and a reformation of
discipline is promised and expected from a general council. "Quod autem de abusibus adstruxerunt, haud
dubie norunt Principes omnes et status imperii, neque a Caes.
Maiestate, neque ullis a Principibus et christiano aliquo homine vel
minimum abusum probari, sed optare tum Principes, tum status imperii,
ut communi consilio ac consensu adnitantur, ut, sublatis abusibus et
emendatis, utriusque status excessus aut penitus aboleantur, aut in
melius reformentur, ac tandem ecclesiasticus status multis modis
labefactatus, ac christiana religio, quae in nonnullis refriguit et
remissa est, ad pristinum decus et ornamentumrestituatur et
redintegretur. Qua in re Caes. Maiestas, ut omnibus constat, hactenus
plurimum et laboris et curae insumsit, et in reliquum ad hoc negotii
omnem suam operam ac studium serio collocaturam benigne
pollicetur." Corp. Ref., XXVII. 182 sq.
The tone of the Confutation is moderate, owing to the express direction of the Emperor; but it makes no concession on the points under dispute. It abounds in biblical and patristic quotations crudely selected. As to talent and style, it is far inferior to the work of Melanchthon. The Roman Church was not yet prepared to cope with the Protestant divines.
The publication of the Confutation as well as the Confession was prohibited, and it did not appear in print till many years afterwards; but its chief contents became known from notes taken by hearers and from manuscript copies.
The Lutheran members of the Diet urged Melanchthon to prepare at once a Protestant refutation of the Roman refutation, and offered the first draught of it to the Diet, Sept. 22, through Chancellor Brück; but it was refused.
On the following day Melanchthon left Augsburg in
company with the Elector of Saxony, re-wrote the Apology on the
journey, He worked so hard at it at Altenburg, even on
Sunday, that Luther reminded him to observe the Fourth
Commandment.
The Apology of the Augsburg Confession is a scholarly vindication of the Confession. It far excels the Confutation in theological and literary merit. It differs from the apologetic Confession by its polemic and protestant tone. It is written with equal learning and ability, but with less moderation and more boldness. It even uses some harsh terms against the papal opponents, and calls them liars and hypocrites (especially in the German edition). It is the most learned of the Lutheran symbols, and seven times larger than the Confession, but for this very reason not adapted to be a symbolical book. It contains many antiquated arguments, and errors in exegesis and patristic quotations. But in its day it greatly strengthened the confidence of scholars in the cause of Protestantism. Its chief and permanent value is historical, and consists in its being the oldest and most authentic interpretation of the Augsburg Confession, by the author himself.
The Apology, though not signed by the Lutheran princes at Augsburg, was recognized first in 1532, at a convent in Schweinfurt, as a public confession; it was signed by Lutheran divines at Smalcald, 1537; it was used at the religious conference at Worms, 1540, and embodied in the various editions of the Confession, and at last in the Book of Concord, 1580.
The text of the Apology has, like that of the
Confession, gone through various transformations, which are used by
Bossuet and other Romanists as proofs of the changeableness of
Protestantism. The original draught made at Augsburg has no authority,
as it was based on fragmentary notes of Camerarius and others who heard
the Confutation read on the 3d of August. Corp. Ref., XXVII. 267 sqq. Melanchthon himself
did not hear it. Ibid., 379 sqq.; XXVIII. 1
sqq. See on the different editions the "Corp. Ref.,"
XXVI. 697 sqq. and XXVII. 379 sqq.; the Latin text of 1531, p. 419
sqq.; the German translation with the variations of ed. II. (1533), ed.
III. and IV. (1540), ed. V. 1550), ed. VI. (1556), in vol. XXVIII.
37-326.
§ 121. The Tetrapolitan Confession.
I. Editions. The Latin text was first printed at Strassburg (Argentoratum), a.d. 1531, Sept. (21 leaves); then in the Corpus et Syntagma Confess. (1612 and 1654); in Augusti’s Corpus libr. symb. (1827), p. 327 sqq.; and in Niemeyer’s Collect. Confess. (1840), p. 740–770; Comp. Proleg., p. LXXXIII.
The German text appeared first at Strassburg, Aug. 1531 (together with the Apology, 72 leaves); then again, 1579, ed. by John Sturm, but was suppressed by the magistrate, 1580; at Zweibrücken, 1604; in Beck’s Symbol. Bücher, vol. I., p. 401 sq.; in Böckel’s Bekenntniss-Schriften der evang. reform. Kirche (1847), p. 363 sq.
II. Gottl. Wernsdorff: Historia Confessionis Tetrapolitanae, Wittenb. 1694, ed. IV. 1721. Schelhorn: Amaenitates Litter., Tom. VI., Francf. 1727. J. H. FELS: Dissert. de varia Confess. Tetrapolitanae fortuna praesertim in civitate Lindaviensi, Götting. 1755. Planck: Geschichte des protest. Lehrbegriffs, vol. III., Part I. (second ed. 1796), pp. 68–94. J. W. Röhrich: Geschichte der evangel. Kirche des Elsasses. Strassburg, 1855, 3 vols. J. W. Baum: Capito und Butzer (Elberf. 1860), p. 466 sqq. and 595. Schaff: Creeds, I. 524–529.
The Tetrapolitan Confession, also called the Strassburg and the Swabian Confession, is the oldest confession of the Reformed Church in Germany, and represented the faith of four imperial cities, Strassburg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau, which at that time sympathized with Zwingli and the Swiss, rather than Luther, on the doctrine of the sacraments.
It was prepared in great haste, during the sessions of the Diet of Augsburg, by Bucer, with the aid of Capito and Hedio, in the name of those four cities (hence the name) which were excluded by the Lutherans from their political and theological conferences, and from the Protestant League. They would greatly have preferred to unite with them, and to sign the Augsburg Confession, with the exception of the tenth article on the eucharist, but were forbidden. The Landgrave Philip of Hesse was the only one who, from a broad, statesmanlike view of the critical situation, favored a solid union of the Protestants against the common foe, but in vain.
Hence, after the Lutherans had presented their Confession June 25, and Zwingli his own July 8, the four cities handed theirs, July 11, to the Emperor in German and Latin. It was received very ungraciously, and not allowed to be read before the Diet; but a confutation full of misrepresentations was prepared by Faber, Eck, and Cochlaeus, and read Oct. 24 (or 17). The Strassburg divines were not even favored with a copy of this confutation, but procured one secretly, and answered it by a "Vindication and Defense" in the autumn of 1531.
The Tetrapolitan Confession consists of twenty-three chapters, besides preface and conclusion. It is in doctrine and arrangement closely conformed to the Lutheran Confession, and breathes the same spirit of moderation, but is more distinctly Protestant. This appears at once in the first chapter (On the Matter of Preaching), in the declaration that nothing should be taught in the pulpit but what was either expressly contained in the Holy Scriptures, or fairly deduced therefrom. (The Lutheran Confession is silent on the supreme authority of the Scriptures.) The evangelical doctrine of justification is stated in the third and fourth chapters more clearly than by Melanchthon; namely, that we are justified not by works of our own, but solely by the grace of God and the merits of Christ, through a living faith, which is active in love, and productive of good works. Images are rejected in Chap. XXII.
The doctrine of the Lord’s Supper (Chap. XVIII.) is couched in dubious language, which was intended to comprehend in substance the Lutheran and the Zwinglian theories, and accords with the union tendency of Bucer. But it contains the germ of the Calvinistic view. In this ordinance, it is said, Christ offers to his followers, as truly now as at the institution, his very body and blood as spiritual food and drink, whereby their souls are nourished to everlasting life. Nothing is said of the oral manducation and the participation of unbelievers, which are the distinctive features of the Lutheran view. Bucer, who had attended the Conference at Marburg in 1529, labored with great zeal afterwards to bring about a doctrinal compromise between the contending theories, but without effect.
The Tetrapolitan Confession was soon superseded by the clearer and more logical confessions of the Calvinistic type. The four cities afterwards signed the Lutheran Confession to join the Smalcald League. But Bucer himself remained true to his union creed, and reconfessed it in his last will and testament (1548) and on his death-bed.
§ 122. Zwingli’s Confession to the Emperor Charles.
Ad Carolum Boni. Imperatorem, Germaniae comitia Augustae celebrantem Fidei Huldrychi Zwinglii Ratio (Rechenschaft). Anno MDXXX. Mense Julio. Vincat veritas. In the same year a German translation appeared in Zürich, and in 1543 an English translation. See Niemeyer, Collect. Conf., p. XXVI. and 16 sqq. Böckel: Bekenntnissschriften der reform. Kirche, p. 40. sqq. Mörikofer: U. Zwingli, vol. II. p. 297 sqq. Christoffel: U. Z., vol. II. p. 237 sqq. Schaff: Creeds, I. 366 sqq.
Zwingli took advantage of the meeting of the Diet of Augsburg, to send a confession of his faith, addressed to the German Emperor, Charles V., shortly after the Lutheran princes had presented theirs. It is dated Zürich, July 3, 1530, and was delivered by his messenger at Augsburg on the 8th of the same month; but it shared the same fate as the "Tetrapolitan Confession." It was treated with contempt, and never laid before the Diet. Dr. Eck wrote in three days a refutation, charging Zwingli that for ten years he had labored to root out from the people of Switzerland all faith and all religion, and to stir them up against the magistrate; that he had caused greater devastation among them than the Turks, Tartars, and Huns; that he had turned the churches and convents founded by the Habsburgers (the Emperor’s ancestors) into temples of Venus and Bacchus; and that he now completed his criminal career by daring to appear before the Emperor with such an impudent piece of writing.
The Lutherans (with the exception of Philip of Hesse) were scarcely less indignant, and much more anxious to conciliate the Catholics than to appear in league with Zwinglians and Anabaptists. They felt especially offended that the Swiss Reformer took strong ground against the corporal presence, and incidentally alluded to them as persons who "were looking back to the flesh-pots of Egypt." Melanchthon judged him insane.
Zwingli, having had no time to consult with his confederates, offered the Confession in his own name, and submitted it to the judgment of the whole church of Christ, under the guidance of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.
In the first sections he declares, as clearly as and even more explicitly than the Lutheran Confession, his faith in the orthodox doctrines of the Trinity and the Person of Christ, as laid down in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds (which are expressly named). He teaches the election by free grace, the sole and sufficient satisfaction by Christ, and justification by faith, in opposition to all human mediators and meritorious works. He distinguishes between the internal or invisible, and the external or visible, church. The former is the company of the elect believers and their children, and is the bride of Christ; the latter embraces all nominal Christians and their children, and is beautifully described in the parable of the ten virgins, of whom five were foolish. The word "church" may also designate a single congregation, as the church in Rome, in Augsburg, in Leyden. The true church can never err in the foundation of faith. Purgatory he rejects as an injurious fiction, which sets Christ’s merits at naught. On original sin, the salvation of unbaptized infants, and the sacraments, he departs much farther from the traditional theology than the Lutherans. He goes into a lengthy argument against the corporal presence in the eucharist. On the other hand, however, he protests against being confounded with the Anabaptists, and rejects their views on infant baptism, civil offices, the sleep of the soul, and universal salvation.
The document is frank and bold, yet dignified and courteous, and concludes thus: "Hinder not, ye children of men, the spread and growth of the Word of God. Ye can not forbid the grass to grow. Ye must see that this plant is richly blessed from heaven. Consider not your own wishes, but the demands of the age concerning the free course of the gospel. Take these words kindly, and show by your deeds that you are children of God."
§ 123. Luther at the Coburg.
Luther’s Letters from Coburg, April 18 to Oct. 4, 1530, in De Wette, IV. 1–182. Melanchthon’s Letters to Luther from Augsburg, in the second volume of the "Corpus Reform."
Zitzlaff (Archidiaconus in Wittenberg): Luther auf der Koburg, Wittenberg, 1882 (175 pages). Köstlin, M. L., II. 198 sqq.
During the Diet of Augsburg, from April till October,
1530, Luther was an honorable prisoner in the electoral castle of
Coburg. Coburg is the residence, alternately with
Gotha, of the Duke, and capital of the duchy, of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 185
m. S. S. W. of Berlin, nearly midway between Wittenberg and Augsburg,
and has now (1888) about sixteen thousand inhabitants. The castle is
situated on an eminence overhanging the town, and has been in part
converted into a prison and house of correction; but some chambers
remain in their original condition, chiefly those occupied by Luther,
with his bedstead and pulpit.
Luther arrived at Coburg, with the Elector and the Wittenberg divines, on April 15, 1530. In the night of the 22d he was conveyed to the fortified castle on the hill, and ordered to remain there for an indefinite time. No reason was given, but he could easily suspect it. He spent the first day in enjoying the prospect of the country, and examining the prince’s building (Fürstenbau) which was assigned him. His sitting-room is still shown. "I have the largest apartment, which overlooks the whole fortress, and I have the keys to all the rooms." He had with him his amanuensis Veit Dietrich, a favorite student, and his nephew Cyriac Kaufmann, a young student from Mansfeld. He let his beard grow again, as he had done on the Wartburg. He was well taken care of at the expense of the Elector, and enjoyed the vacation as well as he could with a heavy load of work and care on his mind. He received more visitors than he liked. About thirty persons were stationed in the castle.
"Dearest Philip," he wrote to Melanchthon, April
23, "we have at last reached our Sinai; but we shall make a Sion of
this Sinai, and here I shall build three tabernacles, one to the
Psalms, one to the Prophets, and one to Aesop .... It is a very
attractive place, and just made for study; only your absence grieves
me. My whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks
and Mohammed, when I see this intolerable raging of the Devil.
Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my
cry is heard in heaven. The sad condition of our German empire
distresses you more." Then he describes to him his residence in the
"empire of birds." In other letters he humorously speaks of the cries
of the ravens and jackdaws in the forest, and compares them to a troop
of kings and grandees, schoolmen and sophists, holding Diet, sending
their mandates through the air, and arranging a crusade against the
fields of wheat and barley, hoping for heroic deeds and grand
victories. He could hear all the sophists and papists chattering around
him from early morning, and was delighted to see how valiantly these
knights of the Diet strutted about and wiped their bills, but he hoped
that before long they would be spitted on a hedge-stake. He was glad to
hear the first nightingale, even as early as April. With such innocent
sports of his fancy he tried to chase away the anxious cares which
weighed upon him. It is from this retreat that he wrote that charming
letter to his boy Hans, describing a beautiful garden full of goodly
apples, pears, and plums, and merry children on little horses with
golden bridles and silver saddles, and promising him and his playmates
a fine fairing if he prayed, and learned his lessons. See above, p. 464.
Joy and grief, life and death, are closely joined in this changing world. On the 5th of June, Luther received the sad news of the pious death of his father, which occurred at Mansfeld, May 29. When he first heard of his sickness, he wrote to him from Wittenberg, Feb. 15, 1530: "It would be a great joy to me if only you and my mother could come to us. My Kate, and all, pray for it with tears. We would do our best to make you comfortable." At the report of his end he said to Dietrich, "So my father, too, is dead," took his Psalter, and retired to his room. On the same day he wrote to Melanchthon that all he was, or possessed, he had received from God through his beloved father.
He suffered much from "buzzing and dizziness" in his head, and a tendency to fainting, so as to be prevented for several weeks from reading and writing. He did not know whether to attribute the illness to the Coburg hospitality, or to his old enemy. He had the same experience at the Wartburg. Dietrich traced it to Satan, since Luther was very careful of his diet.
Nevertheless, he accomplished a great deal of work. As soon as his box of books arrived, he resumed his translation of the Bible, begun on the Wartburg, hoping to finish the Prophets, and dictated to Dietrich a commentary on the first twenty-five Psalms. He also explained his favorite 118th Psalm, and wrote 118:17 on the wall of his room, with the tune for chanting, —
By way of mental recreation he translated thirteen
of Aesop’s fables, to adapt them for youth and common
people, since "they set forth in pleasing colors of fiction excellent
lessons of wise and peaceful living among bad people in this wicked
world." He rendered them in the simplest language, and expressed the
morals in apt German proverbs. The MS. of his translation and adaptation of
these fables has recently been re-discovered in the Vatican Library by
Dr. Reitzenstein, and published, with an interesting facsimile, by E.
Thiele: "Luthers Fabeln nach seiner wiedergefundenen
Handschrift, "
etc. Halle (M. Niemeyer), 1888 (19 pages).
The Diet at Augsburg occupied his constant attention. He was the power behind the throne. He wrote in May a public "Admonition to the Clergy assembled at the Diet," reminding them of the chief scandals, warning them against severe measures, lest they provoke a new rebellion, and promising the quiet possession of all their worldly possessions and dignities, if they would only leave the gospel free. He published a series of tracts, as so many rounds of musketry, against Romish errors and abuses.
He kept up a lively correspondence with Melanchthon, Jonas, Spalatin, Link, Hausmann, Brenz, Agricola, Weller, Chancellor Brück, Cardinal Albrecht, the Elector John, the Landgrave Philip, and others, not forgetting his "liebe Kethe, Herr Frau Katherin Lutherin zu Wittenberg." He dated his letters "from the region of the birds" (ex volucrum regno), "from the Diet of the jackdaws" (ex comitiis Monedu, larum seu Monedulanensibus), or "from the desert" (ex eremo, aus der Einöde). Melanchthon and the Elector kept him informed of the proceedings at Augsburg, asked his advice about every important step, and submitted to him the draught of the Confession. He approved of it, though he would have liked it much stronger. He opposed every compromise in doctrine, and exhorted the confessors to stand by the gospel, without fear of consequences.
His heroic faith, the moving power and crowning
glory of his life, shines with wonderful luster in these letters. The
greater the danger, the stronger his courage. He devoted his best hours
to prayer. His "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott," was written before this
time, See above, 468, 502 sq., 741
sq.
In a remarkable letter to Chancellor
Brück (Aug. 5), he expresses his confidence that God can not
and will not forsake the cause of the evangelicals, since it is His own
cause. "It is His doctrine, it is His Word. Therefore it is certain
that He will hear our prayers, yea, He has already prepared His help,
for he says, ’Can a woman forget her sucking child,
that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, these
may forget, yet will not I forget thee" (
Urbanus Rhegius, the Reformer of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, on his way from Augsburg to Celle, called on Luther, for the first and last time, and spent a day with him at Coburg. It was "the happiest day" of his life, and made a lasting impression on him, which he thus expressed in a letter: "I judge, no one can hate Luther who knows him. His books reveal his genius; but if you would see him face to face, and hear him speak on divine things with apostolic spirit, you would say, the living reality surpasses the fame. Luther is too great to be judged by every wiseacre. I, too, have written books, but compared with him I am a mere pupil. He is an elect instrument of the Holy Ghost. He is a theologus for the whole world."
Bucer also paid him a visit at Coburg (Sept. 25), and sought to induce him, if possible, to a more friendly attitude towards the Zwinglians and Strassburgers. He succeeded at least so far as to make him hopeful of a future reconciliation. It was the beginning of those union efforts which resulted in the Wittenburg Concordia, but failed at last. Bucer received the impression from this visit, that Luther was a man "who truly feared God, and sought sincerely the glory of God."
There can be no doubt about this. Luther feared God, and nothing else. He sought the glory of Christ, and cared nothing for the riches and pleasures of the world. At Coburg, Luther was in the full vigor of manhood,—forty-six years of age,—and at the height of his fame and power. With the Augsburg Confession his work was substantially completed. His followers were now an organized church with a confession of faith, a form of worship and government, and no longer dependent upon his personal efforts. He lived and labored fifteen years longer, completing the translation of the Bible,—the greatest work of his life, preaching, teaching, and writing; but his physical strength began to decline, his infirmities increased, he often complained of lassitude and uselessness, and longed for rest after his herculean labors. Some of his later acts, as the unfortunate complicity with the bigamy affair of Philip of Hesse, and his furious attacks upon Papists and Sacramentarians, obscured his fame, and only remind us of the imperfections which adhere to the greatest and best of men.
Here, therefore, is the proper place to attempt an estimate of his public character, and services to the church and the world.
§ 124. Luther’s Public Character, and Position in History.
In 1883 the four hundredth anniversary of
Luther’s birth was celebrated with enthusiasm
throughout Protestant Christendom by innumerable addresses and sermons
setting forth his various merits as a man and a German, as a husband
and father, as a preacher, catechist, and hymnist, as a Bible
translator and expositor, as a reformer and founder of a church, as a
champion of the sacred rights of conscience, and originator of a mighty
movement of religious and civil liberty which spread over Europe and
across the Atlantic to the shores of the Pacific. The story of his life
was repeated in learned and popular biographies, in different tongues,
and enacted on the stage in the principal cities of Germany. See the Lit. on p. 104. The martyr-Emperor,
Frederick III., as crown prince, representing his venerable father,
Emperor William I. of Germany, was the leading figure in the
celebration at Wittenberg, Sept. 12-14, 1883, and gave it a national
significance. The Luther-celebration produced several Luther-dramas, by
Henzen (1883), Devrient (7th ed. 1888), Herrig (9th ed. 1888), and
Trümpelmann (2nd ed. 1888). Comp. G. A.
Erdmann, Die Lutherfestspiele, Wittenberg, 1889. The meeting of the Evangelical Alliance of the
U. S., then under the management of Drs. Prime and Schaff
(Presbyterians), was the most representative and impressive Luther
celebration in America; it was addressed by Hon. John Jay
(Episcopalian), Dr. Phillips Brooks (Episcopalian), Dr. Wm. M. Taylor
(Congregationalist), Bishop Simpson (Methodist), Dr. Krotel (Lutheran),
Dr. Crosby (Presbyterian). The music was furnished by the New York
Oratorio Society. The Evangelical Alliance issued also an invitation to
the Protestant churches in the United States to celebrate
Luther’s birthday by sermons on the
Reformation.
Such testimony has never been borne to a mortal man. The Zwingli-celebration of the year 1884 had a similar character, and extended over many countries in both hemispheres, but would probably not have been thought of without the preceding Luther-celebration.
And indeed Luther has exerted, and still exerts, a
spiritual power inferior only to that of the sacred writers. St.
Angustin’s influence extends wider, embracing the
Roman Catholic church as well as the Protestant; but he never reached
the heart of the common people. Luther is the only one among the
Reformers whose name was adopted, though against his protest, as the
designation and watchword by the church which he founded. He gave to
his people, in their own vernacular, what no man did before or since,
three fundamental books of religion,—the Bible, a
hymn-book, and a catechism. He forced even his German enemies to
imitate his language in poetry and prose. So strong is the hold which
his Bible version has upon the church of his name, that it is next to
impossible to change and adapt it to modern learning and taste,
although he himself kept revising and improving it as long as he
lived. The Probebibel, so-called, of 1883, though prepared by a
company of able scholars appointed by various German States, is a
timidly conservative revision, does not touch the Erasmian text, and
allows innumerable inaccuracies to stand from respect to
Luther’s memory; and yet even this revision revises
too much for the Lutherans of strict orthodoxy. His popularity is a
hinderance to progress.
Luther was the German of the Germans, and the most
vigorous type of the faults as well as the virtues of his nation. See H. v. Treitschke’s
eloquent address, Luther und die deutsche Nation, Berlin, 1883 (29
pages). Professor Ad. Harnack (Martin Luther,
Giessen, 1883, p. 4) well says: Fast jede Partei unter uns hat
ihren Luther und meint den wahren zu haben. Die Verehrung
für Luther vereinigt mehr als die Hälfte unserer
Nation und die Auffassung Luther’s trennt sie. Von
Luther’s Namen lässt so leicht kein
Deutscher. Ein unvergleichlicher Mann ist er Allen, ob man ihm nun
aufpasst, um ihn anzugreifen, oder ob man ihn rühmt und hoch
preist." The
Germans, if we may say so, worship Luther, Frederick the Great, Goethe,
and Bismarck. Of these, Luther is most worthy, and was least desirous,
of praise.
His real strength lies in his German writings,
which created the modern High-German book-language, and went right to
the heart of the people. His greatest production is a
translation,—the German Bible. Italians, Spaniards,
and Frenchmen, who knew him only from his Latin books, received a very
feeble idea of his power, and could not understand the secret of his
influence. Hallam also, ignoring Luther’s
German writings, calls his polemical books "bellowing in bad Latin," "
scandalous," and " disgusting." (Literature of Europe in the 15th,
16th, and 17th centuries, II. 306, N. Y. ed.)
Nevertheless, Martin Luther’s influence extends far beyond the limits of his native land. He belongs to the church and the world.
Luther has written his own biography, as well as the early history of the German Reformation, in his numerous letters, without a thought of their publication. He lays himself open before the world without reservation. He was the frankest and most outspoken of men, and swayed by the impulse of the moment, without regard to logical consistency or fear of consequences. His faults as well as his virtues lay on the surface of his German works. He infused into them his intense personality to a degree which hardly finds a parallel except in the Epistles of the Apostle Paul.
He knew himself very well. A high sense of his calling and a deep sense of personal unworthiness are inseparably combined in his self-estimate. He was conscious of his prophetic and apostolic mission in republishing the primitive gospel for the German people; and yet he wrote to his wife not to be concerned about him, for God could make a dozen Luthers at any time. In his last will and testament (Jan. 6, 1542) he calls himself "a man well known in heaven, on earth, and in hell," but also "a poor, miserable, unworthy sinner," to whom "God, the Father of all mercies, has intrusted the gospel of His dear Son, and made him a teacher of His truth in spite of the Pope, the Emperor, and the Devil." He signs himself, in that characteristic document, "God’s notary and witness in His gospel." One of his last words was, "We are beggars." And in the preface of the first collected edition of his works, he expresses a wish that they might all perish, and God’s Word alone be read.
Luther was a genuine man of the people, rooted and grounded in rustic soil, but looking boldly and trustingly to heaven with the everlasting gospel in his hand. He was a plebeian, without a drop of patrician blood, and never ashamed of his lowly origin. But what king or emperor or pope of his age could compare with him in intellectual and moral force? He was endowed with an overwhelming genius and indomitable energy, with fiery temper and strong passions, with irresistible eloquence, native wit, and harmless humor, absolutely honest and disinterested, strong in faith, fervent in prayer, and wholly devoted to Christ and His gospel. Many of his wise, quaint, and witty sayings have passed into popular proverbs; and no German writer is more frequently named and quoted than Luther.
Like all great men, he harbored in his mind
colossal contrasts, and burst through the trammels of logic. He was a
giant in public, and a child in his family; the boldest reformer, yet a
conservative churchman; the eulogist of reason as the handmaid of
religion, and the abuser of reason as the mistress of the Devil; the
champion of the freedom of the spirit, and yet a slave of the letter;
an intense hater of popery to the last, and yet an admirer of the
Catholic Church, and himself a pope within his own church. Comp. the admirable description of Luther by
Hase in his Kirchengesch. (11th ed., p. 400), and at the close of his Prot.
Polemik. The Roman Catholic Möhler (Kirchengesch., III. 148) thinks that out of Luther’s
writings might be drawn "the most glorious apology of the Catholic
Church." Harnack (l.c., p. 5) calls him "a sage without
prudence; a statesman without politics; an artist without art; a man
free from the world, in the midst of the world; of vigorous sensuality,
yet pure; obstinately unjust (rechthaberisch ungerecht), yet concerned for the cause; defying
authority, yet bound by authority; at once blaspheming and
emancipating, reason."
Yet there was a unity in this apparent contradiction. He was a seeker of the righteousness of works and peace of conscience as a Catholic monk, and he was a finder of the righteousness of faith as an evangelical reformer; just as the idea and pursuit of righteousness is the connecting link between the Jewish Saul and the Christian Paul. It was the same engine, but reversed. In separating from papal catholicism, Luther remained attached to Christian catholicism; and his churchly instincts were never suppressed, but only suspended to re-assert themselves with new and greater force after the revolutionary excesses of the Reformation.
His history naturally divides itself into three
periods: the Roman-Catholic and monastic period, till 1517; the
Protestant and progressive period, till 1525; the churchly,
conservative, and reactionary period, till 1546. But he never gave up
his devotion to the free gospel, and his hatred of the Pope as the
veritable Antichrist. An interesting parallel in this and other
respects may be drawn by some future historian, between Luther and
Bismarck, whose political influence upon Germany in the nineteenth
century is as powerful as Luther’s ecclesiastical
influence was in the sixteenth. Bismarck was originally an intense
aristocrat, but became the boldest liberal, and ended as a conservative
statesman, though without surrendering the creations of his genius. He
defeated Catholic Austria and France, and protested that he would never
go to Canossa; yet he met Pope Leo XIII. half way, and repealed the
unjust May-laws in the interest of patriotism, without surrendering any
religious principle. With all his faults, he is the greatest statesman
and diplomatist of the century, and the chief founder of the Protestant
German Empire.
Luther’s greatness is not that of
a polished work of art, but of an Alpine mountain with towering peaks,
rough granite blocks, bracing air, fresh fountains, and green meadows.
His polemical books rush along like thunderstorms or turbid mountain
torrents. He knew his violent temper, but never took the trouble to
restrain it; and his last books against the Papists, the Zwinglians,
and the Jews, are his worst, and exceed any thing that is known in the
history of theological polemics. In his little tract against the Romish
Duke Henry of Brunswick, He calls him Hanswurst, Jack
Sausage. So says Döllinger
(Die
Reform., III.
265, note), who counted the number. He adds, that in
Luther’s book on the Councils, the devils are
mentioned fifteen times in four lines. See the passages above, p. 657 sq., note
3. Comp. the comparison between Luther and
Melanchthon, p. 193 sq.
But, with all his faults, he is the greatest man
that Germany produced, and one of the very greatest in history.
Melanchthon, who knew him best, and suffered most from his imperious
temper, called him the Elijah of Protestantism, and compared him to the
Apostle Paul. He announced the death of Luther to his
students with the words: "Ah! obiit auriga et currus Israel, qui
rexit ecclesiam in hac ultima senecta mundi. ... Amemus igitur hujus
viri memoriam."
This is his crowning merit and his enduring monument.
The men who, next to the Apostles, have exerted and still exert through their writings the greatest influence in the Christian Church, as leaders of theological thought, are St. Augustin, Martin Luther, and John Calvin: all pupils of Paul, inspired by his doctrines of sin and grace, filled with the idea that God alone is great, equally eminent for purity of character, abundance in labors, and whole-souled consecration to the service of Christ, their common Lord and Saviour; and yet as different from each other as an African, a German, and a Frenchman can be. Next to them I would place an Englishman, John Wesley, who, as to abundance of useful labor in winning souls to Christ, is the most apostolic man that Great Britain has produced.
Augustin commands the respect and gratitude of the Catholic as well as the Protestant world. He is, among the three the profoundest in thought, and the sweetest in spirit; free from bitterness and coarseness, even in his severest polemics; yet advocating a system of exclusiveness which justifies coercion and persecution of heretics and schismatics. He identified the visible catholic church of his day with the kingdom of God on earth, and furnished the program of mediaeval Catholicism, though he has little to say about the papacy, and protested, in the Pelagian controversy, against the position of one Pope, while he accepted the decision of another. All three were fighters, but against different foes and with different weapons. Augustin contended for the catholic church against heretical sects, and for authority against false freedom; Luther and Calvin fought for evangelical dissent from the overwhelming power of Rome, and for rational freedom against tyrannical authority. Luther was the fiercest and roughest fighter of the three; but he alone had the Teutonic gift of humor which is always associated with a kindly nature, and extracts the sting out of his irony and sarcasm. His bark was far worse than his bite. He advised to drown the Pope and his cardinals in the Tiber; and yet he would have helped to save their lives after the destruction of their office. He wrote a letter of comfort to Tetzel on his death-bed, and protested against the burning of heretics.
Luther and Calvin learned much from Augustin, and esteemed him higher than any human teacher since the Apostles; but they had a different mission, and assumed a polemic attitude towards the traditional church. Augustin struggled from the Manichaean heresy into catholic orthodoxy, from the freedom of error into the authority of truth; the Reformers came out of the corruptions and tyranny of the papacy into the freedom of the gospel. Augustin put the church above the Word, and established the principle of catholic tradition; the Reformers put the Word above the church, and secured a progressive understanding of the Scriptures by the right of free investigation.
Luther and Calvin are confined in their influence to Protestantism, and can never be appreciated by the Roman Church; yet, by the law of re-action, they forced the papacy into a moral reform, which enabled it to recover its strength, and to enter upon a new career of conquest. Romanism has far more vitality and strength in Protestant than in papal countries, and owes a great debt of gratitude to the Reformation.
Of the two Reformers, Luther is the more original, forcible, genial, and popular; Calvin, the more theological, logical, and systematic, besides being an organizer and disciplinarian. Luther controls the Protestant churches of Germany and Scandinavia; Calvin’s genius shaped the confessions and constitutions of the Reformed churches in Switzerland, France, Holland, and Great Britain; he had a marked influence upon the development of civil liberty, and is still the chief molder of theological opinion in the Presbyterian and Congregational churches of Scotland and North America. Luther inspires by his genius, and attracts by his personality; Calvin commands admiration by his intellect and the force of moral self-government, which is the secret of true freedom in church and state.
Great and enduring are the merits of the three; but neither Augustin, nor Luther, nor Calvin has spoken the last word in Christendom. The best is yet to come.
NOTES.
Remarkable Judgments on Luther.
Luther, like other great men, has been the subject of extravagant praise and equally extravagant censure.
We select a few impartial and weighty testimonies from four distinguished writers of very different character and position,—an Anglican divine, two secular poets, and a Catholic historian.
I. Archdeacon Charles Julius Hare (1795–1855) has written the best work in the English language in vindication of Luther. It appeared first as a note of 222 pages in the second volume of his The Mission of the Comforter, 1846 (3d ed. 1876), and afterwards as a separate book shortly before his death, 2d ed. 1855.
Luther has been assailed by English writers on literary, theological, and moral grounds: 1, for violence and coarseness in polemics (by Henry Hallam, the historian); 2, for unsoundness in the doctrine of justification, and disregard of church authority (by the Oxford Tractarians and Anglo-Catholics); 3, for lax views on monogamy in conniving at the bigamy of Philip of Hesse (by the same, and by Sir William Hamilton).
These charges are discussed, refuted, or reduced to a minimum, by Hare (who had the largest Luther library and the fullest Luther knowledge in England), with ample learning, marked ability, and in the best Christian spirit. He concludes his vindication with these words: —
"To some readers it may seem that I have spoken with exaggerated admiration of Luther. No man ever lived whose whole heart and soul and life have been laid bare as his have been to the eyes of mankind. Open as the sky, bold and fearless as the storm, he gave utterance to all his feelings, all his thoughts. He knew nothing of reserve; and the impression he produced on his hearers and friends was such, that they were anxious to treasure up every word that dropped from his pen or from his lips. No man, therefore, has ever been exposed to so severe a trial; perhaps no man was ever placed in such difficult circumstances, or assailed by such manifold temptations. And how has he come out of the trial? Through the power of faith, under the guardian care of his Heavenly Master, he was enabled to stand through life; and still he stands, and will continue to stand, firmly rooted in the love of all who really know him."
II. Goethe, the greatest poet and literary genius of Germany, when he was eighty-two years of age, March 11, 1832 (a few days before his death), paid this tribute to Luther and the Reformation, as reported by Eckermann, in the third or supplemental volume of the Conversations of that extraordinary man: —
"We scarcely know what we owe to Luther, and the Reformation In general. We are freed from the fetters of spiritual narrow-mindedness; we have, in consequence of our increasing culture, become capable of turning back to the fountain-head, and of comprehending Christianity in its purity. We have again the courage to stand with firm feet upon God’s earth, and to feel ourselves in our divinely endowed human nature. Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences go on gaining in depth and breadth, and the human mind expand as it may, it will never go beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it glistens and shines forth in the Gospels.
"But the better we Protestants advance in our noble development, so much the more rapidly will the Catholics follow us. As soon as they feel themselves caught up by the ever-extending enlightenment of the time, they must go on, do what they will, till at last the point is reached where all is but one."
III. Heinrich Heine, of Jewish descent, poet, critic, and humorist, the Franco-German Voltaire, who, like Voltaire, ridiculed with irreverent audacity the most sacred things, and yet, unlike him, could pass from smiles to tears, and appreciate the grandeur of Moses and the beauty of the Bible, pays this striking tribute to the Reformer: —
"Luther was not only the greatest, but also the
most German man of our history; and in his character all the virtues
and vices of the Germans are united in the grandest manner. He had also
attributes which are rarely found together, and are usually regarded as
hostile contradictions. He was at once a dreamy mystic, and a practical
man of action. His thoughts had not only wings, but also hands; he
spoke and he acted. He was not only the tongue, but also the sword of
his age. He was both a cold scholastic stickler for words, and an
inspired, divinely intoxicated prophet. After working his mind weary
with his dogmatic distinctions during the day, he took his flute in the
evening, looked up to the stars, and melted into melody and devotion.
The same man who would scold like a fishwoman could also be as soft as
a tender virgin. He was at times wild as the storm which uproots the
oaks, and again as gentle as the zephyr which kisses the violets. He
was full of the most awful fear of God, full of consecration to the
Holy Spirit; he would be all absorbed in pure spirituality, and yet he
knew very well the glories of the earth, and appreciated them, and from
his mouth blossomed the famous motto: Who does not love wine, wife, and
song, remains a fool his whole life long." This is a mistake; see p. 466
sq.
"Honor to Luther! Eternal honor to the dear man, to whom we owe the recovery of our dearest rights, and by whose benefit we live to-day! It becomes us little to complain about the narrowness of his views. The dwarf who stands on the shoulders of the giant can indeed see farther than the giant himself, especially if he puts on spectacles; but for that lofty point of intuition we want the lofty feeling, the giant heart, which we cannot make our own. It becomes us still less to pass a harsh judgment upon his failings: these failings have been of more use to us than the virtues of a thousand others. The polish of Erasmus, the gentleness of Melanchthon, would never have brought us so far as the divine brutality of Brother Martin. From the imperial Diet, where Luther denied the authority of the Pope, and openly declared ’that his doctrine must be refuted by the authority of the Bible, or by the arguments of reason,’ new age has begun in Germany. The chain wherewith the holy Boniface bound the German church to Rome has been hewn asunder .... Through Luther we attained the greatest freedom of thought; but this Martin Luther gave us not only liberty to move, but also the means of moving, for to the spirit he gave also a body. He created the word for the thought,—he created the German language. He did this by his translation of the Bible. The Divine author of this book himself chose him his translator, and gave him the marvellous power to translate from a dead language which was already buried into another language which did not yet live. How Luther came to the language into which he translated the Bible I cannot conceive to this day .... This old book is a perennial fountain for the renewal of the German language."—Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, 2nd ed. 1852, in Heine’s Sämmtl. Werke, vol. III. 29 sqq.
IV. J. Döllinger, the most learned Catholic historian of the nineteenth century, in his Lectures on the Reunion of Christendom (Ueber die Wiedervereinigung der christlichen Kirchen, Nördlingen, 1888, p. 53), makes the following incidental remark on Luther and the Reformation: —
"The force and strength of the Reformation was only in part due to the personality of the man who was its author and spokesman in Germany. It was indeed Luther’s overpowering mental greatness and wonderful manysidedness (überwältigende Geistesgrösse und wunderbare Vielseitigkeit) that made him the man of his age and his people. Nor was there ever a German who had such an intuitive knowledge of his countrymen, and was again so completely possessed, not to say absorbed, by the national sentiment, as the Augustinian monk of Wittenberg. The mind and spirit of the Germans was in his hand as the lyre is in the hand of a skillful musician. He had given them more than any man in Christian days ever gave his people,—language, Bible, church hymn. All his opponents could offer in place of it, and all the reply they could make to him, was insipid, colorless, and feeble, by the side of his transporting eloquence. They stammered, he spoke. He alone has impressed the indelible stamp of his mind on the German language and the German intellect; and even those among us who hold him in religious detestation, as the great heresiarch and seducer of the nation, are constrained, in spite of themselves, to speak with his words and think with his thoughts.
"And yet still more powerful than this Titan of the world of mind was the yearning of the German people for deliverance from the bonds of a corrupted church system. Had no Luther arisen, a reformation would still have come, and Germany would not have remained Catholic."
Dr. Döllinger delivered the lectures from which this extract is taken, after his quarrel with Vatican Romanism, in the museum at Munich, February, 1872. They were stenographically reported in the "Köllner-Zeitung," translated into English by Oxenham (London, 1872), and from English into French by Madame Hyacinthe-Loyson (La réunion des églises, Paris, 1880), and at last published by the author (1888).
This testimony is of special importance, owing to
the acknowledged learning and ability of Döllinger as a
Roman Catholic historian, and author of an elaborate work against the
Reformation (1848, 3 vols.), consisting mostly of contemporaneous
testimonies. He is thoroughly at home in the writings of the Reformers,
and prepared a biographical sketch of Luther, Luther, eine
Skizze,
Freiburg-i.-B., 1851. I have a copy with notes, which the old Catholic
Bishop Reinkens, a pupil of Döllinger, kindly gave me in
Bonn, 1886. It appeared in the first edition of Wetzer and
Welte’s Kirchen-Lexikon, vol. VI. 651 spp.
Döllinger was excommunicated for his opposition to the Vatican decree of infallibility (1870), but still remains a Catholic, and could not become a Protestant without retracting his work on the Reformation. He would, however, write a very different work now, and present the Reformation as a blessing rather than a calamity to Germany, in the light of the events which have passed since 1870. In one of his Akademische Vorträge, the first volume of which has just reached me (Nördlingen, 1888, p. 76), he makes the significant confession, that for many years the events In Germany from 1517 to 1552 were to him an unsolved riddle, and an object of sorrow and grief, seeing then only the result of division of the church and the nation into hostile camps; but that a closer study of the mediaeval history of Rome and Germany, and the events of the last years, have given him a better understanding and more hopeful view of the renewed and reunited German nation as a noble instrument in the hands of Providence. This is as far as he can go from his standpoint.
§ 125. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.
I conclude this volume with Luther’s
immortal hymn, which is the best expression of his character, and
reveals the secret of his strength as well as the moving power of the
Reformation. The translation was made by my esteemed friend,
Professor Thomas Conrad Porter, D. D., of Easton, Penn., several years
ago, but finished in February, 1888, and is almost equal to that of
Thomas Carlyle in its reproduction of the rugged force of the original,
and surpasses it in rhythmic accuracy. Comp. 468, 502,
sq.
A tower of strength Carlyle: "A safe stronghold."
A good defense "A trusty
shield."—C.
He helps us free from all the ill
That us hath overtaken.
Our old, mortal foe "The ancient prince of
hell."—C.
Now aims his fell blow,
Great might and deep guile
His horrid coat-of-mail; Strong mail of craft and power He weareth in
this hour."—C. "In grim armor dight, Much guile and great might."—Longfellow.
On earth is no one like him. "On earth is not his
fellow."—C.
By might of ours can naught be done: "By force of arms we nothing
can."—C.
Our fate were soon decided.
But for us fights the champion, "The proper
man."—C.
By God himself provided.
Who Is this, ask ye?
Jesus Christ! ÕTis he!
Lord of Sabaoth,
True God and Saviour both,
Omnipotent in battle. "Shall conquer in the
battle."—C.
Did devils fill the earth and air, "And were this world all devils
over."—C.
All eager to devour us,
Our steadfast hearts need feel no care,
Lest they should overpower us.
The grim Prince of hell,
With rage though he swell,
Hurts us not a whit,
Because his doom is writ:
A little word can rout "slay."—C.
The word of God will never yield
To any creature living;
He stands with us upon the field,
His grace and Spirit giving.
Take they child and wife,
Goods, name, fame, and life,
Though all this be done,
Yet have they nothing won:
The kingdom still remaineth.
Das Wort sie sollen lassen stan stehen.
Und keinÕn Dank dazu haben.
Er ist bei uns wohl auf dem Plan ·Kampfplatz.
Genesis
1:1-3 2:18 3:19 6:6 17:7 20:16 41:26 41:26
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Joshua
Judges
1 Samuel
1 Kings
Psalms
9:10 12 22 31:5 46 68 74:22 80:13 118:8-9 124 130
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Ezekiel
Daniel
7:8 7:20 7:21 8:23-25 8:25 9:27
Hosea
Zechariah
Matthew
4:17 5:3 5:21-27 5:39 6:9 6:10 6:11 7:18 9:12 10:29 11:14 11:25 13:29 13:29-30 13:38 16:18 16:18 16:18 18:15-18 18:17 19:12 19:14 21:12 22:14 22:21 22:21 23:3 23:8 23:37 24:4 24:11 24:15 24:23 24:24 25:34 26:26 26:26 26:52 26:52 28:19 28:20 28:20
Mark
Luke
1:41 1:51-52 12:1 14:23 14:23 14:23 17:20-21 21:15
John
1:29 1:51 3 3:8 3:18 4:24 5 5 6 6 6:52 6:63 6:63 6:63 8:1-11 8:44 10:6 10:12 10:14 10:16 15:1 16:16
Acts
2:27 2:39 4:12 4:12 5:29 5:34 5:38-39 6:11 6:13 12:25 14:14 15:11 16:15 16:33 18:24-28 19:19
Romans
1:16 1:17 1:17 2:28-29 3 3:5 3:20 3:28 3:28 3:28 3:28 3:28 3:28 3:28 3:28 6:1 6:1 6:4 7 8:28 9 9:5 11 11:25-26 12:1 12:3 13 13:1 13:1 13:1 13:1 13:1 13:1 13:1 13:8 14:3
1 Corinthians
1:9 1:12 1:16 2 2:4 3:19 6:10 7 7:7 7:7 7:12 7:32 7:33 7:40 9:5 9:19 10:4 10:4 10:16 10:25 11:19 11:27 11:27 11:27 11:27 11:29 11:29 12:9 13 13:1-2 13:8 14:11 14:40 15:30
2 Corinthians
Galatians
2:11 2:16 2:19 3:24 3:25 4:4 4:24 4:24 5:6 5:6 5:6 5:6 5:13 5:21
Ephesians
1:22 2:2 2:11-22 3:17 4:10 4:15 4:15
Philippians
1 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians
2:3 2:3 2:3 2:3-4 2:3-4 2:3-7 2:4 2:4 2:7 2:7 3:10
1 Timothy
2:4 2:4 3:2 3:2 3:12 3:15 4:1-3
2 Timothy
Titus
Hebrews
James
1 Peter
2 Peter
1 John
1:3 1:5 2:18 2:22 2:23 4:8 5:7 5:7 5:7 5:9
2 John
Revelation
1:9 1:20 5:10 11:2 12:7 13 13 13:1 13:1-8 14:8 17 17 17 17:5 18:2 21 22:17 22:20
2 Maccabees